Quote Originally Posted by Rulakir View Post
Opinion poll time! :P Are you more confident, less confident, unchanged, or undecided about Ishikawa possibly (I'm not sure it's been confirmed) having done the outline for the next 10 years?

I'd have to say undecided. I wish they'd talked about Venat. Ishikawa admitting despite Hermes being her favorite character she thought 80% of players would hate him indicates she has her finger on the pulse more than Yoshi-P does, but without knowing the same about Venat it's hard to say.

I'm significantly less confident regarding Yoshi-P. I don't know how much influence he has in the story, but I'm as baffled by his responses to things as he is to ours.
I think she has poor taste if Hermes is her favorite character. Between Hermes' poorly developed metanoia at the end of Elpis, the utterly contrived "test of humanity" and time-reversal plot devices, the vague hand-waving of the continuity of his soul post-sundering, the overall lazy and unnecessary retconning of Amon into his backstory, and the general insufferability of Fandaniel--imo a poor example of how to write a flippant character, as far as mannerisms, dialogue, and plotting are concerned--I think he is possibly the worst character in the series. I understand what Hermes/Fandaniel was supposed to function as in the story--I think it was horribly handled.

I think she's overrated. As much as I enjoyed ShB as a self-contained side story, I think it stands out as the least necessary expansion to the Hydaelyn arc. And Endwalker felt too splayed and rushed conceptually, and in several ways just a retrod of ShB ideas. So I don't have much faith in her ability to plot a whole multi-expansion arc. I wish I could say otherwise because she seems like a very nice person and despite being largely superfluous ShB had some outstanding ideas. But if Hermes is her barometer of her writing style, I think it quite likely that I will not like the ideas she puts forth in the future.