Estinien's Fate? [SPOILER discussion]

[Reiryuu]

I've just got a mental image of Nidhogg dressed like a stereotypical teen and throwing a full angst fit. "But Daaaaaad!! Their ancestors killed my beloved!! I need to make them paaaaaayyy!!"

Ratatoskr was Hraesvelgr and Nidhogg's sister and, thus, Midgardsormr's daughter. =p

[MilesSaintboroguh]

snip

Wonderfully thought up. Just to add onto this, seeing people wanting Estinien dead because personal reasons isn't the first time I seen this brought up. Alphinaud gets flack over his overzealousness in the 2.X story, but he clearly steps up his game in 3.X. Despite this, people are still bitter over his shortcomings in the past and want him to die for it. Minfilia also gets similar flack for just standing around "doing nothing and always getting kidnapped", despite the fact that A) she is only kidnapped twice and was willing to die to protect the information she held and B) she's more of a political figure that does the work you nor anyone else can or is willing to do. She's the face of the Scions and is basically PR because someone's got to be.


People have this uncanny obsession with killing off characters they don't like, feeling like it would improve the story or bring personal justice. It wouldn't. A character's death is supposed to leave a huge impact on the characters related to the victim and even if, for example, Alphinaud was killed off, you'd still have to deal with your character and everyone else mourning over him and reminiscing over the good times they shared, which would probably cause you to complain even more that you're "forced" to remember a character you hated.


The story in this game will always be determined. You'll never have a choice on what happens. But that's fine with me because, in my eyes, it strengthens the story. Having branching paths is fine, but it's not really something that would benefit this game I think. You'd get either wildly different experiences between people, complaints how one path is better than the other, or people would just complain that they have no options to go back and try the other path to see the whole story other than rolling on a new character.

[NaesakiAshwell]

Ratatoskr was Hraesvelgr and Nidhogg's sister and, thus, Midgardsormr's daughter. =p

Its all ultimately one big messed up dragon family as they all came from Midgardsmor .___.

[Belhi]

Ratatoskr was Hraesvelgr and Nidhogg's sister and, thus, Midgardsormr's daughter. =p

Well....

Taimat and Bahamut....

Just saying you know...

Dragons can breed asexually anyway to reproduction tends not to be that important to them in relationships hence the Hraesvelgr/Shiva thing.

[Lunaxia]

snip Middy is a terrible parent

You forget that Ratatoskr was Midgardsormr's daughter, and when we first met him he sympathised with Nidhogg and had already condemned the Ishgardians to destruction for what their ancestors had done to her. He was set to obliterate us as well until we defeated him in battle, and from there he merely decided to postpone our/ "man's" judgement and just observe, which he has been doing thus far. Watching what we've achieved and seeing the Ishgardians try to make amends has warmed him up to our cause a little bit, but I don't see him intervening against his son for our sake - the coming battle will be the final judgement in his eyes, and it's up to Ishgard to prove themselves by finishing what they started.

And Alphinaud should be killed long time ago.

Get out.

[LadyVal]

Honestly I don't think Estinien's life or death will make much of an impact. I can remember why I liked all of our companions who have died, but Estenien is just so... boring to me. He's a jerk, tried to do something nice (begrudgingly), and now is evil. So, really, I don't have much of a soft spot for him and I think they are going to try to kill him to paint him as a martyr but really I just have no emotional investment in him. At this point I've dealt with Krile much less and would be more affected if she were to die, and I had Haurchefant flashbacks when Aymeric got stabbed. It also felt really bad watching Ysaile die because she obviously took a turn for the better and saw things for the better and made an effort to be better.

And yet Estinien falls flat when compared to everyone else. I haven't seen much growth from him, he hasn't changed, he doesn't have any lovable quirks, he's not relate-able, he's not endearing, he's just a flat wall imo. It could just be that I don't "get" his character, or it could be his character isn't properly illustrated, but I just don't care about his fate. Which I think is kind of a miss from the dev's perspective because I think that with someone as important as him, most people would want to feel one way or the other about him. Debates go on and on about Minphilia and Alphinaud, and I'm sure people feel some way about Moenbryda and Ysaile, but Estinien kind of boils down too "Yep. He's there too."

[Nalien]

Nidhoggs goal was never to obliterate Ishgard, he only ever wanted to effectively torture an entire civilization, pushing more to the "heretics" side so they'd drink some dragon blood and turn into dragons... That revelation even had Ysayle condemning them... Midgardsormr was only going to get involved because, presumably, Nidhogg noticed that Pope Thordan had summoned King Thordan, at which point Ishgard became a serious threat and Nidhogg needed to kill them or be killed... Estinien even commented during the Steps of Faith, that it was unusual for Nidhogg not to be present, drawing the conclusion that Ysayle was the reason there, but I don't think Nidhogg was even aware of her... He didn't attack Ishgard directly because he didn't want to get into a direct confrontation with a Primal Thordan, he already lost that fight when he had both his eyes... Thordan goes down, Nidhogg resurfaces and now he is brazenly attacking Ishgard again. If his goal is now total annihilation, I'd put that down to him becoming absolutely retarded with rage, were he still set on tormenting Ishgard he'd simply reset the slate and have Aymeric go down as the second biggest heretic in Ishgardian history...

Midgardsormr also reached his conclusion at the end of 3.0, he himself questioned what Nidhogg had become, but he essentially just left it for us and Ishgard to sort out... He isn't watching us anymore, he flew off because he is a terrible parent... Like I said, that's partly understandable given the history, but we have bigger fish to fry... Having us deal with his angst-filled son is just distracting from us, you know, saving the entire world... We're meant to be stopping the Ascians, but Father of the Year over here has us babysitting instead... That's just the parenting gripes I have with Midgardsormr, too... Don't get me started on how he is supposedly keeping watch over a lake that is important for unknown reasons, yet let the Allagan build a Voidgate opening-end of the world-tower next door (which was powered by his dead sons shade, to boot) and how he straight up crashed a massive warship into it... Bad dragon is bad... The real sticker for me though, is that he doesn't even say hello to Hraesvelgr or Nidhogg... Tries to talk Tiamat out of a self-inflicted prison, but cheering up Hraesy is out of the question... I don't for a minute buy the whole "We're older and perceive time differently, so we're still as mad as if it just happened!" thing, because that's just out right irresponsible... It's true, and perhaps solid reasoning for why it's hard for them to let go, but it is a pathetic excuse for tormenting an entire civilization for 1,000 years... That Midgardsormr was apparently on board with that just has me losing respect for them... Were I literally as old as time, I'd be incline to be somewhat wiser and more understanding of cultural differences... Being immortal doesn't give you a free pass to treat people like ants, and that's exactly what Nidhogg is doing... His sister suffered an anaphylactic shock last week following an ant bite, so now he has taken it upon himself to torment all ants like a sociopath, and Middy is fine with that... And you know... People are slightly higher up the scale of sentience than ants... They literally formed a civilization together, there must have been some level of respect for each other present there... Rather than having Thordan held accountable though, Nidhogg opted to start a race war, which actually let Thordan get off completely free, he became a hero even... I mean, a dead hero, but a hero all the same...

[MilesSaintboroguh]

snip

I can't assume whether or not you done the pre LV50 DRG quests, but I believe some of his character may have been from there, so it can be easy to miss if you never leveled DRG. There was also his little backstory on the web site that showed what happened with certain Heavensward characters. Estinien might have been "flat" because he was supposed to be the realism to Ysayle's idealism. Estinien was basically a devout citizen of Ishgard and wanted to kill the dragons fro what they done to it and himself, but after the truth bombs were dropped about Thordon, he would continue to fight only for the people of Ishgard, not the politics behind it. He was also willing to entertain Ysayle's idea of a parley with dragons just to give the idea a chance, but he knew from the beginning that it wouldn't work.

It's what I think anyway.

[LadyVal]

-snip-

Well, I haven't done any of the DRG quests lol. So I guess I haven't seen every facet to his character. Which may be intention from the devs? Hard to say. I guess ultimately I never formed a bond with him, I never related to him. From what I was presented via how I played the story, he's just some tight-wound, over-zealous, cynical jerk who happens to be good with a spear.

I guess SE does do that a bit now that I think about it, hides lore in pockets so that not everyone is presented with the same information. Like with WP HM, unless you were particularly invested in the SCH questline, people probably did not care one way or the other about tonberries being enslaved, and why would they? You only learn what tonberries actually are through the SCH quests.

[Sterre]

Personally, I wish Estinien would survive, he might not be my favourite character but we have already lost too many companions imo :c