Meteion vs WoW's The Jailer (Spoilers)

Well, I didn't write the story, I'm just explaining it lol. I suppose all I can ask you is: is the sole reason you decide to get out of bed every day "because god" and nothing else?

It doesn't have to be something big. "It's the little things in life, eh?"

Everyone has things personal to them that make life worth living... I'd hope, at least.

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

You should stay far away from JRPGs then, because this is pretty standard fare for them.

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In JRPGs I'm not my character.

Xenogears was awesome, the lore, story, world, morals. But at the end of the day it's another world and characters a part from you.

In FFXIV it's another world but we are our character. You can't just handwave it off like 'i don't support that.'

I guess it could be argued the gods in FFXIV didn't create everything even existence itself and aren't love itself, whereas ours is, so they don't really have a choice to depend on a REAL god. Just man pretending to be.

Guess that will be my reasoning.

The problem with the Jailer (or Zovaal, if you prefer) is that he was retconned into being the main antagonist of the entire franchise. Every single piece on the board was rewritten so as to have him pulling the strings, from before even Orcs & Humans all the way up until Battle for Azeroth and into Shadowlands. Furthermore despite being talked up as a big threat, the exact details of his plan remain extremely vague throughout the expansion - it was theorized the Arbiter was crafted as his replacement (which turned out to be true), but so what? Why is he doing what he is, other than to reclaim his "rightful" position as the judge of the dead? Why should we agree with him, other than Sylvanas' "death is unfair" nonsense, and considering his behavior makes it abundantly clear he's up to no good?

Meteion isn't antagonistic on her own, unlike Zovaal. She just represents existential despair due to the nature of her existence and how the metaphysics of the world work, and is responsible for a calamity exposited upon in just the previous expansion. She hasn't been pulling two dozen strings throughout the game's life, and isn't used as an explanation for the horrid actions of other characters (e.g. Sylvanas burning down Teldrassil and genociding the Night Elves for Zovaal).

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Originally Posted by Nekaru_Infitima

I guess it could be argued the gods in FFXIV didn't create everything even existence itself and aren't love itself, whereas ours is, so they don't really have a choice to depend on a REAL god. Just man pretending to be.

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It has nothing to do with whether they did or didn't create everything. In a sense, the Ancients could create anything they wanted to create, and in another sense, I think it's hard to describe what Venat/Hydaelyn feel as anything but boundless unconditional love for humanity. But they don't define why we choose to suffer and live, rather than embrace the "peace" of a nihilistic self-destruction. We make the best out of the lives we're given, no matter how uniquely bitter and painful it may be at times.

It feels like you're just being disingenuous about it, if you're trying to use the "power" of the gods as a way to handwave the entire philosophical foundations behind the literal entire game. Even supposing they were omniscient, it still doesn't mean we don't independently prescribe our own meaning to our own lives.

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Originally Posted by KatsuraJun

It has nothing to do with whether they did or didn't create everything. In a sense, the Ancients could create anything they wanted to create, and in another sense, I think it's hard to describe what Venat/Hydaelyn feel as anything but boundless unconditional love for humanity. But they don't define why we choose to suffer and live, rather than embrace the "peace" of a nihilistic self-destruction. We make the best out of the lives we're given, no matter how uniquely bitter and painful it may be at times.

It feels like you're just being disingenuous about it, if you're trying to use the "power" of the gods as a way to handwave the entire philosophical foundations behind the literal entire game. Even supposing they were omniscient, it still mean we don't independently prescribe our own meaning to our own lives.

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Disingenuous? I'm trying to find a reason I can still play this damn game, so sorry you're against that.

I'm saying IRL Jehovah created everything even the universe around. Thus we owe it to him to worship, and only his kingdom can bring about true hope and end sufffering. In the game, they have creators but no one creator that is owed and is the end-all to all evil. A god that is love itself. That we can rely on. They only had themselves and false gods to rely on.

That is the difference that allows it.

It's disingenuous because you're kinda ignoring what the game is literally trying to say in favor of crafting a narrative that lets you continue enjoying the game guilt-free against whatever you believe in.

If that's not disingenuous then I'm not sure what is. If your belief system isn't compatible with what the writers were trying to express, wouldn't it be more honest, to, y'know, confront it? Instead of trying to have your cake and eat it too. But what do I know, I guess...?

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Originally Posted by Nekaru_Infitima

Disingenuous? I'm trying to find a reason I can still play this damn game, so sorry you're against that.

I'm saying IRL Jehovah created everything even the universe around. Thus we owe it to him to worship, and only his kingdom can bring about true hope and end sufffering. In the game, they have creators but no one creator that is owed and is the end-all to all evil. A god that is love itself. That we can rely on. They only had themselves and false gods to rely on.

That is the difference that allows it.

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I really don't think the public forums of an MMO is the place to be pushing one's own religion, and I imagine it's a very quick way to get threads closed. Faith is ultimately not the same as fact--it is one's own personal choice, and it would be respectful for each of us not parade our own faiths as objective truth in a setting like this.

Regardless, though, we're ultimately talking about a game and not real life. Playing a game does not inherently mean you are condoning the actions of the characters on screen in the real world. I don't eat meat, but that doesn't mean I'm a hypocrite for having my character in game eating fried chicken when I go raiding. It's about making the distinction between what is fiction and what is reality.

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Originally Posted by KatsuraJun

It's disingenuous because you're kinda ignoring what the game is literally trying to say in favor of crafting a narrative that lets you continue enjoying the game guilt-free against whatever you believe in.

If that's not disingenuous then I'm not sure what is. If your belief system isn't compatible with what the writers were trying to express, wouldn't it be more honest, to, y'know, confront it? Instead of trying to have your cake and eat it too. But what do I know, I guess...?

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It's not disengenous.

THEY DO NOT HAVE A ACTUAL GOD. We were introduced to the Universe, if the Ancients didn't know it, then obviously they didn't create the universe itself just their planets species. They don't have an all-time creator god of EVERYTHING. We do. Or at least our beliefs say we do. So they had no one to fall back on that could snap the issue with Meteion away, or who created life to never have suffering until sin.

Our origin stories are different. Their gods turned out to be false and through belief and aether. Our god would have created the aether itself if that were our world. So until we know the origins of the 12 and if they are real or just man-made too.

Then the universe are completely different.

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Originally Posted by Nekaru_Infitima

So they had no one to fall back on that could snap the issue with Meteion away

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See, I'm not sure how you don't seem to see that what you said there literally goes against the entire theme of the story, which is, yes, meant to parallel real life philosophical concepts.

If you have a problem with the philosophy that inspired the writing of the game... then you have a problem with the philosophy that inspired the writing of the game. It doesn't suddenly just detach itself from its real life sources of inspiration just because you personally don't agree with it. You can disagree with it, sure, but to cheapen the amount of time and effort the writers spent researching the subject and crafting a decade-long story to express the ideas they wanted to express by pretending it doesn't have any application to real life, is frankly disrespectful.

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Originally Posted by KatsuraJun

See, I'm not sure how you don't seem to see that what you said there literally goes against the entire theme of the story, which is, yes, meant to parallel real life philosophical concepts.

If you have a problem with the philosophy that inspired the writing of the game... then you have a problem with the philosophy that inspired the writing of the game. It doesn't suddenly just detach itself from its real life sources of inspiration just because you personally don't agree with it. You can disagree with it, sure, but to cheapen the amount of time and effort the writers spent researching the subject and crafting a decade-long story to express the ideas they wanted to express by pretending it doesn't have any application to real life, is frankly disrespectful.

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You understood nothing.

Also your interpretation of the philosophy doesn't mean that's what they were going with. There are several interpretations people have found. You seem to be arrogant to think you know what they were going for without knowing their mind. I'm done with you and adding you to the many people on here I have ignored.

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

Interesting, and it's definitely something I could see being the case. If Dynamis is powered by emotions, then a DRK, who harnesses their emotions for power, is a master of a form of Dynamis. The same could be said of Warrior, who unleashes their inner rage. It's possible that BLU may also be a manipulator of Dynamis, considering that while you are able to copy the moves of monsters, you'd also need to know the circumstances of how and why they use them before being able to harness them yourself.

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...On second check, I think I was half-awake when I read Sidurgu's dialogue, since he makes no mention of the dark arts or dynamis, just finding your tales of world-saving absurd yet believable yet again.

Virtually all of the job/class trainers (DoH/L included) have new dialogue after the end of 6.0 MSQ, but nothing particularly insightful.

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Originally Posted by Nekaru_Infitima

You understood nothing.

Also your interpretation of the philosophy doesn't mean that's what they were going with. There are several interpretations people have found. You seem to be arrogant to think you know what they were going for without knowing their mind. I'm done with you and adding you to the many people on here I have ignored.

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Yes, I'm sure them using terms like Entelechy, words literally coined by Aristotle, were a total coincidence. Well, you can believe whatever you want to believe, I guess. Cognitive dissonance at it's best, lol.

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Originally Posted by Dagget

Normally, it is poor writing to add in a plot element that was not in any way known earlier in a long story mystery, but in Endwalker we have Meteion introduced for the 1st time as the core trouble behind the End of Days. Over in WoWland we have The Jailer introduced for the 1st time as the puppeteer behind most everything that happened before.

So far, consensus seems to be no real complaints about Meteion being brought into the narrative while there seems to be a lot of griping about The Jailer being brought in as a plot device in WoW.

Thoughts?

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While I thought Meteion being the mastermind behind the finals days was kinda lame, the writers had to add something in to explain the final days. Up until Endwalker, the actual cause of the final days was a mystery.

We won't see a lot of complaints about Meteion because many FFXIV fans will refuse to see anything wrong with the game. The wow community has no such reservations though. They'll trash their game any chance they get.

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Originally Posted by kpxmanifesto

While I thought Meteion being the mastermind behind the finals days was kinda lame, the writers had to add something in to explain the final days. Up until Endwalker, the actual cause of the final days was a mystery.

We won't see a lot of complaints about Meteion because many FFXIV fans will refuse to see anything wrong with the game. The wow community has no such reservations though. They'll trash their game any chance they get.

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Lmao FFXIV fans still clown on Stormbloods writing till this day.

And the Wow community doesnt have reservations talking about how bad the story is because its abysmal beyond words. Nothing in XIV or frankly ANY FF game comes close to being half as dumb and intellectually offensive as Wow's story has been for near two decades, especially the last two expansions.

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Originally Posted by Slatersev

Lmao FFXIV fans still clown on Stormbloods writing till this day.

And the Wow community doesnt have reservations talking about how bad the story is because its abysmal beyond words. Nothing in XIV or frankly ANY FF game comes close to being half as dumb and intellectually offensive as Wow's story has been for near two decades, especially the last two expansions.

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I haven't heard anything about Stormblood. What's the issue? All I ever see on reddit or twitch is if someone says something bad about FFXIV they get brigaded by a bunch of angry FF fans.

I think Meteion was reasonably handled, given they had kept the concept of what she was unmentioned in 99% of the game earlier. I do think Venat was the real standout in terms of adding a new character and fleshing them out to be a hero on the level of our own WoL, though A lot of ppl do take that cutscene a bit too literally and don't realize it is presented metaphorically.

It's a videogame. You have to end up fighting something in the end. However there are some genious twists here no one seems to talk about. My personale favourite was that once you arrive to the end of the universe (Ultima Thule, wasn't it? I'm not very good with names. Remeber the "Thule" thought, that a pretty funny choice of a name, but I digress) your companions begin to drop as flies. First Thancred. That Meteion told us "yeah, he dead, you suck, lol" just like that shocked me to the core. Then all of them begin the sacrifice rulette and by the time Y'shtola went down it was pretty obvious that they weren't dying at all. It was a trick, or we have someway to call them back, or something of the sort. You don't kill your protagonists like that. The sadness wasn't even there.
And then, suddenly, when I was thinking "meh" Zenos appears and he becomes the real last boss of the MSQ. And then, the slide of pictures begin, my poor blood thirsty scythe wielding bunny girl laying almost dead, closing her eyes to oblivion... I know this is an MMO. PC can't die, and remain dead. And still... This is a Final Fantasy too, after all. Doubt swarm my mind. It was like the death of Aurenne back on GW2. Sudden, and shocking. I swear I was looking at the screen for those two cutscenes without even blink. All the shock and sadness that was denied during the suposed final ordeal was suddenly there, once the world's ending threat was already dealt with. My character, that was survived with no scratch through the fight against the forces of darkness and entropy suddenly being killed by some random final PvP duel. That was a struck of geniality in game narrative.
Things like that are proof of two things. First, make you feel the tension by making not even your own character as safe as you think, making you believe, even for a second, that they are crazy enough to even kill the main character. Or at least to think about it. And second, that this was planned already. Probably not to the letter, and probably changed by time and events, and schedules, but the main thing was already written somewhere. WoW isn't. It feels totally disconected with it's own lore, and feels like they have no idea where they are going to, probably leading towards some disapointing conclusion, and with 0 risks along the way. During last two expac. your character isn't even there. It's mostly Jaina, Sylvanas, Anduin and he's wolf, the tauren chief and the ork jesus (don't remember their names XD), and tyrande running around yolo, leroy jenkinging every Thorgast level. That's why WoW is disapointing while FFXIV isn't. However I disagree considering FFXIV's story the best There are great MMO stories out there. TESO sidequests and plots are quite good. SWTOR first story arch was excelent, and the Ethernal Throne saga wasn't as bad as many put it, by far. Characters like Lana Beniko or Kira, and the emperor... Good, best villain 2018. And I'm sorry but GW2 is great too.

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Originally Posted by Dagget

I think Meteion was reasonably handled, given they had kept the concept of what she was unmentioned in 99% of the game earlier. I do think Venat was the real standout in terms of adding a new character and fleshing them out to be a hero on the level of our own WoL, though A lot of ppl do take that cutscene a bit too literally and don't realize it is presented metaphorically.

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Yeah, SE did the best they could with such a character. I personally thought she was a poor choice, but SE made the most of it.

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Originally Posted by kpxmanifesto

I haven't heard anything about Stormblood. What's the issue? All I ever see on reddit or twitch is if someone says something bad about FFXIV they get brigaded by a bunch of angry FF fans.

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Stormblood is considered the weakest expansion because of terrible pacing leaving Gyr Abania severely underutilized and subpar writing during that "half" of the story, which leads to Lyse going from a ditzy martial artist to a full-fledged military leader seemingly overnight. Further the main antagonist, Zenos, isn't well-written and has a disappointing motive behind his actions compared to every other antagonist.

World of WarCraft does have some good expansions - Wrath of the Lich King and Legion are definite high points - but most of the time it's just going to kill a baddie trying to cause lots of death and destruction with no other goal. "He went crazy and evil" is also often used as an excuse to fight lore-important characters (BC Illidan, Malygos, etc).

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Originally Posted by kpxmanifesto

Yeah, SE did the best they could with such a character. I personally thought she was a poor choice, but SE made the most of it.

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She wasn't even an antagonist. She was saddled with the negative emotions of hundreds of races and was merely directing the wave of negative emotion. Her mental process literally snapped and the Final Days was the result.

We were not fighting an individual, we defeated an amalgamation of all the despair felt by all the various races that she encountered in her journey.

In defeating that, we showed her that despair and self destruction wasn't the only path.
Effectively giving the answer to the question she was sent to the stars with.

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Originally Posted by Sylve

She wasn't even an antagonist. She was saddled with the negative emotions of hundreds of races and was merely directing the wave of negative emotion. Her mental process literally snapped and the Final Days was the result.

We were not fighting an individual, we defeated an amalgamation of all the despair felt by all the various races that she encountered in her journey.

In defeating that, we showed her that despair and self destruction wasn't the only path.
Effectively giving the answer to the question she was sent to the stars with.

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I've seen other people say what you're saying before, but I'd have to disagree with this interpretation/opinion. The whole "Meteion wasn't the antagonist, it was negative emotion" interpretation comes off as unreasonable. If Meteion never existed, the final days never would've happened. Negative emotion would always exist with or without Meteion. The whole FFXIV story would never have happened without Meteion.

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Originally Posted by Cilia

World of WarCraft does have some good expansions - Wrath of the Lich King and Legion are definite high points - but most of the time it's just going to kill a baddie trying to cause lots of death and destruction with no other goal. "He went crazy and evil" is also often used as an excuse to fight lore-important characters (BC Illidan, Malygos, etc).

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To be fair, as an excuse for plot stuff "because Old Gods" and "because Ascians" aren't that different.

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Originally Posted by Brightamethyst

To be fair, as an excuse for plot stuff "because Old Gods" and "because Ascians" aren't that different.

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In a sense, but the people the Ascians manipulate tend to have motivations beyond 'they were corrupted/driven insane.'

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Originally Posted by Brightamethyst

To be fair, as an excuse for plot stuff "because Old Gods" and "because Ascians" aren't that different.

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The Ascians have motivations, the Old Gods do not. They're just evil because evil. The people the Ascians manipulate also have goals of their own and believable reasons to fall into the Ascians' trap, instead of just "evil crazy cultist got mind controlled by a tentacle monster".

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Originally Posted by Brightamethyst

To be fair, as an excuse for plot stuff "because Old Gods" and "because Ascians" aren't that different.

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The Old Gods do (or rather did; they're all dead / defeated now) have motivations, they're just either petty or alien. Their personal goal is to restore Azeroth to how it was before the Titan Ordering of the planet so they can go back to warring against each other using bugs and bug-men as proxies; past that, as agents of the Void they aim to unmake reality because they find it offensive. (Hey, you want Lovecraftian horrors? You got 'em.)

Zovaal suffers a similar problem. He was the judge of the dead until his ego got the better of him, so his fellow Shadowland rulers stripped him of his authority and bound him in the inescapable Maw, crafting a new Arbiter using a stolen fragment of his soul. His whole motivation is to shatter the cosmic order and reforge it so all bows to his will; why he sees a problem with said cosmic order, beyond his ego saying he could do better, is thus far unexplained, and that's if they bother to give him a deeper characterization than "he's arrogant." (Sylvanas actually wants to shatter the cosmic cycle of life and death because people are consigned to a given afterlife by the Arbiter, but to anyone not keen on her sophistry it's plain she's just salty about her atrocities condemning her to the Maw (re: Hell).)

... and that's not getting into the whole host of problems with WoW's current story direction, which I don't feel like chronicling here because this isn't WoW.

Conversely all the people offered power by the Ascians had some greater personal goal they were working toward. The Ascians themselves had personal goals behind all the death and destruction, which turned out to be relatable when we finally learned what they were (even if the price they were willing to pay was unconscionable). The few crazy cultists aren't a huge threat. There isn't anybody you have to fight because they "went crazy and turned evil," because no antagonist in this game has been portrayed as wholly evil and irredeemable - not even Zenos as of Endwalker's end.

Meteion is kind of thrown in there, but the consequences of her actions were alluded to in the previous expansion's story, you spend time getting to know her, and much of what happens to her is a tragic accident born of Hermes' naivete and love of life. Zovaal is just Sylvanas' mysterious benefactor in BfA who was retconned into being the true mastermind pulling the strings of every conflict from behind the scenes, and wants power for its own sake. Other than being a bit of a retcon, the similarities between the two are superficial at best.