Letter from the Producer LIVE Part XXVII Lore Discussion

[SuperFlorinjin]

I dunno, Yda was looking kind of blood thirsty at the end of 3.1. I'm thinking she's lost some of her happy-go-lucky nature.

[Chewy2nd]

I fully agree with you. What makes me even more angry with none of the scions dying is that it makes Alphinaud's character growth kinda pointless. His character growth is something Yoshi-P was proud of, however now him learning from his arrogance is pointless because in the end, 'Hey your Crystal Braves didn't kill anyone, buddy!' So now I feel that Heavensward's story is kinda more lame because it takes away so much from Alphinaud's journey.

But what I fear, is that 3.2 will have only a couple of cutscenes dealing with Ishgard, then all the rest dealing with pointless Minifilia and the utterly boring scions just like 3.1. Maybe if they take some characters from this expansion and they were to join us and make this all worth wild then maybe I would be less critical. But we are just going back to the 'good old days', or so it feels.

They killed plenty... including Wilred.

[Theodric]

They killed plenty... including Wilred.

Minor characters, yes. Many of whom showed up only once or twice. Killing at least one major Scion, however? That would make it much more personal. It'd also highlight the fact that they're not invincible...which is sorely needed. It's not just an immunity to death that's the problem either. Thancred got himself possessed by an Ascian, betrayed the location of the Scion's hideout in the process...and it was brushed aside within a matter of moments after we freed him from Lahabrea's control. Livia was the one to assault the place, true, but Thancred is at least partly to blame for what happened.

[Anselmet]

They killed plenty... including Wilred.

Name one main character other than Haurchefant and I guess Moonbryda that they sincerely killed off. The main reason Haurchefant's death is so impactful is because he is truly gone and not coming back (unless Yoshi-P wants to mess up on that one). The story had more heart behind it when we thought we were trying to move on and over come our failures by trying to help Ishgard. The scions all living negates that. One of the final cutscenes has Tataru even saying we need to rebuild the scions (and we need money). Well now we don't because all of the major players are still alive. So Tataru, start becoming unuseful again because we have five other characters to take your place.

EDIT: But seeing how we are stuck with scions, we could have had them come back gradually. Imagine if Yshtola had to deal with the impact of her forbidden magic, thinking Thancred is dead only to find him patches later. Or to have Yda and Papalmo show up in the next expansion. I think my main critique is that its all a happy ending one patch after Heavensward which had a solid story.

[Belhi]

If Minfilia had ended up just dead it would have been very sloppy writing. She gets a message, runs off into the tunnels apparently perfectly healthy, and oh now she is dead.

Honestly in 2.55 I didn't think any of the Scions were dead. What was the critical issue with 2.55 wasn't the Scions dying. Us being scattered, outcast and alone served its purpose enough. The mistake was that Nanamo survived. It was her survival that undermined all the drama of 2.55 and made it lose it impact. Having Minifila dead would have done nothing to get it back.

So far they seem to have handled the Scions return reasonably well. I'll wait and see what they are doing with Minfilia. It isn't what I was expecting but honestly we have so little to go on its impossible to speculate how this will change things. At the very least what we have seen so far is both an attempt to flesh out the Scions a bit while at least showing the events of 2.55 had a cost on them.

I cant help but think people want Minfilia dead just cause they don't like her :/ Seriously if Minfilia had ended up dead, the way she generally seems to be talked about a lot of people would just say 'good'. That's no impact at all. If a death is supposed to have impact you have to care that the person has died.

Anyway they haven't held back in killing off characters in HW. I don't think they are lacking that narratively. Frankly doing it too much would cause it to lose it's impact.

[Fenral]

Most Final Fantasy games had the decency to stop after one or two major deaths, for the above reason. The ones that didn't, like II or IV, are also well-regarded as having handled death badly, to the point that FFII's sloppy handling of character deaths was directly called out in FFIX.

[Frederick22]

Nanamo's dead

I will say and i will say it again. Nanamo's survival was kind of spected, behind all that impact and drama, there were lots, LOTS of things that didnt make sence
We also have the city state leader "plot armor "
The most important thing of this, is that, Let you remind all, you guys think the dev team think this overnight? The develop of 2.55 story had long ended, ever before 2.2. On this very moments they are working with the 4.0 story and by the end of 3.3 they will have enought material to show us something, possibly even the teaser video.

[SummonerSenah]

I'm not particularly pleased by Minfilia's return. Why are we losing the likes of Haurchefant, Estinien and Ysayle only for the Scions to be given a ridiculous amount of plot armour?

I cant help but think people want Minfilia dead just cause they don't like her :/ Seriously if Minfilia had ended up dead, the way she generally seems to be talked about a lot of people would just say 'good'. That's no impact at all. If a death is supposed to have impact you have to care that the person has died.

This, pretty much. And that explains why it's mostly characters that people did care about that have remained permanently dead thus far.

[CyrilLucifer]

It's less that I want Minfilia dead and more that I feel the Scions have started overstaying their welcome. XI handled it better; the main characters of each expansion and post-expansion content changed each time, so it kept them fresh. When you did go back and see those characters, due to side stories adding them all together (Apocalypse Nigh, for example, or Rhapsodies), it really makes you go I missed them.

But if, for example, every expansion had Prishe in it, I would have burnt out on her, the same way I'm burnt out on the Scions in XIV. Which includes Alphinaud, by the way. I don't really need him holding my hand through every event for another expansion.

Edit: That said, I enjoyed 3.0 a good deal more because of the focus on Ysayle and Estinien. It's really just this 3.X series I'm not terribly thrilled about. It's too early to make any comment about 4.0 yet.

[Chewy2nd]

I think killing any of the Scions off would have been a waste, they have so much more to give character wise, exchanging that for a little shock value is pointless in the long run, we will likely see a Scion death at some point, but this isn't it.