Quote Originally Posted by Nav_Blue View Post
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One thing I'd like to add is that even before, while Zadnor was still fresh content, most of my friends weren't Hrothgar players. Many had never even touched the race. But an overall feeling that they expressed was that Bozja did seem to feel more realistic. That we got to see the actual struggles they had gone through, and thanks to that, some of them managed to empathize with their plight. It being so brutal ended up serving the race and giving it credit once they managed to bounce back and reclaim their territory in the end. Like Nav_Blue said, there is pride to gain from Bozja's story if we care enough about our characters to explore it. And it shouldn't be discredited.

It was only after Zadnor that I got more involved with a predominantly-Hrothgar playerbase and found that people felt Bozja as a whole was a little too dark and visceral for what it already was. Though many attribute this to the change in writer: Yasumi Matsuno is NOTORIOUS for his dark and apathetic stories that don't shy away from showing you that cruelty is real. It's what tends to make them memorable. A criticism of this was that there was a tonal shift from the rest of the game, with side-content being more brutal than the MSQ actually had been overall. But it's what we get with different writers altogether: the same happened from Stormblood (warzones) to Shadowbringers (existential dread).

I personally feel like it's a mixed bag. I wouldn't have qualms with the way Hrothgar were portrayed had the race been treated fairly thus far. It just felt like it was compounding onto the situation, as no other form of content thus far had been so predominantly and consistently dark. But the comment has since been deleted, so at least I hope it's now more fair for Square Enix to assess the situation without unnecessary extras.

Still. I'm sorry to have derailed this conversation to a Bozja discussion xD

Keep giving feedback on the race overall, if possible. And I hope Square does at least look into what we say.