What was the point of Lyse?

Mentally going through all the Stormblood stuff and I cannot figure out why the writer's needed to replace Yda with Lyse.

If she had stayed Yda the whole time would anything have changed?

Just seems like such a major reveal should have a reason for it. Some key factor that made her being the younger sister have some more important impact on the plot.

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Originally Posted by Necrotica

Mentally going through all the Stormblood stuff and I cannot figure out why the writer's needed to replace Yda with Lyse.

If she had stayed Yda the whole time would anything have changed?

Just seems like such a major reveal should have a reason for it. Some key factor that made her being the younger sister have some more important impact on the plot.

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Unfortunately this is one of those side-stories that is told a lot more clearly in the fandom on the wiki page versus in-game; whether it makes sense to people or not is a different story.

I've always just viewed the situation as a person who is grieving in the only way they know how to; and often times people in grief make senseless and often misguided decisions.

I always thought it was done because if she had been Yda she'd have been old enough to actually remember Ala Mhigo, and the writers wanted someone who couldn't remember. The story of learning about her father and serving as a foil to Fordola (who also only knows imperial occupation) wouldn't work as well if she were older.

I was under the impression that the whole Yda > Lyse thing was so that they could more or less retire the character without killing her since they concentrated on just the actual Scions in the Stormblood patches and beyond.

With Lyse not having actually been an original member of the Circle of Knowing, she's given more of an excuse to be free to do other things and the game can focus more on a smaller group of people that in the next 2 expansions became more main-character-ish than they were before.

We’re just cycling through hot takes at this point.

The point of Lyse is to give her a character arc that isn’t just “she’s quirky!?!” It also added more weight to her connection with Ala Mhigo, and room for her to separate herself from the Scions, freeing both to develop and change. Regardless of your feelings about writing I’m StB, it’s a move that has merit.

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Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

I was under the impression that the whole Yda > Lyse thing was so that they could more or less retire the character without killing her since they concentrated on just the actual Scions in the Stormblood patches and beyond.

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I was under the impression that they just didn't know what to do with Yda and Papalymo as characters, so they killed the latter and retroactively killed the former. We needed a protagonist for Stormblood and Yda's backstory conveniently mentioned a sister, so...

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Originally Posted by EaraGrace

We’re just cycling through hot takes at this point.

The point of Lyse is to give her a character arc that isn’t just “she’s quirky!?!” It also added more weight to her connection with Ala Mhigo, and room for her to separate herself from the Scions, freeing both to develop and change. Regardless of your feelings about writing I’m StB, it’s a move that has merit.

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Yeah. She was kinda empty and not at all like Lyse whilst masquerading as Yda. Is it a big surprise that I don't even remember her ARR characterization? Say what you want about Stormblood and Lyse, but her in ARR was a non-character and her Stormblood iteration was an improvement in every way.

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Originally Posted by EaraGrace

We’re just cycling through hot takes at this point.

The point of Lyse is to give her a character arc that isn’t just “she’s quirky!?!” It also added more weight to her connection with Ala Mhigo, and room for her to separate herself from the Scions, freeing both to develop and change. Regardless of your feelings about writing I’m StB, it’s a move that has merit.

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I'll take "quirky" over the "strong, independent woman" that we got.

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Originally Posted by TeemoTeemosson

I'll take "quirky" over the "strong, independent woman" that we got.

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She was still quirky and airheaded in Stormblood. She just wasn't a 100% complete ditz anymore and had to grow up so that she'd be accepted as an actual leadership figure by both players and NPCs. She still said "um" in basically half of her lines and had such gems as "It's very...flat. Except where it's not, I suppose." in reference to the Azim Steppe.

Yda was kinda like Zell from FF8.

Good hearted goofball that just punches where they are told.

Much more likeable than whatever Lyse was supposed to be.

Being white and marketable.

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Originally Posted by TheSuperior

Being white and marketable.

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I will never deny that Lyse is good looking. Just think we could have kept Yda.

I quite liked Yda as she was initially introduced. The dynamic with Papalymo worked rather well and not only added some much needed flavour to the Scions it helped to have a 'lovable idiot' in the group who served the important role of an audience surrogate to have concepts explained to her by the much more straight talking Papalymo.

We also already had Widargelt and Arenvald in play if the writers wanted to lean more heavily into characters who were more directly tied to Ala Mhigo. It felt strange to me that they chose to pull out the 'Yda was actually dead all along and I'm not actually her' card with Lyse. Especially when after Stormblood concluded Lyse ended up fading into the background.

I liked her moments with Hien and their discussions regarding the burden of leadership, at least. Though my character started in Gridania so Yda and Papalymo were the Scions I met first and the ones that stood out to me the most as a result.

This always felt odd to me too. Papalymo's death was supposed to set Lyse free to be her own character separate from Yda but that whole plot point ultimately went nowhere. Literally nothing would have changed if they just had Yda leave the scions to join the resistance. Instead we were left scratching our heads trying to figure out a new character for no good reason.

I wonder if Necrotica's just going down a list of things to sling crap about at this point. This one's sadly not even that contrarian, though, so it's far less interesting than her other ones.


I do prefer to chew on this more as a metatextual approach, though; why did Stormblood need Lyse, specifically? And honestly, I think it's because Yda would've been completely incapable of carrying a serious story, and yet... well, they couldn't do Stormblood without her, because she's the only (surviving) Ala Mhigan in the Scions. Sidelining her for Stormblood would've been like doing an entire story about Louisoix and then just not inviting his grandkids.

Now, did they stick the landing on that? No, not specifically, but I wouldn't say they fell flat on their face. Lyse doesn't actually drag Stormblood down at all, her only crime is really just that she doesn't manage to be as interesting as any of the people around her. As far as Scion proximity she's mostly around Alisaie being a much louder hothead that generally appeals closer to an aesthetic the audience tends to like. In Doma she's overshadowed by Gosetsu, Hien, the entire Azim Steppe, and to a lesser extent Yugiri. And when we get to Ala Mhigo... she's sharing a stage with goddamn Raubahn, and Raubahn is such a commanding entity that every single other person sharing a scene with him by default becomes a supporting role.

That kinda makes for a situation where she just doesn't make a strong enough case for herself to counteract the people who are turning up with an axe to grind. If it makes sense, she's not a bad character, but she's also not a strong enough good character to eclipse the people who say she IS a bad character.

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Originally Posted by Theodric

I quite liked Yda as she was initially introduced. The dynamic with Papalymo worked rather well and not only added some much needed flavour to the Scions it helped to have a 'lovable idiot' in the group who served the important role of an audience surrogate to have concepts explained to her by the much more straight talking Papalymo.

We also already had Widargelt and Arenvald in play if the writers wanted to lean more heavily into characters who were more directly tied to Ala Mhigo. It felt strange to me that they chose to pull out the 'Yda was actually dead all along and I'm not actually her' card with Lyse. Especially when after Stormblood concluded Lyse ended up fading into the background.

I liked her moments with Hien and their discussions regarding the burden of leadership, at least. Though my character started in Gridania so Yda and Papalymo were the Scions I met first and the ones that stood out to me the most as a result.

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That's a really good point actually, and I do feel that the Scions, on the whole, became a little less interesting as a result.

I can't help but feel that the Scions needed a 'Yda' to add flavor to an otherwise predictable dish.

I wish this topic would be put bed. Lyse isn't perfect, but makes sense through the character development through the story.

First off, and most importantly, she narrates the story of Stormblood. But it's not enough that she narrates, she uses a tone as if she is addressing someone--that someone is Fordola. She is essentially retelling the tale of how the journey to retake Ala Mhigo has taught her to change and why she couldn't put Fordola to the sword. All those times she is in the background of the story, the msq has you go talk to her and let her reflect on what is going on. She has the personal character growth that's essential to story telling that none of the other characters involved can even touch.

Next, the argument that she isn't Yda is ironic because no one who has played this game since ARR has even met Yda. The Yda you know is Lyse. Yda is literally the immature version of Lyse because they are the same character. So if you like Yda, you like Lyse. They aren't two people if we are stuck behind the lens of the player, which we all are.

They even explain in universe why her identity needed to be hidden. The real Yda died escaping with refugees from Ala Mhigo. Lyse survived but since she and Yda were the children of the leader of the first Ala Mhigian Revolution, they were branded as war criminals by the empire. Luckily Yda had been accepted to the studium in Old Sharlayan, which would protect her from persecution, so Lyse took her sister's place.

Now, I know her existence as Lyse feels like a retcon and frankly it is. But that doesn't mean they did a poor job with her character. The failing is in the story craft, where Doma areas were more developed than Ala Mhigo areas, the narration requires critical thinking instead of just plopping the character revelation in your lap, and often her moments with the WOL were introspective and reflective of her thinking about what she needed to become (although justifiable to the character, too much of it can become underwhelming pretty fast).

I'm also sure not being a real "dancer" also didn't help her case either, as portion of the player base was jaded from the trailer.

But at this point can we let it go? This was 2 expansions ago.

Personally as someone who just finished Stormblood I can't say I really care about Lyse? Unless you start in Gridania your interaction with Papalymo and Lyse will be very limited. There's also an issue in HW where both Thancred and Y'shtola are given some time to establish themselves in a slower moments (Y'shtola's training with Motoya, Thancred's guilt over his past mistakes) but by the time we reunite with Papalymo and Yda the game pushes the duo into the background and keeps them there until the grand finale. As a result both Papalymo's death and Lyse's reveal feel flat because... We barely spent time with those two compared to the rest of the main cast. For pete sake we were given better grasp and freaking Urianger who keeps himself to the background than those two. I genuinely felt "Ok, and?" when the reveal happened made even less impressive when rest of Scions went "we already knew". Throughout the Stormblood her self righteousness (though to be fair most of the core cast shared that trait) and inability to grasp why would the villagers not flock to the rebels (especially painful in Ala Mhigo who just lost most of their youths to Ilbert's madness) just wore me down on her really fast.

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Thank you all! I appreciate your love and support and will do everything I can to continue bringing enjoyable topics for interesting group discussions.

It did feel rather strange and overly sudden what they did with Yda becoming Lyse so quick. Would have been different had we teh WoL actually known the OG Yda, or even had a build up to her and who she was to everyone in the Scions, but it just seemed to come from nowhere. Feels like the writers felt like they wanted us to have a main travelling character who had a connection with Ala Mhigo, but felt Yda was not serious enough a character and so had to do a quick switch-a-roo to try and make her more ‘serious’. Its a strange way they handled all that…

That said, when it comes to Stormblood itself I did like what with Lyse and showing her grow into a leader over the story. Its one of the reasons why I like the expansion so much really, and despite it being her swan-song from the Scions I hope she does not disappear for good. It was nice seeing her in Endwalker, but that just felt like a cameo.

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Originally Posted by Hurlstone

That said, when it comes to Stormblood itself I did like what with Lyse and showing her grow into a leader over the story. Its one of the reasons why I like the expansion so much really, and despite it being her swan-song from the Scions I hope she does not disappear for good. It was nice seeing her in Endwalker, but that just felt like a cameo.

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I like that she becomes a very different type of leader to everyone around her. I think something huge she learns in the Doma stretch isn't just how Hien manages to command leadership, but also that she can't and shouldn't be Hien. Even if she had the commanding presence and intelligence to be the sort of unquestioned kingly leader Hien is... Ala Mhigo doesn't want a king. The last king sucked, and the Imperial rulers afterwards weren't exactly improvements. She becomes the sort of leader that Ala Mhigo actually needs, and sure it's not as grand a role as a lot of the other leaders we've met, but that doesn't mean it's less legitimate.

Hell, I'd be happier living in a country with a Senator Lyse than I would in a country with a Lord Hien any day.

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Originally Posted by Necrotica

I have fans!!

Thank you all! I appreciate your love and support and will do everything I can to continue bringing enjoyable topics for interesting group discussions.

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Great! When will you start?

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Originally Posted by Hurlstone

It did feel rather strange and overly sudden what they did with Yda becoming Lyse so quick. Would have been different had we teh WoL actually known the OG Yda, or even had a build up to her and who she was to everyone in the Scions, but it just seemed to come from nowhere. Feels like the writers felt like they wanted us to have a main travelling character who had a connection with Ala Mhigo, but felt Yda was not serious enough a character and so had to do a quick switch-a-roo to try and make her more ‘serious’. Its a strange way they handled all that…

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Yda was a serious character. I remember her specifically being endearing and mournful when Moenbryda died. Her greatest character failing was Papalymo and every refuses to acknowledge that.

Yda lived in Papalymo's shadow (the same Papalymo, who to be frank, at times was endearing but also had the hot streak of being the jerk know-it-all). Imagine a Stromblood where Papalymo is there to influence Lyse's decisions. The rebellion wants Lyse to be the leader but says no because Papalymo reminds her they executed her father for doing that. Lyse wants to spare Fordola, but Papalymo says it's unwise to keep a loyal enemy alive. Lyse wants to travel to Doma to free everyone from the Empire's oppression and Papalymo says don't fight a war on two fronts. Liberated Ala Mhigo needs Lyse to lead it post-liberation, but Papalymo says what about their oath to the Scions and their partnership.

The only thing that was sudden about this change was Papalymo's death and the "sudden" inability to influence Lyse's decisions.

And this whole OG Yda concept is frankly insulting to the writers, because no one says the same thing about Louisoix and the twin's living via his legacy, even though anyone who started in ARR will have never met Louisoix. So how can it be reasonable for Lyse and not the twins?

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Originally Posted by Kesey

And this whole OG Yda concept is frankly insulting to the writers, because no one says the same thing about Louisoix and the twin's living via his legacy, even though anyone who started in ARR will have never met Louisoix. So how can it be reasonable for Lyse and not the twins?

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Those are two very different scenarios.

With the twins, we watched them grow and evolve as characters in real time. The stark difference between 2.0 Alphinaud and 4.0 Aphinaud doesn't feel jarring because we watched him climb out from under Louisoix's shadow slowly and naturally. With Lyse we were given a brand new character rather than watching an existing one grow. Lyse did come into her own as the SB story progressed (especially in the patches) but that doesn't magically make 3.5 feel any less like a bait and switch.

Lyse gets too much hate, the character was fine.

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Originally Posted by Brightamethyst

Those are two very different scenarios.

With the twins, we watched them grow and evolve as characters in real time. The stark difference between 2.0 Alphinaud and 4.0 Aphinaud doesn't feel jarring because we watched him climb out from under Louisoix's shadow slowly and naturally. With Lyse we were given a brand new character rather than watching an existing one grow. Lyse did come into her own as the SB story progressed (especially in the patches) but that doesn't magically make 3.5 feel any less like a bait and switch.

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This. The real issue with Lyse is that the game prior to 3.5 did not let us spend too much time with neither her nor Papalymo which is hurtful for the overall impact. We spent time with the duo during a single quest chain and then with Yda after Moenbryda's death where. We get the least time and development with the two out of all scions and that's include Urianger whose whole shtick is that he prefers to keep his thoughts obscured. And yet the game expects me to care about Lyse the same way I'd think about Alphinaud (who was at our side the entire expansion) or at least Y'shtola and Thancred who still spent more time around us than the duo.

For whatever it's worth, if anyone's feeling about Lyse is some variety of 'I'm sad we didn't get enough time with her', she's one of the highlights of Dissidia Final Fantasy Opera Omnia. Roughly ARR-era Yda upgrades to roughly SB-era Lyse, including memories, while most of the other FFXIV characters remain somewhat circa-ARR, and she remains one of the 'core' cast members from FFXIV. So there's a lot of scenes of her interacting with the people who don't know how far further she's gone than them, and especially around Papalymo, finally getting to say things she wasn't able to when he was alive.

The only other FFXIV character with similar treatment is Alisaie, who also turns up roughly from Stormblood. Her stuff's all optional and more of a comedic bent, but there's also a dynamic wrung there from the ARR-era crew not knowing what an utter badass she's become.

Looking at the recent treatment of Venat, I came to the conclusion that the writing team just can't pull off a main female character. They all get beautiful character models, lovely costumes and that's it.
When it comes to female side characters, we get less beauty but far more personality and more interesting people (Moenbryda, Fordola etc).

With major female characters the writers seem to make the same mistake over and over, they tell us how wonderful these women are but they don't bother to show it in the game.
Apparently, the Scions really needed Minfillia, no evidence in-game for this whatsoever. She is just an annoying damsel in distress we have to keep saving because.... reasons.
Similarly, M'naago tells us what a great leader Lyse is going to be, yet there is no evidence of her budding leadership prior to Stormblood and the main reason for having her lead the resistance is her dad was important.

The whole 'Yda was really Lyse' thing seemed totally pointless to me. I never knew Lyse and didn't care about her and all, but the deception did affect how I felt about her. All the other scions were apparently in on the whole deception, but they didn't bother to tell the WoL, that rankled, and it did make me wonder about Lyse's mental state. What it didn't do was make me feel she'd make a great leader in a crisis or want to have half the expansion revolving around her.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

For whatever it's worth, if anyone's feeling about Lyse is some variety of 'I'm sad we didn't get enough time with her', she's one of the highlights of Dissidia Final Fantasy Opera Omnia. Roughly ARR-era Yda upgrades to roughly SB-era Lyse, including memories, while most of the other FFXIV characters remain somewhat circa-ARR, and she remains one of the 'core' cast members from FFXIV. So there's a lot of scenes of her interacting with the people who don't know how far further she's gone than them, and especially around Papalymo, finally getting to say things she wasn't able to when he was alive.

The only other FFXIV character with similar treatment is Alisaie, who also turns up roughly from Stormblood. Her stuff's all optional and more of a comedic bent, but there's also a dynamic wrung there from the ARR-era crew not knowing what an utter badass she's become.

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Ya it is one of the aspect of Dissidia opera omnia I enjoy being the story allowing characters to grow beyond their games along with how characters are dealing with Post events after the game and certain ones with their own deaths.

Lyse has had a very large character growth in Dissidia Opera Omnia thanks to being able to speak what she wanted to tell Papalymo. With Papalymo remember how he will die and seeing how much Lyse grown after his death adds more to her character development while remove the doubts Papalymo may had when he died about what may become of Lyse when he is gone.

It is ashame SE has decided to never introduce Gunbreaker Thancred into Opera Omnia since they don't want to introduce a double character again. They only introduce Jack as a separate character from Garland (FF1) only because of a very important lore related to FF1 and FF1 Origins about what happens after FF1 ending revealed in Opera Omnia that they are focusing on now as part of Season 4 storyline for Opera Omnia.

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Originally Posted by Solarra

Looking at the recent treatment of Venat, I came to the conclusion that the writing team just can't pull off a main female character. They all get beautiful character models, lovely costumes and that's it.
When it comes to female side characters, we get less beauty but far more personality and more interesting people (Moenbryda, Fordola etc).

With major female characters the writers seem to make the same mistake over and over, they tell us how wonderful these women are but they don't bother to show it in the game.
Apparently, the Scions really needed Minfillia, no evidence in-game for this whatsoever. She is just an annoying damsel in distress we have to keep saving because.... reasons.
Similarly, M'naago tells us what a great leader Lyse is going to be, yet there is no evidence of her budding leadership prior to Stormblood and the main reason for having her lead the resistance is her dad was important.

The whole 'Yda was really Lyse' thing seemed totally pointless to me. I never knew Lyse and didn't care about her and all, but the deception did affect how I felt about her. All the other scions were apparently in on the whole deception, but they didn't bother to tell the WoL, that rankled, and it did make me wonder about Lyse's mental state. What it didn't do was make me feel she'd make a great leader in a crisis or want to have half the expansion revolving around her.

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It feels the Dissidia Opera Omnia story team may have to step in and filling in the developments with Venat as they did with Lyse if they consider to bring Venat into Opera Omnia.

FF14 team are good story writers but the limited amount of time they give for the characters to develop as a individual just is not enough time. However, with Opera Omnia basically being the "After life" for the characters that died or Post-FF game events that lived, they get time to develop and expand Post-FF game while covering things that had hardly no time to cover during their FF game.

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Originally Posted by Solarra

With major female characters the writers seem to make the same mistake over and over, they tell us how wonderful these women are but they don't bother to show it in the game.
Apparently, the Scions really needed Minfillia, no evidence in-game for this whatsoever. She is just an annoying damsel in distress we have to keep saving because.... reasons.
Similarly, M'naago tells us what a great leader Lyse is going to be, yet there is no evidence of her budding leadership prior to Stormblood and the main reason for having her lead the resistance is her dad was important.

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That's a matter of perception and the game at that time being bad at showing us all the background stuff.

What we see: "The sahagin are trying to summon a primal. Stop them.", and then we go fight Leviathan.

What we don't see: Minfilia dispatching scouts, reading and writing reports, meeting with leaders and diplomats, hiring new scions, and the million other things the lead to getting that information in the first place. We only get called in after the office work is done and it's time to fight something. Minfilia is a great leader and diplomat. We just don't see it very often because most of what she does is boring to watch.


Lyse is similar. Since so much of SB was about losing and having to play catch up, most of Lyse's victories happen off screen while her failures are front and center. That leads to to people thinking she's a worthless character.