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

[Rosenstrauch]

Fair warning, nothing I am about to say has any bearing on any arguments about whether or not characters qualify as "pretty boys", "brats", "masculine", or any other "let's shove a human-shaped body into a tiny box and make it fit" terminology.

FF6 character design

I mean, if we're going to pick nits:

Setzer, Edgar, Cyan, and Locke all have different eyebrow shapes and colors. They also have different nose shapes—Cyan's is an eagle/aquiline nose, Edgar's is hooked/Roman, Setzer's is straight and sharp with a flat glabella, and Locke's is still straight but has a softer tip and concave glabella. Edgar's nose has a reddened tip, while Cyan's nostrils are a deeper shade than the rest of his nose. And lest you somehow mistake Locke and Setzer for the same person, Setzer's face is covered in scars. Their chins are different shapes, too, though this is obscured by clothing and hair in Edgar and Setzer's case.

The point I'm trying to make is that these faces are unique. If you cropped out everything but their faces, it would still be clear that they look like different people, and someone who knew about the cast of FF6 could reasonably identify without having seen Amano's artwork before.

Of course, none of this is relevant to the game itself, which uses 16-bit sprites designed to fit within a 16x24 grid. Notable victims of the process of converting these designs to sprite format are everyone's noses, everyone's eyebrows being distinguishable from their eyelashes, any variation in skin color since they have a limited palette to work with (making everyone vaguely beige), and Sabin's beard.

It shouldn't be surprising that when every defining facial feature except Cyan's moustache is removed, people will tell the characters apart by their clothing.

EDIT: Also, I have no idea why I'm here right now.

[Vyrerus]

intuiting

You could just, you know, admit to being in error.











Anyway, for as long as the series has stuck to having Biseinen and what not, the games that do the best are the ones that feature characters outside of that mold.

IV has Yang
VI has Sabin, Gau, Cyan, Gogo, Umaro, General Leo, Shadow, Mog, Strago, and depending on which Amano art you're looking at, Edgar is also drawn with a wide, dimpled manly chin
VII has Barrett, Red XIII, Cait Sith, and Cid
IX has Steiner, Amarant
X has Wakka and Khimari
XI has Galkas(and Galka Mayo. Don't google that)

Also though, note that official Amano art isn't what sold the early games. We got weird western art portrayals for the earliest Final Fantasies. VI was actually the first one to really openly share the Amano art, having detail character bios in its instruction manual complete with both Amano portrayals of each character.

In the gameplay, of course the graphics at the time limit how the characters look, but they don't call to mind their art. They still all had stand out designs, and were unmistakably different. In the earliest games this took the form of different job designs, rather than characters.

[CrownySuccubus]

Fair warning, nothing I am about to say has any bearing on any arguments about whether or not characters qualify as "pretty boys", "brats", "masculine", or any other "let's shove a human-shaped body into a tiny box and make it fit" terminology.



I mean, if we're going to pick nits:

The problem is that the complaint was about there being too many anime-esque bishonen pretty boys compared to "classically handsome" (aka, rugged and tough, from a Western aesthetic) male characters. Technically speaking, each of the Scions also draw from a variety of subtle facial variations as well, but it doesn't change the fact that they are still of the same beautiful bishonen archetype.

[CrownySuccubus]

IV has Yang

Who I mentioned along with Cid and Tellah.

VI has Sabin, Gau, Cyan, Gogo, Umaro, General Leo, Shadow, Mog, Strago, and depending on which Amano art you're looking at, Edgar is also drawn with a wide, dimpled manly chin

Mentioned all of them except for Gau. Gogo, Umaro, Mog, and Shadow I mentioned as part as having "no human features". Leo is a relatively minor character, so we could technically mention General Ranjit or Rammbroes here if we wanted to be picky. And yes, Edgar's chin depends on the artwork.

I also said that VI has such a HUGE cast that you're bound to find more characters in it that break the mold. However, Amano was specifically instructed to make all of the main male characters that the player would interact with more regularly as "approachable" as possible -- which in Japanese media, meant "pretty". Locke, for instance, was originally designed to be an older rogue with a mustache before Amano was asked to redesign. All of the "unapproachable" features were moved over to Shadow, instead.

Likewise, Galuf and Ricard Highwind are temporary guest characters that get written out of the story or killed off at some point. It's not like FFXIV doesn't have guest party members like Gotetsu or temporary playable characters such as Hien.

VII has Barrett, Red XIII, Cait Sith, and Cid
IX has Steiner, Amarant
X has Wakka and Khimari

I specifically said pre-PS1 era, and I likewise said that Nomura typically has a somewhat more varied diversity.

FFVII is also special, because Nomura was ordered to draw against his normal style for that game. Due to the limitations of early PS1 technical knowledge, they needed the characters to be exaggerated and recognizable by their basic shapes alone.


You could follow the whole conversation rather than call someone else "in error".

[anhaato]

If the burger seething annoys you so much you can just ignore it, you know. Start a different topic. Please just do anything but fight for another 10 pages. What are you actually here for if "the wrong kind of criticism" just sets you off so badly? This thread is for venting about problems with the msq. People have different issues with it. Some issues are more problematic in the eyes of some than others. They might want to talk about it to considerable length. Who are you to try to gatekeep what is or isn't allowed to be discussed or viewed as an issue in this thread?

[CrownySuccubus]

If the burger seething annoys you so much you can just ignore it, you know. Start a different topic. Please just do anything but fight for another 10 pages. What are you actually here for if "the wrong kind of criticism" just sets you off so badly? This thread is for venting about problems with the msq. People have different issues with it. Some issues are more problematic in the eyes of some than others. They might want to talk about it to considerable length. Who are you to try to gatekeep what is or isn't allowed in this thread?

This entire post is silly because it goes both ways. Anyone who wants to talk about G'raha and burgers endlessly can make a topic where they can discuss it there.

Likewise, they have as much a right to bring up the burger scene as a topic as someone else has to argue that the complaint is brought up far too often and with too much vitriol, and by the same clique of posters.

[anhaato]

This entire post is silly because it goes both ways. Anyone who wants to talk about G'raha and burgers endlessly can make a topic where they can discuss it there.

Likewise, they have as much a right to bring up the burger scene as a topic as someone else has to argue that the complaint is brought up far too often and with too much vitriol, and by the same clique of posters.

Ok, and what's your goal in doing so? Quickly.

[Theodric]

The unique fury and fixation inspired by burgers and "a male character that doesn't aesthetically appeal to me" in an expansion as rife with actually substantive issues as Endwalker is sort of morbidly fascinating, if depressing.

Wait, no, I take it back. It's not fascinating. It's the most boring thing in the universe, actually.

You, yourself, not seeing something as a valid issue does not negate it being something other people are free to discuss if it is something that they feel passionate about or see as an issue with the game.

The thread in itself has been a place to discuss perceived issues with Endwalker across the board. Not everyone is going to agree with every point raised, though that isn't a necessity in the first place.

I'd rather not see bizarre attempts at gatekeeping what is 'allowed' to be discussed - especially when they're turning on posters who have contributed extensively to compiling issues with how Venat and Hermes were handled.

It's not like there's anything new to discuss until the next Live Letter arrives, either.

[aveyond-dreams]

Ok well if you want to change the direction of the thread back to Venat, I think it would have been far more interesting and made for a more entertaining experience if she really lived up to the whole fallen angel thing she quite literally has going on instead of pretending to be "everyone's mother." This woman isn't a benevolent goddess, she's a deceiver and one of the most destructive beings in the entirety of the mainline series outclassed only by the likes of Meteion and Jenova. Now, Venat wasn't that bad as a party member when was part of the Elpis trio but everything after (and before) that point is full of flimsy logic and desperate writing in attempt to retcon her into a positive figure, despite having very clear indications in Shadowbringers that she wasn't.




I suppose a better way to have gone about it would've been to draw inspiration from the likes of Sirene or the situation revolving Ryo Asuka. Sirene for being an interesting villainess and having a fight sequence so prominent that it's even being replicated in FFXVI, and Ryo for the way in which such a betrayal could've gone about. Deliberately create a problem that necessitated the summoning of Zodiark, then presenting herself as the solution in the form of a seemingly loving and protective goddess, despite her "creations" being little more than magic putty in the direct aftermath of the sundering. When they went out and said in the Live Letter that the races "evolved" into their current form, none of us pictured that they literally became that after being jello for an unspecified amount of time. All this while subconsciously trying to bring back the friend (the WoL) that would wind up becoming her undoing after having manipulated and fostered his growth to well beyond what she could manage.

I would absolutely have preferred a final fight against her, starting from the depths of the Earth where she resided in a literal lake of ice to winding up fighting on the barren surface of the moon where she originally had banished Zodiark. Partway through the fight, instead of riding Zenos dragon, why not Vrtra? Or better yet Midgardsormr? Naturally given that this is an MMORPG the WoL would likely win instead of the alternate outcome that resulted from Ryo and Akira's battle. It probably would have been a lot more satisfying than willingly salvaging whatever was left of Meteion and unleashing that back into the universe, and then being forced into battle with Zenos which many posters have mentioned that doing this went directly against how they felt their WoLs would react in that situation.

[Jagick]

A Garlemald expansion would have indeed provided the sort of continued conflicts you express interest in, especially from military leaders who are uncompromising in their ideals and beliefs. I imagine that they would still humanize the Garlean people in different ways but in the end I did enjoy how they went about handling that specific aspect of Garlemald in Endwalker – it was still flawed in my view however because of the ridiculous decision to write Gaius out of the plot instead of trying to tie it together to the Weapons storyline. I think they did a good job of showing how not everyone in the Empire subscribes to the same mindset and the characters we did see were worthy of the screentime they took up.

(Ideally, such content like the trial series etc. should be made mandatory for not only story continuity issues but to enforce a skill check that this playerbase needs in endgame content. Especially if it would act as a filter for players whose aversion to more challenging battle content and Heavensward and Ivalice-style storytelling seems to overlap.)

I do enjoy the shades of gray in that regard, especially in that not every Garlean is the same. More of that would be fun to work with. But arriving in Garlemald and trying to figure out how to not kill the poor, poor tempered Garlean soldiers that would happily fight us to the death even if they weren't tempered? They were laying on the concepts of 'if you kill your enemy you're as bad as them' a little too thick. Sometimes I'd rather the people in the story be a little more emotional and human than just... the good guys. I think that's the biggest issue with FFXIV's story as a whole though, especially in Endwalker. The protagonist has no emotional agency (or agency in general) and everyone acts like robots that have a fleeting emotion and then are immediately over it, regardless of what's happening.