Both fans and nonfans alike have said over the years that they hated how several members of the main cast appear to have died, only to turn out to be alive and well. The most common reason being that some of the self sacrificial scenes lost their impact and meaning later on.
However, during my latest run through FFIV, I had thought of something. Try to picture that FFIV is the latest title on store shelves, and that you are familiar with the other three FF games. So yeah, basically pretend you are a very early Japanese '90s kid.
The original Final Fantasy and Final Fantasy III had more of an emphasis on customizable party members rather than story. Meanwhile, Final Fantasy II and Final Fantasy IV were more about the overall story, especially in IV's case. The point is, up to that point in series history, Final Fantasy IV was only the second game that had characters, rather than four blank slates that were simply heroes.
In FFII, nearly every character that occupied the fourth slot gets killed at various points in the game. For that time, I believe Square was going for a "any one can die" attitude.
When Squaresoft crafted IV to be story/character based, I believe they wanted to defy what was expected of them. The reason I feel that there were so many fake out deaths was because--for a first time FFIV player along with one that is familiar with the other three games--they wanted to look like they were going to pull a FFII and have many characters die. Said "dead" characters that turned out to be alive was supposed to the surprising twist. A subversion, if you will.
It seems kind of lame from a modern standpoint, but after I thought of it that way, I think it really makes sense. I can picture someone on the team saying:
"We killed a bunch of characters the last character based game, so they'll be expecting that. Let's surprise them by making it look like a few of the cast dies instead!"
I also know that another reason why some characters appeared to have an untimely death was because they wanted a five character limit at the time, and either Squaresoft couldn't or didn't want to implement a party swap system. Still, to have so many fake out deaths seems a bit odd, so that's why I thought up of the theory on why they did what they did.
I'm not saying this excuses one of the greater flaws of FFIV, but if my theory is even close to being on the mark, that decision makes a lot more sense.
Thoughts?