@Calintz: The characters were generic, foreseeable and there were as good as no surprises. You could see from the beginning of the game that Seymour will be the villain. In every almost every newer FF game there are N characters and one of them is the villain. Since N-M are in your party, the rest is either neutral or villain. Because there needs to be at least 1 neutral and 1 bad guy. That leaves M-2 characters so your imagination. Mostly those M-2 characters are very clearly split into neutrals and henchmen so you pretty much know who is who. So much to surprises. FFX is not "good", it's commercial, it's generic. It was made to make money not to entertain. Older FF games had still a feel of wanting to entertain. Even FFXII has this commercial-advertising feel about it.
In FFX I see Hollywood, not emotion. They give you exactly what you WANT to see: Act. Bad act on top. Until FFX I had no idea it was possible to make game characters look fake and forced.
@Dio: IMO 7, 8 and 9 were alright. Nothing special, but a nice play nether than less. Sure, the older ones were awesome, especially 6. I mean Kefka had so much emotion and motivation. That crazy lunatic. I didn't expect him to turn so rashly against his king (or emperor, I forgot). I was like "WTF?! WTF just happened?! OMG! That son of a bitch!" I really WANTED to stop Kekfa while playing that game.
I don't think not being NES/SNES is the problem. The problem is that they started concentrating on nice graphics and inventing all kind of
bullshit battle systems to keep the players entertained rather than sticking to the game feeling, character depth and story. Even the story wasn't all that good in all FF games. It were the characters. That's what I loved in 6 as well. It did have a shitload of main characters, but they were all unique. Every one of them had something. True, with so many characters it's hard to achieve depth. And they don't have that much depth. But since there are so many of them and every one of them being somehow special, depth was created on a much more interesting level. It turned into a social level. Rather than having something like a few characters with depth, the game had a small society that seemed somewhat real.
Quote from: Calintz on June 20, 2009, 02:32:15 pm
VII was the greatest in the series most likely, because it zoned in and perfectly portrayed characters in a deep way(blizz'd favorite kind 
)
I think people enjoyed it so much, because it was the first time a great RPG was released with characters that gamers could relate themselves to in one way or another.
Early FF games ... Hey, I'm a nobody who enters into a great journey of some sort and I kill shit!
I agree that 7, 8 and 9 had depth, but not close as much as 6. I liked 8 and 9 a lot, but again... In 8 most characters were kinda cold. But still was Squall able to fall in love with Rinoa and I loved the scenes where he would think about stuff and doubt. He was a very deep character. Rinoa on the other side wasn't that deep. She wasn't so shallow, but some more depth wouldn't have been bad either. In 9 the characters are already getting too shallow, but at least they had emotion and motivation. Zidane really enjoyed pissing Steiner off and Steiner would always react with so much emotion.
Quote from: Diokatsu on June 20, 2009, 03:05:17 pm
The story in FFVII was very messy and ill-worked so it gave an ambiguous feeling that I've so often hailed as a prime example of it's immense story. I'd love expand, but it's much harder to pick out after not playing it for so long. Thing is, Cloud is a nobody realistically and is just caught up in Sephiroth's wake by circumstance. If you look at FF IV, Cecil is very important as a captain of the Red Wings which are the main force behind Baron's conquest. Secondly, if you want intricate backgrounds, books are much better. I don't play games to learn about characters. Hell, Chrono Trigger is, in mine and many other's opinions, the best RPG in history and yet Chrono has almost no history despite being the main character. The gameplay was too easy in my opinion and the graphics in battles were horrible. I'd much rather play SNES grpahics than those horrible abominations. And it's far from perfect. It's rather cliche, with Cloud losing his memories and horrible enemy with monsterous power who's all about conquest. I will agree, it had a nice convergance, but the characters were annoying in my opinion and Cloud was a stupid dick who should have died. And if you can relate to RPG characters, find a new hobby.
I did play it and I did not like it after the second go through.
A little bit too harsh IMO. But I agree that Cloud could have been a much better character. At least he had somewhat of determination. And that's all it takes to breed 100 million fanboys worldwide. Why? Cloud was like everybody else (so any idiot can relate to him) except that he was just a little bit better. And that obviously caused an obsession world-wide.
Quote from: Calintz on June 20, 2009, 04:34:49 pm
I don't play games to relate, but I have many friends who enjoy placing themselves into the hero's shoes and wondering what they would do, or how some of their characteristics match, but that doesn't mean they need new hobbies (It's just you being an ass again).
What I just said.