The atrocity that was the "In from the Cold" quest ending - *STORY RANT*

[Absimiliard]

Fandaniel's whole plan was to get Zodiark destroyed to restart the Final Days and end everything, while leaving the WoL to suffer through it. He outright says so. He just does it as theatrically as possible because he's a drama queen.

After all, why not leave everything to chance instead of doing it yourself while you have the power to do so?

[TheMightyMollusk]

After all, why not leave everything to chance instead of doing it yourself while you have the power to do so?

Aside from, again, being a drama queen? Because if super-powerful villains were ever that pragmatic, in any fantasy story, there wouldn't be a story. It would just end the second they found out about a fledgling hero vowing to defeat them.

[Absimiliard]

Aside from, again, being a drama queen? Because if super-powerful villains were ever that pragmatic, in any fantasy story, there wouldn't be a story. It would just end the second they found out about a fledgling hero vowing to defeat them.

We all know a degree of villain stupidity is required for the heroes to win in many cases, as you've observed, but that doesn't mean villains need to be absolutely brain dead. Even accounting for his flair for the dramatic and wish to draw things out, Fandaniel just comes across as unimaginably dumb for having chosen the exact path he did.

[TowaIsBestGirl]

Frankly the entire thing has an issue of "Why didn't ya just shoot him?" to me.

Emet-Selch casts "GUN!"

It's super-effective!

G'raha Tia faints!

The Warrior of Light is out of Pokemon to battle! The Warrior of Light whites out!

[Atelier-Bagur]

story best served cold

[Theodric]

Aside from, again, being a drama queen? Because if super-powerful villains were ever that pragmatic, in any fantasy story, there wouldn't be a story. It would just end the second they found out about a fledgling hero vowing to defeat them.

I don't think that's necessarily true. It's perfectly possible to write a story where antagonists and villains are a competent threat. I'd say they're much more interesting when they're allowed a victory here and there as opposed to just existing for a flashy but otherwise irrelevant fight that only serves to stroke the ego of the player character and/or player.

There's a couple of immensely powerful figures in The Witcher 3 who Geralt simply cannot stand a chance against. He still finds a way to navigate around them to his benefit, though he can never confront them directly. I'd say FFXIV would do well to humble itself with such an approach at some point, rather than just turning everything into a loot pinata.

Furthermore, a not insignificant amount of players generally come to favour the antagonists or at least enjoy them - so having them just turn out to be utterly useless is disappointing, especially if they've been built up for a while. There's a healthy balance to be struck.

[DPZ2]

Even accounting for his flair for the dramatic and wish to draw things out, Fandaniel just comes across as unimaginably dumb for having chosen the exact path he did.

I was of the opinion that Fandaniel was an insane genius who just wanted things to end. His method of choice involved the death of a primal.

The path he chose would have worked well, except for that pesky "Warrior of Light" who went to the past and found out what the real issue with the present Final Days was and found a way to stop it, along with the Friends He's Met Along the Way.

[Iscah]

Also didn't Fandaniel literally need more time to set up the tower?

No. Fandaniel had (or thought he had) enough aether in the Tower already to break through Zodiark's prison. The only reason it fails is direct intervention from Hydaelyn.

As I recall it, the whole body-switching shenanigans thing was done to distract you while the tower was approaching full charge and he wanted to make sure it got there.

It does still all feel like a weak excuse to get that sequence in there – surely leaving us to our one night of respite at the camp would have been more effective, with or without being thrown into chaos by Anima's tempering – but goodness knows what goes on in Fandaniel's head at this point in the story. I guess it meant everyone was a whole lot less rested the next day and he got some entertainment out of it.

(I can't remember re. Hydaelyn's intervention whether that caused the miscalculated charge or just threw them off-course afterwards. I think it may have always been Fandaniel's plan that the laser beam would fail and he'd have to go up to the moon to sort it out. IIRC he said he was planning to get Zenos to kill Zodiark originally, so the "oops it failed, we'll need to go break it ourselves" part may have been pure theatre.)

I do think the whole thing is a weak point of the game; very much "we have a cool idea and we want to wedge it in" rather than properly serving the larger narrative. It's frustrating to go through on replays knowing that it's getting us nowhere significant in the plot.

I think it's a good point that (as far as I can remember) Zenos generally just can't be bothered killing people unless they're at least putting up a fight, because his whole thing is wanting to experience glorious battles. If anything, his logic is probably that if he didn't outright kill them when they clashed in battle, killing them afterwards would be a waste of time, and if they live then maybe he'll get to fight them later.

[Ishe-P]

I want to say, that, from a player-based narrative standpoint, "In From the Cold" could possibly be the best thing the game has ever done. A very self contained thing, you are stripped of everything that makes you awesome, and there is some bit of actual danger that could possibly put you in your place ( I haven't played it since they nerfed it ). But man, they really exercised just exactly what they could do with a single player duty; it's too bad they probably won't do that again for at lease 100 quests.

An extra, bonus thought. In From the Cold was a powerful quest, in my opinion, because it gives The Unknown Soldier a name, almost. If you've done military service, you might understand what I mean. In my opinion, it was the most profound quest I've ever seen in any RPG and whoever came up with it deserves either a promotion, a raise, or a bonus. From a thematic perspective, it's extra special, and yes it was a shame that it got invalidated so quickly, but in the moment it was extremely effective.

[Absimiliard]

I was of the opinion that Fandaniel was an insane genius who just wanted things to end. His method of choice involved the death of a primal.

The path he chose would have worked well, except for that pesky "Warrior of Light" who went to the past and found out what the real issue with the present Final Days was and found a way to stop it, along with the Friends He's Met Along the Way.

Precisely. He made the mistake most of the other villains do, which is assuming the WoL won't somehow snatch victory from the jaws of defeat with a complete asspull. For as intelligent as he was supposed to have been, one would think there would've been contingencies in place to reduce the odds of yet another upset from the upstart. It's not as if he didn't possess full knowledge of the WoL's past exploits and unfathomable levels of plot armor ability to do the impossible on a regular basis.

Elidibus is another good example. He somehow went from being a highly intelligent schemer with a flair for the pragmatic to putting himself in a situation where either himself or the WoL wouldn't be walking away. He was powerful enough for a high degree of confidence to be warranted - especially considering he would've won if not for Emet-Selch emerging from the audience with a steel chair - but all that neuron activity he was touting up until then seemed to have gone right out the window. This is a character that at one point demonstrated full awareness of how these things usually go. Talk about a bad piece of info to lose.

I suppose what I'm getting at is that it's getting old. There's nothing wrong with putting the player-character into a situation with very real stakes. Obviously we know the story will never be written in such a way as to have the WoL die off, but there are other ways to inflict consequences, to permit villains some lasting victories, or even to let them triumph at the end of their arc, when everyone and their mother would fully expect the WoL to roll over them like a boulder meeting Wil-E-Coyote head on.