A game for 4 year olds

[Moomba33]

It is pretty silly how quickly the despair of each civilization is successfully countered by a meal. But at the end of the day SE is choosing to resolve multiple threads in one sidequest series which will necessitate each one getting less attention than a main arc of the game. As much as I may personally be interested in Heavensward 2: Dragons versus Omicrons the writers aren't wrong for wanting to focus on other things.

As for the overall tone, I'm enjoying the comedy. I'm not familiar with the work of Douglas Adams but even without getting the references I'm finding the characters and writing entertaining.

Not really related to the story itself, but I really like the Grebuloff home area. It reminds me of the City of the Ancients in FFVII.

[RyuDragnier]

Correction, the despair of individuals. The entire civilization isn't fine and dandy after that meal, but individuals start to feel better.

[Cleretic]

And it's also clearly not that sharing that food fully heals them, it just helps them over that initial hump.

The Karellians are obviously still harboring a lot of animosity even if they're past open hostilities.
The Grebuloffs probably have the most notable immediate improvement, possibly because their despair came from a very sudden development rather than a slow burn, but there's still a morose feel about most of them.
It's kinda hard to read how much the Ea have improved, even though they have, but they also have the most dramatic changes with both re-learning lost experiences and caring for the jellyfish.
And the dragons have barely cheered up at all, although they're clearly looking at things a little less bleakly now.

Incidentally: I hope we get the Karellians' uniform as a reward from all this, I love that thing.

[Enkidoh]

Incidentally: I hope we get the Karellians' uniform as a reward from all this, I love that thing.

Which one? The Global Community soldiers or the Freedom Fighters? (although I guess both were fundamentally the same design, just the 'tron lines' and helmet colour was different).

Also, they're actually palette swaps of old FFXIII enemies (PSICOM Corps Gunners), so there is that.

[aveyond-dreams]

I am shocked to discover some of you know of or have potentially even played FFXIII. With the mother of one of the playable characters dying halfway through the intro I would have certainly written it off as too dark for the current FFXIV playerbase, who has been enthralled by the likes of Ameliance. Instead of dying in heroic sacrifice, she bibbity boppity boos an outfit for Alphinaud and Alisae and sticks around long enough for players to defile her by dressing her up in bikinis at best and the NieR outfit at worst.

Hope’s depiction of grappling with actual loss in that game was criticized at the time, but was still leagues better than the messaging of Endwalker which would’ve told him to get over it forge ahead without a care, forgiving Snow over burgers and doing away with most of his arc. Leaving nothing that could be called a compelling story left.

[Cleretic]

I am shocked to discover some of you know of or have potentially even played FFXIII. With the mother of one of the playable characters dying halfway through the intro I would have certainly written it off as too dark for the current FFXIV playerbase, who has been enthralled by the likes of Ameliance. Instead of dying in heroic sacrifice, she bibbity boppity boos an outfit for Alphinaud and Alisae and sticks around long enough for players to defile her by dressing her up in bikinis at best and the NieR outfit at worst.

Hope’s depiction of grappling with actual loss in that game was criticized at the time, but was still leagues better than the messaging of Endwalker which would’ve told him to get over it forge ahead without a care, forgiving Snow over burgers and doing away with most of his arc. Leaving nothing that could be called a compelling story left.

Does anyone else get weird vibes from this post? The off-putting nature of it aside, I'm thankful that other fantasy games don't cater to whatever this sort of player is supposed to be. Uncomfortable is only one of many words I could use to describe this.

[aveyond-dreams]

Does anyone else get weird vibes from this post? The off-putting nature of it aside, I'm thankful that other fantasy games don't cater to whatever this sort of player is supposed to be. Uncomfortable is only one of many words I could use to describe this.

The majority of fantasy games do in fact contain the death of significant party members and/or people close to them.

FFII - numerous temporary party members and side characters on the side of the Flynn Rebellion

FFIV - Anna, Tellah, Rydia's mother, with numerous "fakeouts" only being reversed after a lot of time has passed rather than after 30 minutes of Ultima Thule feels rollercoasters.

FFV - the death of King Tycoon, Galuf, and both of Bartz's parents which happened prior to the game but were still addressed in the story.

FFVI - the death of Cid and Celes eventually losing hope and her (failed) suicide attempt is in fact the canon way in which those events are supposed to play out, with the fish minigame being designed to be intentionally obscure. Blasphemy time!

FFVII - Aerith, etc.

FFIX - the death of Queen Brahne and how it impacted Garnet/Dagger. Blasphemy time! The death of Vivi, etc.

FFX - Tidus, prior to the option to revive him in FFX-2 before no doubt Mikko will try and write a whole other essay about how at the time it was canon that he was going to come back to life!! It wasn't. And anyone who tries to claim that it was is similarly disingenuous.

FFXV - the death of King Regis and eventually, Noctis. Not to mention Ignis going blind in a sacrificial attempt to protect Noctis after Luna was murdered by Ardyn.

FFXVI - the death of the Archduke of Rosaria, robbing Clive and Joshua of their father.

Dragon Age series - needs no explanation.

Fire Emblem series - again, needs no explanation across its various games though I specifically have 3 Houses in mind.

Bayonetta 3 -

Stranger of Paradise - the death of Astos, Sarah and the royal family, and the rest of the main party before they are transformed into the elemental fiends.


I could go on, but the ego stroking combined with recent push for overly-kiddified content is definitely a FFXIV exclusive thing. Everything thrown away for a power fantasy where the good guys have had near constant wins as of late while suffering no permanent consequences.

Your pathetic attempt to one-up me has failed. FFXIV players have been pandered to in such a strange way in EW that I truly do not think that anyone who seriously subscribes to this sort of messaging will be able to cope with any real life loss in a healthy way. Rather than showing what to actually do and how to realistically handle death and permanent physical disability, everything just gets waived away under the nonsensical banner of hope "triumphing" over despair. There's no dynamis to save people in real life when things go south.

And yeah, full grown adults who are into this sort of weird kiddie nonsense are offputting individuals who I actively want nothing to do with and want to fully exclude from the spaces I inhabit both in real life and online. I do not believe that sort of player should have ever been catered to from the addition of Lalafells instead of a more dwarf-like race to the mess we have on our hands with the Loporrits and other meme beastmen.

[Cleretic]

Your pathetic attempt to one-up me has failed.

Oh, I don't one-up. I was mostly just treating you like the joke you are, but if you insist, yeah, I'll pick apart the argument you think you have. And I say 'think', because your argument doesn't even make enough sense to have a single consistent point, and requires deliberate ignorance of not just FFXIV, but also pretty much every single other game you just mentioned. I can derive three possible arguments, but none of them really make sense. (I warn you all; this one's gonna get long.)


First: Perhaps you think that Endwalker was bloodless, and all 'good' fantasy games require meaningful character death to change the journeys of the living. To a degree, this almost sniffs at making sense; Endwalker is essentially the 'Disc 5 of 5' end stretch of a single long-running RPG, most of the core cast has already had their major character development moments--a significant number of which, it turns out, were the result of meaningful character deaths (Minfilia, Haurchefaunt, Papalymo, Moenbryda, Louisoix, Ysayle, even Emet-Selch... Endwalker has a whole dungeon shouting out who we've lost, I recommend it, it's good). Most of Endwalker's character development went to supporting characters and antagonists, as is usually the case in that final stretch of an RPG; Fourchenault, Zenos, Fandaniel (in weird, non-linear ways), Venat, Emet to an extent, Jullus, Quintus (who couldn't take the concept of being wrong).

Endwalker's also not bloodless; I'm not sure if you're the type to weigh a raw nameless bodycount or named character deaths heavier, but Endwalker's not bottom of the list in either. In terms of nameless deaths I think it might actually be up near the top; I'd have to do an actual body count between it and Stormblood, which I won't do, but Garlemald and the Thavnair revisit ratchet up that count by A LOT. In terms of named characters, we've got Ahewann, Venat/Hydaelyn, Quintus, Fancy Dan (technically several times), the Blasphemies if you want to count them, and a couple other weird edge cases. That's hardly the biggest named bodycount (I think the Knights Twelve alone make Heavensward win that one), but it's definitely ahead of both SBs.


Then there's 'other games have major motivating character deaths', which... uhm. Yes. They do. So does FFXIV, though; see, again, the Aitiascope. Endwalker does broadly teach the message of 'move on instead of wallowing in it', but really, it's not FFXIV taking that stance that sets it apart, it was underlining it; I can think of very few games that don't show the importance of moving on.

And there's also the apparent notion you have that FFXIV is unique in cutting this dramatic tension with comedy and light-heartedness, which is... well, I'm going to systematically go through every single one of your examples to pick both of these last two apart.

FFVI: Yes, Celes does attempt suicide after Cid dies (if he dies, of course). But then she gets a message from the outside world, realizes she shouldn't throw away her life, and moves on. It's also the game with Mog in it, so it's not exactly straight-faced. I'd instead put forward the Phantom Train segment, where Cyan gets my favorite character scene in the story and actually does struggle for much longer to move on... but remember that just after Phantom Train is our introduction to Gau.

FFIV: A decent amount of deaths, and everyone who survives them learns from and is better for it. This is also the game that introduced the concept of 'bunny people that live on the moon', who turned up right at the final stretch.

FFV: A bunch of deaths, that everyone either moves on from or already had moved on from. This is also... honestly, just FFV, it's the most outright comedic game in the series.

FFVII: Everyone moves on from Aerith's sacrifice and finishes the fight for her. ...well, everyone in the story does; there's a whole lot of people who still haven't made peace with that one. This is also the game with Wall Market, and the scene right after Aerith's death is a sick snowboarding minigame.

FFIX: Garnet moved on from Queen Brahne's death and fought against what was controlling her, both literally in the form of Kuja and metaphorically in the form of 'the embodiment of death'. Vivi's an odd one to bring up, because he dies off-screen between the ending and epilogue and we don't really see anyone dealing with it. But this is also the game with Quina, Steiner, Zidane, Zorn and Thorn... honestly the fact you think XIV is more childish than IX, the game that's literally getting a children's cartoon.

FFX: Yeah, X-2's got a lot about Yuna learning to move on after Tidus' death. Both games also give pretty much everyone the chance to be a silly joke character once in a while. ...and the FFX-3 audio story has Tidus die (again) by kicking a bomb disguised as a blitzball, which is the funniest thing in the world.

FFXV: Yeah, someone died off-screen, and it changed basically nothing about any of the characters; Ignis going blind was more influential, but even there it mostly skipped over everyone dealing with that. I wouldn't even say anyone moves on in FFXV, because I barely feel like they moved in the first place. XV's my least favorite Final Fantasy, you might be able to tell. But it's also the game with the Cup Noodle quest, and... honestly, just Prompto in general.

FFXVI: Neither of us can comment on how much character deaths will or will not matter in this game, because it does not yet exist. But I can tell you with confidence that, like all Final Fantasy games before it, it will have some clownshoes comedic nonsense cutting the tension.

Dragon Age: I only played the first one, because the dialog wheel Bioware started using in all their games afterwards turned me away from them. But Origins actually kinda didn't have meaningful character deaths, it basically only had deaths for stake-raising, shock value and failure punishments (which incidentally is also a point I would level at ME1 and 2).

Fire Emblem: Yes, character deaths do happen, and being a series set in wars they are a series with a large raw bodycount, it's not actually one where character deaths are all that heavily motivating for the living, probably because they have to design the stories around the whole 'unit permadeath' thing. Three Houses is a rich goddamn thing to put forward, though, because not only is it one of the games with the lowest named bodycount if you're a vigilant recruiter, it's also the one that most heavily emphasized undercutting the darkness with softer character moments. Basically the 'darkest' element of Three Houses compared to the rest of the series is a deliberate direction towards not resolving all its conflicts; every side you could pick ignores at least one of the world's major problems, probably more.

Bayonetta 3: You're just putting this in to spoil people for a brand new game out of some kind of weird attack, because not only is it in stark contrast to all of the rest of these games in not being an RPG, I also can't possibly imagine that there's a single human being alive who thinks Bayonetta is a game with serious story worth heavily discussing. (The better Platinum game to bring in here, by the way, would be Astral Chain; also not exactly winning awards, but it's not brand new and much less tongue-in-cheek.)


I was going to say that your arguments actually hold no common logic at all, but then I realized that one of the examples you added in on editing was so thin that, by holding it up as an example, you gave away the only thing you actually cared about.

FFII: This is actually the secret key to understand you completely, because FFII doesn't have character development as a result of deaths, it just has deaths. By holding this up as a superior story, you're showing that you don't actually care about the story: you just think Death Means Gritty Means Good. You don't care that Guy Speak Beaver; you just care that it piled up the bodies and nobody was ever happy, so it must be a better story.

As I mentioned before, Endwalker is in contention for the highest bodycount in FFXIV expansions. But despite that, which you seem to think is very important, you decry Endwalker. And I think you decry it because it dared to say that after it, people had some fucking hope. It dared to be optimistic and smile, and you can't stomach that.

The fact you decry the lalafel are interesting, too; those have been around since the start, and are actually played as among the most regularly serious races in the game--in fact, they're much more serious than the actual dwarves when they turned up. So that says to me that you've either been ignoring huge swathes of the game to pretend it was exactly what you wanted to see of it until suddenly Endwalker told you that was wrong, or that you're just blindly throwing whatever you think will win whatever shifting, nonsensical argument you think you're having.


Aveyond, you're bad at reading and your ideas suck.

[MikkoAkure]

With the mother of one of the playable characters dying halfway through the intro I would have certainly written it off as too dark for the current FFXIV playerbase, who has been enthralled by the likes of Ameliance.

You mean the same game where a major character has a chocobo chick that lives in his afro? And talks to and is understood by the guy whose hair she lives in? And takes out a psicom soldier? And also somehow grows up to become a time-traveling fan-service human woman named “Chocolina” in the sequel?

All FF games have light-hearted elements alongside dark elements. Ahead of its release, FFXV was touted as “the darkest FF” but we still had things like Kenny Crow and goofy interactions between the main characters.

FFXIV similarly has light and dark elements and some stuff in EW is darker than the game has gone before, like a child getting turned into a monster that can never enter the afterlife in front of his dad and then getting stepped on by a larger monster. Or a mother carrying her baby dying on screen and later the baby showing signs of beginning to turn into a monster before being saved.

As an MMO meant to have a longer shelf life than a single-player game, it’s going to have to have more of a balance if it’s meant to cast its net at a wider playerbase and retain them longer. A game where only dark and bad stuff happens is just going to wear most people down over time and care less and less about the story if we never get a break or a win.

The game is not meant to target specifically you. Get over yourself.

FFX - Tidus, prior to the option to revive him in FFX-2 before no doubt Mikko will try and write a whole other essay about how at the time it was canon that he was going to come back to life!! It wasn't. And anyone who tries to claim that it was is similarly disingenuous.

Dude. No essay necessary. He’s right there at the end of the credits. I said as much in another thread and that wasn’t an essay either.

[Garnix]

I totally can understand that someone wouldn't like the writing style of ShB/EW.
But...EW basically makes you bond with Venat/Hythlo/Hermes, even though they obviously are going to die. That is basically made to raise the stakes. (whether it works on your or not is of course subjective)
A lot of EW's moment wouldn't have happened if characters like Louisouix, Minfilia or even Moenbryda did not die.
There is also a suicide during EW...and multiple minor characters died.
Could also go back to Arenvald losing his legs.
A lot of our current cast of characters got some character development based on somebody else's death... (Thancred had Minfilia, Urianger had Moenbryda, Alisaie had Louisoix and Tesleen, Estinien had Nidhogg and Ysayle, Alphi had Haurchefant and Arenvald legs and probably more, G'Raha had a whole world from which he is the only survivor, etc etc.)