[PS2] Final Fantasy 12 - Unappreciated or underwear

Originally Posted by russ

In all seriousness, I think the main problem with what little story you were presented with was that you are never really given any reason to care about any of the characters. Either you like the archetypal character you were presented with, or you didn't. None of them really changed throughout the game.

You hit the nail on the head for how I feel about the game. I was given no real inscentive to continue on the quest, a quest where I had no idea what was going on, nor was interested. If you don't have an interesting or compelling story, atleast give me some compelling characters to fall back on. Alas, this game had neither, and was a tremendous disappointment.

How ya doing, buddy?

The problem with the whole "world being the main character" argument is the fact that we're talking about a video game. This is not a movie. The world and society as the main focus of a narrative story is all well and good for a movie, but for a video game, it's completely ridiculous. Controlling characters who ulitmately affect something indirectly in the background is wholly unsatisfying. It's the same reason why movies that have flat, unmotivated characters fail - There's no personal connection. Looking for the personal connection with FFXII? Look elsewhere, this game is as distancing as they come.

How ya doing, buddy?

Originally Posted by Megavolt

And the reason why world and society as a main focus can work in a videogame is because the main form of storytelling in a videogame is exploration and combat. In fact, the larger perspective can be a good thing, as FFX forced me to be closer to Tidus's personal perspective than I would've liked.

I don't agree with this one bit. And here's why:

Something the audience needs to know right off the bat for any good narrative story to work is this - What's the goal? What's the point? Why? The characters didn't have any discernible goals in the game, not in the 20 hours I played anyway. The only one who had even a minute semblance of a goal was Balthier, and even then it wasn't compelling enough to drive the story.

In any (good) narrative piece, the audience has to know the reason why they are following these characters around. "I want to be a sky pirate and hit puberty finally" is not good enough. They need goals, specifically, they need a source of antagonism. A CLEAR source of antagonism. FFXII may have had sources of antagonism working against the protagonists, but fuck me if I had any clue what they were. You may at this point be citing the rival country or whatever that was against what they characters believed in. That's fine, but they weren't DIRECTLY affecting the characters, and thus, made this seem like a big waste of time.

20 hours in and not one reason to follow these characters around. FFX had Sin. FFVII had Sephiroth, FFVI had Kefka. All staple entries of the series. Why? A clear source of antagonism which gave us the inspiration to go ahead and kick ass and spend 53 hours leveling up.

So, seeing as how I come from a film background, take my whole "source of antagonism" argument and multiply it TENFOLD for a videogame. The personal connection is crucial to a videogame that wants to have a deep story, because if it's not there, the game becomes incredibly tedious. You're actually in control of these people, make the interesting! In a film, you're watching these things. It's more forgivable since it's usually just a 120 minute experience that is (in good movies) well-written and has an overall point.

But for an 80-hour game, do you honestly expect me to sit through that? My biggest problem was a big fat "WHY?!" Why am I moving these flat characters through this lush world? I had no reason to, and since the game wasn't any fun on top of that, I stopped playing it.

*phew!*

Now I'm not trying to antagonize you or anything, just showing you my perspective.

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