What Forge Ahead Actually Means

[Slayer25c]

The Lord of the Rings is terrible. Do you remember how Dumbledore comes back after the Balrog killed him? How dare they not actually kill him, terrible story no stakes.

Wrong person Dumbledore is in Harry Potter lol

[DiaDeem]

Wrong person Dumbledore is in Harry Potter lol

I know. I was making a joke. Check my Bruce Wayne on the other page.

[Avoidy]

A genuine question to the people who enjoy the story as it is and think these threads are unwarranted: how can you feel any suspense, tension, or enjoyment from a story full of characters who are done progressing and for whom consequences might as well not exist? It's really difficult for me to enjoy this game's story when there's no internal conflict and the external conflict is revolving around people who straight up aren't allowed to die.

When I look back on my favorite characters and my favorite moments in the story, I always come back to the beginnings of Heavensward. I think that moment represents a lot of what was missing in EW, and I'll try to briefly explain why. Consider Alphinaud in ARR. The kid's cocky, overconfident, arrogant, naive about the ways of the world, and sincerely thinks he can leap into the arena of geopolitics and just solve problems by taking dark money to fund a solution. His arrogance gets a lot of people killed, and it sees him exiled. When HW opens, Alphinaud is sitting in the chair staring at his feet looking like Shinji from Evangelion, and you and your band are officially branded traitors. The Sultana is thought to be dead. We have no idea what happened to her right hand man (haha get it). So what do we have here? Consequences. Harsh, realistic, gritty consequences doled out for a character's flaws. And Alphinaud is forced to reflect and consider his flaws while Haurchefant hands him hot drinks and then haurchefant fucking dies and his death produces one of the saddest moments in the game; not from the death itself, but from his father's heartbreaking reaction to it. And he died protecting us, and maybe he wouldn't have had to if we hadn't been there, and maybe we wouldn't have been there if we'd done things differently in ARR. And all these thoughts are swirling amid the larger story of HW, and it's greater for it. Meanwhile, in EW, we come up from the Aitiascope after watching Hydaelyn die; this should be huge. This is like watching your greatest ally perish. It's like watching God die right in front of you. ...And two minutes later we're talking about building a battery for a space ship. I think there was a scene where they all went out and ate burgers to kind of cope, and that was it?? Nobody's even like "hey, hey guys. God is basically dead??? What does this mean?" Or when the refugee ship is built and we make the last minute decision to use it and travel to meteion, even when things seem really bleak on ultima thule nobody even mentions that we took mankind's liferaft and now we're losing, like there's never a human moment of doubt. It feels very frantic, like the writers were just tired and wanted to get the chapter over with. The skeleton was there, but the fat, the details, that make it realistic... were missing.


Imagine if a single scion had just fundamentally dis*agreed with the decision to fight meteion. And I don't mean 'gee guys is this right?' followed by immediately falling in line and boarding the ship. I mean disagreeing so hard that they try to stop the others from even considering fighting because they don't want to blow mankind's liferaft on an uncertainty. Like what if Urianger, rocked by his recently completed forgiveness arc, expressed genuine doubt in our ability to beat the bird and felt like the safe way out was best. Or hell, even in post-ew, there's a part where Y'shtola opens a void portal and just starts shoving creatures inside. And she claims it's fine because they're not real, but they're moving around and kind of expressive and I remember several people on my friends list watching that scene and at least laughing at how fucked up it seemed at face value to just march a creature into a portal. Imagine if Y'shtola's desire to fulfill her promise to return to Runar clouded her judgment and led her to continue void research after she was told to stop by concerned researchers in radz, or someone on the scion team like Alphinaud or Urianger. Imagine if a certain brash scion like Alisaie actually called Y'shtola out on endangering others for selfish reasons, while someone like Thancred (who also has strong ties to the First) defended her because he wanted to go back to see Ryne, and then maybe that's when we learn that Y'shtola's been using her life energy to see since HW or some shit and she's barely got a year left so she's desperate, and imagine if that was what ultimately led to an assault of void monsters on Radz at Han. Now we have external conflict (attacking monsters) bred from internal conflict (Y'shtola letting her emotions cloud her judgment). Obviously it doesn't have to be how I laid it out, but it just goes to show like... There are a bunch of people in the scions but they behave like a monolith sometimes and it's fucking DULL because of it. Let these grown ass adults disagree with each other on a hardcore fundamental level. Gimme drama, gimme conflict.


All this is to say, I'm sick of people reading my posts and being like "so u just want ppl 2 die huh???" What I want, is for a "story focused MMO" to stop cutting corners on its story and return back to the writing that hooked me in HW. If you're scared to give the main characters consequences, or if they're now so perfectly developed that they can't make mistakes, then we need new ones who can imo. Zero is a good start. Even though I hate her atm, I have to remind myself that I hated alphinaud at first too, and now he's my favorite character. He's also a character who's been useless to the story for a while now, and I can say this even though I like the character because I like a good story more and these characters are hindering it. They're stopping it from breathing.

[DiaDeem]

A genuine question to the people who enjoy the story as it is and think these threads are unwarranted: how can you feel any suspense, tension, or enjoyment from a story full of characters who are done progressing and for whom consequences might as well not exist? It's really difficult for me to enjoy this game's story when there's no internal conflict and the external conflict is revolving around people who straight up aren't allowed to die

Oh hey Avoidity. I think you've read how I feel. I like the Scions, but I want a new cast with new arcs and conflicts to explore. My issue is that many of the posts are just about character death, and not how else there could be an interesting conflict. Like.. there's many interesting plot devices, why is only Death being brought up as an option? I get what people say when they say it feels like there's no stakes, but this one Death plot point doesn't make or break a story. In that sense, I guess they could kill a Scion, but by then that means they've become a plot device themselves, and not a character, and why the idea doesn't attract me too much.

Sidenote: The Shadowbringers Shtola fake out death in Rak'Tika actually really annoyed me. EVERY Scion gave up on her immediately, and I was like "... guys, do you really have so little faith in her??" and only Runnar was like "Nah, let's just find a way to get her back. I'm sure she's fine." and then she was fine, and I was like "Of course she is"

party members to disagree with each other

Yeah, characters having disagreements is a topic worth exploring. I only ever remember Alisaie yelling a bit at Ryne at the end of ShB, and characters having conflicts with one another and learning to resolve them is a something other than death that can be interesting to explore.

[Kickwars]

All this is to say, I'm sick of people reading my posts and being like "so u just want ppl 2 die huh???" What I want, is for a "story focused MMO" to stop cutting corners on its story and return back to the writing that hooked me in HW.

I don't think the story has ever been that great to be honest. It's very overrated. But it's pretty clear as you've said that character progression is just dead for a lot of the Scions in EW.

Which is why, URIANGER, out of all the Scions, was the most interesting one to me in EW. I loved seeing him really finally open up, in his own way. It's awesome. But the other Scions might as well just be clones of the WoL. And frankly I'm not even sure what is the point of the existence of G'raha Tia or Estinien. One is a rabid fanboy of the WoL and the other is just there to be the cool member (could've done so much more with Vrtra and Estinien). We are supposed to have this big resolution to Alphinaud and Alisaie's family dynamics but it was literally all on Forchenault's end. A more compelling Alisaie would probably be cursing her father, going so far as to maybe lose her temper and mock him in public. And it will set up a real family conflict with mutual escalation from both sides. Something of the sort. Instead the twins just tepidly resolved their family issues. I felt more for Forchenault than I did for either of the twins. Maybe he just raised a pair of robots.

And would you look at that, that's CONFLICT without anyone even dying. This game really feels like it's for babies when they don't even dare show hostility between family members.

Meanwhile, in EW, we come up from the Aitiascope after watching Hydaelyn die; this should be huge. This is like watching your greatest ally perish. It's like watching God die right in front of you. ...And two minutes later we're talking about building a battery for a space ship. I think there was a scene where they all went out and ate burgers to kind of cope, and that was it?? Nobody's even like "hey, hey guys. God is basically dead??? What does this mean?" Or when the refugee ship is built and we make the last minute decision to use it and travel to meteion, even when things seem really bleak on ultima thule nobody even mentions that we took mankind's liferaft and now we're losing, like there's never a human moment of doubt. It feels very frantic, like the writers were just tired and wanted to get the chapter over with. The skeleton was there, but the fat, the details, that make it realistic... were missing.

The decision to squash two expansions worth of story into a single one was a major blunder.

Also, the themes of Endwalker was genuinely profound. But the main characters are just tepid fan-fiction level writing (other than Urianger).

She's an almost literal deus ex machina during the entirety of EW.

I definitely wouldn't mind an entirely new cast.

Has been a huge problem since the beginning of the game honestly. But it just needs to go. Like I don't want Urianger appearing out of nowhere to give us an auracite (and I think he literally did it twice too but don't quote me on that). I don't want Krile randomly appearing and telling us the solution to a dilemma.

where you know your allies are still there but can't actively help you at that time, akin to people in your circle in real life unable to come help you when you are dealing with things yourselves

Unspoken requiem for a river of tears
Flowing, winding, to one eternal sea,
And yet, our hope remains,
Guiding, lighting the way.

No time, for morning rises
On the mem'ry born from the ashes
with the heavens to sunset.
Blood red skies tranquil after the storm.

Blessed shadow
Turning, wending, always night follows day
The sun will shine again.
Walk on, never look back.
Through you, we live.

Tales of loss and fire and faith,
Every word our hearts engraved.
In the dark, you will not stray.
Forge ahead 'til the end, we pray.

These are the lyrics of Ultima Thule and it heavily implies death. You make it sound like it's about your friend not coming over to help you lift the couch to your new apartment.

[Kazemon15]

Unspoken requiem for a river of tears
Flowing, winding, to one eternal sea,
And yet, our hope remains,
Guiding, lighting the way.

No time, for morning rises
On the mem'ry born from the ashes
with the heavens to sunset.
Blood red skies tranquil after the storm.

Blessed shadow
Turning, wending, always night follows day
The sun will shine again.
Walk on, never look back.
Through you, we live.

Tales of loss and fire and faith,
Every word our hearts engraved.
In the dark, you will not stray.
Forge ahead 'til the end, we pray.

These are the lyrics of Ultima Thule and it heavily implies death. You make it sound like it's about your friend not coming over to help you lift the couch to your new apartment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxF0js2zlVA

Way to ignore the other parts of my post when I said Ultima Thule (including its song) is meant to be viewed as a whole to the entire story. People already picked apart the song and its meaning (video linked) if you're curious about any misconception of what it means. But a short version, I guess, the song isn't just talking about the scions.

Unspoken requiem for a river of tears - The denizens of Ultima Thule who are despair incarnate made manifest.

Through you, we live. - Meant to be viewed as a whole including the Scions at this point.

Tales of loss and fire and faith, - Again, meant to be viewed as a whole of all the people who were lost along the way.

Also there was the slight possibility that the scions may not be able to return, so that doubt was linging, but the lyrics go "And yet our hope remains" ....so yeah.

[TheMightyMollusk]

A genuine question to the people who enjoy the story as it is and think these threads are unwarranted: how can you feel any suspense, tension, or enjoyment from a story full of characters who are done progressing and for whom consequences might as well not exist? It's really difficult for me to enjoy this game's story when there's no internal conflict and the external conflict is revolving around people who straight up aren't allowed to die.

Endwalker isn't a stand-alone story. It's the culmination of the entire game until now. We've already seen the Scions go through their arcs, get beaten down and get back up again, all that. This is the final climax, where they've worked out their problems and move forward as one.

When I look back on my favorite characters and my favorite moments in the story, I always come back to the beginnings of Heavensward. I think that moment represents a lot of what was missing in EW, and I'll try to briefly explain why. Consider Alphinaud in ARR. The kid's cocky, overconfident, arrogant, naive about the ways of the world, and sincerely thinks he can leap into the arena of geopolitics and just solve problems by taking dark money to fund a solution. His arrogance gets a lot of people killed, and it sees him exiled. When HW opens, Alphinaud is sitting in the chair staring at his feet looking like Shinji from Evangelion, and you and your band are officially branded traitors. The Sultana is thought to be dead. We have no idea what happened to her right hand man (haha get it). So what do we have here? Consequences. Harsh, realistic, gritty consequences doled out for a character's flaws. And Alphinaud is forced to reflect and consider his flaws while Haurchefant hands him hot drinks and then haurchefant fucking dies and his death produces one of the saddest moments in the game; not from the death itself, but from his father's heartbreaking reaction to it. And he died protecting us, and maybe he wouldn't have had to if we hadn't been there, and maybe we wouldn't have been there if we'd done things differently in ARR. And all these thoughts are swirling amid the larger story of HW, and it's greater for it.

And we've already had that story, so why should we do it again? Do the Scions need to keep getting beaten down so they can go through the same character development over and over?

Meanwhile, in EW, we come up from the Aitiascope after watching Hydaelyn die; this should be huge. This is like watching your greatest ally perish. It's like watching God die right in front of you.

You mean after A: we found out she wasn't really a deity, she was a primal, and B: she outright told us to use the rest of her power to charge the ship?

...And two minutes later we're talking about building a battery for a space ship.

If you're referring to the part where we help finish the ship, that was before the Aitiascope (in fact, getting the ship finished was a prerequisite to getting to go down there in the first place).

I think there was a scene where they all went out and ate burgers to kind of cope, and that was it?? Nobody's even like "hey, hey guys. God is basically dead??? What does this mean?"

There were no burgers involved here at any point. There are brief scenes of the Scions around Sharlayan, because they're basically getting out of the way while the actual tech-minded people get to work. And there's little reaction to Hydaelyn's death because she literally told us to use her soul as a power source.

Or when the refugee ship is built and we make the last minute decision to use it and travel to meteion, even when things seem really bleak on ultima thule nobody even mentions that we took mankind's liferaft and now we're losing, like there's never a human moment of doubt. It feels very frantic, like the writers were just tired and wanted to get the chapter over with. The skeleton was there, but the fat, the details, that make it realistic... were missing.

Were we supposed to stop in the middle of dealing with the crisis to worry about dealing with the crisis? It would just come across as padding, and EW's pacing is wonky enough already.

Imagine if a single scion had just fundamentally agreed with the decision to fight meteion. And I don't mean 'gee guys is this right?' followed by immediately falling in line and boarding the ship. I mean disagreeing so hard that they try to stop the others from even considering fighting because they don't want to blow mankind's liferaft on an uncertainty. Like what if Urianger, rocked by his recently completed forgiveness arc, expressed genuine doubt in our ability to beat the bird and felt like the safe way out was best.

Assuming you meant disagreed and that was just a typo.....The alternative was to let the Final Days play out and kill everyone who couldn't make it onto the ship or the moon (and worse than kill, but we didn't know about Meteion's whole "hoard everyone's souls to end reincarnation" plot yet). Which Scion would you really picture saying "Y'know what, screw it, can't save 'em all" and just leaving people to die? (Not to mention, that was basically Fourchenault's arc through most of EW, so having a Scion randomly repeat it at the last minute would be redundant.)

Or hell, even in post-ew, there's a part where Y'shtola opens a void portal and just starts shoving creatures inside. And she claims it's fine because they're not real, but they're moving around and kind of expressive and I remember several people on my friends list watching that scene and at least laughing at how fucked up it seemed at face value to just march a creature into a portal.

They're arcane familiars. They're like tiny primals. They are literally not living beings.

All this is to say, I'm sick of people reading my posts and being like "so u just want ppl 2 die huh???"

It's hard to take this seriously when your first paragraph is complaining about how no one is allowed to die.

What I want, is for a "story focused MMO" to stop cutting corners on its story and return back to the writing that hooked me in HW. If you're scared to give the main characters consequences, or if they're now so perfectly developed that they can't make mistakes, then we need new ones who can imo. Zero is a good start. Even though I hate her atm, I have to remind myself that I hated alphinaud at first too, and now he's my favorite character. He's also a character who's been useless to the story for a while now, and I can say this even though I like the character because I like a good story more and these characters are hindering it. They're stopping it from breathing.

The post-EW patches have already reduced everyone but Y'shtola and Estinien to basically cameos while we hang out with Zero and Vrtra, so.....congrats? Whether that will continue into 7.0, none of us can accurately say, unless you have a crystal ball handy.

I've said it before, but: Even though I like the Scions, I would like a break from them for a while. But walking back their entire characters just for the sake of drama would be absolutely terrible writing.

[Avoidy]

Endwalker isn't a stand-alone story. It's the culmination of the entire game until now. We've already seen the Scions go through their arcs, get beaten down and get back up again, all that. This is the final climax, where they've worked out their problems and move forward as one.

It's just not a very interesting setup to me. Imagine watching a long sequel film where everyone's resolved their conflicts already. Sure it's not a standalone story. But if the characters are mostly staying the same, did it really need to be told? To me, Endwalker just felt like the writers wrapping up plot objectives so they could call it a day. From a storytelling standpoint, it simply wasn't memorable to me the way HW or even ShB was. EW felt like a really plot driven story, while everything before it felt more character driven AND plot driven.

And we've already had that story, so why should we do it again? Do the Scions need to keep getting beaten down so they can go through the same character development over and over?

What kind of question is this? When I brought up an example of a part of the story that I enjoyed, it wasn't because I want them to do the exact same thing verbatim. It was to show that the story used to have internal conflict and consequences, which isn't possible anymore now that the current cast has run its course.

You mean after A: we found out she wasn't really a deity, she was a primal, and B: she outright told us to use the rest of her power to charge the ship?

Yes? To me, these elements actually warrant a lot more discussion and existential dread on the part of anyone who learns the truth. It didn't get enough time to sit.

If you're referring to the part where we help finish the ship, that was before the Aitiascope (in fact, getting the ship finished was a prerequisite to getting to go down there in the first place).

I was referring to that part after the Hydaelyn trial, where you're sent on fetch quests for something or other. You'll have to forgive me if I don't remember the specifics; I just recall going through that major bombshell loredump cutscene and then immediately being sent on fetch quests and feeling really taken out of the story at that point.

There were no burgers involved here at any point. There are brief scenes of the Scions around Sharlayan, because they're basically getting out of the way while the actual tech-minded people get to work. And there's little reaction to Hydaelyn's death because she literally told us to use her soul as a power source.

I'm saying there should have been a reaction, because normal people don't emerge from the cave of their own ignorance and then just shrug it off without freaking out a little bit. To me this represented a missed opportunity.

Were we supposed to stop in the middle of dealing with the crisis to worry about dealing with the crisis? It would just come across as padding, and EW's pacing is wonky enough already.

YES. Fuck this is so awkward to write because you keep asking questions like "so what, should we have dedicated TIME to EXPLORE THIS TOPIC?" and my answer to that will always be yes. Absolutely yes. Kill a fetch quest or two and dedicate that time to actually giving the story realistic debate, disagreement, and drama. 100 times yes.

Assuming you meant disagreed and that was just a typo.....The alternative was to let the Final Days play out and kill everyone who couldn't make it onto the ship or the moon (and worse than kill, but we didn't know about Meteion's whole "hoard everyone's souls to end reincarnation" plot yet). Which Scion would you really picture saying "Y'know what, screw it, can't save 'em all" and just leaving people to die? (Not to mention, that was basically Fourchenault's arc through most of EW, so having a Scion randomly repeat it at the last minute would be redundant.)

I did mean disagreed, but I didn't notice because I stop coming here once I leave work lol. The alternative being really really terrible (massive loss of life but not total loss of life) but still better than the possibility of failing and letting everyone die, is exactly what makes those two choices so compelling. Absolutely, give me THAT debate in endwalker please. Fourchenault taking the prissy-bitch route isn't really fair or compelling, because Fourchenault doesn't have the power to fight back against Meteion like the scions do so fourchenault has no choice given his time or resources, but to flee. If it's a scion saying it, then there's suddenly internal conflict; a character's lost their nerve and isn't convinced that we have what it takes. To me, that's compelling. To me, that presents two options that both seem convincing, served up by a character who's able to fight but choosing not to for some reason. I hope you can see how it's different when it's one person saying it versus another totally different person with different circumstances. That's not redundant.

They're arcane familiars. They're like tiny primals. They are literally not living beings.

Yeah, I mentioned that in my post. I'm aware that they're not technically alive. If you go back and read it again, you'll see that that entire paragraph was a hypothetical on how they could have made these old characters compelling in post-EW by giving them selfish but understandable motives that force them to behave in understandable but ultimately damaging and conflicting ways.

It's hard to take this seriously when your first paragraph is complaining about how no one is allowed to die.

It's but one example of how this game's story lacks stakes or any real drama. If nothing bad can happen to your characters, then the climactic moments lack weight. If your characters are already complete, then their 30 hour endwalker storyline feels like checking off boxes on the writer's plot to-do list without any satisfying character growth.

The post-EW patches have already reduced everyone but Y'shtola and Estinien to basically cameos while we hang out with Zero and Vrtra, so.....congrats? Whether that will continue into 7.0, none of us can accurately say, unless you have a crystal ball handy.

Yeah I think I either mentioned it here or in some other post about the story, that I hope they don't just turn Zero into some post-EW filler character who gets removed. I don't even like her, but at least she has issues that can provide space for something different. It's such a low bar but it's better than a cast that's already worked through their shit.

I've said it before, but: Even though I like the Scions, I would like a break from them for a while. But walking back their entire characters just for the sake of drama would be absolutely terrible writing.

In my ideal world, we'd just drop these characters because they're finished. But if the writers are too attached to drop them, then they could make them compelling by making them behave like human beings who occasionally do selfish shit to get what they want. Since the scions are actually so good (in a righteous sense) that they're boring, it would feel kind of weird to make Thancred do something selfish just to see Ryne again, but it would also humanize the guy a lot. In the end, we don't need a crystal ball to know that these writers aren't going to have the balls to do anything exciting with the scions, so for that reason I'm glad they're not as present in post-ew and I hope they continue to stay gone so other characters with their own issues can appear and hopefully be interesting.

Note: Blocking someone doesn't remove threads they start from your view in the forums, only posts they make within a thread that's already been started.

Actually didn't know that, but it explains a lot. Can't say I'm even surprised that the forum block list is about as impotent as the in game blacklist.

Also, formatting this was a huge pain in the ass, I hate this site. If you reply again I'll probably just respond with like a paragraph or something. I've said everything I wanted to say though, and at this point I feel like I've said it twice. If you don't feel like certain areas of the story are worth looking at closely that's fine.

[Izar_Chillen]

It's just not a very interesting setup to me. Imagine watching a long sequel film where everyone's resolved their conflicts already. Sure it's not a standalone story. But if the characters are mostly staying the same, did it really need to be told? To me, Endwalker just felt like the writers wrapping up plot objectives so they could call it a day. From a storytelling standpoint, it simply wasn't memorable to me the way HW or even ShB was. EW felt like a really plot driven story, while everything before it felt more character driven AND plot driven.

This is one of the downsides to very long drawn out sagas. Times and ideas change , plots alter , and the reveals/truths/reasons for are less impactful because it took far too long to get there.

It reminds me of the amazing tv show L.O.S.T

When they realised that they actually needed to start making sense of the bizarre place the survivors ended up being and what was actually happening their reality was was just an "oh that was what it was all along" moment.

Anti climatic

[aveyond-dreams]

Sorry, but according to some posters who have made an appearance in this thread it is unrealistic for party members to disagree with each other, because that's a distraction. Nevermind that the cast having disagreements or conflicts with each other is pretty much the norm in countless other games.

In any case, FFXIV was made worse by catering to the people who wanted a Scion hugbox and it stands to only get worse with the addition of Krile into the mix for 7.0, which I made my thoughts known about here.

Heavensward really was when this game's writing was at its peak - I would certainly choose the likes of Maehiro removing characters once their role in the story was finished over Ishikawa's obsession with characters like G'raha Tia and Hermes any day. She'll keep her favorites alive yet she'll remove characters that had potential like Arenvald out of the story, I should have known back then that something was off but I made the mistake of trusting that things wouldn't go awry the way they did.

Meanwhile in FFXVI they already blatantly revealed that it least one major character will die by showing off their funeral scene in the music video clip for the game's official theme. Much as I like the character, I understand that it would be detrimental to the story if they were kept only to bluntly force the game's themes in my face like the average scion does. Also, it's nice to see that we'll be getting a heroine worthy of the name seeing as how Jill, unlike Y'shtola and very much like Ysayle, actually goes through an ordeal that shapes her character prior to joining the party and will hopefully continue to grow throughout the game.