That's why the characters are flat - there's not enough space to make them more rounded. And there's nothing you can really do about it in the ports that already happened, since that would probably change the game too much. I still appreciate the characters, since a lot was done about them for their time and your imagination can fill the blanks in characterisation.
I'm not sure if it being developed on a cartridge is a reason for its limited dialogue. I think that the attitude towards development of role-playing games was to make it resemble Dungeons & Dragons electronically with a basic story and basic motivations for its characters, and to leave more to the imagination of the player. I am pretty sure that dialogue takes up a small amount of space on any medium, including a cartridge. Role-playing games, and video games in general, weren't too focused on the story. It may have been a product of the decade; some movies from that time period are all about style rather than substance.
I believe in the power of humanity.
Interesting discussion and ideas here. There are upsides and downsides to the limited character development; the downside being that perhaps they are less memorable, but the upside being that they can sort of be a "stand-in" for yourself!
I remember Sakaguchi saying something along the lines of him being better at delivering a good story. So I don't really think the first FFs had excuse plots - they were actually trying to concentrate on it. It's just that story-driven games were something new. That's why the sotry feels limited these days, and I'm pretty sure the cartridge space doesn't help.
You can really tell, by all the airships of mass destruction, castles from hell, evil emperors taking over hell, the prince thinking he's a coward but actually being able to prove his worth, and the white wizard sacrificing himself for the well-being of the world, that they really tried to give us an epic storyline with interesting characters. Personally, I think they succeeded anyway, even if the characters may seem flat nowadays
Maybe i have some problem with name.
In PSX was listed Mindu but in mobile phone version i found Minwu.
And so , Gus or Guy ?
Gareth or Ricard ?
The only FF Series in which has a dual name character , i think.
That's true to some degree, but remember that the Japanese writing system can fit much longer sentences into less space, so the English translation usually becomes much more compressed.
I have played the Japanese original version 3 times and I must say the dialogues felt much longer and more detailed there.
The exact Japanese names are written as "GaI" and "RiCha-Do", so it's safe to assume that the real names are Guy and Richard.
Ah, that makes sense. I guess I hadn't considered it like that before. It does seem like there was definitely more focus on the story than the other two Final Fantasy games in this generation. I would say that my point still holds up for the other two games at least; there are memorable characters and storyline points, but there is no focus on the playable characters themselves, similar to a Dungeons & Dragons type of experience. Thanks for your response.
I believe in the power of humanity.
Well D&D and Dragon Quest were the inspiration, so I feel the stories of FFI and III are more about the world than the player because the player characters are meant to be filled in by the player itself. I use to write little extensions to the plots of these types of game with my personally crated characters, like imagining what they talk about and do while fighting monsters on their way to the next dungeon. Is Black Mage really an evil Cultist trying to steal the crystals for himself? Is Onion Knight 3 and 4 secretly brother and sister? Silly things like that. The advent of more detailed movie style story, cutscenes, and voice acting have kind of killed any player involvement from the latest installments, I think it;s why games like Demon's Souls/Dark Souls and Etrian Odyssey are still doing so well, not to mention the Persona series that gives the player more control over the MC as an avatar.
Still, FFII had a pretty cool story going for it, with lots of betrayals, noble sacrifices (including our main White Mage Minwu of this thread) and one of the more badass villains in the series.
True beauty exists in things that last only for a moment.
Current Mood: And it's been a long December and there's reason to believe. Maybe this year will be better than the last. I can't remember all the times I tried to tell myself. To hold on to these moments as they pass...
I have reason to believe his name was supposed to be "Ming Wu."
There's a beta ROM of FF2 that calls him MingWu (truncated for space no doubt) and the game Chocobo Racing mentions a once great Mysidian mage named Ming Wu, though granted Chocobo Racing has a different Mysidia.
Minwu is probably the best transliteration they could manage considering the space limitations; "Mingwu" looks weird, and "MingWu" just screams "like hell we were gonna fix the interface for one character's name."
On topic, Minwu is freakin' awesome and I'm a bit surprised, good sir, that you've taken this long to post a thread gushing about him :P
In Japan, the character's name has always been "Ming-wu"; this is also reflected in the prototype translation.
Evidence is here: ????????? | ??????????? | SQUARE ENIX
Because Japanese cannot perfectly transliterate a name like "Ming-wu", this resulted in all the varying names for him such "Minwu" (Ming in Japanese is spelled more like "Min"), and "Minh" (The translator probably got confused and mistook the final "u" sound to be silent).
But then again the translators of Square in America probably had access to text detailing the characters' official names in Japan; they likely thought "Minwu" and "Mindu" sounded cooler than "Ming-wu"
I really liked Minwu a lot, much like the rest of the cast of guest characters.
Tried playing that FFII rebirth extra episode... too hard for me to get into!
Minwu is pretty neat for a very early developed character into gaming. During his day it was probably most normal for Link and Mario to not say a world so s character development was most likely huge and mind-blowing when the game was made.
We can tell that he was extremely intelligent, had the power to see into the future, and was quite honorable and respectful. While that is not the biggest character persona ever made into a video game, way back in 1988, judging by old Atari and NES games that it most likely to be huge.
I like him and Maria. And his death was sad video game media. Stop giving that Flower Girl and her Ex- Boyfriend all the spotlight.