Grossly problematic quest (The Past Is a Story We Never Tell)

I was playing through the postmoogle quests and was met with an unexpectedly gross questline that glorifies Child abduction& child grooming and is generally unpleasant (which is exacerbated by the fact that I thought I was just going to do funny moogle themed quests but instead got hit with the weirdest twisted glorified criminal instead)

The questline feels wildly out of place in FFXIV and hasn't aged well at all.

The questline involves some old dude regularly entrapping or coercing young miqo'te girls into comitting crimes (Helps them escape from petty crimes he set up, only to then coerce them into committing more crimes or be turned in)under the threat of the girls otherwise being abandoned to be arrested by woodwailers who are heavily insinuated to rape those they arrest.

You don't even ultimately get resolve any of the plotlines and your character largely just witnesses and does nothing about it. The quest has some miqo'te sisters attempt to flee and start a new life but they get stopped by guards who insinuate that they could do things to "pretty thing(s) like you".

Then the man who caused the entire issue of causing the miqo'te sister to be left in such a difficult place with nowhere to go shows up to 'save the day' despite being the main problem who ruined their life in the first place. But the game glorifies this child groomer as the good guy and ultimately the sisters don't escape and stay stuck in this criminals 'harem'.

I genuinely feel that this questline should be re-examined because it does not feel right in FFXIV. It feels extremely disheartening to have the game glorify somebody who coerces young girls into crime with the intent of entrapping them into his harem.

Goodness forbid anybody who has lost family members to abduction play this questline just to have the game suggest that the criminal who abducted them for perverted purposes was the good guy.

I think you're overreacting to the quest line for that particular post-moogle story. You also seem to lack lore information on Miqo'te tribes, specifically those that are Seekers of the Sun.

Personally I never felt that the male character you refer to was being portrayed as a glorified savior, only as one bad option out of many bad options that the protagonist and her sister had to choose from.

If a piece of fiction about non-human tribal hierarchy and loyalty makes you this uncomfortable, you may want to reconsider playing a Miqo'te.

It's not wildly out of place, The game has many examples of other similarly uncomfortable real life topics used to portray harsh realities. I can agree that it hasn't aged well considering real world discussion over the past few years but it's no reason to remove it from the game at this point. How can we learn to avoid problems of the past if they are kept hidden?

Thanks for reply, the sisters are literally keepers of the moon so your condescending comment is just wrong :shrug:

A child being coerced into a life of crime and then groomed into a harem at the threat of being given to corrupt guards is not just the typical miqo'te culture and suggesting that this is just normal miqo'te culture that is a bit much; the sister herself even states that it's a perversion of miqo'te culture. The game literally has a FATE that lets you kill him because what he's doing is a perverted crime. I genuinely do not think you understood the questline and how the game framed it because it is anything but part of the typical miqo'te lore.

If you actually play the questline the sisters life is literally described as being stuck in a shelter metaphorically described as a "Roof of blood, walls of bone . . " because they were coerced into crime with no recourse than to remain as bandits or be arrested by corrupt woodwailers. I genuinely do not see how this can be interpretted as just loyalty.

I think I understand what you mean but also please consider actually thoroughly playing through the questline since it's hard to have any real discourse about it if you didn't pay attention while doing it. Also yes, fictional child grooming does indeed make me uncomfortable.

Posting a reply just to be snarky/condescending despite being verifiably wrong just feels kinda weird.

It's a pretty dark quest, and I can more than understand why it would make you uncomfortable, but it absolutely does not "glorify" the guy in any way; if anything, it does the opposite. The younger sister frequently points out how manipulative he is and tries to get her sister to see the truth of the matter, but she's too traumatised and brainwashed to see it. She then goes on to vow to grow stronger to protect her older sister so she can make her feel safe and save her from his influence, and either kill or imprison him. Leading off of that, there is a fate where you kill him, so within the lore of the game, he does actually wind up dealt with and from there we can hopefully presume the sisters are able to start a new life together.

There's a vast and significant difference between a story that depicts predatory behaviour and a story that glorifies it, and the latter is quite a hefty accusation to make when it does nothing of the sort. You're quite at liberty to take issue with it regardless, and you have a point in that some could find it feasibly triggering, but you're not helping the case you're trying to make by completely misreading the situation to make it seem worse than it is.

Thank you for the reply, in restrospect I agree I was overreacting and misinterpretting the game as glorifying it. The scene as viewed through my seething-vision had me misintepret the games intent when the dude showed up deus-ex-machina style followed by the groomed sister swooning over him with gratitude that he would to take her back. It made me shell shocked with anger and clouded my judgement despite other the sister speaking against him afterwards.

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Originally Posted by ChieAmagi

Thank you for the reply, in restrospect I agree I was overreacting and misinterpretting the game as glorifying it. The scene as viewed through my seething-vision had me misintepret the games intent when the dude showed up deus-ex-machina style followed by the groomed sister swooning over him with gratitude that he would to take her back. It made me shell shocked with anger and clouded my judgement despite other the sister speaking against him afterwards.

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I think what may make it feel more unsettling is that it isn't exactly the sort of quest you'd expect off the back of pretending to be a postman delivering letters for a moogle. I actually remember going through questline pretty well and kicking back thinking I was in for some vaguely Animal Crossing-level storytelling, which made it all seem even darker and more surprising by comparison. So I can sympathise with your feeling a little blindsided here. ARR has a habit of doing this.

But from an objective standpoint, it's pretty clear she's not "swooning" over him and that's she actually deeply traumatised and being emotionally manipulated by him, and they explicitly call out what he's doing.

It's great how Gridania is filled with all of this historical / cultural baggage. Too bad they never really dug into the lore regarding the duskwights.

Although I didn't get the impression that guy was glorifyied, I agree this quest could do well with a few changes, considering how dark an brutal it is. I felt really sick after playing this and then standing there in the Shroud, not being able to do anything more about this whole situation. One sister runs back to him, the other runs off and says she'll keep trying and you yourself, a person who just kicked out the Garlean Empire and their Allagan super weapon out of Eorzea... just goes back to the postmoogle for grabbing the next letter and forgetting about all of this? This doesn't seem to make any sense lore-wise and feels very uncanny for me as a player.

I'd personally have liked the opportunity to confront/report the rapist Wood Wailers. I know the city states are flawed, but their leaders are generally well-meaning, and we're pretty influential at that point. While we don't have the resources to find every bad apple, it'd be great if we could get rid of some of the worst offenders.

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Originally Posted by squidmonarchy

I'd personally have liked the opportunity to confront/report the rapist Wood Wailers. I know the city states are flawed, but their leaders are generally well-meaning, and we're pretty influential at that point. While we don't have the resources to find every bad apple, it'd be great if we could get rid of some of the worst offenders.

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That would be cool. Just having the option to do *something* would already be an improvement for me. And considering our position, I'm sure we could manage to improve the situation for people who want "out" of that group, and/or do something against the bigoted Wood Wailers. Hells, if you leveled WHM you yourself have quite a high rank in Gridania all of a sudden... xD

I remember doing that quest a long time ago and didn't like our character just stood there. We fell gods, yet we could have offed the guy or at lease scare him off right then and there.

Another disturbing story arc I found was in Sharlayan with one of the main crafting quests where a student wants to hook up with her teacher and you help the teacher get over his shyness. At the end of the quest they end up married.

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Originally Posted by Tracewood

I remember doing that quest a long time ago and didn't like our character just stood there. We fell gods, yet we could have offed the guy or at lease scare him off right then and there.

Another disturbing story arc I found was in Sharlayan with one of the main crafting quests where a student wants to hook up with her teacher and you help the teacher get over his shyness. At the end of the quest they end up married.

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While teacher-student relationships are a bit iffy for several reasons, I did not find that particular story arc disturbing as such. It is clearly an advanced student, so likely in her mid-twenties or so, with the teacher in question not that much older (perhaps mid-thirties). So age-wise no real problem.

When you're trying to make a world, there's going to be awful bits to it, too.

As the game's gone on in years a lot of the seedier stuff has kinda been washed away. Maybe this is because of a more focused storytelling team with a more unified direction, but for better or worse that older stuff is still there, just like how horrible things are rampant in our world's history and its today. The Moogle quests in particular weren't designed to simply be necessarily fun and cute, but vignettes to further develop groups and individuals throughout ARR that had always been there. This one's about the Courelclaws, a brigand group of poachers that are outlaws living in the Shroud.

I didn't read the story as deliberately idolizing harem and grooming culture, nor deliberately shocking or edgy. The Courelclaws are not exactly cast in a positive light throughout the game to this point, mostly just serving as villains in FATEs, levequests and sidequests where they exist at all (you can in fact "kill" the Courelclaw King in the South shroud in a FATE chain). This quest served to color them further to show that many people among what is basically another faceless 'bad guy' group are suffering because they're outcast and marginalized from a society that could be protecting them, and only isn't because of racial prejudice.

Spoilers for 5.4 and later expansions:

Likely, at this time the story feels worse even outside of context of the real world, because Ul'dah and Limsa have started dealing with their skeletons a lot more in recent patches. And, 6.0 had an excellent opportunity to revisit a lot of these old zones, especially with the major threat of the expansion, but it largely didn't as expansions tend to largely focus on new zones, partially due to advertising requirements (it might not have gone over as well if EW only had 3 or 4 new zones, or had them all but spent more time in ones they've been in since 2013). Given that the story's still being written, there's some chance that their story might be developed more in the future.

There's clearly a line that they do enforce, so maybe if it really does bother you and you really think it should be removed for the game, push for it: They have changed things before for similar reasons. I remember the original t9 savage achievement name was "The Crying Game," but some folks thought that reference was in poor taste. It's "Scent of a Woman" now, and I'm still not really sure how that reference is supposed to make sense... Anyways, I think the quest's most egregious factor is as others have said it can kinda come out of nowhere, but that's often how the world is.

What do you mean by re-examined? As in remove from the game? They should continue and resolve the story and give justice to the sisters, but the story should not be removed just because it is "problematic." That would be crazy and totally against any idea of art.

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Originally Posted by JohnLakeside

What do you mean by re-examined? As in remove from the game? They should continue and resolve the story and give justice to the sisters, but the story should not be removed just because it is "problematic." That would be crazy and totally against any idea of art.

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Adding another quest where you actually solve the issue, report the shitty Wailers treating the sister like that in the most vulnerable position of her life, and punch the hell out of this abusive leader of this group, would be sufficient for me at least. An actual good ending where the sister (and hopefully the other members of this group) walks free in the end and gets a chance to start over. No need to delete the quest, just add something that doesn't result in the person who just destroyed the Ultimate Weapon and saved Eorzea standing there when the sister runs back being like "eh" and going back to the postmoogle for the next letter.

Like.. we eat gods for breakfast. Please let me do something about some abuser who holds people hostage with lies and a bunch of corrupt "cops" who give his lies some extra weight.