The feeling of beeing Home ...

[aveyond-dreams]

You cannot hope to keep my long term attention if the story you're going to tell me is devoid of meaningful character growth that is punctuated by events such as loss, change, or death. Now that the longstanding and relatively well-liked antagonist faction has been done away with, attention now turns to the scions that they've decided to keep around. These characters however have either regressed in terms of their growth or have fallen into cyclical loops where they go through the same plot points repeatedly just in different settings. It's gotten old. Please do better.

Allow me to highlight some of the more defining moments that party members have experienced throughout the Final Fantasy series and other games:

- Yuna breaking down in tears under the weight of the pressure placed on her shoulders, which in turn allowed for Tidus to comfort her and allowed for her to grow as a heroine by expressing the sort of emotional vulnerability that to date, only Ysayle has expressed in FFXIV. Y'shtola has never done this, nor do I think they would allow for her to do so.

- Vivi discovering that as a Black Mage, his lifespan would be limited due to the nature of his creation. After the events of the game, this character died but his "sons" lived on to carry on his legacy.

- The suicide attempt by Celes Chere in FFVI, when unlike the scions despair truly brought her to and past the brink. Her survival and receiving of a message of hope by way of Locke's bandanna to this day resonates more with the message of "forging ahead" than anything that happened in Endwalker.

- Noctis fulfilling his destiny by sacrificing himself to defeat Ardyn permanently, ending the Starscourge's grip on Eos and restoring the light to the world.

- Vanille confessing to Sazh that she is the cause of the suffering inflicted upon both him and his son due to her actions, offering her life in penance with her arms outstretched.

As a Final Fantasy game that now aspires to bill itself as being on par with other single player titles, I expect more to come from the main party than what we've seen done with the scions so far. "Heroines" like Y'shtola who show so little in terms of character progression or vulnerability under the guise of being a strong or independent character just isn't interesting. Celes Chere is a general for goodness sake, and she was able to show a wider range of emotions over the course of her story than Y'shtola.

FFXIV as a whole needs to be bolder with how far they're willing to go with the main party - and that doesn't mean adding more humor, slice of life scenes, or magical girl transformation sequences. What this story needs is for the party to have moments of greater substance. We had them in Heavensward. Please bring them back.