Synodic Scribe's "The Steady Change in Writing..." Video

[Valence]

He has been a brainless blunt instrument since ARR let's be real.

It wouldn't be so bad if the world didn't revolve around the WoL. But they simultaneously try to make everything depend on the WoL while making him a mute vessel. It's atrocious writing.

Adding to this, a lot of people do not remember how the story felt until ShB showed up because they started playing after.
Before SHB happened, the WoL was the blandest, derplandest character ever made. It was so much designed so that and I quote "every player could insert themselves in its skin and identify as the main protagonist" that it was literally a blank cardboard that was just doing chores for the scions. The WoL had no story, no personality, no voice, nothing. It was just there, as Yoko Taro said, exercising its neck muscles toned by a lifetime of nodding. ShB has been the first time where they put the spotlight over the actual story of the WoL and started inserting it into the overarching plot, but before this? There was no Azem, there was nothing. The spotlight has never been on the WoL before except when a primal needed be killed, let's be real.

[Exmo]

Player focus I think is one of the main keys of successful storytelling in FFXIV, and as OP's video says a few times, the most popular expansions are the one where the WoL is still the focal point and the character that pushes the story forward. Any time that importance is pulled away, whether it be Lyse or Wuk or whoever, the overall story suffers for it. I don't even think we specifically need the Scions clustering around us constantly as some people seem to want; we just need to be the main focus again. I'm sure it sounds narcissist, but we really are more connected when the game makes us feel like we made a difference in that scenario. FFXIV players don't want to feel like tag-alongs or bodyguards; they want to feel like the character that affects the greatest change.

On the contrary, lots of people liked the idea of the WoL being a mentor in DT and wished it had been leaned into more.

[Jeeqbit]

I personally am content to not be the hero of the universe. I am content with the idea of being just a person in this fantasy world. While many people agree with me on this, many people do not.

However, since we are the hero of the universe, it's obnoxious to suddenly not be and pretend like we aren't the one to take out Sphene. That's what we do now. Fortunately, Yoshi-P has said the Warrior of Light will return to being the hero of the world very soon.

I am content for what we do to be much simpler though and I think that is needed in order to reset our power. For example, we could get locked in a prison for some weeks which weakens our physical strength and has a lasting impact on it as our aetherial aptitude is experimented on like Krile was, then we escape and go after a run-of-the-mill thief and fight their minions through the dungeons, culminating in a simple duel with them at the end.

I don't think we need the scions there are at all and we could just go alone (like 6.1's patch art falsely suggested we would), I think they are just concerned that different players are attached to different scions. But they really should just send us somewhere alone.

[Bekuta]

I personally am content to not be the hero of the universe. I am content with the idea of being just a person in this fantasy world. While many people agree with me on this, many people do not.

However, since we are the hero of the universe, it's obnoxious to suddenly not be and pretend like we aren't the one to take out Sphene. That's what we do now. Fortunately, Yoshi-P has said the Warrior of Light will return to being the hero of the world very soon.

I am content for what we do to be much simpler though and I think that is needed in order to reset our power. For example, we could get locked in a prison for some weeks which weakens our physical strength and has a lasting impact on it as our aetherial aptitude is experimented on like Krile was, then we escape and go after a run-of-the-mill thief and fight their minions through the dungeons, culminating in a simple duel with them at the end.

I don't think we need the scions there are at all and we could just go alone (like 6.1's patch art falsely suggested we would), I think they are just concerned that different players are attached to different scions. But they really should just send us somewhere alone.

I'd be okay with not being the hero of the universe, but we still need to be the main character in our story. Making Wuk Lamat the majority of the focus, and having her be the one to take down the big bad is so bad its almost insulting.

[Red-thunder]

Any time that importance is pulled away, whether it be Lyse or Wuk or whoever, the overall story suffers for it.

I disagree. A lot of people care about the importance of their WoL but I don't. I'm fine with the world not revolving around him.

Stormblood had a decent story, although it was pretty disjointed because of the split. Yotsuyu was probably the most nuanced villain they've made in this game, on par with Emet Selch.

Dawntrail is in a league of its own, and it's not because Wuk Lamat is the main character. It's because the writing is childish. The cultures are walking tropes. The villains are copy-pasted from ShB and EW. Zoraal Ja had a lot of potential but they neglected to develop him.

There is a lot of similarity between Dawntrail and Dragon Age: Veilguard. The biggest one is the infantilization of the entire story. The one single time things got a bit more mature, at around Lv95, it was quickly resolved with a "friendship conquers everything" and sends us to a Western cowboy shootout with rubber bullets. But to me this has been a thing since ShB, arguably SB. It's just that ShB and EW were more cohesive and had more depth, but it was still childish at its core because of its poor writing.

The "dark" scenes in ShB and EW feel very artificial and plastic, because they are. Tesleen was put there to shock you and to build stakes. But if you think about it just a little the whole artifice falls flat because she was only there to build stakes. She was introduced and unceremoniously killed off. Her character exists just to shock you. A lot of the "mature" story beats in ShB and EW had little to no build up. Elidibus' retcon was another egregious example of this. The writers had to cut off Elidibus' past story and place the new him in a quarantined little box so that their story beat can make sense. Ishikawa is a capable short story writer, but she is terrible at writing long, grandiose epics. There are such examples before ShB too (Moenbryda), but they were rarer back then.

The situation gets even worse in DT, because now it is both artificial and lacks depth. At least under Ishikawa if you don't think too much about the worldbuilding it's a feel good story. But in DT entire tribes are introduced not to shock you or to introduce some nuanced take on humanity, but to give you quests about trading coins because the entire tribe exists just to trade....

[JohnLakeside]

Here's my controversial take as someone midway through EW. ARR (despite its weak main narrative) through Stormblood felt like playing inside an amazing fantasy novel. I genuinely think Stormblood gave us a bona fide masterclass in handling themes of imperialism and nationhood.

I also believe ARR through Stormblood is the real 'trilogy' of the Hydaelyn saga, despite most people considering it to be Stormblood through EW. But to be fair, I haven’t finished EW yet.

Anyway, starting with Shadowbringers, the writing became so focused on plotplotplot and big reveals that it just started to feel like… well, a video game (whoa). But seriously, somewhere along the line, the writers stopped caring about giving the people and world of FFXIV sociological depth.

[Auro_Seldaris]

Here's my controversial take as someone midway through EW. ARR (despite its weak main narrative) through Stormblood felt like playing inside an amazing fantasy novel. I genuinely think Stormblood gave us a bona fide masterclass in handling themes of imperialism and nationhood.

I also believe ARR through Stormblood is the real 'trilogy' of the Hydaelyn saga, despite most people considering it to be Stormblood through EW. But to be fair, I haven’t finished EW yet.

Anyway, starting with Shadowbringers, the writing became so focused on plotplotplot and big reveals that it just started to feel like… well, a video game (whoa). But seriously, somewhere along the line, the writers stopped caring about giving the people and world of FFXIV sociological depth.

Stormblood has practically nothing to do with Hydaelyn and Zodiark though. Why would you even consider it part of the story? It's the "Boring middle part" that ultimately matters very little in the end.

[Mondschnee]

Thanks for highlighting this topic here as well. It's a very good video. The only thing I personally disagree with him is that imo the SHB marketing was still fine, not too far fetched since you could still argue you bring the shadow back to a land that has been flooded with light, but it might have introduced the trend, yeah...

[CuteBucket]

I'm not familiar with this youtuber, but I mostly agree with what he had to say here. Full disclosure, I absolutely loved Shadowbringers and it remains my favorite expansion and story. However, I can agree with Synodic Scribe in that because it was so well received, they just keep trying to recreate elements of of that expansion over and over in this very clumsy way that fails to understand *why* ShB worked in the first place.

One of the most magical moments in this game for me was getting to The Tempest and seeing the reveal of Amaurot. It's one of those moments that has stuck with me all these years in a way no other part of the game had. Watching recordings of people playing through the game online shows that this is a pretty common experience. But you don't see that same reaction from people for seeing Ultima Thule or Living Memory. Why?

The reveal of who the Ascians really are, the tragedy they faced, and why they did what they did to try and right that wrong and bring justice to their people, had three previous expansions of slow build-up. Even in Stormblood, a relatively low Ascian expansion, you still get the feeling that they are somehow involved in what is happening, working in the shadows, for reasons we then could not fathom. We didn't need each of the previous expansions to focus on them--it was enough that we saw fleeting glimpses of them here and there, building that tension, setting the stage, so when we finally, after hundreds of hours of gameplay, get to Amaurot, we're hit like Frank Reynolds crying in the theater and saying "Oh my God. I get it."

As much as I thought the story of Hermes and Meteion was an interesting one, it doesn't get this time or build-up barely at all. I wanted to be so much more invested in those characters and their story, but I just can't be, because Endwalker was so clearly supposed to be two expansion that got squashed into one and barely has any room to breath, and its patches have nothing to do with it and just go do their own copy-paste FFIV references. Which would have been fine as a side story like the Sorrows of Werlyt, but apparently we don't get stand alone trial series stories anymore.

Do I even have to go into why Living Memory and Sphene completely failed to hit emotionally for many players again? Just look in any story discussion area on these forums or elsewhere. That was even less build up than Hermes and Meteion! At least those two were tied to the Final Days, which had been talked about in ShB. Living Memory and Sphene *come crashing into the story out of nowhere in the most literal sense possible.* No foreshadowing, no years of hints and rumors, just another Villain of the Week with no ties to anything or anyone to show up and cause trouble and then get whooped with the Power of Friendship until they're not a problem anymore and they say sorry. Ugh. People say to judge DT more like ARR as they are both setting up new stories, but at least ARR had fun and interesting world building and mystery it set up, whereas DT made some of the most boring characters and shallow lore I've had the displeasure of interacting with in a video game.