Behold, Failure Fantasy Part 2! Also, cruise over to Epixaricacy for more details on one of the games I’m about to discuss.

So I’ve taken some time to talk about bad protagonists in Final Fantasy games. What, you might ask, are examples of good ones?

I’m glad you asked me that, conjectural reader.

Zidane Tribal (Final Fantasy IX)

With the exception of Amarant, that random amalgamation of muscles and hair on the left of the pictured box art, most of the characters in Final Fantasy IX have depth, emotion and plausible relationships with the people around them. Garnet, the female lead, isn’t an insufferable whiner or completely vain. Vivi is perhaps the most adorable destroyer of worlds in any of these games (unless you count Lulu’s collection of plushies from the following game) and Steiner shows us just how badass a normal guy can be when tossed into these sort of situations. As much as I could talk about them, though, and the plethora of good things I have to say about Freya Crescent, this is about the main protagonists, and in this case, it’s cat/monkey boy Zidane.

He’s not the best main character in the history of gaming, but he’s very nearly a messiah in relation to his two predecessors. From the start, Zidane’s charismatic and fun, from his lecherous gazes at passing women to his interest in both theater and music. Even when the plot begins to twist and turn back upon it self, Zidane never really loses sight of who he is and what he wants to be. In fact, it’s one of his greatest strengths – no matter what someone tells him about ‘fate’ or ‘destiny,’ he is determined to be his own person. Instead of relying on his friends to get him through his most trying time, he actually attempts to forge ahead on his own, rather than endanger them. He shows more consistency and dimension than his previous counterparts, which to me puts him head, shoulders and tail above them.

Terra Branford (Final Fantasy VI)

Zidane reminds me a bit of Locke from this game. In fact, I could discuss any of the characters from Final Fantasy VI at length, because the roster of characters from the game each have unique traits, importance to the plot and dimensions that make the more people than pixels. However, again, I must remain focused on the main hero of the game, or heroine in this case. Terra was the first female protagonist to come to a Final Fantasy game, and to this day, she remains my favorite.

While the game starts her as both an amnesiac and under the control of the game’s villainous omnicidal clown, Terra is quickly revealed to be a compassionate, sensitive and intelligent young woman. Unlike some of the other protagonists I’ve mentioned in other games, as soon as the veil of enemy control is lifted from her, she becomes introspective and self-aware, growing as a character and becoming more comfortable and confident in both herself and her friends. Her arc is well-plotted and executed without major fault, and this consistent and realistic growth adds to her appeal as a cypher for the actions and attitudes of the player.

This player, at least. Most of the opinions I’ve ventured here are purely subjective. Feel free to discuss them at your leisure and fling poo at my cage. However, when compared one against the other in terms of character growth, motivations and appeal, I hope you can see why some of these protagonists succeed while others are complete and total failures.

Issue 239 of the Escapist is now available, entitled “Anti/Hero.” Below is the article I pitched for the issue.

NOTE: Due to circumstances mostly beyond my control, this article has been divided into two parts. Below is part the first.

Final Fantasy is arguably the most popular series of role-playing games from Square/Enix, and one of the selling points of a role-playing game is who drives the epic story forward. In some cases, this means the player fills in the blanks left open by the designers (i.e. Commander Sheperd in Mass Effect), while in others the player takes control of the lead character in a party. Given that developers want people to play their games, why do the protagonists of so many Final Fantasy games seem completely unlikeable?

A good protagonist is the cornerstone of a successful story. Take a look at Luke Skywalker, John McClain, Marty McFly or Frodo Baggins. Heck, even Kevin ‘Neo’ Anderson isn’t a bad protagonist in the first Matrix film. He’s as confused, shocked and awestruck as we are during the course of the story, before he and everyone else in the franchise gets railroaded into even murkier and more confusing references to the murky and confusing philosophy of Baudrillard. But in all of the above cases, you have someone who’s a bit of an everyman, someone with whom the audience can relate right away, who goes through trials and tribulations in a somewhat realistic and endearing way. In Star Wars, where it’d be all too easy for the special effects to take center stage as they did in more recent films (which I’ll touch on more later), Luke Skywalker is the beating heart of the narrative. Frodo Baggins, a short and reluctant individual, deals with his challenges the way most of us probably would. John McClain, a hard-nosed beat-walkin’ cop, shows us that one can be heroic while still being very human.

Bad protagonists, on the other hand, go so far as to unintentionally verge into anti-hero territory. Not because they break the law in the name of justice, but because they exemplify the antithesis of heroism. It’s a matter of degrees when it comes to Final Fantasy, so let’s take a look at the three biggest offenders, and see just how heroic these “heroes” really are.

Cloud Strife (Final Fantasy VII)

Cloud isn’t necessarily a bad guy. A product of the evil ShinRa Corporation’s SOLDIER program, Cloud’s past is something of a mystery even to himself. Still, he acts confident to the point of arrogance in his abilities up until the point of his nervous breakdown. He assumed control of the mercenary group ‘for the right price’ and after his breakdown is more concerned about protecting the planet by atoning for his sins. In both instances, his motivations are more selfish than selfless. He is at least loyal to his friends, especially towards the end, but the fact of the matter is he got off to a very rocky start.

I’m not entirely sure why people chose to follow him. Sure, his abilities were inspiring, and Tifa’s a childhood friend who never forgot the promise he made to protect her, but when we first meet him and see how he deals with the people around, he acts like a bit of a dick. Advent Children and other works have tried to make Cloud into something of an emo crybaby, but he doesn’t blame other people for his shortcomings over the course of the game. He just pretends he doesn’t have any at first. It’s only after personal tragedy that Cloud becomes more introverted and self-aware, but by that point the damage is done. He’s not the worst protagonist in Final Fantasy’s history, but he’s far from the best. At least he has something resembling character growth.

Squall Leonhart (Final Fantasy VIII)

Again, the word “emo” gets lobbed at Squall quite a bit. But despite his haircut, leather jacket and disposition, I wouldn’t go so far as to calling him that. He really isn’t an emo character. The problem is he isn’t much of a character at all. He’s an orphan dedicated to proving himself in the paramilitary academy called Balamb Garden, taking it upon himself to master the tricky and dangerous gunblade. Like Cloud, he’s self-confident in his abilities but there the similarities end.

His cold aloofness towards people around him is probably his most prominent character trait. While it’s understandable in relation to his would-be love interest, the whiny and insufferable Rinoa, upbeat Zell and gentle, intelligent Quistis aren’t able to get around his psychological armor. And don’t get me started on the whole issue of him pursuing Rinoa over Quistus. That’s even more outrageous to me than Cloud pursuing Aerith over Tifa.

It takes quite a while for Squall to finally warm up to just about anybody, including and especially his supposed love interest. He’s a bit more consistent in his growth than Cloud, but this growth is so minuscule and comes so late in the game that it might as well have been skipped altogether. With all the interesting things going on, from possession to dream states to travel into space and through time, you’d think Squall would act more as a cypher for the player and less as a completely blank and lifeless character in and of himself. Instead of allowing the player to impose choices and personality upon their representative in the game world, like Mass Effect or Dragon Age, Squall is just sort of there. You can’t influence who he is and how he acts, and while this would be fine if he had a personality for us to learn about, for most of the game, he has about as much personality as a block of concrete.

Tidus (Final Fantasy X)

Tidus has personality. It’s too bad that he’s such an asshole.

Tidus is a blitzball player drawn into the plight of the world called Spira by a malevolent force dubbed ‘Sin’. Gibberish aside, what Final Fantasy X brings us is a story of a young man, barely more than a child, transplanted from the world he’s known all his life into another place to which he has a mysterious connection. It’s full of foreign people speaking in strange tongues, but hey, at least they have blitzball.

Words used to describe Tidus include ‘cheerful’ and ‘sensitive’. I mostly saw him as whiny, narcissistic, dense and self-congratulatory. When the game begins, he isn’t very nice, he treats people around him badly and he’s worried primarily about himself. He’s also put into a situation with a female character, Yuna, and they just happen to fall in love because the script requires this game to be a sweeping romance I guess.

Tidus, in retrospect and given the wording I’ve paraphrased heavily from Confused Matthew, reminds me of someone.

But at least Tidus didn’t commit mass murder.

To be continued…