Let's keep Character Crossovers from other Square-Enix titles out of FFXIV.

[Keyln]

I am a huge fan of Final Fantasy, and have been since I first played it way back when in 1989, with Final Fantasy as my first Final Fantasy. Since then, I've played, to completion, every major Final Fantasy game that has since come out. I've also played Final Fantasy XIV from when it was released (I even have the collector's edition), and I've seen it change from a boring unplayable mess to what it is today. So, I know Final Fantasy.

If there's one thing that constant about Final Fantasy is change. Every Final Fantasy game changes, with each and every game changing something, doing something different not seen in previous Final Fantasy games, and this is what XIV is doing. Final Fantasy I started off being nothing than a D&D clone with a Japanese twist added into it, but it was a really well made game. In fact, most of the elements that we would identify being uniquely Final Fantasy actually started in Final Fantasy II. So, there's no set "story" or "lore" to the Final Fantasy universe, other than what the developers of a particular Final Fantasy decide what it is. The best part of this is that there's really no one telling the developers that they're doing something wrong from a lore-perspective.

With that said, I choose to have a position of faith when it comes to the inclusion of other Final Fantasy characters into XIV. My faith stems from two things.

The first is that I've seen how this game has changed from its 1.0 days to what it is now. This game is tons more fun to play, and I enjoy playing it when I get the chance (why can't Beta be up longer...). So, yeah, the changes made in this game have been nothing but good so far.

The second is that Yoshi is both sensitive and considerate of the concerns about putting in Final Fantasy characters into the game. He's already stated that characters are real, and that he won't do anything that would disturb how the different Final Fantasy stories came out. Meaning, we won't see Aeris rising from the grave anytime soon. Sephiroth on the other hand...

So, for those two reasons, I choose to have a position of faith with how things will turn out.

[Fatestorm]

The second is that Yoshi is both sensitive and considerate of the concerns about putting in Final Fantasy characters into the game. He's already stated that characters are real, and that he won't do anything that would disturb how the different Final Fantasy stories came out. Meaning, we won't see Aeris rising from the grave anytime soon. Sephiroth on the other hand...

So, for those two reasons, I choose to have a position of faith with how things will turn out.

I hope you're right with this, but you've put your finger right here on what's worrying to me. Why Sephiroth and not Aeris? There is just no way to know what "We will never introduce characters that would destroy their meaning or story" and "We will not use characters that are already dead or whose role has ended in their title" means concretely. Especially characters "whose role has ended in their title." That's a baffling criterion to me and sounds tailor-made to allow anything to fly with the right sort of justification.

Like, as an example, I'm struggling to understand how the example Yoshi himself gave, Red XIII from Final Fantasy VII, is different from Lightning. Why would he not include him in FFXIV? Not that I want him in the game--quite the opposite--but I'm wondering why Yoshi has disqualified one and not the other. Who's to say that Red XIII's role "has ended in his title?" Does Yoshi just mean games that aren't finished yet (Like Lightning Returns)? I really don't know. But why does Sephiroth keep rising from the grave when he got killed at the end of Final Fantasy VII? I really don't know. (Unless I'm being cynical and say because fanservice.) So again, my point is this:

It looks like Yoshi has given us a safeguard that he will preserve plot and character integrity; but this is nowhere near an objective criterion at all. It's basically him saying "come on... trust me!"--and so it's worth precisely that much.

It's also been part of my argument that these crossovers do, by their very nature, damage the plot and character of the respective works involved; and that to properly preserve the integrity of the story one must either ignore them or look upon them as deuterocanonical. So Yoshi's response that Lightning is the one and only Lightning and not a copy, and that the writing team worked hard on the quest story--all of that is I suppose a good thing for the team implementing all this, but really misses my fundamental worry entirely.

In short you have a hermeneutic of faith for Yoshi and his team based on his track record, and in truth you're right and it deserves to be noted. He's made FFXIV into a great game, I agree, and while it's not up to me I do think it'll succeed. I'm proud of him.

I, however, have a hermeneutic of suspicion with this whole crossover business, with all of it. Laying all my cards on the table, and with the understanding that I can't prove any of this or don't know for a fact that this is the case: I think that Square-Enix decided, at the upper level somewhere, that this sort of crossover was going to happen as part of a more aggressive marketing campaign of Square-Enix products and titles, and that Yoshi got told that this FFXIV crossover was going to happen. Or maybe he agreed, or came up with the idea himself; I've no idea. But what's clear to me is that Yoshi and his team sat down and said "ok... crossovers are happening. What's the least painful way for this to happen with respect to story? How can we make this happen?" rather than the other way around-- that is, the lore team didn't come up with a fantastic story for a Lightning crossover and then go ask Yoshi "hey look at this great idea we came up with, can we please do this, I bet players will love it."

[Keyln]

I hope you're right with this, but you've put your finger right here on what's worrying to me. Why Sephiroth and not Aeris? There is just no way to know what "We will never introduce characters that would destroy their meaning or story" and "We will not use characters that are already dead or whose role has ended in their title" means concretely. Especially characters "whose role has ended in their title." That's a baffling criterion to me and sounds tailor-made to allow anything to fly with the right sort of justification.

I think this is a product of poor translation more than anything. I think what Yoshi is saying that characters who can't travel worlds (due to being dead or incapacitated) will not show up in FFXIV. Everyone else is fair game.

Like, as an example, I'm struggling to understand how the example Yoshi himself gave, Red XIII from Final Fantasy VII, is different from Lightning. Why would he not include him in FFXIV? Not that I want him in the game--quite the opposite--but I'm wondering why Yoshi has disqualified one and not the other. Who's to say that Red XIII's role "has ended in his title?" Does Yoshi just mean games that aren't finished yet (Like Lightning Returns)? I really don't know. But why does Sephiroth keep rising from the grave when he got killed at the end of Final Fantasy VII? I really don't know. (Unless I'm being cynical and say because fanservice.) So again, my point is this:

It looks like Yoshi has given us a safeguard that he will preserve plot and character integrity; but this is nowhere near an objective criterion at all. It's basically him saying "come on... trust me!"--and so it's worth precisely that much.

At this point, you have a choice to have faith or not. I choose to have faith in Yoshi in that he'll do a good job in translating the characters to FFXIV, and will be faithful to what the series has already done.

It's also been part of my argument that these crossovers do, by their very nature, damage the plot and character of the respective works involved; and that to properly preserve the integrity of the story one must either ignore them or look upon them as deuterocanonical. So Yoshi's response that Lightning is the one and only Lightning and not a copy, and that the writing team worked hard on the quest story--all of that is I suppose a good thing for the team implementing all this, but really misses my fundamental worry entirely.

And here's where I fundamentally disagree with you. You come from a position that crossovers must be fundamentally bad. I come from a position that crossovers are neither bad nor good, but how well they are written. There are certainly bad crossover events, where one party is overshadowed or overplayed by another, but there are also good crossovers where both parties play well with each other, and highlight their strengths beautifully. A good example of this is in this crossover between Aladdin and Hercules. JLA/Avengers is also a good example of a good crossover. I can think of a few others, but for the sake of brevity, I'll choose to omit those. In short, and to repeat myself, crossovers are not inherently bad, but it does depend heavily on who's doing the writing.

I, however, have a hermeneutic of suspicion with this whole crossover business, with all of it. Laying all my cards on the table, and with the understanding that I can't prove any of this or don't know for a fact that this is the case: I think that Square-Enix decided, at the upper level somewhere, that this sort of crossover was going to happen as part of a more aggressive marketing campaign of Square-Enix products and titles, and that Yoshi got told that this FFXIV crossover was going to happen. Or maybe he agreed, or came up with the idea himself; I've no idea. But what's clear to me is that Yoshi and his team sat down and said "ok... crossovers are happening. What's the least painful way for this to happen with respect to story? How can we make this happen?" rather than the other way around-- that is, the lore team didn't come up with a fantastic story for a Lightning crossover and then go ask Yoshi "hey look at this great idea we came up with, can we please do this, I bet players will love it."

How do you know? Are you privy to some behind the scenes dealings that the rest of us aren't?

Given with what we know about the early designs of ARR, it is quite possible (and daresay probable) that Yoshi, looking at the feedback given, and probably a Final Fantasy fan like ourselves, wanted to have elements from previous Final Fantasies, and I don't see anything that could preclude having characters from previous Final Fantasies included. I doubt that this idea came from on high, considering the changing of the guard during the development of ARR. I think your strong dislike of crossovers is clouding your vision here, and putting things that may or may not have happened without further evidence.

[Fatestorm]

How do you know? Are you privy to some behind the scenes dealings that the rest of us aren't?

I don't, and I said as much in my post.

with the understanding that I can't prove any of this or don't know for a fact that this is the case

It's just what I think is the case. And I openly admit my hermeneutic of suspicion, so I suppose you're perfectly within your rights to be suspicious of me in turn. At any rate, whether my suspicion is true or not is completely immaterial to the substantive argument that I make in my OP.

I think this is a product of poor translation more than anything. I think what Yoshi is saying that characters who can't travel worlds (due to being dead or incapacitated) will not show up in FFXIV. Everyone else is fair game.

...

And here's where I fundamentally disagree with you. You come from a position that crossovers must be fundamentally bad. I come from a position that crossovers are neither bad nor good, but how well they are written. There are certainly bad crossover events, where one party is overshadowed or overplayed by another, but there are also good crossovers where both parties play well with each other, and highlight their strengths beautifully. A good example of this is in this crossover between Aladdin and Hercules. JLA/Avengers is also a good example of a good crossover. I can think of a few others, but for the sake of brevity, I'll choose to omit those. In short, and to repeat myself, crossovers are not inherently bad, but it does depend heavily on who's doing the writing.

I'd like to say that I appreciate your reply, as I actually agree with most of what you say. These two paragraphs help to bring out where we disagree more concretely. To your examples of successful crossovers, I would say--I don't know if I agree with you or not, I would really have to think about it more. I mean, Aladdin/Hercules and the Avengers were certainly successful... but they are arguably after different objectives than high fantasy (general audience entertainment/action/superhero on the one hand; high drama on the other). I'm not saying I've got it completely figured out though; I'd have to think about it some more.

But concretely, you suggest that any character who "can't traverse worlds", because dead or incapacitated, is fair game for crossover. If true, I have to say, I recoil in horror at the concept; as I thought that Yoshi's 'guarantee' to us to do these crossovers with integrity would call for more restraint than that. But in talking about this, I've put my finger on one of the things I dislike about crossovers in a high fantasy like this--this idea of "traversing worlds" altogether.

Again, this is coming more from a 'storytelling' perspective and not a substantive perspective of 'how' do these people cross worlds. And my reason is because crossovers take another crucial storytelling element--setting--and either jettison or deform it. Any given story is a tapestry--plot and character are the most important, but other things like setting, tone, (sometimes) music, spectacle, are also indispensable. In some cases, a crossover takes the character from one world and jettisons him or her from his native plot and native setting into a foreign one. So in this scenario, the character is perpetually a fish out of water. In other cases--which you seem to allude to--two realms are joined--two stories which were originally separate are stitched together and there is an actual attempt to make a unity where there was once duality.

Yoshi has said that he is going after the latter. I can't help but think that most any attempt cannot help but do some of the former. I think of when I played the first Kingdom Hearts, and met--to use just the first example that comes to my head--Squall in that game. KH Squall is a downright caricature of himself in FF8. The only way the character has any depth at all is to pretend that he's a character in this game only, in this setting only, and bracket out what you know about him elsewhere. While simultaneously being unable to do precisely that; because the game is counting on your previous knowledge of him as a crutch for your emotional investment in him at all. All of which, imo, isn't good storytelling.

That said, it is possible to do a good job melding worlds. I still have to insist that there is a fundamental difference between a story conceived and written as a unity on the one hand, and two stories retconned and stitched together to form a unity on the other. But even so, you can do a good or a bad job with the stitches.

Since Yoshi's already said that he's gonna do it, the best I can hope for is that he does do a good job with the stitches, and that he doesn't attach it to the main questline.