Revelations from Patch 5.4

[Fenral]

Main Scenario Quests:

The biggest disappointment of this patch is that nobody of note died - the fake deaths are getting very tiresome and any story that only ever kills off sympathetic antagonists, who a significant amount of players play to see, becomes increasingly one note.

Really, though...

I still kind of wonder where you're coming from, sticking around with a game like this because you want to watch your allies die. No, you're not even close to being the only one who does, and it's not an uncommon mentality for consumers of fiction, but it's completely alien to me.

Do you fantasize about being the lone hero who carries on when everyone else is dead? Do you want a bunch of people to die but are blindly assured that your favorite is safe? Do you prefer characters dead because it gives you a better sense of who they were in their entirety? Do you not like not knowing what happens once the story is done?

Bolding this so it sticks: I'm sorry if any of this sounds hostile. This is purely for my personal research. I'm just trying to understand.

It feels like it wasn't so long ago that people like me were getting chastised for being sick of losing allies every other patch. Yeah, we don't lose so much any more, but we've lost so many people getting here. But forget Louisoix, Monbryda, Minfilia, Haurchefant, Ysayle. We lost freaking Papalymo, for crying out loud. You started in Gridiania in 1.0? Congrats, they're both dead.

Not every series has to be Devilman. Hell, Game of Thrones went all-in on its anyone-can-die motto and was rejected by the internet itself for it, so be careful what you wish for.

[Theodric]

MSQ Related:

-snip-

It's a matter of personal taste. I like a story to have consequences for both the antagonists and the protagonists. I don't care much for the Game of Thrones argument because it's not mass death that is being requested so much as the occasional major character being at risk of actually dying and staying dead. It helps cement an antagonist as a memorable threat and it's a lot more engaging to me than the one sided and very predictable trend of waiting multiple patches or expansions for some payoff for a particular plot point only for it to amount to very little in the end.

Killing off every other character for shock value would be silly, though in my view so too is avoiding killing any major allied characters at critical junctures in the plot. Sadly we've reached a point where even very minor characters are encased in a thick layer of plot armour.

Plus, at the end of the day, they're just pixels on a screen. There's some characters I care about more than others, naturally, but I'm more interested in a nuanced, engaging story than 'feels' and near constant fake outs.

Furthermore, a fair few Final Fantasy games - and other JRPG's - weren't afraid to embrace consequences on a reasonably frequent basis. I particularly enjoyed FF9, FFT and FF12 for that reason. ARR and HW even embraced the same approach, before switching to the majority of deaths being either throwaway characters who we knew for all of five minutes or sympathetic antagonists redeemed at the last moment to fulfil the quota of someone dying.

[Fenral]

-snip-

This isn't really about the MSQ any more.

Honestly, I think we have very different memories of FF9. The majority of deaths were either throwaway characters who we knew for all of five minutes or sympathetic antagonists redeemed at the last moment to fulfill the quota of someone dying. Also a large number of soldiers and civilians, but only a few had names, and again, not much screen time. Quite a few inexplicable survivals as well (looking at you, Puck).

Still, you seem to have remembered it as a nuanced exploration of mortality, and I do as well. For me, it wasn't how few or how many people died, but how that affected these people who were taking us on this journey. It also had a modest runtime and then ended. I don't think I would have enjoyed it nearly as much if I had to sit through two, three, four times that and watch everyone drop, one by one. I think that's the only difference here.

Maybe it's not as frequent as it used to be, but what matters is that the things we've lost still matter. I honestly don't think anyone left in the story at this point is operating on the assumption that they can't die. They just aren't. It's not that the writers are "afraid," they're just busy taking other risks, having basically done meaningful loss to death already. Everyone has at least one recently deceased friend or family member, even minor characters, not to mention all the losses they've shared. No need to maximize their tragedy-per-second just because it's off CD again.

It's also just part of the natural progression of long-runners to eventually settle into something that works and stick with it, and let's face it, a lot of the early storytelling was just oppressive to the point of absurdity. There's nothing remotely nuanced about "if it even looks at you and your soul isn't special, we have no choice but to kill you." I think they were banking on pulling in more of the Attack on Titan grimdark crowd than they did, and have since been adjusting everything that wasn't already in the pipeline before they had feedback to respond to.

And we all know things always could start going badly again, they just haven't. Yet. Complain again in 20 years when we're still on the boat to Elfhelm but somehow managed to pick up three more comic-relief characters.

[Lauront]

*snip*

...and yet they still bait deaths all the time, which we know they're not going to follow through. No one is asking for GoT level of deaths - although that had similar issues in how it chose to take out certain well liked characters - but let's not pretend "no one is safe" when only the antagonists and minor protagonists which we knew for all of 10 mins, like Tesleen or the sidequest lizards, died.

The fact that there is no follow-through makes them dull. Constant deaths can be a drag because they can force reactions that detract from the plot, but equally only having minor ones, or expected antagonist deaths, and then accompanying this with constant teases of death, becomes grating. Additionally, you can add in all the blurbs you like about how powerful Emet-Selch, Elidibus or Zenos are. If there's no real risk of death or permanent injury, it's just blurbs, with no further consequence. With the way tempering has gone, not even Primals pose the same threat they used to, and plot points hinging on it (e.g. Bozja, probably 5.5) are that more easily brushed away through the miracle cure.

Frankly, we're not going to see eye to eye on this matter. I've long since acknowledged that the story direction of the lore isn't to my liking. It is just a case of biding time until another MMO comes along that better suits my tastes.