Ran'jit's strength makes no sense

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Originally Posted by Ilenya

Part of the issue is, and I recall this specifically coming up in the aftermath of 2.55, they can't really spend time accounting for every single job in the game for their cutscenes, at least in regards to having an animation for you actually doing things. I don't think Scholars/Summoners would be blocking many swords with their books, for instance, ability to do it in Susano'o ignored.

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Yes, for simplicity's sake most of our competence happens in instances, because cutscenes are exponentially complex between all the job and race combinations possible.

Honestly, it's not so disturbing.

He is a man who has lived through decades of fighting the Sin Eaters. He is probably the strongest human of the First.
The fact that he can fight with us as equals for a while is not so impossible (Even if we exclude Zenos, people like Gaius, Estinien, Ilberd or Raubhan for example can perfectly do). At the end of our first fight, he barely neutralized us for a few seconds with one specific technique, which will never work against us again as efficiently (proving like we have probably learned from our mistake).

If I compare Ran'jit's strength to how easily we were arrested and forced to flee during Nanamo assassination attempt, I have always find it much more shocking.

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Originally Posted by Zackneifein

Honestly, it's not so disturbing.

He is a man who has lived through decades of fighting the Sin Eaters. He is probably the strongest human of the First.
The fact that he can fight with us as equals for a while is not so impossible (Even if we exclude Zenos, people like Gaius, Estinien, Ilberd or Raubhan for example can perfectly do). At the end of our first fight, he barely neutralized us for a few seconds with one specific technique, which will never work against us again as efficiently (proving like we have probably learned from our mistake).

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At the same time, strength and experience fades over time and Vaulthy would have ensured that Ran'jit would not fight another Sin Eater as long as he was alive. It's a wonder that Ran'jit never gave into the very sloth and vice that he fought for and believed in.

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Originally Posted by Edax

At the same time, strength and experience fades over time and Vaulthy would have ensured that Ran'jit would not fight another Sin Eater as long as he was alive. It's a wonder that Ran'jit never gave into the very sloth and vice that he fought for and believed in.

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He seems like the type that would still train as best he can and guard the city just in case someone tried to do something silly.

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Originally Posted by Ilenya

He seems like the type that would still train as best he can and guard the city just in case someone tried to do something silly.

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Given his impassioned plea about giving up, it seems he's the opposite of the type of person you describe.

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Originally Posted by Edax

Given his impassioned plea about giving up, it seems he's the opposite of the type of person you describe.

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He was giving up fighting the Sin Eaters. There are people *cough*Crystarium*cough* who were against the peace offered by Eulmore. They were a potential issue, especially after Thancred decided Minfilla didn't belong in Eulmore.

Watching someone you care about dying over and over can do things to you.
Especially since there was that addage about insanity repeating the same thing but expecting different results.

Ran'Jit shouldn't have even been in the game. His connection to the story was threadbare and there was no explanation for how deus ex broken he was outside of "he's been fighting a long time".

Honestly, they should have just built up the two Jongleur girls instead. They were proper creepy from the outset, fitting the theme of the expansion as the player was introduced to it. Make them an escalating annoyance throughout the story culminating in a big body horror moment where they turn into some kind of insane Sin Eater amalgam.

Basically they should have been the Zorn and Thorn of Shadowbringers.

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Originally Posted by Donnicton

Ran'Jit shouldn't have even been in the game.

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I disagree. Granted, I think his character was handled somewhat poorly, but it's fairly clear that he was meant to mirror Thancred with the whole father figure arc. Really don't see how the two jesters as a Zorn/Thorn reference could achieve that in the slightest.

What Ran'jit really needed was some Echo flashbacks to him interacting with past Minfilias, so we could actually get a sense of how long he has been fighting, and watch that erode him. I also think his relationship with Ryne should have been... Better? At the very least she should have been able to mourn his passing, think Garnet/Brahne (although perhaps the IX character he should most closely have resembled is Beatrix). He did, after all, want to bring her back so she didn't have to fight and die, there's some amount of good intention in that... All we saw of him though, painted a picture of more of an abusive father figure... Really hard to feel any empathy for him when the only shred of emotion or character he ever showed was right as he died, I think they should have shown that side of him a whole lot more. The whole point of his character was that he raised these children to die fighting Sin Eaters, yet we never saw that, we're only told it. If we were shown it more often I think he'd have been a much better character. Here's hoping the Anniversary Tales can shed a bit more light on that, though it's still a shame to have that handled in a short story rather than seeing it in game where it really should have been...

Oh my no, I don't at all share the opinion that if you Fordola/Yotsuyu in minor underbaddies who do nothing but commit petty acts of one-dimensional evil throughout the expansion to drive the good guys' motivation and then force-feed us some cutscenes near the end about how their horrible past drove their horrible actions up to this point, it does enough to salvage them as a character, much less a sympathetic villain.

To make him work in a manner that makes the player care about him you'd have to rewrite the entire character, you'd have to make him more interesting than irritating the player with some Diet Zenos scripted losses and a couple of Echo drops. He'd need to be more involved with the story from the outset - he needs a proper introduction, a proper arc and a proper execution(so to speak). He doesn't need to be written as well as a second Emet-Selch, but he at least needs to be as interesting as the beast tribes. As Ysayle. Even Edda. God, for Scholars even the Tonberries became quite interesting. And I'm not really confident that the kind of rewriting that would be needed to make him to work just to force some kind of Bizarro-Thancred wouldn't also come at the detriment to the rest of the story, considering how well the rest of the story works without him and how unaffected it is with him.

Sometimes a Grynewaht is just a Grynewaht, and his role in the story I think would not have seen any sort of great vacuum having instead been filled by that kind of character - some annoying little flunkie gofer sycophant of a petty and childish villain like Vauthry, who generally just irritates you for a while and then he's gone and you're glad he's gone - like the nameless captain who was with Ran'jit in the greatwoods.