Quote Originally Posted by TheDustyOne View Post
Another thing I noticed, although relatively minor, was with the FATEs against the bandits. Previous expansions had no qualms just having us slaughter human enemies when their HP is gone, they play the death animation and fade away, but here instead they run away after all their HP is gone. It's relatively minor in the grand scheme of things, but it does come across as oddly inconsistent; this is the same game with Tesleen being skewered, Teledji being sliced in half (albeit off-screen), war, genocide, conquest, but a few bandits slaughtering merchants? Nah they gotta live, never mind that they have no qualms in killing us, but we can only subdue them.
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And also immediately right after is the token "why do people become bandit? Maybe if their lives were better they won't become bandit?" mention.

And when you get to Mehwahhetsoan, there is another token "industrial development is bad for environment and wild life" mention.


Like ... it's weird. Don't get me wrong, FF14 being preachy is nothing news. Sometime even Alphinauh annoyed me of how preachy he is way before DT, and the whole peace and friendship isn't really a Wuk Lamat exclusive. But the thing is in the past, the virtual signalling when it happens, it felt substantial, with intend and purpose, and with effort to make it part of the story. Like the whole Ultima Thule zone felt like a sermon to me, but it was written into a full story. With DT though ... like you said they're just minor detail, token mention that makes me go "huh? Why do that or say that here?". It's like ticking checkboxes, or they're there so they can take an out of context snapshot and put it in a report later to make some ... underwriter happy.


One one hand, they're just minor that doesn't really affect anything important right now. Collectively though, together with the transition to a new writing team and a new era for the game ... it does make me a bit concern if this is the new direction they gonna take the narrative from now on?