Please no more "Inspired by real world culture"

[Hallarem]

Real life inspiration for areas is not a problem here. And I don't think the real world leaked into Dawntrail either.
The story was just very immature in it's way of dealing with politics, problems and more. Pacing is the main culprit, the lack of it. Decades of racism / warfare solved in an instant, and more.
It's just sloppy, bad writing. If they were somehow held back by not trying to offend real world cultures, grow a pair because its a fantasy world, not the real world. Grow up while you're at it, if everyone was worried about their fictional characters offending real world people unless its really blatantly AIMED TO HURT REAL WORLD PEOPLE, we wouldn't have art in any form. It's like that one history channel on youtube "Extra history" or something making the video basically saying orcs are offensive, because orcs are an allegory for black people. And to me, that's the biggest self-report ever instead of being somekind of study on fantasy characters.

Sorry if this offends anyone, but a prime example of the real world entering into a game is the scene from the new Dragonage Veilguard. The whole "Don't say that, thats offensive to trans people" "I am non-binary now, you must call me they/them" said in a fantasy game, in a fantasy universe that has no idea of those modern real world terms and concepts. If they had actual brains as writers and wanted trans content, they could've done it simply by saying "I feel like I'm trapped in a womans body, but I feel like a man" and have them act accordingly. But then again, I feel like that whole scene is ragebait towards haters or something, by the expense of the whole game and its worldbuilding.

WHat FFXIV's problem is that the main writers currently have shonen anime in their brain, very very basic shonen anime, the bad type that reads like a fan fiction Isekai where the main protagonist has cheat skills and can solve everything in an instant while smiling the whole way. I am a 100% sure the writers didn't read through the story or the world that happened before, but only exist within the cliffnotes they have stored for major storybeats.
It was an overcorrection of the most awful kind with bad pacing. "We had a lot of sad, lets do happy now." and thats how we got "Weird happy song about being happy, while building a train bomb." scene. The whole story lacks the bite of earlier worldbuilding, any meaningful character interaction, disagreements and fights where the voice actors could really show their skills rather than. "You are bad, why are you doing the bad thing, grrrrrrr!"

Another pet peeve of mine is inserting real world morals and problems into fantasy worlds that have nothing to do with the real world and where their morals are very different. RANT OVER, I AM SORRY.

[PorxiesRCute]

Sorry if this offends anyone, but a prime example of the real world entering into a game is the scene from the new Dragonage Veilguard. The whole "Don't say that, thats offensive to trans people" "I am non-binary now, you must call me they/them" said in a fantasy game, in a fantasy universe that has no idea of those modern real world terms and concepts. If they had actual brains as writers and wanted trans content, they could've done it simply by saying "I feel like I'm trapped in a womans body, but I feel like a man" and have them act accordingly. But then again, I feel like that whole scene is ragebait towards haters or something, by the expense of the whole game and its worldbuilding.

How can you say that a fictional universe that, by definition, you don't live in "has no idea" of concepts that are literally represented in that universe? Just say you don't like them, bro, it's not hard.

Anyway this post is dumb, Dawntrail's writing problems had nothing to do with it being based on real civilizations and everything to do with the fact that the Werlyt guy didn't get fired after the garbo story that was Werlyt.

[Hallarem]

How can you say that a fictional universe that, by definition, you don't live in "has no idea" of concepts that are literally represented in that universe? Just say you don't like them, bro, it's not hard.

Anyway this post is dumb, Dawntrail's writing problems had nothing to do with it being based on real civilizations and everything to do with the fact that the Werlyt guy didn't get fired after the garbo story that was Werlyt.

By your logic it would be normal for Gandalf toi say "GG WP" to the Balrog after he killed it, because "it's a fictional universe, I don't live in it and because "GG WP" is represented in the newest iteration, its suddenly okay?" Get out of here with that lol.

[VeyaAkemi]

By your logic it would be normal for Gandalf toi say "GG WP" to the Balrog after he killed it, because "it's a fictional universe, I don't live in it and because "GG WP" is represented in the newest iteration, its suddenly okay?" Get out of here with that lol.

How about this then, so long as the concept is known in the universe, they'd have a word for it, and so long as they a word for it, then it's completely fine for them to use the same word as we use in the real world, otherwise you are either asking for queerness to be exclusively a rare and unknown thing in fiction, or for fiction to exclusively use different words for various things, if it is the former, get over it, if it is the latter, then you should also be calling FFXIV's worldbuilding poor for using words like "bear" and "horse", and god forbid, "dog".

[Hallarem]

How about this then, so long as the concept is known in the universe, they'd have a word for it, and so long as they a word for it, then it's completely fine for them to use the same word as we use in the real world, otherwise you are either asking for queerness to be exclusively a rare and unknown thing in fiction, or for fiction to exclusively use different words for various things, if it is the former, get over it, if it is the latter, then you should also be calling FFXIV's worldbuilding poor for using words like "bear" and "horse", and god forbid, "dog".

I meaaaaan, I wasn't talking about that though? I was talking about a very specific example in Veilguard. Please don't put words in my mouth, I even gave a writing example of how they COULDVE made the person come out as trans without using modern words. So don't try and paint me as some transphobe. Hell they could've even made an in universe word for it and made it apart of the worldbuilding and explained said word. But they chose the easy way out.
FFXIV's worldbuilding is poor at times, and I have a hunch its also because the translation team (Koji) wilded out on a lot of things and changed meanings around. While there are bears and horses in the world of FFXIV, I know what you mean, things like calling a miqo'te a "cat" when in Eorzea, the nearest thing to keeping a cat as a pet was a Coeurl-kitten. They sometimes forget how their own world and cultures work, and I bet its only gonna get worse with these new writers.

[Iscah]

You best start believing in settings inspired by RL cultures...



...you're living in one.

(not saying that tural is good, but RL inspiration is not the problem here)

The devs are digging themselves a hole with Meracydia... they've assigned both African and more recently Australian species to it and then the whole fantasy load of the Warring Triad and the dragons as well. Now if we ever go there they've either got to resolve all of those (probably awkwardly) or avoid the real-world cultures (also awkward after the handling of previous locations). They really should have at least kept it vaguely south of Eorzea as a detached Africa and made a separate new-to-Eorzean-knowledge continent for the Australia-equivalent.

In Dawntrail one of the tribes (as it seems to be so important that it's a tribe) has had cruel breeding practices to produce two-headed super lizards which meant forced marriages, forced pregnancies (iirc, though please let me know if I misremember, too tired to go through the cutscenes rn) and eugenic-style selection of infants. We literally visit a mass grave related to that.

While it's fair to assume there must have been forced marriages to ensure they're all mixed-tribe and give the chance of producing blessed siblings, the only implications after that is that most of the babies outright don't survive because ultimately they're mutants and aren't strong enough to hatch out of their shells. It's still extremely dark implications, but not an artificial "selection of infants" as such.

i just want the next expansion zones to have names i can pronounce

They're really not that hard once you look at them and maybe repeat them a few times. It would probably be helpful to try to mention things in a voiced cutscene early on, though.

I could've been clearer. I meant aesthetically. "Oh WoL! We have an envoy from Tural and want to make him feel at home so we want to decorate All Saint's Wake how they do in Tural!" Then we can get some bright colors, papel picado, mexican marigolds, alebrijes, and calacas.

Unfortunately that would involve a lot of redecorating and I don't know if they've ever done that. They seem to just switch the same decorations back on every year.

things like calling a miqo'te a "cat" when in Eorzea, the nearest thing to keeping a cat as a pet was a Coeurl-kitten.

There have been a few mentions of cats in Eorzea, we just never see them. The lady with a coeurl-kitten in a Heavensward sidequest was convinced it was a cat, and IIRC the lorebook says Reyner has a pet cat.

[Volgia]

This is like asking a concept artist never to base their designs off any existing clothes, armor or cultures.

I'm a latino and I actually liked the references in DT.

[lolnotacat]

Unfortunately that would involve a lot of redecorating and I don't know if they've ever done that. They seem to just switch the same decorations back on every year.

And that's part of their problem with holidays. They haven't really done anything new/interesting. Since Covid (the one year it made sense) they've been pretty much doing a copy/paste on events and just giving a new series of random NPCs to talk to. I don't think they'd even need to entirely redecorate new Gridania. Just a small section would really stand out.