Female Hrothgar as a playable race. Show your support!

[Midareyukki]

Sorry but Bozja is a sore spot because Ive never seen a multipatch side story be so incompetently stupidly badly written

Believe me, as someone who absolutely adores Yasumi Matsuno's work, I'm the first one to call the Bozja plotline, its methodology, its execution and everything in-between like minor characters, an absolute disgrace.

We're not going to have a Queen like before xD relax. I'm just saying "if we have a Queen", she will not have the same power as before. And trust me, even in Europe, England's monarchy holds too much power, other countries aren't like that. They're just symbols, they barely even count as presidents. And Constitutional Monarchies =\= Absolute Monarchies, so there is that.

As for Bozja's plot itself... yeah it's a freaking disaster. FF14 was originally written in the same style as FF12, with a bit more fantasy added to it. Matsuno was even the reason Yoshida joined SE to begin with. Yasumi Matsuno's stories are almost always political and draw inspiration from medieval European politics and cultures. Which is why the writing is often a bit dry. And they can get quite dark, as seen in Tactics Ogre LUCT or FFT. Which is fine. But I feel like they forgot how 14 worked and it was inconsistently hopping between Matsuno-style of writing (dry, detailed, political, philosophical, character-driven) and usual 14-style of writing (fantastic, cinematic, 'creature under the bed'-esque, traditional RPG). That writing was just so dumbed down and riddled with clichés, and COVID did not help matters at all.

So we ended up with:
- Hrothgars having an inconsistent lore based on Sharlayan misconceptions (despite Hrothgar living in Sharlayan and Sharlayan being the city state of knowledge and compilation of empirical evidence)
- Misija and Gunnhildr being turned into Femroes
- The Blades being a couple NPCs we barely meet in FATEs before being killed off in the most insulting way possible (no fleshing out other than on text excerpts, turned into creatures in the patch we find a way to cure tempering, almost no mourning or recognition from the other members of Bozja)
- Cutscene Incompetence from our end
- The plot with Cid and the Bozja Incident is only relevant for one moment. And it collectively made people sigh because the fight with Varis isn't really a fight with Varis. Not that it matters anymore, you can get the Varis drops from PVP now... great job.
- Stupid plot clichés (Why are we listening to blind prophecies with zero preparation to secure the future we see?)
- Convoluted storyline that leads nowhere (the resolution to this plot is on texts you have to unlock, and even then it's made clear that it's not over yet and Gabranth is still out there, the Relics are in Garlean hands, half the antagonists get away with it scot free...)
- Characters that are treated poorly and with rushed writing (Dabog). Even the freaking Espers in FF12 had more characterization than this...
- Suddenly, Diabolos?? Ok pop off.

Bozja starts out "fine". Not great, but also not bad. Delubrum honestly ruined it for me and it legit made me hate listening to "Sochen Cave Palace". I really wanted to connect with the Blades. Seeing what was done to them made me feel sick. And Zadnor was just irritating and I couldn't wait for it to end.

Every step of the way, they found ways to irritate me more and more. I WANTED to save Dabog. Fat chance of that, we don't even avenge him properly, Sicinius is still out there. I WANTED there to be a resolution to Lyon, fat chance of that. I WANTED there to be consequences for Pagaga or Clarricie, but screw that. And I wanted the people of Bozja, Landis and Dalmasca to get their revenge on Gabranth, but again, fat chance of that! The only character that was treated somewhat decently for the player was Misija, and there was absolutely no catharsis there because even that the writers couldn't help themselves.

It's like they asked Yasumi Matsuno to write the plot, he did it on a napkin and they rolled with the draft. Sure, they could have had another zone to expand on this, but couldn't due to COVID. But then just adapt! Don't shove everything you've got on the last zone. Save it for some other time. We know they're planning on going back to Dalmasca in the future, but if people were already confused in Return to Ivalice and the plot was actually told to you flat out by speaking to Jenomis, do you think people will want to read unlockable snippets just to understand what's going on? Not to mention how not everyone will understand how Gabranth's still around, as many didn't unlock the snippets nor done the last Dabog instance to see what technology the Garleans have.

It made me not want to see Matsuno in 14 again. And it's such a shame because I was really looking forward to it, especially seeing him be the one to expand on Hrothgar lore. All in all, it was an utter waste.