Does FFXIV Hate Politics Now? [Spoilers for Dawntrail 7.1]

[Mawlzy]

I have no basis for saying this and I'm still on EW, but I'm worried the Disney-fication of the story stems from the writers and localizers (who I suspect are more involved in actually writing the game now than they were in previous expansions) trying too hard to not be offensive and be politically correct.

If the writers were concerned about political correctness, the absolute monarchy in Tural would have been overthrown by pitchfork-wielding anarcho-syndicalists. Alas, that didn't happen.

[Wasselin]

I have no basis for saying this and I'm still on EW, but I'm worried the Disney-fication of the story stems from the writers and localizers (who I suspect are more involved in actually writing the game now than they were in previous expansions) trying too hard to not be offensive and be politically correct.

While I can’t speak to the intentions of the FFXIV team, I feel the opposite: erasing political differences and conflicts isn’t progressive or politically correct—it’s dishonest.

It's a refusal to engage with the very real tensions that define societies, both in fiction and in the real world. True political correctness would mean grappling with these issues, not erasing them. It would mean showing the resentment, the struggle, and the hard work of building bridges—not pretending those bridges were never needed in the first place or were easily and quickly constructed.

Pretending there’s no class struggle, no oppression, and no resentment isn’t just unrealistic—it’s a disservice to the very ideas of progress and understanding, which take hard work.

Disney-fication is a good word for it though because it does resemble corporate propaganda. It’s the kind of sanitized, inoffensive narrative that puts marketability over meaning.

[Vyrerus]

Well, it's not just political intrigue that they've thrown out with the bath water. It's all intrigue. They had a steady narrative building through Stormblood, and decided to do Shadowbringers as surprise twist one off expansion to give the villains who'd been in much of the setting but largely absent from Stormblood their much needed backstory and motivation.

By that time, they'd promoted Ishikawa from side story and job quest writer to lead writer, and she grand slammed that narrative out of the park. So much so, that you could say that it changed the course of the entire game. Of course, doing that to any villain who didn't have a concrete backstory before often changes the entire course of the story. However, this time it took over the narrative in a way that couldn't really be hand waved, and the reason the game's crumbling is because they did handwave it.

Shadowbringers launched us into worldwide and grandiose stakes relating to the origins of all nations. Not just one. Trying to do down to earth political intrigue and fighting armies after that would be to downgrade the stakes and the importance, however much better or real that would have been. They had a worldwide, all encompassing story they wanted to up the stakes with, and the execution was miserable from a storytelling perspective. From a real world economical one though, they were just doing SHB part 2 with Endwalker and striking while the iron was hot. Corporate won out, basically. If they'd taken proper storytelling form and actually had us fight real battles against Garlemald on returning to The Source, it would have been a valley in the story's flow, and that would have bored people who were wanting the bigger mysteries and Hydaelyn's side of the story, and to know about Azem's Heritage etc. Endwalker didn't really reveal all of that, what with sticking to metaphor to downplay atrocity and merely flirting with Azem's heritage, because they're too chicken shit to nail down WoL's past. But it flirted in just the right way for a lot of people, a lot of them fresh off the SHB express having only started playing XIV post Stormblood or later. Players in the honeymoon phase don't need the story to perfectly encapsulate the last 10 years. They just need the hype and want to experience the newness of their first new expansion since joining the game and such.

And now, Dawntrail is basically the SHB joiner Babies second expansion. Where a lot of them are starting to fall out of the honeymoon phase with the game, but not enough of them. They gave us this sanitized expansion with the sanitization more or less as an excuse to not do more writing for it. I'm of the mind that the XIV development team is very bare bones then and currently. SE Corporate has never treated their MMO divisions with any respect. There has been, of course, the restructuring of localizers who are political activists IRL too and I'm sure that's not had any good for the game's writing either.

[Valence]

What I secretly wanted for Dawntrail before they announced what it would be about, with much copium and too little hope, was to travel with the Ragnarok to another star and start anew. Wouldn't prevent us to continue exploring other parts of Etheirys through content other than the msq of course.

Too radical? Yeah..

[BoJumbles]

This is just flat out not how that went down.

Yeah, I just went through that section recently and if anything a ton of people are extremely irrational about your mere presence, even dying outright out of an insistence upon magic-racism. It's only the most desperate, those who actually bother to try and sympathize, and those who weren't pureblooded garleans that accept the aid.
Even then, there's a ton of resentment and pride about it, especially in the interim government that forms. There's a whole-ass 'old racist dude gets saved and realizes the error of his ways' quest in there.
I mean shit even the boring sidequests in the train station usually deal with how mixed the response to "foreign invaders" is.

[JohnLakeside]

Pretending there’s no class struggle, no oppression, and no resentment isn’t just unrealistic—it’s a disservice to the very ideas of progress and understanding, which take hard work.

This is what I was alluding to when I said politically correct. Politically correct in the sense that because DT featured cultures based off of real POC cultures, the writers were too scared to depict them as anything less than approximating perfect. With no real issues or tensions. When I said politically correct I wasn't referring to the ideal politically correct wherein theres actual depth and consideration to representation. If we're going by that use of the word, then I'd say Stormblood is a great example of "politically correct" done well with how it handled its themes of liberty, nationhood, oppression, and imperialism.

[Exmo]

Stormblood is a white savior narrative. It's neither politically correct nor a good example of how to tackle themes of imperialism and oppression, with minor exceptions.

[Hallarem]

Stormblood is a white savior narrative. It's neither politically correct nor a good example of how to tackle themes of imperialism and oppression, with minor exceptions.

Thats the best troll I've seen in a while. Good job.

[Valence]

Stormblood is a white savior narrative. It's neither politically correct nor a good example of how to tackle themes of imperialism and oppression, with minor exceptions.

The white savior that gets immediately rebuked again and again as soon as she gets there and plays the heroic savior?
Someone really should replay through the Ala Ghanna arc. And perhaps The Ala Ghiri one as well where said savior finally matures enough for a change to appear.

[Exmo]

The white savior that gets immediately rebuked again and again as soon as she gets there and plays the heroic savior?
Someone really should replay through the Ala Ghanna arc. And perhaps The Ala Ghiri one as well where said savior finally matures enough for a change to appear.

Yes, the white savior who some villagers scorn one time. Who then falls upwards and becomes the leader of an entire rebellion. Who then falls upwards again and becomes the leader of an entire nation. Who went to a totally foreign country and convinced a whole bunch of countries to unite against the occupying force. Blond hair, blue eyed, "literally just got here" Lyse. The poster girl for a white savior narrative, that one. Despite a few villagers giving her the side eye, a common occurrence in white savior storylines.