First off, just to get this out of the way, Yoshi-P's reference to 007: The Man with the Golden Gun, may be referencing Laguna Loire who, coincidentally has a golden machine gun. So there's a hint.

The gunner job has something of a short history. It's first official appearance in the mainline series came with FF7 with both Barret and Vincent. Barret's limit breaks had him charging up powerful single target blasts and even calling down lasers from satellites. With Vincent, his limit breaks had him transforming into various monsters and dolling out damage in these forms.

In FF8, the Irvine was the de-facto gunner, though he used a shotgun. Equipping various ammos in prep for his limit break allowed him to deal out damage to several targets at once. Though, all in all, his fighting style was fairly limited. Laguna, another gunner utilized a machine and the occasional grenade for his limit break, Desperado.

It wouldn't be until FF10-2 that we see the Gunner come into a full blown job with associated abilities, attacks and more. In this iteration Gunners had rapid fire attacks (Trigger Happy), guaranteed criticals (Burst shot), attacks that ignored enemy defenses (Cheap Shot), and attacks that could hit all enemies at once (Scatterburst) and attacks that had a similar effects to gravity spells like Demi (Quarter Pounder). The class did not have a whole lot of MP, or particularly high HP, but it was a fairly quick class that was pretty straight-forward and easy to work with. A typical starting class.

The Gun Mage in FF10-2 used the Blue Mage as a base to build a job that specialized in killing monsters and acquiring blue bullets (blue magic, in other words) to power up and dish out lots of damage. It had a unique set of abilities specifically designed to take out specific monster types, but the real draw was its blue magic. This - like the Alchemist in FF10-2 - weren't really gunners in the truest sense, but instead used the idea of classic job and built it around usage of a magical gun. Yet this particular class would set the stage for future gun jobs in various spin-offs and later mainline games.

In FF11, the Corsair is often remarked as the main gunner class, but guns had been in the game years before the Corsair - Rangers and Ninja were the primary classes that could use guns. Yet, the Corsair was really the first class the arrived on the scene using its unique Hexagun, a gun-like weapon with six barrels. Though the corsair was primarily a support class and was based off the Gambler job from early games in Final Fantasy, the Corsair's Hexagun could combine magical cards to fire off magically charged shots.

Guns make an appearance in FF12 with Balthier being the primary wielder. Yet, FF12 doesn't contain anything unique regarding the guns or their usage. Even within the Zodiac Braves system from FF12 international, the Job board didn't provide anything truly unique. Yet the job license board leaned the Machinist (a job that used both measures and guns) leaned the class heavily towards time magic.

Finally there's FF13 which had at least two characters wielding guns, Sazh and Lightning. In the case of Lightning, however, her gun combined with sword and could transform at will, so she doesn't really count. Sazh, then, is the only gunner on the team and his primary class at the start was a Ravager a magic-based attacker. Later Sazh would pick up the physical-based Commando, and the support-based Synergist. This combination of roles bears remarkable similarity to FF11's Red Mage or loosely resembles a bard. The middle of the road combination of physical and magic attacks combined with buffs such as Bravery, Faith and Haste made Sazh a rather interesting gunner.

In FF14, the gun class long hinted at was the Musketeer. This itself has its own history. Originally datamined from the alpha/beta web-page featuring a screenshot of Commodore Reyner wielding a gun and the term Musketeer appearing in various early documents prior to beta test, the Musketeer commanded an air of mystery like that of the Arcanist. Unlike the Arcanist, however, we never really learned what the Musketeer's role would be. But it has long been thought that the class would quickly appear given the lack of combat classes in Limsa Lominsa. Sadly, much like the Shepard, we never got to see the Musketeer in action. Our only glimpses come from NPCs like Merlwyb, and a smattering of bosses. Whatever the Musketeer's role would've been, we have don't have much to evidence to guess.

Why do I speak in past tense? Partially because the Musketeer has not been mentioned by name from Yoshi-P since 2011. There's only the mention of a gunner class or job in the works, but not the musketeer. There's still a good possibility that we'll see it come expansion time, but its best to maintain some restraint until we truly know.

Next time, I'll go over the gunners in the spin-offs and remakes. It's here where we get to see some more creative uses of the gunner class.