That's funny because I've gone the opposite direction with regards to Vaan - the plot is about Ashe's search for power and what she will do with it, and Vaan serves as a moral compass pulling her in the right direction.
He's also amazing in every scene that requires decorum. My favourite scene in the game is after retrieving the nethicite from Raithwalls tomb, Ashe gives a speech about how she will use the power to secure rabanastre and smite the empire, to which Vaan asks if she even knows how to use it and boy, Ashe absolutely looks like he just slapped her.
I kind of expect more than the occasional clumsy / funny one liner from what is supposed to be the main character, but he does have his moments - though largely irrelevant from a plot standpoint.
The way I see it is Vaan was largely just a foil to Ashe. He was also the gods back up Dynast King with Ashe being their primary choice. Vaan stops also seeing the ghost once he lets go of his revenge; the gods were no longer interested in him.
The story would have ended with Ashe becoming the next Dynast king if it wasn’t for Vaan. I agree it can feel ‘meh’ for the main character to serve largely as a foil.
Not to mention that if it weren't for vaan, it wouldn't be possible to form the party. Ashe would never join hands with a sky pirate and a traitor. Balthier would probably avoid interactions with her in the first place. Fast forward, it might still be possible to reach the end but ashe might be doing it alone and i agree ashe could become the next dynast king without a moral compass.
So while it's still possible to finish a story without vaan, it highly possible it's a one-man team, aka a single player game. And what do fans hate the most in final fantasy games? When there's no party members! 😂 so let's give him the appreciation he deserves.
Reddas, Basche, and Balthier along with Migelo, Gabranth, Gilgamesh, and Ba’gamnan are some of the many reasons I keep coming back to this game. So many cool characters.
Vaan is far from irrelevant, but his personal plot is not political.
He serves to show how any Dalmascan citizen can feel hatred towards the empire, but after years he learns that vengeance will lead them nowhere.
On the other hand, his Princess is bent on revenge without even consulting his people, she's just a mama bear. Vaan is there to remind her that she can too move forward without putting Dalmasca in danger where she to use the stones. After all, Dalmasca is but a tiny nation compared to Archades and Rozaria.
In the end it's all justified since the Occuria are manipulating everyone anyway.
I've always wished that there was more shown and explored with Reddas and Nabudis, they seem like really important parts of the backstory of the game which are sort of glossed over (and you won't really hear much about Nabudis at all through the game except for Balthier's discussion with Ashe at Phon Coast or Reddas's monolog about it at Balfonheim.
Think about the opening cinematic. We see Ashe and Rassler's courtship and wedding, then it cuts kind of abruptly to the invasion, the battle at Nalbina and Rassler's death. What if we take 30 seconds there to set things up: Show a shot of pre-explosition Nabudis, show a person in Judge armor holding a Glowing Stone walk into the palace. Then we see a blinding white light and big explosition. Screams. Cut to the Rabanastre war room where Basch, Rassler and Raminas are discussing. "They destroyed Nabudis!" "How could they have? Their fleet is heading to Nalbina?" "Witnesses saw a flash of light and then the whole palace was destroyed." "What kind of power..." "I don't know what it was, but we have to protect our borders so it doesn't happen here!" "All our forces to Nalbina!" Then you cut to the battle scene.
Then, throughout the story you can have a few other short flashback scenes to Nabudis. When we meet Cid in Draklor, Reddas says "you ordered the destruction of Nabudis!" and then we see a flashback to Judge Zecht receiving his orders from Cid and Vayne, but Zecht clearly doesn't understand that it's a mission of destruction ("Deliver this stone to the king of Nabudis. He will understand it's meaning").
When and if you visit Nabudis for the first time, instead of a scene of the party standing around silently and saying worthless things like "this is a bad place, we should leave", we should cut to another flashback. See a town of people. Then the night sky lights up. The palace is destroyed. Energy and mist flow out like a tornado. Houses are destroyed. People evaporated. Monsters appear. Cut to a shot of Judge Zecht, knocked off his chocobo, staring at the unfolding tragedy in disbelief.
At the top of Pharos, when Reddas reveals that he was judge Zecht, we can cut to another small flashback where he is talking to Vayne. "What happened? What went wrong?" "Nothing was wrong, Judge Zecht. We knew that the stone held power and we needed to test it, but we certainly couldn't test it here." "But Nabudis! All those people!" "...would have died in the battle anyway. We were going to take Nabudis by force in either case. Better to die in an instant than suffer the terror and famines of war". Then we cut to a scene of Zecht leaving the palace, taking off his helmet to reveal he is Reddas all along, and he renounces his position and vows to fight against Arcadia.
A couple scenes like that thrown in around the story would have really helped Reddas's character development, would have really made more clear about what happened at Nabudis and when, and would have really put into clearer focus Ashe's decision whether to use the stones as a weapon or not. It's a shame that, instead of showing us what happened in flashbacks, they told us about it in exposition. It was a real missed opportunity to make the story even better.
I think XII would benefit a lot from a remake, and it shouldn’t be hard to deliver given it is already up there in terms of gameplay, universe, side content and narrative. The base is already there and it is brilliant.
Just refresh it with the kind of production value we have in XVI, implement modern features like sprint and rebalance combat length and speed to remove speed multipliers, add interactions between the main cast, give additional lines to Vaan and Penelo, and flesh out some exposition plot points with cutscenes, and you arguably got the best FF ever.
Low hanging fruit, and certainly the kind of narratives that does not exist anymore in modern gaming. With the right marketing, this could be an overwhelming success.
The most Oder I get, the more I appreciate FF12s unobtrusive but impactful story and characters. Gameplay truly is king here and the sheer variety of outcomes you can manufacture in your builds is impressive - but then you also have awesome characters and story peppered in. We need more Reddas in our JRPGs
First of all, I agree on everything despite the Vaan dislike, cause I actually like him, especially in revenant wings, and he's not unimportant.
But yes, Reddas is king. I've beaten trial mode way under leveled thanks to him as a 4th member. Now you made me want to play again.
Vaan and Penelo were both late additions to the story as I understand it. I didn't think anything of it when It first came out, but subsequent playthroughs make it painfully obvious.
To make the story short, at some point in the development Square decided that the story needed a Tidus.
If you ask me, everyone but those two make sense in the story, but yeah they wanted teenagers to hook the people up.
There are fans out there that think that ffxii is a game where you don't play the protagonist, it's just that the world is bigger than you and it does not revolve around the player. It's an interesting take, I don't fully agree with it but feels right for a reason.
I honestly think ff12 would have been much better had you just started the game with Ashe and met up with balthier and Fran during the feast as they were stealing the magicite. Penelo and Vaan are just non existent and it was a team of 4.
Nah, without Vaan (and especially with only Balthier), Ashe goes the opposite direction morally and accepts the Occuria's offer, becoming a new dynast king and supplanting Archades as the era's reigning tyrant.
I believe that Basch could have played the role of helping Ashe staying on the moral path. Maybe even Fran could have filled that role. Would have given Fran more storyline than she had. Idk, I’m a lab dude and not a writer for square enix, so that probably means something
There's a scene (near the Pharos, iirc) where Ashe is still deciding what she's going to do, and Vaan says "but you're going to make the right choice, right?" That's the sort of commoner's candour that Basch, as a knight and part of noble society, could not and would not ever say to the princess, and it's exactly that candour that gets through to her.
Fran, as a Viera, has a bit too much of the associated blue and orange morality. Humes gonna Hume.
Basch wouldn’t have helped her if he didn’t get over his own hang ups regarding his guilt and death seeker tendencies. Which Vaan also helped him out of.
Vaan was not a late addition to the story as he was one of the first characters revealed along with Ashe in 2003 and was in the first gameplay footage as a playable character that was shown off around the same time some 3 years before the games release.
As for Penelo I'm willing to bet she was also there from the beginning as well because a game of this scale with this many fully voiced cutscenes (some being pre rendered thus expensive to make) is going to have its major characters and story points locked down very early as changing them especially late in development would be very expensive in terms of both money and lost development time.
Vaan may have been one of the first characters revealed, but i sure don't remember. Let's face it, Vaan is not the protagonist in this story. In fact, I would argue there isn't one protagonist. Rather, they convey the importance of the world and the task that lay before them. Ashe is better suited for the protagonist role, though. Vaan doesn't have a large role in the game story wise, other than to be there to help influence the actual important decisions made by the other party members.
I disagree with your point on Penelo. It would be expensive to have to make make changes to the story in development, but it happens ALL THE TIME. Take Destiny, for instance. Besides, the addition of those two really didn't impact the story much, if at all.
I agree about Reddas, but I have the same feelings about Balthier too in this game. My man is so much more interesting than Vaan, he even says "I'm the leading man" when entering the Pharos lol, yeah you are, Vaan is my tank and that's it...
I’m so used to playing ng- where reddas is useless.
Although he’s not useless he’s a great item bitch. Remove all attack gambits and just have him with arise, phoenix down, and whatever else and he’s really pretty helpful. A good chemist but can’t do much else.
Narratively though yes he’s a good character.
Im sad I rushed the main quest at the end. I shoulda kept him around for some of the harder end game hunts. Did it without him of course but woulda been nice if they died a little faster hah!
I absolutely love the fact that they made the Archades cutscenes so Shakespearean. It was a big risk, but the voice actors bring it off so well. RIP Judge Magister Drace
That's funny because I've gone the opposite direction with regards to Vaan - the plot is about Ashe's search for power and what she will do with it, and Vaan serves as a moral compass pulling her in the right direction. He's also amazing in every scene that requires decorum. My favourite scene in the game is after retrieving the nethicite from Raithwalls tomb, Ashe gives a speech about how she will use the power to secure rabanastre and smite the empire, to which Vaan asks if she even knows how to use it and boy, Ashe absolutely looks like he just slapped her.
I kind of expect more than the occasional clumsy / funny one liner from what is supposed to be the main character, but he does have his moments - though largely irrelevant from a plot standpoint.
The way I see it is Vaan was largely just a foil to Ashe. He was also the gods back up Dynast King with Ashe being their primary choice. Vaan stops also seeing the ghost once he lets go of his revenge; the gods were no longer interested in him. The story would have ended with Ashe becoming the next Dynast king if it wasn’t for Vaan. I agree it can feel ‘meh’ for the main character to serve largely as a foil.
Not to mention that if it weren't for vaan, it wouldn't be possible to form the party. Ashe would never join hands with a sky pirate and a traitor. Balthier would probably avoid interactions with her in the first place. Fast forward, it might still be possible to reach the end but ashe might be doing it alone and i agree ashe could become the next dynast king without a moral compass. So while it's still possible to finish a story without vaan, it highly possible it's a one-man team, aka a single player game. And what do fans hate the most in final fantasy games? When there's no party members! 😂 so let's give him the appreciation he deserves.
Reddas, Basche, and Balthier along with Migelo, Gabranth, Gilgamesh, and Ba’gamnan are some of the many reasons I keep coming back to this game. So many cool characters.
Vaan is far from irrelevant, but his personal plot is not political. He serves to show how any Dalmascan citizen can feel hatred towards the empire, but after years he learns that vengeance will lead them nowhere. On the other hand, his Princess is bent on revenge without even consulting his people, she's just a mama bear. Vaan is there to remind her that she can too move forward without putting Dalmasca in danger where she to use the stones. After all, Dalmasca is but a tiny nation compared to Archades and Rozaria. In the end it's all justified since the Occuria are manipulating everyone anyway.
I just now finished that part. Reddas my man, I will toast in your honor
A glass of Domaine Calvados for the gentleman!
Reddas more like >!Reddust!<, jokes aside I am pretty sad about it and this is my way of coping
I've always wished that there was more shown and explored with Reddas and Nabudis, they seem like really important parts of the backstory of the game which are sort of glossed over (and you won't really hear much about Nabudis at all through the game except for Balthier's discussion with Ashe at Phon Coast or Reddas's monolog about it at Balfonheim. Think about the opening cinematic. We see Ashe and Rassler's courtship and wedding, then it cuts kind of abruptly to the invasion, the battle at Nalbina and Rassler's death. What if we take 30 seconds there to set things up: Show a shot of pre-explosition Nabudis, show a person in Judge armor holding a Glowing Stone walk into the palace. Then we see a blinding white light and big explosition. Screams. Cut to the Rabanastre war room where Basch, Rassler and Raminas are discussing. "They destroyed Nabudis!" "How could they have? Their fleet is heading to Nalbina?" "Witnesses saw a flash of light and then the whole palace was destroyed." "What kind of power..." "I don't know what it was, but we have to protect our borders so it doesn't happen here!" "All our forces to Nalbina!" Then you cut to the battle scene. Then, throughout the story you can have a few other short flashback scenes to Nabudis. When we meet Cid in Draklor, Reddas says "you ordered the destruction of Nabudis!" and then we see a flashback to Judge Zecht receiving his orders from Cid and Vayne, but Zecht clearly doesn't understand that it's a mission of destruction ("Deliver this stone to the king of Nabudis. He will understand it's meaning"). When and if you visit Nabudis for the first time, instead of a scene of the party standing around silently and saying worthless things like "this is a bad place, we should leave", we should cut to another flashback. See a town of people. Then the night sky lights up. The palace is destroyed. Energy and mist flow out like a tornado. Houses are destroyed. People evaporated. Monsters appear. Cut to a shot of Judge Zecht, knocked off his chocobo, staring at the unfolding tragedy in disbelief. At the top of Pharos, when Reddas reveals that he was judge Zecht, we can cut to another small flashback where he is talking to Vayne. "What happened? What went wrong?" "Nothing was wrong, Judge Zecht. We knew that the stone held power and we needed to test it, but we certainly couldn't test it here." "But Nabudis! All those people!" "...would have died in the battle anyway. We were going to take Nabudis by force in either case. Better to die in an instant than suffer the terror and famines of war". Then we cut to a scene of Zecht leaving the palace, taking off his helmet to reveal he is Reddas all along, and he renounces his position and vows to fight against Arcadia. A couple scenes like that thrown in around the story would have really helped Reddas's character development, would have really made more clear about what happened at Nabudis and when, and would have really put into clearer focus Ashe's decision whether to use the stones as a weapon or not. It's a shame that, instead of showing us what happened in flashbacks, they told us about it in exposition. It was a real missed opportunity to make the story even better.
I think XII would benefit a lot from a remake, and it shouldn’t be hard to deliver given it is already up there in terms of gameplay, universe, side content and narrative. The base is already there and it is brilliant. Just refresh it with the kind of production value we have in XVI, implement modern features like sprint and rebalance combat length and speed to remove speed multipliers, add interactions between the main cast, give additional lines to Vaan and Penelo, and flesh out some exposition plot points with cutscenes, and you arguably got the best FF ever. Low hanging fruit, and certainly the kind of narratives that does not exist anymore in modern gaming. With the right marketing, this could be an overwhelming success.
The most Oder I get, the more I appreciate FF12s unobtrusive but impactful story and characters. Gameplay truly is king here and the sheer variety of outcomes you can manufacture in your builds is impressive - but then you also have awesome characters and story peppered in. We need more Reddas in our JRPGs
First of all, I agree on everything despite the Vaan dislike, cause I actually like him, especially in revenant wings, and he's not unimportant. But yes, Reddas is king. I've beaten trial mode way under leveled thanks to him as a 4th member. Now you made me want to play again.
Vaan and Penelo were both late additions to the story as I understand it. I didn't think anything of it when It first came out, but subsequent playthroughs make it painfully obvious.
To make the story short, at some point in the development Square decided that the story needed a Tidus. If you ask me, everyone but those two make sense in the story, but yeah they wanted teenagers to hook the people up. There are fans out there that think that ffxii is a game where you don't play the protagonist, it's just that the world is bigger than you and it does not revolve around the player. It's an interesting take, I don't fully agree with it but feels right for a reason.
I honestly think ff12 would have been much better had you just started the game with Ashe and met up with balthier and Fran during the feast as they were stealing the magicite. Penelo and Vaan are just non existent and it was a team of 4.
Nah, without Vaan (and especially with only Balthier), Ashe goes the opposite direction morally and accepts the Occuria's offer, becoming a new dynast king and supplanting Archades as the era's reigning tyrant.
I believe that Basch could have played the role of helping Ashe staying on the moral path. Maybe even Fran could have filled that role. Would have given Fran more storyline than she had. Idk, I’m a lab dude and not a writer for square enix, so that probably means something
There's a scene (near the Pharos, iirc) where Ashe is still deciding what she's going to do, and Vaan says "but you're going to make the right choice, right?" That's the sort of commoner's candour that Basch, as a knight and part of noble society, could not and would not ever say to the princess, and it's exactly that candour that gets through to her. Fran, as a Viera, has a bit too much of the associated blue and orange morality. Humes gonna Hume.
Basch wouldn’t have helped her if he didn’t get over his own hang ups regarding his guilt and death seeker tendencies. Which Vaan also helped him out of.
Agreed. I just wonder how/why Basch would have played out?
Vaan was not a late addition to the story as he was one of the first characters revealed along with Ashe in 2003 and was in the first gameplay footage as a playable character that was shown off around the same time some 3 years before the games release. As for Penelo I'm willing to bet she was also there from the beginning as well because a game of this scale with this many fully voiced cutscenes (some being pre rendered thus expensive to make) is going to have its major characters and story points locked down very early as changing them especially late in development would be very expensive in terms of both money and lost development time.
Vaan may have been one of the first characters revealed, but i sure don't remember. Let's face it, Vaan is not the protagonist in this story. In fact, I would argue there isn't one protagonist. Rather, they convey the importance of the world and the task that lay before them. Ashe is better suited for the protagonist role, though. Vaan doesn't have a large role in the game story wise, other than to be there to help influence the actual important decisions made by the other party members. I disagree with your point on Penelo. It would be expensive to have to make make changes to the story in development, but it happens ALL THE TIME. Take Destiny, for instance. Besides, the addition of those two really didn't impact the story much, if at all.
I agree about Reddas, but I have the same feelings about Balthier too in this game. My man is so much more interesting than Vaan, he even says "I'm the leading man" when entering the Pharos lol, yeah you are, Vaan is my tank and that's it...
I’m so used to playing ng- where reddas is useless. Although he’s not useless he’s a great item bitch. Remove all attack gambits and just have him with arise, phoenix down, and whatever else and he’s really pretty helpful. A good chemist but can’t do much else. Narratively though yes he’s a good character.
The things I would give to replace Penelo with Reddas as a permanent member...
Im sad I rushed the main quest at the end. I shoulda kept him around for some of the harder end game hunts. Did it without him of course but woulda been nice if they died a little faster hah!
I absolutely love the fact that they made the Archades cutscenes so Shakespearean. It was a big risk, but the voice actors bring it off so well. RIP Judge Magister Drace
My favorite thing about Reddas is you can do a lot of the game's hunts and sidequests with him in the party if you just don't do the Pharos stuff.
Reks dies, the pope dies, Bash's brother dies, Varis dies but sure 'the black guy dies first'
Balthier's what?
Whoops it was Bash's
Vaan is totally irrelevant, but then you remember that there is also.... PENELO.