Well I'm not going to argue that the Gargantuan Big Bad Super Attacks of Ultimate Slash All Kamehameha Times Ten are pretty lame in effect (unless done correctly, like Valkyrie Profile). Especially in a game like Final Fantasy 7, where Omnislash was this big and impressive Bleach sword-slash-a-thon from Hell, and considering how many times you summoned meteors from the sky to crush your opponent, and what have you. The more normal the regular "fight" command is, the more it's supposed to be 'impressive' if Cloud can suddenly shoot lightning bolts out of his ass for a Limit Break, and that's just ludicrous.

Valkyrie Profile at least was consistent - you gang-raped an opponent with the normal attack command.

It still doesn't make it any less absurd to use that as a comparison for out-of-battle death needing to be removed. If you ask me, that was the whole point. Believe whatever you want, but any good story has at least a couple of deaths (good side or bad side). And just because Final Fantasy games happen to have a status effect that looks a hell of alot like death, they aren't subject to removal from that list.

EDIT: Anyway, it sounds like closing time to me.

I would argue with that. I think you meant 'every good damatic story trying to pit two forces of extreme good and evil where life and death is on the line has to have at least one death in it.' Not 'every' good story.

Anyway, I'm not gonna go crazy into my point again. All I'm sayingf is people were complaining a FF game had no deaths in it and I just realized that FF games only have deaths in them when they are due to story points, never due to getting hurt in battle or anything related to the actual gameplay.

So I can totally see a FF game not having any deaths just as long as there's no one getting killed in a cutscene.

I did. My apologies.

Hmmm....kinda surprised how many people didn't like FFTA.

I loved it, probably more then FFT. My save file has over 196 hours in it. The only other game I have that kinda time dropped into is Sonic Adventure 2 Battle, and that's cause my wife and I REALLY wanted to see what Green Hill Zone was like in 3d. God, we were disappointed.

But there was something about FFTA that I loved. I thought the battle system was just fun, the story was decent, and the graphics were great. The problem I have with FFT is that it takes way too much to get into. Plus, FFTA is portable, so I played it at work, which was nice.

If they re-release FFT for a handheld, I might get into it again.

I love The Magicbox...

http://www.the-magicbox.com/0612/game061214b.shtml

Some more images of FFT.

*edit*

Mirai, your earlier comments about Castevania make you my new best friend, just so you know. God, I hope I get Portrait for Christmas.

At this point, I'm thinking you're either dense, a skimmer, or have ignored Krylo and/or me. Sarcasm, perhaps? I mean, if I said in sequence, "FFT" and then the above quote, someone who has played FFT for any appreciable length would surely read my saying as sarcasm. Maybe you've played FFT conservatively and thus never noticed the GONE FOREVER BYE BYE DEATH during ANY fight (such as a random encounter) that is implemented in it. Maybe you think redshirts don't count as people and thus cannot die or be hurt in battle.

I mean, at this point, I am literally wondering what's going on with you. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing, as popular culture would have it. You're just restating your point with no response to the counterpoints/evidence presented to you. Please, answer?

Highlighting mine, to emphasize that this is how I read it. Face it, redshirts don't count, at least when it comes to story.

I would like to see a game where a character's death in battle (Similar to FFT; gotta give some time to revive) would affect the story; however, that's really not possible. There are too many possibilities, and scenes that would be affected; imagine FFXII if Balthier died in the escape from the castle.

The thing is, it's practically impossible for a game to be coded correctly so that it can take gameplay ramifications into account when considering plot advancement. That's expecting too much. Only MMORPGs or other player-driven games can do things like that at this juncture.

Even if there was a RPG that allowed you to continue 'with or without' this character, they won't allow that character to 'die' in any random battle. It would be a 'staged' battle where the games programming is prepared to change the proceeding storylines based on a variable: whether X is dead or alive.

Now, there is one way to allow for a storyline to proceed without a played character: modify the plot so played characters aren't involved in the storyline enough to matter.

My point is that you can't have it both ways; modern programming methods simply can't accomdate a character being deeply involved in a plot, and then allowing for the game to adjust based upon said character's random in-game actions. It can happen in very small instances or in particularly open-ended plots, but open-ended plots tend to lack substance compared to the FF series 'linear movie' template.

Perhaps you skipped over the part in my post after I said the part you quoted where I repeated 'no one dies in a FF game other than when the story dictates it...' and then I added '...except when you don't use a Phoenix Down'. Its there. Go ahead and go back and you'll see it.

I know what you are saying but really, this is just another thing that is taking away from the original point that someone made and I responded to. You can have a FF game where no one dies because no one [important to the story] ever dies unless the story says so. They can be wounded, KOed and smashed into jelly (litterally with a big metallic arm of a giant tank spider) in gameplay but they will never die. But once the story turns around and says 'ok, this character has to die to make the game "dramatic"', then all you need is a simple guy running up and slashing someone in the back with a fingernail and they are just fated to die on the spot.

If you can't agree that this is kinda pathetic, which was my point and not focusing on the 'illusion' or what have you of the 'story', then you must have cried at the end of Episode III or something...you really can accept quite a lot.

Note: Despite this rather laughable situation of characters never dying and then dying from random cut scenes, I still like FF games and I'm not saying they are bad. Just saying because there's always someone who has to bring up that as a counter-argument...

Yeah, I was just repeating my point most of the time we were 'debating' because all the people responding to me were going off on tangents and both not understanding what I meant fully nor talking about it.

Well, there are some games that do it. I know most of the Fire Emblems from at least IV on do it. And for SURE Suikoden does it. No, they don't do it in a super FF complex story way, but they still do have times when you can lose a character permanently and lose a portion of the story or effect the entire story completely. And I'm sure there's some other SNES and PSX RPGs I'm not remembering that have losable characters in battle that effect the story.

It seems my hypocritical skimming refused to closely inspect that comment to see if it actually meant anything.

Maybe this is just my subconscious being an asshole at this point, but now I'm rather curious as to FFs where this has happened other than FF7. If I recall correctly, in V, Galuf blew up or something, and you can't Phoenix Down/Raise someone from a death like that (unless you're playing Dungeons and Dragons).

This wasn't the view I was planning on taking, but I'm going to say this: Episode III was entirely story, no interactive part involved. With video games, it's important to keep a tactical system that allows the player to have fun. So, in my mind, I seperate the gameplay and plot of the story. I can view the random encounter as an abstraction; in gameplay a challenge risking your death that you must overcome, in story it can be ignored, not seen at all, but possibly be seen as the fact that a hero must face adversity before achieving whatever.

Wait, so the 'that' means 'fun level', correct?

Wasn't leaving the point unrepeated an option?

No comment. Quoting for completion.

*nods* I can see these things definitely being worthy of a 'death scene'. But some of the biggest scenes for characters deaths include such as a Masamune stabbing Aeris in the stomach, Squall being stabbed by what looks like a simple Blizzaga spell inthe chest/shoulder (the scene is suppose to make you think Squall died I think) and even discounting these two scenes, there's others of characters in various 2D FF games being little more than stabbed by a sword and being dubbed 'dead' where in battles they are slashed and stabbed all day long and just lose HP... Most often this happens to kings or famous fathers or SO of main characters. In most Square RPGs as well, especially Seiken Densetsu and Chrono games.

Anyway, you make good points on all the other stuff.