Y'shtola's "Marketing Armor"

She's pretty much guaranteed to die because she is using her own aether to see ever since she lost her sight in the lifestream. It's only a matter of time. Personally, I think they'll either do it next expansion or at the transition to next expansion and leave it as a cliff hanger so as to entice sales.

Shortening her lifespan by using aether to see is largely meaningless as long as the game's time frame never changes. She might die years sooner than she normally would from age, but we're never gonna actually get there.

Y'shtola has always been my least favorite Scion. Her niche as know-it-all is filled better by Urianger, so most of the time she seems unnecessary.

The problem with Y'shtola is they've used her death as a fake out for shock value so many times that whenever she's supposed to be in peril my immediate response is completely discordant with what the game wants me to feel. It's never "oh no, Y'shtola is in danger!" it just "nah she's fine" even if the story is treating her like she's supposed to be dead. When she fell into the hole in Raktika, my immediate response wasn't shock followed by being upset alongside the characters, it was complete disbelief that she was actually dead and annoyance at the characters mourning her supposed death because she was definitely fine. Emet-selch snapping her back from the lifestream just had me nodding my head and going "yep of course she's fine" instead of relief. It's to the point where I can no longer take her being in danger seriously and it completely sweeps the emotional tension out of any scene where I'm supposed to be concerned/grieving for her.

I more or less have the same feelings about Thancred because his fight with Ranji't was pretty much framed as him dying only for Urianger to scrape him off the ground offscreen and put him back together.

Why is death the only way for these characters to exit a story? Can't they just simply retire or take on a more passive role? I could see Y'shtola taking on a researcher role like Urianger used to.

Personally, I'd like to see most/all the Scions take a back seat next expansion. I find it hard to invest in them as time goes on because somehow they find themselves at the center of every major conflict on the Source and now even the First. I'd rather see an FFXI approach to characters - where the main characters in the expac are assumed to be close to the conflict at hand way before the player steps foot in it.

Obviously now that XIV is 7 years deep into a linear story arc, that wish becomes a bigger ask with each patch. But when the 'Zodiark Arc' is wrapped up I need a clean slate with a tasteful Scion cameo every now and then.

Personally, my preference would be that the Archons take a back seat role in the next expansion, staying in Eorzea to mind the ship while we venture abroad. Maybe we can bring along Krile and some of the secondary Scions for a while. Riol, Hoary and Ocher Boulder, Coltenet, maybe Arenvald. Have the twins pop in and out as go-betweens, so they're still around but not as central to the plot.

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Originally Posted by TheMightyMollusk

Personally, my preference would be that the Archons take a back seat role in the next expansion, staying in Eorzea to mind the ship while we venture abroad. Maybe we can bring along Krile and some of the secondary Scions for a while. Riol, Hoary and Ocher Boulder, Coltenet, maybe Arenvald. Have the twins pop in and out as go-betweens, so they're still around but not as central to the plot.

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Personally, I'd just be satisfied to have one follow me to wherever we're going next, probably Thancred. He could be my Gunbreaker bro.

I'm guessing they'll split the difference on her. She will die, if not due to her condition then via some sort of noble sacrifice, but because she's so connected to the lifestream and all that they'll find a way to keep her around even just as someone we visit in cutscenes.

Honestly, I actually like her quite a bit but the fake out deaths have definitely made her into as much a meme as a character.

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Originally Posted by Vyrerus

"Who do you think will be the next scion to die?

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No. just stop, no more.

Coming in 6.0: Y'shtola chokes on a pretzel. She uses Flow to teleport it out.

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Originally Posted by TheMightyMollusk

Coming in 6.0: Y'shtola chokes on a pretzel. She uses Flow to teleport it out.

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Nono, she'll teleport herself using Flow because the pretzel isn't part of her aether yet and, since she can't speak due to the choking, it's the only spell she can use! And then plot contrivance character will pull her out from the Lifestream again because Shtola just hasn't mastered how to LEAVE the Lifestream yet, fifth time's the charm, I say!

And then Matoya appears out of nowhere to whack her over the head with her staff and tell her to cut it out.

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Originally Posted by TheMightyMollusk

And then Matoya appears out of nowhere to whack her over the head with her staff and tell her to cut it out.

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yes. on top of everything else that was said Y'shtola seems to be the only one immne to criticism in the Scions.

i appreciate the fact that shdowbringers had a lot of banter / they were not afraid to call each other out when they did stupid stuff but for some reason no one says anything when it's Y'shtola ( you do get to banter with her but i think you only get the option to call her out once and she basically dismisses it).

I dearly miss Matoya for this very reason. Y'shtola seriously comes across as someone who can dish it out

(she literally criticizes everyone and is the first one to call out the scions on their bs)

but really does not know how to take it

(as it's seen by how aggravated she gets everytime Matoya calls her out)

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Originally Posted by TheMightyMollusk

Coming in 6.0: Y'shtola chokes on a pretzel. She uses Flow to teleport it out.

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Lmao. Aww man, I almost want to see that transpire in game now.

I don't dislike Y'shtola. As far as the Scions are concerned, she's tolerable. If I had to pick one of them to kill off then I wouldn't hesitate for a single moment to suggest Alisae. I don't think the fact that Y'shtola is the 'crossover character' should prevent her from being killed off. Dissidia NT isn't being updated any longer and in the other games she shows up in, she often isn't alone when it comes to FFXIV cameos.

I also think the constant fake outs involving Y'shtola 'dying' are rather tiresome. It only serves to cheapen death as a concept and consequence.

I don't think any story character is "safe" per se. So yes, of course Y'shtola could be killed off and with the right circumstances I'd be fine with that.

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Originally Posted by Leareaux

Why is death the only way for these characters to exit a story? Can't they just simply retire or take on a more passive role? I could see Y'shtola taking on a researcher role like Urianger used to.

Personally, I'd like to see most/all the Scions take a back seat next expansion. I find it hard to invest in them as time goes on because somehow they find themselves at the center of every major conflict on the Source and now even the First. I'd rather see an FFXI approach to characters - where the main characters in the expac are assumed to be close to the conflict at hand way before the player steps foot in it.

Obviously now that XIV is 7 years deep into a linear story arc, that wish becomes a bigger ask with each patch. But when the 'Zodiark Arc' is wrapped up I need a clean slate with a tasteful Scion cameo every now and then.

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but but if the scions takes a break who's gonna translate all our nod and expression XD

if anything i want Flhaminn to take some spotlight. after doing DNC quest, she is definitely more than we know.

She's too hot to die. She's also one of the best options for a guest character in other games; plus being pretty much the main "waifu" material in the game. Also, removing the hability to have her in our Trust parties for future Dungeons may not be something people would like. Lyse, on the other hand, could finally be replaced by a superior version, just like Minfilia

regarding thancred I think he is the poster boy of FF14. but he is pretty much done as a character. if we leave the first he lost what he was fighting for. Minfilia is gone. and so is Ryne.
Unless there is a way to bring back Minfilia of course.

Though I don't know why people want to see someone die. ARR killed Moenbryda. though it seems that was her fate from the beginning. HW killed Papalymo. Stormblood didn't kill any of them. just kinda erased Lyse from the Scions.

Maybe someone will not die but stay on the First.

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Originally Posted by Alestorm

What is with the forums and wanting to kill off the Scions lately? This is like the 4th or 5th thread I've seen like this.

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Originally Posted by Leareaux

Why is death the only way for these characters to exit a story? Can't they just simply retire or take on a more passive role? I could see Y'shtola taking on a researcher role like Urianger used to.

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Because people in general are disillusioned by the earlier seasons of Game of Thrones: The idea that character deaths make a story deep, engaging, and meaningful. That works in some cases, but it's not an absolute. Deaths can be meaningless and be executed poorly. If they ever decide to kill of a character, it has to mean something significant to the story and the characters who knew them. Otherwise, it's just shock value (Season 8).

NGL, I think Y'shtola NEEDS to die.... After the stunt she pulled in ShB, I'm still a bit peeved. She does something reckless and giggles like "wew that was a thing huh?".... Mrs. I'm so Careful about balance and aether launches herself into the pit without any thought or plan... I could see her coming back as a "we found a path" or something but she straight up repeats what she did in the end of ARR?... No, I'm ready for her to die, her writing has been used up. Something to note as well, no Scion that is linked to a raid or piece of content can really "die". They can be incapacitated or so on but as far as it goes... the twins are untouchable, Thancred and Urianger now too... Y'shtola is still able I believe though. After being blind and using her aether as is, then getting sliced by Zenos, then the stunt she pulls in ShB.... yeah, she needa go. I'm ready for a replacement on that note, that isn't just another female miqo'te(the idol race).

While I'm not a big fan, I still think Y'shtola is a great character because she is more than the RPG type she would fall under. Yes she is somehow doomed and the "she died oh no she did not" is getting old right now. But she has some sense of humour, which is cruelly lacking in certain characters in my opinion and it helps make it feel more natural and not to "JRPG archetypical" if that makes sense.

I agree that as of now, Thancred has quite outlived his purpose (if he had any), and his 5.X growth was awkward for me (especially because it is hard to make us fell that he has lived 5 years more, grown attached to Ryne etc. when we saw nothing of that) and bound to be over soon with him returning to the Source. It's okay to have more surface characters when there are a lot of them which was the case in ARR, but now that we only have a few of them around us it can lead to an odd feeling compared to other characters. Urianger has the "mystery" trait that pretty much allows anything though.

In any case, I hope 5.3 shakes things up. I don't need blood and deaths though, just making new choices in the writing before it feels some characters are dragged along because they need to fill one role or because they are fan favourites.
We could send Thancred back as a spy / rogue in Illsabard and that would be fine for instance.

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Originally Posted by REPROBEAN_CHILD

Game of Thrones

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I've never watched any Game of Thrones. For me, character death is way to remind the audience that there are stakes for the protagonists. And if it's a sudden, shocking death from something unexpected, then it's usually to instill in the audience that the characters aren't beyond the mundane ways to die.

Not so much in Final Fantasy, but in something like say... Blue Gender, where the military members that pick up the main guy at the start mostly die due to not being properly secured in their seating or from not wearing helmets etc. Just whoopsie doopsie, my chair fell backwards from a shockwave and I snapped my neck! Real world example was, a guy I knew from Scouts slipped in the shower and broke his neck when his head collided with his towel rack.

Obviously not asking for shock value/mundane death, not with how invested in these characters a lot of people get, but at a certain point we need stakes raised and the air of uncertainty let into the story.

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Originally Posted by Vyrerus

I've never watched any Game of Thrones. For me, character death is way to remind the audience that there are stakes for the protagonists. And if it's a sudden, shocking death from something unexpected, then it's usually to instill in the audience that the characters aren't beyond the mundane ways to die.

Not so much in Final Fantasy, but in something like say... Blue Gender, where the military members that pick up the main guy at the start mostly die due to not being properly secured in their seating or from not wearing helmets etc. Just whoopsie doopsie, my chair fell backwards from a shockwave and I snapped my neck! Real world example was, a guy I knew from Scouts slipped in the shower and broke his neck when his head collided with his towel rack.

Obviously not asking for shock value/mundane death, not with how invested in these characters a lot of people get, but at a certain point we need stakes raised and the air of uncertainty let into the story.

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The pitfall Game of Thrones books was that too many interesting character died and you just didn't care about the random grab bag of character that showed up in their place. That's one of the reasons you don't kill off character in a story, because your lose character relationships, story threads get broken and potential character arcs get cut short. Game of Thrones did it well at first because it was entirely logical that the effective protagonist was executed in the first book / first season but it started to turn the story into swiss cheese by book 4-5 seasons 4-5. Killing the character known as Tywin was it mistake, it just removed a very interesting character from the story and made the killer far less interesting.

People often bring up excessive character death as a bad thing, though the opposite is just as bad - if not worse. If barely any characters of note are dying in a story that is supposed to give the impression of high stakes, then things get boring very quickly.

The number of major characters who have perished in FFXIV is very small. Most of the deaths consist of antagonists or minor characters that have otherwise become irrelevant or have just temporarily stepped into the spotlight to give the illusion that they're more important than they actually are.

We've yet to see someone on the same level of importance and influence as, say, Raubahn or Nanamo die. I'd be very impressed if we saw one of Eorzea's leaders die - especially if it led to a period of chaos afterwards due to a lack of an obvious successor.

For a game that tries to put forward political intrigue as a major plot point, it so rarely has it result in lasting negative consequences. Too often everything is wrapped up so cleanly that any sense of loss is immediately cast aside.

I'd also note that FFXIV has an unfortunate habit of killing a character off and then bringing them back, often at the expense of more engaging characters who could otherwise be standing in the spotlight.

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Originally Posted by Valic

Something to note as well, no Scion that is linked to a raid or piece of content can really "die". They can be incapacitated or so on but as far as it goes ... Y'shtola is still able I believe though. .

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By that line of thinking Y'shtola will never die. She's involved in a few cutscenes of the Alexander raids.

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Originally Posted by Ammokkx

By that line of thinking Y'shtola will never die. She's involved in a few cutscenes of the Alexander raids.

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Easily remedied by making them mandatory.

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Originally Posted by Ammokkx

By that line of thinking Y'shtola will never die. She's involved in a few cutscenes of the Alexander raids.

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That's why I'm afraid tbh. Unless they actually go back and consider adding in some form of tweak that happens if you don't do that raid by then... Or as someone said, they become mandatory like the crystal tower raid.

Because the CT series is now mandatory, I guess we could see more characters die or come back. Which honestly, I'd like it better that way, means the dev team can stop doing double or triple work making different dialogues for characters you're supposed to know but don't "officially" know yet, or write themselves in circles trying to make the raid stories self-contained.

I don't think a Scion being linked to something like raid content makes them exempt from death. Said content is encapsulated in the time bubble the rest of its contemporary content exists in... If, for example, you're a newbie making your way through ARR content, knocking out some extra quests here and there. In the event that you see Nanamo "bite the dust" in 2.55 and proceed to do the level 50 culinarian quest where she is all fine and dandy, you're expected to assume that said quest takes place before the Bloody Banquet.

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Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

Per her entry in the lorebook:


I remember the "Archons never aging" thing being mentioned a little bit more in 1.0 but there's been a few throwaway lines in ARR onward that mentioned it, though I can't remember when and where. I thought there was supposed to be a roegadyn Archon out there from the previous era during the Flood, but he hasn't been mentioned since 1.0. Matoya is an Archon and she looks extremely old and has been around for a very, very long time so their aging could just be lengthened greatly.

Thancred only looks older in HW and SB because he has a beard and an eyepatch. He doesn't appear any different to me comparing ARR to ShB.

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Thanks for the quote. Maybe its just me but I read this more as a way to say that they just simply look that age. As in using magic to make them look like the hands of time stopped. Otherwise how powerful would those people be if they cant just age at all.

Well in the expansion right now he is kinda in a special state so not sure if that counts much.

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Originally Posted by REPROBEAN_CHILD

Because people in general are disillusioned by the earlier seasons of Game of Thrones: The idea that character deaths make a story deep, impact, and meaningless. That works in some cases, but it's an an absolute. Deaths can be meaningless and be executed poorly. If they ever decide to kill of a character, it has to mean something significant to the story and the characters who knew them. Otherwise, it's just shock value (Season 8).

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I fully agree and if I have to choose if a character should stay alive or die I would want them to stay alive. Maybe truly having to live with the consequences of their actions. (So in a way like Raubahn losing his arm but with even more suffering after that) BUT if you give a character so many fake deaths than it really is getting annoying. Either kill her off already, or let her live. Dont put her in so many situations where any other normal NPC would have died and she only survived thanks to plot armor. (She should have been chopped in half by the amount of force he used...she should have bleed out since we took time to arrive and nobody was healing her until then.)

Several people have said that the Scions can't die because they're in old raid cutscenes.

... that's probably nonsense. But the 5 Scions on the First (and Ryne) are almost certainly immortal til 6.0, due to the trust leveling system.

doubt she kick the bucket anytime soon, she is the "holmes" of the scion, everytime there is a mystery, she is usually the first one who will either "deduct" or "solve" and then explain to other scion, while everyone just standing there repeating what she says.

holmes: "i get it now, they want to destroy the first!"
alpi: "the first?"
alisae: "first?"
thancred: "they want to destroy what?"
WOL: *surprised pikachu face*

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Originally Posted by Edax

The pitfall Game of Thrones books was that too many interesting character died and you just didn't care about the random grab bag of character that showed up in their place. That's one of the reasons you don't kill off character in a story, because your lose character relationships, story threads get broken and potential character arcs get cut short. Game of Thrones did it well at first because it was entirely logical that the effective protagonist was executed in the first book / first season but it started to turn the story into swiss cheese by book 4-5 seasons 4-5. Killing the character known as Tywin was it mistake, it just removed a very interesting character from the story and made the killer far less interesting.

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I don't think they kill major characters for real enough in FFXIV to turn the story into a character devoid barren, and they also do a decent job at keeping side characters coming back... even if sometimes they seem sorta outta place or just tacked on.

Of course, it partially feels that way because we wait for 3~6 months at a time to read the next chapter, so the lesser characters kinda get memory holed.

There have been 8 major Scion characters and 2 of them are dead by now in 7/9 years of the game's history. That's a pretty big number already in my opinion. The rest are more supporting characters and I don't think it should count either way if they died.

Any Scions you can level in Trusts will likely never die.

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Originally Posted by Goji1639

Any Scions you can level in Trusts will likely never die.

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I mean technically its just their soul you are partying with in the First after all it just their corporeal spirit that made it over. Crystal Monarch essentially help create a body for them. The WoL is the only one that made it over to the first, with body and spirit intact. It could be someone gets trapped in the first in that state and to never return to the source. Not necessarily a death but it does remove them.

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Originally Posted by Valic

That's why I'm afraid tbh. Unless they actually go back and consider adding in some form of tweak that happens if you don't do that raid by then... Or as someone said, they become mandatory like the crystal tower raid.

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They don't bother with retrofitting the story already, so if she did die, it's unlikely they will change the Alexander story. Example: You can still interact with Estinien in the dragoon job quests in his human form between the time he turns into Nidhogg and the time you restore his human form.

That said... Y'Shtola is considered the "main" character for products like the Dissidia games, which makes her feel more safe than any other character in the game. Additionally, she's one of if not the most popular NPC in Japan. And while that doesn't entirely make her immune to an in-game death, it does provide her another layer of protection over any of the other scions.