*Spoilers* Anyone feel joining Emet would have been better

[Veloran]

Killing people just to kill them isn't good writing either.

That is clearly not what he was suggesting.

[KikiTia]

Venat sundered the world so that we could fight against Meteion. The Ancients can't manipulate dynamis because they are so rich in aether, but we are diluted so we stand a fighting chance. Meteion also was only getting stronger over time, it was only a matter of time before she'd be able to overpower Zodiark and bring back the Final Days, this time with no hope of a solution. No I don't think joining Emet would've been a better plan, not least of all because I'd have to say goodbye to Ishgard and the First.

[Cleretic]

We have yet to experience even the barest thread of the same despair the Ancients bore during their experience with the Final Days. It's unsatisfying to say the least.

So did you just take a nap during the Thavnair revisit? If so, I commend you for the unconscious coordination required to beat a dungeon in that state. I tried to sleep my way through Kefka once, and it ended poorly.

Death is not the only way to ramp up stakes and tension, and it's disappointing that a lot of people default to that--including FFXIV's writers, in fact, a big problem with Stormblood and Shadowbringers is that they didn't want to kill major characters, but didn't know how to up the stakes otherwise, leading to a litany of death scares.

But if you needed a bodycount to believe the stakes, we got a fairly sizeable one. I think Thavnair did an absolutely amazing job of illustrating just how terrifying and dangerous what we were dealing with is (and the healer role quest is a great complement, where you see a long-standing character grapple with turning). I never thought that the stakes needed to be raised after Thavnair, we're already in Screaming Terror Mode at that stage.

...and as an incidental thing, I do like that one thing that helps Thavnair through is faith, another thing that the Ancients didn't have. To the point where I was actually briefly predicting 'wait a minute is this a problem solved by primals'. Which I wasn't wrong about, necessarily.

[Veloran]

His issue wasn't that the stakes weren't being pushed higher, his issue was that we weren't made to feel anything like the despair and loss that the Ancients did. Replace Thavnair with any of the Eorzean city-states and maybe it would get there, otherwise the way to impose that feeling isn't though mass devastation, it's through losing something or someone that is personal to you.

[thegreatonemal]

That is clearly not what he was suggesting.

But it is. He thinks that losing them there would hole some kind of weight. He thinks them being alive means we suffer no consequences and makes victory hollow or some such.

[Denishia]

I'm not sure why, maybe because he was representing the unpopular rare Auri M face, or the voice actor, or just because I loved Thavnair aesthetically as a zone, but Ahewann's death hit my harder than a majority of other deaths in the MSQ. And to me the sequence with Matsya and the baby and the lead up to trying to find his friends and the despair that we couldn't save them- and almost lost him and the baby- was the most effective use of terror and sorrow that XIV has done, dwarfing ARR patches or HW.

[Cleretic]

His issue wasn't that the stakes weren't being pushed higher, his issue was that we weren't made to feel anything like the despair and loss that the Ancients did. Replace Thavnair with any of the Eorzean city-states and maybe it would get there, otherwise the way to impose that feeling isn't though mass devastation, it's through losing something or someone that is personal to you.

Well then that's what the role quests are for. How well each one sticks that landing is up for debate (again, healer does it best), but their whole job is to bring the End of Days to hit home in a way that the game can... you know, actually do. Being an MMO brings some limitations they have to work under, but I think they do a bang-up job with those limitations.

[Denishia]

Have Fordola almost succumb was a nice story beat that really drove up the danger. Talking with a friend who doesn't play XIV but to whom has suffered many a lore dump and story reaction and discussions about other stories, they brought up a good argument for why the Scions didn't have any moments of falling prey to dynamis, in that they are the story protagonists, and the common character trait given to the characters who writes as the protags versus the rest of the cast is "protagonists tend on the whole to be more resilient to suffering" - which really does tie into Endwalker as a whole.

[KizuyaKatogami]

Well then that's what the role quests are for. How well each one sticks that landing is up for debate (again, healer does it best), but their whole job is to bring the End of Days to hit home in a way that the game can... you know, actually do. Being an MMO brings some limitations they have to work under, but I think they do a bang-up job with those limitations.

They really couldn’t have made it be more serious? Red skies…some destruction. Considering they were able to do the individual instances with the towers i don’t see why they couldn’t do it here, especially when the trailer advertised the entire eorzea map being on fire. Considering the game made a ton of money in ShB as well it can’t be a budget issue so what is it really? As far as the role quests though the only one i did was healer and i found it pretty funny. Yes let’s have the woman responsible for a specific groups suffering come with us to stop a certain groups suffering…totally gonna end well.

So did you just take a nap during the Thavnair revisit? If so, I commend you for the unconscious coordination required to beat a dungeon in that state. I tried to sleep my way through Kefka once, and it ended poorly.

I dont think we need to be snarky in regards to certain msq plot points. Not everyone finds it to be extremely serious or engaging for them to kill off a bunch of nameless npcs, or to kill off a character that was only introduced to get killed off. I dont think its a coincidence that the most popular ff games have been the ones who have actually killed off characters from the main cast. Its what helps add emphasis to the threat in the world. We only really see the final days come to two zones. We get some blasphemies to show up in the arr zones but thats it. No spooky red skies, nothing.

[KariTheFox]

I'm not sure why, maybe because he was representing the unpopular rare Auri M face, or the voice actor, or just because I loved Thavnair aesthetically as a zone, but Ahewann's death hit my harder than a majority of other deaths in the MSQ. And to me the sequence with Matsya and the baby and the lead up to trying to find his friends and the despair that we couldn't save them- and almost lost him and the baby- was the most effective use of terror and sorrow that XIV has done, dwarfing ARR patches or HW.

He was a delightful character, it was refreshing to meet a truly benevolent leader and be treated with genuine respect by him. It was awful to see him die so brutally as he was trying to calm the fears of his people.

And the fact that both G'raha and Estinien stepped up to fill his role in a time of crisis was powerful. G'raha drawing on his experience as the Crystal Exarch, who guided the inhabitants of the first and helped them to feel safe, calming down a panicking population. And Estinien teaming up with Vrtra to help protect the people of Thavnair - showing how far he's come from his days of killing dragons because he had been taught to hate them, now he's helping one through his pain, even forming a bond of friendship through thier shared grief. I really enjoyed both of them getting that.

Character deaths like that, I can appreciate because the way other characters react leads to compelling stories. I do not want or need character death for the sake of demonstrating how high the stakes are.