LogFAQs > #928652062

Chris, I'm getting Red Mage. Don't try and convince him to steal my thunder.

Alright, Andy, I'll try and convince you to save Delita using narrative analysis.

Final Fantasy Tactics is great because its story is a meditation on morality. It doesn't exactly ask if the ends justify the means. It asks whether great things can be done without getting your hands dirty and gives a complex depiction of that issue. Ramza and Delita start from about the same point and are deliberately used as foils. Although Ramza is unflinchingly heroic and unwilling to compromise on his morals, Delita eventually becomes a pragmatic revolutionary who will do whatever it takes to achieve his vision of a better world. Ramza willingly drags his own name through the mud, betrays his family and his nation, and takes on armies single-handedly to do what he thinks is right. But he isn't the one who recreates the world. That kind of thing is beyond the limits of his morally-clean methods.

It's Delita who does that - and he dies it by lying, manipulating, and murdering. He's one of the few Final Fantasy characters who can be argued to be either a hero or a villain. He has a love story with a princess whom he marries to become king, and it's ambiguous whether he really loves her or is only using her. And while he ultimately achieves his goals, in the end he's left wondering whether Ramza (who is dead for all he knows) got the better deal.