Am I going nuts...

[TrollHunter]

Oh my god, every new post is long enough to justify getting popcorn.
(granted, its also interesting enough to warrant popcorn... but still)
Guys, really, what the smurf?

[Shin Gouken]

Why are people so shocked that people are discussing something in a decent amount of detail? Granted, it has been a long time since i posted on this forum, but it didn't use to be uncommon to see detailed posts. There's nothing more boring than reading posts like "I love this game", or "This game is good" etc. But hey, if i'm bothering anyone i'll just head back over to gamefaqs <_<

[TrollHunter]

Why are people so shocked that people are discussing something in a decent amount of detail? Granted, it has been a long time since i posted on this forum, but it didn't use to be uncommon to see detailed posts. There's nothing more boring than reading posts like "I love this game", or "This game is good" etc. But hey, if i'm bothering anyone i'll just head back over to gamefaqs <_<

None of us said we were bothered by it (I said quite the opposite). For me at least the conversation got a lot more in depth than what I was expecting or was prepared for, else I'd be participating myself. I don't stand a chance in this conversation anymore so all I can do is sit and watch in the background while eating a bowl of popcorn.
Please: Continue this discussion, many amazing points from both sides are being brought up and I'm quite enjoying it.

[Elskidor]

I would nto say it is the best, but it's a damn good game. Vaan nor Penelo should be in the game though. They have no real place. I think Fran is weak for a female character too, but Ashe's badassness makes up for it. Great story, great game play. I'm sure I'm forgetting a few flaws, but they can't be too many that bugged me or I'd remember them....I'd think.

[Cuchulainn]

I did not start this thread for you two to start thesaurus smurfing. The walls of convoluted conjecture are not welcome. Least of all welcome is anyone defending that bandit of arses, Tidus. Pack your trout and get out.

Anyway as I understood it, Vaan & Penelo were there as outside observers to the story. Yea they were loosely connected in some way but they were put in to represent us, the gamer. That's how I seen it anyway.

[Shin Gouken]

*snip*

[Jinx]

*snip*

[Cuchulainn]

*snip*

[Pike]

So guys let's please get the thread back on topic.

Feel free to talk about Tidus in the FFX subforum. In fact, here is a handy link to it: http://home.eyesonff.com/final-fantasy-x/

[Shin Gouken]

*snip*


EDIT: To the above poster -

If we aren't allowed to discuss Tidus in the FFXII forum, we presumably can't talk about Vaan in the FFX forum. So how do you propose we discuss comparing the two? Technically they are both relevant to the discussion so should be fine to discuss in either forum.

What if i wanted to compare Vaan to Luke Skywalker... are you going to boot me out and tell me to find a Star Wars forum?

[Pike]

So how do you propose we discuss comparing the two? Technically they are both relevant to the discussion so should be fine to discuss in either forum.

Personally I'd stick that in the General Final Fantasy forum.

I feel that my above post was not clear and that's my fault. It also meant to include these petty snipes at each other which had no relevance to the topic at hand. As such, some of yours and also some of Cuch's posts have been snipped.

Edit: Comparisons in this thread are of course okay, but it felt like the Tidus discussion was really overbearing the rest of the discussion.

[Pike]

Here guys, I made a new thread for this http://home.eyesonff.com/general-fin...underdome.html

[Shin Gouken]

*snip*

[Skyblade]

No thanks.

There was a perfectly legitimate conversation (related to FFXii) in this topic with people discussing their ideas and giving thought out reasons for them

Actually, the discussion I was engaged in was only half related to FFXII. I was only comparing Tidus and Vaan in the vaguest sense. Mostly I was criticizing Vaan, and defending Tidus. Both interesting, but both separate.

Also, from the amount of posts that got culled, and what usually has to be done to get that sort of action taken, I'd say it probably got a little bit personal (which isn't surprising, judging from what I'd seen last time I was in the thread), which isn't allowed.

which you decided to turn into a typical character vs character discussion that coincidentally has zero substance and is filled with people dissing both characters without detailing reasons.

This is actually a reasonable complaint, the new thread doesn't have nearly the depth or content of the old one. I think I know what happened there, actually (and I have an idea to fix it so it is less likely to happen again), but the best place to handle that sort of discussion is PMs, not listing grievances in a discussion thread.

While that's great, it still doesn't address Vaan's contribution to her decision. If he did have a similar scene, what did it teach her?

Gabranth: You claim no need of power? What of your broken Kingdoms shame? The dead demand justice!
Vaan: You're wrong. I can't help my brother now. He's gone. He's dead.
Ashe: Even with power we cannot change what has passed. What is done is done.

Vaan helps her overcome her own desire for revenge by overcoming his. Vaan overcomes his desire for revenge when he realizes that there's a war coming and people are dying. The real world hits him hard and revenge is the last thing on his mind. Gabranth shows up and Ashe drops the Sword of Kings and raises the Treaty Blade ready to fight Gabranth. But Vaan, despite being confronted with his brothers killer, does not fight.

If you watch the scene at the Pharos, after this line...

Gabranth: No, we cannot escape the past, this man is living proof. What is your past, daughter of Dalmasca? Did you not swear revenge? Do the dead not demand it!

Ashe looks at Vaan. She holds his gaze for a full 18 seconds without a single line of dialogue. She swore revenge and is being prodded by Gabranth to take it. But it is Vaan that holds her back.

Interesting. I didn't actually get far enough in the game to see this scene, actually. I got the Treaty Blade, but never really went past that.

This does sound like pretty decent interaction and development. Although why did it take hundreds of hours to get to?

Also, is that really a role that only Vaan could fill? Pretty much every character in the party (except maybe Fran) has reasons to want revenge on the guy, and any of them could serve a similar role as mediator.

What's more, does Vaan actually hold her back? You say that Vaan and Ashe hold a mirrored path through the story, both coping with the loss and betrayal. If that's true, is Vaan's rejection of revenge anything special, or does Ashe develop similarly? I'll have to see that scene or watch it on YouTube sometime to be sure.

EDIT: Although, wow, even just discussing Vaan is actually way off topic from the original post.

- There's no pathetic, childish, emo love story forced on you

This is true of most FF games.

- The world seems filled. In other releases you'd swear it was a post-apocalyptic nightmare of a place where only your group and a few scattered souls survive.

This I will give you, Ivalice is generally always awesome. It was even pretty good in FFT, even if it was at its weakest there.

- The storyline is mature and for the first time almost believable.

Perhaps. It's also badly paced, horribly structured, and, due to the shifts in writers, seriously falls apart in places.

- the bad guys don't look like angry transvestites anymore and actually look pretty smurfing cool.

Eh, Vayne's hardly the most masculine of men. But the judges are awesome.

- Tidus isnt in it

The point that started the off-topic discussion, and largely moot, since the same is true of every FF game except X.

- you can dedicate as much or as little time you can to it. You get your moneys worth.

The same is true for every FF game. In fact, I spent far more time in most of the others than I did in XII, and enjoyed almost all of it.

- the characters that annoy you no longer outnumber the characters that dont.

When was this ever not the case? Granted, the series has had some annoying characters, but never that many. I'd say this game runs about the same ratio as most.

- Balthier and Fran are probably the best protagonists of the FF series.

Fran is not a good protagonist. Her development is relatively shallow, and she mostly serves to give exposition or have weird connections to the Mist.

The relationship of the two and how they interact with the world is awesome, though.

- Along with FFIX it's probably the best written of all the games

When it's at its peak, sure. But when it's not, it's pretty much right there with the rest of the series.

- Tidus isnt in it

No wonder we got sidetracked.

- It's not too silly (FFIX, even though i love FF IX it's undoubtedly made as a fun homage-type title) or too pathetically emo (FFVIII) it finds that awesome middle ground.

I'm Captain Basch!

- it's a world. It comes across as a world. ie. you're not wandering from a smurfing snow field into a dark forestr, into a great plain in a few tiny steps. You get the sense you're actually smurfing travelling.

This actually hurts the game more than anything else. Because it doesn't feel right. You spend dozens of hours of dungeon crawling with characters who display no individuality or emotion. Then all of a sudden a cutscene happens and for a minute or two you're supposed to relate to these things.

Epic disaster happens? No biggy, you'll be right back to mindlessly mowing down enemies after the cutscene. The world is so huge that you have tons of time where the characters never display their emotions or show what they're thinking.

- the gambit system. One word. Revolutionary.

One word. Boring.

- weather. there's smurfing weather.

Cool, but hardly something that hasn't been done before, or since.

- There's many shades of grey. Not just you're tired good vs evil.

No, it's pretty much a straight good versus evil fight.

- There's a smurfing T-Rex

Now you're thinking of FFVIII

- You get to kill bunnies who only want to cure you.

And this is good because?

- Moogles are back.

Again, Ivalice is awesome. But so what? Again, Moogles are in most of the series.

- The sidequests are relatively enjoyable and not smurfing tortuous.

The sidequests were nice, but the marks were not. Go hunt this monster, go hunt that monster. Boring, poorly structured, and there were way too many of them. And they really overshadowed the actual sidequests which, while fun, there weren't nearly enough of.

[Raistlin]

FFXII is a great game, and one of the best in the series. It had one of the best stories in the game, though had some major issues in pacing that sometimes made it difficult to fully appreciate on a first playthrough. It also had one of the richest worlds to explore, and really made the world seem massive -- more massive than any other game in the series, which is a tough pill for me to swallow, because I love the traditional world map that FFXII did away with. And significantly, FFXII largely dispensed with some of the most annoying and stereotypical character tropes that were overused in the rest of the series.

Great game, and sorely underappreciated.