Shadowbringers Feature Lists 9 New Dungeons... I count Eight?

[AnimaAnimus]

Anyone who was expecting a huge WoL characterization shakeup hasn't been paying attention, IMO.

Meanwhile the trailer is all like "If history must be unwritten, let it be unwritten. Become what you must, become the Warrior of Darkness"

While we see the WoL beating down a light aspected creature and embracing the darkness while the sky around the crystal tower goes dark.

Even though it make sense now, back then it really spoke of a plot shift away from being the chosen of the light. Like I said, it was creative marketing because it made us believe that there was going to be that huge shift but the WoD thing turned out to be merely a sidenote.

Have you ever played FF3? The Warriors of Darkness in that game never opposed the Warriors of Light, and even helped you out against the final boss.

Have you played FFXIV because in FFXIV, you know the game we are actually playing, the WoD did in fact oppose us.

[Theodric]

They were definitely selling it as something a lot more "embracing the power of Darkness" and turning away from being the Warrior of Light with our powers linked to Light and Hydaelyn's blessing... only for it to turn out that all we're actually doing is using our normal Warrior-of-Light-ish abilities to contain the Light and bring back the natural balance of darkness (not Darkness) without having any powers relating to that side of things.

Personally I'm happy it turned out this way - I couldn't see how it was thematically going to work otherwise - but it was definitely advertised to us as something other than what we got.

There's plenty of ways it could have worked thematically. The concept of 'Light' and 'Dark' not inherently being good or evil had already been introduced. As such, it wouldn't have been a stretch for the Warrior of Light to have to make use of Darkness in order to defeat the Sin Eaters. That was the implication of the marketing and for it not to play out in a similar manner proved both deceptive and disappointing to me...and many others, based on what I've read on various FFXIV related sites.

[MeeDeggiThePunisher]

I was expecting more fat cats.

[Eloah]

I think this thread is starting to move past its main premise, or maybe it's right on point, i dunno, that's how confusing it is.

Us being the Warrior of Darkness makes sense in numerous ways, but the easiest way to show it is to tell people to look at how Urianger described Darkness. Darkness on the first was active, ever changing, and full of life, Light on the other hand was stale, stagnant, and devoid of existence. People can say the marketing was a bit "over the top" but it didnt our right lie, it's just a different interpretation than the one we expected.

Also it appears that the opening FMV is meant to show our experiences through our own minds, similar to how when we got transported we saw our past experiences.

[Fynlar]

Have you played FFXIV because in FFXIV, you know the game we are actually playing, the WoD did in fact oppose us.

Have YOU actually played it? Because the story made it pretty clear they were misled by the actual villains and now they're quite firmly on our side.

[ZJyn]

Seems like it took four posts for this thread to derail so hard that the train flew off the tracks and into outer space.

Trying to re-rail it: So i'm not nuts? They said nine dungeons and we got eight? Is there a consensus that dungeon nine was the Lost Canals upgrade?

[Fynlar]

Is there a consensus that dungeon nine was the Lost Canals upgrade?

Well, there isn't really anything else it could possibly be, so that's probably what they meant, regardless of whether we think of it as a legitimate "dungeon" or not.

[AnimaAnimus]

Have YOU actually played it? Because the story made it pretty clear they were misled by the actual villains and now they're quite firmly on our side.

Doesn't mean they were not against us, even up to the final scene they tried to kill Minfilia and it took a promise to get what they wanted, that they were skeptical of, for them to even consider going back to the first with their task on the source incomplete. So they are still WoD because if Min would have failed or have had been lying, of course they would have killed her on the spot when they returned and came back to destroy the WoL, likely with more vigor and determination. A momentary truce does not mean anything.

And it doesn't change the fact that they leaned very heavily on the WoD thing because it made for a better marketing plan and it turned out to be a footnote at best. I am not mad about how they handled the story, I am just saying they were very shady in their marketing for it.

But cant fight a white knight on even the most trivial of things, so you do you dude.

[Fynlar]

Doesn't mean they were not against us,

I never said they weren't ever against us, I was just talking about FF3.

The point is, WoLs and WoDs were never meant to be these drastically opposed forces, just two sides of the same coin working toward the same goal (restoring elemental balance of the world when things get skewed too far in one direction). This is not some sort of secretive plot backpedaling they made up just for SB2, this is literally how it's always been in the FF series. It's not the fault of "the marketing" that you didn't get that memo.

[Hitomi_Kitanoko]

Let's not forget we are still early into the ShB story here, and the opening cinematic depicts us fighting Zenos, after defeating what appears to be a Sin Eater.
That implies that this is a scene which has not come to pass, and possibly could take place in The First, which might mean Zenos finds a way to follow us there. (Or we have simply returned to The Source)
So in regards to us becoming proper Warriors of Darkness, this might be something that is still to occur for reasons not yet revealed to us.