The Shrine

Interview link

When Matsuno was in charge of the project, the intended main character was supposed to be Basch. There was debate over whether a character like Basch was marketable as a lead. After Matsuno left the project, they added in Vaan and Penelo, which were much more like FF9 characters, and Basch's role in the story was greatly reduced. As a result of all of this, the general flow of the plot really felt off during most of the game, with the best story telling being around (you guessed it) Basch's central story sections. Now considering Matsuno's track record with the Ogre Battle series, Final Fantasy Tactics, and Vagrant Story, I don't think the weaker parts of FF12 could be blamed on him. It should have been the crowning achievement of his career. I am not really sure the entire story of the game development, but I do know that much was compromised on the project.

This really explains why their characters seem to be there, but don't really have much to do with the main plot except observe it taking place - I am not one of those people who dislikes a game because they are embarrassed to play a character who is not the equivalent to the Kratos the God of War, or Venom from Spiderman (you know, a characgter who they can identify with), but Vaan and Penelo were very underdeveloped characters in FF12. Taking a look at the FF12 DS sequel, Revenant Wings, they were much much stronger (They were more reminiscent of Vyse and Aika or Chrono and Marle).

Neat. I didn't read the interview yet so I'll take your word on all that. (edit: wait, French?)

Now that you mention it, Vaan did feel much like an avatar for the player rather than a part of that story (from what I remember of FF12, which is little). Square forbid you play as an adult and not an androgynous teen.

Sorry it is a fairly big interview. This is the part that is significant:

Q : Par rapport à la conception du jeu, au départ de Matsuno et aux impératifs de sortie, j'aimerais savoir s'ils sont entièrement satisfait du résultat final ou si ses idées qui lui tenaient vraiment à cœur on dû être remises faute de temps ou de moyens ?
Hiroshi Minagawa : A la manière de n'importe quel jeu vidéo entre le moment où l'on décide d'un projet quand on voit ensuite la version finale du jeu, bien entendu il y a toujours des choses qui changent. Pour Final Fantasy XII, c'était comme pour les autres jeux, il y a des tas des choses qui ont changé mais je dirais qu'il n'y a pas eu d'énormes transformations par rapport à ce que l'on avait prévu de faire. Il y a juste des petites choses qui ont changé à droite à gauche. Par contre, si vous voulez un exemple de quelque chose qui a beaucoup changé : à la base, Final Fantasy XII ne devait pas tellement ressembler à Vagrant Story dans le design, on avait plutôt prévu de revenir à des personnages à grosse tête.
Pour vous donner une idée aussi de l'évolution de l'ambiance du jeu, le premier personnage que l'on avait créé et qui était à la base le héros de l'histoire c'était Bash, et finalement les héros du jeu final tel qu'on le connaît aujourd'hui qui sont Vaan et Penelo, ils ont été en dernier et on les a rajouté à la fin...

Essentially the interviewer asks what changed in development since Matsuno left. The interviewee goes on to say that gameplay and such didn't see any huge changes from the old design, but one of the things that changed drastically was that they wanted to distance themselves from Vagrant Story as much as they could, and even go as far as to give characters bigger heads.

The statement of greatest interest is the last big which I have bolded above:

"To give you an idea of the evolution of the ambiance/style of the game, the original character we had created as the basis for the hero of the story was Basch. Finally, the heroes ended up being Vaan and Penelo, who were only added towards the end of development."

I played FF12 for about 4 hours. I hated Vaan so much that I never picked the game back up.

FF12 was when i finally decided I couldnt do FF games anymore. I liked and beat them up to FF10, but 12 lost my interest eventually. I think it had something to do with the macro things, once you got some good ones and tweaked it where you liked it, you no longer had to do anything in battles. That seemed rather silly, play the game to the point to where you dont have to play the game...

I also agree that Bosch would have been a much cooler hero. Vaan was too typical. Gee, another story where the teenage kid grows and develops into the savior of the world...

Actually Vaan literallly had nothing to do with the story. He is pretty much someone who's filming a documentary about how Basch, Balthier, and Ashe saved the world. The game doesn't even pretend Vaan and Penelo had anything to do with the story.

I thought the battle system was fine, most of the time I personally want more automation involved as I go on, with the exception of boss battles - which FF12 did offer... On the other hand, I found that I was heavily overwhelmed by the large number of battles in the game. This I also found to be the biggest issue in FF13. I hope this is a trend that ends soon.

The problem with boss battles is that you need a custom set of Gambits for them, because something like Cast Esuna doens't work if the boss does Silence (can't cast Esuna while silenced) so it has to be like "Use Echo Screen" which you normally won't have the room to put in for a normal set of gambits.

And yeah there are definitely way too many random battles, and since it's all automated you end up with very long stretches where you're only pushing the forward button while the characters slug it out.