Originally Posted by
Ophannus
I think it's important to keep the entire cast useful and relevant, and FF8 tried to but then it fell off after their story arcs. After Irvine's failed sniped attempt, he doesn't contribute anything to the plot except for the stupid concert crap in Fisherman's Horizon. After Quistis relinquished her role as Instructor, she didn't contribute anything to the plot aside from the missle base scenario but only because the party was split. What happened to the intelligent, prodigy, machine gunning, instructor for the first half of disc 1? FF9 was an improvement as everyone was important and added depth and commentary throughout the whole game, it was the only game where pretty much every character had their moment in the sun and up until the very end every character remained just as relevant(except maybe Quina). Square just has this thing with their storylines where they introduce cool, interesting, powerful characters, then once they join your party and their main arc is over, they kind of get reduced to a shell of their former self and take a backseat position to the others, only adding in generic, contextual dialogue instead of real plot-moving dialogue.