A Vaan problem?

[Bolivar]

yeah it doesn't seem like that short of a time to me

[TrollHunter]

yeah it doesn't seem like that short of a time to me

yeah, I think I spent years of the characters lives just grinding. I would think that going on a genocide of wolves and giants would make a man out of even vaan.

[Bolivar]

^ Haha, yeah, actually it turns out Final Fantasy XII takes place from years 18-27 of his life lol...

[TrollHunter]

Huh.... go figure
Would've been cool if the other characters aged throughout the story, but I guess that's asking too much.

[Xaven]

I understood Vaan's role as the average kid caught up in this big adventure. It probably works better in a novel, but in a game I prefer the 'main character' to have some more relevance to what's going on around him. Whenever I play games there is always a naive kid getting mixed up in a big adventure in a grand world. Myself! I don't need there to be two of me.

I respect the character for reason of the first paragraph. I'd rather see the story through him than through Basch or Ashe.

Also he needs to put on a shirt.

However, here I must disagree. Vaan's most important asset is his eye-candy value.

[Tigmafuzz]

I hate Vaan. I hate Penelo. I hate Tidus. I hate Yuna.
I love Squall. I love Cloud. Balthier and Basch were pretty damn cool. I'm alright with Zidane, even. I love Quistis. I LOVE Lulu. I love Fran. I kinda liked Rikku, but not much. Yuffie was cool. Aerith and Tifa were alright. Rinoa wasn't great, and neither was Selphie. Ashe was easily tolerable, Wakka was barely tolerable, and all of XIII's characters were unoriginal and boring - no matter how different they were.
But if I had to go back and change any of them, I wouldn't. It's the diversity that makes the games interesting. You wouldn't watch the Superfriends if it was just a bunch Supermans, would you? And yes, it's Supermans. It's a proper noun, so it isn't Supermen.
And no, I'm not just saying that Shlup will get all pissy about it. ^.^

[edczxcvbnm]

I love Vann because I get to be one of the most annoying characters of all time. And by that I mean annoying to the populace in the game. I get to go around town shouting idiotic propaganda! Awesome!

[Shin Gouken]

He just doesn't belong. He hurts the story more than helps it, and has no real purpose. If he was written better and was made to have a true impact on the overall story then it would be fine, but he doesn't. The story works just as well if he was completely left off from the start. I try to ignore him and Penelope whenever playing this game.

lol

I'll explain this for anyone else who has a deluded view

Early in the game, Ashe makes a speach about how she will cut down the enemies of Dalmasca. It's no secret that she wants revenge on the empire, who took away her kingdom and who were responsible for the deaths of both her father and her husband. And yet, when she is faced with the Sun Cryst, she chooses to destroy it (Quote - "I will destroy the Sun Cryst") leaving herself with no means to defend her kingdom and powerless to stop the empire. Did anyone bother to think why?

Ashe has key scenes with many of the main cast and her decision is influenced by them.

A scene outside Golmore shows how Basch helps Ashe to bear the shame of failing to protect a kingdom. Basch, who has failed to protect two kingdoms helps her to understand that there is nothing to gain from war and destruction, and that sparing just one person from war would have him bear any shame.
Her key scene with Balthier on the Phon Coast helps her to understand how power corrupts. Balthier watched it happen to his father and warns her not to follow in his fathers footsteps.
Penelo shows Ashe that the empire and dalmasca can co-exist peacefully, through her relationship with Larsa. They need not be enemies.
Poor Fran's influence is reserved for Balthier. She aids him in confronting his past by confronting her own (Quote- "I'm doing this as much for you as i am for me)
Vaan helps Ashe to overcome her need for revenge by overcoming his own need for revenge. His outburst when he see's Basch shows how angry toward the empire he is, however, when confronted by his brothers true killer, Vaan refuses to take his revenge, saying that it won't change anything and won't bring him back.

Every character has an influence on the decision she will make. The key scene in the game is when Ashe is stood in front of the Sun Cryst, holding 1 sword able to destroy it and another sword able to take it's power. The events that take place after she aquires the dawn shard up until finding the sun cryst are all important and affect that decision.

Vaan haters, play the game again, watch it and understand it.

I'm not too fond of him, but he was a massive improvement over Tidus and isn't anywhere near as bad as hope.

[Mercen-X]

I love you, Shin.

I hate Vaan. I hate Penelo. I hate Tidus. I hate Yuna.
I love Squall. I love Cloud. Balthier and Basch were pretty damn cool. I'm alright with Zidane, even. I love Quistis. I LOVE Lulu. I love Fran. I kinda liked Rikku, but not much. Yuffie was cool. Aerith and Tifa were alright. Rinoa wasn't great, and neither was Selphie. Ashe was easily tolerable, Wakka was barely tolerable, and all of XIII's were boring.

What I hear is you like the sullen, quiet, all-too-serious, easily irritated, loners and despise characters with a noticeable sense of humor, short attention span, obsessive behavior, and/or a cheerful disposition of any kind. I haven't played 13 so I can't react, but I'm surprised to see you thought Yuffie was cool. I found her to be a brat who reminded me a bit too much of some of my younger kin. Her personality seems to evolved in later titles, but as for PS game, she was just annoying.

yes, it's Supermans. It's a proper noun, so it isn't Supermen.

I don't believe in proper nouns being an acception to proper plural distinction. Like the Hobbit on LotR who takes offense to his family name being pronounced Proudfoots (he yells "Proudfeet!" in response), I think names ending in -man should be changed to -men when referring to more than one, such as a family. For example, if Doc Ock had a clone he rampaged around with, we should refer to them as the Doctors Octopi.

[ReloadPsi]

I don't mind Vaan.

To me, his main role seems to be as a storytelling device: he's young and rather naive, so he doesn't know a whole lot about Ivalice. By explaining its history and geography to Vaan, the other characters are actually explaining it to us. Much like in The Lord of the Rings, when the heroes arive at a new town, ruin or grassy knoll and Legolas decides to regale them with over 9000 poems detailing that location's origins and culture.

Vaan's other big purpose is to be a playable incarnation of an 'average person' caught up in Dalmasca's conflict. With the exception of Penelo, the other main characters are all rather extraordinary in their own right: Ashe is the fallen princess, Basch the condemned 'traitor', Baltheir the son of Archadia's mad genius and a former Judge. Vaan, though, is a lot more down-to-earth: a young Dalmascan, not a solider but still a victim of war, losing his only brother and his nation's freedom. As he starts to expand his horizons and realise his dreams over the course of the game, Dalmasca does too. In that way, Vaan allows us to see first-hand a nation's growth as well as a man's.

So, it's fair to say that he isn't too crucial to the plot - but he contributes to the plot and the storytelling simply by being caught up and carried along in events. He has a legitimate motivation for joining the fight, and undergoes genuine growth in the process.

This was basically what I thought. Sure beats having a bloody datalog.

[Hollycat]

Raise your hand if you think Reks was a better character than Vaan!



Well that pretty much settles it.
Even if Reks's outfit was lame as well, it wasn't as bad as Vaan.

Unfortunately, without Reks's death, Vaan wouldn't have had any story at all.

[TrollHunter]

The one thing I always wonder is... why do soldiers think it's a good idea to expose their stomach, isn't that... I don't know, a bad idea?

[ReloadPsi]

Probably budget issues. You've seen how little Gil some of them drop.

[Roogle]

Unfortunately, without Reks's death, Vaan wouldn't have had any story at all.

I don't think that the time spent with Reks is enough for the average player to care about that particular story point.

Most of the party is loosely tied together, if at all. One only needs to look to Penelo and Fran to see that individual character motivation wasn't a driving force in the character design for this game.

[Hollycat]

It kind of stinks you know. XII had great customization, gameplay, and a good idea of a story, but very little character development and a perhaps too open environment for the expected audience, while xiii had almost nothing but character development and a story that quickly got lost in the catalog and super linear repetitive gameplay.