What Zero Could've Been

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

I'm hoping they decide to handle it the FFIV way. By which I mean we fight each fiend one at a time, before finally re-fighting all four of them simultaneously in a single encounter at or near the end of our little foray into the Void.

Hmm...so you wager there might be a way to reverse the Crystalization?
Perhaps Golbez figures out a way, or even somehow rips their essence back out and resummons them to serve him 1 last time as a distraction or as part of his plan to do something big? Perhaps he feeds them the rest of Vtra's sister to give the biggest boost possible and we fight mega forms of them?

IDK just spitballing here.

[Rannie]

Hmm...so you wager there might be a way to reverse the Crystalization?
Perhaps Golbez figures out a way, or even somehow rips their essence back out and resummons them to serve him 1 last time as a distraction or as part of his plan to do something big? Perhaps he feeds them the rest of Vtra's sister to give the biggest boost possible and we fight mega forms of them?

IDK just spitballing here.

Maybe due to them pretty much eating alot Vrtra's sister's aether they will be strong enough to break free.

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

Maybe due to them pretty much eating alot Vrtra's sister's aether they will be strong enough to break free.

Hmm, by that logic I would think they would have been to strong to be contained in teh 1st place.
But it would be interesting to see if/how they get free, we should get 1 more encounter with them before they are gone, I feel like they were over to quickly. At least for the Wind Fiend.

[Rannie]

Hmm, by that logic I would think they would have been to strong to be contained in teh 1st place.
But it would be interesting to see if/how they get free, we should get 1 more encounter with them before they are gone, I feel like they were over to quickly. At least for the Wind Fiend.

I mean we did kinda take them by surprise *shrugs* especially with scarmiglione, so I don't see it too far fetched that zero was able to contain them but that's just me. =)

Definitely would like a rematch though four against us like in ffiv also with all four of them on the screen please. Lol

[Theodric]

Y'shtola always struck me as a strange choice for the game's mascot in general. Personally I would have preferred the official mascot to be the player character - depicted as he is in the various cinematic trailers.

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

Y'shtola always struck me as a strange choice for the game's mascot in general. Personally I would have preferred the official mascot to be the player character - depicted as he is in the various cinematic trailers.

I mean, it seems like its a back and forth.
The WoL is featured several times in promos, but he looks different each time through the journey. Y'shtola seems more for merch. I see her featured less in comparison to the WoL

[TheMightyMollusk]

Y'shtola always struck me as a strange choice for the game's mascot in general. Personally I would have preferred the official mascot to be the player character - depicted as he is in the various cinematic trailers.

It kinda makes sense to me. They want a character who's actually visibly in the game early on to hook new players into meeting them, so the generic WoL is out. Of the Scions, the twins are too young (and Alisae ditches the main story for a while), Thancred spends a big chunk of ARR possessed by an antagonist, and Urianger is basically irrelevant to the plot until the Warriors of Darkness arc and then disappears again until Shadowbringers. Yda and Papalymo are the comic relief duo, and Minfilia and Tataru are non-action characters. That pretty much defaults to Y'shtola.

Plus, pretty girls sell merch. Probably could've just stopped with that, really....

So really, her big push lately comes across to me less as the writers actually wanting her to be front and center, and more like marketing forcing her there. And we can all see how that's working out. Which is a shame; even as someone who likes the Scions, I'd certainly go for a break from the main group after two expansions of them all front and center. Hell, I love the twins, but the best part of the patches has been the two of them taking a backseat and not getting involved.

[SannaR]

But Y'shtola wasn't even the one who thought about food. Unless I'm miss remembering. It was Vrtra and Zero was fine with both the "out smart the devil" bit with the name and having to wait longer for some sweet dragon aether.

I think her aether sight could still be a strain on her even if it's just the same aether pool one uses for casting. As I see it more akin to how at least back in ARR casting black magic was highly dangerous to do so without a soul stone due to what aether you tend to use while wielding black magic. Same sort of thing as to why there's a limit to how much a person can heal due to again where that source comes from. And why Sophie's mother died when she tried to actually raise a dead person back to life. We just haven't had something put enough of a strain on her yet to where she'd have to stop or put herself at a high risk. I could see it happening during our next trip into the void though unless they bring some of the new and improved Archon Loaf from the Cul/Alch Studium quest line.

[Silverbane]

There is of course going to be a lot of divergence when it comes to liking or not liking fictional characters; real life is no different. But based my own experience watching anime since the early days of imported Japanese laserdisks, I have to wonder:

Is people's liking or not liking of a character influenced by what language they listen in, or more specifically,
to which voice actor/actress is voicing the character?

The sound of someone's voice is a huge part of their personality, sometimes more than the words they say. We see this in anime: Lisa Ortiz did fine work, but Megumi Hayashibara defined Lina Inverse IMO. Movies too: Darth Vader was brought to life as much by James Earl Jones' deep voice and manner of speaking as anything else, for example.

My Nihongo was never much more than enough to get me around as a tourist, and it's declined a lot since I last visited Japan. But still, I prefer subtitled to dubbed (even when I notice that the subtitles aren't true to the spoken words), even for things like the Ghibli films that employ A-list actors to do the dubs.

So naturally, I listen to FFXIV in Japanese.
And I really like the way Ai Kayano voices Y'shtola.
Would I like Y'shtola less if I listened to Robyn Addison's English rendition of her?
I don't know.

I think it would be interesting to survey the FFXIV English-speaking fanbase and see if a character being liked or disliked is strongly correlated with which voice actor/actress a person experiences the character through.

[Jason_Ashford]

this has to be a troll post, i cannot believe someone would actually be serious when saying "why can't we have zero act like bayonetta?"