... a story which only was possible with more plot armour than that protecting a nuclear bunker .. the final battle decided by a bloody Active Time keyboard-smash.
LMAO, beyond fatuous.
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... a story which only was possible with more plot armour than that protecting a nuclear bunker .. the final battle decided by a bloody Active Time keyboard-smash.
LMAO, beyond fatuous.
It's a test of your reflexes.
nanomachines, son.
I wanted at least one person of the group to die in this expansion if i'm honest, sometimes, it's all about sacrificing one important character to make it even more emotional / attaching, Thought provoking. I don't really care "who", just pick one... It's been a while since it got this "real". Don't disney it all up.
Take the risk of making people sad, it carves it even deeper. People will be upset for a week, reflect on it, and then praise it for going the extra mile.
Not that there isn't a lot of gruesome and horrible moments in this one but, it needed to touch home at some point to cristalize from the spirit into the brain matter, even more. I mean, you can't go with soundtrack very reminiscent of "Forces" from Berserk in your mixes and then not delivering some sacrifices.
Y'know, the time travel makes my head absolutely spin if I spend more than five minutes thinking about how this story only works because of a very specific set of circumstances that can apparently only happen if we go back in time to make sure they do despite us apparently not being able to change things or they'll happen differently than they happen because we went back to change things - YEAH.
But that active time keyboard smash was very cathartic.
Also I'm glad none of our friends died. They live to be subjected to my WoL's terrible sense of humor another day.
This reddit thread was linked in the Lore subforums, and kind of explains the time travel quite a bit with a theory. I suggest reading it since it makes things feel...better, to say the least.
As a player and consumer of media for many years, I am pretty much jaded due to constant exposure and over-used of death. These days I consider it's a fool errand for any media to try and try to directly provoke me. That's why I much prefer the current style FF14 took in the last 2 expack. They can not make me "feel" directly, but they can make me believe how the NPC feel.
2.0 and 3.0 had NPC dying left and right, and for the most part none had really impact for me:
- Milfilina was a meme character. In fact back then I thought the writer decided to kill her off just because how unpopular she was.
- Moenbryda's death left no impact on me, the most was "it's a pity she's kinda cool".
- Haucherfant: followed pretty much the same template as Moenbryda - hype up just to be killed, in what I still consider one of the most stupid and pointless death scene in the game to date.
- Papalymo: probably the ONLY meaningful death that doesn't feel forced.
- Lady ice-heart: neutral. Not a bad death, but doesn't feel wholly necessary, and feel she would have much more contributing to the story had she still live.
- Oh and don't forget, more than half of the Scion was wiped out even before we hit 50, and another chunk kicked the bucket prior to 3.0. Do I remember them? no.
Up until now deaths have been used as a cheap devices the same manner newspaper slap on image of children and women to get sensationalized article. 5.0 and 6.0 seem to depart from that style, and instead of trying to make me feel for the death directly, it try to make me feel for how the NPCs feel to a much better effect.
- I don't care about Tesleen, just a random friendly chick. But I can believe how devastate her death to Allise
- I didn't care about Moenbryda's death, but seeing how it tortured Urienger all those years and finally got his release was one of the best scene in the game. I can speak with confidence that even if Urienger himself die I wouldn't feel as much.
- Arenvald is being handled how I think Ice-heart should have been handled. Yeah he could have kicked the bucket, but by keeping him alive we can see he's adding more to the story.
I agree, I think death is a cheap way to get an emotional payoff out of the consumer. While I don't think every character should survive every life or death situation, there's so much you can do with character development. But that development ends when the character dies, and whatever emotional intensity comes with their death is now the extent of that character's effect on the story, unless you do a fakeout but even that cheapens the emotional impact of the death. I'm okay with them using death sparingly, as it increases the weight when they actually do kill a character off. Fakeout deaths are another problem, but if Endwalker is any indication hopefully they are starting to move away from that.
death just for having death is bad. but the way they did it didnt let me feel the danger. thancred dissapeared in a way you know he will return. and when estinien dissapeared too... at that point it was just obvious they will return.
for it being the end with the highest stakes ever i felt pretty little danger.
On the atb subject the mash button to keep the gauge full from emptying..stupid. I personally dont blame disabled people or those who are annoyed by it if they use a autoclicker. If the devs got issue with this well...make keeping the gauge from emptying easier or get over people using a autoclicker.
Wherever the story goes from here, rely on it to (continue to) jump the shark.
They should have killed off every character and then had the game end with a cutscene where the warrior of light takes off their virtual reality headset to reveal we were just playing sword art online the whole time.
Many people nowadays are iching to have characters dying left and right. And I don't get it. As many said before, there are many ways to create dredd, urgency, sorrow and bitter without killing off a character that can be developed further. Keeping people alive doesn't just say a lot of the hero's skills, but it get them become more and more interesting as far as they grow their personality. Plus, once that personality keeps growing and you learn to enjoy those characters, scenes like
[SPOILER]
Having Zenos takes over your body and go to "meet" the scions and the duy that follows become even more emotional.
One of the clearest evidence about the new direction the writers taking is with Fordola IMO. Really annoying minor character 4.0 that could have been killed, either to provide sense of justice, retribution or have her go out in a fit of redemption. But the story kept her around and develope her slowly. Now, she's one of those character that I'm curious where and how she can grow.
M'naago said it best at the end of the quest line: if you die now, you are everything they say you are, and you are everything you believe you are. But live, and you can become someone different!
Basically, a death character would be nothing more but a static effigy to be reminded of once upon a time, a living character is the one that can tell a story.