Looking back at this Yoshi P statement(story spoilers)

[Mapleine]

Concerning the story Endwalker, I felt it was very good and had a fairly satisfying ending but it would've been far more impactful had it not ended like a Simpsons episode: Everything is alright, nothing of importance has really changed, reset to zero. Not much in the way of enjoyable bittersweet moments or any lingering melancholy that people like from stories like this. It's just... kinda over.

The expansion had plenty of wonderful dialogue, a great weight to it, a fine balance of personal drama and spectacle and a lot of interesting places traveled to, it was all very well made. Most of the expansion was excellent but the ending had low impact on me, I felt like it mildly cheapened the rest.

Also, as someone whose first RPG was FF4 they (IMO) chased having their FF4 prayer moment too hard. I was surprised how blunt and obvious they made it, telegraphing harder than a normal mode raid boss with another round of fake-outs when they had the wisdom to juke us with Zenos/Zemus bait in the trailer.

Not saying kill everyone or necessarily anyone just feels like... wow, that eight year climax sure came and went didn't it? Remember that time we had an apocalypse?

[Rawr18]

Idk, I was severely upset during that vore scene where your WOL decided to be absolutely useless at the worst time.

[Misplaced_Marbles]

Idk, I was severely upset during that vore scene where your WOL decided to be absolutely useless at the worst time.

Hey, you can't be worshipped as a saviour unless you take your time and let the hapless civilians see the stakes and suffer some losses. All part of the "Chosen Hero" job description.

[KizuyaKatogami]

Hey, you can't be worshipped as a saviour unless you take your time and let the hapless civilians see the stakes and suffer some losses. All part of the "Chosen Hero" job description.

We learned it best from our sweet Mother

[MikkoAkure]

So then why even make this comment in the first place? He said this in the middle of ShB. Why would he constantly make comments like this, and saying things like no one is safe but then have nothing come of it? Thats what i dont understand. He's basically saying here that someone in the future is going to go, and that presumably was to be Endwalker, considering its literally the end of the world, yet none of that happened.

Yoshi-P has said a lot of things that never ended up happening. Which adds to my feeling that people haven’t been paying attention. If all of his hints and forecasting were truth then we’d have summonable primals in PvP and separate personal housing. It’s possible that there were other plans for the characters, but as I said before, that ship sailed in 5.0 imo and while a whole other expansion in between could have changed things, that’s not the route they took and it’s obvious there were changes made to the direction they decided to go. Which in retrospect makes sense, at least to me.

Endwalker was dark and about sacrifice and so on, but from a meta level, you don’t kill off the main characters of your franchise at the climax of your living story. The story of FFXIV for better or worse leans on these characters now and there’s not a chance in hell they’d end it all on “welp, just me and Tataru now”. Endwalker wasn’t a self-contained story and you need to look at the bigger picture. Would you have expected the game to run off into uncharted territory without the main cast or limping on with just a few?

[Rulakir]

Do we have to worry about hiding spoilers in this thread? Well, don't read if you haven't finished the game. :P

It doesn't have to be the Scions necessarily. Only one member of the Fellowship of the Ring died after all, but there were plenty of other character deaths along the way that had an impact and members of the Fellowship itself suffered in other ways, particularly the hobbits. One of the things I wish they'd done in ShB is to have the light corruption last longer. I felt like we went from being on the verge of becoming a sin eater and being better than fine far too quickly.

The last person I recall dying on the protagonists' side was Conrad and before that it was Meffrid, two characters who are not missed and who I'd wager many don't even remember. I thought Gosetsu and Yotsuyu should've stayed dead, I was disappointed they were brought back and for not a good enough reason either. The writers aren't even having side characters die anymore. Even in Endwalker, consider that everyone of note who died was already dead. It was a whole other level of ridiculousness for an expansion devoted to a universe ending threat that we knew had all but wiped out Etheirys in the past.

I'm glad they're moving away from war stories if only because they're not willing to write the protagonists as ever having to lose anything since HW. It's another part of why EW rang hollow to me. The only two Scions who I felt knew suffering and despair more than the average person were Estinien and G'raha. It's also a factor into why I prefer the Ancients/Ascians. I find their story and their characters more compelling than the protagonists who always win while incurring nothing in the way of cost.

[KizuyaKatogami]

Yoshi-P has said a lot of things that never ended up happening. Which adds to my feeling that people haven’t been paying attention. If all of his hints and forecasting were truth then we’d have summonable primals in PvP and separate personal housing. It’s possible that there were other plans for the characters, but as I said before, that ship sailed in 5.0 imo and while a whole other expansion in between could have changed things, that’s not the route they took and it’s obvious there were changes made to the direction they decided to go. Which in retrospect makes sense, at least to me.

Endwalker was dark and about sacrifice and so on, but from a meta level, you don’t kill off the main characters of your franchise at the climax of your living story. The story of FFXIV for better or worse leans on these characters now and there’s not a chance in hell they’d end it all on “welp, just me and Tataru now”. Endwalker wasn’t a self-contained story and you need to look at the bigger picture. Would you have expected the game to run off into uncharted territory without the main cast or limping on with just a few?

I don’t think many people are saying to kill them all off, but i think it’s far worse to try and advertise a game or expansjon as fake, dangerous, highest stakes than ever before, and purposely putting death flags and the lead dev hyping it all up only for it to amount to nothing. Especially if they then need to resort to massive plot armor or dropping specific plot threads just to keep specific characters alive(Yshtola). I’m not so sure exactly too, how much keeping a character alive adds to the story if said character doesn’t contribute much. What did Yshtola do of substantial use in Endwalker? All i can think of is Ultima Thule, outside of that her role has been taken by Graha and Krile.I think Endwalker would’ve been the best time tbh. Most if not all of the scions barring the twins have had their development. They’ve been around for years and had time to flourish. One or two of them sacrificing themselves for the others and saving the world would’ve helped make the whole suffering and sacrifice theme a lot easier to swallow if the picture perfect scions actually did have to suffer, and didn’t just slide by two of the highest stakes expansions with 0 consequences whatsoever. I mean at this point it’s not even the no deaths that’s a huge problem, it’s the lack of any consequence whatsoever. Remember back in HW? They talked about how Yshtola’s life was slowly draining. Funny how that’s just been ignored since then. But also, look at what Yoshi himself says. In a story about wars,sacrifice, conflicts etc, it would be wrong not to expect the protagonist side to face loss, yet it hasn’t been felt for a very long time, since 3 expansions ago actually.

I guess i just find it funny when people use the plot or development excuse, but then dont apply that same logic to plot armor or plot holes that betray certain lore threads. Both are just as bad and detrimental to the story no? In the end, im just tired of the devs trying to false advertise stories as dark or loss or trying to create themes of suffering or sacrifice but then its only ever the antagonists that have to deal with such things, the protagonists are squeaky clean and fine. I miss when there were actual consequences to actions and the devs didnt try to make the game a slice of life anime is all. At the very least, i hope they stray away from trying to convey themes of loss or sacrifice or suffering, because it comes across as incredibly tone deaf when they dont have the "heroes" abide by such things.

I felt they had built up all of these characters over so many years and if they had just deleted them all in a split second like that, as I worried they had, I probably wouldn't quit, but I would have been questioning if I should, when all the character stories I had been following for all these years was almost deleted just like that.

Whats funny is this is how i feel about certain antagonists, who had been around for such a long time but then were unceremoniously killed off with little to no consequences or struggling for the protagonists. It makes the story feel very hollow.

[Tehmon]

So many pieces of media and entertainment these days are so trigger happy with killing beloved characters and having bittersweet endings, that I find FFXIV's approach very much needed in this landscape of faux-artistic depressing '' daring '' shock value porn.

[KizuyaKatogami]

So many pieces of media and entertainment these days are so trigger happy with killing beloved characters and having bittersweet endings, that I find FFXIV's approach very much needed in this landscape of faux-artistic depressing '' daring '' shock value porn.

It’s moreso realism. If a story is going to try and preach themes and relate them to real life, then they need to be somewhat accurate. Everything doesn’t always turn out okay. No one is perfect. But in the case of the story lately, the protagonists are perfect, they can do anything and everything, and they’re completely untouchable. It’s especially discouraging when they have antagonists like the ascians who are also fighting for what they believe in, but then are reduced to nothing purely due to the protagonist plot armor. According to this quote, Yoshi P even believes that it’s needed. But it seems like this community can’t really handle death, considering they still get triggered by Haurchefant references 6 years after his death.A lot of antagonists or villains are beloved, yet they arent spared from being killed off, so why should the protags be?

[Iscah]

But it seems like this community can’t really handle death, considering they still get triggered by Haurchefant references 6 years after his death.

That doesn't have anything to do with "not being able to deal with death". It was a death that occurred in the story, that gets referenced deliberately to evoke an emotional response.

From an in-universe perspective, the characters are certainly allowed to still grieve the loss of their friend, even if it's years later.

And out-of-universe, I don't see it as failing to cope but "deliberately engaging in the roleplay of it being someone they care about". Those people are unlikely to actually be struggling to cope or even upset by the thought of it when they're not engaging with the FFXIV community.

It's like any movie. Cry at the sad thing that happens, credits roll, move on with normal life. But this isn't a two-hour movie that's over. We're still in the narrative.

Certainly on the verge of 5.3 I was all set to simultaneously cry a lot over G'raha's expected death, and appreciate it at a storytelling level, and be sad on my character's behalf at any further reminders of him. (I suppose I was already in that state pre-ShB when he did get mentioned occasionally and it was a reminder of the friend she'd made and would never see again. His departure from the plot seemed as final as death at that point.)

I still feel sad when they mention Moenbryda. I feel guilty about Wilred. I fretted for ages about Francel's emotional state in the wake of Haurchefant's death.

But of course it's all fiction, and I'm not under any delusion otherwise, just wilfully participating. I don't carry any of it into other parts of my life. But sit down in front of the game and during that time only they are real people who died and are still missed, and should not stop being missed – in my FFXIV-mind, not my everyday life.

If anything, I wonder if this roleplay-grief is helpful when someone comes up against the real kind.