Quote Originally Posted by Carl the Llama View Post
Quote Originally Posted by Jiro View Post
I don't understand the question. Character development isn't measured in, like, something quantifiable*. It's a matter of quality. Cloud gets more on screen time for his character to develop, and his transition from confident ex-SOLDIER into feeble mind-smurfed clone and then finally into a confident him was nice. Then he became super smurfing emo and lost all the confidence he had gained throughout Final Fantasy VII. While I can understand that, post Meteor crisis, he would have a chance to finally grieve, but it completely deconstructed his character arc.

I'm only like halfway through Crisis Core but Zack's character development is not as dramatic. He deals with stuff like the "defection" of his mentor and all that dodgy Shinra business but basically he turns from cocky to truly heroic and that's kind of sweet even if it doesn't involve a lot of drama or anything.

* Obviously you can have "too little" character development, but having more does not mean better: if Barret ended Final Fantasy VII after having become a repentant anti-hero, a soulful jazz musician, a drunken abusive step dad, Mukki's gay lover, and then finally the founder of Neo Shinra, nobody would be like "WOW WHAT GREAT CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT" because it's unrealistic and doesn't work.
If you want drama... wait till you see the ending, they tuned it from a brutal murder into some all american hero who can take on an army >.>

I don't care who you are, you have "thousands" of shinra troops attacking you with guns rockets and swords and even if they are the lowest of the low (like the ones cloud fought in the opening fight) who deal 4 damage, you will be dead after a single strike/shot from every one of them, they turned it from something dark and gritty (as it was in VII) into some miracle man capable of taking over 1000 damage with only 1hp remaining and yet somehow still survive? what kind of ridiculous game mechanics is that supposed to be? It was just square turning it from how it was supposed to be into something blown out of proportion.
i think the thing with that was more to make it dramatic, the DMW was still breaking in pieces