Spock

Or...wild thought...it's not a problem because so many things in this game are conditional. It would be a consequence of a choice - your first choice - what character you rolled. Just roll a different one next time.

It wouldn't be an equality / identity thing because it's not about your identity. It's a role-playing game. It's about your characters' identity and an example of how different choices affect different characters differently. Elves don't sleep. A half-Orc or Tiefling gets special intimidate options. Bards get to play musical instruments and can go busking etc. It's hardly different.

Irl you don't get to choose your sex / gender / orientation. It's honestly kinda offensive that you would compare that to the great hardship of having to pick a character with a penis on one run (of presumably many) in a videogame.

Veilguards creator wasn't as good as inquisition's though. Not for faces anyway. Oh great, I get to play as a fat guy. Just what I wanted. Can't properly customise a face though, just have to try to make a weird blend between 3 presets. I'll give veilguard mild praise for including more hairs, especially curls and coils, but inquisition is literally a decade older and hair tech has come a long way in that time...kinda feels like praise for doing something they obviously needed to update anyway. Like a pat on the head for remembering to breathe.

Andrew Morrowind is huge. Fantastic game, always will be, but doesn't fit the brief here lol

Ok but...hear me out...can you imagine the tantrums from the BG3 fandom if FR had included more of the companions / origins and derailed a bunch of headcanons? Karlach, Astarion and Shart were probably a pretty safe bet - most people in the fandom seem to agree on the best endings for them. Minsc started as a tabletop character so no surprise he's returned. Imagine them canonising a world state with GaleBomb though? Or keeping Wyll in his pact? The simplest thing they could do was to ignore them. I respect it tbh lol

Oblivion aligns the lore with the mechanics - Skyrim doesn't. Skyrim certainly made it easier but since when was that a synonym for good? The only way I can reconcile Skyrim's vampirism is to gaslight myself into believing the UV is so low in that cold overcast north the vampires just aren't affected so badly lol

Solas arguably doesn't betray you in DAI. He possibly would have betrayed you at the end of the base game if the BBEG hadn't broken his orb, but his orb did break so he had to slink off into the night to betray Flemeth instead.

As you said the epilogue/DLC reveals that he'd been lying the whole time. Again though, there is no real moment of betrayal here, just a whole lot of infodump about his real identity, how, why, etc. He even saves the MC - again - at the end of their interaction to buy them time to get medical assistance.

I understand that people feel betrayed when they've been lied to and manipulated for an entire game, but DAI's MC got off extremely light all things considered lol. You got tricked. Wounded pride. The only actual, significant personal consequence for them was the anchor and their exposure to that wasn't even him, it was pure bad luck. The whole thing is presented more as a twist ending than a real in-game betrayal.

It's the new game where he's throwing actual betrayal around like Halloween candy. He's never a party member in that one though.

He just doesn't fit the criteria for this post unless you're smashing both games together as one, that's my real gripe. It feels weird to see him on it at all, nevermind at #1. There are others on this list who are a way better fit. Solas feels like a cheap pick from a recent game just to get clicks.

I'd be on board with those ideas for 6 and 7.

8 and 9 do not need sequels that are just people getting married.

8 needs a remake long before it needs a sequel (it arguably needed one before 7 imo, but that's a different rant). They cut it up way too much to fit on those CDs. It was a hot mess and I love its weirdness in the same way I love B-movies, but I've also spent 25 years wondering what it was supposed to be. Fix it first, then talk about a sequel. There's no point building on a broken foundation.

9 has so many opportunities for a sequel. Alexandria was not alone in being (partially) destroyed, Cleyra fully bit it and Lindblum and Burmecia were also badly damaged. There would be a power shift across the whole Mist Continent as they all worked to rebuild or resettle.

Lindblum's about to have huge influence because of a: Cid's experience and influence over Garnet, b: the Hilda Garde 3 - the first working internal combustion engine. They're poised for an industrial revolution without mist that would extend into production and manufacturing in the wider market, and c: the rat people lost both their cities and are at a significant disadvantage. Now, Cid seems like a decent guy, but even without any kind of aggression that kind of power imbalance is huge for trade, culture etc. They'd become dominant very fast. That could be explored.

Speaking of the Hilda Garde, that also opens up the opportunity for exploration and settlement of the (largely empty) other continents. There could be some kind of landrush to explore (narratively) there. New archaeological discoveries. Scholars would also have access to Oelvert and Ipsens's Castle, giving solid proof to the masses about about what happened with Terra.

The surviving Genomes are now also on Gaia; it could explore them adapting, exploring, and how the native Gaian's react to that.

Then of course there was Necron. Was it a standalone entity or the start of something huge?

There's huge potential with this game

It still always strikes me when people talk about the popularity of FF9 these days. Anyone old enough to remember the heyday of the FF:WA forums but young enough to have made this entry one of their first probably remembers its original lukewarm reception. "Too short" "too oversimplified" "the characters are too young" "the art style is too chibi" "the ending doesn't make sense" etc, all common complaints at the time. Nice to see the fandom has grown into appreciating it to the point of making it a casual statement in a post about swords haha.

Iirc if you attack an essential until the point where any other NPC would be KOd they do a weird cowering squat thing that I think might be what they're talking about. I don't recall it being a thing for regular enemies but it's been a while.

Zodiac age was not an improvement over the original FFXII. Merging two classes is nothing special when the original gave you absolute free reign over the entire licence board.

If you didn't find Selphie useful you were using her wrong. She, Squall, card refine and Aura will absolutely carry you through the entire game. It's whoever you pick third that's irrelevant lol