DT's Writing: What Could've Been Better

[Hallarem]

Okay, let's break it down, aside from your massive cope:

- Wuk Lamat is supposedly fighting to keep her fathers peace. Who is by the way FROM THAT SIDE OF THE MAMOOL JA you are talking about. So if she is fighting to keep her fathers peace, she probably knows what it was like before the peace? So she probably knows about some cultures, no? And the conflicts they fought, how the people are?
She's shown to be close to the elderly, she didn't talk to them about the old times? People magically stopped talking about their own culture once they moved to Tuliyollal? The past? Things never came up and everyone magically forgot how they got here? Did Wuk Lamat shut her ears with tacos and go "lalalalaala" No matter what angle you look at it from it cracks at the seams.

[StormChase]

And then after the master computer supposedly "deleted" all of the memories of Queen Sphene and we can finally just go beat up this stupid rogue AI trying to destroy all the Shards and the Source by eating up all the aether, WUK LAMAT has to come in and use the Power of Friendship(tm) through the bonds they made (what bonds??) and that MAGICALLY UN-DELETED ALL OF SPHENE'S DATA so that she could be "redeemed" because she realized she did a bad thing and her and Wuk can have a tearful goodbye.I half expected Wuk Lamat to go full Care Bears and call upon the audience to chant "We believe in you, Sphene! Don't give up!"

Where is WoL for all of this? Who knows, the camera hasn't show them in a while. Probably already booted out of cyberspace and vomiting in some corner of Living Memory.

Sphene's a character who really would've benefited from being introduced sooner. The way she's handled is like if you met Emet-Selch for the first time at level 77. But I don't really have a problem with the part where she regains her memories because most of the expansion endings involve some suspension of disbelief (Nidhogg reforming his body from an elezen in Heavensward, Zenos being able to control a primal on par with Bahamut in Stormblood, the WOL successfully joining souls with Ardbert in Shadowbringers, the teleporter just happening to fall near the WOL as they're dying in Endwalker, etc.). Also it was only the memories from her time as an Endless that came back, and she only gave up when she was about to shut down.

[CuteBucket]

snip

Yes, there's often been a big dramatic moment in the stories with wild things happening, but here's the issue: Those previous moments felt earned. We'd been learning about the crazy things dragons, and especially the Elder dragons were capable of for most of Heavensward. There's a whole building plot through Stormblood of Zenos getting the Resonant/artificial Echo, and it's an opportunity to show us just how powerful the Echo as an ability is. Ardbert was first shown as someone "related" in a parallel way to WoL starting all the way back in Heavensward patches, and joining with him was foreshadowed quite a lot in Shadowbringers, with the moments they touched and felt something pull at them together, even though Ardbert was only a ghost at that point. At the end of Endwalker, we are in a zone of pure Dynamis where peoples beliefs and emotions can become reality, and they spent the whole zone establishing the strange nature of the place. None of those moments felt like some out of nowhere ass-pull to me. They are dramatic and fantastical moments, yes, but that is what Final Fantasy has always been.

Maybe that's what they wanted for the end with Sphene, but it missed the mark.

Sphene is a computer. It's never established how an electrope based computer works or "thinks." Living Memory already can't decide whether the Endless are "real people" or not, and switches between treating them like nothing but some code to be deleted one minute and people with real thoughts and goals and dreams we should care about the next. We are told through the last dungeon before the fight that Sphene is erased, and then, oh, never mind, I guess she wasn't because Wuk Lamat is here to Friendship at her. Where was this relationship established and earned? Sphene has been vague and suspicious and distant the whole time she's been on screen. What "friendship" is there to call out to and rekindle?

All they needed to do was just not go through with the "oh no, she's erasing her memories as Sphene and becoming Evil!" bit and commit to Sphene being willing to be brutal to begin with, not this "I have to delete the sweet little pretty princess part of my brain to fight you now. (╥ω╥) I'm sowwy~ Goodbye!" Huh? Why?? Just let her be a Bad Bitch from the start! Sheesh!! Miku Hatsune would make a more compelling villain than this!

I can understand from a writing standpoint why they'd want her last moments to be as Sphene and not Faceless Computer, but this was a unnecessarily convoluted way to go about it just to try to add to the tension that wasn't really there in the whole last zone anyway.

[Midare]

True, but the fact he was around for so long without us knowing what his deal was made it all the more satisfying when we finally learned.

Not really. I barely was even aware of his name once he started becoming more relevant. I barely even remembered him being part of the whole Ascian thing due to the fact that most of his appearances are in cutscenes when he was on his own.

Meanwhile, after one patch with Poochie I was aware that she was a princess and sister of a former student of Sharlayan, the friend of Erenville. Someone "spunky" and always hungry...

And still, 32 quests did a better job than 100.

[StormChase]

Maybe that's what they wanted for the end with Sphene, but it missed the mark.

Sphene is a computer. It's never established how an electrope based computer works or "thinks." Living Memory already can't decide whether the Endless are "real people" or not, and switches between treating them like nothing but some code to be deleted one minute and people with real thoughts and goals and dreams we should care about the next. We are told through the last dungeon before the fight that Sphene is erased, and then, oh, never mind, I guess she wasn't because Wuk Lamat is here to Friendship at her. Where was this relationship established and earned? Sphene has been vague and suspicious and distant the whole time she's been on screen. What "friendship" is there to call out to and rekindle?

All they needed to do was just not go through with the "oh no, she's erasing her memories as Sphene and becoming Evil!" bit and commit to Sphene being willing to be brutal to begin with, not this "I have to delete the sweet little pretty princess part of my brain to fight you now. (╥ω╥) I'm sowwy~ Goodbye!" Huh? Why?? Just let her be a Bad Bitch from the start! Sheesh!! Miku Hatsune would make a more compelling villain than this!

I can understand from a writing standpoint why they'd want her last moments to be as Sphene and not Faceless Computer, but this was a unnecessarily convoluted way to go about it just to try to add to the tension that wasn't really there in the whole last zone anyway.

I think it's sympathetic to the Endless. They shut down Living Memory not because they don't see the Endless as people, but because these people aren't allowed to die. It's established that Endless with unfinished business stick around, so most of the Endless disappear because they're already content and ready to pass on.

Sphene makes more sense as a character when you think of her like Elidibus. At her core she's a kind person, but the way she's programmed she can't not be evil. It's when her power's been taken from her that her original personality finally wins, despite everything.

[SeriousPan]

Alphinaud & Alisaie's character arcs are thrown out the window and they have 0 input on the happenings around them. Alphinaud should have had a LOT to say about Wuk's desire to be a leader and the characteristics she lacked. He is a polite young man but he has learned harsh lessons in ARR, HW and SB. He should have been talking to her the most but he is only here to gather firewood and heal people. Alisaie is overly friendly and has completely lost the bravado mask she usually covers herself in, except it's only for Wuk Lamat. She doesn't treat anyone else in the game with this much affection without trying to hide it but with Wuk she's one step away from calling her sister. The WoL isn't even that close to Alisaie in comparison.

[Mondschnee]

This is true in any FF game. Did people playing FFVI ever think the party wouldn't actually get back together and defeat Kefka after he unleashed the statues? Did people playing FFX ever think the party wouldn't eventually defeat Sin? I could go on and on there.

Uhhh why would I care about any other FF game in that context other than FFXIV itself?

Yes, we are a mentor, and Wuk Lumat goes from believing the empathy she has is worthless to realizing it's a key part of what makes her father a good ruler (among many other things). She is definitely intentionally flawed. You not liking it doesn't make it any less factual.

Man, It's so easy to tell that you are not interested in a genuine discussion. You'd rather spend your time talking down on other people.

Telling someone how perfect they actually are is not mentoring, no matter how you try to spin it. Apart from that, she overcame her motion sickness on her own, we had no part in that. Doesn't have to do with me not liking it. There's an inherent problem with how her insecurities are depicted. Her intentional flaws are very minor in comparison to the flaws that the story doesn't point out because they're not meant to be intentional. These would have made for a much more compelling and believable character growth though.

Aside from the logical fallacy of "just ignore anything that refutes my argument",

Wrong, I simply have heard all of these arguments way too often and they're not believable, so I don't want to argue in that direction is all.

the other key piece is us at that point not knowing anything about what Zoraal Ja's power can do. We do know that he just mincemeat out of someone who had just beaten him and who had fought both us and Estinien to a draw. Aside from the shock of the moment, we have no clue how powerful he really might be at that moment.

We've had plenty of experience with villains and the moment we saw Zoraal Ja coming back to life, we should have grabbed our weapons and intervened.
He showed up in weird armor. You don't need any more reason to be on high alert at all times. This was not a stage play where we were supposed to sit and watch, but the story treated it as such.

[Mondschnee]

To be fair, Wuk Lamat wasn't as determined to understand Zoraal Ja as she was Bakool Ja Ja and the Yok Huy guy because he killed her dad and a bunch of her countrymen. And even though Sphene was also in on it, she'd realized how similar they were as people and wanted to try reaching her through that, even if it didn't work in the end. With Zoraal Ja she realized their similarities too late.

Yeah but at the time, Zoraal Ja's ambitions were to "conquer", so as his sister, she should have tried to understand him more according to her own philosophy, and thereby try to find common ground or change his mind? She gave her own brother up pretty quickly, while showing nothing but respect and patience towards the Yok Huy. But yes, it's another thing they didn't dive into because of a lack of time, I guess? I'm just confused by how little they achieved with the time they had.

I didn't bring this up in the first post because it might've gone past the character limit, but while it's not unique to Dawntrail (there are plenty scenes throughout the game where the WOL just stands there while an NPC gets seriously hurt or killed), the forced incompetence was definitely a problem. Wuk Lamat being too trusting makes sense, but it's hard to believe everyone else would let her go off with a stranger. I think the writers did stuff like that because they wouldn't have time to progress the plot the way they wanted to without it. Easier to have nobody stop her than come up with a better reason why she got abducted.

Yes, other expansions also had this problem with "just standing there", that's definitely true! I remember having a similar feeling after the Satrap was killed in Endwalker, but the "it happened too fast" was at least a bit more believable in the context. And also, the writing was overall better, so I was willing to look past it.

[Raven2014]

Also, another thing Elidibus has going for him is that he's a villain. A hero usually needs more on-screen time for their journey than a villain does. Not that there can't be rushed villains. If he was introduced in 5.2 or even 5.1 he wouldn't have been as effective.

Gosetsu, Yukiri, Hien, Esternien, Ice Heart all had the same or far less screen time than WL and they'll all heroic characters. While not all of them are "great", they're all at least "good". At the sametime, if I say WL is "not that bad", that would just me being extremely polite. Heck, Moenbryda got introduced in one patch and killed in the next and still left a much stronger and more positive impression.

It's not about the time, it's what you do with it. You can cut WL's time in half, or you can double and I doubt the perception about the character would change. One pile of crap, two pile of crap or half a pile of crap, the amount ain't gonna change the fact they're still just crap.

[Bunyon]

Can I just add a bit of positivity by recalling the absolute gigachad of this expansion?

Who is, obviously, Estinien.

Unemployed, travels across the sea just to fight the goddamn ruler of a country, and does such a good job he gets paid a ton of money. Spends the rest of the time fighting other big monsters for fun and praise of the local townsfolk, playing cowboys, and getting drunk of his ass at every saloon. Proceeds to save a bunch more people from the invasion near the end of the game, and when the party is about to go into Living Memory he just hangs back and takes a nice nap until everything is settled. Not a single L.