WanderingWind said:
I wasn't aware ability to fight effectively was tied to maturity. Or career satisfaction, for that matter.
Of course, there have many numerous examples given to you throughout the thread and you still call it unrealistic. Real life, literature, movies and video game examples have been given to you, but it remains unrealistic to you. That's no longer an opinion. That's being purposefully obtuse.
Your "man-baby" mantra is also slightly disturbing. Are you against people moving in their 30s? Changing careers? Starting families?
Can you sincerely not think of stories that could be told within those examples?
As was pointed out to you earlier, the problem isn't that there aren't stories about older characters that are worth telling.
Let me make this as simple as possible for you.
Most JRPG's tend to combine an epic adventure with a coming-of-age story.
As the story progresses, the protagonist matures physically, and 'comes into his power' as a hero. This is reflected in the increase in his stats/level/combat ability, learning new skills, etc., over the course of the game. Overcoming enemies in battle forms a large part of the experience.
The protagonist also matures mentally and emotionally. They often start out with various personal issues that threaten to hamstring them. They wrestle with those as the game goes on, eventually overcoming them thanks to their interactions with the other members of the party and the game's antagonists.
These growth tracks run in parallel through the course of the narrative. That's obvious to anyone with an ounce of common sense, and shouldn't need to be spelled out. Statements like 'I wasn't aware ability to fight effectively was tied to maturity. Or career satisfaction, for that matter.' are disingenuous at best.
The elements I just listed are common in JRPG's, and I'd go as far as to say that they're defining characteristics in the genre.
And it's easier to sell the audience on a combination epic adventure/coming-of-age story with a young protagonist (16-25) than it is with an older one (35+),
because:
- The hero's level 1 at the start of the game. He's usually presumed to be just starting out in his career, though he might have had some minor experience beforehand. Still, it's usually acknowledged by NPC's, and often the hero himself, that he has a long road ahead. That dovetails neatly with characters in their late teens to mid-20's. At that age, it's easy to believe that they've just finished up their education and are setting off into the world for the first time. Most people I know expect your average person to be settled down and established in their field of choice by their mid-30's. If your hero's a thirty-something warrior with years of experience under his belt, then why is he still level 1? And if he is a settled man with a non-combat trade who suddenly decides to take up arms, why's he making such a sudden, radical decision at this point in his life? You're now faced with the task of selling the player on this scenario. Like I said before, it's not impossible, but you run the risk of a really labored setup, and you won't necessarily end up with a better story to show for it.
- The JRPG protagonist traditionally grows and matures emotionally over the course of the game. They may lack confidence, feel overshadowed by parents or siblings, have trust issues, etc., and will confront and overcome those problems over the course of their journey. Perhaps things are different for you, but in my experience, people tend to change more radically during their formative years than they do after they reach their 30's. By then, their personalities are pretty well established. Again, it's not unheard of for an older person to struggle with personal issues or experience a radical shift in character, but it is less common than it is in younger people, and that makes it a little harder to sell believably. More importantly, I think people aren't looking for that kind of thing from an older character in the first place. Most of the people clamoring for older protagonists are also the ones who say they dislike the 'emo bullshit' in JRPG's and want Japanese developers to 'move past' it. Giving us older characters, who presumably wouldn't have those kinds of issues to deal with, is their way of addressing that 'problem'. So what do our options for an older hero look like? We might end up with a thirtysomething who's still wrestling with personal issues (which may result in the character being branded as immature by players, and I'm not sure why you find my saying that 'disturbing' - some peoples' negative reaction to Carth in KotOR come to mind), or going in the opposite direction, one who has the maturity to match his age, but whose personality remains mostly static as a result (gutting the character development angle entirely).
Now, if we're really lucky, we
might somehow end up with a flawed-but-sympathetic older hero who isn't quite done growing up but still manages to start out likeable, undergoes a believable transformation over the course of the game, and ends up a better person than he started, and does all this without the whole scenario feeling incredibly labored and contrived. But again, what's the point? If you want to tell a good coming-of-age story, it's easier to use a protagonist who
is coming of age, one where the epic adventure can double as his rite of passage into adulthood.
Sure, I can think of a lot of ideas for stories with older protagonists. It's just harder to develop a JRPG-style story that really sings while still embodying those aspects of the genre. And that's all I'm after from you. An acknowledgment that the reason the heroes in these games tend to be younger is because
that makes them a better fit for the stories these developers are trying to tell than an older cast would be, which you seem hellbent on denying.
