Trying too hard to be cute, trying too hard to be emotional... This is a trend in most movies, books and games. Writers do not know how make us care for the people in their stories. And besides, "saving the world" is really boring.
Take this passage :
We've never met Olivia, we are forcibly told that she is Agnès' childhood friend... but we are never shown this (with flashback conversations), or able to play with her.
And this other passage :
Compare this with Final Fantasy V, where we play with Galuf for half the game, and then he dies and gets replaced with his grand-daughter. It's a totally different impact because we are invested in the character, we've been taking care of him, and learning about him this whole time.
Same thing when Sue has to give up the adventure in Grandia. We are actually sad that we have to continue with only Justin and Feena. Sue is an adorable character with unorthodox moves that you will not be able to use again, despite having trained her for half the game.
Same thing when you lose a character that you care about in Fire Emblem. Even though you could continue the game, most of us will either restart the chapter or even the whole campaign.
It's really weird that modern games fail to properly convey emotions and meaning through their stories even though the story is actually the main selling point (especially for roleplaying games).