FFXIII coming to Steam

[Talragan]

I have played through whole game before, just a shock rediscovering these characters lol.

Also, because I recently replayed XIII-2 and it was decent, enjoyed the characters there far more so far. Just a shock as I said, I'm sure I'll feel better about them once I get further along.

[AoE]

I couldn't fucking stand Noel, man. I dunno how other people can.

[ronin sparthos]

13 feels like they intended it to be character-focused rather than plot-focused, while 12 was the reverse. So in 12 you get people like Vaan (and even the "real" characters like Ashe and Basche) basically being dragged around to watch the geopolitics and Occuria stuff happen, and only act around the edges, while the real driving forces are basically Vayne/Venat, Cid, Gabranth, Vayne's kid brother, etc. Then in 13 you get a somewhat contrived plot, with a puppetmaster bad guy, that's wrapped around giving each of the main characters some kind of growth arc.

It's a decent premise, but the downside in 13's case is that, in order to give them growth room, they're almost all kind of obnoxious human beings at the beginning. So everyone gets a bad first impression of these dudes, and it lasts long enough, along with the overlong tutorialy part and general linearity, that it taints the whole experience for a lot of people, even though most of them genuinely do "grow and evolve as human beings, etc" and become much more likeable by the end. Hope gets completely over his whineyness post-Alexander, for example, as well as getting Lightning past some of her less pleasant neuroses by acting as a mirror for them for a bit.

This is all ignoring 13-2 and -3, where the character development and plot go a bit off the rails, but a lot of how 13-1 plays out makes more sense when you look at it from this angle, I think.

All of 12 essentially revolves around Ashe's journey from deposed princess to queen of Dalmasca. True, there are geopolitics and ancient gods afoot but all of that takes a seat to the question of how Ashe intends to regain the throne. Will she take revenge and become thrall to ye olde gods or will she wind up getting her nation wrecked by a clearly superior neighbor?

I don't see how Ashe was acting around the edges when essentially she had the power to potentially use WMDs, the primary macguffins of Ivalice. Vayne acts as a distant villain most of the game only because the focus was primarily on Ashe's choice.

12 gets alot of shit mainly because of horrible pacing.

[Tyrath]

Because he was a huge step up from half of XIII's cast?

[AoE]

Because he was a huge step up from half of XIII's cast?

Noel was like the Japanese archetype of all Japanese archetypes compared to the other characters. I'd rather deal with Snow than Noel. Also Caius was probably the best written character in the whole trilogy and his voice actor was probably a perfect match. His fights in FFXIII-2 are bullshit though. lol

[Aumaan_Kujata]

All of 12 essentially revolves around Ashe's journey from deposed princess to queen of Dalmasca. True, there are geopolitics and ancient gods afoot but all of that takes a seat to the question of how Ashe intends to regain the throne. Will she take revenge and become thrall to ye olde gods or will she wind up getting her nation wrecked by a clearly superior neighbor?

I don't see how Ashe was acting around the edges when essentially she had the power to potentially use WMDs, the primary macguffins of Ivalice. Vayne acts as a distant villain most of the game only because the focus was primarily on Ashe's choice.

12 gets alot of shit mainly because of horrible pacing.

Yeah, that's a reasonable way of looking at it, and I don't disagree. I guess I'm looking at it from a step back and thinking about how Square was thinking when they were putting the games together- in 12 the characters are there to advance the plot, and in 13 the plot is there to advance the characters. Ashe's actions are important (though I'd argue the Venat-related stuff going on mostly off screen is just as critical, in-world, to the question of humanity's relationship with the Occuria going forward), but Ashe's actions are more about driving the plot than they are about her evolving as a character. She changes a little along the way, but that's secondary.

I think one can make a lot of this kind of comparison between 12 and 13, to the extent that it feels deliberate. They both have stories that come from the whole "free will vs fate/the gods" thing, but ride it to pretty different conclusions (in 13 they really don't ever escape the Fal'cie plan, following along Bart's path all the way through killing Orphan- they just manage to block (most of) the death toll after the fact through the usual heroic sacrifice/power of friendship thing). Similarly, both games have battle systems that seem to start from the premise of "how can we automate the boring parts of combat but keep strategy important", and went in opposite directions with that too- 12 has you micromanage individual triggers and actions, 13 has you define and shift roles and handles the details for you. Tactical control vs strategic control. I sort of picture a big designer meeting where they're working out "the next FF" and getting the basic ideas down, but not being able to choose between good options in a few places and ultimately deciding they're planning "the next two FFs". Probably not how it went down, but I like the thought so I'm keeping it.

And yeah, 12 has some pretty interesting pacing things going on toward the end, following from some angst on the development side it seems. It's around the Pharos dungeon where you really get the feel that, ok, we could have had more story here, but it's late and we're closing, so murder the god and go home (and by the way we're naming the impossibly-long grindy brutal bonus boss after our director who quit before we finished). I still love it, though.