New story writer for 7.0

[Cleretic]

If we look at everything he has worked on, almost all of them had characters that were brand new, and seem to be genuinely interesting/compelling. So at least character wise, we will not be disappointed. Story wise, most of what he has done has been small stuff over the years. But since I don't recall hearing any complaints about the BRD/BLM/DNC questlines or the range/caster role quest for ShB, I think at worst the story will be average. At best it will be incredibly refreshing compared to what we've dealt with previously. Personally I think we could go for a good adventure expansion, where we don't really have high stakes.

I wouldn't be so sure on low stakes, I think most of the stories he's written have just been in parts of the game where low stakes are the norm. It'd feel a little weird if a job quest was suddenly grappling with the fate of the world in a really big way, wouldn't it? (Excepting that Black Mage actually was preventing a Calamity; even that did it quietly.) He went big when he was writing content that could go big, remember that Mhach was about stopping a top-rung voidsent from getting world-destroying power. And who even knows what Pandaemonium is gonna end in.

Thinking about it, if there's one generally common thread he seems to come back to, it's heroes of unlikely low origins. Not unlikely as in 'I'd expect this character to sooner destroy the world than save it' (which Ishikawa did quite a bit, to generally good return), but heroes that come from the last place you'd expect. The Redbills and Guydelot both separately standing up to smack down some major voidsent; Lalai and Zhai'a stopping a meteor; the Dancers doing... the entire Dancer quest let's be honest; Erich as basically the world's worst warden (although he's got Narrative Nepotism going on where he's important because his dad is); the theater troupe uncovering the truth of the Zodiac Braves; hell, in a sort of morally-flipped version, Misija the lowborn peasant girl becoming the controller of Queen Gunnhildr and focal point of the entire Bozjan war for independence. He really does a lot with characters that I feel like a lot of the other writers would've left by the wayside.

That, I think, gives me the most hope for future content. If 7.0 onwards wants to be a fresh start with all-new characters and stakes, Hiroi might be the perfect writer on staff for the job of making the cast that would ask for.

[aveyond-dreams]

Some excellent news from his recent interview, as seen on reddit:

Hiroi comments on what he’d like to focus on as the lead story writer moving forward. He says the flow of the emotions of the characters, their sadness and joy, and how this touches the player. Also, how the player’s emotions change by the characters. This is the kind of thing he has done in his theatrical career previously, and it’s a point he’s particularly focusing on here on out. He adds that “I’m writing while saying ‘I’m so sorry’ to the characters” (laughs).

Hiroi also comments on his work on the Pandaemonium storyline. Since Lahabrea is a character everyone already knew, he wondered if he should go quite so far, but at a certain point he decided not to hold back, and it ended up quite close to what he originally intended. He says this is the sort of direction he would like to keep up in his future writing.

Especially that second bit, can't wait for his influence in the MSQ to start rearing its head. Hopefully he can apply some of this more nuanced storytelling if we ever return to Garlemald or the remaining Ilsabardian nations.

[RukoBoshi]

Some excellent news from his recent interview, as seen on reddit:





Especially that second bit, can't wait for his influence in the MSQ to start rearing its head. Hopefully he can apply some of this more nuanced storytelling if we ever return to Garlemald or the remaining Ilsabardian nations.

That sounds really good. I'm even more anticipating 6.4 to have Pandaemonium conclusion and see how he handled that.

This raid was the highlight of this patch to me, great and varied characters that makes me interested not only in the conclusion of the Pandaemonium mystery itself, but to these characters arc too.

[Striker44]

In an expansion marked by a fundamental lack of a realistic perspective when it comes to dealing with grief and despair, his work shines in Pandaemonium wherein I found the few characters who act and behave in ways that make sense.

I encourage you to take a trip around YT videos about the EW storyline. You will find a deluge of comments from people talking about how realistic and genuinely helpful they found it.

[AwesomeJr44]

I encourage you to take a trip around YT videos about the EW storyline. You will find a deluge of comments from people talking about how realistic and genuinely helpful they found it.

Muh Majoritah

[KageTokage]

Positive reception is always going to be the majority in XIV land unless they screw something up really badly.

That doesn't mean negativity should be disregarded as it can signal that things are headed in the wrong direction if it's more pronounced then usual.

But in any case, I am very interested in seeing how Hiroi handles things going forward since I feel like his characterization and lore building/weaving were both pretty strong in the stuff he worked on, though I really hope 7.x is a "focused" expansion that gives a single continent/region the time it needs to be properly fleshed-out.

[Cleretic]

I encourage you to take a trip around YT videos about the EW storyline. You will find a deluge of comments from people talking about how realistic and genuinely helpful they found it.

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.

[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.

[RukoBoshi]

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.

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.

[aveyond-dreams]

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.

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.

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.