{"id":53803,"date":"2022-02-11T06:00:26","date_gmt":"2022-02-11T11:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=53803"},"modified":"2022-02-11T08:40:44","modified_gmt":"2022-02-11T13:40:44","slug":"ff12-sightseeing-tour-part-5-a-sad-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=53803","title":{"rendered":"FF12 Sightseeing Tour Part 5: A Sad Party"},"content":{"rendered":"

In this week’s episode<\/a>, we rescue the princess. This means that our party is now complete. And I have to say I’m not really a fan. Of any of them.<\/p>\n

Oh sure, there’s all the problems we’ve already covered, like how their personal goals don’t align with the plot, or indeed go anywhere interesting. But the more immediate problem for me is that these people aren’t any fun<\/b>.<\/p>\n

“Teenagers team up and fight space-Satan to save the world.” That’s how people derisively describe your average Final Fantasy plot. But the truth is that I like<\/b> that dynamic. It’s silly as hell, but I love having a large cast of colorful personalities, all going through their own arcs as the plot ramps up from “ridiculous” to “surreal<\/a>“.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Final Fantasy Shamus<\/h3>\n

Keep in mind that when I talk about Final Fantasy games, I'm REALLY talking about VII, VIII, X, and XII. I've only played a little of the 2D games, and I'm only familiar with the more recent games through their reputation.<\/div>
Keep in mind that when I talk about Final Fantasy games, I'm REALLY talking about VII, VIII, X, and XII. I've only played a little of the 2D games, and I'm only familiar with the more recent games through their reputation.<\/div><\/p>\n

I love how the groups always feature a variety of characters. A mix of male and female, young and old, rich and poor, serious and playful, badass and comical. You can see the same personalities pop up again and again throughout the series like meta-cameos, but each time those personalities are behind different faces, and fulfilling different roles within the story.
\n<\/p>\n

Here’s an example cast I made up:<\/p>\n

The Cheerleader<\/b><\/p>\n

This brash blond-haired loudmouth go-getter is always thrilled to be doing whatever it is the party is doing. He thinks the solution to every problem is to punch the problem in the face, even if the problem is an interplanetary flying space demon. He dresses like his body is split between two different climates. Maybe he’s got a parka up top and swim trunks on the bottom, or maybe he’s got long sleeves \/ pant legs on one side and shorts on the other.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Backstory: His whole family was killed by the bad guys, but you can’t let stuff like that get you down. Gotta stay positive, guys!<\/i>\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Furry<\/b><\/p>\n

This character is half human, and half $animal, where $animal is a mammal that humans find cute, majestic, or otherwise attractive.Maybe even sexy? Look, I’m not here to judge. I’m just saying I’ve seen some of the fan art you people make.<\/span>\u00a0<\/p>\n

Backstory: This character has some family baggage you need to deal with once you meet up with the rest of the $animal tribe. This side-story will be both mandatory and irrelevant to the overall plot.<\/i><\/p>\n

The Jailbait<\/b><\/p>\n

Based on her voice, behavior, language, and body type, this character is very obviously a bubbly hyperactive 14 year old girl. She’s wearing a long-sleeve jacket and short-shorts, or a one-piece bathing suit with six inch heels, or something else overtly sexual yet completely goofy.<\/p>\n

Backstory: She’s actually a 36 year old astrophysicist. I don’t know why you keep insisting she’s 14. Maybe you’re a pervert?<\/i><\/p>\n

The Ice Queen<\/b><\/p>\n

She is SO over everyone’s bullshit, and always has been. She’s got dark hair, angry makeup, and tons of cleavage that she can get angry at you for noticing. In terms of visual design, she looks like she smeared herself in glue, catapulted herself through the front window of a Hot Topic, and decided to wear whatever stuck. Yes, even the broken glass, you smartass.<\/p>\n

Backstory: She has a secret crush that she will express through verbal abuse and problematic behavior.<\/i><\/p>\n

The Shy Nun<\/b><\/p>\n

Why is this mopey wallflower on a quest to fight space-satan? Probably because someone told her it’s the right thing to do. If this setting has eyeglasses, then she’s wearing eyeglasses. Also she’s wearing all the clothes the other girls forgot to wear.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Backstory: After spending her entire life doing the right thing, she finally faces the ultimate test of her convictions, where (plot twist!) she continues to do the right thing.<\/i><\/p>\n

The Badass Mope<\/b><\/p>\n

This geezer is wandering around this technological wonderland wielding a Samurai sword, a spear, or a rusty old six-shooter for no explained reason. He’s quiet, reserved, and has no obvious justification for teaming up with these loud teenage lunatics. He speaks in fortune-cookie platitudes, but only when it’s time to defuse an emotionally charged situation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Backstory: He has a secret vendetta against one of the bad guys, which he will awkwardly reveal just before you fight them for the last time.<\/i><\/p>\n

The Idiot<\/b><\/p>\n

This dunce is our comic relief, because there’s nothing funnier than gross incompetence when the literal fate of the actual entire world is at stake. He makes up for being wrong all the time by also being loud and clumsy. He’s probably fat. (I’m sorry, “big boned”). Barring that, he’s wearing something that covers up his washboard abs, because looking sexy is only for the “cool” characters. Paradoxically, this means his outfit is the least insane of the entire group.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Backstory: Probably something about a long-lost mother or something. Look it up on the wiki because nobody ever bothers paying attention to his nonsense.<\/i><\/p>\n

But What Do I Know?<\/h3>\n

Is this silly? Sure! But it’s my kind of silly. The characters tend to be vibrant, they have really clear motivations, and they play off of each other really well. A roster of 7 people means the story has 21 relationship pairs to consider, just within the party. Something like that can get out of hand quickly, but the distinct visual styles and loud personalities make it easy to keep track of everyone.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I see you went to the Ctrl+C \/ Ctrl-V school of character design.<\/div>
I see you went to the Ctrl+C \/ Ctrl-V school of character design.<\/div><\/p>\n

(Incidentally, this is why I find Final Fantasy XV so aggressively<\/b> unappealing. Our party is only four people? And they’re all dudes? All young? All pale? All slender? All medium height? All wearing black? This is like a version of DOOM where all of your guns are variations of the Deus Ex tranq dart. It’s Minecraft, but your only building material is cobblestone. It’s Mass Effect, but you only have four crew members and they’re all Kaiden Alenko. People keep telling me the game is good, but I look at that box art and my curiosity evaporates.)<\/p>\n

Anyway, getting back to the game at hand…<\/p>\n

The Kingdom of Mopes<\/h3>\n

It would be great if this was an ongoing conflict that needed to be worked through, but like the misunderstanding between Basch and Vaan, this conflict is basically instantly resolved.<\/div>
It would be great if this was an ongoing conflict that needed to be worked through, but like the misunderstanding between Basch and Vaan, this conflict is basically instantly resolved.<\/div><\/p>\n

Final Fantasy XII does not deliver the kind of fun-loving party I look for in this series. This party hates fun. Nobody is having a good time.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This party is a bit old by the standards of the series.Again, by “this series” I mean 7 through 12.<\/span> Penelo and Vaan are the only teens, with the rest of the cast being more or less mature adults. This isn’t a problem in and of itself. I don’t think Final Fantasy stories have<\/b> to be about high schoolers. But FF characters do need to be vibrant, and making them young is an easy way to create characters with really strong and clearly visible emotions. I don’t think that the facial animation technology of the early aughts is well suited to Christopher Nolan<\/a> style stories of guarded conversations and masked emotions.<\/p>\n

Most of the cast this time around seems to be using the “Auron” personality template of grim stoicism. More importantly, none of them seem to have any affection for each other. Penelo seems to express interest in Vaan at the start of the game, and then we never come back to it. Our heroes eventually get to the point where they’re working together, but I never get the impression that any of these people are friends<\/b>. Like, if it wasn’t for the bad guys trying to kill them, I imagine the entire cast would wander off because there isn’t any hint of affection or comradery drawing them together.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If Ashe announced she was going bowling, nobody else in the party would say, “Oh, that sounds like fun! I’ll come with you!” Instead I imagine they would follow her without comment and for no reason. They would then sit in stony silence while she stared listlessly into space, unable to pick a lane or a bowling ball.<\/p>\n

I can imagine an interesting version of this party: A bubbly enthusiastic Penelo. A bratty smartass Vaan. Maybe a boisterous version of Basch that loves to fight hard, drink hard, and tell boastful stories about old battles. Balthier could be a jokester and a bit of an incorrigible scamp, always pilfering minor items and leaving without paying the bill. Fran could hint at the deep wisdom accumulated in her long years by making cutting remarks and wry observations, like Gandalf by way of Okoye<\/a>. Ashe could be a fiery hothead who wears her emotions on her sleeve. She understands that – as royalty – she’s supposed to be reserved and aloof, but she has no idea<\/b> how to keep a lid on her feelings.<\/p>\n

That would be an amazing cast. You just throw that cast into danger and let their personalities bounce off each other for lots of hijinks and interpersonal fireworks. But no. We just get six different flavors of “detached mope”.<\/p>\n

What a shame.<\/p>\n

Before I talk about a character I actually like, I want to draw your attention to the following moment…<\/p>\n

Ghis, Have You Been Skipping Cutscenes?<\/h3>\n

Your father COULD have just surrendered, but NOOOOOOO. He just HAD to get himself murdered like a selfish jerk.<\/div>
Your father COULD have just surrendered, but NOOOOOOO. He just HAD to get himself murdered like a selfish jerk.<\/div><\/p>\n

The Rocketeer already covered this bit in his entry this week, but the short version is that the party decides to bust the princess out of prison, and on the way out she runs into Judge Ghis here. And when she insists on not surrendering, he accuses her of “spurning” an honorable surrender, like her father.<\/p>\n

Except, like… that’s not what happened at all!<\/b> He father didn’t “spurn” anything. He just died.<\/p>\n

The scenario that Judge Ghis describes is not the official story, and it’s not the actual story. No matter who you ask, everyone agrees that Dad was good and ready to surrender. He showed up for the express purpose of doing exactly that when he was murdered. The only detail in dispute is is regarding who did the murdering.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This is like saying JFK spurned his invitation to Dallas. It makes no sense.<\/p>\n

What are we supposed to make of this? Is Judge Ghis just way, way out of the loop? Did some nuance get lost in translation and “spurned” is supposed to be more like “missed out on”? Is this something that got changed in the rewrites and nobody got around to updating this line?\u00a0I know it’s been a running joke in the comments that nobody can follow this story, but a lot of times it feels like the people within<\/strong> the story are just as baffled as we are.<\/p>\n

Anyway, let’s talk about a character who knows how to have a good time, unlike the rest of these sourpusses…<\/p>\n

Larsa<\/h3>\n

Think of it like a lucky charm \/ nuke. Have fun!<\/div>
Think of it like a lucky charm \/ nuke. Have fun!<\/div><\/p>\n

Can I just say I love Larsa? It feels like he’s in his own game. Like, Vaan is over here playing Final Fantasy, while Larsa is playing Crusader Kings II<\/i> on hard mode.<\/p>\n

Shit. My older brother has consolidated a ton of power and he’s next in line for the throne. Oh! I know: I’ll spring these revolutionaries from prison, give them some critical state intel, and to top it off I’ll give them a hunk of WMD. The resulting instability should keep big bro busy and give me time to get the senate on my side.<\/p>\n

OH HEY. I just had an idea. I could hook up with this resistance chick and put a couple of royal bastards into her to make sure that…\u00a0<\/p>\n

Hang on. I just did the math and realized I’m only like, 11 years old or something.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Okay, so I can’t make any bastards yet. But I’ll put the bastard idea (and this resistance chick) on my To-Do list.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Can I kick Basch off the team and pick up Larsa as a free agent? I don’t even care what his combat stats are. I just want to keep the little dude around.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In this week’s episode, we rescue the princess. This means that our party is now complete. And I have to say I’m not really a fan. Of any of them. Oh sure, there’s all the problems we’ve already covered, like how their personal goals don’t align with the plot, or indeed go anywhere interesting. But […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[612],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-retrospectives"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=53803"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53803\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53829,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53803\/revisions\/53829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=53803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=53803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=53803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}