Yes, many of the FFs are predictable but X for me was literally knowing how every scene was going to pan out. I knew around the time of Tidus' revelation about Yuna being sacrificed, what his fate was going to be. When the Yevon faith was presented early in the game, I knew it was going to turn out to be false and corrupt. Not cause I'm smart or anything but rather cause I had dealt with this scenario multiple time before (Xenogears, BoF2, and FFT to name a few...) what bothered me most was that it wasn't dealt with in an original or exciting way. At times I had to keep asking myself why certain elements were even in the plot since they were poorly dealt with.
Course we knew Yevon was going to turn out corrupt, you got the feeling the minute we all saw Maester Mika for the first time. And Seymour. Though his character was s rip off of Kuja. But I won't hold that against him either as Sephiroth was just a rip off of combining Kefka's insanity and state of mind with the posture (both looks and arrogance) of Chrono Trigger's Magus. They even copy their own characters.lol. Wow, I'm impressed, you made SENSE of FFT's storyline. Worst localization job I've ever seen in a video game. And that's including a FF5 fan English translation I played years ago before 7 was released (long story). Don't get me wrong I loved FFT's, but that localization job. WHO AT SE was responsible? It more than made up for it though with its gameplay. And remains one of the sole FF's that contain something called DIFFICULTY. The hard ones are the early ones up to 4. From 5 on they are a breeze. 12 seems to be harder so far. No I haven't finished it yet. So I don't have a full opinion of it yet.


When Celes tried to commit suicide it blew me away cause she had been portrayed as such a strong person, to watch her do such an act was an emotional blow and speaks depth of her character cause it showed another dynamic to her. Yuna deciding to continue her Pilgrimage despite learning its pointless was not so much cause Yuna' personality is trapped in the confines of her archtype so the player knew (or at least should have known) what her decision should have been. Even her crying wasn't out of character for her. She, like all of the cast never strayed from their surface personas. How can a story have emotional impact when its cast are card board cut outs?
I knew what she was doing right when the screen jumped to the bottom of the mountain. Then the words of that bird confirmed it. Yep she's gonna try to kill herself. Since the game already killed this installment's character, I knew she wasn't going to die. Then I guessed she'd get some type of message from Locke. And sure enough she got his bandanna. No I'm not bashing 6. That was my favorite game until I got into X. I just don't see where you think that Celes was a strong character. She had to have her ass saved one too many times for that, I'd say. Cyan was the one that blew me away. Got to feel for the guy. Loosing a family... That could do a lot to a person.

Cloud, Squall, Kain, and Vivi were far more than their surface appearance. There was a true change in the characters (like Bolivar had mentioned) even though Wakka was hit with the impact of learning Yevon was false (Since he's the games token Billy or Rei, cause the rules stipulate that games with false religions have to have some religious nut who gets his world shattered by the truth) he goes from denial to acceptance and moves on like nothing had happened.
Had he been a real person, he may have left the group despite his close ties to Yuna, especially considering how much the game tries to make him out as a faithful follower. It shouldn't be outside the realm of possibility considering he left a previous Pilgrimage due to bliztball of all things. He may have left or at least more focus could have been placed on him trying to discover something else to fill that void. Basically, he's left as a characture cause it works for the story whereas real people tend to complicate things...
I've already told others, don't quote or mention Cloud. He was a sissy emo punk tart with self esteem issues. Luckily RedXIII, Barrett, and Cid were there to make up for it and save the game. Squall was nothing more than the loner, that's in every damn story/novel/myth/legend. I agree on Kain and Vivi though. But I think Wakka went on like nothing happened for a reason. Wouldn't you. You just find out what you've known your whole life is false. What would you do? So he turns to the one thing he does know he still has left, his duties and his friends. Those he knows will always be real.

Though I do agree with you that the ability to switch out party members mid-battle was something much needed in the series. It had a few issues (like getting a gameover cause the active party is dead or being unable to switch out dead characters for live ones) but luckily XII accomodated these issues.
I think that was more to add to the non-existent difficulty factor in the game rather than realism. If you had the option to switched out the dead ones, you'd never have to reset the game in X. XII is considerably more challenging (so far as I can tell anyway) so it's kind of needed there.