Whoa, has Square Enix finaly figured out what is wrong with all JRPGS?
http://www.edge-online.com/magazine/lasting-remnant?page=0%2C1
Most contemporary Japanese RPGs star teenage lead protagonists. As many of Square Enix’s fans are now into their late 20s and early 30s, would you like to create a game with older, more diverse leads?
YN: The format of the RPG lends itself well to having a teenage protagonist. Usually you’re playing for many hours, taking a character on a journey from a relatively weak state to one of power and maturity, a gameplay journey that mirrors that of a teenager moving into adulthood. That’s certainly one of the reasons it works well having young protagonists. That said, what you say is true not only for fans who are growing up with the RPG, but also for developers who were working on titles such as Final Fantasy V when we were much younger, but who are now more mature people. We sometimes wonder what we’re doing dealing with such young protagonists in our games, characters who don’t necessarily speak to us as adults. There’s no pressure internally on how you have to make a character. But you do find that there’s an expectation of how a protagonist must look for Japanese gamers.
I guess the first step is finaly figuring out that you HAVE a problem.
Eventualy we may no longer find 16 year old orphans and their 15yr old female healer sidekick saving the world. Hopefuly the cutesy useless animal characters will soon follow into oblivion.
Yet, today, America's leaders are reenacting every folly that brought these great powers [Russia, Germany, and Japan] to ruin -- from arrogance and hubris, to assertions of global hegemony, to imperial overstretch, to trumpeting new 'crusades,' to handing out war guarantees to regions and countries where Americans have never fought before. We are piling up the kind of commitments that produced the greatest disasters of the twentieth century.
— Pat Buchanan – A Republic, Not an Empire
