What's the point with that quite lackluster story in Endwalker?

[Vryn]

Yeah, that's because Square arnt masterful storytellers. What you have is a story written in less than a yr in a hotel and then tries to carry some of the most challenging philosophical concepts of life and fails miserably, only to have people give them a standing ovation because the majority have never read a book other than of mice and men because that's what they had to read in school. Even then they just got summery from the internet.

[Vryn]

As someone who typically favours playing the role of a diplomatic opportunist in a video game, I don't particularly care for the way in which my character is forced to react to many situations within the game itself. The writers can't account for everything, of course, but one would have thought a company with an ethics department would realise that maybe it isn't the best approach to have the player character indirectly supporting the genocide of an entire race.

I don't need video game developers telling me how to think and feel about complicated moral predicaments. It's why I love Final Fantasy VII - it doesn't pretend as if the eco-terrorists with blood on their hands are removed of any blame or consequences for their actions.

This is squares entire ToS policy. Of course, they would write the story that way. But, LMAO, We can't have those gamers think for themselves about these issues. They might agree with the evil man and ridicule our critically acclaimed writing style it's not like we could have added two extra options. This is Yoshi realising that he can't manipulate the emotions of the players as well as he thinks.

[CrownySuccubus]

I don't need video game developers telling me how to think and feel about complicated moral predicaments. It's why I love Final Fantasy VII - it doesn't pretend as if the eco-terrorists with blood on their hands are removed of any blame or consequences for their actions.

In my opinion, the way that the FFVII cast eventually turned homogeneous is actually even worse than what happened in FFXIV. While you start the game with moral complexity, with Cloud's apathy, Barret only caring about revenge and not collateral damage, and so on...all of that goes out of the window pretty damn quick. Hell, I played FFVII back when it was new, and even back then, one of my main criticisms was the fact that, since the game couldn't account for which party member was in your team at any given time, nobody had any fundamentally different reactions to anything. In most situations, everybody's dialogue is a canned variant on whatever they need the character in that slot to say. The only time it's different is when everybody's talking on the bridge of the Highwind, but the only time I can think of where there's any moral complexity is when Reeve calls out Barret for blowing up the reactors. And it's quickly dismissed because Barret admits that all he cared about at the time was revenge, and he's now onboard with the bigger picture. By the end of the game, everybody's a musketeer, even Yuffie, Vincent and Cid.

[Vryn]

In my opinion, the way that the FFVII cast eventually turned homogeneous is actually even worse than what happened in FFXIV. While you start the game with moral complexity, with Cloud's apathy, Barret only caring about revenge and not collateral damage, and so on...all of that goes out of the window pretty damn quick. Hell, I played FFVII back when it was new, and even back then, one of my main criticisms was the fact that, since the game couldn't account for which party member was in your team at any given time, nobody had any fundamentally different reactions to anything. In most situations, everybody's dialogue is a canned variant on whatever they need the character in that slot to say. The only time it's different is when everybody's talking on the bridge of the Highwind, but the only time I can think of where there's any moral complexity is when Reeve calls out Barret for blowing up the reactors. And it's quickly dismissed because Barret admits that all he cared about at the time was revenge, and he's now onboard with the bigger picture. By the end of the game, everybody's a musketeer, even Yuffie, Vincent and Cid.

Yeah because JRPGs aren't real RPGs their just linear stories with a few RPG Ui and system elements at the end of the day. They don't want you to have a choice because that would stop their ending which will ultimately come down to a bad man is bad because he is a bad man and superficially complicated good person is good because he meets a cast of "insert Japanese archetype + plus hot female". When the entire cast has the emotional and linguistical acumen of a 14 yr old reading poetry and feeling sad for themselves but don't worry because the power of friendship and not self-responsibility will win the day, and we all finish the story with a happy ever after and we get some pedantic speech about love, hope and happiness because the Japanese culture has a massive radioactive scar across its cultural psyche. Yay!

[Brinne]

Yeah because JRPGs aren't real RPGs their just linear stories with a few RPG Ui and system elements at the end of the day. They don't want you to have a choice because that would stop their ending which will ultimately come down to a bad man is bad because he is a bad man and superficially complicated good person is good because he meets a cast of "insert Japanese archetype + plus hot female". When the entire cast has the emotional and linguistical acumen of a 14 yr old reading poetry and feeling sad for themselves but don't worry because the power of friendship and not self-responsibility will win the day, and we all finish the story with a happy ever after and we get some pedantic speech about love, hope and happiness because the Japanese culture has a massive radioactive scar across its cultural psyche. Yay!

Wow, this sure, uh, went places!

[Vryn]

Look at Endwalkers villian compared to Ardyn from FF15. One is a man who bears the responsibility of being able to contain the Starscurge and is offered up as a sacrificial lamb by the gods to cleanse the world. He then decides to take his fate into his hands and live a decent life after 1000s of years imprisoned against the will of the gods to then be shown to be highly mentally unstable and sick to then go on a rampage showing no compassion to his former family because servants of the royal house attacked him in another country causing him to be triggered, It's a compelling sounding villain doesn't play out that way when you see it and in FF14 you have an emotionally damaged celestial pigeon who watched too many reruns of apocalypse now and had a mentally inept creator who went against regulations to create an incompetent form of SETI with no regard to his creations mental health and you expect us to believe he was a compassionate soul originally.

My main question is, what does square have against mentally ill characters? It's becoming a trend in FF7. First, you had Seph, who wanted his mommy, for god sake, and then there was Kefka and the FF10 with the father.

[KizuyaKatogami]

Look at Endwalkers villian compared to Ardyn from FF15. One is a man who bears the responsibility of being able to contain the Starscurge and is offered up as a sacrificial lamb by the gods to cleanse the world. He then decides to take his fate into his hands and live a decent life after 1000s of years imprisoned against the will of the gods to then be shown to be highly mentally unstable and sick to then go on a rampage showing no compassion to his former family because servants of the royal house attacked him in another country causing him to be triggered, It's a compelling sounding villain doesn't play out that way when you see it and in FF14 you have an emotionally damaged celestial pigeon who watched too many reruns of apocalypse now and had a mentally inept creator who went against regulations to create an incompetent form of SETI with no regard to his creations mental health and you expect us to believe he was a compassionate soul originally.

My main question is, what does square have against mentally ill characters? It's becoming a trend in FF7. First, you had Seph, who wanted his mommy, for god sake, and then there was Kefka and the FF10 with the father.

Ngl….you do kind of have a point lol.4,6,7,8,9,10,14,15,potentially 16.

[AziraSyuren]

Look at Endwalkers villian compared to Ardyn from FF15. One is a man who bears the responsibility of being able to contain the Starscurge and is offered up as a sacrificial lamb by the gods to cleanse the world. He then decides to take his fate into his hands and live a decent life after 1000s of years imprisoned against the will of the gods to then be shown to be highly mentally unstable and sick to then go on a rampage showing no compassion to his former family because servants of the royal house attacked him in another country causing him to be triggered, It's a compelling sounding villain doesn't play out that way when you see it and in FF14 you have an emotionally damaged celestial pigeon who watched too many reruns of apocalypse now and had a mentally inept creator who went against regulations to create an incompetent form of SETI with no regard to his creations mental health and you expect us to believe he was a compassionate soul originally.

My main question is, what does square have against mentally ill characters? It's becoming a trend in FF7. First, you had Seph, who wanted his mommy, for god sake, and then there was Kefka and the FF10 with the father.

It's not an SE thing. Ableism is one of the most deeply-entrenched bigotries in just about any industrialized society. It's literally everywhere.

Also, I love Ardyn. He's in my top 5 FF villains period.

[CrownySuccubus]

Look at Endwalkers villian compared to Ardyn from FF15. One is a man who bears the responsibility of being able to contain the Starscurge and is offered up as a sacrificial lamb by the gods to cleanse the world. He then decides to take his fate into his hands and live a decent life after 1000s of years imprisoned against the will of the gods to then be shown to be highly mentally unstable and sick to then go on a rampage showing no compassion to his former family because servants of the royal house attacked him in another country causing him to be triggered, It's a compelling sounding villain doesn't play out that way when you see it and in FF14 you have an emotionally damaged celestial pigeon who watched too many reruns of apocalypse now and had a mentally inept creator who went against regulations to create an incompetent form of SETI with no regard to his creations mental health and you expect us to believe he was a compassionate soul originally.

My main question is, what does square have against mentally ill characters? It's becoming a trend in FF7. First, you had Seph, who wanted his mommy, for god sake, and then there was Kefka and the FF10 with the father.

Mental-illness isn't a very well-understood thing, especially in fiction. It's also seen as a private issue that you need your nakama to help you overcome, and not something that needs clinical treatment. This theme becomes evident in the last part of the story, where the Scions constantly blabber about how their bonds and faith with their friends helps them overcome despair and anxiety.

That's not to say that friends and family aren't important to recovering from mental illness. But clinical diagnosis and treatment is also equally important. But clinical psychiatry is still greatly stained by the prior decades of madhouse asylums, where quack doctors, mad scientists and outright bigots used it to imprison, torture and experiment both on the vulnerable sick and people who actually had no mental illnesses at all. That image is STILL how people view psychiatry, which is why it's a popular location in fictional works such as Batman's Arkham Asylum and Outlast's Mount Massive Asylum.

[AziraSyuren]

Mental-illness isn't a very well-understood thing, especially in fiction. It's also seen as a private issue that you need your nakama to help you overcome, and not something that needs clinical treatment. This theme becomes evident in the last part of the story, where the Scions constantly blabber about how their bonds and faith with their friends helps them overcome despair and anxiety.

That's not to say that friends and family aren't important to recovering from mental illness. But clinical diagnosis and treatment is also equally important. But clinical psychiatry is still greatly stained by the prior decades of madhouse asylums, where quack doctors, mad scientists and outright bigots used it to imprison, torture and experiment both on the vulnerable sick and people who actually had no mental illnesses at all. That image is STILL how people view psychiatry, which is why it's a popular location in fictional works such as Batman's Arkham Asylum and Outlast's Mount Massive Asylum.

Yeah. When you think about it, it wasn't until the past 30-50 years where psychiatry and psychology wasn't just a giant human experimentation cabal. To an extent it still is and will continue to be until we stop treating people so paternalistically.

But that's another topic for another day.