Tales from the Storm Discussion

[YianKutku]

In Kugane, Lyse demonstrated she was still very much the "Yda" we've known all along: impulsive, reckless, all-action-before-thought. But underlining that was an over-riding concern for the safety of Gosetsu and Yugiri. She felt that the Scions had to at least investigate the namazu offer, even when everyone else smelled a rat, because if it were a trap, she was compelled to make sure that nothing untoward had happened to their Doman friends. This abiding loyalty to friends is very much the Yda we've known all along, and it's one of her most endearing qualities as a goofball.

The Ruby Sea chapter highlighted something else key to her development: We came to learn that Lyse was weighed down by the guilt of having dragged everyone into a war that they had no personal connection with. This was why she was so anxious about Alisaie, because she couldn't accept that one of her friends could be hurt on account of her limitations. Throughout the Far East chapters, there was, to me, a sense that Lyse was beating up herself inside for not being more like the WoL, someone who could apparently take on the troubles of the entire world and save the day.

My issue with Lyse is kind of two-fold, and the quoted part touches on one of them: yes, Lyse is still a goofball much like Yda was. But being a goofball wasn't all that endeared her to others.

From the Tales from the Storm:

Yda, on the other hand, was reckless and impulsive. Emotional. But she had a way with people─a way of making them smile and think everything was going to be all right...

It's that second part, about how Yda made everything seem brighter, that is lacking.

Again, there's a good reason for all of that, as you've mentioned. Lyse is burdened by guilt, both for getting everyone involved in the liberation of Ala Mhigo whether they wanted to or not, and also for Papalymo's death. And she's clearly not comfortable with the way the Ala Mhigan Resistance looks to her as a leader, figurehead or otherwise, just because she's Curtis Hext's daughter.

So there's this seed of doubt planted in everyone's minds: is Lyse's change of behaviour between her Yda days and the present due to the events that have transpired, or is it because she was merely acting all happy and optimistic as Yda, and her "real self" is full of self-doubts and regrets? Note that "Yda" was just as optimistic as usual after the attack on the Waking Sands, when the core Scions were abducted and everyone else slaughtered by Livia.

As such, I'm not sure if it's just these particular events (and not any other prior) that have affected Lyse so much that she lost one of her most endearing traits: "a way of making them smile and think everything was going to be all right". Is this just a reaction to current events, or is it going to be permanent?

The second issue I have with Lyse is the way the story progresses around her. I understand the importance of her character development in going with us to Othard, meeting Hien, and learning what it means to be a leader. I understand that it is necessary for Lyse to grow into the role the story sets up for her.

I still don't quite understand why Lyse was going with us to Othard in the first place. The story simply doesn't spend a lot of time on it, treating it as a given instead.

It's as though the WoL and co. were consulting an out-of-game walkthrough that said Lyse had to accompany them to Othard to power-up the Leader Of The Resistance trait, and rationalized the decision backwards from that. It's clunky and meta-gamey.

Overall, turning Yda into Lyse is a major change that simply has not paid off yet. We can suggest waiting for the 4.x series of patches to see if it eventually will, but seeing as we've had an entire expansion allegedly focused on Lyse for it to pay off, one wonders why the story has been so inefficient in this respect.

[Rosenoire]

The second issue I have with Lyse is the way the story progresses around her. I understand the importance of her character development in going with us to Othard, meeting Hien, and learning what it means to be a leader. I understand that it is necessary for Lyse to grow into the role the story sets up for her.

I still don't quite understand why Lyse was going with us to Othard in the first place. The story simply doesn't spend a lot of time on it, treating it as a given instead.

It's as though the WoL and co. were consulting an out-of-game walkthrough that said Lyse had to accompany them to Othard to power-up the Leader Of The Resistance trait, and rationalized the decision backwards from that. It's clunky and meta-gamey.

It's especially notable because she accomplishes nothing in Othard in terms of advancing the story. Alisae wins over the Confederacy. Hien sets up the plan for the Naadam, and manages Magnai and his ego brilliantly. The Warrior of Light, as usual, does all of the heavy lifting. Yugiri's poor life choices have more of an impact on the outcome than anything Lyse does. Heck, Tataru's actions arguably influence things more than Lyse. Aside from punching Namazu, her only big story moment in Othard is her big realization that hey, ordinary people are afraid to rise up because they might lose what little they have left. Hien has to spell it out for her, despite everything she's seen in Ala Mhigo and Doma that should make that kind of obvious.

[Rosenoire]

In other words, to me, there's a greater focus among her critics of who Lyse was, rather than who she's portrayed in the present moment; that's essentially the issue with the GoT episode I highlighted. Many viewers couldn't separate the fact of who the actor was, from the role he was playing at that particular point, in that particular present moment.

I concede that the way Yda was re-written into Lyse could have been done better. Or, for that matter, it may have made more sense to introduce an entirely new character, someone with a link to Yda's past. That could also have worked as a hook to tie Yda's character development with the larger story of revolution.

For me, the Yda/Lyse reveal was emblematic of the problem with the character: I was told that she was important, but I was never shown anything that gave me a reason to care about her prior to Stormblood, Once in Stormblood, as Alleo said, Lyse's characterization was too much telling us how she'd grown without showing it.

As someone who didn't play 1.0 and who started in Limsa, my first real story interaction with Yda was the sylph questline. She comes across as basically the dumb muscle of the Scions, and her bickering with Papalymo provides some comic relief after the Ifrit questline and the heavy stuff that followed. While Thancred and Y'shtola were actively involved and worked with the Warrior of Light throughout ARR, Yda and Papalymo were, for me at least, afterthoughts. I probably had more conversations with Urianger than with those two.

Y&P were completely absent from the main (3.0-3.3) Heavensward arc. They miss some of the Warrior of Light's deepest hurts and greatest triumphs. Y'shtola's there for most of it, and we get Thancred back in 3.1, and we learn how much both of them have sacrificed to ensure victory. Meanwhile, Y&P don't resurface until late in 3.4; when they showed up, I'd almost forgotten about them. This, more than anything, hurt Yda/Lyse for me, because she was so much of a non-factor in most of Heavensward that I had zero investment in her as a character. That lack of investment meant that the big reveal left me cold--and more than a little confused. The little I thought I knew about the character--her identity--was false, but it was essentially "This person you didn't know is really some other person that you don't know." Any emotional punch from the moment was ruined by the fact that the other Scions already knew, and I had no reason to care as a player. Worse, from the point of view of my character, the fact that the rest of the Scions all knew but didn't bother to let him in on the secret was yet one more indication that the Scions view him as a symbol of hope and a sentient weapon they can aim at primals, and not so much as an actual person.

As a writer, it's a challenge to develop an unlikeable character into someone that an audience can relate to and empathize with. It can be done, and SE did it well with Alphinaud and Alisae. I couldn't stand Alphinaud in 2.X. When the WoL leaves for the Excellent Ishgardian Adventure, I wanted a dialogue option to bury Alphinaud in a Coerthas snowdrift and leave him there. By the time we got to Stormblood, I found myself missing him and his diplomatic skills, because I got to watch him mature through the course of the Ishgard arc. Alisae managed to annoy me more than her brother in her brief time in 2.0. But after running the Coil, and after being around her in 3.4, and seeing her grow and change and learn to manage her strengths and weaknesses, and now next to maybe Aymeric, there's no NPC I'd rather have at my side in a fight. With Lyse, I'm constantly told that she's grown and changed and learned, but I don't see that process.

The way that she gains leadership also doesn't help. The trope of someone thrust into a leader's role when they're not ready and rising to the challenge is classic, and that's fine. But when Conrad tells the WoL in confidence that he wants Lyse to succeed him, they might as well have tagged him with the <Dead Mentor Walking> title. The only question there was how he was going to die in that act There was no drama from his death for me because it was so obviously telegraphed. And then Lyse steps up, does something reckless, Raubhan gives her another Lesson In Leadership, and then she puts on a sexy red dress to show how much she's matured and grown into her role as a leader.

Okay, that's a little unfair, but cool as re-creating the trailer moment was, like so much else about Lyse's storyline to me, it felt forced. Her big "growth moments" all involve other people telling her things. She has almost no plot-relevant moments in Doma; have Alisae punch catfish-man and Lyse could be removed from the plot at that point without much change to the story. For someone who is essentially positioned as the NPC protagonist of 4.0, she's remarkably passive. And if it's challenging to make an unlikeable character sympathetic, it's very difficult to make a character who's a cipher into someone I actually care about. Lyse had some good moments, but at the end of 4.0, my main reaction to her leaving the Scions was, "Eh. Whatever."

end tl;dr

All that said, her "Tales" story does a lot to flesh her out, and to show (that word again!) why Lyse is someone people might follow. It's just too bad we didn't get enough of that in the actual game.

[Belhi]

Maybe we will see more going forward in game. After all she is in a leadership role now and as they have said, things are a long way from being sorted out. There are a large number of resistance groups, population centres and factions that are going to have to agree to what the future government of Ala Mhigo is actually going to be.

[Rosenoire]

Maybe we will see more going forward in game. After all she is in a leadership role now and as they have said, things are a long way from being sorted out. There are a large number of resistance groups, population centres and factions that are going to have to agree to what the future government of Ala Mhigo is actually going to be.

There's some real potential for character development here. Despite what I said above, I'm actually a little curious about where Lyse goes next. She does seem to have a grasp of the daunting nature of the challenges ahead, but as of now, she's completely unsuited for a political leadership role. What happens to the Resistance when there's nothing for them to resist any more?

[Alleo]

In short, I can accept and appreciate the many objections raised about the portrayal of Lyse as a character. But ultimately, I can't help but feel that most of these objections miss the forest for the trees.

You see, to me, all this criticism about Lyse, while understandable, misses the point of how she grew as a person throughout Stormblood.

If Lyse became a completely different person simply after dropping her mask, both literally and figuratively, then perhaps I too would have had issues with the plot ret-con.

Ironically, all this criticism against her lies at the heart of why I found her portrayal throughout Stormblood to be consistent and believable: Lyse as Lyse was equally as ditzy and air-headed as when Lyse was "Yda".

These bumbling qualities — which, to many of you, disqualify her as a leader — are, to me, a crucial plot point, because it shows that Lyse didn't suddenly become competent overnight.

In fact, she stayed relatively incompetent, when compared to the other Scions and Lord Hien (as we can see from this side-story, Lyse, on her own, is actually far above average when compared to the average Eorzean; she just happens to be overshadowed by the illustrious company she keeps, and this lies at the heart of her lack of self-confidence).

This, to me, is keeping in character with who Lyse was, and it didn't strain my ability to suspend disbelief, unlike with so many of her critics.

And because I wasn't distracted by all the legacy baggage that others have attached to her, I felt I was better able to appreciate who she really was, now that finally she allowed herself to act in her own capacity. And what I saw impressed me.

As I said, the point about justice is critical to me. No one else in the story, save Lyse, realised its importance to how Ala Mhigo will move on after its liberation. It mattered to the Scions, even as war veterans like Raubahn and Hien casually brushed it away, as though the circumstances of Zenos' death were just an afterthought.

The problem is, that since she still stayed a lot like Yda I just saw no reason for why they suddenly decided to use that "plot twist". I did not play 1.0 and I started in Limsa thus I never had much to do with Yda and Papalymo. Even through ARR and HW the two of them never really got much character development and other than them being a dream team I had no further connections to them. So Papalymos death did not do much for me. Lyse reveal did even less to me. It just did not make much sense to do that since everyone from the older scions already knew it and did not care and we never met the real Yda anyway. Yet suddenly someone that in my opinion was never truly fleshed out and only entertains me together with Papalymo was made the main character. We never got memories from her past, we never saw her doing great stuff for the rebellion. I mean Naago was the one that motivated Conrad to still fight after the bloodbath in the reach.

Also she was just so utterly reckless and angry for a very big part of SB, so I could not believe the change at the very end. Was it not for Meffrid and other characters she would have undone quite a lot of work. (Like wanting to help that person being beat up even after everyone tells her that this would mean even more suffering for everyone and maybe even death.) It would be fine if they had shown over time that she changed but she never did that in my eyes. At the very end she still stayed the same person she was from the beginning just that she was suddenly wearing that red dress (which is not even good for battle..) and was appointed leader by conrad. Ingame we do not know about the stuff she did while staying there in HW, which is my problem with the "show" part.

She might grow into this role over time but lets be honest, in a true battle (without the plot armor of the WoL) you would want someone as the leader that is not only an inspiration but also great at this stuff. (IMO) Someone like Raubahn who makes all the plans and even the speeches. Because inspiration alone will not win a battle, especially not against an army that is normally way too strong for them. (Zenos was the sole reason that we even got a chance) They could have at least played the inspiration part a bit better and showed us her growing. Instead of her wanting to rush of after being appointed a leader, they could have shown her first wanting to suggest it but then realizing her important role and thus she could have appointed someone else to do it. That would be a good growth imo. They could have shown her being more considerate with people so that she would not verbally attack the villagers in Doma because she finally understood the situation of these people. Yet as much as I can remember, she still argued about their position and in the end it was Yugiri and the WoL that changed the hearts of them. Also let her give a big speech before the attack to show the side of her being an inspiration. Yet the focus was Raubahn all over again.

Only at the end after the WoL did most of the work again, she takes the leading role and stands in front of everyone, yet we were never shown what she even did in Ala Mhigo to deserve the first row completely alone. At least after all that the WoL have done for the rebellion, they should have stood next to her. This also did not make her endearing for me, even though I knew that this was a decision by SE.

TinyRedLeaf in the end everyone likes someone out of subjective taste and I am not sure if its so nice to say that people just cant appreciate her because we have some legacy baggage or something. We just might have wished for more development. And still being incompetent does not make her a great leader imo.

I am fine if she grows into this but only if they show us the growth and not make it "tell" only again.

Also I am not really understanding the talk about justice. Were was it shown that she cares much more about justice than anyone else? Could you give some examples because right now I have a hard time of really understanding that point. Hien for example wanted a better doma so he also cared about the aftermath of the battle. I am also quite sure that someone like Raubahn who was on the side of her father and being part of a leading position for a time will also know the importance of the rebuilding.

@Rosenoire: Damn you have already written everything down so nicely. Its exactly how I feel about her and even the tales did not truly make her that much better for me since it was mostly from the view of the others. I do like Naago and Meffrid even more since I felt that those two were worth the title of leader, especially Meffrid..but then he was just killed off like that. V_V

In the end I am not so sure if it was a good decision to make so many other side characters like Alisaie and Hien that outshine her, if you want to make her look like the main character of SB.

[MidnightS]

Wonder who the other three tales are going to focus on? Sure one will be out of left field, but there's so many possibilities for the other two...

Well, Hien will obviously be another one. Perhaps it will detail the immediate aftermath of the failed liberation attempt and him meeting Cirina.

If I had to guess, they other two will probably be Yotsuya and Fordola.

[YianKutku]

Well, Hien will obviously be another one. Perhaps it will detail the immediate aftermath of the failed liberation attempt and him meeting Cirina.

If I had to guess, they other two will probably be Yotsuya and Fordola.

I'd love to read a story about Cirina meeting Hien, from Cirina's point of view, but I don't think it will happen, mostly because it will essentially be a repeat of the M'naago-Lyse meeting told here: a side NPC's PoV of meeting a more important NPC. Still, that doesn't rule out the story being told from Hien's PoV.

I'd be more interested in Fordola's story post-SB than pre-SB, largely because we've pretty much seen all there is to Fordola's motivations during the story: do anything and everything to ingratiate herself with the Garleans, even when it involves killing her own. Pre-SB, she could at least take some small comfort in the belief that it was all necessary. Post-SB, that comfort is stripped away, and she will have to face up to what she's done, essentially for nothing.

I really don't want to read about Yotsuyu's backstory, because it's likely to descend into wallowing in misery. There should be far more interesting and relevant stories to tell within the space of the Tales From The Storm series, rather than rehashing how Yotsuyu's life is terrible.

[Theodric]

It's possible that one of the stories will revolve around Zenos, I suppose. Or even Varis.

The latter would be very interesting, especially if it fills in some detail such as his reaction to Regula's demise.

[Alleo]

Maybe one will be about Magnai and his search for love. :P

But being more serious: I believe one will be Hien, maybe we will also have one from Gosetsus or Yugiris PoV. I would be kinda interested in seeing a story from the eyes of a normal villager. Maybe getting to know more about their lives and feelings.
Zenos would be interesting too but not sure if they ever did one story from the view of an enemy?