SE's favorite devils.Follow

"The church is evil" and "the empire is evil" are so ingrained into us as gamers that I'm not sure we'd know what to do with ourselves if it turned out the church wasn't evil (also, the chancellor is always a bad guy.) It would be cool to see something different but I'm at a bit of a loss to come up with an alternative. Unless you go the "lone supervillain" or "lost in the wilderness" route, you need an organization big enough to have a ton of soldiers and minions, and the government, the church, and the large corporation are really the only options there.

Yeah. I'm a little disappointed that even in an expansion centered around the 1000 year long Dragonsong War you spent surprisingly little time fighting dragon armies. I know Nidhogg will be back later but it was still disappointing to see him get taken out only half way through and then back to primals and garleans and allagans. We've done that already. Where's that dragon war you promised me?

For other games, Kefka was an interesting villain because he actually won. He got taken down in the end but not before he literally destroyed most of the world. In any game the heroes will have setbacks and and the villains are often a step or two ahead throughout the game, but it's rare to see the heroes fail so spectacularly like that. Unfortunately that sort of thing only works once in any given series. If they tried that again people would be all "it's just a FF6 rip off." (I was annoyed with parts of FF9 for that exact reason. To many plot points ripped straight out of FF4.)

I like how 10 handled it too. Sin was a force of nature rather than something you could really fight and defeat. The real "villain" was the sense of hopelessness and inevitability as everyone knew they could never really win. Even Seymor and Yeven were just trying to hold on to a piece of a decaying world. I didn't really miss having a main villain because everything else going on was so interesting by itself.

I like that too. Not everyone has to be evil. I'm just a bit surprised at how few dragons we actually fought given the theme and the build up.



Agreed. It was obvious to me that something was a bit off but I never expected the whole thing to come crashing down so dramatically like that. I was surprised in a good way.

My money's on the lalafell uprising.

Golbez was not truly evil; he was merely being controlled by a very not-empire entity from another celestial body.

Oh, and the "big empire" at the beginning of the game, wasn't evil either, the king was a fake, and the real king would never have done those things.

That was back when SE actually wrote stories that sounded epic and played out to be awesome.

Edited, Aug 9th 2015 8:47pm by Lyrailis

Haha it's true. The second I saw the Pope dude in Ishgard I thought "Yep he's bad."

Pretty much every FF:

Evil empire (secretly controlled by some evil god) is trying to kill you.

Kill possessed leader of said empire. Kill god.

The end.

Man I forgot how good FF4 was. Now I feel like replaying it.

Regarding Kain...

SpoilerFinal Fantasy IV

In the credits, Kain is one of the only characters not to attend Cecil and Rosa's wedding. He feels tremendous guilt about his unintentional acts of treachery and blames his own weaknesses. Instead, he climbs Mount Ordeals to undergo a spiritual trial similar to what Cecil went through when he became a Paladin, with the hope of becoming a great Dragoon worthy of his father's legacy. No one hears from him again for some time.

Final Fantasy IV: The After Years

Some time between Final Fantasy IV and The After Years, Kain entered the mirrored chamber on Mt. Ordeals and engaged his dark side. Failing to dispatch him, Kain was struck down and his dark side escaped. Kain abandoned his name to seek out and destroy his evil half.
..
In Baron Castle, Kain confronts his dark half and reveals his true identity. The two battle and Kain defeats Dark Kain, absorbing him. On Mt. Ordeals, the spirit of Kluya recognizes Kain's strength and grants him the power of light transforming Kain into a Holy Dragoon. Kain assists Ceodore, Rosa, Cid and Edward in breaking Cecil free of the Mysterious Girl's control and he continues to fight alongside the party, reaffirming his bonds with the friends he had abandoned.

After defeating the Creator with the rest of the party, Kain returns home to Baron. He leaves the ranks of the Dragoons to join the Red Wings, and goes with Ceodore to help the boy attain his own Proof of Knighthood. At this point, in the Final Fantasy IV: The After Years novelization, Kain tells Ceodore that although Cecil is his best friend and ally, he still considers him a rival and looks forward to defeating him one day.

I'd have to agree that FF4 was FF's high point in good storytelling.

The FFs that came after it usually followed certain tropes, and it is more of a "ugh.... again!?" every time you gotta fight The Empire, or some Corporation who thinks it is an Empire, or some giant space flea of some type, or some deity-like entity in another dimension.

But FF4... that was just awesomesauce. I, too, feel the temptation to go out and play it again... but to be honest, I didn't like the fact the PC version has input lag and only 15 FPS in some places in the game. 15 FPS? Yeesh. Of course, that's what you get when you emulate a mobile platform, lol. How Far SE has fallen when they resort to emulation when it comes to PC releases of games, lol.

If I were to emulate something, I'd emulate the original and get the full 30 FPS, lol. Voice Acting... I don't even care about voice acting, lol.

I always loved going into the Lunar Subterrane. In the SNES version, they used an abriged version of Cecil's theme (without the long build-up) and it made for a perfect "final dungeon" theme until you got to the "glass" area with all the random dragon fights (the theme there isn't too shabby either!)

The only weak spot in BGM, is the repetitive normal battle theme I felt they coulda made a little better, but the rest of the soundtrack was just gold.

I mean, how can you listen to THIS and not think "awesome!"?

Evil religion, Evil Empire, Evil Tyrant.

Unless we play the bad guys, what more will ever change?

You only have to look at our own history to see how the above 3 can easily become corrupt, evil and be about control. Seeking that next weapon, that next nation to control, using fear and hate.

It's a fact of life. Our own history is filled with the above, I studied history and I can certainly tell you as a Brit (yes real British English) our Empire was created through control and invading armies. Our own history of the church is no shining beacon of light. As for tyrants, the list of these are almost endless. Spanning thousands of years throughout the world. Every empire has had it's own evil.

From the Romans, British, to the EU migrations of America, Ghengis Khan, N@zi's (yes this word was filtered), Japanese Empire, Persians.. they all had one thing in common. Innocent people did die, there were evil things occurring far too often.

SE like all game makers when creating a Good Vs Evil, only have to look at history to see where all the story comes from. Religion is not something I specialise in but one thing does come to mind. The Dark Ages.

We can all relate to the above which is why SE will continue to use that as a base line. And let's face it, when we face the odds - it makes a better story. Going against the Evil Empire, the Evil Tyrant or in the case of some - A complete whack job that simply wants to destroy the world.

Edited, Aug 11th 2015 5:07am by Lonix

Then you have Necron from Final Fantasy IX...way out in left field.

Xenogears at least gets to play the "ran out of time and money and had to fake it" excuse. Xenosaga did it intentionally form the start.