What's the point with that quite lackluster story in Endwalker?

[aveyond-dreams]

And of the 3 pretty boys you've just posted are mature adults who behave as such in FFVI, as opposed to the brattier personalities of current G'raha which adds a layer of insufferability to a character who is too strange looking to fit that alien, mystical style of Amano heroes. Setzer literally stole a woman right off a stage, Edgar was a womanizer king, and Locke was entertaining to have around from start to finish. (Locke's in-game sprite is also wildly different from his artwork, resembling a beefy thug instead.)

Because of these reasons, they appeal to those who we can roughly characterize as having "western tastes" when it comes to the heroes they enjoy seeing in media. The personality is there, the looks are there, and hopefully the overarching plot knows what to do with these characters so they just don't sit around wasting oxygen for the entire game. They're not grating people's patience with overt fanservice at every other corner. Instead, the games use these characters to move the plot forward in meaningful ways instead of going around in circles repeating "I love you so much!" like G'raha Tia does each patch. Every time I look at this character all I can see is this:



I do not want this in my party or for the game to keep forcing this on me without me having any say in the matter. Shove it into side content. Get this character off my screen. He doesn't look like a hero, he doesn't behave like one, and with the direction that the plot is going in, I doubt he'll ever have the chance to be one again because no one can hurt the community plushie. Stop forcing a man with a grown voice who looks like Lucy from the Chronicles of Narnia in my face.

Those of us who want a decent hero in the party have no real options besides Estinien, because the writers don't know what to do with Thancred besides mention Minfilia every now and then. However, this expansion they took away the cool factors of long elven hair and his defiant personality and turned it into mashed potatoes. At least in Stormblood we had Hien and in Shadowbringers we had Ardbert. In Endwalker we had nothing! Just a bunch of baby-faced men who do not look or act their age. Unless the player themselves decides on making a western style hero (and even then that's extremely difficult to pull off given this game's limited options), there's hardly any representation of them in the plot.

I do wonder if the inclusion of better designed masculine cast members aside from the generic WoL posterboy would do anything to win over the crowd who still paint this game as just an anime catgirl visual novel hub (which sadly, is on a fast track to becoming this). Imagine if besides the WoL, we also had high quality cgi and character models of men like Vossler and Basch sharing the stage. Something that makes people go, I want to either play as this or play with this character. That is how you sell me games like FFXII, I see a character that looks cool like Balthier and I take interest.



Of those 3, Vossler was probably my preferred design beating Basch solely because he had a better outfit during the time he was in our party, but in the end all 3 were examples of what kind men FFXIV needs to start including in the main cast in order to offset the other party members and the overwhelmingly bland makeup of the scions.