FFXII is not medieval, neither.
Zankoku no Yami;266337 said:
And the 'basics' of ANY story are cliched. You do realize, to make an original idea, you have to first take the cliches and use them as the basics? Tear down ANY story, no matter WHAT it is, and its cliched at its roots and basics. Because there is nothing new or original. As said before 'only new ways to tell them'. Its as simple as that.
Not that FFVII had a new way to tell those cliches. It starts with the main character working for a small rebel group and revolting against a might empire. Overly cliche both in concept and presentation. Then it's about travelling through the world map in search for the villain, stopping in several locations once in a while for the plot or the characters to develop. Overdone in the FFs before. Then its about gathering magical objects to stop a big threat. Overdone both in concept and presentation. Their mission fails and they just go to the place where the villain is, and kick his ass. Oh, and the key to the plot is a cliche maiden/ white mage. Typical.
I agree, what makes stories original and/ or interesting its the details and the presentation. But FFVII is hardly a good example of this. It HAS some interesting details, like how the cliche organizations, the cliche clones, the cliche scientists and the cliche aliens clash together, and the product of all this (the cliche main character and the cliche villain). Those two cliche characters have an interesting background story because of this, and the amnesia concept is presented in a new way as well. And the cliche maiden is killed half-way.
Some stuff was told in an unique way, but most of the cliches were extremely obvious, and there was clearly no attempt to tell them differently.
Why was Cloud so willing to join avalanche? Remember the little skit with Zack? They were headed to Midgard to start over; but Zack died. Not only that, but Tifa, his old childhood friend, was part of AVALANCE. Why NOT join? Not only that, but look what Shinra did to Zack! That is more than reason enough.
All the reasons you stated are wrong except the first. You should try to understand and/ or remember the FFVII's plot before defending it next time.
First, Cloud's head was messed up and he thought his past was Zack's. So what Shinra had done to his buddy was irrelevant because Cloud totally forgot Zack existed. Second, during that little skit with Zack, the guy told Cloud they were going to Midgar to be mercenaries. So when he joined Avalanche, that's all he wanted to be: A mercenary. And that was obvious through the dialogue at the beginning of the game: Cloud did not care about shinra, avalanche, Tifa, the planet, nothing. He was doing his work for the sake of payment.
The villian was being used as a geniue pig the entire time. He didnt just seperate; no, he realized what they were REALLY doing to both him and WHAT they did to his mother. Its revenge man.
Then he falls into the lifestream, discovers that Jenova is not his mother, that he isn't an ancient but actually a normal human generically altered because of the cells of an alien. Yet, he continues in his quest. Why? In FFVII:AC, his objective becomes more clear: He wants to destroy planets alongside Jenova. Why?
Everything regarding revenge for the ancients and Jenova stops becoming his objective once he find the truth about himself, so the only reason I can think of is that his mind was altered because of Jenova. The excuse for him being a generic evil villain.
Take just about ANY RPG or story; what do you got? A bunch of misfits who can supposedly do what an ENTIRE army can't. It usually comes down to just a group who saves teh day without the help of the armies available to them. So how can they do what others couldnt? Cuz thats the only way to make a story about heroes? I dunno. Its done in almost every case. It just works.
Yes, "it works". That's why most JRPG's stories
suck. Because the overuse of formulas that never were that good in the first place "work".
Fortunately, some of the RPG developers have been trying to prevent this. In FFX, Yuna's group wasn't the only one trying to defeat Sin, and the summoners dealt with powers good enough to destroy Sin... for a while. In FFXII, the rebels, which were far more in quantity than FFVII's, couldn't stand a chance against the empire, and they needed the help of another, more well-funded rebel group, of another empire, of nuclear power,and of an extreme organization and training to EVEN stand a chance against the mighty Archadian Empire. Makes FFVII's Avanlanche feel like it was written by a bunch of kids.
And FF7's storyline was far bigger than that; it was complex and had much depth to it.
FFVII's story was not very complicated nor complex, it was just confusing because of its mediocre narrative that poor translation. FFX's story is equally "complex" but feels much more simple because of the quality narrative and the good translation.
