I think FFXIV should be more political actually

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Originally Posted by Commander_Justitia

Basically Japan trying hard to subtly influence their population to make babies. RIP Abe
Meanwhile Europe is proudly on the same road like the decaying Roman Empire. Thanks all.

We play games to get distracted how stupid real life politics are, I hate if these localizers or storywriters or whoever - bring those politics in the game we like. Same with movies. Let fantasy story be a fantasy story, pure from the corrupted ideologies of real life.

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That's funny in a way because I'm the exact opposite. Stories get meaning by having tangible relatable themes that do bring one to ponder upon those. And it's frankly been the case with most fantasy and scify since the age of forever, between star wars, star trek, middle earth, most of the classic FF titles actually as well among which the most beloved like FF7.

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Originally Posted by Valence

That's funny in a way because I'm the exact opposite. Stories get meaning by having tangible relatable themes that do bring one to ponder upon those. And it's frankly been the case with most fantasy and scify since the age of forever, between star wars, star trek, middle earth, most of the classic FF titles actually as well among which the most beloved like FF7.

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I disagree I think, when a story is more complex, you don't notice the similarities with real life, because it distracts you well enough. Sometimes ignorance is bliss while consuming entertainment products, I am not trying to analyze it directly, others are different I guess. I feel just new stuff often has poorer writing, which makes it very obvious when it contains ideological messages.

You sit down and watch orcs vs humans and think about shell shock in ww1 and 20th century wars? I don't really, maybe I started about thinking about cold war as I got older. What I see is a lore-rich fantasy story, that has some elements of real life, like every story has, but it doesn't try to push it into your face.
When Eowyn pretends to be a soldier and goes to war, I don't think about feminism and the struggle of women. Why? Because it makes sense and feels natural, because in history exceptions existed like shield-maiden during Viking times. And because it is not the movies main topic that Eowyn defeats Sauron and destroys the ring and shows Aragorn how old, weak and ugly he is. Then she marries Gimli, because he is a minority now.
It would be leaking political agenda. Unwatchable.

I think most people do not care what your gender, or political stance is - they just want plausible/authentic quality content in their game or movie.

But u can never make everyone happy anyway

Lord of the Rings is a fun example to pick considering Tolkien's religious and political opinions are explicitly injected into the world. He's often quoted as saying it was "a fundamentally religious and Catholic work" and that Middle Earth is effectively a pre-christian mythical version of the real world, as in Middle Earth has the Christian God as its creator. Remember Catholicism is and was a minority religion in England so it's inescapably political in the same way making a text about gender in 2025 would be political.

Otherwise, Tolkien was anti-industrialisation and firmly pro-English (not pro-Britain), hence his depiction of rightfully born kings as naturally virtuous and benevolent. This is all not to mention how his experiences during the war affected his work. It's disingenuous to compare his politics against the politics of today to try to depict LotR as apolitical, but yes in his time he was fairly reactionary and it's explicit in his text.

Yeah but there is nuance. Feels like cherrypicking the quote of it.

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"Tolkien himself wrote in one of his letters: ‘The Lord of the Rings is of course a
fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the
revision. That is why I have not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything
like ‘religion’, to cults or practices, in the imaginary world. For the religious element is
absorbed into the story and the symbolism.

But Tolkien states that he deliberately left out religion of the imaginary world and only
included it on a meta-level. This means that we will not find direct references to religion or
Christianity in The Lord of the Rings, but still Christian ethics and values, maybe as well as
myths and stories, can be found on many levels and as parallels to different story- lines."

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Idk why we talk about tolkien himself, when the movie is what became famous after all. I think it wouldn't have become a success with "modern" writing nowadays. The "recent" series of it is an example of that.

Like, we live today, I want a good movie or game today, I don't care what people think in 100 years about it, if they think its political and courageous or not, I couldn't care less lol

In the end money talks. And I really hate hearing that the audience is wrong for not liking the products, hello disney, netflix, amazon (who almost canceled warhammer 40k with henry cavill, holy shit imagine he dies before playing a role in it, what a waste of actor it would have been). I hope they either get bankrupt on it or finally do what the customers want. It is the same with game companies.
Majority wants mobile games apparently. We are like the generation that still cares about a good story, maybe we should be thankful a few still exist.

But this is getting too offtopic anyway.

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Originally Posted by StormChase

Why's my dog barking his head off?

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Because he's late for his meeting at parliament. Can't cast his vote if he's not there!

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Originally Posted by Hallarem

Adventures are about living in them, their cultures, their habits, the way they talk and interact. What we are getting now is the equivalent of just looking at a picture of pretty things and not actually visiting and living in the location with the people in them.

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Guessing when they said they were trying to be culturally respectful they meant "We wrote most of the story THEN hired a consultant to suggest minor changes."

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Originally Posted by StormChase

Guessing when they said they were trying to be culturally respectful they meant "We wrote most of the story THEN hired a consultant to suggest minor changes."

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The two most "what were they thinking" moments for me are diplomacy being a virtually unknown concept in Tural until Eorzean contact and the game expecting us to be fine with Alexandria keeping Yyasulani.

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Originally Posted by StormChase

The two most "what were they thinking" moments for me are diplomacy being a virtually unknown concept in Tural until Eorzean contact and the game expecting us to be fine with Alexandria keeping Yyasulani.

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One of the things that really baffles me is the fact that we seemingly never end up telling the Alexandrian populace that Endless Sphene was planning on committing mass murder and that Yyasulani being merged with Alexandria wasn't an accident. The Turalis under the dome are allowed to still be under the impression that this person who essentially kidnapped them was a benevolent ruler.

In-universe politics are definitely fine... But pretty much every time a game tries to tackle real world politics, it just instantly goes to absolute shit.

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Originally Posted by CaptainLagbeard

In-universe politics are definitely fine... But pretty much every time a game tries to tackle real world politics, it just instantly goes to absolute shit.

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Yeah. I feel like people just want to push their sh... stuff... onto others.