Quote Originally Posted by Fynn View Post
Yes, we don't spend as much time developing VIII's cast. And? They are not, by some insane twist of fate, all tormented by their Dark and Troubled PastTM. The story is almost entirely about Squall and Rinoa and there is no need to add some bulltrout character development with Zell suddenly not being racist anymore because he just didn't think friendship was real and Selphie trying to run away from her past where she used to be romantically involved with an international drug cartel owner. These characters are support characters and they don't need to be anything else because THE STORY ISN'T ABOUT THEM. Stating all characters in a story need to undergo the ridiculously overhyped process of character development is just baffling to me. It's like saying Harry Potter sucks because the Weasley twins and the teachers didn't have some tacked on development. Please, read more, people, I beg you.
I don't think anyone is saying every character needs an character arc; those take time to set up and implement. But some character development shows that people change during the story. The focus needn't be on them, but mostly static characters don't help. The greater they are in focus, the more jarring it becomes to me. Penelo in FFXII barely changes from the start to the end of the story. Some characters don't need explicit development; Fran is the 'wise' character of the group, and so doesn't really need much. I see your point; too many characters getting development makes things muddled. I would say too little strips the focus a little.

it's just pulled out of the creator's ass. If you're going to pull all this lore out of nowhere, at least make the terminology something meaningful. Cie doesn't mean anything. The l'Cie, fal'Cie and Cie'th are explained well enough, but since all this could be just called stuff like Crystal, Crystal's Chosen and Crystal Fiend, and there's no foreign language present in the game to warrant foreign terminology, this is just a blatant case of making up nonsense to make it sound cool.
I still don't really see the issue. What's wrong with borrowing a few words? Did you know, fal'cie is an anagram of 'sky', and the 'fa' part is derived from the Latin famulus, meaning 'servant'. They didn't just pluck the names from thin air, Fynn.