TheJollyCorner said:
interesting.
Makes me wonder if Nomura was just messing around with designs for an older FFVIII crew (i.e. VIII-2?
) years ago and ended up just using an older Seifer as Snow?
It seems he was deliberately looking at his old designs and subverting them to different degrees to see how the characters would be received.
Cloud, a self-absorbed ex-soldier versus Lightning, a female ex-soldier with a chip on her shoulder. Cloud's is deliberate due to his schizophrenia, Lightning's is due to family.
Barret, an angry black terrorist leader who shoots first and asks questions later versus Sazh, an easygoing guy who has guns but is more concerned with avoiding battles and thinking things through first.
Vanille: Your typical spunky young girl whose immaturity and irresponsibility actually HAS terrible repercussions. Remember how Yuffie steals materia, or Rinoa runs out on the assassination plot, Rikku blowing things up to kidnap Yuna, and all of those girls never get reprimanded in the long run?
Vanille was totally designed to be the spunky sex appeal girl that the player suddenly has second thoughts about because she REALLY screws up.
Snow is the best example. He's Locke, Zidane, Tidus, all of the headstrong heroes who get a ragtag group of kids to join him to protect the girl without really thinking logically or carefully. Except this time he suffers repeatedly for this stubbornness, whereas every other hero got praised for it.
Fang was...well, Fang is every suddenly angry character that turns on the party at some point. This was probably the weakest cliche characterization, though her love for Vanille certainly is a valid reason.
Compared to, say, Amarant attacking you just to be a dick, or Mind controlled FF4 heroes, or Vossler, who all have their reasons that pretty much are "I'm suddenly mad at you guys.'
Now, this doesn't mean it works for everyone. But I liked that part of FF13, how the heroes were all very flawed in a meta commentary way on the rest of the series.