What was the purpose of the Yda twist?

I never understood why Yda became Lyse from a story perspective. Couldn't Yda have just taken off her mask and done the things Lyse did without the twist? Given our player never met the original Yda and the other Scions were just pretending, what did the twist change/add?

This basically comes down to vibe, but here's my feeling:

By nature of being 'the Ala Mhigan Scion' (well, that's still alive), Yda was basically contractually obligated to get a starring role in Stormblood. However, there was a problem with that: Yda's a joke. She was born onto the screen as the clown to Papalymo's straight man, that was both her intention and her entire character purpose up to that point. But Stormblood was very much not a joke: the Ala Mhigan side especially was dead serious. So Yda was gonna need some pretty serious character renovations, pretty fast.

Was 'I'm actually Yda's sister' the only option? Probably not, but I would argue that anything less major wouldn't work.

It meant that Lyse wasn't actually a member of the original Circle of Knowing or an archon since the tattoo wasn't real so the writers could have a valid reason to have her leave the main cast as of 4.0 since she and Papalymo were sidelined after 2.5 and it seemed like they were trying to thin the cast anyway.

"Yda" only worked as a character against Papalymo and they were very reliant on each other as a duo. With Papalymo gone and Yda actually being Lyse, they also had more opportunity to expand her character when she was a part of the main party in 4.0.

Also, 1.0 characters did meet the original Yda.

The thing I don't get is I don't feel the character's personality changed between being Yda and admitting she was Lyse. What you're saying would make more sense if she was a serious leader who'd been pretending to be ditzy because she was impersonating her sister, but I read it in reverse that the Sharlyan scholar was acting ditzy because she was really her younger sister the whole time. I think that lack of change in her personality was why so many objected to her becoming a world leader at the time.

Was 1.0 Yda less ditzy?

They were dropping hints that Yda would be involved in the Ala Mhigo arc from the first cutscene of 1.0, so my theory was that they "missed their window" on the story they wanted to tell and the character they wanted her to be. Lyse is played like a young, passionate firebrand who wants to do what's right but has no plan because she still has to find out who she is, but if you look at where Yda was at after the 1.0 Echo jump, 2.0 Calamity jump, and 2 expansions of content, she'd had very little character development since 1562 and was pushing 40 besides. My theory was that the swap was an attempt to respect Yda's accomplishments but still get to tell a specific kind of story.

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Originally Posted by Lady_Silvermoon

Was 1.0 Yda less ditzy?

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Absolutely not, lol.

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Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

Also, 1.0 characters did meet the original Yda.

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Quasi-Important Caveat: Met her in Echoes. The swap was placed preciously 1 year before the present-day content, but 9 years after the introductory Echoes.
(i.e. We got talk to talk to Yda at the Gridanian rite but Lyse is the one who just barely landed that punch on Gaius at Silvertear Lake, not that the developers knew or intended this at the time.)

I imagine it's something that hit harder if you played 1.0, which many did not. Personally I preferred Yda's initial happy-go-lucky and somewhat ditzy personality. She worked nicely as a both an in-universe excuse to ask questions so that information could be explained to the player and the more serious nature of Papalymo brought some subtle comic relief to the table.

I also started the game with a character in Gridania, so naturally I spent the most time early on with those two in particular. Lyse didn't really click with me the way 'Yda' did though she was fairly inoffensive. Though now she's basically only ever around for the occasional cameo since much like Aymeric she's now much too busy to go on any adventures.

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Originally Posted by Lady_Silvermoon

The thing I don't get is I don't feel the character's personality changed between being Yda and admitting she was Lyse. What you're saying would make more sense if she was a serious leader who'd been pretending to be ditzy because she was impersonating her sister, but I read it in reverse that the Sharlyan scholar was acting ditzy because she was really her younger sister the whole time. I think that lack of change in her personality was why so many objected to her becoming a world leader at the time.

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I think the important part is less that the character changed (although she did), but that every element of the presentation did.

Doing Stormblood with Yda would be like trying to make a serious drama about organized crime and corruption in Ul'dah with Godbert Manderville as your central character. You're going to need to do some serius work to make sure that the presence of the character alone doesn't destroy the entire tone and ideal of the story. If you put Godbert into a scene straight out of the most tense moments of Yakuza, it just wouldn't work, because we'd all be spending the entire scene waiting for the jokes to start; Yda there without a full overhaul and review would have the same problem, it'd feel like putting Mr. Bean in Saving Private Ryan.

Overhauling to the point where she's not even Yda by name creates other problems, but at least the tone holds.

Also, Moose is right: if Papalymo was dead but Yda was still Yda, she'd be the oldest Scion by a long way, and that'd feel extremely wrong for the character journey ahead of her. She'd be older than every non-Gosetsu major character in Stormblood! She'd be learning from Hien while Hien was like ten years her junior.

It's very wholly unnecessary but probably to also have her have a new look instead of her canon hairstyle shown in echo flashback of 1.0 (the short hair with headband). I mean yeah, she had 15 years to grow out her hair but all the other scions have very minor changes

I'm guessing that the twist was about letting Lyse be a new person going into SB, rather than trying to fit the existing Yda character into that same role. It didn't work out, but I'm guessing that was the original intent.

From a Doylist perspective, my read on it is that they just didn't know what to do with Yda (or Papalymo) so they effectively killed both in the lead-up to Stormblood. Furthermore that story needed an Ala Mhigan national (expatriate / refugee) to serve as the main protagonist, so they reworked Yda into a "new" character (Lyse) to fill that role.

From a Watsonian perspective it doesn't make as much sense as I'd like, though there was some subtle foreshadowing back during 2.x's finale.

the majority of ffxiv's storytelling is built upon retcons and retroactive recontextualization (often in response to fan reaction). this, combined with there being about 50,000 writers on the team, means inconsistencies and shoddy quality is bound to be afoot.

I wonder if it's better if they kept Yda and make Hien the up and coming young leader who needed to learn (the Lyse role). He could be the one who came to Eorzea instead of Gosetsu in 3.55 and we could spend the first half of Stormblood in Ala Mhigo before going to Doma and end 4.0 in Doma.

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Originally Posted by Yuella

I wonder if it's better if they kept Yda and make Hien the up and coming young leader who needed to learn (the Lyse role). He could be the one who came to Eorzea instead of Gosetsu in 3.55 and we could spend the first half of Stormblood in Ala Mhigo before going to Doma and end 4.0 in Doma.

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Given the way their revolution was framed, fighting and dying to put Hien in charge and having him being an annoying ditz would have had people complaining on these forums to no end. Plus, that would still leave the issue of what to do with Yda now that Papalymo was gone. It had to be her. I just don't get why they made her a new character given her starting place character wise was about the same. At least as far as I could tell as someone who didn't play 1.0 and started in Ul'dah with Thancred.

Even with all the possible suggestions as to why she became her sister, the cynic in me is thinking they just wanted to change her hairstyle. But I am willing to accept she was just too goofy to end up a world leader without secretly being a different person.

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Originally Posted by Yuella

I wonder if it's better if they kept Yda and make Hien the up and coming young leader who needed to learn (the Lyse role). He could be the one who came to Eorzea instead of Gosetsu in 3.55 and we could spend the first half of Stormblood in Ala Mhigo before going to Doma and end 4.0 in Doma.

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I don't think this makes much sense, because Yda is, to be blunt, an idiot.

Like I said, they needed to do some character renovations on her to make her a viable serious main character. To make her the mentor you have to convert Yda from a ditzy joke character to a genuine experienced figure with stuff to teach, which is extremely big a reach even if it's a character with the same name. The direction they went is a much more plausible step: we go from 'ditzy joke side-character' to 'eager but inexperienced freedom fighter', which actually makes a lot of sense. It replaces a lot of the 'surface' presentation elements of her character that feasibly could come from a change in worldview or outward presentation, but keeps core parts that wouldn't have been easily changed/faked/hidden.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

I don't think this makes much sense, because Yda is, to be blunt, an idiot.

Like I said, they needed to do some character renovations on her to make her a viable serious main character. To make her the mentor you have to convert Yda from a ditzy joke character to a genuine experienced figure with stuff to teach, which is extremely big a reach even if it's a character with the same name.

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Yda is a Sharlayan archon. Ditzy she may be, but an idiot? No.

The real Yda, yeah. Lyse isn't an archon

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Originally Posted by Lady_Silvermoon

I never understood why Yda became Lyse from a story perspective. Couldn't Yda have just taken off her mask and done the things Lyse did without the twist? Given our player never met the original Yda and the other Scions were just pretending, what did the twist change/add?

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My best guess: They decided that the story they wanted to tell required a protagonist that was angsty and impatient. For whatever reason, they decided that was going to be Yda. But Yda is an optimistic goofball. So they had to find an explanation for why her personality did an extreme 180 turn. And "I've been pretending to be my dead sister" was what they settled on.

In my subjective opinion, it was an uninteresting choice, a twist without substance, one that killed two characters I liked and replaced them with the worst character in the game.

Don't have any proof or anything, but I wouldn't be surprised if the protagonist of SB was planned to be Minfilia at one point (early) in development, before... yeah. It would've made sense I think given what we learn of her backstory in 1.0 (her father having been a spy for the resistance), and Lyse's red dress looks almost like a do-over of her ARR outfit...

Everyone's pretty much answered this as best it can be answered, but I'll drop my 2 cents anyway.

It was the easiest way for them to bring in a new character without technically killing an older one. I mean, part of the reveal is that the real Yda had died many years prior off screen. But the Lyse transmutation of the current "Yda" that happened on screen was one of the first times they've replaced a character without killing/seeming to kill a character.

If you weren't around or don't remember, when the Stormblood trailer first came out, it showed the WoL on Monk sparring with a woman in a red dress. Of course, we know now this was Lyse in Yda's old ornamental Ala Mhigan outfit. But back then, theories flew everywhere about who this was, and a lot of people settled on that it was Yda but somehow her Archon tats were gone. People also were cocksure that she wasn't just a Monk but was a Dancer.

It's very much what Moose put forward. They wanted to tell a story revolving around a young, pretty Ala Mhigan native girl who was old enough to be touched by the Garlean occupation but too young to have done anything about it. To be our native stranger who understands all the customs and traditions but has never lived by them. As the narrative setup for reclaiming Ala Mhigo, she also has to reclaim her heritage.

Can't really do that with a 40 something MILF who has more experience than almost the entire cast and all of the Ala Mhigan Resistance to boot. Of course, I wouldn't have hated that. *pushes index fingers together*

Of course, all narrative rationale aside, you should know these XIV devs by now. They've made it their mission in life to subvert expectations, and even when they actually fail to do that, they still like to act like they did.

Cause I mean, the majority of folks got it right. The girl in the trailer was, "Yda." The one we know. But XIV dev team got to play into their favorite fetish when they revealed she was actually Lyse.

Yes, that's right, our lead XIV dev is something of a loveable dumb ass.

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Originally Posted by Vyrerus

But back then, theories flew everywhere about who this was

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It's Yda!

It's Yda's sister!

No, it's Yda!

No, it's Yda's sister!

[Yda is Yda's sister.]

[collective dumbfounded silence]

Just my humble opinion: I got the impression they created Lyse and really liked the character, but rather than bloat the cast with a new face they decided to remove an otherwise redundant/"dead-ended" character.

I probably wouldn't have done the name swap, but maybe a "Yda grew up fast with the trauma of losing Papalymo", but it's the direction they wanted to go with it, so... is what it is I suppose.

That said, game is full of pointless drama for the sake of having drama that real-world people would just have talked out right away...so maybe it's just more of that?
(Scions knowing all along Yda's identity; Alis/Alph's father not just saying he was doing everything for their benefit, etc)

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Originally Posted by kaynide

Just my humble opinion: I got the impression they created Lyse and really liked the character, but rather than bloat the cast with a new face they decided to remove an otherwise redundant/"dead-ended" character.

I probably wouldn't have done the name swap, but maybe a "Yda grew up fast with the trauma of losing Papalymo", but it's the direction they wanted to go with it, so... is what it is I suppose.

That said, game is full of pointless drama for the sake of having drama that real-world people would just have talked out right away...so maybe it's just more of that?
(Scions knowing all along Yda's identity; Alis/Alph's father not just saying he was doing everything for their benefit, etc)

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Many people have stated that Yda was like 40 and Lyse clearly isn't, so I guess that's another reason she had to be pretending to be her sister. Though that does make me wonder if their parents had kids 20 years apart.

I get why Fourchenault acted the way he did. For one, he literally couldn't tell them the whole truth cause of the spell. And he was fully planning on clunking them over the head and dragging them onto the lifeboat cause he knew they'd take issue with leaving people to die and would try to stay and fight. He was gearing up for a full on, "it's easier to ask forgiveness than to get permission" situation.

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Originally Posted by Lady_Silvermoon

Many people have stated that Yda was like 40 and Lyse clearly isn't, so I guess that's another reason she had to be pretending to be her sister. Though that does make me wonder if their parents had kids 20 years apart.

I get why Fourchenault acted the way he did. For one, he literally couldn't tell them the whole truth cause of the spell. And he was fully planning on clunking them over the head and dragging them onto the lifeboat cause he knew they'd take issue with leaving people to die and would try to stay and fight. He was gearing up for a full on, "it's easier to ask forgiveness than to get permission" situation.

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I mean, sure, but it could also have been a “look kids, I’m doing everything I can to save as many people as I can. I can’t tell you the details, but know everything I am doing it is for you and your future. In the meantime, if you can come up with something better, I all ears and will offer my total support.”

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Originally Posted by kaynide

I mean, sure, but it could also have been a “look kids, I’m doing everything I can to save as many people as I can. I can’t tell you the details, but know everything I am doing it is for you and your future. In the meantime, if you can come up with something better, I all ears and will offer my total support.”

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That leads to the exact same path they ended up on with him disowning them. "What are you doing? What you do mean you can't tell us? We're gonna have to go to Old Sharlayan and investigate." His goal for being rude to them was for them NOT to go to Old Sharlayan and discover the super secret toy boat they were gonna use to save themselves and their allies.

Plus they were asking for Sharlayan's help fighting the towers. The answer, "we're working on something, but we won't work with you" would have floated as an answer they would have accepted. Had we bought the whole disowning act, then there would have been no reason to go to Sharlayan. It was because his behavior seemed sus that we went there.

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Originally Posted by Lady_Silvermoon

Plus they were asking for Sharlayan's help fighting the towers. The answer, "we're working on something, but we won't work with you" would have floated as an answer they would have accepted.

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You and I have very different notions of how the twins respond to suspicious withholding of information. Especially Alphinaud.

But I think with this, both of you are falling into a trap of looking at that scene from a purely plot-functional perspective. I'm a fan of that angle, but it needs to also have the actual character of the... well, characters, involved. That scene isn't just an introduction of plot hooks for the upcoming expansion, it's also an introduction to Fourchenault, a character long known of as a background player (fun fact, his bio's not in EE3, because it was in EE1, that's how long he was in the wings). He needed to make as strong an impression in that scene as Wak Lamat's going to need to make next week.

And the impression Fourchenault had to put forward is that he is not a nice person. One of the few things we knew about him is that he stood in political opposition to Louisoix, for reasons that make him essentially an embodiment of all of Sharlayan's worst tendencies. The fact that the words he chose on that day were so nakedly cruel says as much about him and Sharlayan as the actual content of what he said. Yeah, it caused 'needless drama', but maybe that's not the fault of the story, but the fault of the character in it.

Plot twist, Yda did not die on screen. She did not show up in ataliscope dungeon. She could still be alive as a garlean prisoner. Or brainwashed and still fighting for the enemy in one of the remaining factions out there. Great story potential and a way to bring lyse back into the story and tie up loose plot threads with all this.

For me who wasn't familiar with the 1.0 versions of Papalymo and Yda until later from youtube videos, "Yda" didn't really feel like she changed character much, and I say this as someone did experience the old ARR questing before they trimmed it down. So when the "shocking twist" of Lyse came in, I had no idea who her sister was. Me being naive, I thought "Okay maybe they will show what her sister was like more than just the dress." But it just sort of faded into the background. I didn't hate Lyse, just found her not that interesting, in fact I just assumed that was the entire point of Yda/Lyse was to be some undercover person and that there was nothing more to her until I saw the 1.0x videos.

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Originally Posted by Blindheart

Plot twist, Yda did not die on screen. She did not show up in ataliscope dungeon. She could still be alive as a garlean prisoner. Or brainwashed and still fighting for the enemy in one of the remaining factions out there. Great story potential and a way to bring lyse back into the story and tie up loose plot threads with all this.

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Well, it's been 6-14 years she was gone and everyone else canonically, been there for less than a year, maybe even half. She could've been reborn already, explaining her absence

*Edit* oh, I got a medal for some reason

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Originally Posted by Blindheart

Plot twist, Yda did not die on screen. She did not show up in ataliscope dungeon. She could still be alive as a garlean prisoner. Or brainwashed and still fighting for the enemy in one of the remaining factions out there. Great story potential and a way to bring lyse back into the story and tie up loose plot threads with all this.

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I mean, she didn't know us anyway, so I dunno why she'd turn up anyway.