Why is the WoL so lame in cutscenes?

[Tridus]

I posted this originally in the general thread, but someone suggested it'd make sense here. Anyone else feel like SE hit peak "cutscene power loss" in Bozja?

At this point, it's a trope in this game that in a cutscene the WoL loses their power. ESPECIALLY for healers, who it took until Stormblood to even be acknowledged as existing by the MSQ. But this was just absurd.

Okay, Misija does another "do anything and I'll kill my hostage" move that we've seen a million times and is not very threatening to someone that can heal/shield/raise at will, but sure. At least she's in a position to do it...

Until she kicks Mikoto across the room. Now we're doing what she says because she's threatening someone who is six feet away from her, and well outside of range of the weapon she's threatening with.... to someone who can cast RESCUE.

Then we go along with all this stuff, things happen, and it ends when someone finally shows up and just bleeping shoots her (which is super effective). Well great, why didn't we do that five minutes ago? This could have been ended before it started if my suddenly "I only know how to club things with this staff" WHM WoL remembered she can cast Rescue, pulled Mikoto over behind her, and then the Blades blasted Misija to smithereens.

I imagine it's even worse for MCH players, since it ends with her being shot... which they could have done at any time. Do WoL guns cease to function in cutscenes? It doesn't make a damn lick of sense.

I mean, I get they want to have some drama here, but "lol you have to stand there doing nothing when you could trivially solve this with the powers you had before this cutscene" is just lazy writing and it didn't land for me at all. They did it way better in the ShB MSQ, where it never felt like you were powerless because "cutscene".

This has been going on for a while and it's always frustrating, but this time it was peak absurdity. It doesn't bring me into the story, it takes me totally out of it because I'm sitting there screaming that the whole thing would be over if I wasn't suddenly playing a level 2 character with absolutely no ability to do anything.

[DrWho2010]

i mean at this point we should be able to just snap our fingers and have the antagonists just drop dead, but that wouldn't make the story very interesting now, would it?

[SilverObi]

You act as if this is something most video games don't do.

[Kesey]

I believe I answered this in the other thread too, but the character's hesitations are for storytelling purposes. The player who views the story needs to have time to emotionally react to what is happening and process new information. Most of the hesitation on the player's character is to allow this to happen. They aren't a perfect reflection of what would happen in real life, but suspension of disbelief is important factor here. You have to let the game dictate rules of reality when in the story, not real life or you'll always feel that something is off.

So what your refer to as lazy writing, is your refusal to except suspension of disbelief. You have also forgotten that the player character wants to save Mikoto more than just trounce Misija (Mikoto's safety comes first, so you hesitate to save her life and have to react to the full scale of Misija's betrayal). You have also forgotten the Misija gets shot after kicking Mikoto away and being distracted tempering the Blades while the player character acts appropriately shielding the remaining soldiers. In universe this all makes sense.

All seriousness aside, WHM couldn't rescue Mikoto because they weren't in the same party.

[KageTokage]

Just because something is omnipresent doesn't mean it's okay/good from a writing standpoint.

I much prefer for a situation to be legitimately stacked in a villain's favor if the heroes are just going to stand around doing nothing while they gloat/monologue before enacting their evil scheme; IE, the latter getting ambushed and incapacitated prior or having a hostage situation where someone actually is in grave danger. They could've fixed that whole scene by just having Misija keep Mikoto at bladepoint, not put enough distance between them that one of the ranged fighters like Isolde could've realistically ended her right there before she posed any further threat.

It's honestly common enough that I almost feel like doing a fist pump whenever someone decides to be assertive and just smacks the villain the moment they let their guard down to defuse the situation if not resolve it entirely.

And yes, suspension of disbelief is a thing, but this is honestly probably the first time anywhere in XIV's writing where I had trouble with it.

[Veloran]

I blame the Lalafell.

[Rosenstrauch]

The developers aren't going to make 18+ variations of a cutscene to account for each individual class the player might have entered it with. The most you're ever going to get is the Warrior of Light entering their combat stance without actually doing anything beyond that. It tends to get pretty silly when they try more than that. The reenacted trailer scene in Stormblood in particular is a good example. They also aren't going to create branching storylines based on whichever Job/Role the player happened to be in when they started a dungeon or cutscene. So whether or not you even could Rescue Mikoto to safety just because you happened to queue into Castrum Latore as a WHM/SCH/AST, you'd still end up having to help Misija ruin everything regardless, and I think it'd be far more frustrating in this case because of it.

And this is hardly the worst case of this in FFXIV. Never forget that time Gaius van Baelsar ranted at the Warrior of Light about how great a ruler he will be and how much theism sucks, ranted some more after being defeated, walked all the way to Ultima Weapon and didn't get in the mech, waited for the Warrior of Light to arrive so he could rant even more before getting in the mech, got frustrated that he wasn't winning, stopped and listened to Lahabrea rant, and then was forced to blow up the Praetorium.

Or the time we didn't punch Asahi in the face. Which is most scenes Asahi is in, now that I think about it.

The Warrior of Light becoming frustratingly passive the moment specific bad things need to happen, despite being the character with the most agency in driving the plot forward, is just something you have to accept if you want to enjoy the story. Just imagine we're locked into playing the Law Route, because the alternative was watching Ravness get shot in the face.

[KageTokage]

I'm not so much bothered by the WoL being passive (Since I've gotten plenty used to it at this point) there as it was everyone else who was only slightly further away, since your friends are pretty much always the ones to take the initiative in hostage situations anyways.

[Jandor]

After kicking Mikoto away there didn't really seem to be any need to immediately blow her brains out, the hostage was safe(r) and she was in villain monologue mode, may as well let her spill the beans on the ultimate plan.

I mean, it backfired a bit, but given past precedent it did seem like a safe enough bet.

[Tridus]

You act as if this is something most video games don't do.

Most video games don't have everyone just stand around for no reason whatsoever and let bad things happen, only to resolve it by having a random NPC who wasn't even in the scene beforehand show up and resolve it by firing one shot. Literally, there were people present who could have done the same thing much earlier, and everyone just stood around.

I mean, this has been a thing video games have subverted since Mass Effect 2 gave you the interrupt option to stop the monologue by actually doing something.

I don't expect XIV to ever be able to do *that*, but there are good ways to use this trope and bad ways to use this trope. This was just bad. It stretches suspension of disbelief beyond all reason. Unlike the first part of the kidnapping, where the threat to the hostage is at least credible enough that there's justification for not acting. This was straight up "we're going to simply allow you to execute your evil plan because reasons."