Why is it called Lightning Returns?

Because everyone thought the original subtitle, Milking Lightning, was a hentai game. Which, thanks to Toriyama, is always a possibility.

 

...

 

I think the real question is:

Why does she have to return???

 

Because she is a boomerang.

 

How is it that I care more about the red shirt soldiers with exactly no character development in XCOM but couldn't give two flying facks about Lightning?

Hope pulls her out of his ass?

 

Because neither was Lightning?
If you look at the dev videos, from the start it has never been about making Lightning a fleshed out character. They throw around the words "cool" and "beautiful" like it'll get them free candy though

 

They've said it before in interviews if i remember, that they wanted her to be interesting and brought to life.

All bull of course, but I do believe the FF XIII team, or at least Toriyama, are delusional enough to believe their own horse ****.

I swear, if that man didn't obsess over her and want to marry his digital Pygmalion girlfriend, we would've only had two FFXIII games at best, maybe not even that.

 

Reminder that Lightning will still remain the most popular FF character in Japan and will still receive more attention then Faris.

 

I'd say he probably has a version stashed away in his shrine.

 

Well the thing is, when people talk about bring a character to life in a video game, they mean making them human-like. Realisitc animations, non-uncanny models, that sort of thing

 

Bringing to life does not necessarily mean realistic.
It means exactly what it sounds like, bringing a character to LIFE.
It's the difference between this
And this

 

Varies from person to person.
People claim Xion is a great character because she sacrifices herself for Sora.
I don't see how that's meaningful in any way

A LOT of people are a very shallow about what bringing something to life means.

With a lot of game designers, life begins and ends at how well they can use motion capture to make their characters realistic and thus somehow relatable
Because as you know, how well a person's eyebrows move when something dramatic happens is what REALLY determines how much we care

 

just droppin by to say xion sucks

 

Actually, there was a poll done recently, showing that Yuna is the most popular in Japan, followed by Lightning and then Tifa. At least they got one good one in there, right?

 

and thus FFX2.5