What's the point with that quite lackluster story in Endwalker?

[Swordsman]

Normally I don't like when stories kill characters left and right like game of throne does, because it feels like it's done for sake of being edgy, and I think death needs to be treated with more respect than some stories treat it.

But FFXIV doesn't have an excuse. They have at least one fakeout every expansion, and if no one of the main cast ever dies those fakeouts are just predictable and pointless. If not an annoying waste of time.

SE: "Let's have a fake death scene for every character of the main cast on Ultima Thule. That will really be convincing for the players this time around."

[Theodric]

I'm pointing out that your disagreement with the notion that "a story doesn't need death to be interesting" itself is interesting because of your comment from just the other day that FFXII is your favorite FF game and you completely avoided the topic by linking to your own post from a few months ago that is just a collection of your own quotes.

That very same game has fake-out deaths for major characters like you had just complained about and all but 2 minor "protagonist-aligned" characters survive the main course of the game. It's almost as if the quality of a story is independent of the death count and stakes can exist without having to prove that the stakes are high by having someone die.

No, I don't think you're 'pointing out' anything and you certainly don't need to explain my own thoughts and opinions to me. Especially when we've had this discussion many times already and various examples of RPG's with character deaths have been brought up by myself and other posters each time this same subject has arisen.

I'm not sure why you're downplaying the deaths present in FFXII or even bringing it up in the first place since the post you first responded to had me commenting specifically on FFXIV's lack of stakes and a need for a healthy balance. FFXIV is an MMO and not a one and done story like FFXII so there's a greater need to keep things fresh. As it stands, having a stale and immortal cast who walk away from the second coming of the apocalypse bragging about not having any scars to show for it does very little to interest me.

As I see it, the game is simply casting aside the stuff I find interesting in order to constantly thrust the same preachy and samey characters front and centre at every possible turn. I've consistently advocated for more variety in terms of personal beliefs, personality types and loyalties where the main cast is concerned. We're not really getting that - and even the latest 'new' character is returning to his homeland after spending time in Sharlayan.

The casts in the single player games, however, do not have that problem. They have vastly different backgrounds, goals and belief systems. At times some of them are practically at each other's throats. They come together for the sake of pursuing a wider goal but there's much more of an attempt to appeal to a broader range of personal tastes.

EDIT: As for FFXII, which characters are you referring to as 'fake out deaths' exactly? Basch and Ashe have their deaths faked as part of political intrigue which is very different to the the likes of Y'shtola dying multiple times and being brought back relatively unharmed. Rasler and Rex dying in the game's prologue also plays into the story as a whole. Ashe is very nearly manipulated into attacking the Archadian Empire to get revenge for her slain lover whereas Vaan mistakenly believes that Basch is responsible for his brother's death and it takes some time for him to warm up to the disgraced knight. Vossler's role in the story is pretty large as well, particularly where Basch and Ashe are concerned. To say nothing of the fact that he's a guest character for a decent stretch of the game (particularly if you're doing side quests and exploring every corner of each zone).

[Post]

Yo, Heavensward MSQ owned BECAUSE Estinien and Ysayle were so at each other's throats, meanwhile Alphinaud was working through some crap so he wasn't his normal haughty self and had a rough time trying to control the situation.

I think the Scions are... fine, but they're not really interesting. Even in ShB where they've been the best they've been and there was some strife between Y'sh, Uri and Thancred centered on Ryne and trusting the Exarch, they were outshined by Ardbert, the Exarch and Emet. In 5.1 and beyond, they've worked through all their crap and are still around so there's not much direction they can go in.

The story just works better when there's conflict central in the main cast, too. I don't really feel fulfilled the same when the conflicts being resolved are whose burger Alisae is going to steal, or Estinien is dumb with money, or Y'shtola is a recovering magical girl or whatever.

We know they're sticking around because of the trust and duty support systems now, too, so them threatening to kill them just falls flat unless they really draw me in, and after abandoning an idea as crazy as 'In from the Cold' within the span of a duty and a cutscene, I doubt they have the guts to actually tell that story anymore.

[MikkoAkure]

I'm not sure why you're downplaying the deaths present in FFXII or even bringing it up in the first place since the post you first responded to had me commenting specifically on FFXIV's lack of stakes and a need for a healthy balance. FFXIV is an MMO and not a one and done story like FFXII so there's a greater need to keep things fresh. As it stands, having a stale and immortal cast who walk away from the second coming of the apocalypse bragging about not having any scars to show for it does very little to interest me.

On the contrary I think a stable cast is more important to continue the storyline and carry things over between expansions. I don't think main cast attrition between parts of a long-form story will work well to keep people engaged with what's happening and that's part of where I think FFXI's story has weaknesses.

I do think that it would be nicer if the cast had more diverse opinions and personalities, but killing them off just to introduce new cast feels like an option of last resort and will only make players resent the new characters.

From what little can be gleaned from information we have on Dawntrail, it seems there may be a schism among the Scions coming up anyway.

EDIT: As for FFXII, which characters are you referring to as 'fake out deaths' exactly?.

Fran and Balthier send the rest of the cast off while explosions are happening all around them as the Bahamut crashes but their "sacrifice" is undone right after when the Strahl is stolen back by them a year later and they show up in the sequel with no explanation with how they survived. Y'shtola at least gets healed or wooshed back into existence on screen.

Rasler dies after a minute of screentime in the intro movie. Reks is a sacrificial pawn for the tutorial prologue and we find out later in the game that he doesn't even die on-screen and wastes away while convalescing from his stab wound sometime in between the prologue and the actual start of the game.

After the first 10 minutes, and through the rest of the game for the next 40-60 hours including the end, the only character deaths of "protagonists" come from Vossler, who betrays the group just before he dies, and Reddas, who was an ex-Archadian judge who was looking to die. Neither are major characters. They are temporary guest party members on the same level as Haurchefant. If you are not a main party character, you are not a main character. If you're not important enough to show up on the box or on the poster, you are not a main character. Holding onto them to do side quests that have nothing to do with him doesn't suddenly make either one a main character. Larsa shows up on a poster but I think it would still be much too generous to call him a "main character". Penelo doesn't really deserve to be there, but she at least has the decency to stick around the whole time.

[Eisi]

Death in fiction reflects the tragedy of death in life.

To pretend that FFXIV avoids character death because of good writing is just lying to yourself: The game constantly kills characters, but it's the meaningless faceless nobodies you don't care about, rather than the main cast who get a protective sheathe extended to them every time the situation gets dangerous - and it gets dangerous freuquently, it's in the DNA of the story to be martial. This happens because the writers don't want to kill their characters out of either love for their own characters over the story, denial or overt unease around tragedy affecting personal affairs, concessions to the MMO framework or fear from customer backlash - the ideology that killing off characters is "bad writing" is a post-hoc rationalization.

There will be no main character deaths in FFXIV.

G'raha, Alisaie, Krile, Alphinaud, Y'shtola, Urianger, Thancred and Estinien survived the apocalypse. There's not gonna be a Mamool'Ja stabbing them to death in the next expansion. They are forever safe.

[BRVV]

G'raha, Alisaie, Krile, Alphinaud, Y'shtola, Urianger, Thancred and Estinien survived the apocalypse. There's not gonna be a Mamool'Ja stabbing them to death in the next expansion. They are forever safe.

Yeah and sadly that makes everything they are involved in boring... but hey at least the sales for Y'shtola body pillows are still great.

[Swordsman]

Yeah and sadly that makes everything they are involved in boring... but hey at least the sales for Y'shtola body pillows are still great.

This reminds me of how George Lucas based his decision to keep Han Solo alive in the original trilogy on the belief that the company would be able to sell more Han Solo toys and action figures.

[Eisi]

This reminds me of how George Lucas based his decision to keep Han Solo alive in the original trilogy on the belief that the company would be able to sell more Han Solo toys and action figures.

Which is ironic considering Han Solo was never alive to begin with.

Edit: I googled it and apparently the official reason wasn't toy sales but that George didn't wanna tarnish the happy ending of Return of the Jedi. So a meta reason based on how George believed stories should be.

[BRVV]

Which is ironic considering Han Solo was never alive to begin with.

He was a ghost the entire time! :O

[Silverquick]

I didn’t like many aspects of the Endwalker storyline either, you’re not alone in that. However, making a thread like this is just going to get you hate from people who did.

To be honest with you, I have not really been that impressed with Endwalker either so far. I just picked it up and am moving through the campaign now. It was about as cringy as ARR at points. You know... run yourself off the cliff kind of naivety, emotion emotion emotion with no reason or rationality behind it, despite many of the characters supposedly being scholars and espousing rationality and reason. it was like all the characters reverted back to ARR with no character development. They reference it... but then don't actually show it.

On top of that it's got some of the worst elements of the Stormblood gameplay that just annoyed the hell out of people, half the time I'm not playing my character but rather someone else's. At the very least in ARR there was a lot more freedom, especially with exploration.

After some of the most interesting and in truth mature stories in Heavensward and Shadowbringers, how did it revert back to this state?