Warrior of Darkness: Deceptive Marketing?

[Edax]

So a discussion broke out in another thread and I thought it was interesting enough to dedicate an entire thread to it. Did you guys feel the Shadowbringers marketing was misleading? Were you disappointed or satisfied with the marketing? Was the story more or less what you thought it was going to be from the marketing?

Cliff notes from the other thread:

I think some of you are placing a lot more weight on the light/dark thing than was "advertised"

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. Yet when some people heard about the whole WoD thing for FF14 it had them wondering if we would become the outright evil villains of the story. Uhh, no?

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

"No guys really, you're clearly not paying attention, to truly understand this expansion's marketing you should've gone and played through a thirty-year-old FF title that released before most of you were born. You can only truly understand the advertising if you play through the advertising's source material."

I wasn't expecting a "characterisation shakeup" exactly - which is why I was incredibly puzzled by the direction the advertising was taking.

- emphasis on "Warrior of Darkness"
- If our powers as the "Warrior of Light" are given to us by Hydaelyn, what does it mean to become the "Warrior of Darkness"? Logically that means aligning with the opposite of our Light-power-giver, ie. Zodiark.
- Japanese sub-title "Jet-Black Villains" - if we're the Shadowbringer(s), are we also the "villain"?
- all prior examples of Darkness in the story being aspected to Ascians/Zodiark/chaos and the opposite of our heroic efforts
- trailer scene with taunting gremlin implying we were all alone in a desolate Light-soaked wasteland (didn't happen)
- pre-existing implications from the Warriors of Darkness arc that Ardbert's group caused the Calamity by being too good at being Warriors of Light and defeating the Ascians on their world, triggering the Flood.
- combining those two points, the implication that we triggered a similar flood because we defeated Zenos/Elidibus.
- a following conclusion (now known to be based on incomplete information) that Hydaelyn's command for us to fight the Darkness and spread Light might be anything from 'a bad idea' to deliberately evil, causing us to turn against Her.
- the ominous command to "become what you must", ie. something you maybe don't want to do, but have to. I think this was from the first trailer, long before we knew the identity of the mysterious voice and had reason to trust him.
- Dark Knight, the story that puts a darker-and-edgier spin on your characterisation, as the "poster job" for the expansion.


I didn't want it to happen - if you browse back through the Lore forum at that point you'll probably find a lot of me saying "but we can't go that direction! It doesn't work with the rest of the story!" - but it sure looked like it was the direction they were going, and I was expecting to be dragged unwillingly down that path and hoping there'd be a good explanation at the end.

As it turns out, the explanation seems to be "we wanted the trailer to look impressive".


(See also: the "just there to send us into theory meltdown" scene of Y'shtola being addressed as Master Matoya. The actual explanation for that felt so weak that I would not be surprised if they invented the entire plot point just for trailer shock value.)

[Metalwrath]

Is this a troll thread or has society gotten this bad?

[Enla]

Not really, because I never expected the team to actually go full hog into the Warrior of Darkness trope in the first place. It goes beyond the tone the game has set since ARR and as others have pointed out, the Warriors of Darkness in FF lore aren't necessarily 'the bad guys'.

From what I recall the people running the marketing team for a video game release often have very little input from the team who actually makes the game as well. They're typically given a couple buzz words to pick from and then told to hype the game up as much as possible using them. Sometimes the marketing is spot on and sometimes it's not. Shadowbringers is one of those cases where the marketing was a touch out of sync but it's by no means misleading in my eyes. Not compared to like Aliens: Colonial Marines where they outright showed falsified footage in all their marketing that wasn't /at all/ representative of the final game.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

Would like to remind we have several major patches ahead of us, un which we could end up harnessing darkness. Usually expansions continue X.0 story up to patch X.3, with X.4 starting to set up the coming expansion.

So, we have three major patches of MSQ open for us actually ending up using darkness. Patience.

[TwiibieTwuu]

The master Matoya thing was kinda weird. As for the reject Hydaelyn join Zodiark thing would be kinda silly
"I know you saved me from being tempered and that time with a metal gear but I'm joing this guy now because he has cooler powers" plus I don't think you can be untempered...

Despite being a WoL we don't really use the power alot. I'm sure if we were filled with dark having a lode of corrupted light forced into us would be alot more dangerous.

The trailers usually are slightly different from what we get. Not once did we slice a bullet in half causing a huge shockwave in Kugane. Or watch Rubahns arm get sliced off while we hid in the shadows. Didn't get a window scene in the forgotten knight either.

I think the Gremlin was just supposed to show how hopeless the first was. If the WoL died before killing the first warden pretty much everyone besides your friends would shrug it off. (I do enjoy the fact it's the Exarchs fault they are on the first in the first place.)

The whole Villian thing could be attributed to you kinda starting a war in-between the Crystarium and Eulmore. And you also destroying the hope to bring back an entire civilisation.

[Jennah]

I mean, we have two Shadowbringers.
Us, returning night to the light-wracked land.
And Emet-Selch, returning the shadows - more properly shades, or ghosts - of Amaurot.

And we *were* the villains.
At least according to Vauthry - who, regardless of anything else, was the legitimate ruler of the land.
Even if the story didn't stress that much.

I don't feel like the marketing lied to me at all.

[Bright-Flower]

Not really, because I never expected the team to actually go full hog into the Warrior of Darkness trope in the first place. It goes beyond the tone the game has set since ARR and as others have pointed out, the Warriors of Darkness in FF lore aren't necessarily 'the bad guys'.

From what I recall the people running the marketing team for a video game release often have very little input from the team who actually makes the game as well. They're typically given a couple buzz words to pick from and then told to hype the game up as much as possible using them. Sometimes the marketing is spot on and sometimes it's not. Shadowbringers is one of those cases where the marketing was a touch out of sync but it's by no means misleading in my eyes. Not compared to like Aliens: Colonial Marines where they outright showed falsified footage in all their marketing that wasn't /at all/ representative of the final game.

This is precisely why I was disapointed.

I knew going into SHB we weren't going to be 'the bad guys.' We weren't going to turn evil, or side with Zodiark, etc. I never expected any of that.

But having us learn to utilize the darkness to fight back against the overwhelming light would have been more interesting than what we ended up with...just using the blessing of light to fight the light. As you say, in FF warriors of darkness are not necessarily 'bad guys.' In FF 3 they certainly weren't bad guys, just heroes from a time when it was light that threatened the land. Light isn't 'good' and dark isn't 'evil' so they could have had us become true WODs without making the tone any darker than what we got.

Warrior of Darkness ends up being an entirely incidental title. And it felt lame that the solution to too much light just ended up being our blessing of light.

[Shougun]

Spoiler warning I suppose-

After completing the story I took it more in a question of both what is right and perspective, like the WoL of the other shard blindly following an idea that lead to their doom and becoming WoD to try and fix it, ourselves gathering so much light we almost became the problem too (we were an issue that concerned our allies at least), that we must prevent Emet from bringing back his kin and the ones that sacrificed themselves for a future to live in (one that we now currently enjoy). Maybe more of a warrior of gray lol, but things like that where obviously we're supposed to not let them kill us all but you can see why they were doing what they were doing.

That one WoL is another's WoD, and even when the perspective shifts it doesn't always shift for the same reason. Sometimes being the bad guy is good (Sorry Emet buddy, I want to livveee lol) and sometimes when you're the good guy you're actually bad, at least based on perspectives. Like we brought darkness by holding so much light, a WoD to the people who needed respite from the light. A warrior of extinction and darkness for the Ascians while holding so much light. So I think it wasn't worded to be so straight forward as much as it was trying to mix it and ask you what that even meant.

I think that works out so long as you don't take WoD to mean darkness the element (like fire, wind, water) or objectively evil, since in this usage WoL == WoD "sort of", which I think from Yoshida's interviews on the topic of nuance and perhaps also in the concepts presented by the Dark Knight quest line (relation to the MSQ writer). I think from that the theme goes for something along the lines of nuance, perspective, the occasional unknowability, and both taking action but also concern there in (not to do nothing but to be worried that when you do something it might not be or lead to what you intend). Other themes too of course but less to do with the WoD concept, like perseverance and the wonders of teamwork (honestly two themes pretty much all of FF like to encourage).

Or you know it could just be a marketing department gone wild too I guess, as Enla suggested lol.

[Edax]

And we *were* the villains.
At least according to Vauthry - who, regardless of anything else, was the legitimate ruler of the land.

What? Vauthry invaded half the zones in the game attempting to annex them. Legitimate ≠ Might makes right.
*Spoilers*

We were villains in the sense that we wouldn't let him eat any pixies or cannibalize the people of Rak'tika or of the Crystalarium. Not letting Vauthry eat more people is about as black and white as a morality issue can get.

[Genz]

Just the usual FFXIV, so-called best plot, of nothing really happening. We could see the childish not-really-dark thing coming since we're used to the circus of fake-deaths and other tepid non-events.