For you launchies, a month later

[Renmiri]

I'll admit that FFXII telegraphs the plot a few times but what I meant about

explaining every damn nuance in the game to be called "storytelling" or a "well written plot"

concerend the idea that we have to explain every place we go like FFX did. Just about everytime you entered a new area, a cutscene would start where Yuna or Wakka would explain....

Leave the tour till after we beat Sin" ..

A matter of taste then. I hated the cards with back-story and loved Yuna, Lulu or Maechem telling it. But this wasn't my main beef. I hate when writers "telegraph the plot" or actors do the same in a movie. (Like those pretty Hollywood boys who say "I'm angry" because they can't make a convincing angry face unless they are getting upstaged by a rival in real life )

As for the storyline....If the player had been kept in the dark the scene would have had a greater impact..

I didn't It was quite a shock to me too.

I wrote my feelings on FFX to get this point across. That and I am sick and tired of fanboys and fangirls doing side by side comparisons of FFXII against FFX...

Well I do admit being an FFX fanatic but I honestly did try to see FFXII on it's own merits. And saw a lot of good things, writing just isn't one of them.

Though I still do not understand how you feel as though FFXII is not a cohesive world. We have more details about this game's world than any other in the series. Even more amazing is how everything actually blends together in the game. About 98% of the game's world has a logical reason for being there.

I never said that!

Quite the opposite, I agree with you 100%, the world design on XII is fantastic and perhaps - heresy!!! - even better than my beloved X There, I admitted it. The areas, the culture, the races, the religion, foodstuffs, fiends and Mist / Jagd details are just so rich and detailed!

Which makes the weak story quite glaring to me. And makes me dislike FFXII story and characters more compared to it's own good areas than compared to X or any other game.

The game is very uneven. Wonderful in some hard to make areas, lame in other areas that SE used to excel at. It doesn't live up to it's potential, and by such easily fixable reasons.

With such outstanding graphics and such a rich world, and such a fun and well designed battle system it is just a crime to have XII spoiled by the lame storytelling, unmemorable music and weak Esper system. A pity and a crime. Why didn't SE pop up a bit more $$$ to get better scene writers ? It seems to me it is much harder t o have all those wonderfully detailed graphics and world design than it is to find someone with more than junior high level writing.

It's not fair for someone to justify that FFXII is any less of a Final Fantasy (or downright horrible) by comparing it to FFX alone. It also seems nitpicky and biased.

True for X or any other game, in the context of this thread. There is one about "Is XII the best FF game ever ?" where the idea is exactly that: compared to other games, where do you put FFXII at ?

I said it above, my main beef with XII is comparing it to itself. It has the makings of "the best game ever" but doesn't deliver, and what's worse, it falls short on areas that SE mastered long ago. A true pity.

....except maybe the beginning and ending are so amazing that everything in between seems a little dull.

And you don't get to play on those "so amazing" parts. It is just dumped at you and you have to sit still dying to explore and to move your characters and be condemned to just be listening to a movie instead. See my point about not including the game player in the story telling ?