Apyaahi was right. DT Final Role Quest Spoilers

[Chasingstars]

i mean, if there's someone that has have had enough experience dealing with actual legitimate people wanting to change the system for the better, and petty would-be tyrants who use people's dissatisfaction with the system to further their own selfish ends to the point where they can tell if a person is being genuine or not right off the bat, it's the WoL.

Yeah that is true. It's probably why there is only two dialogue options. Plus the WoL has had to deal with, at least up until shadowbringers, beast tribes that were fragemented into factions. The first faction, the ones the WoL helps, the good ones that don't want to cause harm unto others and as you said want to change the system for the better and don't want anything bad to happen to them. And then the second faction, the zealots who been brainwashed by primals, who often seeked to harm others and enforce brainwashing onto others. The only beast tribe that doesn't follow this rule, at least for it's more zealot side, was the sylphs, and that was because Ramuh himself also behaves differently compared to other primals, much more sensible than those like Titan or Ifrit.

So that might have been the original intent of the role quests in dawntrail. That the good tribes you encounter that been robbed are the ones would have helped along the way, while the villains are like a microcosm of the more zealot side, and each totem does contain some powerful beast inside that is basically a primal in power.

[tsuchii]

I thought it was cute. The role quests started with a joke theme, it's only fitting. Come on, she got kicked out of her village because she's a freeloader. She refuses to work and she's lazy. It's the punchline. Just enjoy it. Not everything has to be deep.

I wish she can return in the future and redeem herself. She's an interesting character.

[MoofiaBossVal]

I was pleasantly surprised by the quest. It was fun.

They had me on her side when we talked about her motivations in Thanalan

Given Apyaahi's attitude, she probably had a long line of insubordination before the hunting incident, which was the last straw for her village.

But instead of developing her ideas further, the writers reduced her to a foolish character meant to be ridiculed—turning her passion for freedom into a joke. It comes across as mockery of anyone who seeks to challenge societal oppression.

She was not oppressed. She does not point out any incidents of actual oppression in her case. She was living a perfectly normal life in a safe village (there are many people who would be envious of that life, a life of peace and stability and being surrounded by kinsmen) and rightfully got the boot for her selfishness. As for her nitpicking about the nations, no country is perfect, and she wants to cause greater evil than whatever evil she claims to fight against. When revolutions happen, innocents become disposed or imprisoned or conscripted or lose their lives. Widespread starvation and illness. Banditry and rampant crime. And so on. And given Apyaahi's shortsightedness and poor character, it is unlikely she would be able to prevent the power vacuums from being filled by crime syndicates and warlord states, or at best fallible regimes like the ones she just toppled.

My character has stood up for "beast" tribes

I stood up for clans that renounced their warlike ways or refused to encroach upon civilization like their kin.

fought corrupt governments

The Syndicate was never overthrown, we were only bystanders in an internal cleanup incident. We never sat out to overthrown Isghard; we were bystanders that got caught up in internal politicking and then became targets at the end because the Archbishop wanted to wield a corruptive power to take over the world and the Primal slayer was right there in front of him. Was fighting the military occupations of Ala Mhigo and Doma was more about about races repelling foreign invaders and restoring the rule of their own blood brethren rather than motivated by differences of opinion in how the government was run. We did not set out to overthrow Eulmore's government but to kill a Sin Eater, the change of administration there being incidental.

The problem is how hilariously tone deaf the entire quest is. I don’t care how badly the antagonist is you simply do not make fun of a homeless person who had their only shelter stolen then try to act like said person is the butt of a joke that everyone else gets but are stringing the victim along on

This is a problem of Apiyaah's own making. She would not have been told off from her village just because of a single incident. She almost certainly had a long line of intolerable behavior. It is on her for not self reflecting on what made her repulsive and changing her behavior. And given how almost everybody is depicted as good natured in late FF14, there was a good chance she could have gone back home and apologized and be let back in.

[Supersnow845]

^as I said she could be the worst person alive, that is still not something you make fun of.

It doesn’t make it all better because she “deserved” the situation she was in

[Mawlzy]

This is a problem of Apiyaah's own making. She would not have been told off from her village just because of a single incident. She almost certainly had a long line of intolerable behavior. It is on her for not self reflecting on what made her repulsive and changing her behavior. And given how almost everybody is depicted as good natured in late FF14, there was a good chance she could have gone back home and apologized and be let back in.

Repulsive? Really? She's one of the few characters recently who showed a bit of depth before the nuance was beaten out of her by ham-fisted writing. We can all write fan fiction about her background. Yours is that she had a long line of intolerable behavior. Others might decide she was sexually abused by a local magistrate. All equally silly.

Irrespective of where one's sympathies might lay with the merits of anarchism, the story was a complete disaster. Saturday morning cartoons explains how homelessness is actually a lifestyle choice and pretty bunnies are dummies.

[Gourdian]

Yeah, it was a goofy and mean-spirited punch-down. the good old "look at those stupid people who have a problem with the current law and order, they're just lazy and childish and don't want to pay for things!" slapstick caricature. Making a self-congratulatory joke of Those People so they can pat themselves on the back for being the sensible ones.

Some people in this thread have got to google "watsonian vs doylist" before talking though. You are behind and running an entirely different race. Genuinely funny watching the OP and others talk about authorial intent while a ton of people pipe up with, "well the fictional characters were bad people who deserved it!" That's awesome man

[Valence]

Wait until you see the Bluesky thread.

Please no. I opened a page yesterday and needed eye bleach immediately.

[MikkoAkure]

But instead of developing her ideas further, the writers reduced her to a foolish character meant to be ridiculed—turning her passion for freedom into a joke. It comes across as mockery of anyone who seeks to challenge societal oppression.

A lot of people on these forums seem to be super quick at jumping in to defend characters after receiving just their side of their little sob story.


Her "rebellion" against her homeland is not the same as someone challenging social oppression in say Ul'dah or Ishgard. You need to actually think about the context of the culture and the setting and can't just use a one-size-fits-all outlook on every single situation.

She grew up in a hunter-gatherer society that survives by keeping in balance with the jungle in which they live but the whole thing kicks off because she decides to purposefully go against her own tribe's rules to hunt "a mighty prey" for no good reason other than her vanity and sense of rebellion. A society like that which lives in very rough locations needs everyone on the same page to survive more than city-dwelling civilizations would and it's said in multiple places that exile is the result of breaking the Green Word so I'm not sure why she's so surprised.


And while she may have had a point in regards to Ul'dah and Ishgard, our own WoL was personally involved in the oppression in both locations, having been caught in Syndicate schemes as the victim and eventually helping in dismantle the corrupt Ishgardian government.

But I don't think she has a point with Gridania and Limsa. Gridania was the home of the Elementals before it was anyone else's and they're the ones who allowed Hyur and Elezen to live in their home. Their house, their rules. Limsa before the reestablishment of the Grand Companies and Merlwyb's reforms was a lawless pariah state with human traffickers and children pickpocketing in alleyways, trying to survive.


Apyaahi is selfishly only seeing what she wants to see and her "solution" is to gather psychopaths and have them steal magic items from villages much like her own that are making a rough living and only able to survive by the use of them. And then her psychopaths go and try things like poisoning an entire nation or trying to overthrow a nation that only just got off its feet after years of war and oppression. It's one thing to fight against oppression but it's another thing to harm those who have nothing at all to do with it "for the cause".

[Dikatis]

I feel like this isn't the first time where there has been a disconnect between the WoL's words/actions and the player, that it usually happens in cutscenes. Whatever it was, I recall some theory cropping up around the time that the Warrior of Light character, both the one used for marketing and what the player makes, is actually not a blank slate. Think it was sometime in Endwalker or Shadowbringers where such a theory came up.

Well, even before Shadowbringers this has been a thing. The Warrior of Light has never been a complete blank slate and has strong, noticeable traits. They have an unquenchable thirst for adventure and is willing to dive into a voidsent-infested ghost ship for no reason other than, "Ah yeah, that sounds cool!" and brings along twenty-three of their friends plus the Redbill Sky Pirates in search of a thrill. They also clearly enjoy combat to one extent or another, flashing grins or smirks when facing worthy opponents in non-life threatening situations like the Masked Carnivale or during the tournament in the Stormblood Paladin quests. They can also be rather spacey at times, as shown in the sidequest "Too Many Cooks" where they completely fail to register that a batch of "squishy" spices recovered from a shipwreck is in fact moldy and rotten until after it's thrown into soup. They're also stated from almost day one to have a strong sense of justice and repeatedly sticks their neck out for others for no reason other than it's the right thing to do, something that gets them recruited into the Scions in the first place. This desire to help is so profound that they'll respond to requests or demands for aid even during cases of mistaken identity.

All these little traits characterize WoL as an almost Shonen Jump-esque hero. Ishikawa's contributions to the game's writing rounds the Warrior's character by introducing the understandable amounts of angst they suffer over the course of their traumatic adventures and introduce the idea that there are times where they wish they hadn't become a hero in the first place. She emphasizes the Warrior's empathy and the loss they've suffered, to the point that they're able to pity and try to empathize with both Emet-Selch and Elidibus even after everything they've done while having mixed feelings about the Ascians' deaths. Even so, there are limits to WoL's patience and they have plenty of people they despise, something most noticeable with WoL's antipathy for Zenos and outright hatred for Lahabrea during the Pandaemonium raids. Even after saving the world with him, both WoL and Lahabrea part ways knowing full well that they'll never see eye-to-eye.

So yeah, while they can get that Apyaahi was being genuinely friendly to them, it doesn't change what she's done and they see through her honeyed words and justifications for terrorism, standing firm in their beliefs to defend the people they love and care about. They're just baffled and disappointed when the depths of Apyaahi's pettiness and entitlement come to light.

[Valence]

Why are people still trying to explain what was bad with Apyaahi's behavior when it has literally nothing to do with the OP?
Go home, watsonians, you're lost.