New story writer for 7.0

[Absimiliard]

Personally, I don't get why certain posters are so opposed to the idea of everybody being wrong in different ways. Moral grey is far more interesting than black and white in the lion's share of scenarios. I, and I suspect many others, would've been far more pleased with Endwalker if Eorzea, the Empire, Venat, the Ascians, and whoever else you want to throw in the list had their deplorable actions properly recognized for what they are.

Unfortunately, a lot of sanitizing happened. We ended up with a story where none of the main cast suffered consequences for their actions and certain characters were never held to any sort of account for having committed some of the greatest atrocities in all of Final Fantasy. What had a tremendous amount of potential wound up becoming just another black and white blob of blah.

It is my earnest hope the new writer will take a more logical approach. Every character, whether they be main cast, villain, or random NPC #923094, should be held to the same standards. Let no crime go unpunished and no atrocity be swept under the rug. Strip away the main cast's plot armor. Allow them to taste the depths of despair without any sort of special protections in place. Put them in the same position as the helpless wretches they walk among. Give us a story with teeth, not some silly sanitized slice of life garbage.

[Iscah]

Making everyone edgy and morally grey just means that I have to slightly dislike everyone, which sours my enjoyment of the entire story.

Fortunately that doesn't seem to be an issue in his past plots. There seems to be a good pattern of enjoyable groups of characters there – the Bard quests in particular have always stood out well.

From the MSQ chapters he has written, at a quick skim of the quest titles, 4.2 was the return of Gosetsu and "Tsuyu" and the introduction of Asahi; 4.4 was travelling to the Burn and the Allagan ruin on the Steppe that is still a bit of a mystery, and the beginning of people being summoned to the First. (Also, Y'shtola met Magnai.)

[Absimiliard]

Fortunately that doesn't seem to be an issue in his past plots. There seems to be a good pattern of enjoyable groups of characters there – the Bard quests in particular have always stood out well.

Asahi and Yotsuyu were quite deplorable, and the game treated them exactly as they were. Yotsuyu's eventual (albeit temporary) reformation in no way absolved her of the horrible things she did. She did come to regret her actions, even tried to better herself before it all came undone. Bad people can try to change, and good people don't necessarily need to always be all good. That's kinda what I am getting at. Not that everyone should exist in a moral grey area at all times. Though, I wouldn't mind if the characters we interact with routinely had their negative traits explored a bit more.

[RukoBoshi]

Asahi and Yotsuyu were quite deplorable, and the game treated them exactly as they were. Yotsuyu's eventual (albeit temporary) reformation in no way absolved her of the horrible things she did. She did come to regret her actions, even tried to better herself before it all came undone. Bad people can try to change, and good people don't necessarily need to always be all good. That's kinda what I am getting at. Not that everyone should exist in a moral grey area at all times. Though, I wouldn't mind if the characters we interact with routinely had their negative traits explored a bit more.

Agreed, which is why i hope we will get a more varied casts of characters as the next expansions come.

Never was a fan of having most characters being scholars from Sharlayan who already knew and worked with each others before the game started.
Because of that i sometimesfelt a lot of the characters could be swap for the others since they would probably share the same opinions and goals.

I want characters that have differents origins, goals and opinions. Characters that don't know each others that well but have to work together since they have a common objective.

This is the dynamic i loved about Guydelot and Sanson from the bard quests.
They didn't know or understand each others at first, and it caused tensions between them when they thought their objectives or seriousness wasn't in line with each others.

I hope Hiroi will provide some of that and more in the MSQ.

[TaleraRistain]

If we look at everything he has worked on, almost all of them had characters that were brand new, and seem to be genuinely interesting/compelling. So at least character wise, we will not be disappointed. Story wise, most of what he has done has been small stuff over the years. But since I don't recall hearing any complaints about the BRD/BLM/DNC questlines or the range/caster role quest for ShB, I think at worst the story will be average. At best it will be incredibly refreshing compared to what we've dealt with previously. Personally I think we could go for a good adventure expansion, where we don't really have high stakes.

They tend to get a little overshadowed when talking about job quests by the DRK line, but the BRD/BLM/DNC questlines were very good.

[Moebious]

From what has been showed of his writing. Looks very promising.

I wonder though, was he the sole writer for Pandaemonium and Palace of the Dead story and lore behind them then? If so, big props. As odd it may sound, the story and lore binded with Palace of the Dead, always felt like more, than what was given on its surface alone. the set up into House of the Dead, and Palace of the Dead was very fascinating. With the inclusion of Edda and her group's journey into utter tragedy was like a hidden gem, easily glanced over on first sight, if not expecting much from it at first. But then after clearing floor 50 and then 100, suddenly wanting to backtrack and rediscover them, is quite something. Then again I doubt Hiroi had such to do with floor 150+ in PotD but that place was always felt like something beyond time itself.

Seems like Hiroi applies an extra layer of lore in-between Character, World, and Story.

Makes one wonder where 7.0 might take place, almost sounds like it would be a lore rich potential place(s).

[EdwinLi]

Makes one wonder where 7.0 might take place, almost sounds like it would be a lore rich potential place(s).

Considering Season 2 may involve the New World as part of the story, they will need to establish a lot of new lore in 7.0 compared to how we started in 1.0 and 2.0 where they had lore books before and during game's release to cover a lot of background information for the regions we can already enter.

Not to mention they already said they won't touch on introducing where 7.0 is going until patch 6.5 or 6.55 which leaves less room than past expansions to start building lore for Season 2 regions until 7.0.

[KageTokage]

With how little time they're getting to lead into the next expansion, I feel like they'll probably take us to Ilsabard because we have the best idea of what the situation over there is like and there's already room for conflict between the Garleans and the other inhabitants even ignoring this impending "great change" that seems liable to complicate things further.

[Cleretic]

Personally, I don't get why certain posters are so opposed to the idea of everybody being wrong in different ways. Moral grey is far more interesting than black and white in the lion's share of scenarios. I, and I suspect many others, would've been far more pleased with Endwalker if Eorzea, the Empire, Venat, the Ascians, and whoever else you want to throw in the list had their deplorable actions properly recognized for what they are.

I think for a lot of people (not everyone, of course), it's quite simple: if every side is wrong, it means that their favorite side is wrong. And if they happen to care A LOT about their side, perhaps even identifying with it, then that feels like a slight on them.

Which, I think, leads to people trying to tear down perceived opposing sides, or the story itself, for doing so. If they can declare the story to be somehow factually wrong about itself, either by declaring plot holes or by other sides actually being somehow worse than depicted, then they can tear down the notion of the story having no real right or wrong sides, and instead claim that there IS a right answer, and it's theirs. Proving themselves to be smarter than a work of fiction, by demanding that story be stripped of all its nuance, themes, and really anything they disagree with.

I wonder though, was he the sole writer for Pandaemonium and Palace of the Dead story and lore behind them then?

I don't think we'll know about Pandaemonium for a while, but with PotD it's... interesting. It definitely looks like a one-writer job just in terms of general amount--there's not a lot of it, after all, you wouldn't exactly need a whole team--but it's clearly building on quite a bit; not only is it a continuation for a character that already existed in the game itself (in fact, for a fair amount of characters if you count the zombies, but they don't exactly get character development), but it's also a continuation on a character that existed in another game, namely Nybeth. So it hits a real good sweet spot where it hints at very large worlds outside it without actually needing to write any of it itself. But it also means that, while Hiroi likely did write everything in PotD itself, the strength of PotD is in the mountain of pre-existing writing it's pulling from.

[jameseoakes]

I think for a lot of people (not everyone, of course), it's quite simple: if every side is wrong, it means that their favorite side is wrong. And if they happen to care A LOT about their side, perhaps even identifying with it, then that feels like a slight on them.

Which, I think, leads to people trying to tear down perceived opposing sides, or the story itself, for doing so. If they can declare the story to be somehow factually wrong about itself, either by declaring plot holes or by other sides actually being somehow worse than depicted, then they can tear down the notion of the story having no real right or wrong sides, and instead claim that there IS a right answer, and it's theirs. Proving themselves to be smarter than a work of fiction, by demanding that story be stripped of all its nuance, themes, and really anything they disagree with.

The issue isn't with sides, Emet was a monster and story did a good job expressing that while making a compelling and interesting character. Venats actions are as bad if not worse then Emets (she betrays the people who trusted her and subject to sundered to 12000 years of horror) but the game screams at us how right she is mostly by othering the ancients as much as possible (though oddly then undermining that in nearly all the side quests in Elpis) and some really badly written dross to pull it together mostly coming down to the actions we called Emet out on in Shadowbringers are fine so long as the people being exterminated have been sufficiently othered which is pretty evil