Revelations from the Shadowbringers E3 Trailer

[Theodric]

Relevant:

CGM: Until now, much of FFXIV‘s narrative has been centered around the player being a champion of Light who fights against the forces of Darkness.. With Shadowbringers, the script is flipped on a large scale. Were there any challenges in disentangling the ideas of “good” and “light” from one another, and how is this reflected in your creative approach to enemy design in Shadowbringers?

NY: From my own personal experience with fantasy media, there typically seems to be a conflation of “light” or “justice” with the notion of “good.” It feels unilateral to me. Surely any force that goes too far in one direction can’t be entirely good, right? That’s why I figured that if there was too much “light” in the world of FFXIV, then there had to be some negative effects. The linchpin here is the Warrior of Light being so thoroughly active in their duties as the realm’s champion that their “light” has become overbearing, disrupting the balance. That’s exactly what happened in the First—the setting for Shadowbringers—and why it has been decimated by the Flood of Light. We felt that restoring that balance would make for a very Final Fantasy-like narrative.

In terms of enemy design for Shadowbringers, this was actually a big stumbling block for us. Some context: generally speaking, Japanese people tend to be rather…agonstic, so to speak, acknowledging aspects of all religions. On Christmas, we exchange presents with one another, but a week later, we’re at Shinto shrines making offerings for the New Year. We’re neutral in that sense. So when we think about the concept of “evil,” we have a comparatively large pool of ideas to draw from. Now, in designing foes that stem from a source of light that has become too powerful, it’s all too easy to immediately jump to the idea of a fallen angel. We specifically wanted to avoid that pitfall in Shadowbringers. Players will be fighting against the First’s “Sin Eaters,” yes, but they are not necessarily angels. It’s funny—when our artists first started conceptualizing new enemies, many couldn’t resist the pull of drawing meticulously feathered wings on their creatures. I feel that’s oversimplifying things. That’s why I had to ask them for several retakes whenever I saw those wings start to appear. I had to explicitly ask them to tone down the designs. Basically…I told them to come up with something super demonic-looking, and then make it white. (laughs) We definitely did struggle with this concept because it’s apparently been ingrained into our collective consciousness to associate white with “good” and black with “evil.”


Source: https://www.cgmagonline.com/2019/06/...naoki-yoshida/

[Kusanagi7]

was thinking after watching the recent trailer we seem to still be useing the light to do major stuff so my question is why are we going darkside i tought we were going warrior of darkess to combat light but in trailer we use light to combat light am i missing sumthing?

[dalta]

was thinking after watching the recent trailer we seem to still be useing the light to do major stuff so my question is why are we going darkside i tought we were going warrior of darkess to combat light but in trailer we use light to combat light am i missing sumthing?

that was just some crap they made up for the trailers and advertising.

for the most part we will be doing the same yes-man stuff we have always been doing. just this time we are killing stuff thats infected with light instead of dark

[Daralii]

was thinking after watching the recent trailer we seem to still be useing the light to do major stuff so my question is why are we going darkside i tought we were going warrior of darkess to combat light but in trailer we use light to combat light am i missing sumthing?

Same reason the one sent to stop the Flood was the Word of the Mother. Hydaelyn and the Blessing of Light still provide power beyond any other mortal.

[Fenral]

Finally saw the trailer. Totally called it, years ago even, not that I can claim any sort of exclusivity on that... Now to just sit tight for two more weeks.


Oh, and I guess there's a Live Letter tomorrow.

[Cilia]

The issue with the "too much Light" angle is that it doesn't really present an alternative. If we have the power to help people, shouldn't we do so?

I understand the dangers of helping people too much; this leads to indolence (re: Zofia from Fire Emblem Gaiden / Echoes: Shadows of Valentia) or stagnation. That said the alternative is to let lots of people suffer and die unnecessary deaths because "balance dood"... and I can't really abide that.

I seriously hope we get more information on the subject going forward...

[Kusanagi7]

so theres no reason to be a warrior of darkness ibh that just sounds so pointless then.

[Fenral]

I understand the dangers of helping people too much; this leads to indolence (re: Zofia from Fire Emblem Gaiden / Echoes: Shadows of Valentia) or stagnation.

Also canon in FFXIV, as the Crystal Tower made life so easy for the Allagans that people started killing themselves out of boredom. And oh, wait a sec, it's finally back in play, so we might find a solid point of reference sooner than we think.

It's fairly typical for the heroes fighting the good fight to be framed as the one thing maintaining balance against an otherwise oppressive darkness, and that's pretty much how FF has played it in games past. "Why fight to live when death is inevitable?" is pretty much the thesis of every game from 3 to 10, and almost always accompanied by a fight against nihilism itself.

I may play Devil's Advocate more than I should, but even then I don't personally think we've ever overstepped the acceptable bounds of "just helping people." And I certainly wouldn't want to stop.


...


And now I'm thinking of Eulmore, and wondering how a system that appears to be sustaining itself through human sacrifice still manages to qualify as "Light." Are they somehow willing sacrifices? Is it some kind of BS like, "if one of you dies, we'll let your family into the upper city," counting on destitute fathers and mothers and brothers who just want to take care of their families stepping forward, conveniently enforcing the complacency of the survivors who can't bear to let that sacrifice go to waste?


Wow, my mind goes dark places. Time to step away from the keyboard...

[Yuyuka3]

Finally saw the trailer. Totally called it, years ago even, not that I can claim any sort of exclusivity on that... Now to just sit tight for two more weeks.


Oh, and I guess there's a Live Letter tomorrow.

It also got a certain FFIII feel to it, since that game also featured both Warriors of Light and Darkness and a precarious balance to be uphold! I really like that they recycled this idea, paying homage to it in a way. Together with the CT and all that, of course xD

I cannot wait for those two weeks to pass, tbh... not satisfied with everything by a far shot, but at least the story got me exited.

[Nalien]

Plot twist; Xandes was the OG Warrior of Darkness. Saw his world was stagnating, realized a Flood of Light was coming, so planned to balance it out with a Flood of Darkness. Caused a Calamity that made both Flood irrelevant anyway. What a legend.

The issue with the "too much Light" angle is that it doesn't really present an alternative. If we have the power to help people, shouldn't we do so?

I see it more as being aetherial based, rather than now we have to be dicks and not help people for "Darkness". Hypothetically, Ifrit is summoned, the aether used is converted to "Ifrit aether" and cannot reintegrate with the rest of the planet easily/at all. I imagine we do something similar; We beat Ifrit, perhaps we help that aether return to the planet or otherwise just expend aether during the battle, but since we did so using the Blessing of Light, that aether becomes astral aspected... We do that too much, too much aether becomes astral aspected in our wake and causes a Flood of Light.

We're not going to stop helping people, we're just going to harness Darkness in order to put out a different energy when we do help people. Hopefully that will manifest in our behavior/etc. some way, but for now I view it as fueling a car with Light or Dark, and getting Light or Dark exhaust fumes as a result... For balance you want to mix up which you use, but at the end of the day you're still just driving a car.

And now I'm thinking of Eulmore, and wondering how a system that appears to be sustaining itself through human sacrifice still manages to qualify as "Light." Are they somehow willing sacrifices? Is it some kind of BS like, "if one of you dies, we'll let your family into the upper city," counting on destitute fathers and mothers and brothers who just want to take care of their families stepping forward, conveniently enforcing the complacency of the survivors who can't bear to let that sacrifice go to waste?

Well, if my hypothesis is correct I imagine common folk have no real impact on balance. They can be upstanding, or complete bastards, but their actions don't aspect the aether in either direction, so things remain the same.

That aside though, from the trailer I didn't get the impression that people are allowed to move into upper Eulmore... Perhaps they're lead to believe they can, but there is one scene with two jester ladies leading someone off? The impression I got was simply that people from the slums are collected to be fed to Sin Eaters. I very much doubt the fat cats in control of Eulmore are incline to share with more by letting anyone else join them.

I'm much more interested in how Eulmore even has a pact with Sin Eaters... Leads me to believe there is some kind of distinction between people, and a reason Sin Eaters would want to sustain themselves on the poor rather than the rich... Can't help but notice Eulmore has a lot more humanoid Sin Eaters, and less of the nightmare fuel ones, I wonder if there's perhaps an evolution they go through... Does make me think their name is a misnomer; Eulmore is full of sin, gluttony being the most visually obvious, yet those aren't the people the Sin Eaters are eating... They're going for the likely hopeful and innocent poor... With Innocence sitting at the top of the Sin Eater hierarchy, that does make me wonder if they should instead be called Virtue Eaters... Innocence ate enough innocent people and became the most powerful Sin Eater, something like that... I can see eating the gluttons of Eulmore leading to more of the monstrous Sin Eater variants, and thus "intelligent" Sin Eaters don't eat such people, instead strike a deal with them...