Please bring back Ishikawa and give her free reign!

[not_ya_wify]

Shadowbringers has been widely accepted as the best expansion and it was written by Ishikawa. Then Ishikawa gave an interview about her plans for 7.0, 8.0, and 9.0 shortly after which was not what we got with End Walker and Dawn Trail. End walker's convoluted mess of a story to finish everything screamed of executive meddling where they shouldn't have been meddling and now Ishikawa didn't get to write Dawntrail at all. What do we get? Another "genocide is ok as long as it's not us" story and an underwhelming trial boss.

You have an incredibly talented writer in Ishikawa who could be reviving Final Fantasy's heyday of the 90s and you choose to get in her way then get rid of her?

Put Ishikawa back in the writer chair and let her write whatever she wants. No more executive meddling. Let the expert do her craft! PLEASE!

[Dikatis]

It's not that they pulled her out. She stepped away so other writers could get their big break just as she did. She's still on as a scenario writer, she's just not the head writer anymore (her name is in the credits and she also wrote the song lyrics for "Smile").

[Zakuyia]

It's not that they pulled her out. She stepped away so other writers could get their big break just as she did. She's still on as a scenario writer, she's just not the head writer anymore (her name is in the credits and she also wrote the song lyrics for "Smile").

Ah yes the toxic positivity strikes again...all jokes its ok for new writers to step in yes but the direction of the story should have been viewed much more carefully.

[Balmung_Griffin]

You guys should stop putting people on a pedestal.
Yoshi-P was also treated like a god by some, and well...here we are, people digging quotes from past lessons learned that were clearly forgotten.

And more importantly, does Ishikawa wants to be Main Scenario Writer? Are you saying as Senior Scenario Writer, fan base favorite and a Manager she has no say on where this was going or she saw and chose to say nothing?

It's just like people say Yoshida is a small fry inside SQEX and can't make things happens when he's part of the board and his rescued game has been footing the bill for sometime.

[Cilia]

If Ishikawa wants a break I say let her have one, especially after the divisive response to Endwalker.

If rumor is to be believed she's on tap for being the lead writer of XVII, and if that's as wildly successful as Shadowbringers / Endwalker it really could propel the franchise back into the mainstream. Don't expect everyone to get a happy ending, though.

[Lyth]

You'll need a Goobbue wall to summon Ishikawa.

I don't think anyone would want to be credited as MSQ writer for this game. There were people cheering Daichi Hiroi's announcement as lead writer on this subforum because they were upset about Amaurot, so I guess there's a degree of karma in this outcome. I similarly think that people won't have any idea how good Yoshi-p is for the game until he decides to pass off his mantle (I think he's probably the only defense against this game being aggressively monetized and then discarded).

There are probably a lot of equally capable writers and everyone will have different preference around philosophy/themes, but I think Ishikawa respects the player as their own individual the most in her writing (a lot of her philosophy of writing comes out in her metacommentary during the Dark Knight quests). I think this was the point of both the Frey and Azem characters, because it let her create a structured, driven narrative while also letting the player be whoever they want. It's essentially a Revan trope, but it works really, really well in interactive fiction.

If I had to come up with a list of what I would hope from a MSQ writer at this point, I think it would be:

• Keep the player character central to the narrative. Proxy heroes are a terrible idea (see: GW2's Trahearne).
• Incorporate lots of player dialogue choices, and avoid deliberately reinterpreting what the player says. This is obviously not a branching storyline, but sometimes a snarky or humorous comment is the only way that the player can diffuse their frustration over a plot direction they have no control over.
• It's probably safer to build new characters over a long time (ideally a couple of expansions) so that you can lay down the groundwork and gauge audience reactions before giving them a more important role. It feels like characters like Krile and Estinien had bit parts for years before they got their big break.
• Be respectful of the work of your predecessors, both in terms of earlier worldbuilding as well as previous Final Fantasy installments. I didn't enjoy bratty Ramza or evil Garnet. Let me preserve the positive memories of these classic games, please.
• If you're going to use up a plot hook, leave another one for the next writer who comes after you. It really feels like we're burning through shards lately for the sake of cheap drama. We have three unknown shards left. Each 'mostly destroyed' shard that we get is a massive loss of worldbuilding potential.

In short, my biggest concern with Hiroi's writing currently is I get the feeling from the Dawntrail MSQ that he doesn't really value the player or the game and series lore that he's inherited, and I was never left with this sense in prior writing. I really want to know if he wrote Arcadion, because I instantly felt more comfortable with the style of writing in that storyline.

I can't put my finger on the exact words to describe it, it's just a general sense of discomfort and distrust around the writing style. I hope they can fix it soon, but something has gone seriously wrong with the writing.

[Cleretic]

What do you think is the current situation in the writing team? That Ishikawa's locked in a closet somewhere, writing How Emet-Selch Got His Groove Back for an audience of nobody? Is it that she's off on some mountain pilgrimage, and nobody told her that Dawntrail was happening?

Because she has editorial control, she is the highest-credited person on the writing staff at this point. She has free reign, there's nobody above her! If she didn't like Dawntrail, it was fully within her power to do something.

You're ignoring all evidence and creating all excuses to deify her, to claim Shadowbringers was some masterpiece auteur's vision and everything else has been a compromised mess that she wouldn't truly approve of, when in truth it's just that her name is on one thing you liked, and a number of things you didn't. Maybe, just accept that she is a writer, who wrote something that aligned with your tastes once.

Also, I do wish we'd stop just trying to submit it as objective fact that Shadowbringers was the best expansion. It's doing none of FFXIV any good, including Shadowbringers. Personally, I put it in third place (and it's not as far away from fourth as anyone wants to imagine), and I wish the community wasn't so fixated on it that such an opinion would be considered an incendiary hot take.

[Lyth]

I don't think there's anything wrong with the Dawntrail storyboard conceptually, but I think there are serious problems with its execution. The pacing was terrible. The character writing and development were stilted. Player interaction with the story was grossly neglected. I can agree that none of us are in a position to troubleshoot the problems and identify how it should be fixed. But I can tell you that I was left with a sense of deep distrust for the writing playing through the MSQ, and that the weight pretty much lifted when I played through Arcadion. That's why I'd love to know if it was the same writer, because at least then I'd know it was just a once off thing.

I can't articulate it entirely, but it just feels incredibly wrong, and I don't want it to continue like this. I don't even need an explanation. Just fix it, and fast.

[Chasingstars]

I think the main problem is that shadowbringers is just a very tough act to follow. It was very well written and engaging and what could be considered the peak of ffxiv's writing from a lore perspective.

So any new writer who is trying to write things, has to contend with that behemoth of an expansion in terms of a new expansion's quality.

[Lurina]

I dunno know why people are blaming Hiroi for Dawntrail's quality. Back at Fanfest, Ishikawa said that Tomohiro Kawasaki and Megumi Onozuka are the ones actually writing it, and they're in the credits as the "Main Scenario Writers", same as she was for Shadowbringers.

Hiroi is credited as the "Lead Story Designer". He presumably came up with the bigger-picture scenario, and then the others did the legwork. It seems as though people are being shuffled around a lot in CS3 at the moment.