twesterm said:
Khuutra said:
Your affinity for a character has nothing to do with their motivation. When you spew out "Balthier has no reason to be there" over and over, you're just trumpeting your own ignorance like it's some kind of war wound. This is not only in bad taste, it's just wrong.
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If he does have some kind of motivation, they should at least learn how to foreshadow, but then if they were clever enough how to figure out foreshadowing the game might have had a decent story.
As it stands, at about the 15-20 mark, Balthier is a pirate who is just tagging along because SE needed an interesting character. He gives no hint at all other than he's just there. Now in well written story I might assume something would be relealed to me later, but since every other character had about the same motivation it is easily just written off as bad storytelling.
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The sound you heard was a blood vessel in my brain exploding.
Balthier's purpose for being there is foreshadowed constantly, primarily in his dialogue with Fran, though it's not even close to as obvious as the foreshadowing that is given to Judge Zecht. At twenty hours in, assuming you are keeping a good pace (and I assume that you are not, as you apparently never learned how to bypass grinding in this game) you should have already heard first plain tell, not even foreshadowing, about what Balthier's true purpose is. Of course, the fact that he's there for the Dawn Shard in the first place and then proceeds to not shoot Vaan in the face and just take it should have given you some hint that he isn't there for the reasons that are readily apparent, but if you didn't get that right off the bat then I don't know what to tell you.
Every other character has the same motivation? Really? Because I thought it was that other thing: no one has the same motivation at all.
Ashe's motivation is the proliferation of her kingdom, with the motivation of her spcific actions being living up to the memory of her husband.
Basch's motivation is chivalry, in the classical sense that that word is used: beyond himself, beyond his personal reasons, he stands behind his ruler and supports her, regardless of the path that she takes. Ashe is his entire motivation if you ignore the idea of his loyalty being to whoever holds his leash.
Fran's motivation is mostly gone over in the Salikawood, specifically in the Euryt Village, and involves Mjrn more than anyone. As a Viera who can feel the way the world is moving, she's primarily concerned with protecting the world from whatever is making the Mist go crazy: also she has good reason to be wary of Nethicite.
Balthier's motivation is naturally a psoiler, but early on it seems to be an intent to eventually take the Dawn Shard for himself, or at the least use Ashe's political status as leverage to gain power for himself in some way.
Vaan's entire motivation is revenge, first on Basch and then on the Empire, in the memory of his brother. His character growth primarily concerns growing past the need for revenge, though I suppose if you never got to the Land of the Garif then you probably never realized this, since most of it up to that point was revealed in his interactions with Basch and I'd bet good money that you weren't really paying attention.
Penelo wants to protect Vaan and bring him home when it's all over. Hers is the most simplistic.
Nnow, you tell me how they're all the same again. Do you want me to get into the support characters? I can do them too.
