[PS2] Final Fantasy 12 - Unappreciated or underwear

People need do disconnect the marketing and business side of videogames from the development side.

It's been an obvious truth, for a very long time, that developers are often not given the opportunity to fulfill their artistic principles by forces outside of their environment. Final Fantasy XII was an interesting case. Why did they hire Matsuno? His games are usually aggressively deep in both story detail and gameplay. I wonder how much of his work was kept in the final product, and how much was changed when he stepped down. It definitely comes off as a half and half type of product. Matsuno and Minagawa's influences are seen, but they're almost obscured by traditional Final Fantasy staples.

I hear they fixed the license board in the re-release, though.

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Does this really have much bearing on anything? As has been established by now, reviewers who don't give good marks to high profile games get fired.

Are you referring to Gerstmann in particular? I don't think he was fired because he gave a game an average score. I've been reading his reviews over the years. He wasn't very good, and his Kane & Lynch video review was pedestrian at best.

"This game is ugly because A, B, and C. They curse alot. I do not like this game. It is kind of boring. There should be co-op online."

Being a professional, you'd think he'd write with a bit of flair.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Also.

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The game could be a giant steaming turd and it's still going to get 90%+ because it's a big name Final Fantasy game and nobody dares say anything bad about it because they want to keep their jobs and ad revenue.

AllRPG.com - Final Fantasy XII - Review

Suffering no loss of ad revenue or free games.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Any adventure or RPG title that doesn't have a contrast/compare buy/equip system gets docked a point.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

I never even saw Balthier as a "leading man". The entire game was largely about each individual, and was one of the first Final Fantasy's without a clear idea of, "this is who we should focus on". It's harder to relate to someone when everyone is given screen time.

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A> FF VI has a fairly obvious main character.

B> FFI doesn't count because it has a story comparable to Super Mario Bros.

:-)

I was speaking idiomatically.

I assume when you say "second half" of the game, you specifically mean the destroyed world. I'm just assuming, though, since the ruined world happens well past the half way marker. Regardless, Terra has a very significant role then as well.

I think her over all importance to the story was pretty much cemented with her at the bow of the airship in the end.

"Play time" is hardly an indicator as to who the main character of a plot is. Yuna is largely the central figure in FFX, but most of the game is played through Tidus.

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My point about Balthier was that if you absolutely needed to point out a main character, he was it. He has the most relevance to being involved in most events, rather than the ciphers that are Vaan and Ashe. Especially given his relationship with Cid in the game.

Can't really argue with that.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Large chunks of the story played without her? The moment you lose her the party goes about finding her and opening up pages of her back story. Then Kefka creates the World of Ruin and then you have to deal with Terra reconciling with everything that's happened.

But your estimate, Chrono's involvement in Chrono Trigger is highly played down because you can choose to end the game without him. But we aren't gonna go that far. Are we?

I don't think we should intermingle gameplay mechanics with story.

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I said VI is less driven by a single character than XII is.

And see, I disagree with you because other than the last 3/4s of the end game, FFVI is directly connected to Terra. There's only a very small percentage of the game that doesn't focus on Terra.

FELIPE NO

So, this is where we're at? Ad hominem? Well then, let's keep things in plain English, then.

- Final Fantasy VI's story is spurred by, and ends with, Terra. 85% of the entire game is directly related to her. Side quests be damned. If your overall enjoyment of the game is heightened because of the short vignettes spread throughout the narrative, then I'm sure Square would be happy. That doesn't change the fact that the entire story starts, concerns, and ends with Terra.

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I mean, it's not like we spend a large portion of the game unlocking Locke's involvement, or Celes.

Just because they aren't the main focus of the story doesn't mean they lack importance.

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Clearly XII has invented this literary trope and we must all bow to the genius that was XII. Fuck off.

Huh. I don't remember making that argument.

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You're trying to turn this into "FF VI is A" argument when it's a long held concept that it is a cast based story, rather than having a single protagonist.

Not really, no. I said A because I believe B, because of C. You're more than welcome to respond without hyperbole or creating red herrings.

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Your argument that XII is this vaulting cast based game that nothing else has ever tried before is stupid.

Huh. I don't remember making that argument.

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You want to like this piece of shit? Go for it. But don't act like it walks on water and created everything cool when it's pretty packaging of things we've seen time and time again.

Huh. I don't remember making that argument. And for your information, I didn't even beat FFXII.

To reiterate, I think you need to separate game play from story. Like I said above, you're welcome to offer a counter point. So far, you've just invested in ad hominem, strawman accusations, and hyperbole.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Jesus Christ.

Alright. Here we go.

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First of all, you are not stuck with a certain avatar you control throughout the game. i.e. Cloud in FF VII, Squall in FF VIII, Zidane in FF IX, Tidus in FF X, etc. (THIS ISN'T TO SAY THAT YOU HAVE MOMENTS IN OTHER FINAL FANTASY GAMES WHERE THE MAIN CHARACTER IS NOT IN YOUR PARTY. THIS IS TO SAY THAT YOU AREN'T FORCED TO USE TERRA WHEN SHE IS IN YOUR PARTY. THANK YOU.) In FF VI, you choose who leads your party, except at certain points in the story. (e.g. when you control Celes at the beginning of the world of ruin) This is the biggest difference between those games and FF VI. While all those games have central characters, the story is told from the perspective of the character / avatar you control. The difference is that FF VI has a much broader angle in which the player has a much more godlike perspective, watching the events unfold and having a certain hand in how they happen. This is a fundamental difference in gameplay that cannot be denied and is not merely a matter of opinion.

Well gollee, there Cletus, I think you're right! You don't control Terra throughout the entire game! That's a definite, undeniable, fact right there! Nope, no denying that. Except, that's not what I said. Doesn't matter if she's in your party or whether or not you control her. Again, I present the notion that you distinguish gameplay from narrative.

When is Terra away from your party the most? When she goes crazy. What do you do while she's away? You pretty much spend the next couple of hours getting her back, and dissecting her back story and that of the Espers. Then when you find her, you have the option to convince her to rejoin your party (this is roughly the beginning of the end game). Much of the plot is directly about her and her backstory and the character. You see, even though you can't see her, her character is still integral to the plot and influences the pacing.

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Locke, Celes, Sabin, Cyan, and Edgar are as important and integral to the story as Terra is.

Except that Loke, Celes, Sabin, Cyan, and Edgar's interesting histories are largely served up via side story and flash backs. I also reiterate that simply because other characters are interesting doesn't change the focus of the story. They may be important characters to the overall story, but they are not the main focus. Terra is.

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To say that Terra is unimportant to the story is a bad argument to make, but to say that FF VI should be renamed FF - Terra's Story is also shortsighted.

I didn't say that. But whatever.

You two act like because I don't share your opinion I some how find FFVI to be a bad game, when that's hardly the case at all.

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Your statement about the sidequests being irrelevant is extremely shortsighted.

Irrelevant? I said the exact opposite of that. Specifically my post directly above yours where I typed out and entered, "Just because they aren't the main focus of the story doesn't mean they lack importance."

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In comparison, the sidequests in FF VI focus disproportionately on characters aside from Terra, serving to explain their individual stories / struggles in depth. It provided a sense of completeness that I haven't seen in many games before or since.

I completely agree with you. One of the reasons I disliked FFVIII so much was because of the unending emphasis on Squall and the seemingly short length of most characters backstory. You're right in what makes FFVI so good is that most of the characters have a very solid history behind them.

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This is a very accurate description of the plot from FF VI but it does not accurately describe the plot from FF XII the way others, such as Deni and Rotorblade, have described it to me.

That's fine, they're more than welcome to form their own opinion on a game. Unlike Deni, I'm not going to slander someone over it.

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Django, to say Deni's plot synopsis is an 'ad hominem' argument shows an extreme deficit in cognition and reading comprehension on your part.

His plot synopsis (if you can call that single paragraph or so of text a "synopsis") wasn't ad hominem, it was him making up arguments that I didn't present and calling me an idiot.

By Deni's and your own rationalization, Chrono's importance to the Chrono Trigger story is severely reduced because you can play the game without him (much more than FFVI and Terra), you can beat the game without him, and because you can play without him. But I don't think anyone's gonna make that argument, are they? No, because it doesn't make sense to correlate game play and narrative.

If you two are so obsessed with reading comprehension, then why are both of you intent on pinning things on me that I didn't say? Hell, I've quoted three arguments in this post that were credited to me, but were not presented by me. You yourself made a misguided attempt to create a strawman in your very own reply.

Reading comprehension indeed.



EDIT

And just as a little mental exercise, the reason I don't think FFXII has a single main character is because, at least what I did play myself (which I would guess to be around 60% - 70%), most of the plot of the game was forwarded by interpretations of various characters that join with you along the way. Balthier's interpretations may have become more important, and more centered, as the story went along, but IMHO, much of the game I played tended to emphasis Basch's character over everyone elses.

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You said that FF XII was the first game that was cast driven, not character driven.

Again, here you are remarking about "reading comprehension" and, again, you've recklessly glossed over my posts and accused me of saying something that I didn't.

I didn't bring up Final Fantasy VI. Your buddy did. I said, and I'll quote it here for you, "I never even saw Balthier as a "leading man". The entire game was largely about each individual, and was one of the first Final Fantasy's without a clear idea of, "this is who we should focus on". It's harder to relate to someone when everyone is given screen time."

Your cohort brought up FFVI, and I meekly replied, "FF VI has a fairly obvious main character. ;-)" It pretty much snowballed from there, since, obviously, the internet's obligated to feel about Final Fantasy VI the same way as you two rays of sunshine. I didn't say anything about "cast driven" or "character driven". Again, just because they aren't the main character doesn't mean they aren't relevant.

I was right in saying that FFXII was one of the first games where it wasn't clear who moved the story along. Way more key points in the plot are furthered by the entire cast, compared to FFVI, in which most of the story was specifically about her.

Then I started thinking. I thought maybe you guys didn't know what "protagonist" means, so I figured I'd look it up for you. Lo and behold, in a rare instance of fortune I discovered the general Internet Wisdom actually agrees with me.

Originally Posted by Wikipedia

When the work contains subplots, these may have different Main Characters from the main plot. In some novels, the book's main character may be impossible to pick out, because the plots do not permit clear identification of one as the main plot, as in Alexander Solzhenitsyn's The First Circle, depicting a variety of characters imprisoned in and living about a gulag camp.

I don't normally recommend Wiki-ing something, but I figured I would and, jeez... that really worked out in my favor, didn't it?

There's no point in arguing with you two about it anymore. You can refer all further responses to the Wiki article. Regardless of what I type out, you're just gonna make something up and respond to that. Enjoy. Let's pretend that I said something about your mom.

There's nowhere I can't reach.