The 3.1 preview looks ominous...

[Cilia]

Ugh, I really want to bring up Tales of Zestiria here in the way that Cilia always brings up Dark Souls... [s]uffice to say it very clearly and deliberately works through the really complex issues we've been sitting here pondering for the last few months, on the nature of heroes and such, and comes to some pretty interesting conclusions.

Lost interest in Tales after Graces, but I might check it out when I fail my CS courses and get kicked outta college this term. I told my folks I didn't think I could handle both a full-time job and school, primarily because of my poor time management skills, but did they wanna listen? Nooooo...

Anyway, I wasn't referencing Dark Souls (this time), which though I do use it often isn't an accurate point of reference owing to XIV's far more optimistic tone. This time I was using Ultra Despair Girls: Danganronpa Another Episode, which (after the omnipresent friendship deal) shows the danger of building up one person as an icon of hope. Or at least comes dangerously close to doing so.

[Fenral]

Off-topic side discussion under the break:

This time I was using Ultra Despair Girls: Danganronpa Another Episode, which (after the omnipresent friendship deal) shows the danger of building up one person as an icon of hope. Or at least comes dangerously close to doing so.

Danganronpa has always been, to me, about how a scenario can be constructed to make people behave however the author (yeah, her ) wants, but that behavior says nothing of how the world really is. It's a giant Take That at series that try to make statements about humanity's innate cruelty by forcing their characters into highly-unrealistic scenarios designed to elicit cruel behavior. (So in its place you get a constructed scenario about constructed scenarios and... yeah. Deliberately circuitous and highly ironic.) I liked Ultra Despair Girls for how Omaru decides that the only way to really win is not to play the game, not become the symbol, but resolve the conflict carefully and without shortcuts.

Zestiria is about much the same thing, but also that "with great power comes great responsibility" does not mean "only use your powers for good" or even "help everyone you come across with everything." It's about how while a hero's powers can be used for anything, they should be used to take on challenges where only their powers will work. Also, it's about the real psychological toll of a hero's burden, the effect a hero has on others (both positive and negative), and not losing yourself to the role. That last part gets really, really ugly in a much darker way than any RPG I've played in the last decade.

Since the Warrior of Light still spends most of his time as a magnanimous odd-jobs man, I worry a lot on that front. I feel like we should be enabling people to solve their own problems, focusing our efforts on solving the problems where only the Warrior of Light will work, not simply solving every little thing we can with the cheat codes rock-mom gave us. We most certainly shouldn't become a presence that lets people believe that things will get better without their help. Sure, helping people is good, but it doesn't enable them to take care of themselves when you aren't around.

I also have a hunch that FFXIV is going in that direction, but unlike Danganronpa or Zestiria, it doesn't want to assume you have any sort of prior trope awareness. So we get this slow dance from 2.0 into 3.X to make sure you get it first, with just enough doubt thrown in there for those of us who like having something extra to chew on.

[Yuyuka3]

I wonder which quest gives cutscene where Aymeric stabbed

Good question. From looking at the german titles, it might even the very first one? Titled 'Wahrheit tut weh' (lit. 'truth hurts'). It's kind of a stretch, but who knows.

Btw., the fourth quest ('In the Eye of the Beholder') is titled 'Blick durchs Kristallauge' (lit. 'glance through the crystal eye' or something like that...), which is interesting in relationship to one of the side quests in Matoyas cave. There are some interesting things in there, I'm a bit mad at myself I didn't look at them sooner.

[Alisa180]

Since the Warrior of Light still spends most of his time as a magnanimous odd-jobs man, I worry a lot on that front. I feel like we should be enabling people to solve their own problems, focusing our efforts on solving the problems where only the Warrior of Light will work, not simply solving every little thing we can with the cheat codes rock-mom gave us. We most certainly shouldn't become a presence that lets people believe that things will get better without their help. Sure, helping people is good, but it doesn't enable them to take care of themselves when you aren't around.

The reason the Warrior of Light 'spends most of their time doing odd jobs' is because of the nature of their profession: They are an adventurer. A minor sidequest (A young boy) NPC in Gridania says 'Adventurers will do anything for money', and he means by that is in an 'odd job' sort of way. Here, I found the exact quote:

"I know all about adventurers! You'll do anything for a reward, won't you?
Well then, I want you to make Aunillie laugh."

Another good example of this is a sidequest in Bentbranch:

"You there─adventurer! Yes, you will suffice. I have a job I need performed, and I'm willing to pay the going rate.
A trifling task, really. I simply need you to ask the locals here at Bentbranch Meadows what the head wrangler covets most in all the world."

During 2.x, it's implied that time passes between each story (like there's some time between the defeat of the Ultima Weapon, and the start of A Realm Reawoken, and again before Through the Malestrom, and so on). Not to mention there's indications of time passing within the Main Scenario itself. The WoL obviously isn't on Scion/main story business all the time, so when they aren't being called upon to do their hero shtick they naturally fall back on typical adventurer work. Ventures, hunts, dungeons from time to time, crafting, odd jobs (various sidequests), and pretty much everything not directly connected to the Main Scenario. They have to earn gil somehow after all.

[Lucerna]

Question! Am I the only one who saw the quest "A Little Slow, a Little Late" and thought we might be seeing Thancred again, but in bad shape? Aymeric was injured with a knife, after all..

[DPZ2]

I like to believe that, as the Warrior of Light, I haven't gotten so 'enlightened' as to believe that simply helping others is beyond my dignity.

It's the side-quests, those mini-stories of nobody-especially-important asking for help, eventually benefiting from insights gained about themselves and others when the help is given, that truly create the Warrior of Light.

I do, however, dread becoming that which I fight against. Arrogance has been the downfall of more than one being of Light, after all.

[Fenral]

I'm much too cynical to think all the people I've inspired have truly been inspired to their best. At least one I can say outright wasn't, but there's nothing that can be done about that right now so I'll leave it aside.

As for ones I still hopefully can deal with (and to prove that I've thought long and hard about far more of this game's plot than I'm given credit for): the Scions. Sure, we're allies against the "primal threat" which all their exposition indicates is a terrible thing for Hydaelin, but... More than a few things still bother me about the whole operation. You could argue that inspiring others to stand back and let me do all the fighting is, for some people, a way of helping them reach their true potential, but, at the same time, what of people who could be fighting but now don't have to?

The "classic" anti-primal MO was to just send in wave after wave in the hopes that one of the waves would get through tempered and slay the thing. it was pretty terrible. Our current MO involves sending me (and my anonymous "allies") in to take out the primal, leaving them to swoop in and clean up any tempered left. After the Ifrit fight in ARR, Thancred quietly drops the bombshell that the people I fought Ifrit alongside have all been executed as tempered, since that is the only way to deal with tempering. The messy implication there is that some if not all the "other adventurers" I fight primals alongside do, in fact, get tempered after all, even if I don't, and after that there's no alternative but to put them down like animals.

The beast tribes are still summoning primals and creating tempered, and each of their "false gods" I put down only terrifies them into summoning a stronger incarnation. I am the nuclear deterrent, and just about as effective as any nuclear deterrent can be against fanatics who believe they can still bring out a bigger gun. The core problem of summoning and tempering is only made worse by my actions, and simply killing everything involved that isn't me is laughably far removed from an ideal solution.

Not that I want there to be heavier losses on our side, but as things stand, the only "solution" in our arsenal relies on me being there. The motivations behind the summoning of primals are left basically as they are (we have no choice), and the only solution to tempering remains to simply keep as many people as they can from being tempered and simply dispose of those who do get tempered in the most tragically permanent way they can (we have no choice).

The Allagans didn't have an invincible hero with the Echo and the Blessing of Light to take on the primals so they didn't have to. Were they wiped out? No. To fight back, they invented the art of Summoning. Well, technically they stole it from the Meracydians, but the point is: when faced with a threat that amounts to "evolve or die," they evolved.

Minfilia was the leader of an entire organization full of people gifted with the Echo. In other words, she commanded a (small) army of people immune to tempering. Properly trained and equipped, they could have become an effective force. Dragon-dad was nice enough to prove that our strength did not come from Hydaelin's blessing. It was our own strength, human strength.

Without some invincible hero charging on ahead to solve their problems for them, the next best thing would have been a strike force that could get in and out without the risk of tempering. We actually had that, but they were never called on to fight primals because I was there, and one thing leading to another led to them all(?) being wiped out in Livia's raid on the Waking Sands. So much for that.

We still have no way to properly prevent primal summoning. We also have no way to prevent or cure tempering, save for the Echo. A change to either of those would be a proper step in the right direction, but neither step needs to be taken so long as the current solution works.

If the Ascians really want to mess with us, they need only cause primals to be summoned in two different regions at once. That'll show how effective our current solution is.

[Yuyuka3]

After the Ifrit fight in ARR, Thancred quietly drops the bombshell that the people I fought Ifrit alongside have all been executed as tempered, since that is the only way to deal with tempering. The messy implication there is that some if not all the "other adventurers" I fight primals alongside do, in fact, get tempered after all, even if I don't, and after that there's no alternative but to put them down like animals.

Uh, didn't he talk about the soldiers that got caught with you by the Amalj'aa, not the adventurers fighting with? I could be wrong, but that's what I remember from that quest (been a while) and it makes far more sense to me. Since, you know, if any of the people fighting in our group where tempered - wouldn't they have just stopped fighting by our side against Ifrit, and actually started fighting against us? Since I doupt a tempered would continue to fight his god.
That's why the company of heroes used three waves in the first place. First got tempered -> second fought first -> third fought Leviathan.

[Fenral]

snip

It's a stray bit of small-talk, so with XIVDB left eternally-borked by the 3.0 update, the only choice left is to ask Anony "I get payed to transcribe the script" Moose for specifics. I do distinctly recall those who fought alongside us as included in that number, but it's literally the first and last time anything like that is mentioned. Either way, I tend to be extremely sensitive to background character death, and whether or not I'm correct on that tiny point has no bearing whatsoever on the rest of what I said.

[Yuyuka3]

It's a stray bit of small-talk, so with XIVDB left eternally-borked by the 3.0 update, the only choice left is to ask Anony "I get payed to transcribe the script" Moose for specifics. I do distinctly recall those who fought alongside us as included in that number, but it's literally the first and last time anything like that is mentioned. Either way, I tend to be extremely sensitive to background character death, and whether or not I'm correct on that tiny point has no bearing whatsoever on the rest of what I said.

Yeah, guess we will have to wait right now...
But I tink what you say about it bein unimport for the rest of your post is only partially true. Think of it, who would even fight besides you if they knew they where going to die afterwards no matter what? Most people wouldn't, and I don't think advanturers are that heroic (or rather, stupid...) that they just throw their lives away.
Towards the rest of your post. Is the current solution the best one? No, deffinitely not. Do we have another choise except sacrificing who knows how many people? Uh...
What would you recommend them to do?
(The reason you don't just take some of the other echo users in the Sands with you is probably gameplay based and handwaved as 'not avaiable at the time' I guess...)

Right before the Ifrit fight, when you are in the captured area, you actually are able to leave (with an NPC saying to gather some allies and PLEASE come back for them essentially). All adventurers you fight alongside should be assumed to have the Echo as well (as while you are the WoL of your story and the rest of us aren't, we do in fact still have the echo. You are the Chosen One of the Chosen Many essentially.)

The other soldiers who were captured alongside you are dead yes, but not the adventurers who fought Ifrit alongside you.

This is what I meant. Thank you.