The Eye-Rolling Laziness of the Crystal Tower Arc Ending [SPOILERS]

[ECHOxLegend]

Makes perfect sense to me for the many reasons already posted, although the one thing that does bother me is that as long as we are breaking out tropes, why didn't we get into the nitty gritty moral of being a clone and free-will and all that moral/social/ debate stuff that always comes up with clones.

[Alberel]

G'raha Tia--whatever character he might have had, became a deus ex machina for the sake of the plot (the argument could be made that Unei and Doga were that already); and he adopts a very alienating attitude of paternalistic, holier-than-thou condescension when he seals the tower--which, even if we were to go along with SE's 'story' here, seems to contradict in its essence the fond desire that his Allagan ancestor wished to effect.

In the end, as a character, I've made no new friends, made no real 'progress' (things are only the same as they started), and I'm not sure why I went through the whole effort with the Tower at all. That's not a good way to tell a story. That's not how I felt at the end of the Praetorium. S-E can do better, and we should demand that they do their best with this game's plot, because it's very meaningful to us all.

G'raha Tia made it pretty clear that he had no choice but to seal the tower. Salina had wanted someone to purge the tower and make it into a beacon of hope but G'raha points out that even with his new power to control the tower NOAH and the Eorzeans do not have the technology to harness it safely and they would risk causing another earthquake like the one that wiped out Allag. G'raha also didn't have the luxury of just waiting, however, as his power to control the tower would not last for long (as Unei said, the power of their blood was only ephemeral) so instead he sealed the tower the same way Xande did. If someday someone has the technology and understanding to be able to break the seal on the tower then they would also have the technology to harness it safely.

I do agree though that the way nothing has effectively changed by the end of the story is disappointing. Having said that I can see why they were forced to handle it like this. The CT story is a side-story and thus entirely optional. Giving it a lasting impact on the game's main narrative would prove problematic for the writers unless they made CT into a requirement for future main scenario quests...

Somehow I doubt that's the last we've seen of Nero though, and I would love to think that in a few expansions we may actually return to release G'raha and use the tower as part of a future storyline.

[LineageRazor]

There's a key thing here that folks are missing when they're saying, "XXX character had a GOOD REASON for doing YYY action." We KNOW that the story provided good reasons for the things that happened. That's not what the complaints are about.

These "good reasons" were CREATED BY THE WRITERS. The WRITERS decided that the technology in the Crystal Tower was too advanced for Eorzea and needed to be sealed away, and the reason that they made this decision was so that they would be able to clean up all the extra characters and plot elements and return everything to the status quo. There didn't HAVE to be the likely threat of a disaster if the technology was misused, but the writers decided it was so.

The writers wanted an easy out. If they had wanted a challenge, they could have taken a different path. For example, G'raha decided instead that Eorzea IS ready for the technology, kept the tower open, and lead teams of researchers in to study the ancient technology. It wouldn't even have to have a big impact on the game - after all, this is advanced stuff, it's going to take a while to make heads or tails of how it works.

The problem the writers want to avoid, though, is that they would be obligated to revisit this open-ended plot thread. Players will justifiably want to know how the research is coming along, and expect to see changes made to the game involving the discoveries there. The authors decided to dodge this obligation with a trite, "You are not ready." and a door slam. Now, no one expects anything to come of the Crystal Tower as it will likely be sealed for well beyond the lifespans of their characters.

[Fenral]

What they've done here is establish, right out the gate, the precedent that nothing you do in major side-stories is allowed to matter. Not to mention it's a slap in the face to people like me, who thought we were seeing a male Miqo'te join the recurring cast, if only for contained side-story arcs like Hildibrand (NOAH season 2, anyone?).

All we knew from 2.3 was that G'raha had a lost memory. When it finally emerged, it could have taken any form the writers chose (including simply seeing the tower cleansed of darkness), and instead they chose the form that left not even the faintest possibility of any sort of continuation, and did a disservice to the source material. They story could have ended on any number of notes, but in this case the "bittersweet farewell" they chose is tainted by too much narrative convenience to be properly effective, at least for me.

[EdwinLi]

meh I pretty much saw that the characters introduced in CT story would not have any role beyond the CT storyline since CT storyline began.

It is a very common thing for characters introduced to play a major role in a small part of a story to not be seen again in future storylines for different plot reasons.

Even if he did not seal himself in the CT story and the plot took a different path he most likely would have stayed in the CT area to help farther research about it thus preventing him from leaving the CT area and to appear in the future side stories.

If he had left to return to report his findings and gain more help to supply CT research he would have disappeared again where we would only get a comment about what has happen to him by talking to another NPC.

Either way he was going to disappear from the story anyways.

[Tayolynn]

G'raha didn't want to preserve Crystal Tower in a deep slumber, that hoe is just gonna leave it awake and have massive parties and frolic in a huge and overly gorgeous castle for himself, the nerve! The staircases! The crystals! The awesome throne! I want it as my friggin house. The moment those gates reopen, the people who open the tower will find that darn catman sitting on the awesome throne all smug, not having to be a 3-star goldsmith.

Also, did anyone else see a massive troll face the moment Cid grabbed Nero's hand.

Nero: "Oh no, will I make it out of here? Will I be trapped here all eternity? My ambitions, my goals, lost to the void that's about to swallow me whole...!

Nero: "No I won't be undone! I won't be outdone by Cid!"

*grabs a hand*

Cid: "You owe me Nero."

Nero: Goddamit Cid!

[Fenral]

At any rate, the argument in this thread is not so much about what they did, as the hasty and dissatisfying manner in which they did it. Nero surviving the Praetorium, reuniting, albeit temporarily, with Cid, is a pretty major event that can and will most definitely be addressed again, even if players haven't done the CT scenario. Treating the rest of the characters as simply disposable pawns towards that purpose does them a disservice, especially as all developments leading to that result happened over the course of about five minutes at the very end with very little setup, conflict, or justification from the source material.

Anger and frustration aside, turns out there are few injustices that can't be corrected with Retainer Fantasia. Somehow, I was able to snag the name of a major NPC on a major server more than a year from his introduction:


I suppose it was fate.

[Luciano_Bozzelli]

I sorta liked it.

This... I sorta liked it, but the experience in going into Syrcus Tower for the first time felt better than going into that dark world. It seems like they didn't try to hard on the actual design as a lot of the boss areas, and fight areas look the same except going toward the end.

[Nalien]

Given the "Eureka, the Forbidden Land" teaser at the end, I doubt we've seen the last of G'raha. We even have Noah cosplaying a catgirl set up ready to help us reopen the tower early in order to deal with whatever threat Eureka poses...

[Andevom]

Wasn't anything that made me go "Oh god, that's terrible", although I was kinda bummed last time when ST came out and Doga and Unei looked nothing like their FFIII counterparts.

I enjoy the game too much to let things like bizarre character actions phase me anymore, and I think they more than made up for any shortcomings with the absurd fun in the Hildebrand storyline this time around.