Thread: New story writer for 7.0

Originally Posted by Cleretic

If you read that poster's 'rewrite' of Endwalker, you'd know they were literally never going to be happy with what we got, because what they wanted required pretty much every single person to act out of character, and for the story to have basically no thematic or tonal cohesion beyond 'Venat Bad, Empire Good'. (The actual zone structure looked pretty terribly-paced, too, but that's a different problem.)

Honestly, I expect that poster to hate Hiroi's tenure as main writer once it becomes clear that he also isn't going to write something that fits their weirdly specific, angry and kind of concerning ideas. It's not Hiroi's previous work or actual stated feelings giving them hope, it's the fact he's something of a blank slate to project ideals onto.

What you are right about, though, is that this person's a weird outlier; most people liked Endwalker pretty damn well, albeit not as much as Shadowbringers. Getting an idea of how its story specifically stacks up for people is difficult because there's never really been quantitative information on that, but we do have character polls, and most of EW's new characters stack up pretty well. Props to Venat especially, who's so popular she manages to break up the bloc of 'hot, shippable guys' at the top, standing right alongside the likes of Emet, G'raha, and Zenos.

This post was very interesting to read. And it was a complete mischaracterization of my positions besides. Your labelling of my ideas as “concerning” strikes me as little more than another attempt to paint me as something that I am not. I just want good stories, good stakes, and likeable characters whose actions make sense. However given that this is apparently another of your posts, I can see that little productive discussion will occur should we engage in any kind of continued back and forth. I wouldn't come up to you and say something like "You hate Emet-Selch because you might hate men and that may have something to do with that," because that just isn't an argument anyone wants to see or entertain. But given that you are apparently willing to do the inverse for Venat? That shows me just about all I need to see.

Originally Posted by Thenightvortex

God I hope that when new writer said that he says “I’m sorry” to the characters as he writes them that’s indication of him actually having the gall to inflict some heavy and dark stuff on them, especially the protagonists. Actually heavy and dark and not the twisted and babyfied conception of it that Yoshi and Ishikawa seem to have.

Originally Posted by RukoBoshi

I think you're judging the writers a bit too harshly or are forgetting that they wrote Shadowbringers were most dark moments in XIV are from.

Wasn't Tesleen transformation dark and twisted ? Holminster switch being full of dead bodies everywhere ? People eating what is essentially dead former humans among other things ? Everything about the faeries ? Or the final dungeon being a the end of a whole civilization ?

Every part of Norvrandt was filled with a dark reality that was treated seriously. With how people have to deal with the devastation of the world and it's negative consequences.

The expansion is about a world that is ending, the last dungeon is a world that has ended, and we are fighting to prevent the 8th umbral calamity, a future where the world has ended.

Were all these aspects of a dark and twisted reality babyfied ? How dark do we have to go ? Most FF aren't that dark.

To me the most importing thing Endwalker would have benefitted from is the death of one of the main characters, just so the theme of moving forward despite the suffering would be more significant.

Endwalker had the hard tasks to be both a follow up to Shadowbringers and have to wrap-up a 10 years old story, i think they did it pretty nicely all things considered.

I’ll respond to these posts together, starting with the fact that both bring up some good points. Firstly, more than anything we need Hiroi to do *something* with the characters that remain. I sound like a broken record at this point it bears repeating until we actually see them manifest: lasting. consequences. No more get out of jail free cards or near-instantaneous invalidations of peoples’ sacrifices when they’re party members. I would hope that someone with a background in writing for theatre is aware of the need for this, so given his current handling of Pandaemonium I’m willing to entertain his ideas. Unless something catastrophic occurs in the writing of 6.4’s segment, which given the general state of Endwalker is something that weighs on the heads of some Ancient fans who don’t want to see these characters treated in the ridiculous manner Emet was in Endwalker’s MSQ.

Now comes the fun part.

We know that Ishikawa wrote Shadowbringers. We know that she wrote Endwalker. And we know that Yoshi was a lot more particular about the details of the latter. Did she deliver a good story that is more or less in line with other Final Fantasy games in Shadowbringers? Yes. The world and cast of characters from 5.0 till 5.3 made for a good experience, and if taken as a standalone game, could easily be forgiven for not killing off now redundant characters like Thancred because in the context of that expansion, he went through quite a lot and his presence was justified.

This is not the case for Endwalker, where character development stagnated at best or reversed in the worst cases. As for how “dark” things could’ve gotten, there are already examples of world-ending events happening in other FF games. In FFVI, while the cast does survive, the core members go through a lot of soul searching during that apocalyptic segment and their development is not paused in the same manner that the Scions were. In FFXV, most of the known world was essentially obliterated and overrun with demons. In both cases, the scale of the events happening was far greater than in Endwalker, where only a few areas were severely affected by the second coming of the Final Days. Even Final Days weather being added to old zones would’ve done a lot to help in that regard, but that moment came and went.

The preferential treatment of Ishikawa’s characters and the Scions has also proved to the game’s detriment, as RukoBoshi says this would’ve helped the messaging they failed to pull off about moving forward in the face of despair if one of these precious characters perished. Instead we got some of the most privileged “heroes” in FFXIV’s world go in, not do much of anything significant, and then they get brought back by a yellow rock that needs to be smashed to pieces already.

Seriously, seeing Azem’s glyphs show up has 0 effect on me anymore and instead of awe and excitement all I can do is groan. In no uncertain terms, get rid of it as soon as possible. We’re not gonna have much of a power reset or rebalancing of stakes until that thing is removed from the plot. Along with the immortality of the Scions. Hiroi at the moment has my trust. I can only hope that Yoshi’s meddling won’t cause it to be broken again.

Lastly, Endwalker should’ve been two expansions instead of one, and in case of the low probability anyone of relevance actually reads this thread I’ll leave a link to my rewrite so that anyone is free to read it for themselves and examine what it is I’m looking to see. Let them come to their own opinions instead of being fed one by a clearly biased source.

Personally, I don't get why certain posters are so opposed to the idea of everybody being wrong in different ways. Moral grey is far more interesting than black and white in the lion's share of scenarios. I, and I suspect many others, would've been far more pleased with Endwalker if Eorzea, the Empire, Venat, the Ascians, and whoever else you want to throw in the list had their deplorable actions properly recognized for what they are.

Unfortunately, a lot of sanitizing happened. We ended up with a story where none of the main cast suffered consequences for their actions and certain characters were never held to any sort of account for having committed some of the greatest atrocities in all of Final Fantasy. What had a tremendous amount of potential wound up becoming just another black and white blob of blah.

It is my earnest hope the new writer will take a more logical approach. Every character, whether they be main cast, villain, or random NPC #923094, should be held to the same standards. Let no crime go unpunished and no atrocity be swept under the rug. Strip away the main cast's plot armor. Allow them to taste the depths of despair without any sort of special protections in place. Put them in the same position as the helpless wretches they walk among. Give us a story with teeth, not some silly sanitized slice of life garbage.

Originally Posted by Absimiliard

Personally, I don't get why certain posters are so opposed to the idea of everybody being wrong in different ways. Moral grey is far more interesting than black and white in the lion's share of scenarios. I, and I suspect many others, would've been far more pleased with Endwalker if Eorzea, the Empire, Venat, the Ascians, and whoever else you want to throw in the list had their deplorable actions properly recognized for what they are.

I think for a lot of people (not everyone, of course), it's quite simple: if every side is wrong, it means that their favorite side is wrong. And if they happen to care A LOT about their side, perhaps even identifying with it, then that feels like a slight on them.

Which, I think, leads to people trying to tear down perceived opposing sides, or the story itself, for doing so. If they can declare the story to be somehow factually wrong about itself, either by declaring plot holes or by other sides actually being somehow worse than depicted, then they can tear down the notion of the story having no real right or wrong sides, and instead claim that there IS a right answer, and it's theirs. Proving themselves to be smarter than a work of fiction, by demanding that story be stripped of all its nuance, themes, and really anything they disagree with.

Originally Posted by Moebious

I wonder though, was he the sole writer for Pandaemonium and Palace of the Dead story and lore behind them then?

I don't think we'll know about Pandaemonium for a while, but with PotD it's... interesting. It definitely looks like a one-writer job just in terms of general amount--there's not a lot of it, after all, you wouldn't exactly need a whole team--but it's clearly building on quite a bit; not only is it a continuation for a character that already existed in the game itself (in fact, for a fair amount of characters if you count the zombies, but they don't exactly get character development), but it's also a continuation on a character that existed in another game, namely Nybeth. So it hits a real good sweet spot where it hints at very large worlds outside it without actually needing to write any of it itself. But it also means that, while Hiroi likely did write everything in PotD itself, the strength of PotD is in the mountain of pre-existing writing it's pulling from.

Originally Posted by Iscah

Fortunately that doesn't seem to be an issue in his past plots. There seems to be a good pattern of enjoyable groups of characters there – the Bard quests in particular have always stood out well.

Asahi and Yotsuyu were quite deplorable, and the game treated them exactly as they were. Yotsuyu's eventual (albeit temporary) reformation in no way absolved her of the horrible things she did. She did come to regret her actions, even tried to better herself before it all came undone. Bad people can try to change, and good people don't necessarily need to always be all good. That's kinda what I am getting at. Not that everyone should exist in a moral grey area at all times. Though, I wouldn't mind if the characters we interact with routinely had their negative traits explored a bit more.