Sundering stuff established in the Q&A

[MikkoAkure]

Ah yes nothing more positive than your entire base being massacred, having to carry their bodies onto a cart yourself, learning about tempering and how there was no hope for them, watching them be executed, people drinking alien blood and turning into monsters massacring their own kind, the first dungeon of the game being full of sex slaves...need i go on? The game only got incredibly positive around shb.

Almost every single piece of media, let alone RPGs or the Final Fantasy series has moments where bad stuff happens, otherwise there wouldn't be much of a plot. Almost every story at its base is about the main characters overcoming the hardships and earning a better future.

If you take a nihilist approach to the game, then all you see is the bad things. Literally the whole point of the Scions is a group of people who are waaaaay too cheerful, noble, positive, and optimistic about the world and even after a large number were killed, they move on instead of losing themselves to grief like they would in a lot of other media. They rebuild themselves, beat the bad guys, and continue on to keep being good for no reward. Their attitude is so sickeningly sweet and stereotypical for a group of protagonists that it takes me out of it sometimes.

I don't see FFXIV as a "grimdark" series like Witcher, Berserk, A Song of Ice and Fire, etc. where it's a long series of bad things happening to everyone for almost no reason except to beat the audience with terrible events happening to people to the point where they become numb. The difference is that FFXIV doesn't dwell on those bad things and the characters overcome it with a stereotypical "shounen" gung-ho-ness. At the end of the day in every X.0 and X.3 patch, the heroes of FFXIV, battered and bruised, always come out smiling to celebrating NPCs and acknowledge those who died in the events leading up to it but then turn it onto having hopes for the future. All of it to the fanfare of the Final Fantasy main theme as credits roll.

The whole theme of the game is retroactively very obvious even when you go back to the ending of 2.0.

Merlwyb:

No victory, however sweet, can wash away our bitter sorrows. No triumph can reclaim those we lost. Yet do not presume you honor them by dwelling on the past. It was not the past they fought for. You would repay their sacrifice by looking to the future.

Also the rejoinings wouldnt lead to the end of all worlds but im sure you already know that.

All of the remaining Shards as well as the Source would end. I think that counts as the end of their worlds, unless you are an Ancient who has already been sacrificed to Zodiark or a Convocation member, all of whom are already dead. The whole reason Rejoinings are bad is "returning life to those who have already passed, in exchange for those who are currently living across many worlds", which contradicts what I believe the theme of the game is about.

How do you think Hythlodeus would react if he found out that his friends spent 12000 years killing millions of people just to bring him and the others back when they already sacrificed themselves? Not for Amaurot, but for the Star. Elpis hammers in how much they care about the Star and the cycle of life in general. To bring them back is a slap in the face of their sacrifice. Do you think they did it with the full expectation they would be brought back to life and everything would be hunky-dory like none of that ever happened?

[sidurgu-12]

All of the remaining Shards as well as the Source would end. I think that counts as the end of their worlds, unless you are an Ancient who has already been sacrificed to Zodiark or a Convocation member, all of whom are already dead. The whole reason Rejoinings are bad is "returning life to those who have already passed, in exchange for those who are currently living across many worlds", which contradicts what I believe the theme of the game is about.

How do you think Hythlodeus would react if he found out that his friends spent 12000 years killing millions of people just to bring him and the others back when they already sacrificed themselves? Not for Amaurot, but for the Star. Elpis hammers in how much they care about the Star and the cycle of life in general. To bring them back is a slap in the face of their sacrifice. Do you think they did it with the full expectation they would be brought back to life and everything would be hunky-dory like none of that ever happened?

we already have pre sundering emets reaction and it was anger and denial. and to me that was one of the most important parts in elpis because it shows how desperate (and later unhinged) they became. though given venats flashback im guessing hythlo would be more sad than angry.

[KizuyaKatogami]

snip

My point is it takes away from any sense of threat or severity of the plot. It especially doesn’t help when the writing itself has to contradict, go through hoops, and create plot holes just for certain characters to live, that’s detrimental to the writing. It also doesn’t help when one of the main devs continues to prattle on about “no one is safe, just because some of the scions are locked behind side quests doesn’t mean they’re safe,” but then literally nothing ever comes from that. The story feels incredibly one sided, only the protagonists are allowed to bend the rules, but when the antagonists do the same they’re apparently in the wrong for it.As far as rpg’s go, there’s numerous rpg’s and even ff games in the series where things stay dark or important characters die(something 14 has lacked).

As for the rejoinings my point was there would still be A world left, just not one with the sundered. None of that is very relevant though, as we know how much the 12,000 years changed Emet and the ascians. They wouldn’t have had to endure that if someone had just told the truth.

Ah yes the one scene everyone falls back on. Yes it was a spooky and dark scene, but
1.)It’s happening to an npc we’ve known for about 10 minutes and it pretty few and far between.
2.)Compared to the back to back horror in ARR this isn’t really much.

Edit: I'm also sure I've seen you praise Shb for being morally grey where Endwalker is not, and yet here you're saying it was a positive ending based expansion? Those two positions seem to cancel each other out, how can it be morally grey if it focuses on positive ends for its stories?

tbf I could be confusing someone else's comments with your past ones.

While ShB is morally grey, it was a fairy positive ending based expansion. After kill Emet-Selch we have Alphinaud cheering us on for doing so. Fast forward a bit to 5.3 after we kill Elidibus, they just go and have some cringy cutscene of doing battle poses with their new outfits… Positive for me no. Positive for others and the protagonists yes.

My point is, the other expansions at least had *Consequences*. ARE had the waking sands massacre, the mass tempering, The iconic banquet etc. HW had Haurchefant,Ysayle,Papalymo lost to us. Shinryu as a threat at the end of HW. Now SB did have some moments like that i will say, what with Yotsuyu’s past and the doman flooding.But to just win such…incredible events with literally 0 consequences doesn’t sit right with me. It just makes the cast feel perfect and untouchable and like the devs are too afraid to actually give consequences anymore. It makes the story hard to engage in because of moments like UT where you know for a fact they aren’t going to die lmao. It takes away from that entire engagement.

[Jandor]

2.)Compared to the back to back horror in ARR this isn’t really much.

Back to back horror? I think we played different ARR's

The story had some dark moments, and it definitely had some pretty dark world-building going on in the background, but it was hardly back to back horror.
Darker than later installments? Sure, I could agree with that, but lets not oversell it, full blown dark fantasy it was not.

[KizuyaKatogami]

Back to back horror? I think we played different ARR's

It’s certainly subjective in the end. Personally i found it felt like one bad thing to the next between sastasha, then tam tara with edda’s party, then learning about tempering and how there was no hope for those people, then learning of the Kobolds, then the waking sands massacre etc etc.

[Jandor]

It’s certainly subjective in the end. Personally i found it felt like one bad thing to the next between sastasha, then tam tara with edda’s party, then learning about tempering and how there was no hope for those people, then learning of the Kobolds, then the waking sands massacre etc etc.

That stuff has the same problem, so to speak, that you have with Tesleen. You spend about ten minutes on it and then move on.

The Tesleen scene didn't really make me all that sad, as you said, we don't know her all that well. The strength of it, same as the ARR stuff, is in the implications.

Tesleen shows what happens when a Sineater kills you, you painfully turn into a monster.
I don't care about the tempered soldiers, but the scene reveals that Primals can permanently enslave people.
I didn't really care about Edda, (well, not till she was fleshed out after) but that part shows just how dangerous adventuring can be.

[KizuyaKatogami]

That stuff has the same problem, so to speak, that you have with Tesleen. You spend about ten minutes on it and then move on.

The Tesleen scene didn't really make me all that sad, as you said, we don't know her all that well. The strength of it, same as the ARR stuff, is in the implications.

Tesleen shows what happens when a Sineater kills you, you painfully turn into a monster.
I don't care about the tempered soldiers, but the scene reveals that Primals can permanently enslave people.
I didn't really care about Edda, (well, not till she was fleshed out after) but that part shows just how dangerous adventuring can be.

Right, very true regarding the implications, and i feel like ARR/HW did better in the showing rather than telling aspect of things. We have the things in ShB like oh the scions are on a ticking time bomb but then nothing comes from that. We have oh Graha gets weaker the farther and longer he’s away from the tower…but then is somehow at full power in Amaurot. It’s just things like that, that add up for pseudo consequence but nothing ever comes from it. Compare that to say the banquet and the first use of flow where it actually had lasting consequences, or some of the deaths in HW. While there were the little cheery moments here and there i don’t feel like they took away from the atmosphere like the tea and lunch dates or Loporrits did in EW.