Question about LV50 Dark Knight quest *Spoilers*

[Fenral]

The problem is... nothing really can be done about it. The Warrior of Light is a silent protagonist to further sell the "blank slate" on which every player can project their personality. Since the WoL has to be a blank slate, s/he can't really have a personality, so s/he can't be the central character of the storyline.

And Final Fantasy (the first one) says "hi." Even if your role is to be the hired muscle, the fact remains that the plot can't advance without you being there. G'raha even has a line to that effect when you go to Syrcus Tower with Unei and Doga.

The line in question is the only one that denies "Eorzea's hope" is our true character and deals with the Warrior of Light's selfish wish - to be freed of the endless cycle of conflict and suffering.

And that's why FFXIV can never be a reconstruction of the epic hero archetype. It may try to tease the possibility of more complex notions of good and evil, but ultimately our "good" is still "objectively good," and deviating from that is "selfish." Until they do something with it later, the great weakness of CT's finale is that, as soon as "the ancient's wish" became known, rather than actually stop and weigh that wish against the Tower's troubled history, G'raha's own desires, or the good he can do with that knowledge in the present, the "decision" is made offscreen. His "sacrifice" is simply presented as the only correct choice, and not even a choice at all, as nobody in the party is capable of disagreeing with notions the writers perceive as "objective good." We're stuck in a story that tries to have moral grey areas, but refuses to relinquish its objective morality, instead either ignoring contradictions or discrediting them.

I'm currently of the opinion that "Hydaelyn's Champion" would probably have let Yuna go through with the Final Summoning, as its benefit to the majority was obvious enough that no further discussion was really needed ("10 years of peace for the price of one weepy doormat? Sold!"). Of course we'd always remember her and the beautiful sacrifice she made, and we'd live on to honor that memory in the world she made at the cost of her life.

I brought up Tales of Phantasia because, for its time, it cared to posit that even actions that seem like they benefit everyone are still a product of a protagonist-centric morality, just one that the majority agrees with. The Tales series since then has a good track record for accepting its protagonist-centric morality, and later Final Fantasy games as well, by accepting that even that "selfish" morality is still capable of positive change. So long as FFXIV continues to hide behind Hydaelyn's crystal skirts, however, our morality is the one "true" good before which all others must yield, no matter who tries to say otherwise. Every time Elidbus and his entirely-too-young voice show up, I hope FFXIV will start recognizing the folly of presenting its morality as absolute, but it hasn't happened yet.

I'd really love to see the branching quest outcomes from 1.X brought back at some point, even superficially. It wouldn't need to change everything ever, just give players a sense that their own decisions actually contributed to the outcome everyone would have attributed entirely to them anyway.