discussion [Spoilers] 3.4 MSQ Discussion Thread

[Kilieit]

Honestly, straight up...

 

I think he was thinking "I want to approach my long-term crush dearest friend and see if he's alive without being possessed myself by a vengeful shade".

 

He knows he carries Ratatoskr's blood and is therefore more susceptible to transformation than Alphinaud (who is Sharlayan) or the Warrior of Light (whose only canonical backstory is "not from Eorzea", aka not Ishgardian). I think he was literally, foolishly, just thinking in terms of how to get through the next 5 seconds.

[Nero]

I understand that line of thinking, but unless I missed some dialogue, I think Aymeric honestly forgot about the Eyes of Nidhogg. It'd have been much more consistent and forgiveable if at least after the fact and after Estinien is saved, he says something along the lines of "We really shouldn't have thrown the Eyes of Nidhogg away so that anyone can find them", or at least acknowledges that it was a decision that will very definitely come back to bite Eorzea in the ass.

[Dat Oni]

It's not bad writing on the part of Aymeric hastily tossing them off a cliff, it's bad writing on the part of having the Ascians just be able to so easily retrieve something that shouldn't have been retrievable. The eyes were frozen solid at the bottom of a supposedly bottomless pit; how the FUCK did the Ascians retrieve them?

[Verad]

Dinner scene was all right. The WoL's fears over poison were well-handled and I was pretty charmed by the glee in Aymeric's reaction when I suggested he come with me on the next adventure.

 

I am apparently a sucker for the sentimental because the koboldling's story and the altered Titan fight really got to me.

 

I didn't like the Warriors of Darkness being resolved so quickly, in the first patch where we really interact with them as more than a looming, foreshadowed threat. Not great pacing, and it undermined their previous build-up. I think they would have been better resolved in 3.5 or similar. As far as how the actual events played out, I'm fine with those; I just think they happened too fast.

[Edda]

I thought MSQ was really good this patch on the sole basis that it didn't focus at all on Ishgard's perfect, flawless resolution and how much of an amazing person Aymeric is.

 

The Ala Mhigan Resistance's representation was very nice (reckless, self-absorbed and self-righteous), and if they do away with that and make its key players shining beacons of good and justice in 4.0, as they did with Ishgard, I will be very disappointed.

 

The Warrior of Darkness, now there's a real human bean.

[Jana]

yooooo him taking a swing at Minfilia tho

[Pip]

Up front, I missed out on 1.0 Ascilla/Minfilia. I've heard that those early experiences with the character alter the impression of her. However...

 

It took three years, an expansion, being consumed by the frigging mother crystal, and the suicidal crystal-offerings of the saviors of an entire world to FINALLY end Minfilia's reign as Miss Ostensible of Eorzea. AND NOW THAT SHE'S ACTUALLY ARGUABLY DOING SOMETHING, IT'S OFF SCREEN. Off WORLD even!!

 

The NPCs are all "No, Minnie! We all miss you so much! What will we do without you!?" Meanwhile, I'm standing there all, "Actually, kinda forgot you were gone? Occasionally visit your office, but it's still got a weird kid in it obsessed with sending us to fight primals. I guess your function is covered? Plus they can do more in a fight than yell out a weirdly sensual, 'Nooo!' It's strange, but without you there to call us back to the mother bleeping no-aetheryte Itchy Sands, all the competent members of the team (and Alf) just do our damn jobs. So... TTYLOMGSorryNotSorry"

[Teadrinker]

 

I don't like these options. I was looking for this one:

"AY MABBE I SHOULD GO PICK UP THOSE FCKING EYEBALLS MY DUMB ASS THREW OFF THE DAMN BRIDGE."

 

Seriously, the eyes were about as predictable as getting ran over by a Zamboni.

 

In fact, can we just go back to Ishgard? I am 0% excited for Ala Mhigo. I mean, the Ala Mhigans are kinda assholes.

 

There I SAID IT. YALL SUCK. Borderline as bad as Garlemald invading shit just cause ya can then you get mad when someone does it to you. Though I am REALLY happy that the eyes involvement in further Ala Mhigan conflicts essentially cements Ishgard's involvement in 4.0.

 

Also I really have no idea what the relationship between Thancred and Minnie is. Like not a damn clue.

 

Did he love her? Was he like a brother? A dad? I CAN'T TELL. I CAN'T HAVE SYMPATHY FOR THEIR PARTING IF I DON'T EVEN KNOW HOW THEY ARE RELATED, SQUARE.

 

Also when the Ascian in white, Elder Bus or whatever his name is, appeared with the Griffin I really just honestly facedesked. Like "THIS SHIT AGAIN. AND AGAIN." Wasn't this dude supposed to be a messenger or envoy or spectator ro something and that's why he was in white? Correct me if I'm wrong there, but there he goes messing with shit.

 

Also am I the only one starting to notice the correlation between this and Kingdom Hearts? The whole Heartless/Nobodies and thew Dark/Light thing? Like apparently all light is bad too. But then doesn't that technically make Hydaelyan evil?

 

What is even going on.

 

Why is my character even doing anything.

 

Oh, and Yda being some Ala Mhigan princess or whatever is Zamboni 2.0.

 

OH.

 

And when Alisae pulled out her "aetherical blade" as she calls it later in the rising stones. I'm not gonna touch on the details of that but this is my face.

 

 

I'm hoping they'll go back and explain that one because they should but I'm really expecting them not to because that would involve explaining something in the world and SE doesn't like to do that.

[Virella]

I just want Ala Mhigans to Ala Mhigan and do stupid shit. I'm so curious to see what they are going to do with the eyes? Power Omega with it? I'm not sure!

[Teadrinker]

I just want Ala Mhigans to Ala Mhigan and do stupid shit. I'm so curious to see what they are going to do with the eyes? Power Omega with it? I'm not sure!

 

I am curious to see what the landscape of Ala Mhigo will look like. I'm hoping dearly it'll be as breathtaking as the city of Ishgard was the first time I stepped into it but I'm scared at this point it'll look like a gigantic Castrum.

[Valence]

I'm eager to leave Ishgard. It wasn't super enthusiastic about it at first, and then it started to grow a bit on me, but I'm bored of that cliché medieval fantasy knights vs dragons trope thing. It was well done at least though, I can grant them that.

 

Ala-Migho/Garlemald all the way. Can't wait.

[GhostlyMaiden]

 

I don't like these options. I was looking for this one:

"AY MABBE I SHOULD GO PICK UP THOSE FCKING EYEBALLS MY DUMB ASS THREW OFF THE DAMN BRIDGE."

 

After obtaining the eyes in the last patch, I was like "Awww yeah, now go chop it up into little pieces, step on it a bunch of times, do whatever you have to do to destroy them."

 

But instead, what do we do? WE THROW OFF THE DAMN BRIDGE! RIGHT THEN AND THERE, EVERYONE KNEW THEY WOULD SHOW UP AGAIN! You'd think after the two times with dealing with Nidhogg, WE WOULD BE SMART ABOUT THIS.

 

I'm eager to leave Ishgard. It wasn't super enthusiastic about it at first, and then it started to grow a bit on me, but I'm bored of that cliché medieval fantasy knights vs dragons trope thing. It was well done at least though, I can grant them that.

 

Ala-Migho/Garlemald all the way. Can't wait.

 

I'm also ready to get out of Ishgard, but I'm not too excited about Ala Mihgo either.

[Valence]

I must confess that I'm partial to Garlemald being of the party 

[Nero]

I thought Ishgard was super interesting. Or at least, it had the potential to be super interesting.

 

Heavensward writing was a mess. The pacing was shitty and the focus was terrible. I have no hope that Ala Mhigo will be any better in the slightest.

 

I am not on board with the game's fetish for the Scions of the Seventh Dawn. I get that they're essentially the "main" characters and the vehicle our characters use to travel all over the place and beat up primals, but the characters are flat and completely uninteresting. I don't care! I want to see Ishgard. I want to delve into a conflicted theocracy undergoing rapid, sudden change. I want to see more of these cool characters, and not the ones I definitively do not give a single shit about.

 

Comparitively to the Scions, Aymeric is cool. Estinien was great. Ysayle was really good. Lucia was interesting. Those fucking Fortemps brats were more compelling as characters and had better character arcs than the Scooby-Doo Gang of the Seventh Dawn bopping around the world and killing primals. The Heavensward writing is flat, but I care more about seeing these characters than I do seeing the Scions.

 

I don't care about Thancred's missing pants. I don't care about Krile functionally replacing Minfillia. I stopped caring about Alphinaud when he had the audacity to tell the Warrior of fucking Light to hand out T-shirts to the Crystal Braves.

 

At no point does the story even attempt to portray that Thordan actually has a good point. People love the status quo and, as a whole, hate change. Pulling the rug out from under them by revealing the war should have caused more mass chaos, more conflict than Aymeric getting stabbed by a fruit knife and one crazy lady on a rooftop getting shot with an arrow. In no setting can you get me to believe that a militant, zealous theocracy centred around the waging of a genocidal war can smoothly transition to a two house democratic republic with no issues.

 

Ala Mhigo has the potential to have a lot of interesting themes and conflict. I just don't trust the writers to actually explore any of that, because who bothers exploring interesting themes and conflict when we can watch Yda be a princess or some shit? Look, Papalymo is hitting someone with Tupsimati! That's interesting, right?

 

No.

 

The Warriors of Darkness were pretty decent, but the conflict with the Ascians should really be a background thing, a sinister undertone that adds to the gravity of the Warrior of Light going around and saving the world. The instant you shove the mysteries in our face--repeatedly--it stops being a mystery and it takes all the proactivity away from our characters.

 

Here's how we handle the Ascians: we sit on our happy asses and wait for them to do something, then react. And maybe we'll save Ishgard on the side if we feel like it.

 

It should be the other way around. We should be proactively going to stop the Dragonsong war as our main motivation. We should be going to liberate Ala Mhigo as our main motivation. I don't think we should be going there with the Scions, waiting for the Ascians, and "Yeah cool the Ascians aren't doing anything, I guess we should liberate Ala Mhigo".

[Valence]

Because you have seen a lot of interesting ishgardian characters? I'm genuinely curious really. 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). I almost think that most of his persona is flatly designed to please the female audience, which seems to work admirably well, and nothing wrong with that, to the contrary... But besides that... meh. He got way better in 3.2-3.4 though. I like him now, we got to see his dreams, doubts, etc. But I would also like to see more of his failings. More of his pragmatic side we barely saw the first time we met him in 2.4.

 

For example, I didn't find Estinien great at all. He had the potential to be great, with his internal darkness and all, but he just shuts it up most of the time and plays the brooding dragoon. He then gets possessed like an idiot (why not) and literally gets to play Thancred's role in the battle for Ultima Weapon (who was also possessed, but by ascians). Those possessed characters don't exactly hold any personality left of them to make an impression in my opinion. The only time where Estinien got a bit fleshed out (a bit... since he always broods and never complains) was during the trip with Ysayle. I can admit that their mutual relationship was interesting, but it never really took off in my view.

 

I like Ysayle way more than at first impression yeah. Still not totally sold on her as well. SE has really lacked the fundamental part of storytelling since 2.0 (can't say for 1.0 I didn't play it), which is character development. Ysayle most of the time spent her time in the background, following the warrior of light after she stopped being the apparent 2 dimensional ishgard villain (it was interesting to see that what seemed to be in the Dragonsong conflict actually wasn't black and white, that's the main strength of its story). Her sacrifice at the end was telegraphed. But I think I'm nitpicking because overall, I like her okay.

 

I don't find Lucia interesting at all. She is bland to me. Her only redeeming (and potential!) value is that she may have something for Aymeric, which makes her seem at least a bit human. And if that's not even the case, then what? She is an empty husk, and not even in the positive storytelling sense. She has literally nothing for her. It's not even easy to describe her considering how void of character she is...

 

Compared to all the Scions up to 3.0, and all the Scions minus Y'shtola up to 3.3? Sure, they are ten times above. The Scions were so abysmally void that it was repelling (almost as much as Minfillia's prepubescent player-bait cleavage). 

 

What makes me rather hopeful and optimistic though, is what they did in 3.4. It's the first time I see a patch mostly focused on character development, besides what we already had on Alphinaud with his dreams of grandeurs and the crystal braves (which was kind of meh but ended awesome thanks to Lolorito). I had good hopes for Alisaie, and they really made a believable character with flaws, doubts and all with her. She's not all awesome and altruistic like some. But it makes her inner strength, emotions and failings even more brilliant in comparison.

 

I even started to like Yda and Papalimo. Or at least, not hate them like I did before. I hope they continue on that path, which is, improvement. If we start to discover how deep some apparently bland and non fleshed out characters are, I'm all for it really. It can be quite a nice twist.

[GhostlyMaiden]

Heavensward writing was a mess. The pacing was shitty and the focus was terrible. I have no hope that Ala Mhigo will be any better in the slightest.

 

In general, I liked the Heavensward stuff, it had a nice story about the Dragonsong War, but I have to agree with you that the pacing is shitty. One minute we're about to go fight Nidhogg and then suddenly "QUICK GO TO UL'DAH" >_>

I also wish they went into more detail about certain aspects of the story.

 

 

Aymeric is cool. Estinien was great. Ysayle was really good. Lucia was interesting. Those fucking Fortemps brats were more compelling as characters and had better character arcs than the Scooby-Doo Gang of the Seventh Dawn bopping around the world and killing primals.

 

Can we just hang out with Aymeric for now on? Because I don't like the idea of  staying with Seventh Dawn peeps forever and ever. It's getting old, like you mentioned, it's the same stuff over and over again except new people and new places. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind that they're alive and well, but let them do their own thing.

 

Pulling the rug out from under them by revealing the war should have caused more mass chaos, more conflict than Aymeric getting stabbed by a fruit knife and one crazy lady on a rooftop getting shot with an arrow. In no setting can you get me to believe that a militant, zealous theocracy centred around the waging of a genocidal war can smoothly transition to a two house democratic republic with no issues.

 

I'm probably wrong in saying this since I hardly ever do sidequests unless it unlocks something, but wasn't more of the conflict found within side quests and talking to NPCs?

 

I agree that the two house thing happened way too smoothly and realistically, that shit never happens. Can we think of one time in History where the breaking down of a government that has been around for years has ever worked out smoothly? I can't think of anything on the top of my head.

 

The issues of the two houses was just disregarded, it was likely there if you really wanted to believe it, but the quests never went into detail and it is fairly disappointing. I would've loved to see what conflicts would arise from it and who knows maybe we will in future patches.

 

Here's how we handle the Ascians: we sit on our happy asses and wait for them to do something, then react. And maybe we'll save Ishgard on the side if we feel like it.

 

Back in the 2.x MSQ, we did try to take charge and not wait for the Ascians and that was when Moenbryda was around. Maybe if she wasn't dead, we would get more shit done instead of waiting for trouble.

[Sun'ra]

I have a (possibly silly) question. So, the Warring Triad.... They were caged and having their power siphoned to power a lot of the Allag technology right?

 

So, if we destroy all three, won't Azys Lla fall out the sky without its power source?

[Gegenji]

Aymeric is cool. Estinien was great. Ysayle was really good. Lucia was interesting. Those fucking Fortemps brats were more compelling as characters and had better character arcs than the Scooby-Doo Gang of the Seventh Dawn bopping around the world and killing primals.

 

Well, the patch ended with the Scions deciding they were all going to go off and do their own things with some vague thread of connection between them. So, hopefully something will come of them effectively going their own ways to try to deal with the various problems. Perhaps things that will help further develop them as characters or establish some level of competence in their skill sets as a whole.

 

... Or they'll all get into trouble individually, requiring the WoL to come save their keisters, and making them decide "yeah, we need to stick together as a unit" for some reason or another.

[Virella]

HW story felt rushed. I'm so sad to see not much struggle in Ishgard itself. I really hope if we go Ala Mhigo, retaking it will be a lot tougher and bloodier. But I don't have high hopes at this point. I know its a MMO, and they can't rush things, and I'd sooner have them do this then what Blizzard does, with year of no content.

 

But yeh, I would have liked have seen more civil unrest? Idk. It just felt rushed.

[Nero]

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.

 

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.

[Teadrinker]

In the one scene where Aymeric protected Lucia from the falling pillar on the Steps of Faith.... in that 3 seconds of footage he had more character development than most of the Scions combined.

[Valence]

I think their horrible pacing (which is not new and already stems from 2.0, where you are put to sleep by the story for like 70% of the story until the end) is also due to their inability to put the story actually as a leading factor for development.

 

I know it's not an easy thing to do, but like in a lot of (especially western) RPGs, the story doesn't dictate the pacing and the world around, but the world and leveldesign dictates the story and thus, constrains it. Working myself in the industry, it's pretty blatant to me that the story writers get two things to work with: the general idea and outline for the expansion universe and concept, and the world builders and gameplay developers also get the same outline.

 

Then both will work on their thing, and the story writers will then get to work with many different places leveldesigned in a certain way for it to work as a MMO, and they will have to make the story stick and go through a general path making the player visit all those places, allowing him/her to access to all the sidequests around. Every time.

 

Now try to write a story where you know that the first thing you will have to do is find something to do in Western Coerthas, then fucking Sea of Clouds... I'm sure they could have found more engaging than just helping those two Fortemps heirs, but I really can't help to see it any other way than that.

[Tyndles]

I liked the story, but it got tied up in a neat little bow too early.  Like it wasn't a masterpiece but I really enjoyed 3.4 a lot, but the fact that it was "hey the Warriors of Darkness are gone and Ishgard is saved and the Scions are all back together again" was blah.

 

There's going to be at least one more patch, and WTF are we going to do then?  I mean sure it will be threads into Ala Mhigo but that story isn't going to resolve until the next expansion, so its just going to be a butt ton of cliff hangers til then?   Boo.  

 

I think they should have closed with the Warriors of Darkness, then in 3.5 or whatever the last patch ends up being, reunite Papalymo and Yda with the group, and then have the threads into Ala Mhigo.  Then at least there would be some story resolution along WITH the cliff hangers.  As it stands the end of the expansion is going to be very hollow and unfulfilling.   No resolution, all build up.

[Nero]

Then both will work on their thing, and the story writers will then get to work with many different places leveldesigned in a certain way for it to work as a MMO, and they will have to make the story stick and go through a general path making the player visit all those places, allowing him/her to access to all the sidequests around. Every time.

 

This is the impression I got as well, and it's a baffling design decision for a game that is ostensibly heavy on the story. I can at least give credit that the story writers are probably forced into a railroad and have to do their best to tie everything together as best as they can. I wish the story was given heavier weight though: I assume that Square wanted 3.0 to end with a bang so someone wrote "KNIGHTS OF THE ROUND" on a whiteboard and everyone applauded and did their best to crowbar in the Knights of the Round as early as possible.

 

Even so, the development process doesn't particularly excuse the story writers from being what I can only be described as incredibly wasteful with their opportunities.

 

One huge example of this is the dinner with Aymeric. That entire scene had a uniquely composed setting and was fully voiced with different responses from Aymeric depending on what you choose, and it was also completely worthless because the only thing Aymeric ever said is reiterate the same three things he's been saying ever since 3.1:

 

1). "We are grateful to the Warrior of Light."

2). "I hope Ishgard can change peacefully."

3). "Ishgard must help Eorzea."

 

That whole conversation was so laughably shallow, and the worst part is that the only interesting bit is in the end where the WoL is tentatively given an opportunity to define themselves to the characters outside of a nameless boss-killing plot vehicle.

 

No, Aymeric, I don't want you to talk to me about how Ishgard is undergoing great change (again), nor do I want to hear about how indebted people are to me (again), and no I don't want to hear about how Ishgard must repay the Eorzean Alliance (again).

 

We have a one-on-one conversation, the WoL and Aymeric at this point are implied to be trusted friends, but since the world offers Aymeric no conflict or real resistance, we hear nothing of it. We don't get to hear Aymeric tentatively relying on the WoL as a confidante and saying that he's unsure about his role as Lord Speaker. We don't get to hear about how Aymeric might possibly like being a politician and a people-pleaser.

 

We don't hear anything interesting about Aymeric at all, but he's really grateful to us and Ishgard is undergoing great change and will have to help the Alliance.

 

Anyway, I'm going to stop harping on this subject now, but I earnestly hope Stormblood's writing is better.

[Valence]

Well at least Heavensward's writing was better than A Realm Reborn so... Progression I guess? I hope?

 

I wish they fleshed out the WoL more. But they probably won't because they probably think that if they start doing so, they will create a character that will maybe not fit to the headcanon/vision some players have of them. They possibly want to give the player full liberty to make up their own vision of their WoL.

 

Which is a bit baffling since there is literally very little, if nothing to work with to begin with.

 

Damn, I'm close to go on a rant again against all the bad things with western RPGs... And make no mistake, what differentiates FFXIV from other FF titles is that it works exactly like a western classical RPG (arenas and hubs filled with quests givers).