Things Phil Hates: Obligatory Kid Characters

I’ve been playing RPGs for most of my life; since Secret of Mana on the SNES, the genre has been my favorite.  However, when you’ve played as many games as I have, certain trends begin to pop up that grate on you or just piss you off.  One of those things is the obligatory “kid” character.  You’ve seen it before; your party is assembling a wide-ranged cast of warriors and mages fit for taking on the ultimate evil; then that kid shows up.  Considerably younger than the rest of the party and with an attitude to match, these brats effectively hamstring the party dynamic by forcing themselves into scenes that don’t call for it, and often play little to no role in the main storyline as a whole.  So why keep bringing them back?  Where did they come from?  Let’s take a look.

The Birth of Frustration – Palom and Porom, Final Fantasy IV

Despite my long-standing love for the series, this cliche’s genesis can effectively be traced back to one origin point; Final Fantasy.  The first three Final Fantasy games were not particularly narrative-driven, featuring “blank slate” characters in FF1 and FF3, while FF2’s cast was entirely composed of adults.  This all changed with Final Fantasy IV on the Super Nintendo, Squaresoft’s first attempt at “serious” storytelling, and the first major RPG (to hit the west, at least) to awkwardly force kid characters into the party.  It gave birth to a cliche that still lives on now, almost 20 years later.

At one point during the story of Final Fantasy IV, main hero Cecil Harvey, a Dark Knight, learns that his darkness-based powers are, unsurprisingly, ineffective against the main villain, Golbez.  As such, he treks out to the magic city of Mysidia in an attempt to cast off his dark side and become a Paladin.  This is all well and good, and in fact it marks one of the first major pieces of valuable character development in the entire Final Fantasy franchise.  However, as he’s sent out on his quest to become a Paladin, he is saddled with two young mages, Palom and Porom, ostensibly given to him as guides to help him in his quest.  These two kids are not particularly annoying, so to speak, though Palom is a brash, headstrong brat whose actions and statements constantly force his sister Porom to apologize for him.  These two kids follow the party around even after Cecil becomes a Paladin, only leaving the party when they – surprisingly enough – sacrifice themselves to stop the entire party from being crushed to death in a trap.  They (of course) don’t actually die, showing up again shortly before the game’s climax, but they are never major characters again from that point on outside of the Game Boy Advance port of the game.

Now, you might be thinking; that’s not a very hateful write-up, no?  Well, things only get worse from here.  Palom and Porom may have created the stereotype, but they’re definitely not the worst examples of the trope.

The Cancer Spreads – The Entire “Tales of” Franchise

Final Fantasy may have given birth to the trope, but their examples of Obligatory Kid Characters (Eiko, Cara, Gau, etc) absolutely pale in comparison to the undigestible tripe that seems to infect and corrupt every game in Namco’s long-running Tales franchise.  Dating all the way back to the original Tales of Phantasia, every game in the franchise has had at least one annoying, bratty kid character; from broom-riding witch Arche (Phantasia) to underage gold-digger Anise (Abyss) to a considerable chunk of the cast of Symphonia, they seem truly inescapable.  However, one Obligatory Kid Character stands out above all the rest as the focus of my hatred; Karol, from the XBOX 360 and PS3’s Tales of Vesperia.

From the very beginning, Tales of Vesperia was being marketed as a more “mature” take on the Tales series; the hero was an older man, the story themes were supposed to be darker and more serious, and things were going to be done over the course of the game that routine Tales players might not expect.  For the first few hours, this was actually almost true; Yuri, the main hero, is one of the more compelling, likeable male leads in an RPG in recent years, and he’s also not an idiotic idealist – his opinions are actually formed through careful thought and experience, not based off of a one-line personality trope that defines his every action.  However, this is all generally spoiled when Karol, a young member of the Hunting Blades guild, is recruited early on in the game.  Karol is a walking example of everything wrong with the Obligatory Kid Character trope; he’s annoying, he never shuts up, he uses a weapon that someone his age is physically incapable of even lifting, he barges into important story scenes in an attempt by the writers to be cute or funny and always fails, and he draws attention away from the main plot to his own pointless development.  You see, Karol wants to start his own guild; a 12-year-old boy wants to run and operate a band of mercenaries that move across the entire planet doing odd jobs for the needy.  Anyone see a problem with this?  I wouldn’t, if the game wasn’t so insistent on his idiotic dream becoming one of the major tenets of the entire plot.

At the close of the game’s first act, when the team is basically on the verge of fulfilling their main objective and returing rogue princess Estelle (more on her in another article) to her throne and thus ending their adventure, Yuri, in an attempt to amuse Karol, decides to actually help the brat start his guild; and what’s perhaps more annoying, he makes Karol the leader.  That’s right, we have a battle-hardened former knight who only several hours prior murdered a man in cold blood, ceding authority to a 12-year-old kid with a giant axe.  This is one of the biggest examples of what’s wrong with JRPGs today; in an attempt to keep younger players interested in the games, they place FAR too much importance on the younger members of the party at the expense of meaningful plot development, thus alienating their older fans.

Hatred Continued – The Star Ocean Franchise and Others

Since their genesis in FFIV, kid characters have spread throughout the genre, some more frustrating than others.  Tri-ACE’s Star Ocean franchise contains several examples as well, including Star Ocean: The Last Hope’s Lymle (to be examined at a later date) and Star Ocean 3’s Peppita Rossetti.  Peppita is another extremely annoying Kid Character, but also an example of how to handle them well – she’s an optional party member!  Voiced by Sherry Lynn, a veteran voice actress who seems to specialize in Obligatory Kid Characters (her credits include MOMO from Xenosaga and Sasami from Tenchi Muyo!), Peppita is…a little girl.  She’s not elaborated on too much more than that, except that she follows the party around because she wants to be friends with the main characters.  Like all Obligatory Kid Characters, she fights in an unorthodox manner (this time, by dancing), she has an incredibly annoying voice, and she adds nothing to the main plot.

However, as stated earlier, she is an optional party member; aside from one or two dungeons in which you’re forced to use her, Peppita can be ditched shortly before the Moon Base you recruit her on is destroyed, thus ending her menace forever.  If more games offered the player the option to ditch their Obligatory Kid Character on an exploding moonbase, I’d buy 3 copies!  Sadly, the next installment in the series was not so lucky; its Obligatory Kid Character is mandatory, and perhaps one of the worst of all.  I’ll get to her another time, as she fits more than one terrible archetype.

Obligatory Kid Characters have been plaguing Japanese RPGs for a decade and a half now, with the industry showing no signs of stopping any time soon.  Recently announced Tales of Graces just showed off its first Obligatory Kid Character in a trailer released last week, while a good chunk of the cast of Arc Rise Fantasia, by Marvelous Interactive, is comprised of kids.  So what I’m here to say now is this; it’s getting absurd, Japan; some of your fans are pushing 30, and you’re still subjecting us to this tripe game after game.  Maybe this might be one of the reasons why JRPG sales have been steadily declining in recent years?  Sony’s Wild ARMs 4 actually contained a plotline that literally boiled down to “kids are awesome because adults are stupid and mean”.  This is not how you write a captivating story.  This is not how you keep older players buying your games, and it’s definitely not how you captivate the Western market.  Hopefully Square can lead Japanese developers out of the abyss with Final Fantasy XIII and Final Fantasy Versus XIII, both showing signs of being refreshingly kid-free – for now.  Let’s hope it stays that way.

This has been the first installment of Things Phil Hates – from here on out, I’ll be tackling a myriad of subjects, ranging from badly written female characters to the lack of deep melee combat in modern WRPGs.  From JRPG to FPS, If I hate it, when you’re done reading about it, you will too!  Thanks for reading!