TBH let's be real. The entire story is wasted potential.
I love, love, love the intro. The introduction of the royal family, Reks and the introduction to Basch, Vaan and Penelo. What we have here is the story of a people who have been stepped on and treated like dirt. The pathos the game builds for Vaan and Penelo is very, very good. stepping on the flowers, huddled into low town, penelo as a mother figure to the kids, all of the orphans. The game sets this all up so that by the time it's time to crash the fete, you're all in. Fuck the Empire. It takes Vaan as a central character who has lost EVERYTHING and then does nothing with it. There's potential for a class based story here. A struggle between Vaan and Ashe looking for revenge and how Ashe potentially cares more about revenge than her people. Matsuno traditionally does very well with class based stories, as seen in FFT and TO. Orphans are a big part of his storytelling and while FFT merely flirts with class it kind of pushes it to the side after chapter 1. We could have had a more dramatic story, pushing for more tension between Vaan and Basch Suikoden III Hugo vs Chris style. But nope. Vaan forgives and believes Basch far too quickly for it to be believable. That's left alone. There's a lot of potential that the game starts with that is completely left on the table. The world building and story telling in the beginning, all the way up to the prison escape when Basch joins as a guest is perfection. The story falls off the rails from there.
You could say that Basch could be the main character but even Basch kind of sucks and isn't that interesting. What makes Basch interesting is Gabranth. Anything Basch does of note is almost all related to Gabranth or Ashe. Because Basch doesn't subsist on his own as a character. Even his potential is stifled.
The only original plot line that has actual merit for the main cast is that of Ashe and her struggle for revenge. That is the main story of note in the game for our cast and it never reaches its full potential.
There could have been a case for it to be an FFVI styled game where there is no main character and they all have legitimate stakes in the pot. But even that fails.
Basically, everything in the game related to the story that are not the villains or the world building itself sucks. Ashe and Balther are the only main characters to make a big splash or do anything noteworthy. Fran is just there, Vaan, Basch, and Penelo are wasted. There's barely any character interaction at all. The entire scenario is wasted potential, Vaan or not.
The saddest part of FFXII's story is that the idea of Vaan isn't even bad. The intro is still fantastic to this day. The set up is perfect. But right when the game gives you a reason to care it just fucks off.
Is there any good thing to read about this game's troubled development? Like a good post-mortem or something?
I can find it if I search but basically, FFXII entered development in 2000. It took six years to develop. Jesus Christ.
The fact that FFXII was written by the same dude who wrote Tactics Ogre and that the game came out after FFX, which IMO has the best FF cast, is so, so damning.
