JP: Yoshi P should step down, FF14 is a sinking ship, in response to interview

[StormChase]

Honestly my current conspiracy is that something very strange and unfortunate happened behind the scenes, something we'll probably never find out about due to NDAs unless someone in another 5-10 years goes and makes a documentary about it (like was done with FFXIV 1.0). It could be any number of stupid corporate nonsense and office wankery scenarios. If you've worked in enough teams and been around some types of people, you know how south a project can go if someone is both stupid and has power. Whatever the case may be, it resulted in the team having to scrap and rewrite a huge portion of the story very quickly. Like REALLY quickly. Literally no time to go back and edit and polish, just go go go get it done yesterday.

Because we've seen these writer's works before. We KNOW they're better than this! And there are the bones here for a good (if still generally silly and anime styled) story! I also liked Wuk Lamat when she was first introduced. I liked the idea of being a mentor to her. I liked her dynamic with Erenville. I liked the idea of just exploring the world with some new and old friends both, maybe with some rivalry from the other Scions just to spice things up and change the old dynamics up. And then...I got none of that in the actual expansion! HUH?? Something strange happened here.

I've been thinking about it for the past month or two and my best conclusion is that the writers didn't have enough time to tell the full story. It's not a new problem. Stormblood and even Endwalker struggled with it. The way the expansions are structured, stories that are too short to be two but too long to neatly fit into one tend to suffer the most.

[LittleArrow]

Honestly my current conspiracy is that something very strange and unfortunate happened behind the scenes, something we'll probably never find out about due to NDAs unless someone in another 5-10 years goes and makes a documentary about it (like was done with FFXIV 1.0). It could be any number of stupid corporate nonsense and office wankery scenarios. If you've worked in enough teams and been around some types of people, you know how south a project can go if someone is both stupid and has power. Whatever the case may be, it resulted in the team having to scrap and rewrite a huge portion of the story very quickly. Like REALLY quickly. Literally no time to go back and edit and polish, just go go go get it done yesterday.

Because we've seen these writer's works before. We KNOW they're better than this! And there are the bones here for a good (if still generally silly and anime styled) story! I also liked Wuk Lamat when she was first introduced. I liked the idea of being a mentor to her. I liked her dynamic with Erenville. I liked the idea of just exploring the world with some new and old friends both, maybe with some rivalry from the other Scions just to spice things up and change the old dynamics up. And then...I got none of that in the actual expansion! HUH?? Something strange happened here.

I couldn't agree more. It definitely smells like a massive rewrite, mainly due to the constant repeated lines of dialogue that were so strangely unnecessary. I remember I counted the same line of dialogue in one of the trial I think 3xs with only one-two lines of dialogue between them. I apologize for not having specifics b/c I honestly don't want to go through any of the story a second time. I also remember it started getting much worse after the bird people trial. The giants trial was probably the only trial I felt had writing that was comparable to pre DT writing - however it all came crashing down when they showed the wall of painted memories and I literally rolled my eyes saying out loud to my monitor, 'Really? You're going to rip off Raktika's wall paintings? You all couldn't have done something different? It's literally the exact same scene..." I wish they had cut that out or replaced it with the stone totems like the later scene with the graves. This is ignoring the blaring plot hole of releasing Valigarmanda and all the can of worms that causes, but just ends up being a big ol' OOPSIE. So dumb...

I've been thinking about it for the past month or two and my best conclusion is that the writers didn't have enough time to tell the full story. It's not a new problem. Stormblood and even Endwalker struggled with it. The way the expansions are structured, stories that are too short to be two but too long to neatly fit into one tend to suffer the most.

The only reason why I would disagree with this theory is due to the insane amount of wasted dialogue. There were SO many times dialogue was almost word for word repeated by multiple characters for no reason. The story kept dying without any padding or reason. There wasn't any connective tissue, just all dried bones of a story. In other words, they were just wasting time. I felt like I was reading some procrastinating student's 5 page essay that they went through and changed the font size of periods. No filler or silly adjectives, just empty dead space that makes no sense.

It looks like the space of the story had plenty of time to tell the story they were going for, it just seems like they didn't know how to connect or transition anything. They also really didn't understand how to build characters at all. Wuk's character seemed so sacred to the writers they literally couldn't have her do anything wrong or fail. The one failure she had was her strike against Bakool Jaja - the two headed one. Then suddenly she can not only beat him with 'resolve,' but also be stronger than an 8xs aether saturated warrior of light. Man, poor Emet and Hydaelyn, picking the wrong warrior. With those haymakers Wuk was suddenly giving Sphene, she definitely could've handled all of that light that Emet was testing on us and then some! She became so overpowered for literally no reason.

Sorry, I know this has been said before, but I just wanted to give a quick example of how badly that's written. It's not just Wuk either, it's literally every character in the story - including us. I didn't even see a problem with the idea of the story - it sounds really incredibly fun and exciting. They just didn't have the skill to do it, or someone -really- messed it up with rewrites.