What Zero Could've Been

[Theodric]

Y'shtola always struck me as a strange choice for the game's mascot in general. Personally I would have preferred the official mascot to be the player character - depicted as he is in the various cinematic trailers.

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

Y'shtola always struck me as a strange choice for the game's mascot in general. Personally I would have preferred the official mascot to be the player character - depicted as he is in the various cinematic trailers.

I mean, it seems like its a back and forth.
The WoL is featured several times in promos, but he looks different each time through the journey. Y'shtola seems more for merch. I see her featured less in comparison to the WoL

[TheMightyMollusk]

Y'shtola always struck me as a strange choice for the game's mascot in general. Personally I would have preferred the official mascot to be the player character - depicted as he is in the various cinematic trailers.

It kinda makes sense to me. They want a character who's actually visibly in the game early on to hook new players into meeting them, so the generic WoL is out. Of the Scions, the twins are too young (and Alisae ditches the main story for a while), Thancred spends a big chunk of ARR possessed by an antagonist, and Urianger is basically irrelevant to the plot until the Warriors of Darkness arc and then disappears again until Shadowbringers. Yda and Papalymo are the comic relief duo, and Minfilia and Tataru are non-action characters. That pretty much defaults to Y'shtola.

Plus, pretty girls sell merch. Probably could've just stopped with that, really....

So really, her big push lately comes across to me less as the writers actually wanting her to be front and center, and more like marketing forcing her there. And we can all see how that's working out. Which is a shame; even as someone who likes the Scions, I'd certainly go for a break from the main group after two expansions of them all front and center. Hell, I love the twins, but the best part of the patches has been the two of them taking a backseat and not getting involved.