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NikkolasKing posted:Isn't there only like, two party members in XIII-2? Admittedly I know nothing about this Noel guy and I guess Serah was kinda cute in XIII, but I find it hard to believe they can support my interest all on their own. They aren't great characters or anything, but neither are they terrible characters either. I did not like 13 but I absolutely loved 13-2 (my favorite after 12, though I like both for different reasons obviously). The difference being that 13 was dumb and tried to act like it wasn't, 13-2 is much more aware of the silly parts of it's plot.
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Sep 11, 2012 18:42
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VagueRant posted:Wait, don't they auto level up a bit behind you like in FFVII? They get half the EXP your main party does. In FF6, your party members technically don't level up as they idle outside of your group; when they rejoin in the World of Ruin, their levels are re-averaged like the first time they join your party (Mog is your party's average level + 5 or something). It's like... fake level-ups, I guess. It'll give you the impression they do, but only at a glance. Also FF8's music is Castlevania ahahahahahahaha oh my god are you you must be fixated on eyes on me::i am the wind ohhhh man
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Sep 11, 2012 19:02
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Cityinthesea posted:They aren't great characters or anything, but neither are they terrible characters either. I'd like to think we all realized FFXIII wasn't taking itself THAT SERIOUSLY when the baby chocobo popped out of Sazh's afro.
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Sep 11, 2012 19:13
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Sex_Ferguson posted:I'd like to think we all realized FFXIII wasn't taking itself THAT SERIOUSLY when the baby chocobo popped out of Sazh's afro. And then we realized that wasn't going to last when they gave "YOUR NAME IS HOPE YOU GIVE US HOPE" speeches with totally straight faces.
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Sep 11, 2012 19:23
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Surlaw posted:Just to offer a dissenting viewpoint: I thought 13-2 was worse in nearly every possible way, especially it's writing and balance. It's less linear than 13 but all this really means is it has 100+ fetch quests that have no compelling reason to complete outside of having higher numbers. Dungeons now branch but the branches are few and mostly inconsequential and the entire thing feels lazy from start to finish. This is my general feeling about the game. The strongest part of FFXIII to me was the combat system. FFXIII-2 offered superficial improvements to that at the cost of completely loving balance. Without that balance, the combat system falls apart entirely. There are a few fights which are fun but they're massively far between. I also absolutely hated the story. I played the English version compared to FFXIII's Japanese version so I don't know if that colors anything but it was just a convoluted stupid mess even compared to FFXIII. The constant babbling about paradoxes got tiring quickly and they repeated themselves entirely too often. On the surface it's the better game. It should be the better game. The mechanical changes and new ideas are good ideas at first blush but it's clear they only cared about the surface impression. Even an iota more effort put into the gameplay would have meant a lot. The story, however, is probably just screwed. ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 19:38 on Sep 11, 2012 |
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Sep 11, 2012 19:28
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Defiance Industries posted:And then we realized that wasn't going to last when they gave "YOUR NAME IS HOPE YOU GIVE US HOPE" speeches with totally straight faces. I thought it was the opposite where Snow says to Hope "we gotta have hope" and then Hope says "we don't have any!" I really don't know what the gently caress they were thinking. I mean, even if they named them based on regular words, couldn't they have used a foreign version? Vanille is just french for Vanilla right? But when you name a character Hope you are just neutering any attempt you have at serious storytelling or drama because someone is probably gonna use the regular word hope at some point. And I actually liked Hope. Then again, the things I liked about the game seem to be what a lot of people hated about it. For example, I preferred the first half of the game. That was when most of the characters were developing. Second half of the game meanwhile has the Fifth Ark, Pulse, and of course the final dungeon. Pulse in particular was hell to get through with that tower area you had to climb while doing missions for the stone things.
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Sep 11, 2012 19:44
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The White Dragon posted:Also FF8's music is Castlevania ahahahahahahaha oh my god are you Uh, he's talking about the final dungeon which for some weird reason that I can neither figure out nor argue with is just a huge Castlevania homage in like every possible way, so yeah?
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Sep 11, 2012 19:45
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It didn't really feel like Castlevania to me; I mean even even those games' creepy, ominous tracks are mildly rock-flavored and 8 was just straight-up pipe organ. I actually really hated that dungeon because who the gently caress seals save? Seriously. It's not that it's a pain, really, but more that it's just a petulant gently caress-you at the peak of diarrhea mountain.
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Sep 11, 2012 20:04
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NikkolasKing posted:I really don't know what the gently caress they were thinking. I mean, even if they named them based on regular words, couldn't they have used a foreign version? They did. The writers are Japanese. ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 20:16 on Sep 11, 2012 |
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Sep 11, 2012 20:06
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The White Dragon posted:It didn't really feel like Castlevania to me; I mean even even those games' creepy, ominous tracks are mildly rock-flavored and 8 was just straight-up pipe organ. Sometimes. Sometimes not. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ul5IIz2iJwY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsSTQSAlSHg
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Sep 11, 2012 20:16
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ImpAtom posted:They did. The writers are Japanese. Oh. So if the scene was Hope saying they don't have any hope, they'd actually say Hope in English and then the Japanese word for hope? I guess that is better?
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Sep 11, 2012 20:17
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NikkolasKing posted:Oh. So if the scene was Hope saying they don't have any hope, they'd actually say Hope in English and then the Japanese word for hope? gently caress no, it's still a stupid scene in the Japanese version, but "well, make it foreign" isn't really a solution because that is what they did in the first place. Japan has a thing for names. I mean, let's be honest here. Ever author has a thing for names. That's why we unironically have popular fantasy series with characters named Draco Malfoy. (spoiler alert: dude is an rear end in a top hat.) Japanese media, or at least certain forms of it, have an even bigger thing for cheesy-rear end name stuff. That is why we got a protagonist named Cloud Strife battling a guy named Sephiroth. It's why the love interests in FFX are effectively named Sun and Moon and battle a monster called Sin. Almost every form of media has name symbolism. Why FFXIII's is stupid is that they literally have two characters sit around and discuss the symbolism behind their names in the stupidest and most hamfisted way possible. No amount of foreigning the names would change that because it's a bad scene at heart.
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Sep 11, 2012 20:25
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ImpAtom posted:gently caress no, it's still a stupid scene in the Japanese version, but "well, make it foreign" isn't really a solution because that is what they did in the first place. The difference between the Sin thing and Lightning and Hope's speeches about the symbolism of their names is that naming a big monster "Sin" is explained in a way that makes it part of the setting. It's not named "Sin" for no reason, it's named "Sin" because the theocratic government that controls the world teach that the monster is a supernatural punishment for the misdeeds of their predecessors. It's like a modern serial killer, sorta. They would get names like the Boston Strangler because they were evocative of what they did. Near as I recall, Sin got the name from victims who needed a name for it. FF names are usually hamfisted, but Sin is one of the few times they've made it work. For it to be equivalent to that incredible poo poo scene from 13, rather than it being something that you hear as part of the religious teachings in the world, Sin would have to yell "I AM SIN BECAUSE I AM GOING TO PUNISH YOU FOR BAD THINGS YOU HAVE DONE" when he comes by to smash boats or whatever it was he did.
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Sep 11, 2012 20:37
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Well I don't have any problem with exotic sounding names. It's the driving philosophy behind Tina vs. Terra after all. One is exotic to the Japanese and to gkeep that spirit alive, we got an exotic name of our own. Like I said earlier, the problem for me lay in the fact hope is a word that will probably be brought up in some form. By contrast, I don't think anyone ever mentioned clouds in FFVII and I didn't even known squall was an actual word when I played FFVIII. It's also why I never had a problem with the Tsviets names in DoC. That game was terrible and the Tsviets themselves sucked but him being called Nero the Sable never bothered me at all. Unlike a certain Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood anime where there i a character titled "Envy the Jealous." edit: Defiance Industries posted:The difference between the Sin thing and Lightning and Hope's speeches about the symbolism of their names is that naming a big monster "Sin" is explained in a way that makes it part of the setting. It's not named "Sin" for no reason, it's named "Sin" because the theocratic government that controls the world teach that the monster is a supernatural punishment for the misdeeds of their predecessors. It's like a modern serial killer, sorta. They would get names like the Boston Strangler because they were evocative of what they did. Near as I recall, Sin got the name from victims who needed a name for it. Well yeah, what he said.
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Sep 11, 2012 20:45
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Defiance Industries posted:Sin would have to yell "I AM SIN BECAUSE I AM GOING TO PUNISH YOU FOR BAD THINGS YOU HAVE DONE" when he comes by to smash boats or whatever it was he did. Sin doesn't do that but the other characters do. (Wakka in particular has a scene where he's like "Sin is because of our sins!") It's just better executed and probably less offputting when it is a monster. NikkolasKing posted:Well I don't have any problem with exotic sounding names. It's the driving philosophy behind Tina vs. Terra after all. One is exotic to the Japanese and to gkeep that spirit alive, we got an exotic name of our own. On the other hand, Hope is an actual name. Like, a name real-world people have. Unlike Cloud or Squall, you can meet people (usually women) named Hope on a fairly regular basis. The same goes for Faith or Charity or Friday or April or Hunter or tons of other real words that are also names. Hope's name is only odd on the surface in that it is usually given to women. The problem with it isn't that people may someday use the word hope, it is that they have a long conversation about HOPE MEANS HOPE. "Foreignizing" names is silly because many real names are also words. The problem is when the hamhandedness of a name outweighs everything else. Even then it can work if it's in proper context for the media and how you approach it, and the skill of the storyteller. ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 21:09 on Sep 11, 2012 |
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Sep 11, 2012 20:49
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ImpAtom posted:Sin doesn't do that but the other characters do. (Wakka in particular has a scene where he's like "Sin is because of our sins!") It's just better executed and probably less offputting when it is a monster. That or players instinctively ignore things that backwoods fundamentalist-yevon racists say.
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Sep 11, 2012 20:53
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Bonaventure posted:Uh, he's talking about the final dungeon which for some weird reason that I can neither figure out nor argue with is just a huge Castlevania homage in like every possible way, so yeah? It really, really isn't. You either need to play more Castlevania or... I don't know what, but they really aren't that alike. And this is someone who loved Ultimecia's Castle and has played through probably half a dozen CV titles. (2D only.)
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Sep 11, 2012 20:56
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Pyroxene Stigma posted:It really, really isn't. You either need to play more Castlevania or... I don't know what, but they really aren't that alike. And this is someone who loved Ultimecia's Castle and has played through probably half a dozen CV titles. (2D only.) Bullshit you climb up a clock tower and then cross a bridge onto another tower where The Last Boss is. It's blatant.
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Sep 11, 2012 21:03
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DeathBySpoon posted:I gave up on Tactics most of the way through Chapter 2 because it felt like the story was all happening elsewhere and I had to take notes to figure out what on earth was going on. I don't remember names well, especially when I have no faces or images to associate them with, so I felt like I jumped into a medieval soap opera halfway through season 2. I enjoyed A2 a lot more because I felt like I wasn't missing anything by ignoring the story. With Tactics, it seemed like a bunch of cool stuff was happening, but it was impossible to follow because the story had so many different offscreen NPCs doing stuff that you never saw, all of which were important to the plot. Also the battles are incredibly slow. I really liked the general mechanics of it all, it just didn't give me any reason to keep going. I agree re: the story of FF Tactics. It is a good one but they sort of start you in the middle and it takes a while (or a couple play-throughs) to figure out who is who on whose side and how they are related to various other characters and who is backstabbing who. Did anyone ever actually fill out Gau's "Rage" list in its entirety?
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Sep 11, 2012 21:20
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Ross posted:Did anyone ever actually fill out Gau's "Rage" list in its entirety? I did. Gau was so ridiculously broken it wasn't even funny.
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Sep 11, 2012 21:22
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Ross posted:I agree re: the story of FF Tactics. It is a good one but they sort of start you in the middle and it takes a while (or a couple play-throughs) to figure out who is who on whose side and how they are related to various other characters and who is backstabbing who. It's like Game of Thrones, but fun! 
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Sep 11, 2012 21:23
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ImpAtom posted:I did. Gau was so ridiculously broken it wasn't even funny. I came close, but I missed a couple mobs in places like Cyan's Soul. I kinda wish the Veldt had been divided into encounter areas kinda like a mini-world map, it gets to be a real pain in the rear end to run into monsters after a while.
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Sep 11, 2012 21:34
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Ross posted:Did anyone ever actually fill out Gau's "Rage" list in its entirety? I did, once. My teenage self didn't have as many things to do with his time as my adult self does. gently caress doing that now without a cheat code. Or even with one, for that matter: way too much scrolling to get to the useful rages; it would've been nice if they were at least alphabetized. There were still four open spaces left over at the end which couldn't be filled legitimately: Allo Ver, Chupon, Siegfried, and the last space (Pugs), which is a weird little case of "the game knows you know the rage but leaves the space blank anyway because programming". As I understand it, the GBA re-release allows you to get Allo Ver legitimately as well (something about it showing up in a different enemy formation in that bonus-content enemy gauntlet thing), but I'm pretty sure Chupon and Siegfried are still out (I may be reputed rash), and the last space in the rage list is still perpetually blank. All you really need is that one enemy from Owzer's place with the super charm attack, anyway.
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Sep 11, 2012 21:44
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The name Sin does work because he's a monster, but also because it's the name given by its victims. Wakka yelling "he's Sin because of our sins!" was hamhanded, but the name itself works in the way that serial killer names work. The Ice Truck Killer murdered dudes and hid bodies in an ice truck. Hope was named that from birth, like his parents knew he'd one day need to be in a lot of lovely metaphors. If you want a stupid name, you have to earn it and get it from someone else, is I guess what I'm saying.
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Sep 11, 2012 23:59
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Krad posted:It's like Game of Thrones, but fun! I wish they would have just named Ajora Jesus. Maybe they did at first and Sony was all "This game is great but you're gonna have to change that."
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Sep 12, 2012 02:35
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Ross posted:Maybe they did at first and Sony was all "This game is great but you're gonna have to change that." 
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Sep 12, 2012 02:49
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St. Jesus? I don't mind thinly-veiled allegories, personally.
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Sep 12, 2012 02:51
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ImpAtom posted:On the other hand, Hope is an actual name. Like, a name real-world people have. Unlike Cloud or Squall, you can meet people (usually women) named Hope on a fairly regular basis. The same goes for Faith or Charity or Friday or April or Hunter or tons of other real words that are also names. Hope's name is only odd on the surface in that it is usually given to women. The problem with it isn't that people may someday use the word hope, it is that they have a long conversation about HOPE MEANS HOPE. I'd say it's a combination of that and him being in a cast of characters named Lightning, Snow, Fang and Vanille. Compared to say, Squall, these names are much more mundane and sound way stupider. It feels like they're a result of bad translation, even if it really isn't. Also, Dagger had the same problem and I have always hated that name. At least it was something she gave herself.
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Sep 12, 2012 03:30
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Ever since I had a call from Thor about his auto insurance, I'm 100% positive there are a few dozen Cloud's and Squall's running around out there.
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Sep 12, 2012 04:03
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Loving Life Partner posted:Ever since I had a call from Thor about his auto insurance, I'm 100% positive there are a few dozen Cloud's and Squall's running around out there. After five seconds of Google, I have to ask, was it this guy? Or is there more than one Thor out there selling auto insurance?
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Sep 12, 2012 04:21
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Loving Life Partner posted:Ever since I had a call from Thor about his auto insurance, I'm 100% positive there are a few dozen Cloud's and Squall's running around out there.
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Sep 12, 2012 04:37
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ImpAtom posted:On the other hand, Hope is an actual name. Like, a name real-world people have. Unlike Cloud or Squall, you can meet people (usually women) named Hope on a fairly regular basis. The same goes for Faith or Charity or Friday or April or Hunter or tons of other real words that are also names. Hope's name is only odd on the surface in that it is usually given to women. The problem with it isn't that people may someday use the word hope, it is that they have a long conversation about HOPE MEANS HOPE. Now that you mention it, the daughter in Homeward Bound was named Hope. Good call. Of course I still think it sounds retarded when you name a character after a word and then use the regular word when talking to that character. To use your example of Faith, nobody in Buffy ever talked to Faith about having faith. That would have sounded ridiculous. Loving Life Partner posted:Ever since I had a call from Thor about his auto insurance, I'm 100% positive there are a few dozen Cloud's and Squall's running around out there. I don't know if you watch LPs but I remember a Tipping Forties video where Topikal recounts how a friend heard a woman say to her son "come here Sephiroth!"
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Sep 12, 2012 04:44
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Sex_Ferguson posted:I'd like to think we all realized FFXIII wasn't taking itself THAT SERIOUSLY when the baby chocobo popped out of Sazh's afro. No that just means it didn't have a consistent tone. I mean it's all SERIOUS SERIOUS WE'RE JUST SLAVES ARGH I'M GONNA SHOOT MYSELF and then suddenly HAHAHA WACKY MASCOT CHARACTER SHENANIGANS. That's not to say that a serious story can't have comic relief, but to be good it needs to fit with the overall tone. You see that kind of inconsistent tone thing in a lot of anime, and FF13 just happens to be The Biggest Anime.
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Sep 12, 2012 04:51
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The White Dragon posted:I came close, but I missed a couple mobs in places like Cyan's Soul. I kinda wish the Veldt had been divided into encounter areas kinda like a mini-world map, it gets to be a real pain in the rear end to run into monsters after a while. I am now imagining a Veldt kitted out like the Pal Park from Pokemon Diamond/Pearl/Platinum. On the name thing, how come Final Fantasy characters never have relevant last names? Like, I'm discounting the Ivalice games here, because they all written by people who actually decided to do something different with the series (whether or not you like the stories), but you go and play a game where you have all these characters, and where we have real life where people have multiple names, everyone is all these one name things. This wouldn't even be a thing but then you go and play games like Tales of Symphonia, where some of the character's last names are mentioned, and one is a minor plot point while another is a major one! It's like, why even bother giving them a last name?
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Sep 12, 2012 07:14
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Trasson posted:I am now imagining a Veldt kitted out like the Pal Park from Pokemon Diamond/Pearl/Platinum. What did you mean by that though? Because some characters do have last names that do somewhat reflect their role and growth in the storyline (Cloud Strife, Tifa Lockhart, Cid Highwind), are minor plot points (Rinoa Heartilly), or just have other odd connections (Eiko plays a flute in battle, and her last name is Carol). It might even be weirder if they didn't have a last name - it worked for FFX due to the whole doomwhale killing off people regularly so I guess parents getting killed off early was a bit of a given, but in most games where you presumably have societies and such, why wouldn't they have a last name?
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Sep 12, 2012 07:36
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Momomo posted:I'd say it's a combination of that and him being in a cast of characters named Lightning, Snow, Fang and Vanille. Compared to say, Squall, these names are much more mundane and sound way stupider. It feels like they're a result of bad translation, even if it really isn't. Yeah Dagger literally picked up a Dagger and then said "This is called a Dagger? Then I will name myself..." And you get a naming prompt. Which is funny because you can type in literally anything and the whole scene falls apart
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Sep 12, 2012 08:01
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ApplesandOranges posted:What did you mean by that though? Because some characters do have last names that do somewhat reflect their role and growth in the storyline (Cloud Strife, Tifa Lockhart, Cid Highwind), are minor plot points (Rinoa Heartilly), or just have other odd connections (Eiko plays a flute in battle, and her last name is Carol). No, I'm talking about the very minor thing of character's having last names that are never actually mentioned or matter to the story. Like, Cloud's last name is never anything but another piece of decoration for his character design. I know it's a complete JRPG cliche, it's just something I'd noticed is endemic to Final Fantasy.
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Sep 12, 2012 08:03
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Trasson posted:No, I'm talking about the very minor thing of character's having last names that are never actually mentioned or matter to the story. Like, Cloud's last name is never anything but another piece of decoration for his character design. I know it's a complete JRPG cliche, it's just something I'd noticed is endemic to Final Fantasy. Japan? They love little flavor bits like that. The FF VII manual even lists each character's blood type.
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Sep 12, 2012 08:09
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Trasson posted:No, I'm talking about the very minor thing of character's having last names that are never actually mentioned or matter to the story. Like, Cloud's last name is never anything but another piece of decoration for his character design. I know it's a complete JRPG cliche, it's just something I'd noticed is endemic to Final Fantasy. I like how Mass Effect handled this. Your character's last name is Shephard, you can make his first name whatever you want. That way your name could be SEPHIROTH and people still have something to call you in voice-acted cutscenes. Waaaay better than the stupid route FFX took where not a single person ever mentioned Tidus' name. Made even more obvious in FFX-2 where they only refer to "him" as if he's voldemort
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Sep 12, 2012 08:11
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They should have had the name prompt pop up when she asks what it's called. Garnet: "Zidane, what is this called?" Zidane: [name prompt] That way even if you name her something dumb like buttface or dongs, it's just Zidane being a jerk.
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Sep 12, 2012 08:15
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