To expand on my earlier point, my main criticism is that I disagree on the focus of the expansion and that the characters suck because of the pacing of the story.
Aymeric, Lucia, Estinien, Ysayle, Thordan, Haurchefant, the Four Houses...on their own and as they're portrayed, all of these characters are, as Valence described, pretty much a write-off.
Estinien is an angry guy who gets corrupted by an angry dragon. Lucia is a stale and generic "second in command" character. Thordan was a mustache twirling zealot. Haurchefant was a one-dimensional nice guy whose death really had zero impact whatsoever on a narrative or character development scale. Aymeric is a pretty-boy Reasonable Authority Figure who does not particularly contemplate any of his decisions after the fact nor really suffer any consequences of such (besides getting stabbed with a fruit knife that one time).
The thing is that these characters didn't have to be flat. They could have been so much more, and the fact that they were shafted in favour of giving more screentime to the Scions upsets me, because I don't find the Scions to be particularly compelling. And yeah, you could write off all of my criticisms as petulant "Waaah Square Enix didn't write the story the way I wanted it to be written", and you'd pretty much be correct, but I still protest.
Thordan is a huge example of this. All hail Archbishop Wasted Opportunity VII.
Thordan did not get nearly the amount of buildup he needed. The pacing of his story is terrible. He locks up Aymeric, runs away, ninja loots the key to Azys Lla, goes to Azys Lla and becomes a primal for about twenty minutes before dying. And part of this problem is how easily the majority of Ishgard accepts responsibility for starting the Dragonsong War. Thordan's response to Aymeric threatening to reveal the truth shouldn't have been to lock Aymeric up, but to say "Who would believe you?" The Ishgardians have been the subject of a measured genocidal war that was deliberately transformed into a war of attrition for a thousand years. Aymeric suddenly showing up and saying "Hey guys, the dragons said it's actually our fault, and it totally is" should not have worked as well as it did. The main conflict between Thordan and Aymeric's ideologies in the game is implied to be order versus chaos, except Thordan's idea of "order" is completely batshit and nonsensical.
Thordan's whole deal should have been that Ishgard needs the Dragonsong War, or at least the dragons as enemies, to remain stable and to retain its heritage and national identity. For one thousand years, Ishgard's been throwing themselves at the dragons, and to completely undermine the last thousand years of war would do nothing but sow chaos and breed discontent and destroy the unity that's kept the city together all this time. That is the idea of order that Thordan should have been trying to adhere to: the status quo is god, or ends on favourable terms.
Instead, Thordan for some reason decides that the path to piece is a world of absolute order at the cost of all freedoms and the destruction of anyone who opposes him. He becomes more one dimensional in motivations than Sauron. This is some insane hypocritical thinking since he opens the gates so the Heretics can assault the foundation to fuel the prayers to become King Thordan, and this motivation completely robs him of any legitimacy.
There's no escalation. Thordan immediately jumps to fire the nuke that is becoming King Thordan. There's no buildup.
And that's most of Heavensward's writing in a nutshell: the pacing is awful, so all these characters either fix things flawlessly in an incredibly short time, or immediately become insane to move the plot along.
Aymeric could have been really good. Here we have a military man and bastard son of the Archbishop suddenly become embroiled in politics and trusted to lead the future of his nation. I keep mocking his getting stabbed with a fruit knife in 3.1, but there was some actual drama there: the nobility accused Aymeric of being a patricidal heretic and saw his removing Thordan as a power grab.
And the reason why Aymeric seems mostly flat is because the world doesn't give him any consequences to deal with, and even if they do, we never see him deal with this consequences.
Ishgard becomes a seamless democracy with no problem. He doesn't care about the Eyes of Nidhogg at all or the implication that Nidhogg might come back as long as they're still intact. Everyone respects and follows him without question. He faces no genuine conflict that reflects upon his character besides "He's a nice guy and does good stuff".
Why is Aymeric never overwhelmed by the politics? Why do we never see his frustration from having to juggle the wants and needs of Lords and commoners? Why does he never think about the ramifications of his actions (fucking EYES OF NIDHOGG, ANYONE)? There is a lot of room for serious depth that goes wasted because ultimately, Aymeric is a side character.
And the thing is that Lucia can have real depth too besides being Aymeric's arm candy. She's a defected Garlean. We can never tell if her experience as a soldier in the Empire colours her perception of Eorzea or Ishgard. We never see Aymeric really rely on her except as a patsy or a messenger. If Aymeric is busy running the country as Lord Speaker, shouldn't she be in charge of the Temple Knights? Shouldn't Lucia have some apprehensions on being found out as a Garlean and being put in a position of authority? She's devoted to Aymeric and Ishgard, but we never see her be relevant except when she's doing something in Aymeric's stead. Is she ashamed of being Garlean?
And the Scions. Ugh.
Here's why I don't like any of the writing for the Scions: they do display a measure of depth, consequence, and respond to consequence, but the thing is that their writing is built on more bad writing.
Let's take for example Thancred, who has some real weight among the Scions. He felt responsible for Minfillia since he got her dad killed and feels guilt over being unable to save her. He's grieved over Minfilia becoming the voice of Hydaelyn and is much less snarky and less of a womaniser as a result, becoming more stoic as a result. There's some actual development there.
Except, the subject of his dramas was a cardboard cutout who was more useless than a DVD rewinder (Minfilia), the whole reason for her death was idiotic (the entire Ul'dah conflict in 2.5 that started Heavensward...jesus shit), and interactions with Thancred are mostly just exposition. Thancred is always an observer and never a subject.
Urianger is about the only Scion I actually like because there is actual emotional depth there and the subject of his affections wasn't totally incompetent.
Alisaie got a lot of focus in the last patch, but her character is so transparently a blatant plot device that it's hard to take seriously. She appears and disappears as needed. She had a good arc during Binding Coil where she defrosts but in 3.4 she goes totally Scion-brand flat. And in 3.4, her whole drama was that she wasn't willing to kill a kobold kid who might be tempered. Our teenaged heroine might have a problem with killing children? Stop the presses, Square Enix!
Anyway TL;DR, Heavensward's pacing sucked and negatively impacted the potential growths of all the characters which makes them less compelling and makes the story crap, and I think the Ala Mhigo expansion will suffer from the exact same problem.
EDIT: Also, think about this: Moenbryda got introduced in one patch and killed in the next, and she was written way better than most of the Scions, and that was with most of her backstory being delivered via exposition dump. Square Enix can do it, they just choose not to.
Aymeric, Lucia, Estinien, Ysayle, Thordan, Haurchefant, the Four Houses...on their own and as they're portrayed, all of these characters are, as Valence described, pretty much a write-off.
Estinien is an angry guy who gets corrupted by an angry dragon. Lucia is a stale and generic "second in command" character. Thordan was a mustache twirling zealot. Haurchefant was a one-dimensional nice guy whose death really had zero impact whatsoever on a narrative or character development scale. Aymeric is a pretty-boy Reasonable Authority Figure who does not particularly contemplate any of his decisions after the fact nor really suffer any consequences of such (besides getting stabbed with a fruit knife that one time).
The thing is that these characters didn't have to be flat. They could have been so much more, and the fact that they were shafted in favour of giving more screentime to the Scions upsets me, because I don't find the Scions to be particularly compelling. And yeah, you could write off all of my criticisms as petulant "Waaah Square Enix didn't write the story the way I wanted it to be written", and you'd pretty much be correct, but I still protest.
Thordan is a huge example of this. All hail Archbishop Wasted Opportunity VII.
Thordan did not get nearly the amount of buildup he needed. The pacing of his story is terrible. He locks up Aymeric, runs away, ninja loots the key to Azys Lla, goes to Azys Lla and becomes a primal for about twenty minutes before dying. And part of this problem is how easily the majority of Ishgard accepts responsibility for starting the Dragonsong War. Thordan's response to Aymeric threatening to reveal the truth shouldn't have been to lock Aymeric up, but to say "Who would believe you?" The Ishgardians have been the subject of a measured genocidal war that was deliberately transformed into a war of attrition for a thousand years. Aymeric suddenly showing up and saying "Hey guys, the dragons said it's actually our fault, and it totally is" should not have worked as well as it did. The main conflict between Thordan and Aymeric's ideologies in the game is implied to be order versus chaos, except Thordan's idea of "order" is completely batshit and nonsensical.
Thordan's whole deal should have been that Ishgard needs the Dragonsong War, or at least the dragons as enemies, to remain stable and to retain its heritage and national identity. For one thousand years, Ishgard's been throwing themselves at the dragons, and to completely undermine the last thousand years of war would do nothing but sow chaos and breed discontent and destroy the unity that's kept the city together all this time. That is the idea of order that Thordan should have been trying to adhere to: the status quo is god, or ends on favourable terms.
Instead, Thordan for some reason decides that the path to piece is a world of absolute order at the cost of all freedoms and the destruction of anyone who opposes him. He becomes more one dimensional in motivations than Sauron. This is some insane hypocritical thinking since he opens the gates so the Heretics can assault the foundation to fuel the prayers to become King Thordan, and this motivation completely robs him of any legitimacy.
There's no escalation. Thordan immediately jumps to fire the nuke that is becoming King Thordan. There's no buildup.
And that's most of Heavensward's writing in a nutshell: the pacing is awful, so all these characters either fix things flawlessly in an incredibly short time, or immediately become insane to move the plot along.
(10-13-2016, 10:29 AM)Valence Wrote: I find Aymeric pretty alright and not flat and trite as I found him the first time I saw him, but I don't find him especially better than the Scions (except Minfillia).
Aymeric could have been really good. Here we have a military man and bastard son of the Archbishop suddenly become embroiled in politics and trusted to lead the future of his nation. I keep mocking his getting stabbed with a fruit knife in 3.1, but there was some actual drama there: the nobility accused Aymeric of being a patricidal heretic and saw his removing Thordan as a power grab.
And the reason why Aymeric seems mostly flat is because the world doesn't give him any consequences to deal with, and even if they do, we never see him deal with this consequences.
Ishgard becomes a seamless democracy with no problem. He doesn't care about the Eyes of Nidhogg at all or the implication that Nidhogg might come back as long as they're still intact. Everyone respects and follows him without question. He faces no genuine conflict that reflects upon his character besides "He's a nice guy and does good stuff".
Why is Aymeric never overwhelmed by the politics? Why do we never see his frustration from having to juggle the wants and needs of Lords and commoners? Why does he never think about the ramifications of his actions (fucking EYES OF NIDHOGG, ANYONE)? There is a lot of room for serious depth that goes wasted because ultimately, Aymeric is a side character.
And the thing is that Lucia can have real depth too besides being Aymeric's arm candy. She's a defected Garlean. We can never tell if her experience as a soldier in the Empire colours her perception of Eorzea or Ishgard. We never see Aymeric really rely on her except as a patsy or a messenger. If Aymeric is busy running the country as Lord Speaker, shouldn't she be in charge of the Temple Knights? Shouldn't Lucia have some apprehensions on being found out as a Garlean and being put in a position of authority? She's devoted to Aymeric and Ishgard, but we never see her be relevant except when she's doing something in Aymeric's stead. Is she ashamed of being Garlean?
And the Scions. Ugh.
Here's why I don't like any of the writing for the Scions: they do display a measure of depth, consequence, and respond to consequence, but the thing is that their writing is built on more bad writing.
Let's take for example Thancred, who has some real weight among the Scions. He felt responsible for Minfillia since he got her dad killed and feels guilt over being unable to save her. He's grieved over Minfilia becoming the voice of Hydaelyn and is much less snarky and less of a womaniser as a result, becoming more stoic as a result. There's some actual development there.
Except, the subject of his dramas was a cardboard cutout who was more useless than a DVD rewinder (Minfilia), the whole reason for her death was idiotic (the entire Ul'dah conflict in 2.5 that started Heavensward...jesus shit), and interactions with Thancred are mostly just exposition. Thancred is always an observer and never a subject.
Urianger is about the only Scion I actually like because there is actual emotional depth there and the subject of his affections wasn't totally incompetent.
Alisaie got a lot of focus in the last patch, but her character is so transparently a blatant plot device that it's hard to take seriously. She appears and disappears as needed. She had a good arc during Binding Coil where she defrosts but in 3.4 she goes totally Scion-brand flat. And in 3.4, her whole drama was that she wasn't willing to kill a kobold kid who might be tempered. Our teenaged heroine might have a problem with killing children? Stop the presses, Square Enix!
Anyway TL;DR, Heavensward's pacing sucked and negatively impacted the potential growths of all the characters which makes them less compelling and makes the story crap, and I think the Ala Mhigo expansion will suffer from the exact same problem.
EDIT: Also, think about this: Moenbryda got introduced in one patch and killed in the next, and she was written way better than most of the Scions, and that was with most of her backstory being delivered via exposition dump. Square Enix can do it, they just choose not to.