How do you feel about the character cast of FFXIV.

[MoofiaBossVal]

If the game has one major hole in its cast it's the Warrior of Light.

I wish we could select personalities for our WoL that changed some of their animations in cutscenes or had more options for choosing dialogue. Shadowbringers made the right move in making the WoL be in mortal peril for a while but other than that I felt like my character was a wooden board with no weakness.

As for the wooden board, I can relate. I first played through FFXIV as a Lalafell. I think the cutscenes work far better as one, because Lalas are very expressive, and in cutscenes they come across as young and childlike and naive, so it sorta makes sense for other characters to talk down to me or order me around, or for Alphinaud/Alisae/Aymeric treating me as their best friend/equal. When I've played through the game as other races, I'm not as immersed, as the player is nowhere near as expressive, and things can get awkward when you have Alphinaud/Alisae/Aymeric treating you as your equal, when visually you might look like you're in your 40s or something, possibly old enough to be their dad. I'm going to change my main back to Lala before 5.4 hits; I look cool but it just doesn't work in the story.

As for selecting personalities, that could be interesting. In GW2 the player character has voice acted lines dialogue during the story, just like any of the other characters. The voice acting and the demeanor of the player character depends on their race/gender combination. So if the player is a male Charr, the player is a more brutish, straightforward "let's skip bureaucracy and just punch evil in the face" kind of guy. If you play a male Asura, then the player is more thoughtful, likes to take a moment to evaluate all of the options on the table before making a decision, not hastey. The characters in the story also react differently to you depending on your race, which was sometimes really cool. In GW2, the Sylvari race were created to be minions of the first expansion's big bad, Mordremoth, and he can try to brainwash Sylvari. So if you played one, then during that expansion you would hear Mordremoth whispering to you, trying to seduce you to his side (other races just heard incomprehensible roars), and other characters would be suspicious of you.

I'd imagine it would be very expensive for FFXIV to try to do the same, because the hundreds of hours of cutscenes (in GW2 there really aren't any cutscenes where your character is animated doing stuff, almost all of the story happens as NPCs talk in real time while you can still move around at will). So I'd imagine that if a game like FFXIV did it, they would probably do the GW2 thing where each race/gender combo has just the one voice actor and has just that one animation set.

[GenBroadaxe]

For the most part I like how they've taken to doing deeper dives on the characters as the expansions go on. When playing through the ARR sections the Alliance leaders felt pretty meh, although the development for Raubahn and Nanamo has been fantastic through Heavensward and Stormblood. Unfortunately Merlwyb and Kan-e-Senna haven't gotten the same development which is a shame since, especially with Merlwyb, there's definitely opportunities. There were some nice almost there moment for her in the ARR patches, but as the action has moved further away from the main 3 city states the opportunity hasn't been there.

The Scions have definitely grown on me too, again going from 'meh' to looking forward to seeing them in the story. Papalymo was my fave in ARR just because he had so much personality between the lala emotes and his voice actor. It set him apart in my mind from the others who were more like fantasy trope archetypes to me. A lot of that is probably due to the writing team being able to take a breath and tell a story with more room for small character moments vs writing ARR where there needed to be a lot of narrative shorthand due to all the world building for people who didn't play 1.0.

It's been neat to see that development too. Seeing Alphinaud going from someone who was the worst "I'm the smartest person in the room" to a more measured diplomat was one of my favorite transformations. Same with Urianger who's a very nuanced characters in that his emotions come across in a much more nuanced way. Shadowbringers gave us a nice look at him feeling conflicted about not sharing some information, but at the same time there's no doubt that he's just as dedicated to the task at hand.

So it's definitely not the deepest narrative in a piece of media, but I think the writers have done a bang up job developing the characters who initially felt a bit one dimensional and then introducing characters like Emet Selch who feel more developed on arrival. When it's time to work with the Scions I look forward to seeing them again. I love being able to talk with Raubahn and the other Alliance leaders (although man, can we get Merlwyb's ARR VA back pleeease?), and I'm even looking forward to what they do with Zenos going forward. I didn't think that I'd like Emet Selch when he showed up in Stormblood, but man he made me love him in Shadowbringers, so I'm hopeful for Zenos to get interesting.

[Ayuhra]

As for the wooden board, I can relate. I first played through FFXIV as a Lalafell. I think the cutscenes work far better as one, because Lalas are very expressive, and in cutscenes they come across as young and childlike and naive, so it sorta makes sense for other characters to talk down to me or order me around, or for Alphinaud/Alisae/Aymeric treating me as their best friend/equal. When I've played through the game as other races, I'm not as immersed, as the player is nowhere near as expressive, and things can get awkward when you have Alphinaud/Alisae/Aymeric treating you as your equal, when visually you might look like you're in your 40s or something, possibly old enough to be their dad. I'm going to change my main back to Lala before 5.4 hits; I look cool but it just doesn't work in the story.

As for selecting personalities, that could be interesting. In GW2 the player character has voice acted lines dialogue during the story, just like any of the other characters. The voice acting and the demeanor of the player character depends on their race/gender combination. So if the player is a male Charr, the player is a more brutish, straightforward "let's skip bureaucracy and just punch evil in the face" kind of guy. If you play a male Asura, then the player is more thoughtful, likes to take a moment to evaluate all of the options on the table before making a decision, not hastey. The characters in the story also react differently to you depending on your race, which was sometimes really cool. In GW2, the Sylvari race were created to be minions of the first expansion's big bad, Mordremoth, and he can try to brainwash Sylvari. So if you played one, then during that expansion you would hear Mordremoth whispering to you, trying to seduce you to his side (other races just heard incomprehensible roars), and other characters would be suspicious of you.

I'd imagine it would be very expensive for FFXIV to try to do the same, because the hundreds of hours of cutscenes (in GW2 there really aren't any cutscenes where your character is animated doing stuff, almost all of the story happens as NPCs talk in real time while you can still move around at will). So I'd imagine that if a game like FFXIV did it, they would probably do the GW2 thing where each race/gender combo has just the one voice actor and has just that one animation set.

When I say personalities that change animations I mean they do that and only that. I don't think it would be hard to implement. Right now we respond in cutscenes with canned emotes. With a new "personality" some of these emotes would be swapped to different but also standard emotes.

For example a timid character may /aback where an aggressive character goes into a weapon ready stance. There are no changes in dialogue, no added voices, just emote swaps.