[Spoiler - 6.0] Lv. 83 MSQ - How One Quest Broke My Connection to my WoL

[WizardOfWinter]

I've never had an experience so bad in a game that it made me want to quit playing. I have now. "In From the Cold" was so awful as to make me stop MSQ progress entirely. I'm leaving the solo duty itself aside - it's flawed to high heaven, but passable. It's what's around it that's so terrible.

The Wrong Kind of Questions

• Apparently sharded Ascians can teleport the WoL with ease? Why didn't the much more powerful complete Ascians use this constantly on us? We've seen them do it before, but never with such ease. For how effective it is, why haven't they?
• Somehow, we can be forced out of our bodies for extended periods of time. How? It's hand-waived with a reference from two expansions ago. Why don't we remember anything before waking up? What happens if we die, or if our "home" body dies? How did we get back to our old body? How did Zenos get back to his?
• How long exactly did it take for Zenos to leisurely stroll his way to Camp Broken Glass? Apparently almost as much time than it took us, on the brink of death, to crawl halfway there. Did Zenos not know there was a clock, or was he purposely so ineffective?

These aren't the fun kind of questions that invite engagement with the world. They're the kind of questions that make you wonder if thought was put into what's happening on screen.

Sound and Fury Signifying Nothing

• One of Zenos's stated goals was to get us emotionally invested enough in fighting him by killing our friends. At the end, no one's even injured. Zenos barely even attacked the Scions after standing around.
• What new information did we learn? A monologue about Anima, maybe, but we were going to storm the castle anyway. We don't even treat bodyjacking as a threat that might be used against us in our next assault.
• What of character impacts? Thancred frames it as "glad I'm now not the only one." Y'stola basically says "that sucks, but we need to keep moving." And everyone else? It's a mild amusement. Only Alphinaud seems to care about whether or not we're okay in any capacity.

And are we okay? Apparently the WoL is, somehow. But as a player? I'm not. I'm not at all.

Nothing, At What Cost?

I've just had my player avatar, the one I've played with for hundreds of hours, taken from me. Without warning, without explanation, without consequence, without character or plot development, without anything except a middling solo duty. I look at my WoL now, the one I used to feel happiness and joy and connection with, and I feel...nothing. It's just a bunch of pixels now. It always has been, of course, but isn't the point for us to empathize with our avatar? That's gone now. And for what?

For those of you who say it's just a game and I should quit, don't worry - I've taken your advice. There's a million games out there I can play, now that I no longer feel the thing that kept me playing this one: a connection to my WoL.

[Carin-Eri]

It was certainly one of those story-points you either loved or hated.

I didn't like it much either to be honest, although more the gameplay element than the story - I detest 'beat the timer' in any form it takes.

[Frizze]

The timer is part of the psychological trick that is that entire solo duty. Every instanced duty in the game has a timer on it, solo or group. For the type of content that this duty entails, the "standard" timer is 30 mins. But none of the other duties(at least none i can think of) highlight or stress the timer element. The timer on this one is... was it 26 mins? I havent seen it in a minute, but in my head its less then the standard 30 but more then 25. Someone with perfect knowledge about what is expected of them can finish in under 5 mins, so the timer is far more then is required. Of course, someone can also spend the entire timer never getting to the second trigger(the first being that fight in the enclosed area and paying respects for the fallen soldier). Having watched a lot of streamers try this live, ive yet to see someone time out. Ive seen people fail the stealth and get overwhelmed, and ive seen one or two get close on the timer(less then 2 mins) but its always been kinda a non-issue. The 5.3 solo instance where you relive your journey with Elidibus ive seen a lot more people get into timer trouble on(so many things to distract).

As to the OP... this feels to me like a wild overreaction. But im also not the thought police, so i dont get to tell someone else how to feel. Sorry it didnt agree with you. Personally i find In From The Cold to be one of the more effective parts of the story, and the ending they build up to through the expansion hit me SO hard. But i am me, and you are you.

[Exmo]

Not clear from OP why you feel disconnected from your character by virtue of this quest. You listed a bunch of questions that reads like cinema sins, which of you like that sort of attitude to media you do you. But the only thing that sticks out as relevant to the main point is the quest disembodied you and you feel you cannot be embodied again. That's an amazing response to the story, if I were the writer I'd be ecstatic to see the intended terror of that story beat was communicated so cleanly.

[Brandr]

One Ascian displayed the power to disembody. One total.
It doesn't mean all Ascians can do it or even if it's an Ascian exclusive magic.

May even not be Ascian magic at all since there is a boss that does a prototype version of it, that one in a Charles Xavier' chair.

[Enkidoh]

Also Fandangalangadingdong didnt have the power specifically by default to pull another's soul from their body, he was actually using Alus's souljacking technology that Fandaniel recovered from Alus's lab in Ala Mhigo (you know, the same thing that was used against you in the second boss fight of Ala Mhigo where you're pulled out of your body and have to get back to it quickly or else you're KO'd?). to pull the WoL's soul from their body and put it into the corpse of a deceased Garlean centurion (it was strongly presumed the corpse was the same one Zenos used temporarily until he got his own body back during SB's story). This is why your soul ultimately is ejected from the host body, it's the limitations of Alus's technology, and it was simply a means to an end. Like much of EW, it was a callback to an earlier plotpoint in the story.

Fannyboy and Zenos wanted to see just how powerful you really were, and the actual source of said power, that maybe it was your body that was the key (hence why Zenos then takes your body for a joyride to Camp Broken Glass while Fandaniel drops you in your borrowed Garlean meatsuit into the ruins of Garlemald.

But it showed that it was your soul as well that made you who you were, given you're the reincarnation of Azem the Wanderer, a more powerful Ancient than Fandaniel ever was, and putting the will to protect others and their needs before your own which is where your power truly lies. Something neither really understood (Well, Fandaniel did once, a long time ago, but that's another story.) Evil cannot understand good and all that.

[WizardOfWinter]

Not clear from OP why you feel disconnected from your character by virtue of this quest...

This is the thing. I think I'd have actually enjoyed and respected this feeling of disconnection, if it was treated similarly to other moments that contained even less violating things. After the "assassination" of Nanamo and getting drugged in Heavenward before the peace meeting, the WoL more than once, expansions later, treats drinks suspiciously. Both have lasting impacts on the story - one kicks off a whole expansion, and the other results in massive character growth for a up-to-this-point minor character. Heck, in Shadowbringers just before, whether or not we can contain all of the light aether is such a concern that *how* characters ask if we're okay is even a plot point. All of those moments get set-up far better than literal body-swapping far stronger the twenty-second jaunt we saw in Ala Mhigo, and somehow are completely abandoned and forgotten about before we even finish quest turn-in. Strong reactions to media can be great, if you've set things up for it to be impactful. This felt very much like a "we have this half-finished solo duty and need to shoehorn in how to make it work in a plot that doesn't even care about it" event, making a strong reaction be in service to...what, exactly?

Also Fandangalangadingdong didnt have the power specifically by default to pull another's soul from their body, he was actually using Alus's souljacking technology that Fandaniel recovered from Alus's lab in Ala Mhigo...

Thank you for you thoughtful reply, first and foremost. In discussing this with the community, I've been surprised by how many people have tried to find a way to help me grapple with and understand this. Even in this, the community is amazing, and for that I am grateful.

This is the problem with word limits on forums - I wanted to go far deeper into this, but had to gloss over it. I understood what they were attempting to call back to. Even in that boss battle, it was treated as something we almost trivially overcame, not even requiring our Echo/Azem's soul to do (as shown by our NPC party members). Now it's somehow powerful enough to keep us from going back for some indeterminate but far longer time, to the point where if they cared to use it to actually hurt us instead of screw with us/experiment, they could have wrecked us and the Scions. The fact that nobody considers that they can do it again to us is wild. The technology is now so advanced as to displace the WoL for long enough to turn the tides of a conflict (or just destroy our original body), and since apparently we can be teleported around indiscriminately now, this should be treated as a threat that can be used on us again, at any time and in any place. Instead, past the quest turn-in screen, everyone seems to develop amnesia that it even happened. So when I feel this strong reaction to what happened, and not even our friends and allies seem to treat it as anything but next-level crazy wacky hijinks that escalated inexplicably in power and significance from where we last saw it, with no indication of why we're somehow unconcerned about it...yeah. I'm feeling this way for something the story itself doesn't seem to care about.

Which is a shame. I imagine the world where this got the setup it deserved, where we'd get hints about it (like Ala Mhigo) before it happens, only to find out it's far stronger than we expected (maybe because Fandango has knowledge of souls from the Ascian and Allagan persepective now). Some Scion - probably Graha, the poor lad - gets injured as a result of this. Whether the WoL is actually capable of charging in, or even if they should risk getting them so close to that tech again, is considered. And then it's a threat looming over us the entire time we charge in after Anima. We have escalation that doesn't come out of nowhere, consequences from the action, consideration of how it impacts the world, and still get to destroy the tech and remove it from the plot one quest later. Heck, as someone else mentioned to me, maybe the significant aether expenditure to do this is why they only break five of the six seals after, meaning it's actually cost our villains something to do this. Even that small level of integration probably would have me applauding them for their work and the execution of all those themes you mentioned and evoking such a strong emotional reaction (or lack of reaction) in me, instead of just...sitting here, dumbfounded and disconnected.

[Birdbrain]

Funny how different but similar people's perceptions end up being. "In from the Cold" was one of my favorite experiences in the game but I did share quite a few of OP's criticisms all the same.

There did seem to be very little lasting damage which is an utter shame. Nobody got injured because of plot reasons, ok fine, but I was hoping for some real psychological damage instead. Right after that quest you unlock a new dungeon-- my hope was that the WoL would be distracted or still in shock from being bodyjacked and mess up on the mission somewhere. Maybe be distant and distracted from the rest of the NPCs. I was seriously hoping for some major "Are you really the WoL right now?" suspicions to come up. I don't recall there being any and this major event was seemingly brushed aside. Being forced to inhabit a stranger's (dead) body alone should be scarring, juxtaposed with how casual Zenos seems about it.

Again despite it being a favorite quest for me, my immediate thoughts upon completion were 'that ended too soon, too suddenly, and barely anybody seems to care'. I enjoyed it but was also disappointed. I wondered if they had to rush through that quest because they didn't want the cutscene to last too long, because it was also attached to a solo duty, or something. Definitely felt like things were hurried along for "reasons". It didn't break my connection to my WoL or anything, but I could see how the fumbles would break some people's immersion. Endwalker MSQ had some really strange pacing decisions.

[WizardOfWinter]

Funny how different but similar people's perceptions end up being. "In from the Cold" was one of my favorite experiences in the game but I did share quite a few of OP's criticisms all the same.

With the help of some amazing friends, and still dealing with the residual effects of things...gods, it is obvious how much they wanted to take everything with Anima, Fandaniel, and Zenos and just get it over with as soon as possible. Lucia basically looking at the camera and saying "Don't expect Zenos to be in this story anymore" was the nail in the coffin there. (And later on seeing someone also say "Yeah, Fandaniel really was way more extra than he probably should have been" was also fascinating.) As someone who hated it, it's frustrating to be so invalidated. I can only imagine how much worse it must be to actually like it, and have the writers and plot basically tell you that you're not getting more of any of it, so move on. (I'm sure they'll attempt to bring both Fandaniel and Zenos back for an attempt at tying up loose ends - I'm already bracing for disappointment.)

_____

I still feel that disconnect from my character, and I still feel frustration at knowing the Scions are bulletproof from here on out (if "In from the Cold" didn't have consequences, nothing will). It's rare that I'd consider removal of content an improvement, but it's so clear how levels 81-83 of this weren't the story the writers wanted to tell. It only makes what happened feel worse - it's SO clear that everything post-Zodiark is where the love and attention went in this expansion. I wish they'd have just committed and focused on that to begin with. I can only imagine how much I'd have enjoyed the far better stuff that came after if I didn't have this experience. Alas, I'll never know - but I'll try to enjoy this how I can, for the sake of at least seeing this through.

[Shistar]

I still feel that disconnect from my character, and I still feel frustration at knowing the Scions are bulletproof from here on out (if "In from the Cold" didn't have consequences, nothing will)

This, a thousand times. I miss when I used to be scared my WoL's actions would inevitably put someone in danger, or a sacrifice would be needed to barely make it. When the times they told us we're basically "a storm that sweeps everyone around us into this chaos, and wherever we go death will surely follow" actually meant something. If death can't take us, it'll take someone else.
Of course it'd hurt to see some of the Scions we've been attached to for so long dying, but I think a fitting death is much better than joining the plot armor gang. But a dumb death like Ysayle's is worse than joining the plot armor gang...