Quote Originally Posted by cheeplikor View Post
I don't disagree that what used to make the "heart" of this game has gradually vanished over the years, but I think it's less to do with the direction of the game and more to do with pining for bygone years.
I disagree. People are "pining for bygone years" because the direction of the game has changed. Shadowbringers and Endwalker destroyed a lot of the mystery that had been built up since 1.0, and Dawntrail gave us an entire continent full of people so agreeable as to be completely ridiculous. Every bit of conflict or discord is quickly resolved in the purifying light of Friendship and Forgiveness.

Even the English script (I can't comment on other languages) has been sanitized and made to be as non-offensive as possible; witness the modern affectation of using they/them pronouns (e.g. calling a singular robot "they" instead of "it," or an NPC calling my character "she" and "they" in the same sentence, which is just silly), or NPCs never acknowledging your character's race (I only remember two Roegadyn in the entire MSQ, Kettenramm and my character, and nobody seemed taken aback by a giant grey-skinned woman). I remember being a little shocked while running an alt through ARR and an NPC said "I brought the Elezen bitch." That line would never fly in the game now. DT sanded off all the rough edges that the game's world used to have.

The story doesn't have to be perpetually violent and dark and depressing, but there has to be some of that to make for an authentic, believable world. Everyone getting along all the time feels fake, and that is just one of many problems with DT.