What Forge Ahead Actually Means

[VeyaAkemi]

That begs the question why bother with the over long monologues anyway, just say hey see you in a bit and do whatever.

Ignoring the point that they needed to prove their resolve to Meteion to break past her control of the Dynamis, I viewed it as a Dragon Ball situation, Dragon Ball similarly has a thing where, due to the nature of the titular wish-granting relics, the main characters always return to life at the end of each arc unless they specifically choose to stay dead for whatever reason, but there is a point where, you still need to win, if Gohan hadn't found the strength to push past his struggle against Cell, Trunks would've remained dead, everyone who was still alive would've died, and that's the situation where the Scions were, they were putting their lives on your hands, they knew they'd be able to return, and they trusted that you would win, but you still needed to win to bring them back, so they display their resolve through a short speech, and you manage to get that first but nonetheless meaningful victory when we break Meteion's grief and snap her out of the collective, and thus we had the original Meteion, the one we met in Elpis, separate from the rest of the corrupted Meteia, and back at our side.

[VictorSpoils]

You people have a weird fascination with character death, like it means anything on its own. The industry is plagued by really dumb character deaths put in there for shock value that actually feel cheap and worthless. Anyone seen Amanda? I think she's on a Holiday.

Anyway, as I said on another thread: Character death for the sake of itself means nothing. Stakes are created through conflict, which can mean many things, and you people need to stop being so obsessed over this ONE plot device and understand there's more to conflict than "oh no they died".

Then again, it's Wood Guy, so I don't know what I was expecting.

I said this in another thread: The Scions are fine, but they're done with their conflicts/growth, so of course they can feel stale now, much more if someone doesn't enjoy their personality at a base level. I've been saying I want new characters for 7.0 for this reason, but this has nothing to do with character death as a cheap plot device.

You could argue they already went the cheap route with Horsefart. The issue with the Scions is that they kept killing them off only to immediately bring them back, not that they need to die to be interesting. It's because of the fake-outs that an actual death would be "refreshing," and it probably would've been better for them to just not face near-death experiences at all.

[DiaDeem]

Ignoring the point that they needed to prove their resolve to Meteion to break past her control of the Dynamis, I viewed it as a Dragon Ball situation, Dragon Ball similarly has a thing where, due to the nature of the titular wish-granting relics, the main characters always return to life at the end of each arc unless they specifically choose to stay dead for whatever reason, but there is a point where, you still need to win, if Gohan hadn't found the strength to push past his struggle against Cell, Trunks would've remained dead, everyone who was still alive would've died, and that's the situation where the Scions were, they were putting their lives on your hands, they knew they'd be able to return, and they trusted that you would win, but you still needed to win to bring them back, so they display their resolve through a short speech, and you manage to get that first but nonetheless meaningful victory when we break Meteion's grief and snap her out of the collective, and thus we had the original Meteion, the one we met in Elpis, separate from the rest of the corrupted Meteia, and back at our side.

I'm angry I didn't come up with this argument myself. Well said xD

[VictorSpoils]

Ignoring the point that they needed to prove their resolve to Meteion to break past her control of the Dynamis, I viewed it as a Dragon Ball situation, Dragon Ball similarly has a thing where, due to the nature of the titular wish-granting relics, the main characters always return to life at the end of each arc unless they specifically choose to stay dead for whatever reason, but there is a point where, you still need to win, if Gohan hadn't found the strength to push past his struggle against Cell, Trunks would've remained dead, everyone who was still alive would've died, and that's the situation where the Scions were, they were putting their lives on your hands, they knew they'd be able to return, and they trusted that you would win, but you still needed to win to bring them back, so they display their resolve through a short speech, and you manage to get that first but nonetheless meaningful victory when we break Meteion's grief and snap her out of the collective, and thus we had the original Meteion, the one we met in Elpis, separate from the rest of the corrupted Meteia, and back at our side.

Funny you should mention Dragon Ball, as there's a certain FF game that happens to take after it quite noticeably...

[DiaDeem]

The issue with the Scions is that they kept killing them off only to immediately bring them back

Shtola, yes.
Everyone else, no.

A Scion death at this point would actually feel more like a way to get cheap tears from some players rather than something fresh. I can't understand why you people are so obsessed with the concept. Actually... did you feel much of anything when Papalymo died? My argument stays the same: Let the Scions be, let's just get a new cast going entirely.

[TheMightyMollusk]

One of these days, someone should draw up a Venn diagram of the "people need to die in the story" posters and the "I dislike the Scions" posters and see how closely they match up. Not me, though, I'm way too lazy.

Also it's hilarious to me to see aveyond making a post complaining about the "Forge Ahead" message when he keeps coming back to make the same threads. Clearly someone isn't forging ahead.

[VictorSpoils]

Shtola, yes.
Everyone else, no.

Actually, pretty much all of them have had multiple experiences by now:
-Y'shtola (Flow, bodied by Zenos, Norvrandt coma, Flow again, Thule)
-Thancred (Flow, Norvrandt coma, bodied by Ran'jit, Thule)
-Alphinaud (Coils, downed airship, Norvrandt coma, Thule)
-Alisaie (Coils, Abania, Norvrandt coma, Thule)
-Urianger (Waking Sands raid, Norvrandt coma, Thule)
-G'raha (Crystal Tower, Elidibus, Thule)
-Estinien (Nidhogg, Thule)
-Minfilia (Waking Sands raid, Flow)
-Krile (Isle of Val, Zenos)

[TheMightyMollusk]

The Waking Sands raid counts as a death fakeout? For the characters we clearly saw just being captured? Who were never at all stated as being dead?

Then again, you list every time a character gets injured at all as if getting hurt means clearly they were gonna die, which.....doesn't remotely track.

[VeyaAkemi]

Isle of Val also was never done as a fakeout, we met Krile after that happened so it is a part of her backstory, somebody going "Oh yeah I almost died that one time" isn't a "death fake out"...

And Thancred "bodied by Ran'jit"? Thancred won that fight, it's Ran'jit who's inexcusable that he survived, he was explicitly Thancred's foil in ShB and he should've died by fighting Thancred.

[Saraide]

Isle of Val also was never done as a fakeout, we met Krile after that happened so it is a part of her backstory, somebody going "Oh yeah I almost died that one time" isn't a "death fake out"...

And Thancred "bodied by Ran'jit"? Thancred won that fight, it's Ran'jit who's inexcusable that he survived, he was explicitly Thancred's foil in ShB and he should've died by fighting Thancred.

Scion haters are willing to grasp at anything that looks even remotely straw-like under bad lighting.