Standing There Syndrome

[sindriiisgaming]

We've all seen it. We all hate it. When characters, often our own, simply stand there during cutscenes where something bad is happening, when there is absolutely nothing stopping them from intervening.

Now, we also know that the reason we don't get to see our WoL kick people's behinds cinematically is due to budget - there are way too many different jobs, and there'd have to be either one variation for each, or to have us engage in a completely different way (the punch).

However, everyone also knows that you can (often quite easily) simply write around it. Have the characters who aren't going to do anything in a scene either not be there, or be otherwise busy with other threats. It's a key, and very simple skill to have as a writer, especially when dealing with walking nukes.

Stormblood was very guilty of it. Endwalker had few, but egregious moments. And then there is Dawntrail.

I'm not going to mention the MSQ, we've all suffered through it, we all saw how 80% of things only happen because characters are either holding the dumb ball or the inaction ball. I thought I was done giving feedback about 7.0. And then I started doing the Role Quests.

Good gods, it's never been this bad. Putting aside the even lower quality writing than the MSQ (pranks, really? Lighthearted doesn't have to mean juvenile. Please make the writer responsible play through the Hildibrand questline over and over again until they understand that.), almost every single thing that happens in these godforsaken cutscenes is due to no one involved having any initiative whatsoever. There are so many ways to write around this, to keep someone busy or unavailable, and they use not a single one of them.

The Warrior of Light has the Echo. Surely the writers know this? That it's the perfect plot device for us to learn about things that happened when we weren't somewhere? That it is how ARR handles the attack on the Waking Sands, and they didn't even need to because we weren't even walking nukes yet.

Sub-ARR. This is where we've gotten to.

wol is half sedated in most cutscenes now. its crazy. i think canonically hes just had a complete mental breakdown after endwalker. hopefully this ends soon... my wol acts like he has chronic dissociation. at least the raids might get a side glance or alert reaction from him