FFXIV gets praised for its (post-ARR) writing but some of it is pretty rough

QisTopTier · Apr 5, 2022

endwalker spoilers

I don't really get the whole garlemald "redemption and pity" thing people keep saying. They go super out of their way to show off how fucked it all was and the people were with the ideals. With even people from other cities mentioning how they didnt really want anything to do with them directly but given that the fucking world was ending they understood they needed to do a tiny bit of something.

Poppy · Apr 5, 2022

i like the characters, not the story

RelaxItsJustMe · Apr 5, 2022

Becks' said:
I agree with the Zenos assessment. He is a nihilistic edgelord that makes for a miserable main villain of Stormblood. While he is divisive here in FF14 community, Japan fuckin loves Zenos and thats why he sticks around for so long. IMO, he should have died in Ala Mhigo and never come back.

For the dialogue choice at the end, I always interpreted it as a question not posed to the character of Warrior of Light but to players themselves (that's why Zenos says adventurer at the end - breaking the fourth wall) so I went with the first choice. While MSQ is the main course of the game, the best time in the game I had was enjoying Extreme trials and raids with my group of friends so Zenos' statement resonated with me. The fulfillment after beating the content and us going crazy in the Discord call feels so good.
- Endwalker spoiler.

I keep hearing this but is there actually a source for the "Japan loves Zenos"?

The only thing I can really remember was the almost 500.000 vote poll from NHK for all of Final Fantasy.

He placed 94th there. Emet on the other hand, placed 6th (ranking above even characters like Tidus, Tifa and Sephiroth.) That is behind even characters like Yotsuyu (92nd), barely above completely optional characters like Frey (95th, only 1 spot below Zenos) and Hildi (98th). Even Asahi is at 126th and who even likes Asahi? That really does not seem like the ranking of this supposed really popular in Japan character which made the devs push him into every expansion after his introduction.

Viale · Apr 5, 2022

Ashlette said:
Even after reading some of the pro-story replies in here, I'm still convinced that the lore of the game is more interesting than the story itself.

The themes and lore, as pointed out by a few members here, are both excellent, yet the story is contrived to its own detriment. An example at the end of EW being

The gang going to ultima thule without proper protection, knowing that it is the epicenter of the world-ending dynamis, with the player character being aware (and learning the hard way back in Elpis) that they are not immune to its effects.

Ultimately, I feel that the people here trying to defend the story are unintentionally defending the lore instead.

Considering how much love a large amount of the cast gets in FFXIV, I really can't agree with the underlined honestly. I don't quite remember a plot hole on the part you described, but even then, no one, or not many at least, are suggesting the story is infallible. Most in the community have issues with various aspects which is kind of the name of the game with a story this large and touched by so many.

People will also just have different thresholds on what bothers them in terms of a plot hole or not though.

Ashlette · Apr 5, 2022

Eidan said:
What protection are you referring to? It's been a couple of months since I went through the story so my memory is foggy, but wasn't the only "protection" from dynamis to just not give into despair?

An aether barrier that negates dynamis. the ancients made zodiark to protect etheirys with one until he was yeeted at the start of EW.

Resolve does nothing if the dynamis source is strong enough. Not even the player character resisted its effects the first time meteion went insane back in Elpis.

AgeEighty · Apr 5, 2022

alexdotgames said:
These are very disingenuous takes because I am not talking about a different story. AgeEighty in particular: you ask me how I would hypothetically write the storylines differently and then attack me on not writing it the way SE has written it? Are you serious?

Yes, I am. How are you not talking about a different story if your entire take rests on "What if the writers are lying to you and the Ancients weren't really tricking the tribes and instead that's just what they wanted you to think?" Like, what? Are you positing some alternate universe scenario where the game didn't unfold the way it did? Or are you suggesting that they could still go back and revisit all that and retcon it all? That's not happening; they're done with that story arc. Ancients, Ascians, Garleans as antagonists, primals as antagonists, and tribes as antagonists are all "resolved", maybe not to your satisfaction but that's where we're at.

Also, please don't presume the intent of my arguments by calling them disingenuous; you have zero grounds for that.

alexdotgames said:
"The story they wrote is the story they wrote." And I am arguing that the way they have written the story is egregious. That it does get better, but the way it does is not at all enough to get into "good" territory. I even provided suggestions what they could have done to make it better, after you asked me to.

Yes, but your suggestions require an alternate history of the game going back almost a decade. They involve a completely different story (which is fun to imagine but not particularly useful as part of this conversation) vs. asking, "How could the actions of the WoL and Scions have been written better in this story?" (which is useful to think about in this conversation).

alexdotgames said:
I am also not claiming that SE has some "clandestine" motive to brainwash the players. Where do you even get this idea?

I got it from this: "Because, yes, that is what the game is telling you to think. But what if that is only half true?" which suggests you think there's something hidden beneath the story they've told up to now, of which there's been no suggestion or hint in the game.

alexdotgames said:
What I am saying, though, is that colonialism and imperialism and all these other ideologies aren't "strewn in my own head", but in all our heads, including the writers at SE. And that the way they handle these issues is just not par for the course. The game is mired in these issues, it even tries to remedy the most egregious aspects of them but ultimately falls flat in addressing them because the game never owns its complicity.

FF14 always rates it more important to titillate the Warrior of Light as being infallible and morally good than to do good by the other races in its world.

The game never owns its complicity? The game's? Because I disagree. I think the game doesn't shy away from these issues and tries to confront them in a way that is believable in-world and respects the established lore while making changes deemed necessary. Remember, these people inherited this game and its world, they didn't create it.

Personally I would much prefer that the writers do what they did—to confront the real world-adjacent issues surrounding the oppression of the tribes and do so imperfectly—than try to sweep it all under the rug and not confront the game's problematic thematic beginnings.

PshycoNinja said:
I dont think its fair for you to trap the poster by asking them what they would have done to only then use this argument and strawman against them.

Yeah, not what I did. In the same post where I asked the question, I also specified that I meant within the bounds of the story that had already been told up to that point.

Dreamboum · Apr 5, 2022

QisTopTier said:
endwalker spoilers

I don't really get the whole garlemald "redemption and pity" thing people keep saying. They go super out of their way to show off how fucked it all was and the people were with the ideals. With even people from other cities mentioning how they didnt really want anything to do with them directly but given that the fucking world was ending they understood they needed to do a tiny bit of something.

this is absolutely true

Only 10% answered the call to be at garlemald, the situation was so fucked that they had nothing else to do but to save what's left, not to mention their ultimate goal was to strike at the heart of garlemald in order to breach the tower of babil
The truth is that Alphinaud and Alisaie knew that it wasn't the time to try them at the hague and that there was nothing that would get done if everyone went "what about what you did here and there". It would have accomplished nothing to have the moral and debate high ground and it runs sour when the prize is just to have more people dying.
Garleans are brainwashed into thinking they're the victims, you will never get them to convince otherwise but by showing that Zenos is a criminal and that we are as helpers rather than conquerors.

Eidan · Apr 5, 2022

Ashlette said:
An aether barrier that negates dynamis. the ancients made zodiark to protect etheirys with one until he was yeeted at the start of EW.

Resolve does nothing if the dynamis source is strong enough. Not even the player character resisted its effects the first time meteion went insane back in Elpis.

If they could just make a barrier to negate dynamis, why wouldn't they do that back on Etheirys? Why even make the trip to Ultima Thule? I'm sorry I just don't remember that ever being discussed as a plausible solution in the story, even on a small scale. Is Zodiark the only instance where such protection was discussed?"

CaptainKashup · Apr 5, 2022

I've got a friend who's very into the game and who keep showing me cutscenes and I'm like.. Really ?
From everything I've seen, FFXIV is just the usual pure middle school weeb power of friendship cringe. I don't understand how people can be into

Eidan · Apr 5, 2022

CaptainKashup said:
I've got a friend who's very into the game and who keep showing me cutscenes and I'm like.. Really ?
From everything I've seen, FFXIV is just the usual pure middle school weeb power of friendship cringe. I don't understand how people can be into

Hahaha cringe indeed.

EllipsisBreak · Apr 5, 2022

Ashlette said:
An aether barrier that negates dynamis. the ancients made zodiark to protect etheirys with one until he was yeeted at the start of EW.

Resolve does nothing if the dynamis source is strong enough. Not even the player character resisted its effects the first time meteion went insane back in Elpis.

But... it took Zodiark to do that. A super-primal of darkness, made from all the power of half the ancients put together. This isn't something the Scions could just repeat.

Besides, Hydaelyn warned them that aether will not avail them in Ultima Thule. We're not talking about a star with an abundance of aether, we're talking about Meteion's own seat of power. There was never any indication that any effective shield could be made against this.

DNAbro · Apr 5, 2022

CaptainKashup said:
I've got a friend who's very into the game and who keep showing me cutscenes and I'm like.. Really ?
From everything I've seen, FFXIV is just the usual pure middle school weeb power of friendship cringe. I don't understand how people can be into

Y'all really just be posting like we can't make fun of you

AgeEighty · Apr 5, 2022

Eidan said:
If they could just make a barrier to negate dynamis, why wouldn't they do that back on Etheirys? I'm sorry I just don't remember that ever being discussed as a plausible solution in the story, even on a small scale. Is Zodiark the only instance where such protection was discussed?"

Isn't that just a bandaid on the problem rather than a solution? It also just leaves the rest of the universe to rot. Plus where are they going to get enough power to do that again? It's established that the only reason the Ancients did it is that they were willing to sacrifice half the population because they didn't value life the way we do. They also took that approach because they couldn't figure out what the actual problem was. It doesn't seem ideal.

Kenai · Apr 5, 2022

mawilite said:
Just coming into this thread to agree with and reassure Persephone that their takeaways are completely reasonable. I am not interested in debating anyone on whether FFXIV is actually good or bad. Especially if you are a white and or cis person.

FFXIV isn't the worst story in the world, it's often an enjoyable enough 6/10, but it's got its generous share of standard video game asspull writing and its politics are rancid. Zenos was never a good character and never got better. There are moments throughout the game where I've felt very invested in the story but after the being beaten over the head with its subpar-at-best treatment of poc over and over both in main story quests and side content, contrasted with how it'll bend over backwards to humanize fascist characters every time, I've completely checked out. Endwalker's Thavnair area was a small step in the right direction and then it completely slapped me in the face with Garlemald and at this point I only come back for the gameplay and group content with my FC.

I could also go off about how gross FFXIV can get about women and LGBT+ identities but I am not really interested in writing an essay on this game and I personally find its racism to be its most egregious failing. It's fine. It's a 6/10 video game story. There is media out there that is more racist, more sexist, more queerphobic, etc. than FFXIV is. But FFXIV has extremely glaring issues and while it is completely fine if you personally enjoy FFXIV's story, you should seek out other people's perspectives on FFXIVs failings and not dismiss those views.

Without going into too much detail about me, I am brown and a member of the LBGT+ community and most of the problems I initially had with the treatment of different races (literally different races) and PoC has improved to the point where I can say they have gotten far more right than wrong. Several of the most important new side characters in the game are PoC

(Erenville, Matsuya, Nidhana and Livingway, honorable mention to Erichthonios, Vrtra and Varshahn)

spoilerd just in case, and they have consistently made sure to include a variety of skin tones in pretty much every new area that has people in it. The main cast going into EW was definitely still too white for my liking outside of my WoL, but considering where the story has gone I am not worried that we are going to continue to see non-incrimental improvement. They actually did end up

showing how the vast majority of interracial and cultural relations were actually in fact facilitated by Ascian meddling WHILE both admonishing various parties for both continuing the cycle and placing the onus on the perpetrators rather than the victims to create lasting change. That at least has been pretty damn consistent, with one or two notable exceptions (hi Bozja)

I do still want to see more canonically LBGT+ people (they seem to not mention much about orientation at all which isn't satisfying when they could (minor spoiler)

considering the only canonical relationship any of the main Scions has had that we know about ended up being a fairly significant plot point of said character, I would love to see that effort made with an LBGT relationship, but they genuinely don't talk about many major NPC relationships to the point where we don't even know most of the main cast's orientation, so I am personally not too upset, even gave them some props for having a healthy poly romance going

and I do not feel qualified to speak on the yay or nay of women character representation since I am not a woman (outside of the fact that we did get several notable new ones in EW that I personally really liked), but I digress.

I definitely can't rate this story a 6/10 based on those criteria, at least the ones I am familiar with, whether compared to big budget AAA games, or MMOs, or JRPGs, or the FF franchise, or really anything outside of some indie games, which are not going to influence gaming the way FFXIV is. Yes, the bar is that low. Yes, it needs to go up. I won't give FFXIV much in the way of props for their MSQ and what clearly needs more improvement, but let's not mince words about the rest of the industry either. Even if it's not tied into the MSQ a lot of the time, this game has done a lot more than most to make me and several, several others like me feel welcome, and continues to.

I want to see this type of thing brought up anyway because seeing people's different perspectives on stuff is usually worthwhile even if I end up disagreeing (or agreeing) about whatever.

kayos90 · Apr 5, 2022

I think it's extremely unfair how the posters who are against FF14's story get to deploy fallacies, make combatitive/confrontational comments, belittle the opposing side, and frame the opposite side with reductive statements and are allowed to continue to do so but when the pro-ff14 story users start to call these out they only get further ridiculed. Why is this discussion continued to devolve into this way?

Alpheus · Apr 5, 2022

Ashlette said:
An aether barrier that negates dynamis. the ancients made zodiark to protect etheirys with one until he was yeeted at the start of EW.

Resolve does nothing if the dynamis source is strong enough. Not even the player character resisted its effects the first time meteion went insane back in Elpis.

I think the absence of what you mention was meant to parallel what occurs earlier in the story with the dragon scales, that the stakes were so high that there was nothing feasible to be done given Zodiark as a solution ONLY worked because there was enough Aether due to the world still being whole at the time of his creation. The only real solution to the Dynamis problem is to be a sociopath like Zenos, he's the only individual who was shown to be completely immune to her bullshit and that is simply unfeasible given that the WoL and the Scions wouldn't abandon their ideals

CaptainKashup said:
I've got a friend who's very into the game and who keep showing me cutscenes and I'm like.. Really ?
From everything I've seen, FFXIV is just the usual pure middle school weeb power of friendship cringe. I don't understand how people can be into

lol but fair i guess???

PshycoNinja · Apr 5, 2022

Glabados said:
FFXIV is one of my favorite games, but it's fairer to say it has the *most* writing rather than the *best* writing of any FF. Extremely high highs, but a lot of it is a slog.

I think this one of the more pretty solid takes in this thread.

Robotnik said:
I dunno, the ending of Endwalker basically solidified FFXIV as a narrative masterpiece that will go down in history as one of the GOATs. I mean, that we got to defeat nihilism by punching a little girl in the face is obviously the culmination of hundreds of hours of impeccable storytelling.

Edit: Also, Zeno's arc is brilliant and absolutely not shonen rival trope bs.

You got a chuckle out of me.

DNAbro said:
Y'all really just be posting like we can't make fun of you

Pretty sure that would be bullying and against the rules.

MetatronM · Apr 5, 2022

Ashlette said:
Even after reading some of the pro-story replies in here, I'm still convinced that the lore of the game is more interesting than the story itself.

The themes and lore, as pointed out by a few members here, are both excellent, yet the story is contrived to its own detriment. An example at the end of EW being

The gang going to ultima thule without proper protection, knowing that it is the epicenter of the world-ending dynamis, with the player character being aware (and learning the hard way back in Elpis) that they are not immune to its effects.

Ultimately, I feel that the people here trying to defend the story are unintentionally defending the lore instead.

The gang being more susceptible to the effects of dynamis was literally the entire point of the sundering, though. Going in with some kind of aether shield to protect them from its influence completely eliminates their ability to interact with it at all. The only reason there even IS an Ultima Thule when you get there is because Thancred was able to force at least part of it to manifest in tangible form. Dynamis is not a one way street. In order to be able to have the ability to affect the dynamis around them, they also need to be vulnerable to it. Y'shtola directly spells this out in the conversation with Hydaelyn, and Hytdaelyn is like "yup, that was exactly the reason."

Now, if you want to argue that this small ragtag group shouldn't be able to assert their will over the hoarded wills of billions of lifeforms from across the universe, well, that's a different argument. (And probably true, but also arguing the "realism" of such a scenario starts to get a bit silly, right?)

Dolce · Apr 5, 2022

in my short time on this earth, something i have learned is that trying to categorize things into "good" and "bad", at least with respect to quality, is a waste of time. long have i moved past "i dislike this thing, so it must be flawed" and learned to accept that sometimes i don't like a thing because i don't like a thing. it can be fun to be introspective and learn about yourself. but at the same time, sometimes the reason is as simple as "i just don't."

quality is used as a tool to bludgeon away the things we dislike, or to ridicule. but in the end, it doesn't matter. people like the things they like. what is trash to someone might mean the world to another. and i think it's far more interesting to learn why people care about something in that way.

if you look at things as good/bad in that way, you'll then question why people like things. and you'll look over why people really like things.

edit: also, this doesn't mean don't criticize. or that the op is wrong to dislike it and air that. it is just getting weird in that now we are questioning other people for why they like a thing, saying they don't really like it but like this instead, etc.

Dakkon · Apr 5, 2022

Persephone said:
If I had a dollar every time Stormblood tried to make me feel bad for a war criminal by giving her a sad backstory I would have two dollars. Which isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice.

I'm not sure how this is rough or even surprising, nature vs nurture is an extremely common writing thing, you have villains that are evil by nature (see someone like Kefka, Chaos, so on and so forth in previous FF's), and you have villains that are evil by nurture.

Stormblood, being intimately tied to the Garlean Empire, lynchpinned both of its primary villains on nurture because the central point of the Garlean empire is that it, being a fascist dictatorship regime, nurtures people through circumstance into worse people than they would be otherwise. Yotsuyu and Zenos (granted, his short story is on an entry of a physical book but you can read it here) are "evil" because their life from an early childhood broke them mentally.

It really shouldn't be all that weird, you can simultaneously condemn someone for their actions while simultaneously understanding the circumstances that brought them to that point. The game isn't trying to say that the war criminals aren't bad people, it's trying to say that it's ok to have an understanding why someone got dragged into being a bad person.

If anything, that's the exact opposite of rough, that's a complex subject that only gets more complex when placed in the context that the rest of Eorzea pushing Garlemald out into such a tiny corner iceland with very little to their name knowing they were disadvantaged already in magic basically drove them to this. Garlemald's actions of course obviously suck, but also if the rest of Eorzea treated Garleans better in the first place it never would have come to this, much in the way that if Eorzea actually treated the "Beast Tribes" properly in the first place they never would have been so disadvantaged and struggling that they felt the need to summon their Primals in the first place.

Ultimately at its core its a story about sympathy and caring for other groups of better can solve problems. What the Beast Tribes and Garleans do is still bad of course, but if you drive people to complete desperation can you really completely fault them either?

Eidan · Apr 5, 2022

kayos90 said:
I think it's extremely unfair how the posters who are against FF14's story get to deploy fallacies, make combatitive/confrontational comments, belittle the opposing side, and frame the opposite side with reductive statements and are allowed to continue to do so but when the pro-ff14 story users start to call these out they only get further ridiculed. Why is this discussion continued to devolve into this way?

Critics of FFXIV seem to really dislike their criticisms being challenged. Any time you see this kind of thread pop up, whether it's about story or design choices in the game, if there's a handful of people who disagree, you get complaints about FFXIV fans being incapable of accepting criticism, that the fanbase is a hive mind, blah blah blah. It really makes you wonder why they decided to put their opinions on a forum if rote agreement was all they were looking for.

PshycoNinja · Apr 5, 2022

kayos90 said:
I think it's extremely unfair how the posters who are against FF14's story get to deploy fallacies, make combatitive/confrontational comments, belittle the opposing side, and frame the opposite side with reductive statements and are allowed to continue to do so but when the pro-ff14 story users start to call these out they only get further ridiculed. Why is this discussion continued to devolve into this way?

I think its super weird you are framing this as pro XIV vs Anti XIV people. Its okay to have criticism and I have seen most people in the thread debate in good faith. However the ridicule I have personally seen in this thread has come from those who think newer players who don't like the narrative have a "lesser" opinion, and "gotcha" posts to entrap people to try and dismiss criticism. I feel like some maybe need to take a step back and approach this less emotionally. OP absolutely has the right to feel the way they feel. Anyone just expressing an opinion of the problematic tones of the game have the right to express that.

kayos90 · Apr 5, 2022

PshycoNinja said:
I think its super weird you are framing this as pro XIV vs Anti XIV people. Its okay to have criticism and I have seen most people in the thread debate in good faith. However the ridicule I have personally seen in this thread has come from those who think newer players who don't like the narrative have a "lesser" opinion, and "gotcha" posts to entrap people to try and dismiss criticism. I feel like some maybe need to take a step back and approach this less emotionally. OP absolutely has the right to feel the way they feel. Anyone just expressing an opinion of the problematic tones of the game have the right to express that.

I didn't create this pro XIV and anti XIV segmentation. The conversation naturally devolved in this way if you look at the progression of the discussion in this thread from page 1. I'm merely exposing it for what it is right now.

You don't get to say that most people argue in good faith when certain users who want to "call out" people who speak positiviely about XIV's story and add more nuance and context devolved it into where it is today and start ridiculing the opposing side. You say that the OP has the right to feel a certain way and while that is true, the reverse has not held for majority of this discussion here. At every turn the goalpost of the integrity of the game's story is consistently pushed back and challenged to the point where it's lost a great deal of focus. You don't get to handwaive the actions of users on here saying "it's an expression of opinion" when that door has not swung both ways.

CaptainKashup · Apr 5, 2022

My friend showed me this for example :

FINAL FANTASY XIV: Shadowbringers- Confronting Emet-Selch

Intense spoilers ahead. Watch at your own risk.

www.youtube.com

And I legitimately can't take any of this seriously. I feel like I've seen this same stuff in every anime in history.
Also, why can't these characters talk like actual human beings

kayos90 · Apr 5, 2022

CaptainKashup said:
My friend showed me this for example :

FINAL FANTASY XIV: Shadowbringers- Confronting Emet-Selch

Intense spoilers ahead. Watch at your own risk.

www.youtube.com

And I legitimately can't take any of this seriously. I feel like I've seen this same stuff in every anime in history.
Also, why can't these characters talk like actual human beings

Have you played the game up to this point?

Dolce · Apr 5, 2022

CaptainKashup said:
Also, why can't these characters talk like actual human beings

because many characters in stories... uh... don't. it's a story.

like people didn't run around talking like shakespeare.

Fanuilos · Apr 5, 2022

CaptainKashup said:
My friend showed me this for example :

FINAL FANTASY XIV: Shadowbringers- Confronting Emet-Selch

Intense spoilers ahead. Watch at your own risk.

www.youtube.com

And I legitimately can't take any of this seriously. I feel like I've seen this same stuff in every anime in history.
Also, why can't these characters talk like actual human beings

I mean, if you haven't been invested in a story and jump to climax point several hours in it's not likely to do much for you. That's gonna be the case regardless of genre.

CaptainKashup · Apr 5, 2022

kayos90 said:
Have you played the game up to this point?

I've watched cutscenes.
But I mean, anime isn't my thing so I'm pretty much destined to dislike this type of storytelling

Eidan · Apr 5, 2022

CaptainKashup said:
My friend showed me this for example :

FINAL FANTASY XIV: Shadowbringers- Confronting Emet-Selch

Intense spoilers ahead. Watch at your own risk.

www.youtube.com

And I legitimately can't take any of this seriously. I feel like I've seen this same stuff in every anime in history.
Also, why can't these characters talk like actual human beings

Haha why would your friend show you that? It's the climax of that expansion's story. You haven't played the game, and have no understanding of what is going or any of the context.

Alpheus · Apr 5, 2022

PshycoNinja said:
I think its super weird you are framing this as pro XIV vs Anti XIV people. Its okay to have criticism and I have seen most people in the thread debate in good faith. However the ridicule I have personally seen in this thread has come from those who think newer players who don't like the narrative have a "lesser" opinion, and "gotcha" posts to entrap people to try and dismiss criticism. I feel like some maybe need to take a step back and approach this less emotionally. OP absolutely has the right to feel the way they feel. Anyone just expressing an opinion of the problematic tones of the game have the right to express that.

Regarding the posts you're characterizing as "saying that those who played through the MSQ recently have a "lesser" opinion on the writing" I took it to mean that mainlining the story like that will cause ya to look at it differently due to burn out. Granted maybe those posts did intend to come off the way they read to you and perhaps I am the one who is misreading the intent of those posts and (in my stupidity) am being too charitable with regard to their intent. Not to take away from your reading of those posts though cuz I have seen what you've described elsewhere on the net and for whatever reasons on my end it just didn't occur to me here.

Gravijah said:
because many characters in stories... uh... don't. it's a story.

like people didn't run around talking like shakespeare.

Alas poor Boko I knew him well

Robotnik · Apr 5, 2022

Eidan said:
Haha why would your friend show you that? It's the climax of that expansion's story. You haven't played the game, and have no understanding of what is going or any of the context.

I don't think the context is really relevant. The scene very much plays out like a fairly typical anime climax. That's their whole point.

DNAbro · Apr 5, 2022

The post is funnier when you know "stupid weeb game" is a meme from the FFXIV community

Anyway that exact scene drove multiple grown ass men and woman to tears so maybe it works if you actually play it

CaptainKashup · Apr 5, 2022

There was also that scene where

a dude is carrying a whole ass wall on his back. But instead of y'know, moving to get to safety, everyone stay perfectly calm while he has a whole self-sacrifice speech.

That one was honestly pretty funny.

AgeEighty · Apr 5, 2022

CaptainKashup said:
There was also that scene where

a dude is carrying a whole ass wall on his back. But instead of y'know, moving to get to safety, everyone stay perfectly calm while he has a whole self-sacrifice speech.

That one was honestly pretty funny.

It's hard to understand why you (or your friend for that matter) would think you'd get anything out of climactic scenes yanked without any context out of a story you don't know anything about. Are you telling us you think the entire game is scenes like that?

AliGalactic · Apr 5, 2022

Imagine a story driven MMOJRPG having both extremely good and extremely poor writing to various degrees over the hundreds of hours of playtime it offers.

Like I dunno I read takes like this and just go "Well no shit?"

MetatronM · Apr 5, 2022

CaptainKashup said:
My friend showed me this for example :

FINAL FANTASY XIV: Shadowbringers- Confronting Emet-Selch

Intense spoilers ahead. Watch at your own risk.

www.youtube.com

And I legitimately can't take any of this seriously. I feel like I've seen this same stuff in every anime in history.
Also, why can't these characters talk like actual human beings

I mean, yes, this is a very anime situation (it is a JRPG), but also in the game it's not like you're not seeing this scene out of context with no preamble. It comes after spending the last 40 hours around this villain and getting to know him, to say nothing of the preceding couple hundred hours with all the other characters in the scene. This also occurs immediately after fighting through a pretty illuminating dungeon that gives a lot more context for the villain's POV. That obviously doesn't make it any less anime, but the thing that makes it work is the emotional connection and level of empathy you (may) have built up with these characters along the way.

Like, imagine reading the last chapter of some critically acclaimed book without going through the rest and not understanding why people feel strongly about it. It's going to be very very very very rare that it's going to click with you in the same way it would for someone who went through the journey.

This isn't even really a point about whether it's good or not, it's just perspective.

Eidan · Apr 5, 2022

Robotnik said:
I don't think the context is really relevant. The scene very much plays out like a fairly typical anime climax. That's their whole point.

I understand their point. I don't understand why their friend sent it to them, which was my point. Absent any understanding of the details of the story, shallow reads like "lol weeb shit" seems like the best you could expect.

PshycoNinja · Apr 5, 2022

Alpheus said:
Regarding the posts you're characterizing as "saying that those who played through the MSQ recently have a "lesser" opinion on the writing" I took it to mean that mainlining the story like that will cause ya to look at it differently due to burn out. Granted maybe those posts did intend to come off the way they read to you and perhaps I am the one who is misreading the intent of those posts and (in my stupidity) am being too charitable with regard to their intent. Not to take away from your reading of those posts though cuz I have seen what you've described elsewhere on the net and for whatever reasons on my end it just didn't occur to me here.

Thats completely fair, and maybe that isn't the way they intended to word their post, and perhaps they posted that in frustration. Regardless, I personally don't believe just because someone started in 2013 and has the "framing" of how it all went down since then has a higher opinion of someone who started...say...last year.

If they would like to clarify their statement they are more than welcome to it cause I think every deserves to clarify statements. I think the temperature needs to come down a bit as some people coming in are trying to be combative a bit and I dont think that is very conducive to good or decent conversation.

Also I appreciate you coming at this in really good faith. I tend to read less charitably and just take everything literally. Tone in text is hard. So thanks. :)

MegaSackman · Apr 5, 2022

AgeEighty said:
It's hard to understand why you (or your friend for that matter) would think you'd get anything out of climactic scenes yanked without any context out of a story you don't know anything about. Are you telling us you think the entire game is scenes like that?

It's like complaining Solid Snake doesn't shoot his enemies on sight and let them speal first.

At some point you have to recognize you don't care anything about the game, regardless if it's good or bad.

CaptainKashup · Apr 5, 2022

AgeEighty said:
It's hard to understand why you (or your friend for that matter) would think you'd get anything out of climactic scenes yanked without any context out of a story you don't know anything about. Are you telling us you think the entire game is scenes like that?

Climatic or not, the whole thing is pretty silly given the urgency.
Also love that

the dude get shot and nobody even reacts or try to stop the girl, even though she take her sweet time to do it lmao

Cenauru · Apr 5, 2022

Y'all aren't even trying anymore, goddamn.

This really is the "airing out my dirty laundry" thread now.

Dolce · Apr 5, 2022

CaptainKashup said:
Climatic or not, the whole thing is pretty silly given the urgency.
Also love that

the dude get shot and nobody even reacts or try to stop the girl, even though she take her sweet time to do it lmao

do you uh like storytelling at all

like all the things in storytelling that aren't just literal events

part of what storytelling is, in many mediums, is bending reality to evoke feelings

like, it is why opera and plays exist. song. poetry.

Zero-ELEC · Apr 5, 2022

Yeah, the storytelling can be clumsy. Still very emotionally resonant and fun.

alexdotgames said:
I mean, this game has you joining a paramilitary organisation that is hellbent on destroying other races' belief systems. Races, they - and everyone around you, basically - do not even recognise as ~~human~~ races with as much dignity as everyone else. To achieve that, you fly around the world in the hopes to found the in-universe equivalent of the NATO to beat up what is a weird mixture of Nazi Germany, the Roman Empire and the Star Wars Empire. Which all culminates in the game making you (the character, not necessarily the player) sympathizing with genocidal maniacs who want to (and already have succeeded in) commit(ting) mass murder on a multi-planet level.

FF14 is a lot.

That is completely false. The game very specifically never casts judgement on the belief systems of the various peoples of the world. As far as the game is concerned Garuda is as much as a real god as any of the Twelve, the gods the "civilised people of Eorzea" believe in. What they're against is summoning, which is brought about by the Paragons who approach these native tribes who are oppressed by the governments of Eorzea to get them to summon in response.

Which, by the way, the game continually points out the hypocrisy of separating the races of "man" from "beast", to the point where the next patch will literally remove the moniker Beast Tribe from the UI. In the text it is repeatedly explained that the term was invented by Ul'dah merchants to exclude mercantile rivals like the quiqirn and goblins and that cities like Limsa Lominsa have oppressed the natives of O'Ghomoro and repeatedly broken treaties.

And while the game invites the player to empathize with people that commit those horrendous acts, it never invites you to sympathize with them.

That's a very bad faith reading of a bunch of disparate elements of the game.

Ovvv · Apr 5, 2022

PshycoNinja said:
I think its super weird you are framing this as pro XIV vs Anti XIV people. Its okay to have criticism and I have seen most people in the thread debate in good faith. However the ridicule I have personally seen in this thread has come from those who think newer players who don't like the narrative have a "lesser" opinion, and "gotcha" posts to entrap people to try and dismiss criticism. I feel like some maybe need to take a step back and approach this less emotionally. OP absolutely has the right to feel the way they feel. Anyone just expressing an opinion of the problematic tones of the game have the right to express that.

No, what you're doing is actually literally what the person you quoted is saying. Misconstruing people's posts, adding intent where none was meant, and using that to siphon up the idea that "ff14 story likers can't handle criticism! OP can feel how they want!" It's extremely apparent. Nobody is being told they can't express their opinion or feel how they feel in this thread. People are saying how they feel and then other people who feel differently are responding. That's like, uh, the entire point of a discussion board.

"The ridicule I have personally seen in this thread." This is the exact inflammatory language being deployed that the person you quoted is talking about. Who the hell is being "ridiculed" in here?

Helix · Apr 5, 2022

CaptainKashup said:
My friend showed me this for example :

FINAL FANTASY XIV: Shadowbringers- Confronting Emet-Selch

Intense spoilers ahead. Watch at your own risk.

www.youtube.com

And I legitimately can't take any of this seriously. I feel like I've seen this same stuff in every anime in history.
Also, why can't these characters talk like actual human beings

lol seriously? you really need to play the whole thing to even feel somewhat invested in the culmination of the ShB story or else literally everything will sound like garbage

PshycoNinja · Apr 5, 2022

AliGalactic said:
Imagine a story driven MMOJRPG having both extremely good and extremely poor writing to various degrees over the hundreds of hours of playtime it offers.

Like I dunno I read takes like this and just go "Well no shit?"

I agree with you but considering we are 6 pages deep in this thread it seems some have opposition to considering either the good writing or the bad writing and accepting that it does indeed have both. Some will try to minimize its successes and/or issues.

AgeEighty · Apr 5, 2022

CaptainKashup said:
Climatic or not, the whole thing is pretty silly given the urgency.
Also love that

the dude get shot and nobody even reacts or try to stop the girl, even though she take her sweet time to do it lmao

That's not how it works. Dramatic scenes often feel silly in stories when you haven't experienced anything leading up to them. This is true of games, anime, movies, TV shows. I don't know if your friend was trying to get you into the game or was going "Haha look at the weebshit OMEGALULZ" but either way it was a weird thing for them to do.

PshycoNinja said:
I agree with you but considering we are 6 pages deep in this thread it seems some have opposition to considering either the good writing or the bad writing and accepting that it does indeed have both. Some will try to minimize its successes and/or issues.

And others have opposition to the opposition, and on it goes, because people continually mistake disagreement for dismissal. Do we all decide to post threads on Era because we just want an echo chamber where everyone agrees with us?

Bossking · Apr 5, 2022

Opened a book, pulled out a random page, balled it up and ate it.

Wasn't to my taste.

CaptainKashup · Apr 5, 2022

I mean, the thread title is about shitting on this game's writing, something I've been wanting to do ever since my friend started sharing these cutscenes with me.

I understand that people like this stuff and I'm glad that they do. Just because I don't like something doesn't mean it's bad. It's all in good fun.

DNAbro · Apr 5, 2022

If you want a scene that's actually cringey from the game, the end of ARR 2.0 is up there. Now that one I'm embarrassed is in the game.

FFXIV gets praised for its (post-ARR) writing but some of it is pretty rough

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