A bit of a critique of something in PS2

[etony33]

They didn't explore the emotional state of Rolf and the others nearly as much as they should have (or, really, at all) after Nei's demise. It was just, basically, "oh well (shrug) let's go close the dams". Why? I mean, Rolf was just continuing to work after Climatrol and trying to fix Motavia, but what about his feelings? His emotions? You saw it with Chaz for sure.

Megid comes from anger (though this is not, to my knowledge, explicitly stated in PS2, but only PS3/PS4), but Rolf's anger isn't explored for the most part.

I don't know, I'm just rambling at this point, but I'm sure you guys know what I mean.

[The PS Logo]

There definitely wasn't enough memory in the original cartridge for character development, and if there was a little space, it wouldn't be fair for only 1 character to get such development. Any character development that happened in the original game was closely tied to the plot, so the game settled for the playable cast to simply witness the events that occur in the game.
PSG2 tried to add such character development, but I doubt emotional states were touched upon there.

[MrStarbird]

its just a sign of the time the game was made in. Nobody really thought about character development until right around Final Fantasy IV came out.

In theory, Rolf might not have had much emotion because he was considered a trained agent of Motavia. If they act like any CIA agent of the US or something, they could be trained to contain their emotions for a job. Since Rolf never really stopped working, he probably had no time to vent Nei's death. Add in that he was orphaned at a young age, he might have also learned to bottle things.

[myau56]

Maybe it's our role, us the players, to think about Rolf's emotional state at the moment (surely very bad...) but the game was launched in 1989 : at this period, like someone has already said, the characters were often poorly developed and their emotions weren't shown at all (or so few...).

[etony33]

The only character to have any sort of development at all, to me, is Shir. She's a free spirit and very immature. She doesn't care one iota about saving Algo - at least, it doesn't seem that way. She comes along because she thinks Rolf is cute and because she thinks it'll be fun. Even her line in the ending doesn't say anything about Algo. She talks about herself.

Whether you love Shir or you hate her, at least there is something there.

[MrStarbird]

the developers gave each character in that game a backstory, something not very common (almost unheard of) in 1989. It was a start towards character development.

[etony33]

Whether intentionally or not, Shir's penchant for stealing a Dagger from Ryuon's weapon shop and going back to Paseo adds to her character development.

I could just picture Rolf..."are you &#$@ kidding me, Shir? She better have stolen a Fire Staff or something this time."

[Zucca]

There definitely wasn't enough memory in the original cartridge for character development, and if there was a little space, it wouldn't be fair for only 1 character to get such development. Any character development that happened in the original game was closely tied to the plot, so the game settled for the playable cast to simply witness the events that occur in the game.
PSG2 tried to add such character development, but I doubt emotional states were touched upon there.

Yeah. The lack of space was propably the major reason why. If only there were special editions on Sega CD...

[zio_falz]

Sure they did.
Rolf was very angry.
That's why he learnt Megid, quite early in comparison to PSIV, without Re-Faze.