Final Fantasy & Age

Sum1sgruj

Sum1sgruj

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Why are most FF characters so young? This has been something I've always wondered about but never asked. Obviously, it has ties with the Japanese because most of their RPGs/anime/etc. revolve around young people. How am I older than Cloud, ya kno? Can anyone enlighten me on this?
 
Sullivan0930 said:
because its a fantasy. nobody wants an old man in there fantasy. we want teens with tight skin.
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This is probably right, unfortunately.
I heard Basch lost out on top billing in XII because the developer's didn't think the target audience would identify with a 30-ish yr old man.
Hence, the abomination known as Vaan was created.

However, when you think about it, some of the most awesome people in FF were 30 or older, some even old fogeys.

Examples - Galuf, Tellah, Shadow, Auron, Basch, Barrett, Cid (VII), Sazh, etc.
The list goes on. The only main protagonist I can think of with a bit of age on him (not much, like) is possibly Cecil, but then I'm not sure how old he actually is.
 
Typical Japanese tastes I suppose. Japan usually prefers seeing younger characters because aesthetically they fit in well with their general liking of seeing attractive characters. Exactly why this is I don't really know but it explains why main characters in Japanese fictional media are young - and essentially "pretty" - and older characters with facial hair sparse.
 
Dishy said:
The only main protagonist I can think of with a bit of age on him (not much, like) is possibly Cecil, but then I'm not sure how old he actually is.
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This is what I thought, too. I figured Cecil would be in his mid to late twenties as he has a pretty accomplished position and history before the start of the game, but no. His canonical age is 20. (Mind I got this off of FF Wiki, which also lists his height and weight as 5'10" and 128 lbs which is.... iffy to say the least, but all weights for Japanese characters seem to be)
 
I never cared enough about the main characters age to give it much thought. Why does it matter if they're young or not? o.o As long as they're interesting and fun characters overall I don't see why one should concern themselves with their age. I wouldn't even know how old/young some of these guys are if they didn't say it in the manual.
 
Ayen said:
I never cared enough about the main characters age to give it much thought. Why does it matter if they're young or not? o.o As long as they're interesting and fun characters overall I don't see why one should concern themselves with their age. I wouldn't even know how old/young some of these guys are if they didn't say it in the manual.
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It doesn't take away from the game,, I'm just saying: Most FF characters are between 15-24 years old. That's really, really young right? I mean, yeah its a fantasy but geez.. most of them certainly dont look that young, why make them all high-schoolers lol
 
Actually, that's one of the things I liked a lot about FFVI--a lot of the main characters are I think around 25-27, and then you have people like Cyan, Strago, and Banon who are older still. I'd never really associated the young characters with the games being Japanese, though; I mean if you look at a lot of the "hot" celebrities in any country, a large number of them are in the 18-24 age bracket, and many of them even younger. I'd actually just associated the young ages of many FF characters with the idea that many of the games take places in worlds similar to earlier periods of our own history where people didn't live as long as they do now, so people around 18 were considered "adults" (also, the whole thing with girls being married off when they're 14, etc. that whole thing). And for the more futuristic or contemporary-seeming FF worlds, I'd just assume their worlds were dangerous enough that people had trouble living long lives for that reason as well :hmmm:
 
And for the more futuristic or contemporary-seeming FF worlds, I'd just assume their worlds were dangerous enough that people had trouble living long lives for that reason as well
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I think apart from marketing reasons this is a good enough reason. I thought the same. In these monster-infested fantasy worlds age expectancy is probably around 50 or even less for the poorer folk. So I'd assume a person is considered to be mature from say 15 probably.
 
It’s probably the same as seen in a lot of fiction with younger characters. Not only are their physical ages and appearances young, but they also have had a lot of experience and a heck of a life behind them (often unrealistically so).

They try to make kids and young adults seem unrealistically strong and confident to give people role models and people to live up to. I’m not just talking about fighting monsters and using magic here (as I am aware that this is fantasy!), but general things too. It can be quite depressing actually to see characters really very young doing so much and being so awesome, and then I reflect on my own insignificant life and sigh at how I couldn’t do that sort of stuff now, let alone when I was a few years younger. I know it is fiction, but still. :monster:

If I was to meet any of the child characters, let alone the teenage or young adult characters, I’d probably get my ass kicked. I can’t paint, so Relm would kill me with a very good picture of me. I’m too unfit and unconfident to leap around and pretend to be a lion, so Gau will leap on my back and claw at me, and I’ll have a heart attack and die. Krille can be any number of different things, and I’m quite unsure of even one thing I am. Young Rydia could summon powerful creatures from another dimension to flatten me, and I could barely summon my friends to help me out. It goes on.

I guess it is really to inspire the youth to strive to be great, but at the same time to make the older generations reflect on how weak and feeble they are and to change themselves too. Seeing children, teenagers or young adults with amazing power in fiction is both depressing and inspiring. I wish I’d been uber-awesome when I was younger, but at the same time I guess it is never too late to try to be as uber-awesome as you could possibly be at any age. Though we’ll never be as good as those kids. Never. :brooding:


It'll also be because of the reasons already mentioned in this thread, and those will be the main reasons, I think, above the one I have given which is just another possible reason.
 
I don't know why Final Fantasy and other game titles do this though, ever since i began playing games i never once cared about the age of the main character, like for example in Dead Rising, Metal Gear Solid, Uncharted and so on...all those main characters are awesome and they're around 30 years old or above.

In fact i can honestly say it bothers me that FF characters in the latest games are always so young and look so young, especially when they're like 19 years old and look like a 13 year old or they're 15 years old and look like they're 10 years old or they're 21 years old but look like they're 30, especially in FFXIII.

I realize the characters i mentioned above are from a completely different type of game but i don't think it would be so bad to try and have a bigger diversity in the roster of playable characters in the future with characters who have a lot of different ages and who actually look like the age they're given.

Heck you can even had a grandpa or grandma in the game that would be fun, those characters are actually pretty useful to give advice and such...
 
I think that the characters are mostly that age because that is their target populous they want to entice. Also the fact that that is the age when a person is still confused about a lot of things, has so much he has to decide on, what to do with his life and what not. That is the age we dream of what we want to become the most and try to live up to that dream...

After 26-7, most of the big choices I guess are made and the character of a person is formed and mostly set, he has chosen what to do with his life and just tries to stay on that path.
 
Its clever japanese marketing. They know all guys love those sexy young girls with tight outfits....and this isnt illegal since its a video game...well they are right! we all dig the sexy young characters. (just another meaning to the word "fantasy".) But I have noticed that if there are characters that are older...they usually fall into the catagory of males. I cant remember a lot of old female characters.. but there are quite a few males.
 
Old bloke here! Yes, the Japanese have a 'thing' for young characters but I won't go into that. Generally, so long as the character is well scripted, I don't care about their age but it does seem that I prefer more mature ones, they just seem cooler. I hated Hope in XIII for example (whining ladyboy). Give me an Auron anyday.
 
Most JRPG characters are only in their teens. I didn't think Cloud was too young. 21 is typically when people are in their prime.

Also, the games are targeted more for teenagers so they put the character's age around their target audience's age.
 
As mentioned before, targetted at teenagers and more attractive, and everyone's elaborated on every point I could think of that relates to the two.

The only thing I can add is that it does tend to add to the drama. Most main characters of FF are teens or young adults, coming of age sort of age group, so they're going through emotional development, and mixing that up with relationships, tragedy, loss and battle would most likely draw a more emotional response from the characters which is fitting for the FF narrative. Younger characters tend to develop more than an older characters during the course of the story. Chances are, the older characters have experienced more before the story we see and as a result, develop slower, if at all.

To summarise, huuzah for teenage angst. Mind, some of my favourite characters are oldies too. Rock on Cid. :e
 
I always through they were made young so the people playing it would feel like the character (I always just assumed it was made for younger people, but because the games are awesome Older people stuck with it!)

I always forget Vivi in FFIX is 9 yrs old... it creeps me out...and Eiko is 6!
 
Really, I'd have rather played a game about people in their mid-thirties. They can still make them look young. Hell, people in their mid-thirties are still young. It's pretty ridiculous that Celes is a "battle-hardned general" and is also an eighteen-year-old girl who weighs about 100 lbs.

OK.

Of course, none of this applies to any character where the youth is absolutely necessary. Half of IX's charm is that Zidane and Dagger are so young; it's got a definite Romeo & Juliet thing going. VIII's whole ordeal of Squall growing up into a real Final Fantasy hero would have been a lot more pathetic if he was twenty-seven.

But, like, Lightning? yeah, she should have been twenty-nine.
 
I heard it because in Japan, younger main characters (15-22) are prefered, which is the oposite to western rpgs were the main character is usualy alot older/not as good looking. This can be seen with final fantasy 12, were Vaan was really popular in japan, but really unpopular in europe/america.

Also most people who play final fantasy are teenagers so they would be able to relate to the characters more, than say if they were 40ish.
 
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