Final Fantasy 14 Anniversary

[Alisa180]

One of the defining moments in the game for me was on Cid's airship, towards the end of the 2.0 story.

After rescuing the Scions from the Castrum, Alphinaud stood before them and gave a speech about hope. Keep in mind, before then, Alphinaud had been your typical, stuck-up and cynical young-man archetype. I explicitly remember thinking, 'wait, when did you start actually believing in the hope stuff!?'

It hit me at that moment that I was witnessing a very rare kind of character arc in this day and age. In so many stories, you see the young idealist being shot down by 'reality' and becoming more cynical. Alphinaud had essentially gone through the reverse, starting as incredibly cynical, and growing to become genuine idealist. That moment essentially cemented Alphinaud as my favorite FFXIV character, and the FFXIV story in general as a very good one.

Keep in mind this was *before* 3.0 and Heavensward. Before then, people had a lot of hate towards him. But me, I grew to love him more and more, another favorite moment being his speech towards the end of 2.3. He had grown to genuinely love the people of Eorzea, in a way not unlike his grandfather.

This arc becomes even more impressive and unique during the HW storyline, which explicitly took a turn towards dark fantasy, complete with Game of Thrones references. Most of the time, the story becoming 'darker' means the characters become more cynical. Not for Alphinaud. The events only strengthen his resolve, and at the end of 3.2 and through 3.3 he essentially plans (and does!) to partly rebuke the darker story by saving a certain someone. How many characters these days come out of a dark fantasy story with more optimism?

And this is just a fraction of the things that add up to Alphinaud being, not just my favorite FFXIV character, but one of my favorite fiction characters in quite a while.

TL;DR Don't let Alphinaud's pre-3.0 attitude fool you. He's one of the, if not the, most well-developed and well-written characters in FFXIV, and an *extremely* well-done character in general. He's worth paying attention to. And don't worry, he gets his head forcibly removed from his ass by the time the 3.0 story starts.