Building a better Alphinaud

[CrownySuccubus]

People who have known each other a long time having group conflicts is nonsensical? What? Siblings and even long-term friendships go through turmoil especially the longer it goes on, the only thing nonsensical here is the endless nodding and agreeing with each other.

I completely disagree that getting rid of the white haired and ideologically homogenous scions would turn an enourmous amount of the playerbase off. If the end of ARR is anything to go by, that would only increase everyone's hype for the story once these characters finally exit the stage.

Except you and Theodric aren't talking about merely "disagreeing" with each other. I specifically brought up the fact that the Scion's don't see eye-to-eye earlier and it was dismissed as "surface level". You guys are talking about flat out opposing each other on moral and philosophical terms, and that is NOT something "friends" typically do. As I mentioned before, even your "better" example of FFIX ends with three people who outright hated Zidane at the start (Steiner, Amarant and Garnet) becoming such good friends that they all risk their lives to rescue him on Pandemonium. Garnet and Steiner wind up falling in love with him and fully supporting said love, respectively, by the end of the game. Furthermore, the end of the game has the survivors of Burmecia, Lindblum, Cleyra, Alexandria and other kingdoms all becoming allied forces under a banner of friendship.

The whole monarchy to republic thing got old after it became their defacto way of wrapping up regions they don't want to deal with - the fact that they've repeated the same old song and dance this many times is a problem. I don't want to be told the same story 4 times in a row. Introducing irl political structures this many times comes across as preaching and it doesn't make for a world I want to spend time in.

As I mentioned in another thread, we also have stories about deposing one monarch to establish another (the Fae), a story about ending an occupation to restore a Monarchy (Doma), a story about BECOMING a "monarch" (the Steppe), and a story about helping a monarch step out of the shadows (Thavnair). You aren't hurting for different outcomes.

I don't play Final Fantasy games because I want to liberate places and turn them into republics. The more and more unique political systems evaporate into thin air as the scions make their way, the less magic there is in this world.

Again, it's really silly that "a whole lot of monarchies" are being called "unique political systems" but different types of Republics created by different people are being called "the same".