Please help me like the MSQ ending more

[Raldo]

I hear all the praise lauded on the MSQ, and I'm rather dumbfounded. It was good in certain parts, I like most of the characters, but that ending just left a sour taste in my mouth. This being the company that gave us Kingdom Hearts' endings that leave you with a feeling of "Wait, WHAT?", I shouldn't be surprised, but I was. I think my problem lies with the expectations I went into this expansion with, but maybe you guys can change my mind on things. I WANT to like this more, but I just can't stop rolling my eyes.

So, here's my problem: The CG trailer gets you in the mindset of lots of stuff going badly. There's flashbacks to all sort of bad stuff happening, the gremlin is like "blah blah things are hopeless", and the derplander breaks and/or is ineffective with several weapons. I'm going into this expansion expecting shit to go REAL bad.

And then I play the MSQ. The problem is identified. You play Pokemon gotta-catch-em-all with the Lightwardens. You get a couple of death fake-outs, but haha just kidding everyone's okay. You get a little light-induced turberculosis when you eat the final Lightwarden, cough a couple times and maybe pass out, but are otherwise still functional. You travel to Ascian town, lay the smackdown on Emet, then you believe in yourself real hard, a dead guy kisses your boo-boos better, and ... now everything is fine? You weren't even fighting the Ascian with the intent to fix your light problem but that's ok, everything is just fine now. Like, really?

I understand that they obviously can't cripple your character. Mechanically, the game still needs to allow you to be able to do whatever, whenever, but I feel like some story duty where you're limping along toward Emet whilst dodging AOE's and/or charging your mega axe laser would've made me feel the gravitas of what was going on a lot better. Also, only one named ally character is actually killed off, and that chick you only get to know for like 10 minutes tops before she's offed? Meh, I don't care about her by that point.

I expected to have to harness the darkness at some point. The poster child of this expansion is a DRK for pete's sake, but the only "darkness" thing we do is bring back the night sky? That ending was so sickly sweet with its "everything's fine and dandy" that I want to throw up. I was expecting some, or all, of the scions to die in the first (with a post-credits cop-out where you find out that dying on the first just sent their souls back to their bodies on the Source and they're actually okay because we need a few poster-children for XIV to put in our cross-over games), and that would trigger utter despair in your character allowing you to summon your inner darkness to cancel out the overwhelming light or something. Alternatively, I was half-expecting the Exarch to be actually the bad guy and... I dunno, I didn't think much further down that road. Another alternative; you defeat Emet but are still fighting the light-sickness. It's either contained/reduced thanks to Bert and Ernie Ardbert and the Emet fight, but the remainder of the MSQ (i.e. upcoming patches) revolve around trying to find solutions to that problem.

Am I missing something? Or am I just salty that my expectations differed so greatly from what actually happened? Am I alone in disliking the story's resolution?


Bonus disappointment: My wife told me she'd return to the game if the story was interesting. As you can imagine by my rather flippant description of the story, she was not impressed.


I don't like the time-travel garbage either, but as a means to put the story pieces is place, it's fine I guess.

[Bright-Flower]

I can understand how expectations would sour things. When I cleared the first dungeon and realized that us being the WOD was actually just using the blessing of light to absorb light when you get right down to it, I was thinking 'I bet people who were sold on the idea of being a warrior of DARKNESS dark knight type' are goinna be maaaaaaaad.' I'm lucky in that I wasn't invested in that angle.

[Elladie]

I thought the story for ShB was fantastic; great character building so I was invested in the Scions much more than I've ever been; very skilful use of pacing to build the emotional highs and lows; amazing and sympathetic antagonist in Emet-Selch. Gorgeous zones, great music, just loved everything about it. But I went into it with no expectations except that we'd be the WoD because we were fighting light-based creatures; I never expected any 'villainy' from my character. I disagree strongly that it was ever cheesy or sickly sweet- it challenged me to look at things differently, dragged my emotions up hill and down dale, and left me shattered but thrilled.

I don't really think you want me try and change your view of it. Your view is perfectly valid, you didn't like it and that's fine. I doubt me telling why it blew me away is going to change how you see it. I will say though, having preconceived ideas is often going to result in feeling let down. That's why I try to avoid them.

Also not going to lie, Emet-Selch was best boy for me. I had previously loathed him but he was so damn hilarious I fell for him big time. Really didn't want to kill him but knew I had to, gave the ending a real old twist

[Raldo]

That's fair, but unfortunate I hope I like the subsequent patch MSQ storyline better.

Yeah, I really enjoyed Emet-Selch as well.

[Dezarc]

i didn't really expect a whole lot to come out of us being the 'warrior of darkness'; this is still a high fantasy game about us being a big hero doing big heroic things.

i think i might agree with the resolution being a bit too 'neat', since we save the first from light, kill emet-selch, and harness the light within us in one fell swoop while they could have drawn that out until 5.3 like they did with heavensward truly ending on final steps of faith, but i really enjoyed the final quest despite that because i'm a big sucker for hype anime finales and it was pretty much that to a T. in my opinion the WoL stumbling towards emet-selch in the cutscene just before hades was enough of a display of struggling with the light tearing their soul apart for me; i think a solo duty would have been kind of annoying to play through.

the first is initially still pretty hopeless, in my eyes. a world full of people with no hope, the crystarium pretty much the only town that tries to do something, the entirety of eulmore is pretty depressing, and the inn at journey's head is full of people that are just waiting for assisted suicide. when you meet ardbert he's a depressed ghost who had to wander around for 100 years in the world that he destroyed, unable to talk to or interact with anybody or anything, the crystal exarch comes from a doomed timeline where they spent 200 years of war and destruction holding onto the tiniest thread of hope from the Warrior of Light's legends that they might be able to fix things, and then g'raha himself spent almost a hundred more years in norvrandt trying to set things up for your summoning. the cutscene after you finish the twinning in particular hit me with some feels. emet-selch is a millennia-old immortal who just wants his world and his people back, which i think they portrayed pretty perfectly with amaurot and his dialogue in the final few cutscenes. i also think they did a good job portraying the sacrifice of the previous Warriors of Light/Darkness in the role quests; they thought they were doing everything right in their adventures only to accidentally ruin their entire world and resolved to kill themselves to go to the source for a slim chance at changing things, only for that to almost completely fail and everyone on their home shard to revile them as absolute villains.

i do agree on the lack of actual deaths, though. i think if thancred had died after fighting ran'jit that would have been the perfect cutscene for him to go out on, even if they decided to say that dying on the first just sent him back to his real body. i guess the minfillia we knew technically died when she decided to let ryne keep her own personality (after basically forcing a few generations of previous young women to fight and die for her).

all in all i didn't personally have a problem with the expansion, but i wasn't expecting too much darkness and despair to really be lasting with how the game's story has gone on in past expansions.

[Alleo]

Well I think its fine if you are disappointed with the ending, nothing will ever get all people to like it.

But you have to remember that the CGI trailer is never truly showing things happening in the game 1:1. The flashbacks that the WoL is having is just them remembering all the bad stuff they had to go through while they walk around still dizzy from just landing on the first. The battle with the sin eater just shows the switch of the jobs that derplander had through the years and lands on the poster job for this expansion. Of course us splitting the sky with our darkness and them telling us that we are going to be the WoD really gave some people the high expectations that things will be differently. It is in a way funny that they call us the WoD (because we bring back the night) but we are only able to do this thanks to Hydealyns blessing. That is imo probably the part where even I was surprised. But of course one does wonder on how any other job would have done it, if it was darkness that was needed.

Stuff also went down. That transformation of that NPC was gruesome and horrifiying. The attack which we played as the first dungeon was horrible. The later solo instance with another attack was horrible, especially seeing how common soldiers are dieing all around us. Then we triumph but always with the fear of us turning and then all our work was for nothing with the sky returning as it was, with us getting worse and worse (I would have liked some more reactions from our character, but still that what we got was showing how it affected us). We seemingly just went to Emet with the hopes of maybe finding a solution at the end and freeing a friend but at the same time you could feel how bad this was for the Scions, especially Alisaie and how even we were more down than normal. This could have easily ended with us turning, we just simply thought that it would be great to take out the Ascian along the way and if it was not for Ardbert we would have become the strongest Lightwarden.. I think the stakes were done quite well for a character that simply cant be killed because we are playing him and want to continue playing him since its a MMO.

Of course they had some fake kill outs but do we really need x amount of main character death to have a great story? For me this was next to HW (and there it also was not because of the deaths) one of the best expansions story wise. With huge amount of emotional impact.

And the happy ending felt earned. On top of that we do know that not all is well and that Zenos and Elidibus can mess things up big time. The expansion is not over, bad stuff can still happen.

[Rannie]

You know alleo, I've been wanting to say this but I find the parallels between that whole scene (minus the job shifts) and the one with Emet Selch to be almost uncanny. Hell the Gremlin and Emet say two lines exactly the same just before the light over powers the Wol (coincides with the sineater attacking). So uncanny. =)

[Vayanne]

It seems it's just not your type of story, no need to force yourself to like it.
I'm in the opposite camp. While I do like how FFXIV handles dark and mature themes, I was a bit worried the story could go in the nowadays popular "shocking" and edgy direction. If a story is too bleak and/or tries too hard to shock me, I just roll my eyes and stop caring about it. To me hopeless crap sack worlds are just as uninteresting as sickly sweet flowers & rainbows settings. Fortunately, my trust in the writing team was rewarded, they managed to pull off a nuanced and balanced story. The most eye-rolling moment for me was what happened to

Tesleen

but it wasn't done just to "shock" us, it had purpose and fit well into the story. I don't mind the death fake-outs. I'm glad we had that instead of another ridiculous Haurchefant moment for them to rub in our faces on every opportunity. At least if

Thankred

had died there, it wouldn't have been as jarring as Haurchefant's "I'll make a show of trying to block this aetherial spear with my ilvl 1 shield while the Big Hero, who can see primals' attacks coming and react in milliseconds, simply stands there." Moenbryda, Papalymo and Ysayle's deaths at least accomplished a plausible goal, while Haurchefant's just made the people present look incompetent. We can't save everyone but when people who we can reasonably save die right in front of us for no apparent reason than to make us sad, it feels very contrived.

[Alleo]

I'm glad we had that instead of another ridiculous Haurchefant moment for them to rub in our faces on every opportunity. At least if

Thankred

had died there, it wouldn't have been as jarring as Haurchefant's "I'll make a show of trying to block this aetherial spear with my ilvl 1 shield while the Big Hero, who can see primals' attacks coming and react in milliseconds, simply stands there." Moenbryda, Papalymo and Ysayle's deaths at least accomplished a plausible goal, while Haurchefant's just made the people present look incompetent. We can't save everyone but when people who we can reasonably save die right in front of us for no apparent reason than to make us sad, it feels very contrived.

I know its a bit off topic but I fully agree with you here and that is why Haurchefants death is still something I cant really get over. (And on top of that they like to use him for the feelz) He was my favorite character but its not only because of that, that I cant just accept his death. Its as you said: We are a primal slayer at this point, a bit later we will defeat Thordan and his knights alone! But in that moment we are completely missing that attack? But Haurchefant notices it and has the time to move towards us and also block it. Why did we not just jump out the way? Would it have even hit us if we continued on? Why did we not shove him out of the way when he was blocking it? His death did also not change the overall story. Ysayle (another favorite of mine) did her sacrifice in a moment where we could not have done anything else and her actions stopped a huge ship from coming towards Eorzea. She did not just save us but also her actions shaped the the future quite a bit.

Sry for that rambling but that is why I am so happy that we did not lose a single major NPC this time.

[Hezzlocks]

I honestly can't wrap my head around people *hoping* for characters to get killed off, and not in the "I hate this character I wish they'd kill him off" kind of way, either. I mean, I get that fake-outs can get pretty old, and ShB had a few of them, but they also mostly served a point besides being a fake-out. Example, Y'sthola's fake-out led to Emet-Selch showcasing his power and earning some brownies points with the Scions, helping to display his genuine interest in cooperation should we prove ourselves worthy.

Thancred's fake-out was also symbolic in that it was the end of the old Minfilia-worshipping Thancred unable to accept the fact that Minfilia was, for all intents and purposes, gone forever, and the start of new Thancred who will cherish her memory but will now instead focus on his friends in the here and now. It also displayed his new-found devotion to this acceptance by pushing himself to the very edge of death to hold back a foe who had already once bested the Scions and the WoL at the same time. It was character development, something Thancred was in very dire need of.

Sometimes a fake-out has more purpose than just "Oh my god is he dead? I think he's dead!", sometimes it's supposed to be symbolic, or to serve some other purpose. I never once thought Y'shtola or Thancred or any of the other Scions were ever at all in any risk of death this expansion, partly due to the Trust system tbh, but I still appreciated these scenes for what they were. And at no times did I ever wish that SE pulled the trigger on any of these characters. I want to see them be further developed. I want to see where they will go next.

If they end up dying in a fashion that is a fitting conclusion for their character arc, such as Minfilia passing the torch on to Ryne, then fair enough, I will be sad for their deaths but I will enjoy them. But neither Y'shtola nor Thancred felt like they were at a fitting conclusion for their character arc. Y'shtola would have been dying for some random antidote that came out of nowhere all of a sudden for a bunch of people whom we did not yet know were poisoned nor had we spent enough time with them to establish any real kind of empathy with. In my opinion, if she died there, it would have felt incredibly out of place. Thancred's would have been fitting if it was just about accepting the end of Minfilia, but he now had Ryne to guide and protect in her place. If he died there, it would have been an ill-fit for his conclusion, and it would have been all the worse for Ryne's character development, too.