What Forge Ahead Actually Means

[Dorito_Burrito]

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.

Yeah but what's the deal with the URL of your signature?

[VictorSpoils]

The Waking Sands raid counts as a death fakeout? For the characters we clearly saw just being captured? Who were never at all stated as being dead?

Then again, you list every time a character gets injured at all as if getting hurt means clearly they were gonna die, which.....doesn't remotely track.

Well, they storm the area and kill everyone except the four main Scions (including the receptionist), who they instead capture so they can be rescued later. Not that much of a stretch. The concept of dying from injuries isn't entirely foreign in this universe either.

Thancred: Flow, and that's it. He beats Ran'jit, and it was never inferred he was dead.

The fight plays out like he's giving his life, and he's completely depleted afterwards. The game doesn't need to display in bold letters "Thancred is about to die" for it to be inferred. Next scene: he's just sitting on some steps like it was a light scrap.

The Twins: Coils? No idea how your mind went to death with that.

Alisaie: "We'll not survive another blast..." (spoiler: they do)

Many people survived the fall of the Garlean tower in Abania. It was never inferred any of the Scions had died there. Even some Garlean soldiers survived.

You might've forgotten when Fordola sliced her up, but it's just another Y'shtola case that was already discarded.

Urianger: His body wasn't in the Waking Sands. Why would anyone ever think he died?

Same reason as the other three?

Krile: We didn't even know her when the Isle vanished.

Why does this matter? The Isle was thought to have been deleted from existence until Krile casually pops up later none the worse for wear.

Many of these I've never seen interpreted as deaths before this post. Not once in almost ten years of playing this game.

There was definitely some discussion about Thancred/Ran'jit, and I'm sure there was at least some conjecture regarding the unknown fates like Krile/G'raha.

You didn't even bring G'Raha being shot by Emet. I mean, I don't include it because Emet says 30 seconds later "cat not dead btw"

I think that was the point of this thread. "Not dead BTW" sums up at least most of these incidents.

You didn't even bring up Amaurot, and for that one I'm willing to give the Twins and Ryne one each, because even I got surprised Ryne was just fine after The Dying Gasp. Then again, Ryne is a retired character.

Might have to be more specific with this one... If anything, this was yet another moment where it really looked like G'raha was toast.

Maybe my statement goes way further than I thought it did: You truly (and inexplicably) are obsessed with the concept of Scion Deaths.

I think you are exaggerating. You're free to dismiss all of those incidents, because that's all they are.

[Xirean]

Lots of fun discussion here. For me death/consequences is simply a matter of the stakes being elevated. Any time in a story that the stakes are raised like a big monster being unleashed or people going off to save the entire world, there needs to be some sort of cost to that raised stake. Otherwise it feels too easy. It feels hollow. Whether that cost is a death or an injury makes no difference to me. I would also like to see new cast members take the place of older ones and I understand people's desire to have characters killed off to facilitate that. If they are dead then in theory they shouldn't be coming back anymore. It's the only way you can be certain that the cast has been changed for good. I feel like people are poorly communicating those two concepts when they talk about how they want the scions to die. They want a cost and they want new people.

[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.

[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.

[AwesomeJr44]

Take some agency and just block the guy so you don't have to see/bump his threads if you hate him criticizing your favorite toy so much.

^ This. I've been saying this for god knows how long. They clearly don't want to block him, they just like getting mad over his threads. While it was kinda funny watching the regulars flail around and throw tantrums every time they see Aveyond's name pop up for a while, the bit's gotten a little old and it's not that funny anymore, just mainly sad.

For me death/consequences is simply a matter of the stakes being elevated. Any time in a story that the stakes are raised like a big monster being unleashed or people going off to save the entire world, there needs to be some sort of cost to that raised stake. Otherwise it feels too easy. It feels hollow.

Exactly. People want main character deaths because the stakes of the MSQ have been non-existent for years now. It's not fun watching characters that you know are invincible because the devs wouldn't risk people on Twitter throwing a fit over any actual consequences for the character.

IDK both you guys and /mmog/ (which is probably just the same two or three anons who ruined the thread for months now) have this ridiculous drama that is pretty funny to watch.

/mmog/? Is that a 4Chan board? I barely even look at that site, let alone post there, but that looks like a 4Chan board title. Regardless, I assume that if it was anywhere near relevant I would have heard of it by now.

[Kickwars]

^ This. I've been saying this for god knows how long. They clearly don't want to block him, they just like getting mad over his threads. While it was kinda funny watching the regulars flail around and throw tantrums every time they see Aveyond's name pop up for a while, the bit's gotten a little old and it's not that funny anymore, just mainly sad.

IDK both you guys and /mmog/ (which is probably just the same two or three anons who ruined the thread for months now) have this ridiculous drama that is pretty funny to watch.

/mmog/? Is that a 4Chan board? I barely even look at that site, let alone post there, but that looks like a 4Chan board title. Regardless, I assume that if it was anywhere near relevant I would have heard of it by now.

Lol

[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.

[Renalt]

^ This. I've been saying this for god knows how long. They clearly don't want to block him,

Yeah but blocking does nothing. Yeah it removes THEIR post...but if it's quoted then you see it from there. Blocking people will only 100% work if that person never says anything quotable.

Take me for example. You can block me but if I say something and someone else quotes it...

Then "hello there". It's me again. You thought I was gone? No. I live through others.

Now if it actually blocked the quoted lines too...oh YEAH would a lot more people use it. Myself included.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Yeah but blocking does nothing. Yeah it removes THEIR post...but if it's quoted then you see it from there. Blocking people will only 100% work if that person never says anything quotable.

Take me for example. You can block me but if I say something and someone else quotes it...

Then "hello there". It's me again. You thought I was gone? No. I live through others.

Now if it actually blocked the quoted lines too...oh YEAH would a lot more people use it. Myself included.

Blocking also doesn't remove threads from visibility. Only posts within a thread that are not quoted.


Also, I think we'd run out of block space with as many alts as skiros/brofists/titanmen has


Venandi, tatatatatatata, all his recent ones... BeautyAstrologian, Ativan....