Letter from the Producer LIVE Part XXVII Lore Discussion

[myahele]

Yeah, her "crystallization" makes me think that she won't be with us in the physical sense, but spiritually ... meaning instead of linkpearl, she'll use telepathy to communicate with us

Though, on a more serious note, I do wonder if this was Elidibus' plan? Nabriales did say that Elidibus had plans for her, so he bound her to Zodiark's crystal ... now she's bound to a White crystal.

By the end of 3.0 we saw that the "true power of the echo" allows for beings to merge with each other ... perhaps what we're seeing is truly Minfilia merging with Hydaelyn?

Maybe this will be the change that'll color our perspective regarding Hydaelyn? That she's a parasite and not as good as we thought?

[Cilia]

I'm not particularly pleased by Minfilia's return. Why are we losing the likes of Haurchefant, Estinien and Ysayle only for the Scions to be given a ridiculous amount of plot armour? The end of 2.0 appears to be very anti-climatic in hindsight since we didn't lose anything, really. Everybody but Teledji survived. Yes, Raubahn lost an arm but every single Scion survived. I'm not very happy with that.

The only ones who seemed definitely dead were Y'shtola and Thancred... and they got saved by a deus ex machina, more or less. Yda and Papalymo had an easy escape route, while Minfilia ran back into a collapsed tunnel for reasons we don't yet know. Aside from how we, the legendary Warrior of Light, were played for a fool and thrown around by the Monetarists / Crystal Braves, it's easily my biggest complaint with what happened during "The Parting Glass."

I need to watch... video... if is up...

But Antitower is Ipsen's Castle / Memoria styled? Hmm... and a research studium trying to discern the nature of the Mothercrystal? Very intriguing... Memoria is easily my favorite end-dungeon, and if it's Memoria-styled it might have some real answers.

Minfilia coming back into the picture is... a bit anxiety-inducing. I have nothing against her as a person, but being her servant in all but name was annoying. That said if she's being held somewhere... gotta go save her. Especially if she has made contact with Hydaelyn, who limits her contact with us to "Good job, beloved child! Repel the darkness more!"

Sephirot should be MSQ. I'm expecting it to be, the HM (normal) version at least. From Elidibus talking about them, it sounds like the Garleans' and the Triad's fate is linked... which is hardly surprising, given Garlemald is the Gestahlian Empire in almost all but name. (They even have the same magitek armors!)

Let's just wait a month and see what happens...

[Fenral]

Exactly, I want them to have the stones to kill off someone at the least, from the Scion's (no, Moony doesn't count) and have them stay dead.

Oh, it's this debate. Again. (I'm one to talk. :P) I wonder what kind of world we live in where it's become the norm for audiences to demand that characters die.

Killing characters off isn't a matter of having "stones" or not. Well, it is if you're a hack writer with no ongoing plans for any of your characters and just going for shock value and one-off emotional manipulation, but as a rule characters only die to suit the demands of the ongoing narrative.

Moenbryda and Haurchefant, at least, continue to have an ongoing presence in the narrative even after death, and the jury's still out but signs suggest that Ysayle will play a role in whatever happens to Estinien. Granted that still leaves a ton of other "lesser" allies who have been killed off and forgotten, but I want to believe that the writing team is capable of learning from the backlash they've got over that.

This Scions aren't expendable and never will be. Sorry. It also wouldn't be right to kill anyone off after Nanamo came back as easily as she did, unless something were to cast doubt on the current, otherwise "happy," resolution of that arc. I suspect if anyone's dead for real it will be Yda, because Yoshida keeps a list of my favorites on hand just so he can check them off one at a time.

Sephirot should be MSQ. I'm expecting it to be, the HM (normal) version at least.

It sounded like the NM is MSQ and the EX is an independent unlock that won't require the NM. Not sure how that's supposed to work.

[Theodric]

Characters dying helps move a plot forward. It also makes the antagonists seem like a genuine threat. Killing off characters for the sake of killing them off is silly, of course, but at the same time...when we have a massive plot device such as the WoL in play then we need other characters to take the fall because we're obviously not going to be killed off.

[Alisa180]

Oh, it's this debate. Again. (I'm one to talk. :P) I wonder what kind of world we live in where it's become the norm for audiences to demand that characters die.

Killing characters off isn't a matter of having "stones" or not. Well, it is if you're a hack writer with no ongoing plans for any of your characters and just going for shock value and one-off emotional manipulation, but as a rule characters only die to suit the demands of the ongoing narrative.

Moenbryda and Haurchefant, at least, continue to have an ongoing presence in the narrative even after death, and the jury's still out but signs suggest that Ysayle will play a role in whatever happens to Estinien. Granted that still leaves a ton of other "lesser" allies who have been killed off and forgotten, but I want to believe that the writing team is capable of learning from the backlash they've got over that.

This Scions aren't expendable and never will be. Sorry. It also wouldn't be right to kill anyone off after Nanamo came back as easily as she did, unless something were to cast doubt on the current, otherwise "happy," resolution of that arc. I suspect if anyone's dead for real it will be Yda, because Yoshida keeps a list of my favorites on hand just so he can check them off one at a time.

Please not Yda. She's my favorite Scion after Alphinaud. D:

But otherwise, I can't second this enough. I think the desire to kill characters off comes from the reasoning of 'death=dark=good story'. But a story that kills off characters ala Game of Thrones can be just as bad as a story that cheats everyone out of dying. On that subject, FFXIV has actually handled the matter of character death exceptionally well. Even the impact of the Waking Sands attack is still felt, as Urianger has stated that the attack, along with Moenbryda's death, has motivated him to ensure such a tragedy does not happen on his watch again. This fueled his motivation to agree to hear Elidibus out, however begrudgingly.

Heck, even the death of otherwise-minor villain Livia came back to hit us like a boomerang when we found out Lucia was her sister. A couple have theorized that was why Lucia was rather cold to us at the start. And if you talk to Wilred's father in Little Ala Mhigo (I forget his name) you find out he hasn't learned of his son's death yet. Yeah, that's not going to crop up again if we're heading into an Ala Mhigo expansion.

[AstralKaos]

snip

I'm saying it because seeing all our "beloved" Scion's get killed in a big old scene only for them to be crapped back out takes any scene involving death and so on have zero urgency or impact.

Nanamo, Thancred, Y'shtola, Papalymo, Yda, Minfilia... all apparently done over... big drama etc... oh, nope! The only folk that do die are those who were only made to die, Moenbryda for example, who, might I add is more deserving to come back than that useless little crumpet.

I'm also not demanding anything, I just find it meh that they can't stick to their guns at all when it came to killing off anyone in that scene.

Edit: It also isn't about dark, edgy wow things either, it's them not sticking to things they do, the first time in the whole game we deal with our bestest friends for everest being done over and all of them just come back. Moenbryda, Haurchefant, Ysayle, Louisoix... all fair game, dead, gone etc. But from the way they've handled the Scion scene, why should I not think that any of them will come back, or any other person who dies will just come back, why would I care if they make some scene about some guy dying if deep down I don't know if I believe it's going to stick?

[CyrilLucifer]

I actually think Minfilia coming back completely warped might lead to an interesting parallel. It was pretty clear when she left us that she was the one in the least amount of danger. So we might have underestimated how much trouble she ended up in and might actually have been the one most challenged by the affair. She might have been summoned for a completely different purpose than everyone expected.

I'm also looking to see some Thancred character development. Y'shtola, while a fun character, didn't really develop per se. She died and came back and that's it, very static. yay for her fans, I guess, but it left a sour taste in my mouth on the character development front. Thancred is in a prime place to either grow or at least be tested in some way. If you talk to him after the 3.1 quest, he's really fierce about his desire to find Minfilia. That can mutate and go too far very quickly.

That being said, I'm quite fond of the idea that the crystal there is more metaphorical and Minfilia was trapped by some of the more, ah, hardcore Sharlayans and they're using her to study the Echo against her will. Hence the appearance of being bound by the crystal, and a Sharlayan facility that seems to have been warped. I know it's probably not going to happen, but I like it, okay?

Alternatively, and to me more realistically, it could be that she is bound to her duties to Hydaelyn and she feels imprisoned by them.

[Fenral]

I'm saying it because seeing all our "beloved" Scion's get killed in a big old scene only for them to be crapped back out takes any scene involving death and so on have zero urgency or impact.

Um, that scene happened to put them in limbo, not to kill them off, as a lead-in to a story arc where we reassess their value to us and reestablish the core ensemble. Nobody was ever meant to die there. Nanamo was certainly a cop-out, because hear death had serious game-changing potential, but she's the only one of that sort so far.

If they were to, say, kill off Minfilia in a way that made it clear that it played into the plans of exactly nobody, that could have some serious potential, as it would leave Eldibus, Lahabrea, and even us struggling to fill the void left by her absence. This isn't quite the same as axing a character before they're allowed to have lingering implications (i.e. Ysayle), which is just a cop out.

[Chewy2nd]

If its any consolation, Y'shtola's trip to the lifesteam gave her blindness and an allegorical cancer so she might die in a few years (give or take), Also, Minfilia might not be dead, but I don't think she's gonna rejoin the Scions, if anything its more likely that she might wind up to be shall we say "severed" from the material realm if that splash art is any indication (well either that or she's just gonna go l'Cie on us, making the most polarizing character int he game even more polarizing by having elements of the most polarizing game int he franchise)

Also, from the sounds of it, Thancred has lost the ability to use aether, kinda like the Garleans, meaning he has to physically travel around the realm, rather than teleporting. Everyone seems to have lost something... aside from Yda and Papalymo.

[Anselmet]

I'm not particularly pleased by Minfilia's return. Why are we losing the likes of Haurchefant, Estinien and Ysayle only for the Scions to be given a ridiculous amount of plot armour? The end of 2.0 appears to be very anti-climatic in hindsight since we didn't lose anything, really. Everybody but Teledji survived. Yes, Raubahn lost an arm but every single Scion survived. I'm not very happy with that.

In my opinion even the major characters shouldn't be immune to major consequences or death. It makes for a more interesting story overall. Putting that aside, however, I'm eager to see what the story brings us moving forward.

I fully agree with you. What makes me even more angry with none of the scions dying is that it makes Alphinaud's character growth kinda pointless. His character growth is something Yoshi-P was proud of, however now him learning from his arrogance is pointless because in the end, 'Hey your Crystal Braves didn't kill anyone, buddy!' So now I feel that Heavensward's story is kinda more lame because it takes away so much from Alphinaud's journey.

But what I fear, is that 3.2 will have only a couple of cutscenes dealing with Ishgard, then all the rest dealing with pointless Minifilia and the utterly boring scions just like 3.1. Maybe if they take some characters from this expansion and they were to join us and make this all worth wild then maybe I would be less critical. But we are just going back to the 'good old days', or so it feels.