On Personal Bugbears
Sometimes there are tropes in fiction that you don't vibe with.
It doesn't matter if it serves a narrative purpose. It doesn't matter if it's thematically consistent. It doesn't matter if it's good. It doesn't matter if it even makes the story better or more coherent or resolves important questions. It's a story conceit that you just don't like, no matter what.
I think in this case it goes beyond the personal dislike for a particular trope and into the trope being executed badly and not fitting the game.
The question of whether espers can live alongside humanity or if they must be separated for the good of all lest their power be misused is a theme running through the entire (first half of the) game. We see espers being turned into weapons, we hear about devastation unleashed by them in the War of the Magi, but we also have Terra and the story of her parents as a counterpoint as well as the little story about Odin and the queen.
The obvious, narratively satisfying conclusion is that yeah, obviously espers can live together with humans, so long as both are dedicated to peace and are willing to stand up to tyranny and exploitation. Terra is the living proof of it, a bridge between two peoples, here to unite them.
So when the game swerves into "actually, Little Bahatimmy has to die for the greater good", it doesn't come across as "the age of myth is over, the great evil is defeated but at a cost of great wonder leaving the world forever", it just comes across as arbitrary raising of the stakes for the sake of drama.
Personally, I would really prefer for some espers to survive and be integrated into the World of Ruin, so you could find them in various communities, helping people to rebuild, using their powers to save lives. Maybe have espers be your new companions instead of Gogo and Umaro with, like, actual dialogue and shit. Have them contribute to the defeat of Kefka in a show of solidarity and common purpose rather than subjugation and have the power of the Warring Triad be distributed among the espers rather than exiting the world altogether.
That, I think, would have tied into the themes of the story better than what we've got.
I hate how so many JRPG villains are just so emo they decide to kill everyone. It's. So. Boring. I always kind of thought FF7 invented it, but here it is in FF6.
I don't mind speeches like that because I think of them as, like, a null hypothesis. Nihilistic screeds are an invitation for the heroes to reject them and state what does matter to them, what they're willing to fight and bleed for, what has meaning.
It doesn't make for the most interesting villain perhaps, but it's a very efficient way to showcase the ideals of the heroes, what they stand for in the face of bleak powers, so it's useful for a story.
