*SPOILERS* Terrified for the remaining Scions!

[KizuyaKatogami]

Aria in FF3 is a side character.
If we count these side characters then people should be satisfied with FF14 thanks to Papalymo, Moenbryda, and co.

Oh snap though I forgot about Tellah.



And as I mentioned the main characters that died turned out to have either faked it or they come back to life.


FF2 did not kill of any of their 3 main characters. They had a revolving door of side characters temporarily join your party and die, but the main cast? No.
For side characters see what I said about FF3.


I suppose Galuf dies, that's true.


Yes, I acknowledged this.


No playable characters are dead by the end. After you kill Necron everyone comes back to life.


Wait... (checks notes), I thought we were talking about the series roots...
Some of those games are a bit older by this point, but calling them "roots" is too strong a term. Heck, you're bringing up things that came out after FF14 did.

Looking at 1-9, one main characters dies in 4, one in 5 and one in 7. That's hardly establishing it as a (in Kizuya's words) "common thing."
If you count games were main characters die and stay dead, then people should be more appreciative of all the hard work Y'shtola is putting in lol.

It doesn’t matter if 15 came after 14, point stands that it came out before ShB which is what this topic is about. You can nitpick all you want, but the main thing is, death has always been a part of final fantasy. Type 0 had the entire main cast die which was around 8+ people. 13-2 had the main character die and the antagonist actually won. Someone does die in 9 although it happens after the final boss. The ff2 characters were major characters, so much so they literally got an entire separate game version dedicated to them. Someone else mentioned someone from ff3 as well, ff4 was tellah, ff5 galuf, ff6 shadow etc etc.

snip

We knew tesleen for like 5 minutes. I heavily disagree with ShB having an excellent payoff. While they did have suspense with the scions being on a time limit, nothing came from that. No consequences whatsoever. One of the things they had built up, which was the fact Graha was weaker the farther away he is from the tower, had no payoff because they completely ignored that plot point at the end of ShB and gave him immense plot armor. As i've said many times before, look at HW. We didnt face crazy mighty foes, but we still lost people. But look at ShB, where we face the strongest foes yet, literal demigods, and its the sole expansion where we come out unscathed. Its dull. I already feel heavily detached from the scions as it is, but them just having immeasurable plot armor and messing up the story with plot holes out of nowhere is detrimental.

[ItMe]

It doesn’t matter if 15 came after 14, point stands that it came out before ShB which is what this topic is about. You can nitpick all you want, but the main thing is, death has always been a part of final fantasy.

Nitpick nothing.
We are explicitly talking about main character deaths in the roots of the franchise.

There's also various other JRPG's that have killed off party members:

Other things did other things. I don't understand how this is relevant. That's like saying DC has published some comics where the main character died, so why aren't there more main character deaths in this other series they're publishing.
These things aren't really related.

[Hunky]

We knew tesleen for like 5 minutes. I heavily disagree with ShB having an excellent payoff. While they did have suspense with the scions being on a time limit, nothing came from that. No consequences whatsoever. One of the things they had built up, which was the fact Graha was weaker the farther away he is from the tower, had no payoff because they completely ignored that plot point at the end of ShB and gave him immense plot armor. As i've said many times before, look at HW. We didnt face crazy mighty foes, but we still lost people. But look at ShB, where we face the strongest foes yet, literal demigods, and its the sole expansion where we come out unscathed. Its dull. I already feel heavily detached from the scions as it is, but them just having immeasurable plot armor and messing up the story with plot holes out of nowhere is detrimental.

You are right in that we only knew Tesleen for a short while.

However, I don't think we need a deep emotional attachment to a character that dies for a story to become high stakes.

Not knowing her for long doesn't take away from what happened to her was horrifying.

Tesleen's demise drove the point home very well that the sin eaters are a tremendous threat to the world. It was an excellent example of the terror and destruction these monsters inflict.

If the warrior of light fails, that spells the end of the world. That's definitely high stakes. Just the knowledge of what these people go through and what they have to endure was enough.

There's a story duty in which you and the Scions have to assist the Crystarium soldiers defeat the sin eaters when they invade Lakeland.

In one part of the duty, you and the Scions try to reach a group of soldiers to save them, but you can't reach them in time and they're all killed.

For me, that was a very "high stakes" moment and cranked up the emotional tension and sense of urgency.

As for emotional payoff, I thought it was extremely well thought out.

For example, when you beat Holminster Switch and the night sky is revealed for the first time, I felt that was one of the most life-affirming moments in the game, and it served a reminder of why these characters fight so hard and sacrifice so much.

We watched someone get skewered, turn into a sin eater before our eyes, and then we fought them in the first dungeon. That did pretty well to properly display the severity of the situation and the actual stakes in the story for me.

Agreed 100%

Shadowbringers especially did a great job in maintaining this sense of urgency throughout the story. The constant threat of the sin eaters (and the consequences their success would mean to the citizens of Norvrandt), as well as the lingering idea of absorbing too much light and its terrible consequence kept me from ever feeling "safe". I always had a feeling of dread whenever things seemed to "relax". And I think that's because the story established high stakes from the get go.