What flavors of Trauma are in Werlyt?

[Omedon]

Ok, I need to do these quests, and the two recurring reviews I hear of them are "very good" and "very traumatic," to the point that there's some eyebrow-raising trigger warning-like talk going on. I don't often stick around for the details when I hear that sort of thing, but now I kind of need to know.

I would like to ask just what flavors of darkness exist in this questline because that will determine whether I do this story skipping through cutscenes like mad or actually savoring it.

It's not that I can't handle mature or dark themes, I just... either need to be ready for it or reserve the right to have my gaming be more escapist than "artistic journey of emotional impact." I'm not going to get into debates, as this is a personal taste thing, but when I heard "as a mother, this was very difficult to watch" from one review I immediately buried the questline from consideration, as I don't do violence against kids or pets. But now it's mandatory for the Tataru line.

So, you don't *have* to spoil it, but I'd rather be spoiled than depressed. If you were to write "content notes" for Werlyt, what would they be?

Thanks in advance for any and all helpful replies.

[Wyssahtyn]

it's trite.

[Simple_Barghest]

Sounds the FF14 fandom over-dramatizing things like usual.
Anyways enough of my grousing: It's mostly child soldiers. Child soldiers, PTSD, abuse and gaslighting, trauma, catatonic states, etc. Nothing beyond that, it's fairly grim in its own right but the subject matter itself has been done better elsewhere. Edit: Which isn't to say that Sorrows of Werlyt is bad. It's not bad, in my honest opinion.

[DayHealer]

Lmao people calling Werlyt questline traumatic, bet are the same people that says Meteion is a good final antagonist and the scions "deaths" in Ultima Thule were emotional

[Boblawblah]

Lmao people calling Werlyt questline traumatic, bet are the same people that says Meteion is a good final antagonist and the scions "deaths" in Ultima Thule were emotional

[Lunaxia]

The emotional trauma of having to trawl through the shoddy writing haphazardly employed in a bid to earn redemption points for Gaius War Crimes McGee?

But on a slightly more serious note, I think they may be referring to the part where the villain forces some children to partake in the physical torture of another prisoner. It's arguably creepy, even if you're not sensitive about that sort of thing.

Or perhaps they just mean the villain in general. The facial expressions he pulls alone are pretty traumatic, to be fair.

[DiaDeem]

There's family death, lots of it.

Also, different kinds of trauma affect people differently. Saying something isn't too bad when it doesn't affect you personally ignores the basic human condition of individuality. I know people who didn't bat an eye at Quintus in EW, and other people were affected by it heavily. Each person is different.

[Iscah]

The villain is a creep of the highest order, and as others have noted, there's a scene where he's outright torturing someone for having failed him, with the implication that he's been keeping all his underlings in line like this for years, and while it's not graphic as such, I ended up skipping the scene a little way into it (I regretted watching what I had) because I just don't need that in my brain.

I'm also just on the side of not liking the storyline as a whole. The drama feels manufactured – here's this whole cast of characters who have no real clear purpose or depth to them except that they're willing to commit to kamikaze missions and die one by one. And collectively for some reason they consider themselves "Gaius's children" and call him Dad and he guilts over their deaths. People seem to take this as deep and emotional storytelling but for me it just seems like they tried too hard to make me feel sad and it rings false.

I like this game and get emotional about it as a whole, but Werlyt does nothing for me except get me annoyed at bad writing, and puzzled why so many praise it.

[Omedon]

People seem to take this as deep and emotional storytelling but for me it just seems like they tried too hard to make me feel sad and it rings false.

I could apply this to so much of endwalker. I called it "cheap heat" (a pro wrestling term) when all the tragedies surrounding the baby matsya ends up carrying took place, and I refused to let it take purchase. And yet, I cried like a baby when a certain family embraced Urianger!