Yeah, yeah, I know. I'm gonna get killed for this. But I honestly gotta say, I do not like Locke very much.
It's not because he's arguably the least useful character in the game. While there's only maybe 2 or 3 instances where his ability to steal is really useful before the game just becomes a race to see how long it takes you to teach everyone in the team Ultima, which makes it slightly annoying that the game so often forces you to take him along in place of someone whose talents are useful, like Edgar or Sabin or Gau or Cyan or Mog or Shadow, the game is thankfully created well enough that most of it is pretty balanced and seldom hard enough to be frustrating. No, my reason for disliking Locke is strictly character-based.
Now don't get me wrong. He has a lot of good traits. He's protective (even though you could perhaps, though not very well, argue that this is based SOLELY on his guilt for the past), he's devoted to correcting his past mistake with Rachel which wasn't even really his fault anyway, and he pretty clearly knows right from wrong and sticks by that knowledge. In fact, I have to admit I feel like I SHOULD like him overall.
But man oh man, did he ever fuck up something fierce in the Magitek factory.
Going under the assumption that you all know by now that spoilers abound in these rants, and also on the assumption that you may be familiar with a game a decade old by now anyway, I'm gonna say right here that this scene makes me HATE Locke a good deal. Celes, newest member of the Returners, is a general who is implied to have been raised from a fairly young age to be a leader for Gestahl and the Empire. It is a likely thing that following her orders and fighting for the Empire is the ONLY thing she has ever known in her life, her sole purpose in life. Yet, even though she's been raised to be a perfectly obedient soldier, she cannot find it in herself to serve an army that lets monsters like Kefka poison innocents with impunity, and she rebels and is sentenced to execution for it. Locke rescues her, protects her while she's still weak, and gives her a new purpose in life, a new cause to rally behind. He completely saves her, and helps her to start forming a new identity that she can actually call her own.
But this is a process that takes TIME, and until she can function as a true individual, it's obvious that a significant portion of her confidence in her new self, in her new life, is invested in the guidance and emotional support of the man who gave it to her.
Now that she's been given a way to be herself, Celes has been a completely loyal and fearless warrior for the Returners, putting her life on the line at every opportunity to stop the Empire. There is no rational reason to suspect her of anything devious, given the circumstances of how she was found and how she's fought. But the very instant that Kefka tells Locke that Celes is a spy, he, who knows BEST of her situation before he rescued her, doubts her. KEFKA, for fuck's sake. I mean, of all the villains in the world he's the LAST person you'd ever believe a word from! And it's not any minor doubt that Locke has, it's a serious and genuine mistrust that is immediately put in him. And it DESTROYS Celes that this man, who rescued her in so many ways, who said he'd protect her and trust her, who holds a very significant portion of her vulnerable growing individuality, apparently is so completely willing to doubt her.
Frankly, I'm of the opinion that Celes should never have forgiven him for it.
So there you have it. Locke turned against the person he'd sworn to protect in the very worst way, on the word of KEFKA for God's sake, and proved himself a gullible liar and jerk to me. When I think of him, and of the Celes-Locke pairing, which rarely addresses this issue, I just can't get past how incredibly stupid and rotten he was right then. That's why I frankly just don't like him. And he'll never, ever deserve her.
...also, now that I remember, I've always also found it stupid that he takes such exception to being called a thief by someone whom he's exactly 8 seconds from stealing the clothes off of.
I've yet to meet many Locke fans who don't have problems with that incident. His portrayal is that of a rather unstable guy, even regarding his GOOD qualities, like the protectiveness you mentioned.
ReplyDelete"Frankly, I'm of the opinion that Celes should never have forgiven him for it."
Now this would be a hell of a refreshing twist in an RPG romance between people who can't just disappear from each other's lives.
"...also, now that I remember, I've always also found it stupid that he takes such exception to being called a thief by someone whom he's exactly 8 seconds from stealing the clothes off of. "
That's a hyperactive localization moment. His original response was more of a casual "call me a treasure hunter, would ya?", which is self-aware of his thievery while still trying to establish himself as something more than a pocket-pincher. Not much better, but there you have it.
You obviously don't undrestand his character. He's one of the most well developed characters in the series. FF6 as a whole is pretty much the crown jewel of the series.
ReplyDeleteI have quite a clear understanding of his moderately well developed character. Its positives simply do not outweigh this one crucial moment of stupidity and utter emotional betrayal, to me.
DeleteAgain a reply on an old article. An even older one!
ReplyDeleteI agree entirely. That moment was so contrived. I would have given it some credit if they'd at least played the angle that Kefka has some kind of bewitching abilities.
That said, I always disliked Terra more. The most, in fact. Terra is the second worst lead protagonist within the first ten games, in my opinion. Which is sad to me since I adore FF6 so much. If you are curious, I loathe Tidus above her. By leagues.
Interesting, because I think Terra's a pretty solid character (although Celes is the better of the game's 2 protagonists), and I also think Tidus is a great one. What about them do you hate so?
DeleteI've always found Terra's writing to dwell far too much on the whining. Her over-sensitive nature is fine when it comes to her guilt (despite her lack of control over her actions) and her lack of understanding about herself. However, the constant, "I NEED LOVE NOOOOOOOW!!!" stuff, gag. I get what they were going for it just hung too long in melodrama for me to connect to her. I preferred the drama of Cyan's loss of his family and station, and Sabin's cracking under the pressure of losing a parent and royal whatsits at a very young age. Although it will always be funny to me that his child sprite is still a giant muscle bound man.
DeleteTidus I just do not understand at all. He does nothing but whinge like a child. He didn't even have Terra's eventual grow-up moment. Or at least in as notable a way.
Fair enough on the point of Terra; there's a mild irritation that I myself have with her on that point. Still, I like the rest of her character and story quite a bit, and I quite appreciate that her story winds up with her being able to find emotional fulfillment in the love for her children in communal maternity. You'd do better talking a dog into dropping the bone he's gnawing on than to try to get an RPG to take things in any direction but forced romance once it's got its "I need love" teeth sunk into a character. I'll also say that I can forgive Terra certain self-centered emotional fixation given that she seems not to have had much, if any, meaningful social interaction during her formative years. Potentially, she's surrounded by a race of people like her who understand and know how to access depths of themselves and one another, depths that she's completely unable to parse and has no history of observational experience with, depths that have been denied to her when they seem like they're supposed to be part of being a person and provide fulfillment she lacks. Additionally, given that she may also have lacked the levels of socialization as a child that help one to form the capacity for empathy and sympathy, we might count it lucky she's just whining a bit rather than a flat-out sociopath regarding what she wants. All conjecture, of course, but I'll still cut her some slack over it.
DeleteSabin's lack of an appropriate youth sprite always did annoy me.
Tidus is a sports star who's been accordingly told he's amazing by the world around him for virtually nothing, all while perpetually living in the shadow of a father who taught him nothing and then left forever. The fact that he can change his story from "Typical NFL Star" to "Man Who Understands And Respects The Needs Of Others And Will Die In Place Of The Woman He Loves (And Also Reached Within Himself To Understand His Father And Find Ground On Which He Can Respect Him)", and that you can actually see and understand how this evolution happens, makes him pretty awesome to me.
Fair. One thing Terra has going for her in my eyes was how interesting her circumstances are both isolated and in relation to everybody around her. It is more of a failing of the medium than the character, perhaps.
DeleteTidus I still just can't like. That said, after reading your point I wonder how much of that is because Final Fantasy X itself also did not land with me overall. Different strokes, and all.