Looking back at this Yoshi P statement(story spoilers)

[MikkoAkure]

I was actually thinking it would be urianger who's going to bite the dust, since he's the one who matches Yoshida's description of "no npc is safe even if they're quest giver".

But yeah, shame they prioritize merchandise over story integrity.

Urianger's only merchandise is an acrylic stand...

It just doesn't make sense to kill off all of the main speaking-role characters like that and it was never going to happen. Killing off characters for no reason except shock value doesn't give a story "integrity" or make it good. Neither were we owed dead characters just because he said something in an interview.

Except for Thancred at specific moments, I don't really like any of the Scions as characters, but I don't think killing them is going to save their story in any way. Not sure where people are getting this idea from. Every single X.0 patch story ended with everyone celebrating together. Why would they make the end of the whole arc any different? Why would they make the culmination of 10 years of story end with the deaths? Makes no sense.

They missed their chance in Shadowbringers to end some of the Scions and after that I knew there was no way they were going to do anything to the rest and anyone who thought otherwise hasn't been paying attention or is too edgy for their own good.

[KizuyaKatogami]

Urianger's only merchandise is an acrylic stand...

It just doesn't make sense to kill off all of the main speaking-role characters like that and it was never going to happen. Killing off characters for no reason except shock value doesn't give a story "integrity" or make it good. Neither were we owed dead characters just because he said something in an interview.

Except for Thancred at specific moments, I don't really like any of the Scions as characters, but I don't think killing them is going to save their story in any way. Not sure where people are getting this idea from. Every single X.0 patch story ended with everyone celebrating together. Why would they make the end of the whole arc any different? Why would they make the culmination of 10 years of story end with the deaths? Makes no sense.

They missed their chance in Shadowbringers to end some of the Scions and after that I knew there was no way they were going to do anything to the rest and anyone who thought otherwise hasn't been paying attention or is too edgy for their own good.

So then why even make this comment in the first place? He said this in the middle of ShB. Why would he constantly make comments like this, and saying things like no one is safe but then have nothing come of it? Thats what i dont understand. He's basically saying here that someone in the future is going to go, and that presumably was to be Endwalker, considering its literally the end of the world, yet none of that happened.

Also honestly, the merchandise excuses dont really ring well to me. There other ff protagonists that have died that they continue to make merchandise for. They even appear in crossovers for other games so im not sure how any of this rings true. Anyone who thought otherwise after ShB? I think people have been paying attention and i think its extremely disingenuous to imply they arent. This expansion was about a literal planet ending apocalypse. If anytime was the best time it was now, but they went against their own themes of sacrifice and suffering and brought the scions back from death. Dont see how any of that has to do with being edgy or not paying attention, it seems more like yoshi p contradicting himself yet again.

[MikkoAkure]

So then why even make this comment in the first place? He said this in the middle of ShB. Why would he constantly make comments like this, and saying things like no one is safe but then have nothing come of it? Thats what i dont understand. He's basically saying here that someone in the future is going to go, and that presumably was to be Endwalker, considering its literally the end of the world, yet none of that happened.

Yoshi-P has said a lot of things that never ended up happening. Which adds to my feeling that people haven’t been paying attention. If all of his hints and forecasting were truth then we’d have summonable primals in PvP and separate personal housing. It’s possible that there were other plans for the characters, but as I said before, that ship sailed in 5.0 imo and while a whole other expansion in between could have changed things, that’s not the route they took and it’s obvious there were changes made to the direction they decided to go. Which in retrospect makes sense, at least to me.

Endwalker was dark and about sacrifice and so on, but from a meta level, you don’t kill off the main characters of your franchise at the climax of your living story. The story of FFXIV for better or worse leans on these characters now and there’s not a chance in hell they’d end it all on “welp, just me and Tataru now”. Endwalker wasn’t a self-contained story and you need to look at the bigger picture. Would you have expected the game to run off into uncharted territory without the main cast or limping on with just a few?

[Jeeqbit]

Most of the major character deaths we've had in FF have been from characters who either just showed up in the expansion they die in, or are introduced in the X.4 or X.5 patch before the expansion they die in. Exceptions are characters who have been around since ARR (or before) but were on the periphery and never really truly a part of the main crew and/or not developed well. At this point, the main core group of Scions we have now have been through so much together and are now so popular that I don't see them dying. Besides that, they've all had so many close calls that I feel like it wouldn't pack as much of a punch anymore.

This echoes my perspective as well. We had a lot of deaths early on, all the way up to Stormblood, then it stopped unless they had just been introduced for the purpose of being killed.

Although some of these characters seemed like a part of our core crew, the entirety of our core crew were not developed and the purpose of 2.5 was to transform our bland, boring scions into characters with super powers. Y'shtola lost her eyesight, but in its place developed the power to see aether. Thancred lost the ability to use magick, forcing him to find ways to work around this disability. Yda was reminded of her history and her desire to see Ala Mhigo freed. Urianger already had a unique trait of being the know-it-all that lives in a library. Alphinaud and Alisaie were new to 2.0 so they had a plan for them already. Our friends were not bland anymore, but they didn't come up with a way to remove the blandness from all of them so they just killed them instead.

The way I take the lack of deaths after that is that they were not careful enough to begin with but as their experience grew they were better at avoiding death.

Ultima Thule was the perfect time to off them. They did their job and faced their demons. Yoshi and his team is too scared to take any kind of risks, it even shows in the content.

There just wasn't any point in it. With it being the end of the story, they could have killed them all off, or not. Either way, we probably won't see much of them again on our new adventure, so the only purpose killing them off would serve is to make us sad and depressed that so many of our favorite characters are gone. There wasn't any point making us feel sad at the end of the story.

I felt they had built up all of these characters over so many years and if they had just deleted them all in a split second like that, as I worried they had, I probably wouldn't quit, but I would have been questioning if I should, when all the character stories I had been following for all these years was almost deleted just like that.

[Rulakir]

Do we have to worry about hiding spoilers in this thread? Well, don't read if you haven't finished the game. :P

It doesn't have to be the Scions necessarily. Only one member of the Fellowship of the Ring died after all, but there were plenty of other character deaths along the way that had an impact and members of the Fellowship itself suffered in other ways, particularly the hobbits. One of the things I wish they'd done in ShB is to have the light corruption last longer. I felt like we went from being on the verge of becoming a sin eater and being better than fine far too quickly.

The last person I recall dying on the protagonists' side was Conrad and before that it was Meffrid, two characters who are not missed and who I'd wager many don't even remember. I thought Gosetsu and Yotsuyu should've stayed dead, I was disappointed they were brought back and for not a good enough reason either. The writers aren't even having side characters die anymore. Even in Endwalker, consider that everyone of note who died was already dead. It was a whole other level of ridiculousness for an expansion devoted to a universe ending threat that we knew had all but wiped out Etheirys in the past.

I'm glad they're moving away from war stories if only because they're not willing to write the protagonists as ever having to lose anything since HW. It's another part of why EW rang hollow to me. The only two Scions who I felt knew suffering and despair more than the average person were Estinien and G'raha. It's also a factor into why I prefer the Ancients/Ascians. I find their story and their characters more compelling than the protagonists who always win while incurring nothing in the way of cost.

[KizuyaKatogami]

Yoshi-P has said a lot of things that never ended up happening. Which adds to my feeling that people haven’t been paying attention. If all of his hints and forecasting were truth then we’d have summonable primals in PvP and separate personal housing. It’s possible that there were other plans for the characters, but as I said before, that ship sailed in 5.0 imo and while a whole other expansion in between could have changed things, that’s not the route they took and it’s obvious there were changes made to the direction they decided to go. Which in retrospect makes sense, at least to me.

Endwalker was dark and about sacrifice and so on, but from a meta level, you don’t kill off the main characters of your franchise at the climax of your living story. The story of FFXIV for better or worse leans on these characters now and there’s not a chance in hell they’d end it all on “welp, just me and Tataru now”. Endwalker wasn’t a self-contained story and you need to look at the bigger picture. Would you have expected the game to run off into uncharted territory without the main cast or limping on with just a few?

I don’t think many people are saying to kill them all off, but i think it’s far worse to try and advertise a game or expansjon as fake, dangerous, highest stakes than ever before, and purposely putting death flags and the lead dev hyping it all up only for it to amount to nothing. Especially if they then need to resort to massive plot armor or dropping specific plot threads just to keep specific characters alive(Yshtola). I’m not so sure exactly too, how much keeping a character alive adds to the story if said character doesn’t contribute much. What did Yshtola do of substantial use in Endwalker? All i can think of is Ultima Thule, outside of that her role has been taken by Graha and Krile.I think Endwalker would’ve been the best time tbh. Most if not all of the scions barring the twins have had their development. They’ve been around for years and had time to flourish. One or two of them sacrificing themselves for the others and saving the world would’ve helped make the whole suffering and sacrifice theme a lot easier to swallow if the picture perfect scions actually did have to suffer, and didn’t just slide by two of the highest stakes expansions with 0 consequences whatsoever. I mean at this point it’s not even the no deaths that’s a huge problem, it’s the lack of any consequence whatsoever. Remember back in HW? They talked about how Yshtola’s life was slowly draining. Funny how that’s just been ignored since then. But also, look at what Yoshi himself says. In a story about wars,sacrifice, conflicts etc, it would be wrong not to expect the protagonist side to face loss, yet it hasn’t been felt for a very long time, since 3 expansions ago actually.

I guess i just find it funny when people use the plot or development excuse, but then dont apply that same logic to plot armor or plot holes that betray certain lore threads. Both are just as bad and detrimental to the story no? In the end, im just tired of the devs trying to false advertise stories as dark or loss or trying to create themes of suffering or sacrifice but then its only ever the antagonists that have to deal with such things, the protagonists are squeaky clean and fine. I miss when there were actual consequences to actions and the devs didnt try to make the game a slice of life anime is all. At the very least, i hope they stray away from trying to convey themes of loss or sacrifice or suffering, because it comes across as incredibly tone deaf when they dont have the "heroes" abide by such things.

I felt they had built up all of these characters over so many years and if they had just deleted them all in a split second like that, as I worried they had, I probably wouldn't quit, but I would have been questioning if I should, when all the character stories I had been following for all these years was almost deleted just like that.

Whats funny is this is how i feel about certain antagonists, who had been around for such a long time but then were unceremoniously killed off with little to no consequences or struggling for the protagonists. It makes the story feel very hollow.

[Tehmon]

So many pieces of media and entertainment these days are so trigger happy with killing beloved characters and having bittersweet endings, that I find FFXIV's approach very much needed in this landscape of faux-artistic depressing '' daring '' shock value porn.

[KizuyaKatogami]

So many pieces of media and entertainment these days are so trigger happy with killing beloved characters and having bittersweet endings, that I find FFXIV's approach very much needed in this landscape of faux-artistic depressing '' daring '' shock value porn.

It’s moreso realism. If a story is going to try and preach themes and relate them to real life, then they need to be somewhat accurate. Everything doesn’t always turn out okay. No one is perfect. But in the case of the story lately, the protagonists are perfect, they can do anything and everything, and they’re completely untouchable. It’s especially discouraging when they have antagonists like the ascians who are also fighting for what they believe in, but then are reduced to nothing purely due to the protagonist plot armor. According to this quote, Yoshi P even believes that it’s needed. But it seems like this community can’t really handle death, considering they still get triggered by Haurchefant references 6 years after his death.A lot of antagonists or villains are beloved, yet they arent spared from being killed off, so why should the protags be?

[Garruss]

I don't see why so many people are so set to have the Scions "Die" seems people want to watch these characters we've known for years meet their ends, seems strange to me I'd rather have them all still around in the story. End of the day they are the Warrior of Lights friends after all.

[AziraSyuren]

I was honestly prepared to let go of Thancred back in Shadowbringers, but when he ended up being fine that's basically where I became subconsciously conditioned to stop worrying about the Scions.

At this point, I'm having doubts that even if they did choose to off a long-established character that it would be executed well enough to make it actually feel like a worthwhile decision writing-wise.

Yeah, this is more or less my exact take. The moment Thancred survived, I pretty much came to terms with the idea that no Scions would ever die and just lived with that assumption moving forward. At this point, with how many fake-outs there have been, it seems like them dying would just be a shock value thing that wouldn't add anything to the story.

Yeah yeah, stakes and all that. Whatever. I've been burned by writers not following through on that so much that I just find tension elsewhere.