I hope the Writing doesn't remain like it did from Post 5.0 to Now (post 6.0)

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Originally Posted by Iscah

I would be mostly okay with the whole Azem business if they weren't so intent on the "Azem is like you so we will dance around the subject of giving them any solid traits or even a gender" – doubly so when it comes between the very solid and not-you character of Ardbert also having Azem's soul, and Amon not identifying with Hermes despite having the same soul.

From those other cases we can extrapolate:
1. Being a shard of an ancient soul does not guarantee you will physically resemble the original bearer.
2. This is not just a difference between soul-shards from the Source and the reflections.
3. Being a shard does not make you the same person as the original.

So there is no need for Azem to be like our character, except in basic personality. It would be better to make them more of a distinct individual.

On a separate note, I don't particularly feel like I'm the chosen one because of Azem. It's convenient that we have personal connections back to all these plot-important characters but that isn't quite the same thing.

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If the story goes the way it seems to be pointing - then our characters will probably time travel back to a time before Elpis, meet our Ancient frenemies, and gain the title of Azem. The big twist is that we’ll actually be our Azem - and we’ll get to play a bunch of adventures as “Azem.” I’m cool with this, as our character stays in the driver seat - or something this game deems close enough.

Later on we’ll travel back to the future, (explaining our absence during the Sundering), but we’ll probably have to leave some portion of our self behind to become the sundered “Azem” shards. (Or this will literally be the final part of the game and we’ll just reboot on the cart with the twins).

If this is indeed the end-point of the Azem adventure, I kinda dig it - as it centers the story on our character, not some stranger we inherit all our personality from - and the (admittedly limited) decisions we get to make along the way are decisions made by us and us alone.

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Originally Posted by Silverquick

And even then they still threw in so much cringe it was annoying at times. This constant "need for emotional reinforcement and support" or "rah rah" you can do it stuff was even more overdone in Endwalker as a whole, than it was in the ARR. All it really did was make the many of the important characters look weak and insecure. It's fine to do it on occasion, but god it was almost every other conversation.

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The dialogue has been making me rant at my screen in these last couple of expansions. Lots of repetition of phrases like "I daresay" from different characters and (to support your point), "apologies for the wait" - even coming from Y'shtola, who should never apologise for anything. It feels like it needed a good editor!

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Originally Posted by Joolee

Lots of repetition of phrases like "I daresay" from different characters and (to support your point), "apologies for the wait" - even coming from Y'shtola, who should never apologise for anything. It feels like it needed a good editor!

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The sudden and unusually frequent use of "sally forth" in 6.5 is what I picked up on lol. As in your example, it felt particularly weird coming out of Y'shtola's mouth too, but she felt kind of uncharacteristically twee in 6.5 in general (setting aside the earlier stuff with Drippy, which worked, at the time, precisely because it was unexpected), and I assume that wasn't a localization issue... Maybe just because they were missing the sort of character in that finale's cast who would normally make the kind of quixotic proclamations they felt they needed for the climax to work; I can only guess.

That said, I haven't really disliked the 6.x writing over all. In past patch storylines, even if the events were debatably more compelling (Vrtra and Azdaja's plight were enough to make me care, personally), the pace and density of those storylines tended to make the writing feel thinner to me in general -- at least until their threads got picked up later. And 6.x felt pretty consistent with that, imo. Like, I'd argue the post-HW MSQ felt sloppier over all without context at the time, and that was similarly focused on setting up the pieces for a storyline that wouldn't immediately bear fruit despite its relatively tidy conclusion.

I don't think 6.x (or 6.0 for the matter) is the game's best showing in terms of narrative quality, by any stretch, but I'm not doomsaying yet. Knowing what we know about the way EW proper was written makes it easy to point a finger at and go, "Oh, that's why this was questionable to me". And 6.x was stuck between a rock and hard place to begin with, in terms of what the story could be and how they could tell it. But I know the writers are capable of creating stories I enjoy, and I'd argue they've done that more than they've disappointed me yet, even if the disappointments are more recent.

So anyway, I'll worry after Dawntrail.

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Originally Posted by Joolee

"apologies for the wait" - even coming from Y'shtola, who should never apologise for anything.

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"Apologies for the wait" is such an automatic polite thing to say when arriving late, on the same basic level as please and thankyou, that I don't know why you would object to it.

Y'shtola probably wouldn't ever apologise for her opinions, but that's not the same thing as not being courteous. If the latter is part of Y'shtola's canon portrayal then I have been missing it all this time.

Yeah, Y'shtola's absolutely polite, she'd apologize for being unintentionally late. What she wouldn't apologize for is being intentionally rude, because she rarely steps without purpose as far as social interactions go.

If anything Y'shtola strikes me as an 'ask forgiveness instead of permission' sort of person, so perhaps the most surprising thing about that little nugget is that the 'sorry' didn't come with a reason. But, maybe this is grossly overthinking a single line that isn't actually out-of-character, and basically exists so that the cutscene can be framed in the most logistically comfortable way. If the demonstration is only going to begin once everyone is there, and most people in the scene just sorta live there anyway (Vrtra, Estinien, Zero), then it feels better if Y'shtola's the one that they're waiting on rather than ourselves. Especially for the first scene in a patch; if they call us late for that, that just feels like them blaming us for the patch cycle!

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Originally Posted by Iscah

I came out of my happy single-player bubble of playing Shadowbringers for the first time, and was seriously confused by all the "greatest villain ever" fanning over Emet-Selch.

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I think he's a fantastic villain. I feel he's written in a way that makes you love to hate him; he's arrogant but affable and it's sort of fun to have him around while you wait for the inevitable betrayal. Emet's issue is that it seems a lot of people are really thirsty over him and don't want to admit they want to basically bugger a dude that personally created two totalitarian dictatorships and did planetary genocide about seven times so they bend over backwards trying to argue he's not actually a total monster but actually an unsung hero. They don't want him to the villain he obviously is.

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Originally Posted by Rufalus

Glad I'm not alone in feeling this way. I stopped connecting with the story when the miracle breakthroughs went into overdrive.

I wouldn't mind so much if there was some unprecedented world-changing event as an explanation for all the brand new science. Some reason that the impossible became so easy in this era. Not just the same group of prodigious youths bulldozing through scientific barriers whenever something inconveniences them because they are so smart.

I mean honestly, the contrived story has the same root cause as the repetitive gameplay formula problems -- it's the Yoshida style. He told the writers to not feel restricted by Oda's pre-existing lore, just make up some convenient excuse on the spot to smash through it.

The history of the realm has much better writing than the present-era player's journey. We're just gonna keep on liberating cities, planets, dimensions, whatever we focus our gaze on because it's so easy. The main scenario is about as serious as Hildibrand at this point.

Yoshida isn't alone in hurting the series reputation for good story content, it's all the directors and writers in the S-E age. XIII was some incomprehensible Fal'Cie god nonsense, XV was half-finished with some major story locations and events cut for time, XVI didn't finish as good as it started but I guess it could be called progress, it's better than the worst game.

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Well a cat boy did travel 200 years into the past with a building full of the most advanced technology ever created by man. That probably helped.

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Originally Posted by Mortex

I do think emet would work way more if he had doubts and being troubled over killing so many people and effectively doing the same thing too other worlds as has happened with the ancients. Like he knows what he does is utterly vile and evil but it’s the only way for zoodiarc too bring back all his friends and people he cared about. His smug and holier than thou attitude plus his quote “I do not consider you to be truly alive. Ergo, I will not be guilty of murder if I kill you.” is the most villain thing you can do and then thing people feel bad about him. Like they had even the chance too make him light hearted and not a tsundere in Elpis and explain his shitty ass behavior in the future with this. Like from mildly grumpy too mega grumpy isn’t a good character arc.

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But in this case you're made of the parts of his murdered friend. It's not like he's saying that to a random person. He's saying it to Frankenstein monsters from his perspective. And the Ancients viewed death as just part of the natural cycle of life. Had he succeeded, the world would be restored and mankind would be able to abide in peace, harmony and happiness. What happens when we're confronted with a being no longer recognizable as human life? A blasphemy or a sin eater? *stab* *stab* That's what.

We're the sineaters of the Ascians' Saga.

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Originally Posted by DreadCrow

I think he's a fantastic villain. I feel he's written in a way that makes you love to hate him; he's arrogant but affable and it's sort of fun to have him around while you wait for the inevitable betrayal. Emet's issue is that it seems a lot of people are really thirsty over him and don't want to admit they want to basically bugger a dude that personally created two totalitarian dictatorships and did planetary genocide about seven times so they bend over backwards trying to argue he's not actually a total monster but actually an unsung hero. They don't want him to the villain he obviously is.

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It's not that. It's that he's in the unique fictional case of attempting to reverse a genocide. He's not just killing people for funsies. He's trying to put them back together and end their torment. The sundering is a torture machine and he's trying to break it.

And while yeah, we're well in our rights to fight for our lives. He's well in his rights to try to save his people.

I very much agree with his line, "The victor shall right the tale and the vanquished become it's villain."

Emet-Selch is a Scion of the Ancient world. What he's doing is exactly what the Scions would do if some evil god reduced the human race to ants and we had to squash the lot of them to make them people again. I know this because the blasphemies used to be people, the sin eaters used to be people, the voidsent used to be people. At least Emet-Selch is attempting to restore the people who have been mutilated. We just kill our mutilated brethren and call it day's work.

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Originally Posted by Silverquick

Yeah I'll be honest with you,

Endwalker was probably the worst of the story expansions. I really just flat out did not enjoy the story much except at small points. There was just sooo much cringe in this one that even went beyond the kind you saw in ARR the original. The Climax was pretty engaging with the ending of the Meteion arc, but... so much in between was either flat out boring or just cringe worthy. And as much as I loved the Shadowbringers expansion, which really had a very mature story... the reality is, it really almost completely re-wrote the Ascians into something they never were or were intended to be. Now they are screwed with the Meteion arc which comes out of nowhere because it was originally supposed to be the Ascians who did those things.

You can clearly see in ARR and Heavensward the Ascians were supposed to be attached to the Void or emptiness. They were the bad guys working with the Voidsent to devour the world. This played itself out in all of the after stories and alliance raids of those two. Hell they even hosed it in the Endwalker where Zodiark actually looks more like a Demon or Voidsent, not some Eikon or Primal created by what was originally in the new story line the "peace loving" Ascians.

Not only did Endwalker hose up the original story... but on top of that it really just wasn't that terribly exciting to play through other than the end run.

I didn't start feeling like I was even playing a Final Fantasy game until the afterstory with the Voidsent.
And even then they still threw in so much cringe it was annoying at times. This constant "need for emotional reinforcement and support" or "rah rah" you can do it stuff was even more overdone in Endwalker as a whole, than it was in the ARR. All it really did was make the many of the important characters look weak and insecure. It's fine to do it on occasion, but god it was almost every other conversation.

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I loved Endwalker as I played through it. I felt all the feelings I was supposed to feel, when I was supposed to feel them. I even bought into the Ancients deserving to die because they were weak and culturally inferior. And as the new strong superior race we deserved to inherit the star. Emet-Selch was simply mistaken over which race was superior. Turns out, it was us. He was only looking at physical and magical strength, we were superior in spirit (ignoring everything the unsundered endured in their attempt to restore the world, that looks like fortitude to me). Then little by little did the fuzzy feelings fade and the horrible reality of it all trickled in...wait, was my character the direct cause of a genocide? Did an entire species get wiped from existence because I time traveled and impressed mommy goddess? Did Emet-Selch, Lahabrea and Elidibus get tortured for 12k years to make me? Were the calamities by design to create me? Did billions of people die so I could sit here and fish? OH GOD!