Still the Warrior of Light in 6.x and beyond? [Spoilers through ShB]

Because of time travel, I would not be surprised if WoL is what inspired Elidibus and Venat to maintain and spread the idea of "Warrior of Light"

I think Hydaeyln's Blessing is still around, but with her gone maybe it will fade in time? In either case, I'm hoping 6.xx patches will be us slowly shifting away from the Ancients and their influences and move on. Maybe we'll lose the power of Azem's crystal

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Originally Posted by KariTheFox

"Hydaelyn's blessing" was a simple traveller's ward that Venat used to protect people from aetheric corruption. Does she still need to be alive for it to function? Hard to say, but given the warding scales provide basically the same function to any npc that has one, taking that power away from the WoL now seems a little pointless narratively speaking.

As for the crystals if light, didn't we break them during the hydaelyn fight? Whatever that means.

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That may have been what it was at its base form but as a primal she is imbuing more power than that into the WoL, which we can tell from the entire narrative behind the crystals of light, Midgadsormr de-activating it because it taxed her so much (something the Ascians confirm too, and which is shown in Praetorium) and also so that your character could cease leaning on her so much, the whole process of re-activating it, as well as the Blessing being seen as pivotal for wielding the lightwarden aether on the First and also when Hades curses it during the fight with him. I would say that if it's of a kind with other primal blessings, yes, she probably does need to be around for it to function. Her remaining power was slurped up by Zenos, so unless there's other shards of her that are hooked in, it's probably gone. The Azem crystal appears to have overtaken it, along with having gained another soul shard in SHB and I also suspect they are intending to dial down the stakes a bit for the foreseeable future if this is anything to go by. As to the traveller's ward? Who can say, but I suspect like Emet's reconstruction of Amaurot, that too would fade in time with her death.

I am really hoping we go back to adventurers. Maybe some non heroic dialogue options. Maybe we get some revenge on people who wronged us in the past?

So sick of being a hero.

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Originally Posted by Necrotica

I am really hoping we go back to adventurers. Maybe some non heroic dialogue options. Maybe we get some revenge on people who wronged us in the past?

So sick of being a hero.

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Well, I'm sorry to say but you're playing the wrong game here if that is what truely what you want - in the FF series you are never anything but 'the hero' (of course, there is a certain moral ambuguity within many FF games questioning that where the meaning of 'hero' is stretched a little), but at their core, every FF game you're always a protagonist trying to right the wrongs in their world and fighting the forces that would threaten or destroy it.

And in FFXIV especially, what sets an 'adventurer' apart from a common sellsword or mercenary is exactly that - altruism and a willingness to help those in need, even if you get nothing in return. And yes although there is a few times where the WoL gets frustrated by the world letting them down and people being.. well.. people, and you have a dialogue choice that reflects their frustration (the DRK questline especially), they're still fundamentally a kind, compassionate soul that only wants to help others and make the world a better place, and any such frustrations are usually reflected simply with slight sarcasm or humour.

FFXIV is simply never going to be an edgy/grimdark game despite covering some very dark topics and situations, that's how the series has always been, and FFXIV is no exception.

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Originally Posted by Necrotica

I am really hoping we go back to adventurers. Maybe some non heroic dialogue options. Maybe we get some revenge on people who wronged us in the past?

So sick of being a hero.

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Outside of Lolorito, who's even 'wronged us' who we didn't end up royally serving or seeing die anyway?

...is it just Lolorito? Do you just want to cause a diplomatic incident out of vengeance?

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Originally Posted by Enkidoh

FFXIV is simply never going to be an edgy/grimdark game despite covering some very dark topics and situations, that's how the series has always been, and FFXIV is no exception.

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Not sure where you’re getting this from. The series has always typically been incredibly edgy and grim dark. FF6,7,8,10,13,type 0 just to name a few examples. Even 14 is pretty edgy and grim dark in the earlier expansions, it’s just that they stopped with it around stormblood sadly.

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Originally Posted by KizuyaKatogami

Not sure where you’re getting this from. The series has always typically been incredibly edgy and grim dark. FF6,7,8,10,13,type 0 just to name a few examples. Even 14 is pretty edgy and grim dark in the earlier expansions, it’s just that they stopped with it around stormblood sadly.

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I loved FF8. Mercenary for hire, willing to kidnap, assassinate, fight in wars, and getting paid for it. And while the person in charge may have been taking some of the jobs for moral reasons, Squall was just doing what he was paid to do. And his frustration with Rinoa's do-gooder naivete in the early missions was extremely relatable. Later on he does more good, but it is not to save the world. It is to save the person he cares about, even if saving her risks the end of the world.

WoL is just too...Jedi like. They will not let personal feelings prevent them from acting 'FOR THE GREATER GOOD'.

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Originally Posted by KizuyaKatogami

Not sure where you’re getting this from. The series has always typically been incredibly edgy and grim dark. FF6,7,8,10,13,type 0 just to name a few examples. Even 14 is pretty edgy and grim dark in the earlier expansions, it’s just that they stopped with it around stormblood sadly.

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While the only FF game I've ever played for any substantive amount of time is FF14, so I can't really talk about the others, I wouldn't say FF14 is a particularly grim dark game. If you've ever read a single Warhammer 40K novel you can easily see that FF14's story, no matter how dark it gets, and Endwalker's existentialism did so, barely holds a candle to the edgy grim darkness of the franchise from whom the term grim dark quite literally originated.

Edit: This is not to say that the game can't be dark and/or edgy, simply that it isn't that dark/edgy that it becomes a grim dark story. And as far as I am aware, the term grim dark originates from the tagline of Warhammer 40K "In the grim darkness of the far future there is only war"

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Originally Posted by KizuyaKatogami

FF6,7,8,10,13,type 0 just to name a few examples. Even 14 is pretty edgy and grim dark in the earlier expansions, it’s just that they stopped with it around stormblood sadly.

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Honestly if your standard for "grimdark" is those ff games then I fail to see how the depiction of the empire's oppression in Stormblood, the body horror in Shadowbringers, the Garlemald zone, and the second half of Thavanair don't all qualify.

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Originally Posted by KariTheFox

Honestly if your standard for "grimdark" is those ff games then I fail to see how the depiction of the empire's oppression in Stormblood, the body horror in Shadowbringers, the Garlemald zone, and the second half of Thavanair don't all qualify.

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The body horror in shadowbringers was what, one scene? And of someone we hardly knew. Second half of thavnair was pretty dark but ultimately short lived. Same with Garlemald. Didn’t help that directly after we’re having a lunch date with the scions. Compare it though to earlier 14 where the very first dungeon you do is the abode of a bunch of pirates housing kidnapped children and sex slaves, one of the 50 dungeons being about a woman who couldn’t deal with the death of her beloved so she turned to necromancy,body defilement,zombification etc to try and bring him back, ultimately cherishing his severed head.

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Originally Posted by KizuyaKatogami

The body horror in shadowbringers was what, one scene? And of someone we hardly knew. Second half of thavnair was pretty dark but ultimately short lived. Same with Garlemald. Didn’t help that directly after we’re having a lunch date with the scions. Compare it though to earlier 14 where the very first dungeon you do is the abode of a bunch of pirates housing kidnapped children and sex slaves, one of the 50 dungeons being about a woman who couldn’t deal with the death of her beloved so she turned to necromancy,body defilement,zombification etc to try and bring him back, ultimately cherishing his severed head.

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If being short lived is a disqualifying characteristic then I would argue that both of your examples combined are more short lived than the second half of Thavnir. Let alone the other darker parts of Stormblood, Shadowbringers and Endwalker, for example Yotsuyu's childhood and teenage abuse at the hands of her family before being married off and latter being forced into prostitution, Yotsuyu's rein of terror in Doma, including but not limited to making family members kill each other to prove their loyalty to her, Eulmore and eating the flesh of its own sin eaterified populace without knowing they were doing so (Soylent green), the WOL being corrupted into a monster by the light aether they absorbed with the intent of saving a world, the existential nihilism of all of the dead races in Endwalker, Endwalker bringing up the eventual heat death of the universe and the finite nature of all life, Fordola massacring her own troops to try and halt the alliance during the second half of Ala Migho, and Meteion's quest to permanently kill every living being in the universe just to name a few.

Of course if we look outside of FF then we can find franchises that are even more grim dark than those, Halo with a collection of genocidal fanatics trying to kill every last human and the flood, a terrifying body horror plague that corrupts all living beings in the universe and that was only stopped by first wiping out all life in the universe to stop its spread, and not to mention the grandfather of grim dark Warhammer 40K. It has the works, four gods determined to flood the universe in either blood, plagues, hedonism or treachery and mutation, a hive mind hell bent on consuming all life in the galaxy, mid controlling space communists, the orks whose only purpose in life is to fight anyone and everyone, plus countless species who only want to destroy or enslave humanity just to name a few.

tldr, FF14 can get grim dark but it is a drop in the ocean when looking at what grim darkness trully is.

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Originally Posted by Kordarion

If being short lived is a disqualifying characteristic then I would argue that both of your examples combined are more short lived than the second half of Thavnir. Let alone the other darker parts of Stormblood, Shadowbringers and Endwalker, for example Yotsuyu's childhood and teenage abuse at the hands of her family before being married off and latter being forced into prostitution, Yotsuyu's rein of terror in Doma, including but not limited to making family members kill each other to prove their loyalty to her, Eulmore and eating the flesh of its own sin eaterified populace without knowing they were doing so (Soylent green), the WOL being corrupted into a monster by the light aether they absorbed with the intent of saving a world, the existential nihilism of all of the dead races in Endwalker, Endwalker bringing up the eventual heat death of the universe and the finite nature of all life, Fordola massacring her own troops to try and halt the alliance during the second half of Ala Migho, and Meteion's quest to permanently kill every living being in the universe just to name a few.

Of course if we look outside of FF then we can find franchises that are even more grim dark than those, Halo with a collection of genocidal fanatics trying to kill every last human and the flood, a terrifying body horror plague that corrupts all living beings in the universe and that was only stopped by first wiping out all life in the universe to stop its spread, and not to mention the grandfather of grim dark Warhammer 40K. It has the works, four gods determined to flood the universe in either blood, plagues, hedonism or treachery and mutation, a hive mind hell bent on consuming all life in the galaxy, mid controlling space communists, the orks whose only purpose in life is to fight anyone and everyone, plus countless species who only want to destroy or enslave humanity just to name a few.

tldr, FF14 can get grim dark but it is a drop in the ocean when looking at what grim darkness trully is.

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I never said compared to other game series it’s nearly as dark as them. I was simply saying to say the series isn’t that dark or grim makes me think people haven’t actually played the other games in the series lol. You are correct about some of those examples, a few i had forgotten about. One i will say i kind of disagree with us the WoL turning into a sineater one, just because everyone knows from the get-go we aren’t going to turn. It’s why a lot of that threat felt a bit fake. Unfortunately it’s an mmo so we know we’re going to make it out fine. It’s why however the ticking time bomb on the scions was pretty well done.

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Originally Posted by KizuyaKatogami

I never said compared to other game series it’s nearly as dark as them. I was simply saying to say the series isn’t that dark or grim makes me think people haven’t actually played the other games in the series lol. You are correct about some of those examples, a few i had forgotten about. One i will say i kind of disagree with us the WoL turning into a sineater one, just because everyone knows from the get-go we aren’t going to turn. It’s why a lot of that threat felt a bit fake. Unfortunately it’s an mmo so we know we’re going to make it out fine. It’s why however the ticking time bomb on the scions was pretty well done.

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Fair enough, I only have a basic understanding of the plots of other games in the series so I can't really speak on them when it comes to grim darkness but I think, at least, a game or property has to be incredibly dark to classify as grim dark rather than just regular old dark. Also the reason I brought up the WOL sineater thing is because even though it was evidently never going to be the status quo, same as Zenos' body stealing episode in Garlemald, the fact that the writers even dangled such an outcome in front of us in-game is pretty dark to begin with.

Edit: In hindsight I've realised FF14 can be pretty grim dark and that ultimately, for me what stops it becoming fully grim dark is that there are people, like the WOL, who fight for a better future and win, in the process enacting change for the better. Truly grim dark stories are unable to clamber there way out of that grim darkness while a story like FF14 can, see the peace with the beast races, peacefully ending the dragon song war, saving the first, averting multiple calamities, overthrowing the Garlean empire without replacing it with something equally as bad, convincing the Omicrons to find a better future for themselves or beating the literal avatar of despair.

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Originally Posted by KizuyaKatogami

Not sure where you’re getting this from. The series has always typically been incredibly edgy and grim dark. FF6,7,8,10,13,type 0 just to name a few examples. Even 14 is pretty edgy and grim dark in the earlier expansions, it’s just that they stopped with it around stormblood sadly.

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Somehow that list expertly missed almost all the ones that actually kill party members (you left out 2, 3, 4, 5, 9, 12, 13-2, 15). I'd say 2 is probably the darkest the series ever got. You're missing out if you haven't played it.

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Originally Posted by Fenral

Somehow that list expertly missed almost all the ones that actually kill party members (you left out 2, 3, 4, 5, 9, 12, 13-2, 15). I'd say 2 is probably the darkest the series ever got. You're missing out if you haven't played it.

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I’ve played it. I don’t necessarily equate grim dark to killing off party members,depends how it’s done imo. But true there’s some pretty oof stuff in 2. I’ve played every game in the series outside of 11 :p I did say 13 in which i mean the 13 trilogy.In terms of darkest in the series i dont think anything holds a candle to Type-0. There's a reason it was the first rated M game in the series.

Poor 2. Nobody remembers 2 and the mountain of dead guest player members (ok, Scott wasn't a party member until Dawn of Souls). Or that you're starting off -after an unwinnable fight- in a world that has been almost all been conquered and overrun with monsters from hell. Josep, Min-wu, Ricard... You get Leon as the OG Dark Knight brother-turned-evil then a last minute redemption joins party.
But to actually rec that game to someone? The amount of grinding that I did outside Kashun against goblins meant that FFII's battle theme was triggering me when it reappeared as the Hall of Novice music. Very much a love/hate relationship with everything from that game. Though it'd be nice if the next WHM AF gear was inspired by Min-wu.

Just grind defense by smacking yourself in the face repeatedly. Duh.

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Originally Posted by Fenral

Just grind defense by smacking yourself in the face repeatedly. Duh.

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those poor baffled goblins waiting for me to stopping hitting myself

While Final Fantasy can (and often does) touch heavy subject matter, it has never been grimdark. There is always hope and a happy ending waiting for the protagonists, even if it takes a ton of effort and there's no guarantee said happy ending will last. Grimdark is typically given a "the world is shit, nothing you can do will improve it, just try to survive" feel.

... which I can't objectively speak to, but XIV has never felt that way. A Realm Reborn has being instrumental in saving Eorzea from Garlean conquest, later repelling primal threats while working with Alphinaud to build a non-political military force that can act freely. That goes south due to Teledji, but after that it's been nothing but up - we expose the lies behind and stop the perpetuation of the Dragonsong War, liberate Doma and Ala Mhigo from Imperial oppression, and drag the First back from the brink - saving the Source in the process. Endwalker sees it climax with us saving not just Etheriys but the universe not only from a premature heat death but from Meteion hoarding souls in Ultima Thule so new life outside Etheirys could instantiate once more.

That's not to say the story has no grim or dark moments, but tonally it's never gone there. Costs are paid but hope lives on.

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Originally Posted by Cilia

While Final Fantasy can (and often does) touch heavy subject matter, it has never been grimdark. There is always hope and a happy ending waiting for the protagonists, even if it takes a ton of effort and there's no guarantee said happy ending will last. Grimdark is typically given a "the world is shit, nothing you can do will improve it, just try to survive" feel.

... which I can't objectively speak to, but XIV has never felt that way. A Realm Reborn has being instrumental in saving Eorzea from Garlean conquest, later repelling primal threats while working with Alphinaud to build a non-political military force that can act freely. That goes south due to Teledji, but after that it's been nothing but up - we expose the lies behind and stop the perpetuation of the Dragonsong War, liberate Doma and Ala Mhigo from Imperial oppression, and drag the First back from the brink - saving the Source in the process. Endwalker sees it climax with us saving not just Etheriys but the universe not only from a premature heat death but from Meteion hoarding souls in Ultima Thule so new life outside Etheirys could instantiate once more.

That's not to say the story has no grim or dark moments, but tonally it's never gone there. Costs are paid but hope lives on.

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ff13-2 doesn’t have a very happy ending tbf. I disagree that the tone has never been dark. I definitely think it was there in ARR and HW. Yes while hope lives on, many don’t live to see that. That’s one of the harsh realities that used to be in the game. No one is safe, everyone is human. We see this fairly early on with ARR with the invasion of the waking sands. We see it with Edda as well. Peoples own stories cut short in horrible ways. Not to mention there’s a ton of the messed up things on the side, like Uldah zombifying an entire city state etc.

Even putting aside the other Final Fantasy games, there's the simple fact that FFXIV is an MMO and by their very nature such games seek to appeal to a broad and diverse audience. It's perfectly possible for the game to set out to tell a variety of different stories throughout the duration of its existence - and not all of those stories or characters will appeal to absolutely everybody, nor should they given that things would be rather bland if everybody settled for just fawning over the same handful of characters at every turn.

If we do look to the other Final Fantasy games, though, I'd note that each one typically sets out to do something different in order to set itself apart from the others. Stories also, by their very nature, are taken very different by the one partaking of them. What is 'hopeful' to one person does not necessarily come off as such to someone else.

There's many different elements to consider. Localisation differences alone mean that some things might hit completely differently, though one's background, culture and other beliefs will impact how they see specific characters and factions. Such is particularly true of those who recognise nuance and do not cling to the habit of pushing things in one of two categories such as 'good' or 'evil'.

At any rate, I for one am delighted to see a return to being a humble adventurer! There's so many different things to see and do that I do not doubt that we will be kept very busy!

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Originally Posted by Cilia

While Final Fantasy can (and often does) touch heavy subject matter, it has never been grimdark. There is always hope and a happy ending waiting for the protagonists, even if it takes a ton of effort and there's no guarantee said happy ending will last. Grimdark is typically given a "the world is shit, nothing you can do will improve it, just try to survive" feel.

... which I can't objectively speak to, but XIV has never felt that way. A Realm Reborn has being instrumental in saving Eorzea from Garlean conquest, later repelling primal threats while working with Alphinaud to build a non-political military force that can act freely. That goes south due to Teledji, but after that it's been nothing but up - we expose the lies behind and stop the perpetuation of the Dragonsong War, liberate Doma and Ala Mhigo from Imperial oppression, and drag the First back from the brink - saving the Source in the process. Endwalker sees it climax with us saving not just Etheriys but the universe not only from a premature heat death but from Meteion hoarding souls in Ultima Thule so new life outside Etheirys could instantiate once more.

That's not to say the story has no grim or dark moments, but tonally it's never gone there. Costs are paid but hope lives on.

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Yeah, 'grimdark' is a term coined to describe Warhammer 40k. Trying to use it to describe any Final Fantasy, which are all ultimately hopeful and positive even when extremely bad things happen, is either completely misusing the term or dreadfully misreading Final Fantasy.