Looking back at this Yoshi P statement(story spoilers)

[KizuyaKatogami]

snip

I suppose the argument there is whether she’s a true protagonist or not, personally with how backseated she was i don’t consider it much of an “impactful main character death.” Also she wasn’t the only one whose soul got extinguished. Elidibus had the same happen to him when he made the ultimate sacrifice to send us back to Elpis.

The problem is when we start getting such a bloated cast and some characters begin to lose a purpose. Yshtola did nothing of significant value this expansion at all, i think she read some books and that was it. She doesn’t really have an arching story until now where i guess she’s trying to travel, but with this logic they can just keep inventing new ways and random sub plots to keep characters around. It comes off as incredibly tone deaf to write an expansion trying to preach to its players about suffering and sacrifice but then to not have the heroes have to deal with something like that, and that’s why this quote is so interesting to me. Yoshi P in this quote is basically confirming that in a story like 14’s, it would be wrong to expect everything to go okay on the hero side. Ever since Stormblood the story has been incredibly one sided. The protagonists win and survive with no consequences whatsoever whereas powerful antagonists are reduced to nothing through the power of plot armor or plot convenience. It severely reduces the impact for people. How am i supposed to take a threat or character seriously if i know nothing bad will ever happen? Again, this isn’t supposed to be some kid movie(although funnily enough, more characters die in disney movies than in 14 lul) it’s an mmorpg that advertises itself as dark,grim, etc etc. But then doesn’t ever follow through with that. The fact they only had the final days in 2 zones is a testament to that.

Might i also add, it’s not even just death that’s the problem, it’s any consequences whatsoever. There’s none for any of their actions. Again i point back yo Heavensward, where they make the comment of Yshtola’s life draining away and that’s just completely forgotten about. At the very least Thancred is still feeling the consequences of flow as he can’t use aether still. But stormblood onwards it’s nothin but a one sided fluff fest where they advertise it as high stakes, horrible apocalyptic scenarios, but everyone comes out unscathed. How does it make sense that we lost more people close to us against the garleans/primals than unsundered ascians, or the final days.

In addition to Venat, technically Hades and Hyth count as major character deaths in Endwalker, even if not really handled as such.

This specific quote is in reference to the ally side tbf.