The Eye-Rolling Laziness of the Crystal Tower Arc Ending [SPOILERS]

[BreathlessTao]

Not to mention it's a slap in the face to people like me, who thought we were seeing a male Miqo'te join the recurring cast

^ this. They did this with the ACN guildmaster (I...swear I used to remember his name, but for whatever reason it slips my mind rn) - shows up in one quest then goes byebye. They did this with damn-fine-hot-a××-motherf××××× Nhaza'a - shows up in one quest then goes byebye. Now there's that white-haired male Miqo' in the one quest that unlocks Wanderer's Palace HM - shows up in there and goes byebye, I doubt we'll see him again.

Idk what SE has against male Miqo'te, but it's damn annoying. I mean, I suppose lore could be argued, but with the realm overrun by so many male Miqo'te PCs, I say it would be a moot point and a bad excuse at this point.

[Fenral]

Idk what SE has against male Miqo'te, but it's damn annoying.

I'm beginning to think this is simply part of an ongoing trend of "any time the fanbase whines about content, Yoshi-P cuts a catboy."

Vague, throwaway, AK HM "but wait!" moment aside, the journal entry and extra dialogue with Ramnbroes seem to suggest that this is indeed the end of CT in FF14, and that it is an ending we were meant to be fully happy with. The objections raised in the forums here by myself and others with regards to character consistency, free will, and our overall takeaway from the conclusion may very well have never been considered by the devs, and there is no in-game evidence at this time that we were expected to consider them either. As from someone who has been loyal to the ARR project since it's inception, it would be nice to find out if our voices are being heard on this.

[Fenral]

Kind of a necro and a bit of a bump, but two more really aggravating and unresolved details came to light when I rewatched the storyline and reread the rest of the dialogue on XIVDB.

Firstly, the notion that the tower only poses a danger to the world at large when "misused." Going back to the Syrcus Tower quest cutscenes, it turns out that Doga and Unei mention, rather unambiguously, that it was the tower serving it's original purpose that caused the decline of Allag. Put more simply, that it was the loss of ambition, not ambition itself, that set the wheels in motion. That in turn led to the revival of Xande, the Dalamud project, and finally the fourth calamity. It's a pretty interesting philosophical point (brings to mind the "flood of light" from FF3), but ultimately it goes completely ignored in the final cutscene.


(cont'd next post)

[Fenral]

-snip-

It was still bugging me (pathetic, I know ), so I did some digging and discovered that my other nagging unresolved detail was... actually lovingly introduced almost whole-cloth by the localization team. In the Japanese script, he says he feels weird the more he remembers, but there's never any loss-of-self mentioned. It's a well-meant embellishment, but it does shed a negative light on otherwise straightforward developments. This thread is totally buried now, much like the Tower storyline itself, but for archival purposes I'll admit this one was, indirectly, my bad. I'm also not bumping again.

Prior point still stands (I checked both scripts), and while I still disagree with the sudden character "development" that resulted in sealing the tower, or the necessity of ending a fluff storyline with anyone locked inside anything, (and also really miss G'raha), the emotions in the Japanese script are, as seems to be the alarming recurring pattern these days, much more straightforward. I'm now much more sure than I was that this won't be the end.