The game opens with Cecil attacking the city of Mysidia to take the crystal under orders from the King of Baron, an act Cecil feels immense guilt for doing. Later, Cecil washes onto the shores of Mysidia and approaches the city to ask for help. The people of Mysidia all promptly call him out for attacking them at the start of the game, and make it clear the only reason he is allowed in is because the city's Elder is willing to listen and give Cecil a chance for redemption. Shortly after, Cecil braves Mt. Ordeals and goes from a Dark Knight to a Paladin to complete his redemption. His traveling companions Palom and Porom then reveal the real reason they joined for this trip; the village Elder wanted them to spy on Cecil to make sure he really did try to redeem himself. Even after Cecil becomes a paladin, there's still a few people in Mysidia who admit they can't bring themselves to forgive what Cecil did, a conclusion that Cecil ultimately accepts.
Tellah is a very old man, and mixing this with Gameplay and Story Integration, he actually gets weaker as he levels up, his stats decreasing and his magic costs going up. He might be an incredibly powerful master of both Black and White Magic, but his advanced age means he hit his physical peak long ago and has only been degrading with the stress and strain of having to go on an adventure like this and keep up with much younger characters.
At the beginning of the Final Fantasy V, Galuf decides that the best way to get a ride on a pirate ship is to steal it. So they sneak aboard, take the helm, Galuf grabs the ship's wheel... and nothing happens. Even accounting for the fact that the ship is being pulled by a dragon, there's more to setting sail than just grabbing the wheel.
Final Fantasy VII: Infamously, when Aerith is murdered by Sephiroth, there is no theatrics to it at all. No Hopeless Boss Fight, no Heads I Win, Tails You Lose, no chance for Aerith or Cloud to react; Sephiroth just ambushes her while she's alone with Cloud in the middle of the night and impales her through the heart with his Masamune. While other characters have demonstrated the ability to survive such grievous wounds along with other things, all of them are battle-hardened veterans or enhanced to be superhuman. In contrast, Aerith is a powerful mage but has little physical power, so that one hit instantly kills her.
Genesis tries to deliver a Breaking Speech to convince Sephiroth to join him by revealing startling news about his birth, expecting that such a revelation would make Sephiroth join forces with Genesis when Sephiroth learns they are in the same position now. Despite the news surprising Sephiroth, due to Genesis having burned so many bridges in their friendship by the time said Breaking Speech is attempted, Sephiroth refuses to consider the idea and leaves. This shocks Genesis into confusion as to what to do next, since Genesis was so sure that his speech would work that he had no backup plan in case it failed.
As powerful as Sephiroth is, even he has his limits. Zack has taken multiple levels of badass, and Sephiroth is in the middle of a Tomato in the Mirror-induced mental breakdown when the two of them square up in a boss fight. While Sephiroth still wins the fight, the struggle of beating an opponent who was a legitimate threat ended up tiring out Sephiroth. Combine mental instability with physical exhaustion, and Cloud was able to catch Sephiroth off-guard by stabbing him through the back with the Buster Sword. Sephiroth is shocked that some "no-name" member of SOLDIER managed to almost kill him when he had been mowing down people like Cloud left and right just hours earlier.
No matter how badass you are, fighting against an entire army by yourself will not end well. Despite his skill, Zack dies when he gets fatigued fighting the Shinra Army, and it only takes a few shots after most of the army is beaten to fatally wound him. It's all Zack can do to say goodbye to Cloud before he dies from shock and blood loss.
Generally, any fighter who doesn't fight for long periods of time is bound to grow rusty and weaker in time, no matter how badass they are. Tifa gets her ass handed to her by Loz, and the main party isn't anywhere near the same level of skill as Cloud nor do they help him in his final fight. Since they've decided to live their lives instead of continuing to fight, Cloud's the only one who could possibly go toe-to-toe with Sephiroth.
The final fight demonstrates that without Sephiroth having a case of Worf Had the Flu, Cloud would have no chance of winning against him. In the years since the game, he may have developed his own skills instead of relying solely on Zack's memories, but he still has no actual SOLDIER training. He's only drawing on his training as an infantryman and the events of the game. As such, Cloud can't fight Sephiroth as effectively as any of the SOLDIERS could.
In Complete, Cloud tries to use Omnislash to defeat Sephiroth once more, only to fail miserably. As it was the same move that was used to take down Sephiroth in their second battle when they were fighting on the Lifestream with Sephiroth weakened from being beaten as Safer-Sephiroth, Sephiroth's previous experience with the attack makes it easy for him to not only block all of Cloud's attacks, but he ends up using Cloud's attempt to deliver the finishing leaping blow to instead stab Masamune through Cloud's stomach. The Fusion Sword Cloud was using not being nearly as long as Sephiroth's Masamune, the move works spectacularly in Sephiroth's favor and completely negates Cloud's attempted attack before it can even come close.
In general, finding one's resolve doesn't mean one will never relapse. Cloud never really had proper time to mourn Aerith and Zack's deaths in the original game due to the world being at risk. Once the threat is taken care of, things started to finally sink in and Cloud is in severe Survivor's Guilt by the time the film rolls around.
Cloud's Buster sword is big, so the first time he tries to draw it in an enclosed space (a doorframe), his sword is blocked, and he has to step back to do it.
Deciding to climb the 59 floors of the Shinra building by stairs? Even with a Super-Soldier, an accomplished martial artist, and a walking tank of a man, the crew is reduced to barely being able to stand by the time they finish the ascent. To add to it, the characters all keep a different pace with each other with this trope in mind; Tifa, the most athletic and lightest, gets to the top first and lasts longer than the others, while Cloud, a Super-Soldier but wearing heavier equipment, falls behind but remains ahead of Barrett, a big and strong, but otherwise not trained fighter.
Jessie is forced to sit out after being injured by the mysterious ghosts haunting the party. How do they take her out of the fight? They yank her off a flight of stairs about 5 steps long, but it still injures her leg badly enough that Barret can't afford to take her on a mission as dangerous as bombing a Mako reactor that's on high alert from their previous bombing. Similarly, while it's Played for Laughs at the moment, Wedge getting his ass chomped by a guard dog on the warehouse raid the night before - and visibly showing pain from it, makes Barret sit him out as well.
As part of the writing being far more human to the cast and noticeably more detail-oriented, you get to see sides of the cast that weren't expanded upon properly to make them more like people instead of characters. Tifa is incredibly hung up over death and loss due to what happened in Nibelheim 5 years ago. Barret is noticeably trying to convince himself as much as the others that they're doing the right thing after witnessing the collateral damage of the first Reactor bombing, and Marlene being Barret's Living Emotional Crutch makes him suffer a heartbreaking Heroic BSoD when he doesn't know of her fate after the sector 7 plate drop instead of cursing angrily and shooting at the debris wall. Aerith seems to have a lot more anxieties and acts very different from how she did in VII because of knowing her heritage and because it's implied she's seen the original timeline, all the way up to her death. And Cloud, well, even without knowing ahead of time from playing the original, it's clear as early as the prologue there's something seriously wrong with his head.
In the original game the Sector 7 Plate Drop was pretty much uniform and localized despite the immensity of the object that fell. In the remake the logistics of a disaster like this are given much more detail; the plate doesn't fall like a single even slice of pizza, it buckles in the middle of itself where the pillar was detonated, folding in on itself as it fell and leaving it slanted up towards Shinra HQ. The shockwaves from such a heavy object striking the earth all at once scatter debris all over the other sectors instead of stopping at the playground and the event cause earthquakes, tremors, and sinkholes for hours afterward. Even the people living on top of the plate don't get away as such a major upheaval causes many houses to collapse on themselves and the debris from the edges of the other plates falls and causes even more damage. Slightly more optimistically though, the plate collapsing how it did means the slums weren't completely entombed and sealed flat under the collapsed plate, so rescue efforts can occur and as a result, more people survive than were present in the original and even have hope that they can rebuild.
The context of the reactor bombing is clarified to reflect that Shinra here is exactly as dangerous as a world-dominating mega-corp should be. They've survived wars with a society of Ninja, masters of stealth and subterfuge, so in spite of Avalanche considering themselves clever for their reactor bombing mission, the Shinra execs were aware of what they were doing from the start, and instead of just letting them destroy the reactors, they actively make the first explosion worse (To create a False Flag Operation justifying cracking down on Avalanche) and the second explosion on a remote detonator they easily hijack, evacuate their staff, and set off to justify their desperate measures of the plate drop and justify ditching the entire city.
Another detail is given a surprisingly realistic angle within the Shinra company itself: Reeve Tuesti, head of urban development, is the only uncorrupt executive on the Shinra board and is the only one of them who wants to do a good job for the sake of the people of Midgar rather than financial gain or other self-serving purposes. Consequently, he isn't respected by his peers and his department is understaffed, underfunded and, when he attempts to get a rebuilding effort started after the fall of the Sector 7 Plate, all of his suggestions are shot down as a waste of time and resources. The only reason the other executives still have him and his department around at all is that they are a source of good PR, making it seem outward like Shinra actually cares about the well-being of the people of Midgar.
In the original game, AVALANCHE defeated Sephiroth, but one must note that Sephiroth was in his transformations and was simply throwing his immense power in the form of powerful attacks with no skill involved in his part and when he and Cloud fight it out in Advent Children, Sephiroth almost beats him in a fair fight. The remake has him as the Final Boss in his human form and the fight turns out to be much harder than back then. Out of the AVALANCHE members present, Aerith has only had a few years of experience and that was limited to fighting the menaces on the slums while Barret may have more experience in the field but he's got no actual combat training. Cloud is only relying on the skills he is copying from Zack's memories and Tifa has had only a few years of training under Zangan before she is subsequently put into the role of AVALANCHE's financial manager, which clearly prevents her from gaining much direct experience, with the only experience she's had at that time was handling a few monsters in her guide days and she's probably only been fighting Shinra troops for a while. They can take down Shinra's troops with ease, sure, but elite mooks like the Turks and powerful mech and monsters are still capable of posing some serious challenge. When they fight Sephiroth, who can now bring into the field not just his immense power but also the legendary skills he's known for having as SOLDIER's crown jewel, he ends up being much more of a match for them and demonstrates that a fully seasoned war veteran with years of training and experience will beat a strong but untrained fighter with not much experience. This lets Sephiroth handle the party 3-on-1 without being truly defeated, and he ends up beating them in a two-on-one fight, and the difference in performance and expression makes it clear Sephiroth isn't really that affected by the fighting while AVALANCHE struggles to keep their bearings due to being less competent in battle and apart from being temporarily reeling after being beaten enough that his Meteor gets canceled, he is still perfectly able to continue fighting and only retreats when he decides he has had enough and wants to talk to Cloud one-on-one, during which he gets to show the difference between him and Cloud when Cloud refuses to join him, the fight between them barely lasting for a minute, as the seasoned, disciplined swordmaster thoroughly kicks the ass of a headstrong but untrained swordsman to an almost humiliating extent.
In Final Fantasy VII Remake: Trace of Two Pasts tells Tifa's good looks are often given a deconstruction and shown to be an obstacle to her having actual relationships. Her friends back at Nibelheim often did things to get her attention and she could tell that they only saw her as a prize to be won. The first person who tries to be her friend, Rekash, keeps her in debt with medical bills that he inflated and steals her savings to stop her from leaving.
During the SeeD exam early on, Seifer ignores orders and runs off to do what he wants, namely going into a radio tower held by the enemy. Though he succeeds and the mission is mostly a success, Seifer is reprimanded by the people overseeing their exam for disobeying orders and for putting the lives of his fellow students in danger to satisfy his own pride. Seifer is shocked to learn that he's failed the exam as a result of his recklessness, while the others who followed their orders graduated. The Gardens are schools for mercenaries, and mercs who can't be trusted to follow their orders aren't going to be mercs for very long.
While the player can't mess up the exam as badly as Seifer did, Squall, Zell, and Selphie are still being monitored and ranked based on their performance. They're supposed to be professional mercenaries, so running from fights, ignoring the squad leader's orders, talking to non-mission-critical people and taking risky shortcuts all deduct points, and ducking into a hotel to escape the spider mech chasing you at the end in particular causes a massive point drop since you just put a ton of civilians in danger. Notably though, while Seifer fails the exam because he ran off to the radio tower against orders, Squall and Zell make the cut despite accompanying him because they were following his orders, so the burden of responsibility isn't on them.
Violently dealing with a political figure is not an easy task. In spite of Rinoa's admittedly rather smart plan to take President Deling hostage on the train, the simple presence of a body double made all that effort go to waste and made the Timber Owls look like chumps, while also putting Timber on high security. Seifer dragging Deling off at blade-tip on a live broadcast causes an international incident and (alleged) execution offscreen when Balamb Garden throws him under the bus to escape immediate reprisal. The assassination attempt on Edea a few hours later fails spectacularly for the sole reason that Irvine chokes his shot at exactly the wrong moment when he tried to snipe her, giving her time to put up a barrier. As a result of the failed attempt and the fact the assassination party was made of SeeDs from all three Gardens, Edea declared war on the Gardens, with Galbadia Garden throwing the other two under the bus (Irvine wasn't caught, so they could claim deniability) and siding with Edea while Balamb and Trabia Garden are bombarded with missiles (Balamb escapes due to circumstances, Trabia suffers a direct hit with massive loss of life).
It turns out that training children into a special forces combat force is really bad for their mental health and emotional stability, especially when they lack more than the most cursory adult support and guidance. Squall, the worst-case thanks to his Ellone-related abandonment issues, is a nuclear stress meltdown waiting to happen, but none of the Garden kids are in great shape: Seifer is a bully whose combination of grand dreams and trouble with authority figures leaves him vulnerable to manipulation by the Big Bad; Quistis was driven to mature too quickly and thus ended up saddled with responsibilities too heavy for her, not helped by her own crippling self-doubt; Selphie, despite her cute Genki Girl demeanor, is almost always quick to suggest excessive violence as a problem-solving strategy; and Irvine presents himself as a shallow, self-absorbed flirt to cover for his abandonment issues, only to completely crack under pressure during a critical mission and nearly flub the whole thing. The only member of the main SeeD squad to have their head on even halfway straight is, ironically, the hot-tempered and impulsive Zell, who got the benefit of being raised by and maintaining a close relationship with a loving parent to offset the whole "child soldier" business.
On the same topic, leaving matters of global importance in the hands of a bunch of emotionally compromised teenagers also doesn't really pan out that well. This shows up with the starkest clarity in the third disc, when Rinoa's coma sends Squall into an emotional crisis so overwhelming that he simply shuts down and abandons all of his responsibilities entirely without a word of explanation to anyone. Ultimately, it takes Laguna formally hiring SeeD to put an end to the sorceress to really get the plot back on track.
The realistic issues the characters have to deal with are all a result of the fact that, according to Word of God, the game is a deconstruction of the character tropes present in many school-based manga and anime (such as Squall being the stoic loner, Quistis being the confident senpai, etc).
Garnet goes through several traumatic events that puts her deep in a Heroic BSoD; first she finds out that her own mother, Brahne, tried to kill her after having her summoning powers extracted against her will, Later on, Kuja uses Bahamut to kill Garnet's mother, who uses her last breath to apologize for being a terrible mother to her. Lastly, Garland uses the Invincible ship to nuke Garnet's kingdom to oblivion shortly after she became a queen. Garnet is so traumatized that she's unable to speak and it extends to the gameplay as well; Garnet will constantly be thinking about all the bad things that happened, which can cause her to lose concentration and waste her turn in battle. Likewise, Garnet loses access to Trance since she's too distraught to keep her emotions in check. Only when Garnet gets over her troubles is she able to be effective in combat again.
The story makes it clear that Queen Brahne is not a good person and she aims to conquer other kingdoms and continents to satiate her own greed. Everyone can see it, but Garnet and Steiner are in complete denial over it for various reasons; Garnet knows her mother has gone off the deep end, but she wants to help her rescind her evil ways rather than go against her because she's the only family she has. Steiner served as a knight under Brahne for years, so he is likely used to the negative views people have on her and is also why he refuses to listen to Zidane or anyone else who can clearly see that Brahne became evil. Even when someone they have a strong bond with is heavily flawed, not everyone will be willing to accept the truth about them off the bat.
Wakka, a devout believer in Yevon, goes through a Crisis of Faith after learning that Seymour killed his own father and the Church of Yevon is corrupt at the top. Unlike in most works of fiction where a character going through such a crisis typically resolves themselves to turning against their beliefs quickly, Wakka remains conflicted for pretty much the rest of the game. Having grown up his whole life being taught Yevon's teachings, he struggles with what to do because it was all he knew and believed in. Also, Wakka's hatred for the Al Bhed doesn't automatically go away either; Wakka has to re-evaluate his beliefs over the course of the game to fully let go of it, especially when he finds out Yuna is half-Al Bhed.
The game doesn't forget that Auron and Wen Kinoc were old friends. When Kinoc is murdered by Seymour, using Auron's trigger command shows just how angry a person can get in that situation.
Auron: Though not the man I once knew, Kinoc was still my friend, Seymour. You will pay for his death!
After millennia of Medieval Stasis, Spira's freedom from Yevon's machina ban causes the world to change drastically in just a few years. Formerly untamed wildernesses like the Calm Lands and religious sites like Zanarkand have turned into tourist attractions. Augmenting technology into combat has forced off most wild beasts, leaving formerly endgame zones relatively safe. The Thunder Plains in particular, for what a pain to navigate they used to be, has turned the lightning storms into a non-issue with machina-augmented lightning rods laid out across the entire road. Even Yuna, who journeyed across all of Spira, consistently remarks with surprise how much the world has changed when she goes through places she's been before.
Since Summoners relied on Aeons and the teachings of Yevon, when the truth came out and Yevon was overthrown, Summoners became obsolete. Thus, any summoner or apprentice summoner was forced to suddenly change their entire life quickly. Several Summoners in-game admit to having no idea what to do now and thus are conflicted on their life choices.
Yuna revealed to the world that Yevonism was both hypocritical and led by people upholding an Ancient Conspiracy. As a result, not even the most staunch followers of Yevon stayed loyal, especially since Yuna and her guardians gave the world no reason to stay loyal by permanently defeating Sin in a way that directly went against Yevon's teachings. But instead of Yevon going away completely, the upper brass tried replacing it with the "New Yevon Party", less a religion and more a sociopolitical movement, which keeps to the positive morals of the old religion while preaching for conservatively making changes to the world.
The Guado and the Ronso are both feeling extreme tension towards one another at the start of the game due to Seymour's actions. Seymour massacred a ton of their race as well as their Maester when the party went climbing Mount Gagazet to reach Zanarkand in the first game, and as the official leader of the Guado as a whole, his psychopathy made everyone else look at the Guado with suspicion at best and hatred at worst, not helped that some Guado continue to revere Seymour, even if they admit that he was misguided and what he did was awful. If the party doesn't talk the Ronso down, this leads to tensions boiling over to a race war that is implied to lead to the extinction of the Guado.
Yuna is beloved by the people of Spira. New Yevon reveres her as the only High Summoner to have ever survived fighting Sin, the Youth League loves her for exposing Yevon as a Religion of Evil, and everybody loves her for bringing the Eternal Calm with Sin gone for good. As such, most of Spira sees Yuna as a rallying figure, which results in all the major factions wanting her to ally with them because it will make their side look more legitimate to the rest of the world. As a result, when Yuna finds a potentially important sphere and has to choose who gets it, the factions Yuna doesn't help become openly hostile. Yuna doesn't get why anyone would care about one sphere at first, but it's explained to Yuna that it's not the sphere that's important, it's her that's important. Someone like Yuna can't just make political choices and expect to not get any backlash when her word carries so much weight.
A major theme throughout the first half of the game is that Ashe is the Princess of Dalmasca... and that means nothing. Her family is dead, so she has no real political or military power, and also has no way to prove her royal heritage. The only respect she gets is from people who recognize her and feel loyalty towards her, but if she needs their help, she is pretty much relying on them feeling charitable. Ghis also points out that Ashe hasn't been seen in two years and is presumed dead, so if Archadia ever wanted to use "Ashe's" influence, any young girl bearing a passing resemblance to her could be presented as the real thing and more easily molded into the Empire's pawn. This means that not only is it going to be hard for Ashe to convince anyone that she's the princess, but that it would be much better for the Empire if she ended up dead.
Rasler plays the role of a Frontline General during the defense of Nalbina Fortress during the game's intro, but the downfall of his kingdom and the presumed death of his father leads him to ignore Basch's (a much more experienced captain's) suggestions for retreat, the fortress being well overrun and no longer shielded from aerial bombardment due to the fall of its defensive Paling. He ends up being killed by a random Imperial Mook that manages to shoot him with an arrow.
Ashe's desire for revenge means she's willing to do whatever it takes to get at the Archadian Empire. This causes major issues because she puts revenge over her country's future or well-being, leading to instances of the loss of allies or even the deaths of people because she believes her revenge is justified and this rushes off to find power or fight back against the Empire. Vossler outright betrays her when he realizes this, believing that she would doom Dalmasca over revenge, something that Ashe doesn't truly awaken to till late into the game.
When Vaan, Balthier, and Fran meet Basch in the Nalbina Dungeons, he tries to explain he has an Evil Twin brother who posed as him and killed the king, that way Reks would be an Unwitting Pawn. While it turns out that he not lying and Gabranth did do that, Balthier points out how ridiculous it would be to just believe Basch's excuse of an Evil Twin doing so, and Vaan outright refuses to believe it. The only reason Balthier and Fran humor Bash is because they just saw Gabranth take his helmet off and reveal he looks somewhat like Basch. Even still, they only release him because of pragmatic reasons, and it takes a bit for the three to accept that he wasn't lying.
When the party is about to enter the Imperial capital, the seat of their enemy's power, Vaan questions if the authorities will arrest them. Ashe points out that "our names may be notorious but our faces are not far-known", thus allowing them to blend in with the crowd.
Once the Final Boss is defeated, everyone gazes thoughtfully at the sky to contemplate the villain's death and the implications of victory. Then a destroyed fighter crashes in front of the party because the two airship fleets have naturally been focused on the enemy ships, not tiny people running around on a stationary object. These ships don't magically know that they can stop shooting and that the war is over. Cue the heroes' frantically scrambling to announce a ceasefire before any more lives are lost.
The guild master of the Leatherworker's Guild, Geva, is a Caustic Critic who believes in constantly belittling even the best leatherworker's accomplishments as a way of rallying them, except she doesn't make nearly the attempt to rally them alongside her insults. As a result, at the midway point of their original storyline, over half the guild quits getting away from her abusive mentorship. This leaves Geva to run herself to exhaustion trying to fill in an impossible amount of backlogged orders, more than any one person can handle. Thankfully she learns her lesson from this — while she doesn't get kinder, she does get some more sense about giving proper praise where it's due.
A Realm Reborn shows that while ultimately Bahamut was stopped, it doesn't mean the world is simply back to how it was. All the major city-states are damaged and the people are not living in the best of situations because of the apocalyptic events that occurred only a few years beforehand. Several areas have had their entire weather regions changed, such as Ishgard and the Coerthas Highlands going from grassy landscapes to snow- and ice-covered rocky landscapes - one can even find an encampment in the western highlands from Heavensward that's been totally abandoned, including a completely frozen-over and nonfunctional aetheryte because of the sudden and harsh change in weather - and the Mor Dhona area, being the spot where the two largest events in Legacy occurred, is now barren with crystals everywhere. The main story of ARR deals with how the world is trying to recover from the damage of the events, but ultimately struggling to do so because of just how much damage was down by Bahamut's awakening. Also, the Eorzean Alliance that allied to stop it? They somewhat fall apart because they have too much on their hands to work out and don't have the resources or manpower to help each other out. It isn't until the Scions step in and help that they reforge the alliance.
In the Stormblood Astrologian quests, it's shown that there's a strong demand for geomancers in Kugane, as the local businesses consider their divinations to be essential to success. Unfortunately, this also means that there's no shortage of fraudsters willing to play on the general population's ignorance, aided by a general attitude of "buyer beware" and lack of regulatory authority. And, as Kyokuho discovers the hard way, it's all too easy for a genuine and honest geomancer to be branded a fraud.
The Ishgardians have spent almost their entire history as a nation fighting dragons. So when they have to face threats that aren't dragons, they do poorly because they aren't equipped to fight against it properly. This is why the Heretics begin to become a massive issue in the lead up to the Heavensward expansion, especially when Lady Iceheart gives them a unified leader.
During the story between Heavensward and Stormblood, after Aymeric pushes to end the war between Ishgard and the benevolent groups of dragons, the people are heavily resistant to peace. Some even try to sabotage the peace proceedings, because fighting dragons is all they know. On top of that, the people who oppose peace do so because, among other reasons, it will mean that their loved ones who died in the Dragonsong War died for nothing. While Aymeric points out the Sunk Cost Fallacy in play, he admits that it's an illogical but emotionally-charged conclusion, so they have to figure out a way to convince people.
The "Return To Ivalice" raid shows that when the people of Rabanastre saw their brothers in Doma and Ala Mhigo rise up and reclaim their home from the rule of the Garleans, they too rose up in defiance. However, the Domans and Ala Mhigans succeeded because they had the Eorzean Alliance to assist them and the Garleans ruling their lands were either incompetent or were left to their own devices due to various factors. But the Rabanastre people were not so lucky; when they rebelled against the Garleans, they were defeated easily because they lacked the resources or manpower to take on a more focused and competently-lead military force. When you arrive in Rabanastre, it's clear that the people never stood a chance against the crushing might of the Empire; just because their neighbors succeeded doesn't mean they were guaranteed success.
In a world that's still in the middle-ages tech-wise, the country to advance technology is usually the one to have an edge. Garlemald's discovery of ceruleum and magitek put them on par with the other nations in spite of having no ability to use magic, and developing an active airship fleet, which nobody else could do, giving them an air force that could easily wipe out and subjugate resistant countries. The only reason the empire's conquest stalled is because their airship fleet - including the Agrias flagship - ran afoul of Midgardsomr, father of dragonkind and a being on the level with a god as well a massive swarm of angry dragons he summoned, who wiped said fleet out. Cid defecting to Eorzea with the knowledge of tech, combined with Garlemald's weakened military leverage, was a major reason Eorzea was the first and, before Stormblood, the only country to beat the Garleans back.
Ishgard spent a thousand years fighting dragons due to misinformation over what started the war. While it was believed that the dragons attacked first, it turns out King Thordan I struck first since he wanted power and gouged out a dragon's eyes to obtain said power. All of Ishgard was raised on a lie and not everyone believes the truth when it's finally revealed. It takes a lot for the citizens to take everything in since they grew up believing the history they were told. Later side story developments show Ishgard and the dragons are attempting to make peace with each other, but it's going to take a lot of time and work since both sides still have fresh memories of the bloody war in their mind. This also extends to the church in two ways; despite Thordan's atrocities being exposed to the public, several members of the church are still willing to cling to the old ways and were willing to harm anyone that tried to disband them. Just because one's leader was proven to be false doesn't mean that all of their followers will give up their roles or beliefs. The magic DPS role quests in Endwalker also show that the remaining members of the church are in extreme despair because everything they knew and believed in was a lie and the public can no longer trust them. It's no wonder that some members of the church refuse to accept help from Aymeric, who was partially responsible for exposing the church's dark secrets.
The Dotharl tribe of Xaela Au Ra are bloodthirsty fighters who pick battles with larger tribes no matter how suicidal, believing that if one of their members dies in combat, or if someone from outside of a tribe dies saving a Dotharl, they'll be reborn as a new Dotharl as an effective form of Born-Again Immortality, to the point of being given the name of their supposed past life. After talking with Sadu for a bit, she somberly points out that the reality of their deadly culture means they don't replace their numbers and attrition is adding up, and they may even one day in the near future be wiped out for the simple reason that they simply don't have children fast enough. Even if their clansmen really can reincarnate indefinitely, it's a moot point when there are not enough people reproducing to provide flesh for those souls to reincarnate into.
In Stormblood, every village you come across in Garlean occupied territory is completely and utterly broken. The people live in destitution and suffer under Imperial taxation, conscriptions, and general cruelty. The people have lived like this for 25 years, and have come to accept it as their lot in life. Lyse keeps trying to rally the peoples' spirits, and is consistently rebuffed each time, to the point that she's shocked when people tell Lyse that they don't want her help. They believe that so long as they keep their heads down and obey, nothing worse will happen. As such, every time Lyse and the Scions arrive to offer aid and a chance at fighting back, they're met with fear and hatred for it. Everyone in Ala Mhigo knows what they have is awful, but to take any action would mean they'd be butchered by the Empire. But when the Warrior of Light becomes a Hope Bringer as they always do, the Empire stomps it out, stopping an uprising before it starts. Starting La Résistance isn't as easy as it sounds when there are eyes and ears everywhere.
Endwalker has the Eorzean Alliance stage a rescue mission to save the people of Garlemald from their tempered brethren. However, most of the Garlean citizens still see the Alliance as the enemy since they lost so many of their own to them and The Empire always branded the Alliance as savages. Just because one side decided to broker for peace after fighting in a war for years doesn't mean everyone on the other side is willing to forgive and forget. The Warrior of Light is constantly reminded about all the Garlean soldiers they killed in the past and other people would rather risk death in the cold wilderness than accept supplies from their enemies.
Likewise, while the contingent gathered to help aid Garlemald is large, it's pointed out for every soldier who joined to help, another dozen flatly refused. The nations of the world aren't so willing to help the citizens of the global power that has enslaved or attempted genocide against them for fifty years. While many people in Garlemald had no direct hand in the Empire's expansionist ways, not many people can tell the difference between those and the racist, heartless soldiers who sought to crush them under heel.
In "The Parting Glass" and its immediate aftermath, the culprit's plot goes off more or less without a hitch. The Sultana is dead, as is Lord Lolorito's peer/rival Teledji Adeledji, Raubahn is in prison awaiting execution for murdering Teledji, and the Scions of the Seventh Dawn have been broken and branded as regicides. Afterwards, however, the culprit runs into the problem of trying to run a Frame-Up on someone beloved like the Warrior of Light. Most of the public only knows rumors about what happened, and almost nobody believes the accusations against the Warrior, so the False Flag Operation fails. The few that do believe that the Warrior is guilty decide they'd rather just turn a blind eye to the Warrior's presence, handily handwaving the fact that they can move around more or less freely despite supposedly being Eorzea's Most Wanted. The other leaders of the Eorzean Alliance further made it clear to the Ul'dahn Syndicate that they are not to go public with the charges against the Warrior until they can present concrete evidence, ostensibly because of the unrest that would occur if the realm's beloved hero and primal slayer were accused of something like what the culprit intended. Then Heavensward comes around, and reveals that things didn't go so smoothly after all. Very little of what happened at the Bloody Banquet was intended by Lolorito. Teledji Adeledji may have wanted to overthrow the Sultanate and install himself and his fellow Monetarists as the rulers of Ul'dah, but Lolorito recognized that he was already running the show in all but name. He stood to lose far too much and gain too little by going along with Teledji's plan. As such, Lolorito had the poison intended for Sultana Nanamo replaced with a sleeping potion, and had intended to use his influence to publicly acquit the Scions of the Seventh Dawn, including the Warrior of Light, of all charges. But the Scions' refusal to stand down and be brought in by guards — who, for all they knew, intended to simply execute them all on the spot — spoiled that part of the plan.
When an amnesiac ridden Yotsuyu shows up in Doma during Stormblood, the populace are naturally frightened and angry that she is in their presence since she was the one who ruled as Doma's cruel viceroy that killed and tortured her own people. Hien reassures everyone that Yotsuyu is now harmless since she doesn't have her memories and that it wouldn't be right to kill someone who is basically a different person. Most of the citizens begrudgingly accept it, but they make it clear that they are not happy with the decision while also pointing out that he is basically letting a mass murderer walk free while everyone's loved ones aren't getting the justice they deserve. Later on in the ranged DPS role quests for Endwalker, it's revealed that the citizens still haven't gotten over Hien's decision to spare Yotsuyu's life since they felt like he put her life over those that were lost to the Garlean Empire and they also feel that Hien is basically ignoring the past. Hien takes the criticisms to heart and holds a funeral service for those who died at the Empire's hands while promising to look to the past for remembrance while pressing forward towards Doma's new future.
In the Blacksmith questline, Laurisse de Jervaint asks the Warrior to reforge her family's heirloom sword, Integrity, in time for her upcoming tournament. But it's a Wrecked Weapon, nicked, rusted, and chipped beyond repair even for the Ultimate Blacksmith, Gerolt Blackthorne. He instead recommends forging a new blade to place in the hilt rather than attempting to turn a useless piece of scrap metal into something barely passing for a sword.
In the same Blacksmith questline, Laurisse is a Pint-Sized Powerhouse entering a tournament for adults in hopes of being knighted. Her ferocity and Determinator mindset scares off five of her competitors before she even gets to fight them. Her resolve remains unwavering even while staring down her first opponent in the finals, a grizzled warrior twice her size. She loses decisively. For all her hard work and talent, she's still a young, inexperienced noble facing down a much larger, stronger, and more experienced opponent.
The Establishing Character Moment for Gosetsu contains such an outcome, but it's Played for Laughs. Through sheer determination and a sense of duty, he managed to travel from Kugane to Eorzea in a small boat, intending on finding allies to help him in the liberation of Doma. Naturally, such efforts have left him starving for some food. Gosetsu, ever the Determinator, says that he won't listen to "the feeble grumblings of an empty belly" and that "duty comes before all". He psyches himself up, takes one step... and falls flat on his face from exhaustion and hunger.
After a particularly brutal Wham Episode the party's resident Team Mom and healer Ignis goes blind. Instead of being a Handicapped Badass, they promptly and immediately become The Millstone as you're forced to help them get through a tough dungeon with no assistance. And even when the character tries to fight, they just end up flailing wildly, more often than not hitting the player's party. And the character is fully aware of how unhelpful they've become, too. It takes the ten-year Time Skip and constant practice for Ignis to get any semblance of his talent back. Even then, he still uses a cane to walk.
On a slightly more humorous note, your party members are not immune to friendly fire when you use magic. So, for example, using a Thunder spell sees them all paralyzed by the electricity, using Blizzard sees them all shivering from the cold, and using a Blizzard spell while standing in water causes everyone to get stuck.
In Episode Ardyn, after the Final Boss Fight, Somnus pleads to Ardyn that what he did to Ardyn was because he was told to by the Gods, claiming it was for the right of his people. Does Ardyn accept said reasons and see things Somnus's way? NOPE! Ardyn outright snaps at Somnus because, despite his brother's reasons, Ardyn still spent 2,000 years chained up in Angelgard, and even then, Somnus still killed his fiancé. Prophecy or not, Ardyn still has every right to be mad at his brother for all of the terrible things he's done to him.
Various gameplay elements are designed to simulate the limits of actual human beings. For example, running for an extended period of time causes Noctis to run out of breath and get tired, and going for days without sleep causes sleep deprivation (represented by you being unable to get buffs from food no matter how many times you eat), while getting regular rest and eating properly gives you long-lasting, often potent, buffs and allows you to level up. Even the story presentation has this: for the most part, the things the player sees/hears are what the party sees/hears — near-everything else is offscreen, and they have to read/be told about events they didn't witness, much like how it is in real life.
You want to avoid Imperials air-dropping on you? Just get into a wooded area; they aren't going to air-drop into trees.
If you drive the Regalia recklessly, you can crash it and damage it, which will harm its performance and it may become undrivable. It can also run out of gas, forcing the party to push it to the nearest station to refuel. Either problem can also be solved by calling up Cindy and having her tow it to Hammerhead to service it, which costs money. The dangers of reckless driving go triple for the Regalia Type-F: you need a nice straight stretch of road to safely come down for a landing, and if you mess it up the airship will crash and it's Game Over. It also takes a bit of technique to do it smoothly, and party members will comment about a bumpy landing.
The off-road Regalia Type-D has a durability meter. Damaging the car too much leads to a Nonstandard Game Over, and it's too heavy to push if it runs out of gas.
The Astrals. These "summons" are explicitly referred to as gods, and thus don't look favorably upon humans by default. Defeating them earns respect for your party, but that only goes so far, even for the ones who are friendly enough — they aren't gonna drop everything and come every time you call, and only long, protracted battles or near-death is generally enough to warrant their help... and even then, they may not automatically offer their help because they're aloof allies, not pets. Individual Astrals also have additional summoning restrictions: Leviathan can only be summoned if there's a large body of water nearby, and massive ones like Titan can't be summoned underground or in caves. The most likely Astral a player will see is Ramuh who is one of the first, one of the most friendly, and one with the least restrictions - and by "most likely", one can expect to see him a total of about six times during a strict story run.
Final Fantasy XVI has a pretty brutal dose of realism in how the game treats its Fantastic Racism towards magic-using Branded. Centuries of institutionalizing of bigoted ideology has left most commonfolk - even ones who are otherwise great people - quick to turn into snarling beasts when a Branded slips their leash. Many Branded themselves also don't appreciate the party's Slave Liberation for a variety of reasons, including also buying into the fact they're lesser people, finding Happiness in Slavery or biting the bullet because it's a horrible life, but it's an assured life instead of potentially dying in the unknown chasing freedom, and fearing that if the party gains too much notoriety as Outlaws, people will start killing enslaved Branded Just In Case which is exactly what ends up happening after the Time Skip.
Final Fantasy Tactics: The game ends on a Bittersweet Ending where Ramza defeats Ultima, meaning the Church is more or less depowered, and the world is free from the Lucaiv's threat, but Ramza goes down in history as a heretic and a traitor to his house. Ramza's actions occurred during a massive world war-like conflict, meaning the crowning of Delita as king overshadows much of the events that occurred. With nobody able to vouch for Ramza in an influential way, he goes down in history as a villain instead of The Hero.
Final Fantasy Tactics Advance: Protagonist Marche knows that staying in the dream world is not mentally healthy for him or his friends and he tries to get them to face and solve their problems rather than run away from them. Because the main cast are young teenagers around the ages of 12 to 14, they aren't confident in themselves and see the fantasy world as an easier solution where they can be happy and not have to deal with life's problems. Seeing Marche's friends and his own brother lash out against him when they themselves don't know of his own struggles in life is a pretty realistic outcome of what happens when one feels like you're forcing them against their wills to leave their seemingly only source of happiness.
Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Cid is known as an enemy of a criminal organization that he used to be a member of. He left the syndicate after seeing how evil they were and he wanted no part of it. This results in the syndicate eventually finding and shooting him in the middle of a street, only for him to barely cheat death by swearing an oath to a Judge. Just because you want an out and don't want to be in a crime syndicate anymore doesn't mean that said group will let you go without a hitch.
In Final Fantasy Type-0 Militesi Supersoldiers empty a magazine from their firearms at chest height and promptly graduate from the Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy. In contrast with the standard soldiers, who fire single aimed shots and will hit the cadet they're aiming at if said cadet doesn't move.
