| Alphachris said:
4) A JRPG does not necessaryily need a "main villain" like Sephiroth. In fact Square-Enix abandoned the Main-Hero vs Main-Villain storytelling approach in the last few games. That leads the story away from a black-white scheme and allow for a much more mature Storytelling. Sure, Cloud vs Sephiroth was epic, but Hero vs. Villain is a storytelling structure you can even find in superhero comics and fairy tales... I really like it who they started to make the Partymembers more equal in story importance since Final Fantasy X. Who was the main character in FF XII? Balthier, Basch, Ashe, Vaan? Who was the main character in Final Fantasy XIII? Vanille, Lightning, Fang? There was no real "main character" since FF IX. And thats one reason why I feel that Final Fantasy made a huge progress starting with Final Fantasy X.
The same goes for the villain. A main villain is often a weak storytelling component. Theres is often a bad guy, who is simply bad because he is bad and who wants to rule/destroy the world. Since Final Fantasy 7 Square is putting more effort in explaining the motivation of the Bad guy (Nibelheim incident where Sephiroth discovers his origin, Kuja learning about his origin, etc.) and with Final Fantasy X they progressed even further. In Final Fantasy X Sin was an incarnation of your own father, the Order of Yevon and Maester Seymour were great antagonists but not the last end boss. In Final Fantasy XII there were two great empires who where treathening Dalmasca and the main task was to restore peace. Final Fantasy XIII had a civil war, Fal'Cie, Gods and the conflict between Grand Pulse and Cocoon.
In Part of the storytelling Final Fantasy X, XII and XIII were a huge step forward from the earlier Final Fantasy games. The stories became more mature and serious (maturity does not equal violence).
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Great post, I thought I'd comment on the story perspective. Final Fantasy X definitely had a main character (Tidus) and I really liked the whole story about Sin, Summoners, Guardians, the Final Summoning, Seymour, etc... I was brillantly told because since Tidus came from a different era we got to discover Spira with him. It was easy to feel involved in the quest and you hated Seymour, the order of Yevon and really wanted to rid Spira of Sin for good.
Final Fantasy XII had a very mature story, I remember enjoying it a lot, sadly I've yet to replay the game in full so I don't remember all that much from it.
Final Fantasy XIII's story was a mess, it introduced so many concepts without explaining them properly, what you're fighting against is very abstract and to this day I'm not exactly sure what a Fal'Cie is and what they really do. They just hammer you with "We're L'Cie, we've gotta realize our focus" all game long.
So in short, I agree with X and XII making huge progress in the story telling department but XIII was a big step back.
