Thread: Our passive characters and why the 2.55 story fails (BIG SPOILERS) (rant warning)

our character can't fight.... more it's too much for him for react.

let's check what did happend, nanamo die infront of us and suddenly we are accused to be the one responsible, surrounded by soldier. first, we are heroes, we don't go killing people around like this. the smartest move is to wait to see what happend. more because we are innocent, fighting there will simply admit that we are guilty.

another point, we are strong that a given, but.... we are in middle of uldah attacked by the joint force of 2 group. even if we are strong, we will not receive help from the immortal since raubahn is himself fighting and most of them are either too a traitor or shocked by all the event. i think they will need a few day before be able to react normally. (them leader are arrested too)

finally, i think it was needed to make it like this.... personally i was shocked of all this event, barely able to keep calm or think logically. it was simply too much.... minfillia know that we are far stronger than any scion and that if we stay alive we can still do thing. she is not different than a princess peach actually, even if she is the leader of the scion. she don't have any power or strength.... i will not talk of alphinaud that still a kids and himself did notice at the end how arrogant and ignorant he was.

now i can't wait to see how will react gridania and limsa lominsa. i means, with the death of Nanamo and raubahn arrested.... the alliance just did loose uldah.

I'm not sure if it was just me, but prior to Nanamo's meeting with you she seems to be looking towards the goblet that's on the table very often. Not only that, but the dialogue that she had with the hand-maiden can be taken much more seriously than it might seem at first. Nanamo thanking the hand-maiden and the reply that it was her honor seemed a bit too serious for just being polite. I keep thinking about that scene and the way Nanamo kept glancing at the goblet on the table and thinking that she knew that it was poisoned. Could it be that she faked her own death?

In the end, I'm kind of wondering if Nanamo is actually dead or not. Then again, it could just be a case of an overactive imagination combined with a poor translation.

Honestly I just enjoyed it for what it was because the moment you start thinking about it it all falls apart, starting from the laughable poisoning (yes of course it was me who poisoned the glass with the sultana right in front of me, not the handmaiden who had been alone with the bottle for who knows how much time, how did anyone keep a straight face when Teledji accused me), to the non-fightning/aiding Rubharn during the party or the escape. It was all as dramatic as it was dumb.

Our character has alwas been the biggest flaw in the storytelling of this game, but that's true for all these kind of games. It's a Final Fantasy but it will never reach Final Fantasy standards, it's to be expected.

To be honest all we need is a little variation in our responces. Silent Protragonist is kinda OLD nowadays expecially when all it would take it to write in SOME lines here and there with a varied responce just like mass effect.

Example!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwcrE1sbBgA

I just finished the main story for myself last night and I hated it. I took the time to read the thread and I Think I've finally come to the conclusion why; I felt like a prop. I might as well not be there at all for as much bearing I have on the story. The whole "Run you're the only one that can save us!" thing works great when I'm a budding new adventurer. However, having fought gods, the ancient remnants of the Allaghan nation, their genetic mutations, and their stupidly powerful world-ending machines, I'm sort of confused why a handful of mook guards are making me flee. I'm the person these people have turned to EVERY SINGLE TIME to fight the stupidly powerful things they're too weak to. I'm a walking instrument of destruction, but I'm running from guards and my friends are sacrificing themselves to get me out? The hell? Thancred takes on these mooks and wins, Yda takes on these mooks and wrecks their faces, if I'm so much above them why am I running? Also WHY ARE WE RUNNING? did the aethernet suddenly break down? is this not a thing? I had it argued to me by someone in my FC that the aethernet is just a gameplay consideration. However many NPCs make mention of it, the lore behind it, and even how they function. If I'm the most important one to get out why didn't I just port? pop, gone.

I get that the writers want to tell a story and if I look at it objectively without the above considerations it's an interesting political plot. the problem comes from the very large holes in the logic of the story telling. If you need me to be weakened and restrained and need protecting why not just poison me too? That would have filled in several of the holes by itself. give me a scene where I try to resist and get overwhelmed, I would have been less frustrated. Deus ex machina of NPCs is a pretty well recognized trope. have me get overwhelmed and THEN the scions save me and have to escort me out. Something. ANYTHING to explain me turning tail. As written, it feels trite. I am not involved in the goings-on in a meaningful way, I'm just there to be a witness, railroaded by a plot that they wanted, without consideration at all as to who my character is or what they've done.

I already accepted the fact that the player character isn't really us, the player. It's a character that we model to look like us, nothing more. The character we play as isn't US personally. It's sort of like Link from the Zelda games; we can name him whatever we wish and choose how he responds to NPCs, but in the end, he is his own character. The story for FF14 is already decided and we are just there for the ride. No amount of "character responses" is going to change anything unless Square suddenly decides to write different scenarios for every action we choose to take.


It's less frustrating that way and if you really want a better story to player interaction, it's not going to be here.

Originally Posted by Dyne_Fellpool

A lot of people seem to be basically complaining that they felt helpless during all this -- good. I think we're supposed to. We're the victim of an expertly crafted trap which has been sprung on us all of a sudden and it goes way deeper than we feared to think. Sh*t just hit the fan in a major way and its probably fairly realistic to feel a bit helpless as friends betray us, allies are murdered, a city turns on us, and the entire socio-political climate changes in a blink of an eye. WoL or not, you're probably gonna feel pretty helpless and confused as all this happens around you. Needing to get away, to have time to take it all in and assess what is really going on and who is truly friend/foe, is pretty understandable and probably even quite necessary.

Just want to quickly put forward the fact that a lot of people felt helpless as a player, and not as the character. There was a major disconnect between them and their avatar in this situation, which in other Final Fantasies and games with pre-crafted PCs, but when it comes to MMOs these characters are us.