Waxing intellectual about Final Fantasy XII

[roflcopter_down]

Okay, so, I don't know why I thought about this, but I was thinking about Vaan and Penelo, and what kind of role they have in FFXII. Mostly because it came up as a topic last night during Immortal. It comes down to this, really.

People have made comparisons between Star Wars and FFXII. But I don't think FFXII is a retelling of Star Wars so much as inspired by The Hidden Fortress, a Kurosawa film that Star Wars drew much of its material from. In The Hidden Fortress, the movie follows two bumbling and inept-at-everything peasants. They're wrapped up in something way over their heads, and often bog things down for everyone else. The problem comes when we are asked to like the characters. Final Fantasy is notorious for this. In just about every game since Seven, there's been characters we've been asked to like, and they're just about the most hated characters in the game. Lately, they've been the main characters. This is why a lot of people hate Vaan. We're so used to being asked to like certain characters in the game that we have a volitile reaction to him. But Kurosawa movies often include a few bumbling characters. The farmers and Kikuchiyo (though Kikuchiyo grows up during the movie and becomes surprisingly capable) in Seven Samurai, and the group of young samurai in Yojimbo are prime examples of this. You really don't have to like them, but what I'm saying is that they're the Tahei and Matakishi of Final Fantasy XII. That's really what I think SE was going for.

Of course, if I could pry myself from FFXI long enough to play XII more, I'd probably have a better idea of what's going on with them.

Comments

[lami.livejournal.com]

I could really see that, and it works better than Star Wars. The thing about Vaan is that for me a lot of the times he had a line it felt shoehorned in. He (as well as Penelo) wasn't initially part of the plot anyways, the main characters were supposed to be Ashe and Balthier, but the producers told Matsuno to put Vaan in to sell more copies.

Hell, nobody buys games called Final Fantasy, they've always been low sellers and I'm amazed they've made twelve of them and spinoffs.

So Vaan wasn't part of the creator's vision, and it really shows. Penelo they managed to fit into the plot a bit better, she doesn't do that much and is supposed to be the relatively ordinary person who's along for the ride. But yeah, Vaan and Penelo are really the least interesting characters in the game.

[arborwin.livejournal.com]

You really don't have to like them,

Of course we don't, because the writing of these characters is inferior. Of course they're stock characters. Bumbling characters have much older origins than you're referencing here. Read some Plautus.

The truth is, these games just aren't well written. It's perfectly possible to have an appealing "bumble" character. The problem with Vaan is that his characterization is muddy and noncommital, and his flubs exacerbate an already poorly established personality, giving the player even less reason to like him.

They're going for the idea, sure, but they barely scrape the surface. It's just plain, simple bad writing, nothing fancier than that.

[katimus-prime.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I hadn't thought of that. Then again, I haven't seen any Kurosawa films except for Seven Samurai. But thinking of Vaan and Penelo as C-3P0 and R2-D2 makes it a little bit easier. Though the droids have aeons worth of character development on both Vaan and Penelo.