Gee, I wonder why the death of random side NPCs that we've known for 5 minutes don't really matter.
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Yeah, that's kinda the thing about calling a story 'bloodless' or 'lacking death'; there's a bunch of different, mostly arbitrary ways to declare that certain deaths 'don't count'. Hell, even I do it; I consider Dragon Age: Origins a pretty death-free game, because while it has a high bodycount barely any of them are characters that actually matter to anybody, it's basically just a throng of bodies to set the tone and setting. But yeah, that's why I mentioned that Endwalker's no slouch in terms of both named and unnamed NPC deaths; if one of those doesn't count to you, the other should.
And I think it should also be noted that FFXIII has perhaps the most egregious usage of 'fight against stated inevitable fact but winning because of Determination' in the entire series at the end. At least with FFXIV it gets conceptual with the help of a zone and concepts that really help it make that actually work, while XIII basically just goes 'no, they believed hard enough to get a good ending anyway'.
I consider XIII's sequels better than the original (in no small part because XIII-2's ending includes the characters trying to do the 'fight fate with conviction' thing and failing miserably, which is very funny), but I'm fully aware that to a lot of people, saying 'FFXIII's sequels were better' is a claim met with great skepticism, because anyone who can say it played multiple FFXIII games.
It does matter, it established the stakes in the story.
Or you're going to tell me the death of the ancients during the Amaurot dungeon weren't effective in that regard ?
Because the death of these randoms NPC hit me hard, and i only knew them for 1 hour before Amaurot. It did felt like it mattered.
Seeing the people of Thavnair die horribly after spending time there first was absolutely effective in upping the stakes, just like in that dungeon.
I think if the only reason you can give for why more characters ought to die is to "prove" that the story has stakes, you might want to go back and rethink what you want out of the story.
For the cast to not be made up of immortal and invincible nobodies whose sacrifices are invalidated within the span of a half hour in an expansion where the stakes for them should have been the highest. Especially if these writers were going to be so tone deaf as to try and preach how these characters represent hope winning over despair. This isn’t a story that resonates with people who have experienced the real sort of problems Endwalker is so eager to tell people to forge ahead instead of addressing in a realistic way.
Given all that’s been said and done I fully believe that a decent chunk of this playerbase especially those in this thread are willing to accept pretty much anything so long as it’s sanctioned by Yoshi, so they lose nothing if those of us wanting a more mature world and story get our way. They’ll play regardless. Whereas EW caused no small amount of us to quit with me being one of the last holdouts because I want to have money in case of the slim chance that 7.0 isn’t a disaster like this expansion was.
I am fairly certain that plenty of the people that Endwalker resonated with have in fact, experienced "real problems".
I’ve told people in real life about how EW tried to pull off its messaging. They were not appreciative of it. I do not believe that the people who defend its messaging have experienced loss in their lives or if they have they definitely didn’t process it like a normal human being.
I am 100% sure the way you told other people is a twisted version of what it really was. And people who like its story, myself included have experienced loss. You're pretty high up there if you think that. I have lost my father, mother, grandmother, 2 aunts, a cousin and 3 pets all in a span of 5 years. EW resonated with me *because* it showed loss but also showed hope, which was its main theme, so get off your dumb high horse that you're the ONLY ONE who understand what "loss" is and not anyone else, little boy.
Also what is "normal human being"? EVERYONE experiences loss differently. If YOU truly experienced loss, you would know that.
I'm not suprised that people were not "appreciative" of you talking (in a very even-handed and unbiased way, I'm sure.) about how horrible Endwalker's writing is.
What do I even say to this? You honestly believe that people who like a video game's story and themes haven't experienced loss? Am I being trolled right now?