What is going on with Square Enix and the 14 team?

[aveyond-dreams]

words

Y'shtola has barely done anything to warrant a random Sailor Moon sequence being thrown into the alleged start of Season 2. I didn't come here for scenes pulled straight out of a cartoon show intended for a pre-teen female audience. I came because it is a Final Fantasy game. G'raha can be a fan as much as he wants from a distance and needs to stop acting weird around the player character. It is a nuisance when we do not reciprocate his obsessions.

And yeah, of course I'm mad that we didn't get to see what felt like the most obvious thing to include in Endwalker, instead we ended up with a scene that half the playerbase doesn't understand wasn't indicative of actual events and only serves to make Venat look all the more unfavorable. If not for the risk of being reported and likely banned for doing so, I'd love to pose the models for both gods and make the scene myself, given that it is now common knowledge that such tools exist. Outside of the Thavnair and disjointed battles in Garlemald, Endwalker's action was too far stretched out. The pacing was all over the place and it felt like most of the time that there was no apparent danger at all.

6.1 teasing the Void was one of the sole good decisions this patch. I am interested in seeing what they do with this story moving forward over there but the levels of hype I had at the end of Shadowbringers is all but evaporated. Now this game has to put up a fight to keep my attention, and will especially have to once Forspoken and FFXVI release. They mismanaged a significant amount of material. If they had not turned Summoner into a Summoner-as incomplete as it is and missing most of the summons and abilities it should have by level 90-I probably would be unsubbed and playing FFXI. PVP was a surprise success that I didn't see coming, but if not for my own list of glamours/mounts to hunt down for each of my alts I would be sorely pressed for content to do.

It just wasn't like this back in the Stormblood and Heavensward days. It wasn't.

[Vahlnir]

Y'shtola has barely done anything to warrant a random Sailor Moon sequence being thrown into the alleged start of Season 2. I didn't come here for scenes pulled straight out of a cartoon show intended for a pre-teen female audience. I came because it is a Final Fantasy game. G'raha can be a fan as much as he wants from a distance and needs to stop acting weird around the player character. It is a nuisance when we do not reciprocate his obsessions.

Honestly, this is an anime style JRPG game rated T for Teen. Sometimes it goes full anime. It happens. lol To expect anything less is foolish, in my opinion.

[TaleraRistain]

It just wasn't like this back in the Stormblood and Heavensward days. It wasn't.

Stormblood was one giant seinen anime. The anime trappings have always been there. People derisively call this a weeb game but they're not far off the mark.

[AziraSyuren]

Stormblood was one giant seinen anime. The anime trappings have always been there. People derisively call this a weeb game but they're not far off the mark.

The funny thing is that a lot of these tropes were featured in FF before (or around the same time as) anime became infamous for them.

FFXIV's story had all the trappings of a standard Final Fantasy game for as long as I've been playing. The closest thing to an exception we've ever gotten was Shadowbringers and that's mostly because FF stories generally aren't written with that level of nuance to their characters. FFIX had transformation sequences as limit breaks and the series as a whole has had ridiculous summoning animations that wouldn't be out of place in a late 1990's to early 2010's Super Robot anime ever since VII. The Power of Friendship (and Love) has been a major theme to the series ever since IV.

HW in particular was pretty much the platonic ideal of FF stories until EW came along. Gods bad, religion bad, dragons cool but also sometimes bad, Moogles, you name it.

It's just really jarring because ShB was meaningfully different in a lot of ways. Even the fights lacked much of the dramatic flair (to their detriment imo) until the patches came along.

[TaleraRistain]

The funny thing is that a lot of these tropes were featured in FF before (or around the same time as) anime became infamous for them.

They predate FF. Manga existed before the 50s but started reaching its heyday in Japanese culture then and anime starting taking off in the 60s. So it's no surprise to see the ideals reflected in the FF series since they were known in Japanese society.