Warrior of Darkness: Deceptive Marketing?

[jameseoakes]

Its a lore reason

She used that name because As the Night's Blessed custom is to never speak their true names aloud beneath the light

That did feel like a rather weak explanation for something that does feel it was done just to build suspense to what was going on with the Trailer.

[SendohJin]

Its a lore reason

She used that name because As the Night's Blessed custom is to never speak their true names aloud beneath the light

they write the lore, what's the purpose of it if it was never used in any meaningful manner?

and i'm not saying every bit of lore has to be important either but it doesn't add to the Night's Blessed if it's not even used on one of their characters, it doesn't make them more interesting.

[Fayt1203]

they write the lore, what's the purpose of it if it was never used in any meaningful manner?

and i'm not saying every bit of lore has to be important either but it doesn't add to the Night's Blessed if it's not even used on one of their characters, it doesn't make them more interesting.

depends on the person how meaningful it was. when i was doing the msq and the reason was explain why she used that name i was like oooh thats why.

That did feel like a rather weak explanation for something that does feel it was done just to build suspense to what was going on with the Trailer.

Isn't that how all trailers are made. to build suspense and make people wonder what that meant and stuff. there were crazy theories around after the trailer was shown about why the Matoya name and thank god no one of them were true

[jameseoakes]

Isn't that how all trailers are made. to build suspense and make people wonder what that meant and stuff. there were crazy theories around after the trailer was shown about why the Matoya name and thank god no one of them were true

I guess so, though given how good Shadowbringers actually was making up weak bait and switches seems like a poor choice. It was a pretty boring plot idea, and didn't really add anything.

[Scryar]

When I first heart about the expansion theme I kinda hoped we would go more into a grey area with our character. At this time I still expected we would go to garlemald and thought that we maybe would have to make some difficult decisions like helping garlemald and turning on our former allies to prevent a flood of light if garlemald looses the war. But it became quickly clear that we would do what we always do. People want to play their good guy/girl in shining armor saving the day power fantasy so that is what we always will get.

[MikkoAkure]

How does anyone paying attention to the story assume from the trailer that we’re going to become the same kind of warriors of darkness that we fought in Heavensward and that we’ll go around the First attempting to kill adventurers and cause problems? The other promotional material such as the website made no such allusions to that.

From the second trailer where they talk about no night for 100 years, I assumed it was obvious we were just bringing night back to the world somehow and undo what the warriors of light did before. Hence “shadowbringers” and “warriors of darkness”.

Anyone upset now that we didn’t become edgelord darkness-fueled knights has probably been skipping cutscenes since ARR since that’s not the tone of the game. Or they’re being selectively oblivious about everything else pre-Shadowbringers launch except the first hype trailer.

[Gaethan_Tessula]

they write the lore, what's the purpose of it if it was never used in any meaningful manner?

and i'm not saying every bit of lore has to be important either but it doesn't add to the Night's Blessed if it's not even used on one of their characters, it doesn't make them more interesting.

It does get used in the funeral for the dead. It's a nice bit of lore and adds verisimilitude.

But it doesn't Matter. Not in a narrative sense.

The protagonists suffer no complications nor advantages from this custom. It does not help shape the plot. It is a world building detail and nothing more.

And to put it in such prominence in major advertising is misleading, because the implication given is that it will Matter. I didn't want the crazy hypotheses about Matoya to be true either: they were all terribly convoluted. But I do want advertising that seems to be touching on story (rather than presenting vistas like the sweep through the Crystarium or serving action or mood) to be accurate as to its actual importance.

We could have had that scene with Urianger not addressing Y'shtola by name at all and nothing would have been lost.

[Vahlnir]

Deceptive? Hardly. The "twist" I was expecting? Not really. Not that it's a bad thing, imo. I really enjoyed Shadowbringers' story, and...it usually takes a lot for me to be engaged in the story with this game at all. It is the best so far, at least to me.

[Raldo]

I thought about this when all the rave reviews were rolling in for the expansion. I wouldn't complain about "deceptive marketing", but I certainly felt like my expectations weren't met. I'm glad I'm not completely alone here, though it's clearly a minority.

Once the story got going, I didn't expect us to be the villains, but I did keep expecting the story to "get dark" (i.e. bad stuff happening to us), and that seemed in quite short supply. I was disappointed that no one important died. I was disappointed that we never had to "harness the darkness" (whatever that could mean). I was disappointed that the light sickness amounted to little more than a couple of sneezes. I was disappointed that the light sickness was cured without us actually intending to fix it, and the excuse was that Arbert kissed your boo-boos better. Bleh.

That ending was so sickly sweet with its "everything's fine and dandy" that it really ended on a sour note for me.

[Fynlar]

Isn't that how all trailers are made. to build suspense and make people wonder what that meant and stuff. there were crazy theories around after the trailer was shown about why the Matoya name and thank god no one of them were true

Here's the thing though: the trailer does another similar bait-and-switchy thing later on with "Minfilia" but that case is different because 1) given what we now know about the scene afterward, it actually makes sense for Thancred to be calling her that, and 2) we knew that Minfilia's fate (as in, the "real" Minfilia that we knew) would be touched upon in this expansion because we knew this expansion was focused on the First, and we knew that's where she ended up. Because of this, nothing really felt out of place here. All the post-banquet scenes that featured Minfilia were setting the stage for "Minfilia's" appearance here.

This scene made sense to put in the trailer and was a lot more well received and actually probably drew the intrigue it was trying to do -- about the only complaint most of us might have is that Thancred dabbles a bit in Cutscene Power to the Max and does stunts with his gunblade that players can't do at all, but that's always kinda been Thancred's thing even before he took up a gunblade, so...

Nothing comparatively set the stage for "Master Matoya". It was just kinda there and there wasn't any real reason for Urianger to refer to her using some incognito alias in that particular scene (other than for the aforementioned trailer shock factor) because nobody else was even present. Not to mention I'm guessing it was a chaotic setting given everything was on fire for some reason, and there likely wasn't anyone there just to snoop on them or anything. But they just made up some reason (involving a new world and new people, so they could make up whatever "reason" they wanted) for her to be referred to that way and seemingly called it a day. It just felt very thrown in and unnecessary, in comparison.