Almost decent characters

[maybee]

What are some characters that you feel were almost decent but something is just holding them back ? Whether if it's just a personality flaw that annoys you or just bad writing, or maybe even something else.


Here's some of my own thoughts :

Amarant FFIX

Amarant was the almost perfect foil to Zidane. Amarant was selfish but independent and believed that it was better to work alone while Zidane was team Power of Friendship. Amarant could've brought in some good debates and throw in some good points, but after Ipsen's Castle he just becomes pointless. Amarant had his change of heart too quickly. Or maybe even just replace him with Beatrix after he's played his role.

Ashe FFXII

She should've been the main character of FFXII. Yes, still mad about this. Going to die mad about this. Rolling in the grave, mad about this.

Penelo FFXII

Square just like Ashe didn't give the poor girl the justice that she deserves. She's cute but give us more than that please Square. We want our girls to feel human and more than just one trait. Again, still like her, but come on here.

Vaan FFXII

Vaan just like his friend Penelo is cute but lacks depth. There's bits of it here and there but give us more than that. We go to Cloud, Squall, Tidus and then Vaan ? Or you know, just make Ashe the main character and let Vaan take the supportive role he was more born to play.


Seifer FFVIII

Almost a good foil and rivial to Squall, almost, so close. Seifer's atonement feels so out of nowhere though and his development just feels too rushed. Seifer goes from boy who's playing hero, to loyal puppet to insane to redemption so fast. Though that might be fault of the game he's in as some parts of endgame feel quite rough.


Irvine FFVIII

Irvine is the opposite of Seifer's problem as it feels like he doesn't change at all. We learn that Irvine knows the truth and acts cooler than he actually is so he puts on a bit of a act-which is fine, I like characters like that, though Irvine has no growth whatsoever. Irvine just keeps on playing the clown. No wonder Cid didn't want him to grow up in Balamb Garden so he'll become a seed, boy is like a dead plant.

Noel/Serah FFXIII-2

If Noel stepped in and told Serah that her fiance was a fool and they started dating instead, I might've had more respect for them both. Fanfic is the only hero here, I guess.



So what about you ?

[Fynn]

But Ashe is the main character. Vaan is the point of view character, sure, but Ashe is 100% the protagonist of XII

[Wolf Kanno]

I agree with Fynn, Ashe is the main protagonist of XII, Vaan is simply the POV character. Also, if you want some good development for Vaan and Penelo, check out Tactics A2. That game may have screwed up the main plot but it actually gave the returning XII characters some justice after the trout show that was Revenant Wings. Vaan is trying hard to be like Balthier and bumbling through it while Penelo acts like a straight laced version of Fran who has to smack Vaan over the head. It's pretty amusing.

I'll get back to this thread later, I have too many characters to sort through first.

[Psychotic]

Ashe my arse, everyone knows Balthier is the leading man.

On topic, Zell. There's a line between funny and annoying and he crossed it one too many times. See Steiner as an example of how to do it perfectly.

[Fynn]

He wishes

[Lord Golbez]

He's the only one with a personality, which as far I'm concerned doesn't just make him the main character; it makes him the only character.

[Mr Gashtacular]

I replayed FF12 last month to see if I could finally pay attention to the plot. I did, finally, but the characters just aren't interesting. It's a really good game to play, but the character and plot just ain't good.

Freya is a missed opportunity - her little plotline comes and goes and then she is pretty much ignored for the rest of the game, as far as I can remember.

I guess thats the problem when you have 8 or so main characters to develop.

[Wolf Kanno]

Alright, let's get this started.

FFV

Lenna Tycoon - I like her, but she's a bit too much of a wallflower compared to the rest of the cast. She gets easily lost behind Bartz and Galuf's antics, and Faris' situation. Krile also just pops up and sort of takes most of her character traits as well but also gets involved more with the game's funny hijinxs so she has a more difficult time standing out.

FFVII

Red XIII - I just don't get the hype with him. I mean he's unique being the first four legged monster character in an FF, but I find his personality to be dull and his personal story is kind of predictable. I feel part of my issue is that his story really doesn't go anywhere, he doesn't seem like he's really invested in the plot, and he kind of fades into the background after Cosmo Canyon. When I realized how easy it would be to write him out of the script entirely, I lost a lot of my interest in him. He's not unlikable, he's just not as interesting as I feel people make him out to be. If they had kept some of his original story elements from the early drafts of the script, I feel he would have been a far more engaging character. As it stands he kind of feels like Umaro or Gogo to me, neat characters but more there for the sake of variet than to be compelling.

Vincent Valentine - I like my cool dark loners, but in hindsight, Vincent's main source of angst is him still crushing on a girl who treated him like trout and chose her career over him. While it's tragic, his overly melodramatic reaction to the whole ordeal makes him come across like a middle schooler who acts like the world ends after their first relationship falls apart. It's more pathetic than endearing.

FFVIII

Quistis Trepe - I really want to like Quistis, I think she's an interesting character with some cool background details that could make her a compelling character. Instead her actions within the game usually betray these details and she ultimately never lives up to the reputation the game inflates in the beginning concerning her. She has her moments where she's awesome, but she also has a lot of moments that makes you wonder what is really going on in that head of hers.

FFIX

Zidane Tribal - He has all the qualities I like in a character for the most part, but I never appreciate how much of a spotlight stealing character he tends to be. IX really tries hard with that whole ensemble cast feel but Zidane tends to get disproportionate screen time and eventually more importance to the plot than most of the cast. It just gets grating after awhile. He's one of the few characters in the series where my opinion of him depends on where I'm at in the game. Love him in the first disc, he's getting a bit annoying but still lovable by disc 2, and I'm starting to get really annoyed with him by disc 3 and 4.

Garnet - Again, I would really like to actually enjoy her as a character but she just has this annoying habit in the plot of exasperating the situation. I'm still trying to wrap my head around how she spends half of disc 1 wishing to escape Alexandria so she can discover a way to stop war and figure out why her mother has gone bat trout crazy, only to spend the rest of the same disc and part of disc 2 trying to run away back to Alexandria to confront her, when she has no plans, knows her mom wants her powers, and was so concerned about her warped personality that she fled her nation to discuss it with her uncle only to now think she can turn around and talk her out of this. Like what the hell?! You're now flip flopping on the player.

FFX

Wakka - This is the other character where my enjoyment of them largely stems from where I am in the game. I initially really liked him, but just as you get older and discover your fun loving uncle is a crazy religious zealot with some racist views of the world, he just becomes really uncomfortable after awhile. I also feel like his character arc never goes anywhere and he just kind of accepts what's going on with little conflict despite the game throwing in your face how much Yu-Yevon religion and his hatred of Al bhed are a part of his character. It's annoying.

FFXIII

Snow Villers - I want to like this guy. In truth, he's not too dissimilar to Sabin from FFVI, but he so grating. I think it's his constant "Hero speech" that kept getting to me. It was like being stuck with the flanderized Disney Hercules from Kingdom Hearts for 30 hours. He has a better character growing moment than most of the cast, but it's not well executed since he is out of the plot for a good ten or so hours before he comes back in time to have the ending to his arc. So the momentum is kind of off. Can't comment on how he turns out in the sequels.

Fang - I like her personality, but I can't justify her existence in the plot. She doesn't really have any character growth, doesn't really have any commitment to the team or its goal outside of just following along with Vanille who is guilt-tripped into helping, and yeah. I just feel like she's a pointless character despite being one of the game's few likable cast members.

[maybee]

Freya is a missed opportunity - her little plotline comes and goes and then she is pretty much ignored for the rest of the game, as far as I can remember.

Poor Freya.

[Karifean]

I'm just going to blanket put down every character that can be summed up with this sentence: has their arc independently from the main plot and adds nothing meaningful to the dynamic of the group, or other characters' arcs.

Red XIII, Cid, Barret (after Midgar), Freya, Amarant, Kimahri, Fran, Basch, (really also Balthier), and pretty much every character in FF VI, but primarily Setzer, Cyan, Strago, Relm, Gau and Terra.

As far as FF VI is concerned Terra is especially a strange case since "what" she is - a half human half esper who can mediate between both sides - is important to the plot, and yet her actual character arc around finding love and everything relating to "who" she is and what she wants and wishes to be is totally segregated from it. Besides her the others are a bit more straightforward, although even characters like Celes, Locke and Edgar who are much more central have so little drive or reason to be part of this mishmash group fighting the Empire / Kefka, much less have any more than a handful of meaningful interactions with the majority of them.

FF XII I feel is kinda trying to do a thing where each character's arc feeds into Ashe's perspective and influences her to ultimately make the choice not to cut new nethicite atop the Pharos, but if that is the idea they really dance around it since Ashe has so very few double-sided conversations with her party members on the subject it never really feels like the other characters' arcs meaningfully contribute in the end. They as well as their characters in general could be cut from the story and it wouldn't feel unnatural for the outcome to be the same. Dunno, maybe I'm misunderstanding the fundamental idea, but it feels like an aspect of the game that could've been brought to the forefront a lot more than it is.

FF VIII, IX and X don't really have this problem much each for their own individual reasons. In FF VIII, the characters besides Squall and Rinoa don't really undergo 'arcs' as much as they're just human beings offering their own perspectives to the main duo who are the two actually getting proper development. FF IX has most characters with arcs undergo them over the course of the story. And FF X has the cast actually continuously influence one another *and* have their arcs not be diversions from the main plot, making them easily the most human cast in the series.

Well that's the main thing that comes to mind immediately. Might go over some more individual cases later.

[Mercen-X]

Can't say much for pre-NGC games.

FF7, (SPOILER)the ShinRa executives. The only who doesn't seem to be a sterotypical villain is Reeve and, low and behold, he's one of the main protagonists (or at least a playable character, does that count as protagonist? Also Palmer isn't really a villain, he's more an comedic oaf). Thinking about it, some of the PCs don't seem definitively to be protagonists. They're more like strays. Yuffie, Vincent, Cid, Cait Sith, and (after Midgar) even Red XIII don't really participate actively in the main quest. That is to say they don't contribute to the plot either by actions or dialogue. They don't show initiative to destroy Shinra, stop Sephiroth, or save the planet. They're all just kind of there. At least in FF8, you know why the group members continue on their quest together: they're all raised to be soldiers (apart from Rinoa who is a sorceress). Cloud's crew has motives so far removed from the main objective that you can quickly forget about them. Cait Sith isn't even real. He's a proxy. Cid is only concerned with space and airships. Vincent just wants to kill Hojo. Yuffie is completely devoid of value. Red XIII's motivation for being involved really should have dried up in Cosmo Canyon. He basically says he's tagging along because he's young and needs to see the world. It's like Rufus said when he met them: What a crew.

FF8, Raijin, Fujin, Kiros, and Ward. The storyless sidekicks of two main characters in the grand scope of the narrative. Fujin looks cool but her penchant for blurting out one-word answer AFAIK went unexplained. After Ward lost his voice, he pretty disappeared from the story and Kiros didn't get much development either. This especially sucks when it comes to characters you're playing as. Of course, compared to Squall and Rinoa, the protagonists seem kind of bland too with Zell only a marginal improvement.

FF9, my favorite character was Blank, but he's turned to stone in the first chapter and he is isn't restored until the game's end. I really wanted to know more about him. Garland also felt undedeveloped considering his apparent importance to the plot.

[Wolf Kanno]

I'm just going to blanket put down every character that can be summed up with this sentence: has their arc independently from the main plot and adds nothing meaningful to the dynamic of the group, or other characters' arcs.

Red XIII, Cid, Barret (after Midgar), Freya, Amarant, Kimahri, Fran, Basch, (really also Balthier), and pretty much every character in FF VI, but primarily Setzer, Cyan, Strago, Relm, Gau and Terra.

As far as FF VI is concerned Terra is especially a strange case since "what" she is - a half human half esper who can mediate between both sides - is important to the plot, and yet her actual character arc around finding love and everything relating to "who" she is and what she wants and wishes to be is totally segregated from it. Besides her the others are a bit more straightforward, although even characters like Celes, Locke and Edgar who are much more central have so little drive or reason to be part of this mishmash group fighting the Empire / Kefka, much less have any more than a handful of meaningful interactions with the majority of them.

I'm going to disagree that the characters don't have ample reason to ban together. I feel VI does a fairly good job of explaining why a majority of that cast has a reason to hate on the empire and work together to stop it and later Kefka. Terra was exploited by them, Celes didn't like the brutal tactics they were doing, Locke lost Rachel to them, the Figaro Bros. father was assassinated by them, Setzer is losing money because of their wars, you pretty much watch Cyan lose his whole homeland to them, and Strago and Relm are compelled by their people's history to stop them from repeating the War of the Magi by exploiting espers, not to mention the empire directly attacked their home village. The issue is that they all band together due to the empire's actions, but the empire disappears halfway through the game. Hard to tie in their arcs to that plot line, when the object of their wrath implodes in on itself and a greater scope villain enters the fray.

As for their personal issues being separate from the main conflict, I personally feel it's a bit brilliant because VI is really more character focused than story driven. Though this is more subjective than anything, so if it made you like the cast less, I can't really argue, but I kind of had the opposite issue where I found it made the characters more endearing because their problems extended far beyond just the ramifications of the plot. I mean Cyan wasn't going to get self-redemption by just focusing his anger on revenge against the empire. His issue really was from learning how all his strength didn't matter when saving his family, and I feel his escapades helping another person fight off the loss they suffered from the war, and then later finally confronting head on his own grief in the Dream World is a far better way to resolve his story than just have him go after Kefka for revenge.

As for limited interaction with each other, I'd chalk that up to technological limitations. You would be hard pressed to find any game featuring more than 10 playable character, where every character actually interacts with each other, made in this time frame. Hell, we have modern games where the party have fewer characters and none of them interact with each other. Still I feel that when the characters do interact with each other, it usually works out pretty well, I don't feel Celes or Lock would be as interesting without the other, and Terra winds up interacting with more than half the cast, and even some prominent NPCs like General Leo. Hell the biggest highlight in the game for me is doing Gau's quest after you've collected most of the cast, cause it's the only time outside of the ending where you see the whole party interact with each other trying to help out the little guy.

[Lord Golbez]

Assignment of dialogue to the party en masse in the World of Ruin is definitely not a function of technological limitations.

[Wolf Kanno]

Assignment of dialogue to the party en masse in the World of Ruin is definitely not a function of technological limitations.

It is when the team doesn't have the time or workforce to coordinate programming different dialogue for 14 different characters, for most scenarios forone of the first purposely made open ended segments of the series. Takes time, it's why you don't see too many RPGs on consoles that have both a large cast, and player freedom to change the order of events. You have to remember this was the first time the team consciously did this with a character focused narrative. There is a reason why the successes that came after VI tend to have smaller casts and tighter control on letting the player do things at their own discretion, when they don't just pull a SaGa and drop the character focus from the get go for the "choose your own adventure" angle.

[Karifean]

I can buy that they'd want to fight back against the empire individually. I can't buy that they'd cooperate with each other as a party, much less all be onboard with what they decide to do.

They just don't feel like human beings. For instance, I'd imagine Edgar to be much more concerned over how matters affect Figaro and South Figaro even beyond what happens with the empire, Strago to be much more concerned with not putting Relm near any mortal danger, while I'd imagine Cyan to be much more concerned with inflicting as much damage to the empire as possible no matter what. There's not much of a common goal there and it'd almost certainly lead to strife and disagreements, especially in the absence of a leader they both trust, which FFVI's party lacks. Fortunately they all just go along with whatever the group decides to do, and I'm not sure these three ever exchange any more than five lines of dialogue beyond maybe pleasantries/introductions. I'm not even sure if the others know Edgar is a king, come to think of it. And even when the empire stops being a threat, it's not like, say, Cyan's arc involves him learning from someone else in the party, or someone else in the party learning from him, or talking with him, or acknowledging and caring about anything he's going through. It's in total isolation from the rest of the group. He, as a character, in general, exists in almost total isolation from the rest of the group. And the same can be said for most others.

The scene I always think about at times like these is when in FFX Yuna considers actually ending her pilgrimage, and her and Tidus together actually go through how every member of the party would react and feel about this decision each for their own reasons.

I agree it's a limitation of the times, maybe it was even a necessary step in evolving, and sure enough, the series got so much better about this in the PSX era, especially by FF IX. Which is why I tend to prefer those games' casts as well as other SNES games like FFV and Chrono Trigger that at least played more to the strengths of that era rather than playing hard into its weaknesses.