Quote Originally Posted by Semirhage View Post
Hm. I'm having a weird thought here, and I'm not sure if it's a synaptic misfire or something worth writing down. I think one of the things that's been nagging at me about the story lately is the weird mix of philosophies they're doing. What I mean by that is, they're talking a big game about meaning, despair, struggling forward despite it all, etc etc. And then they're pairing it with this weird mushy "everyone's just trying their best and everyone's a good person deep down and there are no real villains only people we haven't spent enough time yapping philosophy at" vague-occasionally-venturing-into-cutesy kumbaya vibe that's just....nooooot landing with me, especially in the EW patch content. I've encountered some meaty, juicy stories that mix existential angst with humor, but something about this isn't doing it for me.
It's because existentialism is a philosophy that is against essentializing yourself or others. It's about living authentically.

However, some of the main characters in FF14 are very much not living authentically, at least to normal humans like us. They are caricatures, tropes, essences. For a game that has frequently espoused the virtue of celebrating humanity, the human experience, and free will, even if it means making mistakes and being flawed, most of the main Scions do not seem to actually do so since HW. Long gone are the days of Alphinaud actually suffering any consequence from his mistakes. Failing again and again and yet persisting, like Camus' Sisphyus, even if it were futile, can be a potent symbol. Some of the Scions reference this idea at times, saying that they will fight even if the odds are insurmountable. But in the story they are as surmountable as a gentle, carpeted straight road.

Living authentically is not easy. Living authentically is scary because failure no longer has an external excuse - failures belong to you. That kind of is the point of existentialism. If there are no stakes, the philosophy rings hollow, because anyone can do it. Anyone can defy fate if they know they're not going to actually die. Anyone can say that they embrace humanity's flaws and failures if people always get inspired by them and are nice to them - and if they do not, they almost always will after two quests of convincing with good deeds. Anyone can want to fight on if they never failed.

The philosophy the Scions espouse only has merit if we start seeing them actually display human flaws and fail more often.