Unique as in, if I replace their looks and voice actor...is it 90% of another character? Believe it or not there is more to being a person than having reasons to be sad sometimes and having different clothes.
A person is composed of his decisions, his background, his friends, and his environment. When you have a vastly different background, completely different friends, and an extremely different environment, it would seem to fit that the decisions they'd make would be wholefully different. Instead we consistantly get the same 5 characters confronted with the same 2 issues, and we consistantly see the same singular answer (with someone in the back screaming 'beleive in your friends!' It's a big waste of time for me when I could have played Final Fantasy 7-2, 7-3, 7-4, 7-5, and 7-6 instead of FF9 10 10-2 11 12 (ok 12 is a stretch) and most likely 13. Why should I expect anything out of Square Enix besides better Graphics than the previous game? The only reason they still get points in my book is because they put in a lot of effort to make you play the same friggen game 9 times. For comparison all Madden does is change the number on the game cover.
An extremely predictable story is a boring story. Period. I'm not talking about 'The Good Guys Win.' I'm talking about the path that leads them there. Further, it doesn't help that you could switch out the protagonists best friend with either Square Enix's Zell or Selphie and you'd still get the same decisions made, the same outcomes. The characters backgrounds are all but ignored whenever they make a decision.
Take for instance any game where there's a priest-character. You'd think they'd stop for a minute and think maybe their religion might be more important than their friends, so they'd reflect an opposing view point other than the main hero's. I'm not talking about disagreeing with the protagonist because they want to go it alone and that someone hammers it into their supposedly thick skull that 'they dont have to do everything by themselves,' I'm talking about 'hold the fuck on billy stabs-a-lot. You cant kill the BEBG just because you want to! That's a sin!' Now that's a perfectly good place to stand right? Killing's evil. Now let's put this through the Square-Enix blender. Who's going to say this? The 20 something big busted cleric that showed up 6 main characters in? No, it's going to be the short child you got stuck with early on in the game because of course children think killing is bad, and only someone as innocent as a child could open the hero's eyes. Why the child is so innocent, how can she possibly be wrong on such a big adult issue?
It's one thing to have my mind challenged, it's one thing to put foreshadowing in, sneak in the occasional clue, and let the reader come up to their own conclusions, and god willing, be playing a game that lets them seek out those choices they think they should make but Final Fantasy has consistantly lead me by the hand ever since 7 good game or bad and I've seen it all now. I want something fresh, not something pretty.
Unique also, isn't all it's cracked up to be, I'd rather read a good book than a new book. I hear the word innovative tossed around a lot when referencing the merits of a game and I can't help but think what lot good that does for the medium. Mirrors Edge was innovative as hell and beautiful to boot but had all the replayability of a crossword puzzle.
I haven't played the game yet. This much is extremely obvious. What I'm saying is there better be more to this than the last dozen+ games or I'm not going to like it like the last 3 games.
