That FFXIII game again: villains, character arc, and plot.
I was talking to my brother about FFXIII last night, and he mentioned how knowing that there's only two chapters left in the plot makes the incredibly speedy deaths of two of the main "villians" a lot more understandable. But that made me realize that part of the problem with XIII is that it doesn't really have villains.
Seriously, you know how there's that one guy who always dogs you the entire way, and you have to fight a million times over and he always kicks your ass (well, maybe)? (Seifer, Jenova, Seymour.) Or how the Big Bad usually has a bunch of underlings who show up regularly to make your life miserable? (Reno and Rude, Fuujin and Raijin, Beatrix.) Or how there's the antihero who is just trying to do the right thing, but believes that the only way to achieve that is by doing the opposite of whatever you're doing and consequently has to stand in your way? (Riku, Kain, Miles Edgeworth.)
Point is, in an RPG, you usually have Recurring Villains who are not the Big Bad. It keeps things Interesting, because it's hard to maintain compelling conflict with only a single villain in a 50+ hour game.
In FFXIII, there's the Pope-dude, who makes one or two press releases and whom you fight, uh, once--and it's not like you didn't see that coming anyway, because even if he weren't obviously evil, I'd like you to name me a single JRPG in which there's an organized religion that isn't evil and in which you don't fight the Pope. (He might be the Big Bad, might not, idek. Square-Enix's idea of Big Bads these days tends more towards giant inexplicable mecha.)
And then there's these two. They each show up approximately, um, twice. And neither of them are particularly compelling as characters. (Make that "boring, inconsistent, over-the-top cliche, and not compelling at all.") Oh, also?
You don't ever fight either of them.
And they're touted by the creators as two of the game's primary villains. Anybody else see anything wrong with this picture?
This game just doesn't have villains. The plot essentially occurs without input from the higher powers; you see the occassional order being issued, but mostly it's just an endless stream of soldiers coming after you, and even that peters out pretty quick.
And without villains, there's not really any sense of conflict.
The conflict, as I gather, is supposed to be within the heroes themselves; it is internal. (The eidolons are obvious external manifestations of this, of course.) The trouble is, while I'm all for that as a concept, it doesn't really work as your sole plot-moving conflict. For one thing, these characters aren't exactly having mindblowing revelations that we haven't heard before from a million other video games and movies and anime: it's all pretty standard "learning to believe in yourself" stuff, all pretty little messages about family and strength and forgiveness and shit. For another thing, most JRPGs manage to have both the internal plot conflicts and the external. As characer arcs, I've seen this all already in, uh, most other FF games, for starters? There's no need to sacrifice an external plot for the sake of the characters--you can have both, and you should if you want to have a well-rounded story.
There's an idea bandied about by writers that a good plot is not one that happens to your characters, but rather one that happens as a result of your characters, the decisions they make and they actions they take. I'm not arguing against this. But the characters of Final Fantasy XIII don't make very many decisions that drive the plot forward. They don't do very much that changes what is happening. They spend a lot of time running either away from the government or towards the government, but never with any real idea of what they're going to do once they get there. Then they decide to go to Pulse, so they do, and then they still don't know what they're going to do now that they're there. There's a vague "Let's go to this town," but there's no real reason why other than the fact that it's better than not going anywhere at all.
It is, in effect, rather like bad adventure fanfiction: the creators wanted to have their characters travel through a collection of locations that they wanted to describe/render in vivid and excrutiating detail, though they didn't actually have any good reason for the characters to be there or anything for them to do. They wanted to show character arcs and emotional conflict and growth, but they didn't want to deal with the added hassle of having that growth come from the characters taking action in a broader external conflict because that involves putting time and effort into said external conflict--creating villains, a compelling series of obstacles, etc. So they just showed some interal angst and then manifested it into some monsters that you fight and called that a character arc.
Which, guys, no.
You're telling me these characters have grown, but I don't really know why. I haven't seen them engage with much of anything; I've just heard them talk about it a lot. The characters are telling me they've changed, and sure, maybe they're acting a little differently now than they were earlier, but I'm not clear on what caused them to have these life-changing revelations. There was one incident I mentioned a while back earlier where Hope makes an innocuous comment and Lightning flips her shit because this comment makes her realize something and it completely changes her life omg (srsly, it ends up in the datalog and everything). But as a trigger it didn't actually make any sense. And it certainly wasn't very exciting.
I should probably stop droning on now because I talk about this shit a lot and I'm probably sounding like a broken record but. This game, it is just. It's like it wasn't made by an experienced company at all. Everybody involved failed Basic Game Writing 101.
tl;dr version: This game sucks because it has no tension. (Among other things.)
Seriously, you know how there's that one guy who always dogs you the entire way, and you have to fight a million times over and he always kicks your ass (well, maybe)? (Seifer, Jenova, Seymour.) Or how the Big Bad usually has a bunch of underlings who show up regularly to make your life miserable? (Reno and Rude, Fuujin and Raijin, Beatrix.) Or how there's the antihero who is just trying to do the right thing, but believes that the only way to achieve that is by doing the opposite of whatever you're doing and consequently has to stand in your way? (Riku, Kain, Miles Edgeworth.)
Point is, in an RPG, you usually have Recurring Villains who are not the Big Bad. It keeps things Interesting, because it's hard to maintain compelling conflict with only a single villain in a 50+ hour game.
In FFXIII, there's the Pope-dude, who makes one or two press releases and whom you fight, uh, once--and it's not like you didn't see that coming anyway, because even if he weren't obviously evil, I'd like you to name me a single JRPG in which there's an organized religion that isn't evil and in which you don't fight the Pope. (He might be the Big Bad, might not, idek. Square-Enix's idea of Big Bads these days tends more towards giant inexplicable mecha.)
And then there's these two. They each show up approximately, um, twice. And neither of them are particularly compelling as characters. (Make that "boring, inconsistent, over-the-top cliche, and not compelling at all.") Oh, also?
You don't ever fight either of them.
And they're touted by the creators as two of the game's primary villains. Anybody else see anything wrong with this picture?
This game just doesn't have villains. The plot essentially occurs without input from the higher powers; you see the occassional order being issued, but mostly it's just an endless stream of soldiers coming after you, and even that peters out pretty quick.
And without villains, there's not really any sense of conflict.
The conflict, as I gather, is supposed to be within the heroes themselves; it is internal. (The eidolons are obvious external manifestations of this, of course.) The trouble is, while I'm all for that as a concept, it doesn't really work as your sole plot-moving conflict. For one thing, these characters aren't exactly having mindblowing revelations that we haven't heard before from a million other video games and movies and anime: it's all pretty standard "learning to believe in yourself" stuff, all pretty little messages about family and strength and forgiveness and shit. For another thing, most JRPGs manage to have both the internal plot conflicts and the external. As characer arcs, I've seen this all already in, uh, most other FF games, for starters? There's no need to sacrifice an external plot for the sake of the characters--you can have both, and you should if you want to have a well-rounded story.
There's an idea bandied about by writers that a good plot is not one that happens to your characters, but rather one that happens as a result of your characters, the decisions they make and they actions they take. I'm not arguing against this. But the characters of Final Fantasy XIII don't make very many decisions that drive the plot forward. They don't do very much that changes what is happening. They spend a lot of time running either away from the government or towards the government, but never with any real idea of what they're going to do once they get there. Then they decide to go to Pulse, so they do, and then they still don't know what they're going to do now that they're there. There's a vague "Let's go to this town," but there's no real reason why other than the fact that it's better than not going anywhere at all.
It is, in effect, rather like bad adventure fanfiction: the creators wanted to have their characters travel through a collection of locations that they wanted to describe/render in vivid and excrutiating detail, though they didn't actually have any good reason for the characters to be there or anything for them to do. They wanted to show character arcs and emotional conflict and growth, but they didn't want to deal with the added hassle of having that growth come from the characters taking action in a broader external conflict because that involves putting time and effort into said external conflict--creating villains, a compelling series of obstacles, etc. So they just showed some interal angst and then manifested it into some monsters that you fight and called that a character arc.
Which, guys, no.
You're telling me these characters have grown, but I don't really know why. I haven't seen them engage with much of anything; I've just heard them talk about it a lot. The characters are telling me they've changed, and sure, maybe they're acting a little differently now than they were earlier, but I'm not clear on what caused them to have these life-changing revelations. There was one incident I mentioned a while back earlier where Hope makes an innocuous comment and Lightning flips her shit because this comment makes her realize something and it completely changes her life omg (srsly, it ends up in the datalog and everything). But as a trigger it didn't actually make any sense. And it certainly wasn't very exciting.
I should probably stop droning on now because I talk about this shit a lot and I'm probably sounding like a broken record but. This game, it is just. It's like it wasn't made by an experienced company at all. Everybody involved failed Basic Game Writing 101.
tl;dr version: This game sucks because it has no tension. (Among other things.)