Flashbacks in cutscenes

This isn't really a big deal but it's something that's kinda bothered me over the years.
I'm sure a lot of us like to change our looks as we go through the game, we're not wearing the exact same thing through the entire MSQ especially with how you unlock increasingly more new things as you progress.
So with that said it's kinda disappointing and slightly immersion breaking when the game will do a big flashback sequence where your character is wearing the same thing as they are currently - I'm sure if you've played through Endwalker you know what I'm talking about especially with how that section encourages you to use a specific glamour prior to the cutscene.
Obviously I don't expect the game to keep an exact snapshot of what my character looked like at every point in the story, but I feel like these types of flashbacks would hit a lot harder if they'd at least put you in level-appropriate job gear like they do at the start of ARR or in the DRG level 80 quest.

They should have put us in the Shadowbringer outfit tataru made for us.
I think they did that during Shadowbringers when Urianger explain his vision.

More immersive for one person can be more jarring for another. Job gear is very rarely in a style that suits what my character would wear, and I would find it more jarring to see her switched into it than wearing her current equipment.

It wouldn't even fix the problem of it being not what you were wearing at the time.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

More immersive for one person can be more jarring for another. Job gear is very rarely in a style that suits what my character would wear, and I would find it more jarring to see her switched into it than wearing her current equipment.

It wouldn't even fix the problem of it being not what you were wearing at the time.

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In the case of my specific example where it's depicting the end of ShB? I'd say 95% of people are wearing the job gear since it's only 30-40 minutes after you first get it. But yes the "default" outfit Tataru gives you would be good too. Anything would be better than transplanting us from the future likely with gear impossible to obtain at the time into that moment.

one other thing, is that over time people will use the same glamour either ways, so if they haven't had reason to change or adjust.

for some other groups. there is no change.
<and tbh, I never really used the outfit Tataru made, thus I didn't immediately get it was supposed to represent the PC til it got close enough to tell certain body features, if you have them>

That's not something that would be remotely easy to do and it wouldn't be something that would be fixable for current players.

The game would have to be able to store what outfit you are wearing at the time.

And what about players who were doing story stuff in a silly outfit and forgot to switch to their serious outfit before talking to someone for an MSQ quest and now their cutscene is forever locked to that silly costume. Your solution would mean that they couldn't go back to watch the cutscene in a more appropriate outfit.

What if the player has fantasia'ed to a different race and their outfit at the time was glamoured to be race specific or gender specific and they no longer fit those requirements?

While I'd be fine with them adding this if there was an option to use current outfit, I'd rather the resources be spent on other aspects of the game that would have a greater impact on more players.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

More immersive for one person can be more jarring for another. Job gear is very rarely in a style that suits what my character would wear, and I would find it more jarring to see her switched into it than wearing her current equipment.

It wouldn't even fix the problem of it being not what you were wearing at the time.

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Originally Posted by Ameela

In the case of my specific example where it's depicting the end of ShB? I'd say 95% of people are wearing the job gear since it's only 30-40 minutes after you first get it. But yes the "default" outfit Tataru gives you would be good too. Anything would be better than transplanting us from the future likely with gear impossible to obtain at the time into that moment.

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Personally I don't like it whenever they show me in anything other than the outfit I've worn since 3.2, especially cutscenes that force hide headgear. I never go more than a few seconds in new gear without glamouring it and carry a manual glamour set just in case backtracking to the nearest Sanctuary would be inconvenient.

Personally, I don't see it as much of a deal, and if anything it kinda makes sense. While the "flashback" is mainly intended for the human playing the game, in-game it's also our character "remembering" an event from the past. Personally? When I (in real life) remember something from my past, I don't have a clue what I was actually wearing at that time. My mental flashbacks don't come with photographic memory of what clothes I was wearing that day; if anything, my brain does exactly what this game does and just kinda places me as an observer from the present day re-witnessing the past event.

What if you changed race/gender? That would be very strange to see different people in different cutscenes. My WoL is who she is NOW, at this very moment. I love being able to change up my glamour and see it reflected in cutscenes, it's one of the reasons I rewatch them. (that and for the feels)

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Originally Posted by Boblawblah

What if you changed race/gender?

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Fantasia is a gameplay/monetization mechanic, not canon. When you Fantasia to something new, as far as the story is concerned you have always been what you have become.

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Originally Posted by Rongway

Fantasia is a gameplay/monetization mechanic, not canon. When you Fantasia to something new, as far as the story is concerned you have always been what you have become.

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The question there is if you get locked into what you were when you first did the quest as a male Roegadyn and then fantasia'ed into a female Lalafell, what would happen with the cutscene?

Would you be a male Roegadyn or a female Lalafell?

If it is the former, it goes against their view of fantasia - it can't be a what you always were if you appear as a different race/gender in a cutscene.

If it is the latter, what if you were wearing something with the appearance of something you can't wear as your current race? Such as an outfit locked to male or an outfit locked to Roegadyn.

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Originally Posted by Seera1024

The question there is if you get locked into what you were when you first did the quest as a male Roegadyn and then fantasia'ed into a female Lalafell, what would happen with the cutscene?

Would you be a male Roegadyn or a female Lalafell?

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It's not a question. Fantasia is not canon. Fantasia is a metamechanic put in place so they can make money off people who change their minds about their characters' appearances but don't want to start a new character.

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Originally Posted by Rongway

It's not a question. Fantasia is not canon. Fantasia is a metamechanic put in place so they can make money off people who change their minds about their characters' appearances but don't want to start a new character.

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I feel like you haven't actually read the rest of the thread, and why fantasia came up

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Originally Posted by Boblawblah

I feel like you haven't actually read the rest of the thread, and why fantasia came up

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I read it fine, thanks. Fantasia is still just a metamechanic put in place so they can make money off people who change their minds about their characters' appearances but don't want to start a new character. Neither your character nor any other character in the game has any memory of you being anything but what you currently are because Fantasia, as a metamechanic put in place so they can make money off people who change their minds about their characters' appearances but don't want to start a new character, retcons reality so that your character has always been what you are.

It isn't even a question of "how would the devs implement it?" because we know they would never take the time to have the game keep a record of your character appearance at any given point in the story because it's just not worth the coding time, testing time, and storage space required to do so. It's so blindingly obvious that they would take the point of view that Fantasia is just a metamechanic because it means less programming and bookkeeping.

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Originally Posted by Rongway

It isn't even a question of "how would the devs implement it?" because we know they would never take the time to have the game keep a record of your character appearance at any given point in the story because it's just not worth the coding time, testing time, and storage space required to do so.

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They would also have to know in advance which scenes they intend to reference back to, potentially years down the track.

And even then, people may not want the game to remember the earlier state of their character. They may want to see their updated character in old cutscenes when they go back to review them.

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Originally Posted by Ameela

So with that said it's kinda disappointing and slightly immersion breaking when the game will do a big flashback sequence where your character is wearing the same thing as they are currently - I'm sure if you've played through Endwalker you know what I'm talking about especially with how that section encourages you to use a specific glamour prior to the cutscene.

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I'm still struggling to recall anything you might be referring to here, so it can't have had a memorably detrimental effect on my experience.

The only time we are encouraged to use a specific glamour is in Elpis (and maybe cold-weather gear in Garlemald) and I can't remember major flashbacks in either of those zones, or in the final zone where I had long since switched out of my Elpis glamour anyway.

I just figure that in my memories, I'm the me of today, not me as I was in the past.
And a flash-back is a memory.

I know the Echo is mystical, but if it was merely reading people's memories,
it would wind up showing us a lot of things that didn't actually happen.

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Originally Posted by Rongway

I read it fine, thanks. Fantasia is still just a metamechanic put in place so they can make money off people who change their minds about their characters' appearances but don't want to start a new character. Neither your character nor any other character in the game has any memory of you being anything but what you currently are because Fantasia, as a metamechanic put in place so they can make money off people who change their minds about their characters' appearances but don't want to start a new character, retcons reality so that your character has always been what you are.

It isn't even a question of "how would the devs implement it?" because we know they would never take the time to have the game keep a record of your character appearance at any given point in the story because it's just not worth the coding time, testing time, and storage space required to do so. It's so blindingly obvious that they would take the point of view that Fantasia is just a metamechanic because it means less programming and bookkeeping.

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The time and resources to implement it is also a point to keep in mind, but the time and resources needed would involve figuring out how to handle it when a player uses a fantasia.

If there were no gender or race locked outfits, then one could just keep a record of glamour/outfit used.

But we do have gender and race locked outfits and therefore the game would have to record character specific data as well to recreate it in the instance the player has since used a fantasia. Even if they are someone who wouldn't fantasia. The game still has to store the data in the case that they do.

Getting players to think about the exact resources needed for their idea can help them realize that their idea is a "it would be nice if we could, but I understand that it's not likely to actually happen" idea.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

I'm still struggling to recall anything you might be referring to here, so it can't have had a memorably detrimental effect on my experience.

The only time we are encouraged to use a specific glamour is in Elpis (and maybe cold-weather gear in Garlemald) and I can't remember major flashbacks in either of those zones, or in the final zone where I had long since switched out of my Elpis glamour anyway.

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I think she's referring to the scene in the

Dimensional Rift when you return back to the present day after Elpis (specifically the scenes of the Sundering - where in the aftermath it keeps cutting into the scene of Venat struggling through the now Sundered world with a brief flashback to the climax of ShB's story at the end of Amaurot where the WoL is succumbing to the corrupted Light and equally struggling to walk slowly but defiantely towards Emet.

Naturally the scene would show whatever you happen to be wearing right then rather than whatever you were wearing in that particular scene back in ShB - it was a bit jarring for me in particular when I first went through that scene given I hadn't changed my glam from the Sophist gear that I was wearing in Elpis, instead of the PLD glam Enki was wearing back in ShB,

so yeah I can definetely understand the sentiment of this thread.

But there are just too many technical challenges to deal with to implement some kind of flag for what gear you wore back in that scene originally, so I don't see SE changing this.

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Originally Posted by Enkidoh

I think she's referring to the scene in the

Dimensional Rift when you return back to the present day after Elpis (specifically the scenes of the Sundering - where in the aftermath it keeps cutting into the scene of Venat struggling through the now Sundered world with a brief flashback to the climax of ShB's story at the end of Amaurot where the WoL is succumbing to the corrupted Light and equally struggling to walk slowly but defiantely towards Emet.

Naturally the scene would show whatever you happen to be wearing right then rather than whatever you were wearing in that particular scene back in ShB - it was a bit jarring for me in particular when I first went through that scene given I hadn't changed my glam from the Sophist gear that I was wearing in Elpis, instead of the PLD glam Enki was wearing back in ShB,

so yeah I can definetely understand the sentiment of this thread.

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Okay, I do remember that now that you mention it, but still...

...it sort of fits with that scene being a jumble of time and space and metaphor anyway. It could conceivably even be deliberate to show you in that scene wearing Ancient robes, echoing the moment in the scene itself where Emet sees you as an Ancient.

(I was far more distracted in that scene by the way the writers were shredding everything they had previously told us about the circumstances of the Sundering to drop a new narrative out of nowhere, but that's a different issue entirely.)

I never suggested they should snapshot your character's appearance for every quest, that'd just be unrealistic. "^ ^
I was suggesting something like what the ARR intro and DRG level 80 quest does where they'll put your character in job gear appropriate for the referenced level (i.e. in the DRG level 80 quest it flashes back to HW so your character is always in the level 60 job gear)
The thing is I'm not sure if they actually have a flag that checks for your current job that would allow them to do this or if the ARR intro is just an edge case where they made a different cutscene for every single possible job, which would explain why the only other time they've ever done this was in a job quest which wouldn't allow you to use anything else anyway.

No thanks. It would be more jarring to see yourself dressed in other stuff as they don’t always suit your character.

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Originally Posted by Ameela

I never suggested they should snapshot your character's appearance for every quest, that'd just be unrealistic. "^ ^
I was suggesting something like what the ARR intro and DRG level 80 quest does where they'll put your character in job gear appropriate for the referenced level (i.e. in the DRG level 80 quest it flashes back to HW so your character is always in the level 60 job gear)
The thing is I'm not sure if they actually have a flag that checks for your current job that would allow them to do this or if the ARR intro is just an edge case where they made a different cutscene for every single possible job, which would explain why the only other time they've ever done this was in a job quest which wouldn't allow you to use anything else anyway.

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And I would bet that if you had fantasia'd race/gender that it would show you in your current race/gender in the Dragoon armor from HW so it's not snapshotting what you're actually wearing. It's the game saying to take your character and display it wearing X armor. Even if you never wore said armor. Some characters may have immediately had enough tomestones to replace some, if not all, of the level 60 dragoon gear with level 60 tome gear of a higher iLvl in preparation for Stormblood. So they may have never done a single quest wearing say the chest piece.

And as I personally hated the level 50 female Dragoon armor, I hope that if they add a just show relevant quest gear for character's current race and gender, that it's optional. Because the armor is something I hate and I do not want to see it in cutscenes and I'd much rather it show my current glamour than see that ever again. For those that don't know, the female dragoon level 50 armor exposes the stomach. The male version does not. It looks entirely stupid and unrealistic for a dragoon to have a stomach exposed when they are tasked with fighting dragons that are known for having claws and other such parts that would love to see that much exposed skin.