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.

[Alleo]

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.

There is a point where you have to believe that somehow one guy can slash a useless npc and they die in one hit will another more important one can be nearly cut in half, not get healings for quite some time and somehow still survive. You have to somehow accept that someone getting shot a couple of times and getting the whole building collaps on them somehow survives it and even strands on an island..or that somehow in the exact right moment of time an ally that had no idea that we needed help came in to help us...while the others that were still not tempered could have done the same but of course not they are standing there in pure shock.

You migh have to accept some stuff but there is a point where it gets too much. My emotional reaction to that scene in bozja was full annoyance...annoyance at my own character and how she was again forced to do nothing..to watch like she is a starting adventurer and not someone that killed a certain Ascians a bit ago...we were not standing against another Ascian or even Zenos, no against a normal soldier, who at that time had no hostage anymore. (Just like how Thancred needed to save us from the WoD in HW...because seemingly we were not able to do so...)

Yes the character wants to save Mikoto so instead of rushing to her side (which the WoL should be able to quite fast no matter the job...) they stand there...Mikoto at that time is not in direct contact to the traitor, she was kicked away...it would be utterly realistic in this world to be there standing infront her. With that we would truly protect her and not just trust that the other person would not just kill her anyways. Misija also only gets shot from someone outside the group who magically appeared the moment they were needed. Not a few seconds earlier to stop it at all or too late. No quite nicely to save us all, while it could have easily been done by some of the remaining soldiers.

The reaction of a character should imo fit with how they are presented throughout the story. We are nearly godlike. It is canon that the WoL can level more than one job and yet as soon as cutscenes starts (and only there) we are weak. Weak and slow and kinda stupid...

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.

So now she is save enough? If she is why did we follow through with the crystal? We know at least a bit how that one works and if Mikoto was not in any danger (and I agree she was not, at least should not be for trained people like us and the rest of the resistance) why did we do that? Why not just attack the traitor while letting the rest handle Mikoto and the cyrstal? We were not alone, while she was. Our very own character should have been enough to hold her back enough to get back anything she took. But we did nothing..no worse we even helped her...

They didn't necessarily have to shoot to kill, just to incapacitate...which is what ended up happening after everything went to shite which further made me facepalm a little.

I'll feel better about it if we actually get to save the blades somehow after just standing around and letting all but two of them get tempered, though (This really bugged me after the whole incident with Lakshmi where we immediately assumed she was going to try to temper our friends and jumped to their defense the moment she showed up). Well, that and Misija getting the traitor's death she deserves without them trying to play the sympathy card.

Yeah thats horrible too..we should know (after that many dealings with primals) that this was one but we only used the shield when it was too late for most. (But hey at least we remembered that and saved the most important ones.) Funny also how she used blades of tempering for the first round but not for the second making it much easier to hold it back.

[Rosenoire]

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.

My problem is that it strains my suspension of disbelief to the breaking point to watch a character who is canonically capable of killing gods fall victim yet again to a fairly obvious face-heel turn. Mizija is Yotsuyu is the Ivy: a poor mistreated lower-class girl who betrays her country in favor of the Empire. As soon as we saw the cutscene where people were being horrible and classist to her, it was obvious that she was going to stab us in the back--and given how often that's happened in game, I feel like the WoL shouldn't have been caught completely flat-footed. The part that I genuinely felt was lazy writing was that they've gone to this well over and over again. We had an entire expansion in Heavensward where class conflict was one of the central problems. I would genuinely have preferred to have Mizija be subject to straight-up racism, to show that the Garleans aren't the only ones who are racist.

[Cilia]

My problem is that it strains my suspension of disbelief to the breaking point to watch a character who is canonically capable of killing gods fall victim yet again to a fairly obvious face-heel turn. Mizija is Yotsuyu is the Ivy: a poor mistreated lower-class girl who betrays her country in favor of the Empire. As soon as we saw the cutscene where people were being horrible and classist to her, it was obvious that she was going to stab us in the back--and given how often that's happened in game, I feel like the WoL shouldn't have been caught completely flat-footed. The part that I genuinely felt was lazy writing was that they've gone to this well over and over again.

That is pretty much my big issue with the story so far. Aside from my disdain for yet more Ivalice references (with classism being a big issue in Tactics at least) they've done this gimmick time and again. It's to the point the PC should immediately be wary of anyone we're told was mistreated for being of common birth in a highly stratified social system, especially when the Empire is involved. It's boring and stale at this point - "highly stratified social system mistreated its lower class, so now they've joined up with the Empire and are out for revenge."

Never you mind the injustice Misija's out for vengeance in retaliation for is even more ancient than Nidhogg's grudge against Ishgard...

[Kesey]

Never you mind the injustice Misija's out for vengeance in retaliation for is even more ancient than Nidhogg's grudge against Ishgard...

Yes, but her backstory does say she was an archeologist, so I guess if anyone was to know about the details of something like this, that far back it was her. Plus they made her a descendent too, to really bring the trope home.

[Kesey]

My problem is that it strains my suspension of disbelief to the breaking point to watch a character who is canonically capable of killing gods fall victim yet again to a fairly obvious face-heel turn. Mizija is Yotsuyu is the Ivy: a poor mistreated lower-class girl who betrays her country in favor of the Empire. As soon as we saw the cutscene where people were being horrible and classist to her, it was obvious that she was going to stab us in the back--and given how often that's happened in game, I feel like the WoL shouldn't have been caught completely flat-footed. The part that I genuinely felt was lazy writing was that they've gone to this well over and over again. We had an entire expansion in Heavensward where class conflict was one of the central problems. I would genuinely have preferred to have Mizija be subject to straight-up racism, to show that the Garleans aren't the only ones who are racist.

Then you misunderstand about suspension of disbelief. It isn't affected by the story, it's completely controlled by you. You can blame the story, but the fact you insist on over analyzing to ruin your suspension is completely on you, by definition.

[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.