a small question on popularity

[Flying Arrow]

With Squall, it is 100% writing, you're right.

The thing with Squall is that he's so one-dimensional. I get why he's brooding and all that, but there's nothing else to him, and that's unacceptable for a 45-hour video game. His introversion is supposed to make his romance with Rinoa moving but it doesn't work at all because he has no depth. I appreciate that Square tried to really characterize their protagonist, but the thing is that he needed to have more to him than he did and it needed to be fleshed out. As Squall is, he's kind of just baffling and needlessly rude to people and it's kind of smurfing annoying. If I went to school with Squall, I'd beat the out of him everyday and stick him in his locker. That is, if he wasn't the most capable and powerful human being on the planet.

And it sounds like I should be glad I have yet to experience Hope..

Hope can be annoying, but he's not as bad as people make him out to be. The backlash against Hope is basically why I came up with the 'people are sick of this archetype' idea. Hope's storyline could have actually been really effective, but SE presents it in such a way that makes it an absolute facepalm and leaves the player wondering what kind of moon logic Hope is motivated by.