#94: Franklin Covey Was Wrong, Wrong, Wrong
Sticking to the task at hand and going directly from place to place and goal to goal is always a bad idea, and may even prevent you from being able to finish the game. It's by dawdling around, completing side quests and giving money to derelicts that you come into your real power.

I've always been a little disappointed with the fact that all of these super-hard side quests seem to get stacked up at the very end of the game. They're designed so you'll go out and dick around for 40 hours while Meteor is hovering over the planet, Seifer has kidnapped Ellone for Sorceress Adel, or Sin is about to fuck all of Spira up reeeeeaaal bad.

Most of these sidequests involve getting superior weapons/spells, so that you can go out and defeat even more optional sidequest bosses. Not that there wasn't any fun in gloating to my other nerd-friends about defeating FF8's omega weapon. I just wish that either the story-related boss fights were a little more difficult (requiring you to level up to 70 instead of 40 wouldn't be unreasonable, would it?), the side quests were a little more spread out, or they provided some major back story exposition.

That's why I appreciated the structure of FFX-2 so much. If you played the regular no-frills game, you'd finish in about 45 minutes. :) But the optional missions all provided some really rich details about the characters and the world, including some details about FFX. Even fighting Trema (and the 100 level dungeon) was worthwhile, IMHO.

Anyway, I'm running around trying to fight all of these rare game monsters, and I'm not really sure why I'm doing it, because I'm definitely not getting much out of it, story-wise.

You'll find that this phenomenon isn't limited to the Final Fantasy series, although that doesn't excuse it. I agree that sidequests should have some relevance to the story. Either that or take place during "downtime" in the plot while characters are in hiding and/or planning their next move or whatever.

What bothers me the most is that, barring "this castle will bloe up in five minutes, lol" time completely stops and does not advance unless you want it to- no time magic required. If the world were more dynamic i.e., stuff would actually happen independent of your actions, it would be way more emersive. As it is, you're not participating in a fantasy world, you're just acting out your given role. Note that Western RPGs, which are frequently touted for their "sandbox" qualities, also fail spectacularly in this regard.

Yeah, I know there would be problems if Meteor actually crashed or time were compressed or the crystal shattered or Sin did a belly flop or Vayne annihilated the Resistance. But these are all very urgent, very important things that should be dealt with quickly and seriously. But it's ALSO okay for the game to keep going afterward. Why can't the Warriors of Light become casual adventurers AFTER the evil bishonen is pushing up daisies? Momentum of convention, says I.

I agree 100%, although I am a huge fan of the ff series I am sick to death of these scenarios where something is going to destroy the world unless you do something, but the something never destroys the world....

If I had my way I would make it so the game develops each time you do an important sidequest, for example you search for the tournesol instead of flying to bahamut. This theoretically should give vayne and his friends more time to get stronger so when you eventually confront him he is a lot stronger.
Just as an example, but it would have been cool,

I think this scenario is the worst in final fantasy 7, when meteor threatens to crash into the world, aaaaaaaaaaagggggggggghhhh

:) "Oh, hi. This is Sephiroth. I asked for a Meaty Zor pizza, and I got a Meteor instead."

Yeah, that always got me in FFVII too. I think it was actually said by one of the characters that the Meteor was going to crash in like, seven days, or whatever. come on.


And I totally agree about X-2. Okay, so maybe you didn't quite finish in 45 minutes if you played the "no-frills" game, but you could definitely power through pretty quickly, and it is actually possible to complete it in around 2 hours or so if you skip scenes and dialogue and all side-stuff. But there really is a rich story waiting if you take the time to play out those sidequests.

The only problem that I have with X-2 is that it felt like you had to do the side-quests. I loathe it when games do that. I do agree with the idea that side-quests should give extra information and details in regards to the storyline.

Ya, the Meteor thing bugged me a loy.

Yeah meteor sucks balls, big sephiroth balls