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Post by crimsoncommand on Feb 5, 2015 11:55:52 GMT -7
I was recently playing FFIX with my brother and thought that it was really odd on how many child characters there were. Honestly, it seems that every child character besides Rydia and Vivi just diminishes the story. To me they are annoying. I'm wondering if anyone else feels this way or what your thoughts are about age and playable characters?
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Post by Battman on Feb 5, 2015 18:37:07 GMT -7
I'm glad you brought this up, because I'm sick of FF games where you play as kids or teens. I think this is part of the reason the series gets a bad wrap for not having "mature" storylines. It has never really bothered me in the past but I think they could really dive into some emotional and deep story elements of they decide to move to an older cast of characters.
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Post by crimsoncommand on Feb 5, 2015 19:58:29 GMT -7
I'm glad I'm not the only one that thinks this. FFVII was considered a mature and darkish story and the majority of the cast was 20+. I think late teens could work like FFVIII if the story was a little more solid, but the characters were relatable. Even when I was younger I couldn't relate with the kids or even empathize with any of their stories. They just seemed out of place. Maybe it's a cultural thing, maybe children are seen as more mature than what I see
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Post by Battman on Feb 5, 2015 20:06:33 GMT -7
I think that they try gearing the games to their target audiences. The older games were geared to pre-teens because they had NES and SNES consoles. As that age group got older (progressing to the PS era) the characters got older, therefore less children in the games. It seems like child characters were predominant in the early games of the series but have since diminished, with the exception of hope but he is a reoccurring character.
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Post by crimsoncommand on Feb 7, 2015 13:37:18 GMT -7
That's an interesting point, I agree and I think it's similar to the Harry Potter series in a way where the target audience grew with the characters. However, the only problem was that the SNES Era ended with VII. Like I said before it was 20+ with the exception of Yuffie, but VIII ages went down and then IX had pretty much characters under 18 except Steiner, Freya, and Quina (I think). I'm curious on why they reverted. Maybe because it was a time piece and the age of an adult was lower...by that standard Steiner should have been decrepit.
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Post by Battman on Feb 7, 2015 14:14:55 GMT -7
That's a good point about the characters in the early games having older characters. Maybe the demographic shifted during the move from nintendo to Sony? Although if I recall even most of the characters from FF6 were late teens early 20s. It's possible that they are just trying to satisfy the whole of their fan base by appealing to a wide variety of age groups, and teenagers are the bridge between children and adults. I think teenagers also add for more character development since that is a time in life where you do a lot of growing anyway.
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Post by crimsoncommand on Feb 10, 2015 5:22:03 GMT -7
I think that is the best response I've heard. I hadn't thought of the development time with teenagers. I guess full adults like Barrett and Cid are too stuck in their ways to change drastically like a developing teenager. They did show some, but not as much as say the cast of VIII or IX. Tidus changed a lot as well in X if I remember correctly
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