Can 7.0 focus on a storyline without the philosophizing

[Eorzean_username]

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.

I was convinced that when the "grumpy Garlean" in 6.40 MSQ wandered off into the city, it was going to be some fake-out heroic moment, and we'd find him dead or something, and have to confront the consequences of infighting, etc. Because it couldn't possibly be going down as obvious and banal a path as it seemed, right?

Nope.

It really was just, "Oh I bumped into a robot, but you killed the robot, I'm sorry I was mean to you, I've changed my political views completely, let's stop obstructing your plot device".

Why did it even need to happen?

Why am I even here, at this point?

You could just summarise this in a pop-up text and I would feel like my time was better spent.

[TheDecay]

I was convinced that when the "grumpy Garlean" in 6.40 MSQ wandered off into the city, it was going to be some fake-out heroic moment, and we'd find him dead or something, and have to confront the consequences of infighting, etc. Because it couldn't possibly be going down as obvious and banal a path as it seemed, right?

Nope.

It really was just, "Oh I bumped into a robot, but you killed the robot, I'm sorry I was mean to you, I've changed my political views completely, let's stop obstructing your plot device".

Why did it even need to happen?

Why am I even here, at this point?

You could just summarise this in a pop-up text and I would feel like my time was better spent.

Exactly. This is another big issue. People just don't behave like that realistically. People are stubborn and it can take a long time to convince them of something. Sometimes, in trying to convince them of something they might even retaliate.

But this game almost never shows that these days. The dev team has shown flawed characters (Alphinaud) and what that flaw wrought (2.55), but I wonder why we never see it anymore.