Consequences Doesn't Necessarily Mean Death

[MikkoAkure]

The audience knows that a lot of the main cast probably won't stay dead, but they may stay dismembered, depressed, maimed, etc. I could see Alphinaud losing the ability to speak, Alisae losing her sword arm and getting a prosthetic, Urianger losing Moenbryda's parents, Y'shtola having to deal with Maytoya going through dementia and losing her knowledge.

They each have things they care about deeply that don't require the character die. You just need them to lose something that they deeply, deeply care about.

Why though.

Other long running media have characters that are static for 10+ years and have fake-out deaths (Stargate SG-1) and I never see conversations around wishing someone would lose a limb there. Characters don't necessarily need to suffer or die in order for a story to be compelling.

FFXIV's main cast have already all had a lot of things happen to them that they had to overcome. Alphinaud had his wide-eyed political idealism thrown back into his face when his private military went and did a coup. Thancred lost his ability to manipulate aether and nearly died fighting Ran'jit while dealing with his angst around Ryne and Minfilia. Urianger lost Moenbryda, Yda lost Papalymo, Estinian had his entire worldview flipped upside down and then got possessed by his archnemesis, Y'shtola lost her sight, and while it doesn't exactly come up as much as I'd wish it, it at least shows she's somewhat vulnerable. They all went through the story together in ShB and EW and nearly died there but because the good guys won, everyone came out battered but alive but it isn't like it was sunshine and rainbows the entire time either.

Requiring to have bad things constantly happen to the main characters over and over just to make the story feel "compelling" feels like torture porn than actual good story-telling. The main characters have already mostly been through their own characterization and suffering so I don't know what else can come of throwing more targetted suffering at them. Krile, Erenville, and Wuk Lamat are being added to the main cast so they'll probably end up going through the forge of characterization in Dawntrail but at this point I think needlessly going back and throwing the other Scions into the blender to have bad things happen to them will just make more people angry than happy.

[Sjol]

snip

Stargate SG-1 is an interesting comparison. I've seen pretty much the entire franchise, sometimes a couple of times. SG-1 has the heroes fail... a lot. But, being a serialized show, there's a basic need to reset back to something stable in between episodes. Not every show does it that way, but that was SG-1 a lot of the time.

I would also argue that a lot of bad things happened to the main cast with the possible exception of Sam, which was a complaint of the show for a long time. The show starts with O'Neal losing his son and Daniel's losing his wife to the Goa'uld. That's where the show starts. Teal'c sacrifices his position and station in the first episode. Teal'c loses his symbiote and lot of his resistance at one point. They have a lot of near-death experiences. The fact that the situations tend to last an episode instead the entire franchise is a writing choice, but one appropriate to episodic television.

Contrast that to here where our allies barely get hurt or slowed down. We don't even see them fail very often. McCay frequently fails and is one of the reasons he's sufferable. We don't see the struggle for the Scions. And that lack of struggle is why they frequently come off as insufferable. Sam from SG-1 had the same issue. She rarely, if ever, suffered and as a result was a poor character.

Struggling (and sometimes suffering) is what allows the Scions to be bastions. Without that they're the rich man whose never suffered a day in his life telling the poor man who has lost everything that he just needs a better attitude to succeed. Alphinaud was personally obnoxious to me for most of ARR and only after the Banquet that I actually start to like him as a character -- because he had learned perspective and humility. The hero's journey includes struggle as a necessary component. But their success rate has moved the needle from struggling to just doing. And if they are struggling, the game is having trouble showing it.

[MikkoAkure]

Stargate SG-1 is an interesting comparison.

At this point I feel like FFXIV is basically a serialized MMO with every iteration being its own episode/movie with the same characters, for good or ill. Running them through a gauntlet of suffering every single episode is going to get tiring which is why every expansion also has a rotating cast of potentially sacrificial side-characters. After they came out with the Trust System, I decided that there was no way anything bad was going to happen to the Scions again because they were enshrined in a part of the game where you could level them up. Now that the biggest thing ever to happen in the entire world has been resolved, Dawntrail feels like a sidequest and it won't have the same effect if say Thancred finally bites the bullet or gets forcefully retired through injury.


I think one problem is that FFXIV sits in an awkward spot with more content, more new story updates, and a much longer life than a single-player FF where anything can happen and it's all in a self-contained story, but less content than a TV show that has a main cast that is pretty much static. This means that there's not quite as much time as a TV show that has characters go through new problems and solve them every 45 minutes, giving them the chance to show new facets with many more problems than our FFXIV cast has gone through. But they're the main cast of something that's gone on much longer than a single-player experience so it's that much more dire to have something terrible to happen to them.

I nearly gave up on Atlantis after what happened to my favorite character Beckett but he still had a sort of reset by the end anyway. McKay was my next favorite character but I feel like his writing threads a very thin line between annoying smart guy and god's pathetic jingling jester that fails over and over. He's the comic relief but he also has to be hyper-competent and I think that would be difficult to pull off at the same level with say, Alphinaud. They tried it with Y'shtola and the Usual Suspects came into the forums to complain about her torturing familiars or not liking her one haha moment for other reasons.


Though I can see how Y'shtola is basically Sam Carter now and I don't think that'll ever leave my head...

[Sjol]

I nearly gave up on Atlantis after what happened to my favorite character Beckett but he still had a sort of reset by the end anyway. McKay was my next favorite character but I feel like his writing threads a very thin line between annoying smart guy and god's pathetic jingling jester that fails over and over. He's the comic relief but he also has to be hyper-competent and I think that would be difficult to pull off at the same level with say, Alphinaud. They tried it with Y'shtola and the Usual Suspects came into the forums to complain about her torturing familiars or not liking her one haha moment for other reasons.


Though I can see how Y'shtola is basically Sam Carter now and I don't think that'll ever leave my head...

I actually liked Y'shtola's vulnerability and the reminder that at one point she was a child and awkward and that she could be embarrassed. That people come in here and complain that their favorite character isn't perfect is sad to me, but then there are lots of people who forget that characters serve the story and not the other way around.

Taking it back to TV writing, SG-1 and a lot of serialized ensemble shows follow a similar pattern for breaking down season structure as 1-2 focus episodes per character and then the rest is plot-forwarding. But the focus episodes are critical for character development and having us see that the people are still human even though they're galivanting across the universe. Sometimes you'd get a peek behind the scenes where you get to see the characters trying to have a life. The number of lovers that die on SG-1, it kind of becomes a dangerous thing to be one of their partners. Sam even has a section on her being a Black Widow. SG-1 was also a show where we had a good idea of who wasn't going to die, but that doesn't mean nothing bad ever happened to them. The groundhog's day episode still remains one of my favorites. We laugh with the character because how else are you going to survive something that insanity-inducing.

And I agree that not every character works for every kind of role. Honestly, I think the lighter moments could come from the main cast and not necessarily be relegated so much to "merchandising opportunities".