YoshiP “Torn" Over What to do with the Scions (Interview)

Honestly, they just need a good writer who can make them laugh, fight and have a ... I don't know a PERSONALITY beyond being plotdrivers and exposition dumps.
I've had time to think on this, I don't feel like it's an issue of the Scions arcs being over, or them being boring. It's their writing being boring and them being used for plot reasons and not to show how they FEEL or THINK about situations, they don't have their PERSONAL goals, they just TALK about them.

SHOW, don't TELL

I like traveling places of significance with Scions that have strong narrative connections to them, sure. I would have even been happy if we had all traveled to Tural, gone our separate ways, and in our journey around the nation we would have seen the learning/inspirational impact each one would have had, and at most we would have traveled with Krile at our hip to give her more emphasis on the much greater impact the nation was supposed to have to her story while we mentored Wuk Lamat in what it means to be an adventurer but also bear great responsibility on our shoulders.

Instead we got paraded around like the entourage to a Taylor Swift Tural Tour, constantly praising Wuk Lamat without offering a single word of criticism or encouragement to try new approaches to situations. Every single character was overshadowed by that NPC when she was on-screen, and off-screen there was actual growth and development with other characters because they had room to speak and to share their thoughts. We didn't even have to hold Lamat's hand; we could have just been a referee, adventuring leisurely while monitoring all four Promises during the competition without being used as a gatcha-five-star golden character that we were actually used for by Lamat in order to win. Every place we went there was almost no opposition to Lamat, and yet the issue brought forth was that she hadn't 'achieved' anything. Good God, she didn't even know about the cultures of the nation she was supposed to rule; why was the learning process to becoming Dawnservant happening NOW? Of all times? The Scions had very little to do with any of the proceedings and were there for flavor. I've never felt Y'shtola so out of place before, and while she isn't one of my favorite Scions I still think these characters deserved more than what we got.

To put it more succinctly: we could have had very little time with the other Scions in contrast to the new characters and it still would have made the intended mark if they hadn't pushed Wuk Lamat down our throats so gorram much. There is so much wrong with the set-up and that character that it was a genuine slap to the face for me. I don't have much to complain about the other encounters, only to think back on what could have been, what should have been, and what we ended up getting. A distracted Yoshi-P (being split between projects and direction) didn't help this entire ordeal, that's for sure.

I will rethink my desire to follow patiently along the MSQ if they make Wuk Lamat a bloody Scion. For all that is holy, leave her on the damn island and let us leave her behind.

I'm lukewarm on most of the scions, I think most of them could still be interesting if you cut the cast down to a single one on each expansion kinda like what they teased with Krile in DT before leaving her with nothing to do for 90% of it.

Only character I fully want them to retire is Estinien. I hate that he had to show up in DT just to deal with remote controlled cannon fodder, and I hate that his personality seems to have changed from "gruff soldier with a heart of gold" to a freespirited wanderer who loves travelling and fighting. It just weakens his ending from Heavensward to me.

If you're going to have them around, have them do stuff and not just be set pieces. Otherwise, don't have them at all. Easy enough.

Just make them side characters like you did with Cid.

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Originally Posted by Kusanagi7

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't shtola supposed to be dying cuz she went into midstream or am I misremembering?

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She's not dying per se, but Matoya says that Yshtola's using her own aether to "see" which can shorten her lifespan if done in excess. We also don't know how often Yshtola actually does it... she could possibly just be functionally blind a lot of the time and just uses aether in bursts when there's something she needs to pay attention to or examine.

Of course if the writers were so inclined, they could certainly accelerate this at some point in the future for drama or something, but I feel like she's had so many fakeout deaths at this point that they wouldn't do that unless they were reeeeaaally out of ideas

Speaking of the Scions of the Seventh Dawn. There's a lot more members than just the Circle of Knowing members, the Twins, Krile, G'raha, and Estinien.

We've missed out on countless opportunities over the years to flesh out Riol, the Boulder brothers, Coultenet, Aenor, Clemence, Aergmhus, Bloumwyda, Alianne, Isildaure, Homei, Ephemie, and Wigstan.

Yes, I had to use a Wiki to look up the ones I couldn't remember (and are still alive).

Our friends absolutely could've taken a break (except for Krile, Estinien, and G'raha) and any of the others could have taken their places in Duty Support in this supposed "fresh start".

Arenvald is literally the only other Scion to have gained relevance and he's wheelchair-bound now.

IMO they should go back to doing the Heavensward approach (minus a bunch of them disappearing): Have one or two Scions be relevant and have the others stand back. There's still a few they can build on as characters (Y'shtola... please...).

Scions need to be side characters or not even appear in 8.0, I mean they kind of were side characters 7.0, but you still brought them around for some reason, I don't mind scions showing up once in a while they're your friends but lets be real they have had character development and we know that they're never going to be in any real danger because that would annoy the fans of that character it's kind of too late at this point.

I hope they introduce a new cast, I'll just give a example here but imagine exploring a new shard with a group that mostly comes from that place, having risks involved such as characters not all surviving, if this "new" cast was written decently you'd possibly be able to have something pretty interesting going on. then the only issue would be the WOL's power level being so high which can be solved by either the nature of the shard or some event that puts the WOL more down to earth, which isn't perfect, but the story should still focus on how the WOL interacts with the group instead of one person in the group being the new center making the main character a side character...

I'm not saying it's easy to write stories, I'd have no clue where to start, but depending on the scions isn't going to work out, theirs pretty much nothing interesting you can do with them anymore.