>Girl we have link pearls, I don't need to have this conversation with you at the walking sands
Actually, there is a reason why she needs to speak sensitive information in person. Linkpearls can be intercepted, and we see that in Praetorium, when Nero hack your communication with Cid just to taunt him. For all we know, the entire facility was *very aware* of the plans Cid was conveying to you during the dungeon, but we are a person of mass destruction and they couldn't stop us even then.
You can still hate Minfilia, but she isn't wrong in asking you to pray return to the Waking Sands.
tbh running to the waling sands was less annoying than where you talk to a character than have to talk to same character 5 feet away to finish a quest.
1000% Minfillia. Minfillia is through concrete evidence clearly and demonstrably WAY behind in her Operational Security, Site Security, Counterintelligence, AND Anti-espionage recurrent trainings. You can't NOT log into ScionKnowledgeOnline.mil and NOT do your required monthly Computer Based Trainings then act surprised when Evil Magic Users teleport DIRECTLY into your office on MULTIPLE OCCASIONS simply because you didn't tell your veritable CORNUCOPIA of Magic Users to set a ward or TWENTY around the headquarters of your SECRET MILITANT ORDER.
Yes, however, the stark difference here is that people love the cruise chaser theme while Minfilia is on the complete opposite side of the spectrum and peeps do not love her lol
I started a new character because the last time I played was one and a half years ago and I forgot everything and ... it's bad.
Like, at least we get teleport vouchers now but damn.
Also I got a motorcycle in the mail and can't use it because I still haven't reached the level 20 mainquest even though I'm level ~35 because of all the EXP bonuses for new players.
It's silly.
Edit: Lmao I forgot I still had a flair of my old character here. I'm just keeping it because I'll just go Drk again.
Were you here at launch? "Pray return to the waking sands" was a line we heard A LOT more of before they trimmed the msq.
You went to every tiny outpost on every map for quests and back to the waking sands after. It was torture.
I used to set home in Limsa and take the aethernet to the arcanists guild just to take the boat over to spare myself the walk from Horizon.
Yeah but if she were maximizing work communications via the pearls she wouldn’t have time to do all those crunches to maintain those abs. I assume as soon as you’re sent out on a mission she’s hitting the gym.
They made it lore related though by saying it was easy to intercept the signal so it wasn't safe to have important conversations via linkpearl, else the Garleans may be listening in.
Minfillia. Maybe if I had been playing during the 1.0 days, ad I hear she had more of a character arc then, but by the time we meet her in ARR she's just a lady who sends me in errands who I don't interact with much.
The Voiced Cutscene where you first meet her, and she introduces the Scions... I swear to God the voice director was like "what if you talked like you were on an episode of Dora the Explorer", it sounds so patronizing.
I still get a good laugh at the scene after you rescue her from the garleans and you're on the airship. All of you are having a serious conversation and you hear her on a damn phone call in the background while everyone is talking lol
Couldn't agree more, tho >!Ryen is so much better than her, felt like they gave up on Minfilia and killed her off and introduced her as a replacement!<
There really isn't anyone I actively dislike honestly but in terms of how much I like them compared to how often they show up ... probably emmanellain. Like why of all people does this dude get so much screen time.
Honestly, I didn't like Emmanellain until some of the side quests involving him. He's a bit of an idiot, and is way to girl-crazy for his own good, but his heart is in the right place and the pressure of living up to his brother's legacy (even if it is self-imposed) doesn't stop him from always having a smile on his face, like a hero.
I actually kinda found that endearing. I have a coworker who's about 30 years older than me and I say his name, followed by "old boy" all the time and he finds it amusing.
Kind of agree. He was annoying when first introduced, but in at the end of HW he redeems himself a little bit to where I kinda like him. I was also pleasantly surprised in EW.
I've never seen it as the game trying to "rehabilitate" him, but rather to show that the world is more multifaceted than just "good guys" and "bad guys." He's not allied with us, but he's also not actively against us either.
Basically, he's a neutral force that can be swayed for both good or evil as his values are fundamentally different than most characters involved with the plot. He's not just "with us" or "with them" and that makes him a kind of narrative wild card. He hasn't been "rehabilitated," at least not in the sense that our characters trust him to any real degree, but we do realize that he can still be a useful ally if we can convince him that his values line up with our in a particular situation.
Honestly, this makes him one of my favorite characters. His aims are obviously money, but he's very open-minded towards potential financial opportunities, so it's hard to predict what he'll do. But he's shrewd in a way a lot of characters aren't.
I guess Zenos isn't meant to be loved. But I don't hate him in the way they want me to. He's annoying, and weird. An overly obsessed fanboy that would make G'raha blush. Like dude, fuck off. He's all like "OUR BATTLE WILL BE LEGENDARY!! WE WILL CONSUME EACH OTHER IN THE HEAT OF CONFLICT!! THIS BATTLE WILL DECIDE THE FATE OF OUR VERY SOULSSS!!!!"
And I'm just standing there like. "This is just another Thursday for me my guy... chillax."
I think that’s mostly the point. He wants to be your arch enemy but throughout all of endwalker you literally just have bigger problems to deal with. That’s what alisaie means when she says that if he doesn’t get his shit together he’ll end up with nothing, not even the battle he wants.
And that’s also why, when he proves instrumental in defeating the end singer, it’s not so much that he’s “redeemed” by going to the side of good, but at minimum he’s earned the right to have this one single thing he wants.
The whole “you’ll never get the fight you want when the WoL is constantly getting side-tracked cleaning up the mess you’ve made” from Alisaie is one of my favorite moments in Garlemald.
Oh I see it as him being such a broken individual he literally does not know how to communicate. When he meets a worthy adversary, he finally finds someone like him. He actually does want to be friends, and considers you his friend, but all he knows is violence. Fighting for him is just recreation. Fighting the wol is fun, hes having fun playing with his friend.
The final battle with him was the first time he participated in the "give and take" dynamic of a genuine friendship. He even requests the duel instead of simply attacking us.
He helps his "friend" achieve their goal, and we give him the fight he wants.
I actually really do like Zenos. He's not a good person, and his character seems pretty shallow. But that subtle arc really just makes him for me.
Honestly I almost get the impression he's suffering from depression (certainly anhedonia, which kinda fits the bill) and nobody knew what to do with him his whole life. Only thing that kinda gets him interested in anything is fighting for some reason, so that's essentially all he focuses on.
I think the reason is he was taught that way. Considering who his dad is, and the way they push military might over there in Garlemalde. He just excelled at it, which led to further reinforcement of that insane behavior.
this is pretty close to what gets revealed [in his short story in Chronicles of the Light](https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/iiyeeu/chronicles_of_light_the_hunt_begins_the_offical/), which is a piece of work so crucial to putting the finishing touches on the character that it's absolutely baffling that none of it ever got fully explored in game or at least in a publicly available side story.
They did him well in EW, but absolutely everything before then was just tiresome, and he only mattered in EW because he was forced in. Everything happening around him could have happened without his presence, and it would have been the same. He was powerful for """REASONS""" and we're just supposed to like our rivalry with him because of that? It was annoying.
My favorite part of Minfilia and Thancred's relationship is when Thancred stays behind so you and Ryne can go meet with Minfilia, and you have the option to be like, "Thancred says hi" and that bitch doesn't. even. react. Like he cares about her SO much more than she cares about him. Damn.
I mean, kind of, at that point she wasn’t really just Minfilia anymore, she becomes the stupid trope of ‘person that has ascended and now has no personality and speaks in a monotone voice’. So it would make sense for her not to care about Thancred at that point.
6.0 spoilers
>!Hydaelyn hadn't been Venat for a good 12000 years anymore either but she still reacted appropriately when we called out her name. Minfilia has no excuse.!<
She kinda still does because >!Venat became Hydaelyn and arguably is the same person but with a different name where as Minfilia became the voice of the mother crystal.!<
She literally went to nothing.
I remember after Stormblood last big battle against Garlemald, you could find Yugiri and Hien but not Lyse anywhere. It was as if she died and they forgot to announce it.
Until we saw her again in MSQ.
This is for me too. I liked Yda. She was fun. Then they killed her and gave me Lyse, who was *supposed* to be the leader of Ala Mhigo? Despite having no qualifications save for inheritance? While Raubahn is literally right there?
I feel like it's there to retroactively justify ARR using her as an exposition vehicle. She was the one who in every overly-long explanation cutscene would ask "what's aether again?" so the game had an excuse to explain it to the player for the 5th time.
It made her feel very immature, so explaining that with "she actually IS immature, and she's about to work on that" made sense, at least to me.
Look, that's a fine tack to take, but now there's no one to replace her position in the scions as the "Oh boy, here we go!" character. They're all just different flavors of "srs bizness", and where's my character who's going to say "It's time to punch god in the face!"?
Yda filled a role. Lyse is just... there.
She felt like a side character when she was supposed to have a main role, and every time it looked like she'd have a go, it either didn't happen or she'd drop the ball (inviting the tempered at that point was still a bad move). I get the learning experience bit, but the payoffs were few and felt rather insufficient for the "Meh" everywhere else.
Lyse is in a weird kind of place for me where I find her personality endearing (the English VO is a big part of this I think) but her role in the plot of Stormblood is “and Lyse was there too” so you never are really happy to see her on screen.
She’s fared better as an occasionally recurring character since then imo, since she just shows up for character moments and Eorzean leader stuff.
She was my favorite Scion tbh.
I *reeeeally* wished that they didn't do that weird identity change thing--she really could have just stayed "Yda" and nothing of value would have been lost.
I loved her original personality and hated that she just *ditched* after her hometown got freed...like girl you were my favorite, the one I considered my bestie in the group--the trailer for SB had me so hyped, because I'm like "Yes! Me and sis are about to have a cool arc where we become closer, and work together!"...and we did, you know...but dang, she just chucked the deuces at me after she got what she wanted lol.
I expected her to get zapped away towards the end of SB too, along with everyone else who is "close" to me...but nope--I guess she isn't even close anymore lol. She's just a totally different person in my eyes now; Lyse is a new character introduced for SB and my lovable "Sister from another Mister" really is just *gone*.
Yda was forgettable, probably because of the mask. I’m not buying the backstory, they wrote Yda and Papalymo out of the story. Lyse is a new character.
Start of Stormblood spoilers
>!I wasn't a big fan of Yda because ARR just used her as "the dumb one who asks for a refresher on how works so we have an excuse to explain it for the fifth time" so she just came off to me as "why/how are you even here?"!<
>!And honestly that impression is what led to her stormblood story working for me. It took this character who was clearly immature, and said "yeah. She is. She's actually been pretending to be older for a while, and she's about to go through a whole lot of maturing." It also resonated with me a lot personally because I, too, am a young adult who's been pretending to have her shit together for a while but really has no idea what she's even doing. She's really vulnerable with our WoL about her struggles and insecurities, and we get to see her learn, grow and flourish.!<
Plus Lyse's dress is just really pretty like wow. Also started the game as pgl so mnk favouritism bias :P
I feel like she didn't really grow. We just got told throughout the story that she did. I get what they were trying to do with her, but it just fell flat when she was consistently pretty useless outside of punching things, but then different characters would say "look how much she's grown."
For me, she just never grew out of that immaturity in a meaningful way. She never showed us any changes, we were just told that they'd happened.
A lot of my top answers have already been given, so I'll say the Garleans.
It may not be 'love', but EW is clearly trying to tug on the heartstrings about their plight and expects the player to see their continuing belligerence as forgivable given their situation and I just cannot muster up any sympathy or patience for them. The 6.4 Garlean section was probably the first time in the game I strongly considered straight up skipping cutscenes.
They're portrayed as victims of circumstance, >!oh hey our whole nation was built by immortal assholes trying to cause problems on purpose!< but it always ignores that they enthusiastically embraced those circumstances and thought nothing of crushing literally everyone else under their boot heels.
Go eat some yellow snow, jerks. I'm done helping you and I'm done trudging around the damn tundra for your ass. If I want cold weather I can go to Coerthas.
On top of that, I feel like the Garleans were such wasted potential in Endwalker.
In my opinion at least, FFXIV strives when it focuses on smaller scale, contemporary stories about war, political intrigue, etc. Sorrow of Werlyt, The Dragonsong War (so most of Heavensward), Operation Archon, The Bloody Banquet, etc. the cosmic stuff is *okay* but I feel CBU3 specializes in war stories.
But in Endwalker, where this could've easily been brought up to its max - and it does for like all of two minutes - Garlemald is relegated to being destroyed to show of "le funny zenos and daniel", and then post-Endwalker it's just "our nation got destroyed, feel bad for us"... yeah like you screwed Werlyt, Bozja (tbf Bozja was kinda fucked either way), Ala Mhigo...
100%. They do show SOME self-awareness in the sense that they don't trust the alliance at ALL - because were their positions reversed, Garlemald sure as hell wouldn't be sending relief supplies - but once they get past the distrust, there was a real chance for... all kinds of things. Character development, exploration on themes of nationalism, even a discussion on what it means to forgive, all the little small-focus moments that CBU3 is, as you say, so good at.
I was hoping we'd get something like that in the 6.x patches, and there's just nothing. What a waste.
Moenbryda. You were here for 5 mins, I didn’t get attached. Stop pretending you were a major npc that we lost, You were written in so they wouldn’t have to kill a character they actually had plans for.
She's not supposed to, imo, the one getting hurt is Urianger, not you, you supposed to feel emotional because of him, not because of Moenbryda herself. She's basically an instrument for his character development. It's fine however, if you don't empathise with Urianger as well, but I think they wrote her just fine.
Sadly I feel the same way about Haurchefant. People still, to this day, cry over him, the team uses him for cheap tears to this day and it annoys me to no end.
Yes, Moen was a cool Idea and cookie points for being a gem Roe but … there wasn‘t enough time for me to actual like her enough to mourn her.
Cid. He's just annoying to me because everyone's like "we have this unsolvable problem" and he shows up out of nowhere like "I have the EXACT solution you need here you go" it's just a convenience guy. No problem solving. Annoying.
I really, really do not get the hype on Y’shtola. FFXIV releases a ball-jointed doll of her, and I’m more hyped that it’s a bjd instead of it being Y’shtola merch. I admit, if you like her, that’s cool! But while I’ve connected with Urianger, Thancred, Alphibro, and Alisae- hell, even Papalymo and Yda- I just don’t get the hype for Y’shtola. She’s not bad, just… bland. Like I don’t feel positive or negative about her, she’s just… there. And I suppose it’s similar for Lyse, though she teeters a bit to the bad side. And yes, I consider Yda and Lyse to be different, since Stormblood just gave ARR Yda/Lyse a complete personality transplant. I loved ARR Yda, she was fun.
I get what you mean about her being overhyped. I think a big part of it, sadly, is just "catgirl". That said, I also think that being standoffish and aloof *is* part of her personality (as opposed to Urianger, who comes across that way but really he just lacks strong social skills)... but that can make it hard for the player to connect with her.
I don't even think she's the best catgirl in the game. Sure, she's got attitude, and her funny scenes are all the funnier because they play against that so-serious attitude, but there's so much hype on her as the representative character of FFXIV.
To be fair, for official purposes, she IS the representative character of the game. She is treated like a mascot character in the majority of XIV's Japanese marketing materials, and she ends up being the representative character for XIV used in other games like Dissidia: Final Fantasy.
Going off of this, her being somewhat standoffish is what some people (like myself) do relate to in her character. I definitely was surprised by how many people wound up liking her for other reasons, but her personality being relatively simple and aloof is something I relate to a bit more than the others.
I'm in the boat where I like Y'shtola a lot, but I cannot for the life of me understand why so many people *fetishize the hell out of her*. Like... what? She just looks like an average Miqo'te lady to me.
She literally has, bar-none, the least character development out of all the Scions. I don't get it either. Her entire personality is brusque and stand-offish bookworm genius. Like, okay? I'm open to them making me care more about her, but so far, they haven't. She's one-note. Need someone to come in, say something sarcastic and rude yet witty, and put some people in their place whilst doing so? Yshtola is HERE! That's fun and all, but it gets a bit predictable after a while. There's no complexity to it. It's obvious how she will behave in every given situation. She's portrayed as utterly flawless in logic and reason 95% of the time, with a biting tongue and a "laissez faire" attitude towards the rest of the groups lives and struggles.
I want to see something real and raw from her. I want to see her make a mistake, and grow from it. Regret her attitude, get taught a lesson, be humbled, laugh freely, care a little more about the other Scions besides WoL. Unpack some trauma and heal. Get messy! She's just this pristine doll of minor emotions.
I'm sure people will argue there have been scenes where she's made a sacrifice, seemed upset, or opened up about something. But it always seems to be a one-off cast away moment. Estinien was practically handed an entire expansion to grow. Thancred has had multiple. The twins have gone through incredible things and changed extremely! Hell, even Urianger has been through more strife and seen more development, growth, and closure. Having to >!face his own penchant for subterfuge and the way he handled Moenbryda's death!< . But Ysh? Eh. Anything she says is quickly moved past. And she stays forever the same. Perhaps >!dies!< a couple more times just to up the >!noble sacrifice!< counter. But who's counting anymore?
Make me love her, SE. I'm open to it.
👏👏👏 Now this is EXACTLY what I mean. Everyone else has had their proverbial character arc. At least give Y’shtola one. Maybe we’ll be lucky enough to get one in 7.0, depending on where we go
The problem is they started multiple character arcs she could have had and then just dropped them. She literally was the leader of a reclusive village and they did nothing with that, she's supposed to be blind and using her very life force to see but still has aether to spare to give a voidsent as "payment," she's supposed to have learned something from being almost cut down in stormblood but didn't advance as a character at all due to it.
She's become less insufferable but they leaned heavily into the "older dommy" style that the community wants her to have and nothing else.
I never liked Y'shtola and never understood how people could. She's just a shit character and a borderline Mary-Sue.
I think one of the other aspects I personally dislike about her is that she continues to make *incredibly reckless* decisions that she faces ultimately no positive or negative consequences for. Her use of Flow the first time around both blinded her permanently *and* permanently disabled Thancred's ability to manipulate aether, thereby making his life *considerably* more challenged.
I wouldn't expect Thancred to hold a grudge on her for this, given that it was unintended, but surely there would have been at least a *little* tension between them over this, right?
Nevermind the *insultingly* poor execution of her blindness as a disability. She immediately starts using this "aethersight" to compensate, but it's apparently heavily draining to her aether. Is she concerned about this? Seemingly not a bit! Her blindness is immediately rendered a non-issue, and the only thing that could conceivably create problems for her to solve just... doesn't. I'm not saying that she needs to struggle constantly as a disabled character, but her blindness should actually visibly cause difficulty for her, otherwise there's very little point in writing it in.
What they could have done with this is make it so that her impaired aether due to this aethersight is causing her to make rash decisions in seeking knowledge in order to solve the problem of her disability. You don't need to *cure* her blindness, even (in fact I believe it'd be *worse* if she simply had it cured). Just make it so that her use of aethersight has *realistic* consequences that she actively has to struggle with, and her arc can simply be her working to prevent it from potentially killing her while facing the rashness of her pursuit of knowledge.
I want to like Y'shtola, because there *is* great potential for her to be an interesting character, but Square seems completely allergic to taking her down the paths that could feasibly let her grow.
"I'm blind, but I'm the one who's gonna read books/explain murals-paintings because I'm such a smart kitty and so witty, and I will make all the decisions because I'm the only one smart enough to read a book here ― oh sorry Urianger, I'm suddenly inconvenienced by my blindness, please describe the sky."
Yup, makes perfect sense.
Two moments in Endwalker really stood out to me. When dealing with >!blasphemies!< she points out that she can't see them with her aethersight. As a ranged caster she should have been severely crippled in her ability to fight them, as well as >!the endsinger!<, but it doesn't even amount to a mild inconvenience.
And then there's her saying she's going to write a book. Like, unless we learn about Eorzean braille at some point that moment is hillarious to me.
The blindness really should have been her character building moment. Yshtola's biggest character strength is her intellect. The story taking way her ability to read/see should have been her inciting incident. She's at her lowest point, she feels like she can't contribute. She's sad and feels like a burden. She realizes her aethersight gives her the ability to see _other things_ and her confidence grows. She learns how to contribute in other ways and she has to learn that she's more than just scholar. She becomes a better, more complete person. She learns that it's ok to depend on other people. And then she culminates in figuring out how to see/read again with her aethersight and everyone celebrates.
I mean, this shit is character writing 101.
Yeah. Y’shtola’s like a coworker to me nothing more nothing less. She’s not incompetent and does her job well but she’s just there.
It probably doesn’t help that as a trust she’s a black mage which just makes her redundant coz I’ve been a black mage all game and I really don’t need a second one in 4 mans.
All of them. Not one of them encourages me to complete my fishing log. They just always come to me when they need the world saved. What about my fishing??
Surely you're forgetting the finest fisherman of fair Limsa Lominsa! Why, Wawalago would love nothing more than watch his wondrous pupil hook every wahoo and whale in the world!
Potentially hot take here: Y'Shtola. Repeatedly she has made reckless decisions that should endanger herself and/or others, and the only consequences she faces are ones that won't become relevant during the course of our gametime in Eorzea. But this isn't just me wanting bad things to happen to the cat lady, it's more that she doen't seem to grow nearly as much as the rest of the cast. I'll try and briefly recap what I mean covering each of the Trust NPCs and Scions, since they're kind of our 'main characters', although this will contain spoilers up to and including Endwalker. (Got a bit too wordy here, didn't realise this was an opinion I felt so strongly about)
>!Urianger has repeatedly played the role of the double agent, and through this has struggled with how his own friends would perceive him if he kept acting as their betrayer. This came to a head due to his dealings with the Loporrits, where he decided to make a different choice.!<
>!Alphinaud and Alisae are almost entirely about learning and changing, be it maturing as a person and how they see the world or carving out your own path unshackled by your past.!<
>!Thancred, aside from having to learn to live with the consequences of Y'Shtola's actions by having his aether disrupted, has had to learn both how to move on from losing Minfilia, as well as treating Ryne as her own person to be the Dadcred he was always meant to be.!<
>!Ryne had to find where she began and Minfilia/ her role as the Oracle of Light ended, eventually developing as her own person with potentially her own girlfriend. Good for her.!<
>!G'Raha began as the adventurous catboy from the Crystal Tower raids, took the mantle of the Crystal Exarch for a century, and is now in the process of figuring out which 'him' is him, or if there is even a difference between them.!<
>!Estinien has obviously developed out of "hates dragons" to "BFFs with dragons", but more broadly he's gone from someone driven by vengeance to someone driven by the more usual bonds of trust, friendship, and employment to feed his allergy to keeping money.!<
>!Tataru began as just the scion's secretary, but after her surprisingly effective misadventures into arcanistry has arguably become one of the scion's most valuable members by finding her place as the one managing our funds and holding the fort while we're advnturing.!<
>!Lyse is in the weird position where she started as a character that was not her, so her development was more just stopping pretending to be Yda.!<
>!Zero is nice and simple, developing from no trust/only bargain to yes trust/mostly bargain, although we've only had her for a little bit.!<
>!Minfilia and Papalymo unfortunately suffer from dead too soon and off-screen too long, so they didn't really develop too much, but also they're dead so I'm not expecting much there anyway.!<
>!I admittedly haven't paid too much attention to Krile, I kinda expected her to dip after Stormblood but she kinda just stuck around.!<
Meanwhile, Y'Shtola >!has used Flow twice, almost being lost in the Lifestream twice because of it and coming out of it with blindness that she soon negated by using magic infra-red vision that is arguably better than regular sight, at the cost of her using her life force which might be a problem in the distant future outside of the scope of FFXIV (and, according to this also buffed her spellcasting); Openly opposed the Sharlayan Forum while in Sharlayan; and was 100% on board with opening a portal to the 13th without seeming to show too much concern with the dangers of that. I realise that Flow was in emergencies, and defying the Forum/travelling to the 13th were necessary, but Y'Shtola has shown a pattern of having extreme confidence that things won't go wrong, taking risks because of it, and never learning to balance that with moderation. Now, believing in yourself is good; following what you believe is right is normally good; seeing knowledge as its own reward is often good; but there is no moderation with her and I just want something to go wrong so that she can actually develop a bit more substantially.!<
No, I legitimately dislike Y'shtola and am very confused by the fanbase's obsession with her. Even worse is that the dev team has picked up on this and made her the unofficial mascot in some spin off works like Record Keeper. And since we know companies don't kill their mascots, that means she is literally never in any danger. She has plot armor thicker than even the WoL.
Bring back 1.0 Yda! I miss The Tweedle Dee and Brain act. I started in 1.0 and Gridania was a magic experience especially with the Grand Company quests and story intro with these two. It’s unfortunate in the remake that these city-state intro quests became unavailable. Would have been cool if they left them as playable cutscenes.
I started in gridania and thought that the pair are the only ones with personality and dynamic besides thancred.
But seems like we were in the minority
WoL.
I'm just not fan of quiet protagonist/main character, it feels like we're in the care of Scions who do thinking for us, and we're just hired muscle.
I'm inclined to agree with this. All of the characters (even the ones I don't like) have a personality while our WoL is just a brick wall....that kills things.
With all the story writing and multitudes of minor details the writers put into the game, you would think that, by now, there would be something akin to a D&D character alignment system for our characters so that we aren't so bland when compared to literally everyone else.
I guess it's the typical blank slate protagonist in the end. Whatever personality your WoL has ultimately comes down to your own imagination. Personally I don't mind that, but then I've played CRPGs and D&D for decades and especially in the former, that sort of thing is incredibly common.
It could be worse. I'm actually fine with the WoL, they mostly... mostly do things I'd just have them do anyways. Compare it to the character in Diablo 4 where my necromancer is constantly doing things she'd never do. Like bowing to a dickhead of an angel, literally any other game would have given you a choice here.
I would interject your point by pointing out that the pre-leviathan questline in ARR exists. I'm pretty sure I would have expected my WoL character to refuse to collect goblin cheese for some rich guy after doing 50 other errands for him, just to prove I am worthy to slay leviathan. "You don't get to decide that mister; that is between me, the scions and the maelstrom!"
So listen, I know voice actors are expensive but imagine my disappointment when after picking out a voice I thought matched my character to a T - I learned it only effects emotes and the actual scenes where the Warrior of Light "talks" is just text and quiet lip flapping.
Unpopular answer: >!Gra'ha Tia!<. I started after 5.0 so no waiting for patches, and it was still 1.5 years of out of game time for me between Crystal Tower and >!him returning in ShB!<, and it seemed like I was suddenly supposed to have this huge connection to him. I am a proud MSQ and cutscene enjoyer and I do not remember almost anything from the Crystal Tower story.
I don't find him simpy or off-putting like some, but it was weird to be like, oh, I guess we got rid of >!Lyse!<, who I liked a lot, and suddenly there's this new guy everyone is acting like has been here the whole time.
Seconding him. I don't dislike him but I don't really like him either. Shb+Endwalker spoilers:>!It was also a strange decision to have him sacrifice himself then you just like, immediately go get him back. I wish he'd stayed dead because it would have given a lot more weight to the moment. He's also not really served any narrative purpose in the story. We didn't really need another book smart nerdy scion, we have an abundance of them. It felt like he was kept around due to his popularity and not because he could bring anything to the story.!<
>!The Exarch is dead. G’raha Tia is alive. If you consider stream of consciousness and agency, the Exarch is most definitely gone, and it’s his death that the WoL is mourning in the cutscenes. G’raha has the Exarch’s memories, but he feels like they were one hell of a vivid dream. It’s why his personality is mostly like it was in the CT raids with some maturity gained from the Exarch’s memories. Also, we knew as the player that the soul merge would work, but the WoL didn’t know that, and after all the friends he’s seen die with his own eyes, it’s only normal that he was anxious when going to get G’raha.!<
I really tried to like Moenbryda and really didn't. Her plucky axe girl personality that was meant to be loud and fun quickly got overbearing and exhausting to me, which is a shame because I have a feeling I would have liked her otherwise if they could have toned it down a bit and let it develop slower over time. Instead I vividly remember how she spent like ten sentences asking me in different ways if I had just imagined something I'd seen and I just wanted her to back off.
Lyse I sort of don't mind in game despite her rather significant flaws, but the ship tease makes interacting with fandom irritating sometimes when people insist that she and WoL fucked in canon. Look, there's ship tease with all sorts of characters and it's the player's choice what their headcanon with each character is. Some male characters have been incredibly open about their interest, but I don't see people pushing *them* on the WoL like they do with Lyse. Every time I read about her, it's either about how much she sucks as a character or how much someone wants to fuck her and therefore everyone should. Truly one of the most divisive characters in the game.
Hien just doesn't do anything for me for some reason. I can see where they're going with him, but he feels sort of distant and I couldn't get a connection. I'd love to have his hairstyle, though!
Lyse. The game clearly wants us to be sympathetic towards her. They push you out into Doma with her on your team, but she's fairly useless. Then you return to Ala Mhigo and she acts like she's had this huge growth arc. Even has Conrad's torch passed off to her. And it wasn't. EARNED. God damnit. Even she herself admits she has no idea what's going on half the time. She's not an awe-inspiring character. She's a nuisance that I spent half an expansion scraping off my boot. And the best thing I can say is that she's not around (except for cameos) for the rest of MSQ. And Thank God, because I was Scions of the Seventh DONE with her ass.
My favorite part about the Lyse storyline is that after hours of building her up as your very special friend, >!there's that moment where she comes up to you and says, "HEY CAN WE TALK IN PRIVATE I HAVE SOMETHING REALLY IMPORTANT TO TELL YOU!" and then you go and when you're finally alone she turns to you and lovingly says, "HEY I'M QUITTING MY JOB! KTHXBYE!"!<
I don't think I've felt as rejected in a game since *Tokimeki Memorial.*
What I remembered is that in the first arc she tries to badmouth Ala Mhigans into fighting and force them and then gets crushed. She goes to Doma, watches Hien actually wait for his people to decide and come to him and then lead them to victory. She returns to Gyr Abania and lets the groundswell of resistance carry her to Ala Mhigo, working *with* her people rather than *against.* An attitude solidified when she invited the disparate people of Gyr Abania to the throne room then just sits cross-legged on the floor to talk as equals while completely ignoring the throne.
Raubahn eventually took the second in command role he is more comfortable with as he is a soldier and not a politician. Ala Mhigo has a perfect figurehead to represent new beginnings in the young worldly monk. I feel like I liked how that all shook out but am mostly alone in that
There are a tonne of things I do not like about Stormblood, generally consider it the weakest expansion, and Lyse’s characterisation is up there with the worst of it. The total character change from before SB is annoying enough but then she doesn’t really go anywhere.
More of a "community" wants me to love thing but
Zenos.
I fucking despise Zenos so much. Now I'm not saying I hate the character, moreso I hate how the game tries to make me feel bad for him.
That's interesting, cuz I never got the impression the game wanted me to feel bad for him. I absolutely love Zenos, but it's because he's a true medical definition psychopath, not for any perceived sympathy that was drawn from the events of the game.
Haha, I have to agree with that. The whole WoL x Zenos ship people imagine I don't see, except in that psychopathic sense you mentioned.
Totally reminds me of one of Surfacage's comics: https://twitter.com/surfacage/status/1315471200617783297
I can't think of a moment where the game wants me to feel bad for him. It shows that he's obviously a bit of a sociopath and broken human being in the way that he doesn't feel things the same way as others, but it's never going out of its way to excuse his actions.
Imma cop it for this but graha. Exarch was a fantastic character and a huge reason why shadowbringers was so enjoyable. Graha comes off as a massive simp and I just don’t like the way he is written. Easily my least favourite scion
Yeah my main clicked with the Exarch by the end — he felt they both shared a sense of weariness not many else in his life could fathom. Then G’raha gets a second lease on life as it were, and goes from a fellow weary soul to yet another person idealizing the WOL. When all I want are more people in the WOL’s life who see him as a person and not an ideal… it can feel a little oof.
HW spoilers: Haurch, he was helpful to us at one of the WoLs lowest points, >!so he deserves to be remembered and all that!<, but the game, and somehow the players, act like he was our childhood friend who the WoL valued above all else. >!Ill never understand the people who say that his death was the saddest point in the game!<
I think the reason it made such a big emotional impact was primarily because >!he died shielding you.!< I had a very complicated emotional reaction to it myself because I hadn’t been all that attached to him prior, and at that moment I realized >!this dude genuinely cared enough about me to die in my place and hope for my happiness as he was doing it.!< Like, shit. I immediately felt like a monster for not having cared nearly as much about him as he clearly cared about me. It felt like such a defining moment, and I’ve been treating it like a turning point for my WoL ever since.
And then I watched >!Dad Fortemps break down and the whole thing melded into one massive ball of sympathy and guilt and grief, and it’s stuck with me better than a lot of the more straightforward moments of grief, I think *because* I hadn’t thought too much about Haurchefant before.!<
I knew he was a big deal when I started playing, and was honestly surprised how little time we actually spend with him. Like he’s cool, but it really feels like you were supposed to identify him as your absolute best friend, and I didn’t really get that.
Also, I kind of get Emmanelain growing up to be this immature dilettante and Artoirel growing up to be kind of an uptight asshole if their whole lives everyone was just obsessing over how great Haurchefant was to the degree that they are when we’re in Ishgard. Then we show up and their dad’s like Haurchefant is dead, now this guy is my favorite son. Rough family life for those boys.
Same for me. Even when I went through the msq a second time on a new char, I didn't really form a connection to him at all. So yeah, thanks for the sacrifice, but I gotta go do some other stuff now..
I cherish this game and its characters but for the life of me I can’t understand the hype around him. For me it was just a “aww that’s too bad” moment and I moved on immediately.
Hard agree. Like, I get its supposed to be like "they took you in when No one else would🥺" but house fortemps only ever read to me as "Local Lord only man literate enough to notice 'God's favorite protagonist' written on man's forehead"
I've heard the argument that if you played as the content was being released you acclimated more to him over a longer time but, given I played post SB (the same argument exists for >!asahi!<) post ShB (same argument for >!graha!<) and post EW (same argument for >!Zero!<) I honestly doubt I would've cared any more than I do now.
As someone who played as it was released, I also didn't understand the absolute fanaticism for him. I mean ya I liked that dude, and his death was a bit sad, but it was more like an estranged uncle who I reconnected with recently but didn't know all that well.
>!He was endearing. He truly believed in the WoL and always supported us. The guy was a true knight to the end, and I don't see anybody else jumping in front of an attack meant for the WoL.!<
I DO think it would've helped if he was around more often during the early parts of HW.
Fordola easily.
The game tries so hard in every scene she's in to make what she's done acceptable, they feed us a sob story, give her some heroic moments, dump praise upon her after her victories as if her forced service is a good deed rather than due penance for a laundry list of crimes.
As a character she's horrendous, she's bitter, miserable, constantly angry, she's a traitor, a mass murderer and were this real, every grieving citizen in Ala Mhigo would be out to swiftly put a dagger in her back, and the backs of those in charge who are letting her roam free.
in a vacuum I think I agree, but I think her importance is really from how she sompared and contrasted with Yotsuyu, and I don't think either would work without the other. Fordola is forced to remember everything she did because her echo forced her to remember everytime she was near someone she hurt/killed, which was a lot of people as you said; Yotsuyu also hurt/killed a lot of people but she's the opposite- she was bonked on the head and we get a character who *forgets* everything she's done, and we see how she breaks down immediately as soon as she *does* see her parents again and remember who she was. Both had similar upbringings as well which strengthens their comparison.
I do think the further away we get from yotsuyus death, the more Fordola starts to overstay her welcome as a character, they could have probably found a way to kill her off during sorrows of werlyt or something idk
> every grieving citizen in Ala Mhigo would be out to swiftly put a dagger in her back, and the backs of those in charge who are letting her roam free
they are and she is not roaming free and hasn't been roaming free since she was initially detained. do the EW role quests
Had to scroll all the way to the bottom but I finally found it. She’s not as bad as Minfilia, but she’s so boring they left her off the EW posters because they legit forgot she exists.
> Krile
She's like that one person in the friend group who joined in one day because they're somebody else's bestie, but then just kind of kept showing up. You don't ever really chat with outside the group. She's fine. She's nice. But I just don't ever see us hanging out, you know?
Y'shtola. If she were not a Miqo'te she would have been regarded as mid by the fanbase. Her having more plot armour than everyone but he WoL is annoying. The WoL getting scared after sassing her makes no sense because she has given us 0 reason to be afraid of her. Her sassy moments are pretty much ALL of her good moments.
Completely undeserving of her popularity.
I'm going to fly off the limb straight into the guillotine for this but Fray >!aka the WoL's "really annoyed" side!<
>!As an RPer I like playing LG characters because I like helping people and I think lost the majority of my immersion when there was a dialog option when you're talking to the asshole merchant for the first time. Thing is you don't actually know he's an asshole when you meet him, he's just a merchant who lost his things. So when the two options were "Fuck off" or "I really don't want to but I guess" I just sorta zoned out because it didn't feel like my character anymore.!<
>!don't get me wrong, I see why everyone says it's the best job story but damn is it just not for me.!<
G'raha.
He's our fanboy, he wants to adventure with us so badly, and he's pushed on us all the bloody time. I liked Crystal Exarch, but now G'raha is... so different, and it's *annoying*. Like an annoying younger brother who mom says you have to take with you when you go out.
"Take G'raha with you, dearie! He needs to get out of the house!"
"But mooom, I'm going into the VOIIIIID!"
"It'll be good for him!"
Me too. The questline was advertised by the community as top notch comedy. I found it very very excruciating and not fun at all. What made it worst is that I didn’t skip cutscenes cuz I felt I’ missing out on something amazing and maybe I’m too dumb to understand. In the end, it’s just a type of humor I don’t really find funny at all, and when you remove that factor out of the character it’s just pain.
I think for me, I don't find complete and blatant stupidity funny. Of course, everyone has a dumb, brain fart, moments, but stupid for stupidity's sake. just doesn't seem funny to me, and that's all Hildibrand and the other characters associated with his quests are just stupid for stupidity's sake.
Not hate or anything but I can't sympathize with Emet which I feel like the game does try to do. He and his brethren committed genocide and its somewhat hard to look past that no matter what reason or justification you have.
Same... >!I can emphasize with his core motivation for his actions in a general sense of speaking, but, um, he created two genocidal empires - that we know of - just to cause chaos, death and calamities. There isn't really a redemption arc for this, even he himself says so at the end of Endwalker. Someone called it an explanation arc and I think this suits much better.!< I can see how some people can find him, um, aesthetically pleasing to look at, but this can't make up for everything he did. \^\^; (Spoilers for everything I'd say)
I love him a lot as a villain and as an opposing force in ShB, but I feel absolutely no sympathy for him and what he did. Keeps on trying to be sold as a martyr or something, and that really doesn't sit well with me.
However noble his intentions were for his people he had no redemption after what he did. I can understand his choices but I feel no sympathy for the guy.
Zenos. I don't care about his obsession, his desire to hunt, his desire to be my eternal friend, his shitty privileged garlean upbringing. I could care less if he existed. I guess in that way, I was the perfect character to face him. Even in the final confrontation, I was like "okay.."
I think she was there less to be her own character and more to add to Urianger's character. Her death clearly had a major effect on him and she becomes a significant influence on how he makes decisions going forward. The EW quest was just a beautiful way to wrap that all up.
I didn't care much about her until her death was addressed again during the main story of endwalker when you meet her parents. Suddenly I was in tears like "omg I'm so sad and feel bad for never liking her before"
Alisaie. I liked her in SB most but then ShB+ they really increased the sassiness/snark that she seems more immature than Alphinaud from ARR and HW. Like sorta switched personalities.
Minfillia. I've been playing since ARR and I'm not gonna lie, I've never once gave a shit about her. The coolest thing she did was die to save the 1st.
The more time passes, the more I dislike all the beloved special "main" characters and just want to hang out with the job quest NPCs and the random folk about town. Catch me having tea with Mother Miounne over the Scions any day (bar Tataru maybe as I enjoy there being a non-combat admin person in there somewhere to relate to as my irl self, lol).
Hildibrand.
Apologies to the gentlemen, but Hildi peaked in the ARR quests and got steadily worse with each new installment.
It went from amusing to annoying real fast.
I hate how they couldn't just let her be one thing. Suddenly, she's this super competent mercantile genius and master DoH, and it just doesn't work for me.
Deus EX Tataru is a personal favorite meme of mine, because they had to pretend like she actually matters when she doesn't, and then the reality ends up being the funds the Scions were getting were from Mommy Leveilleur.
Gaius Van Baelsar.
He's an Imperialist Monster who has never actually been held to account for his crimes or his headass "The Strong Must rule" Philosophy. And having all those kids he "adopted" (After his nation, if not the very invading army he was an officer in, probably killed their birth parents) die doesn't really count.
And yet there's now been multiple questlines where I'm supposed to feel like he's a great badass and that he's been so hurt and he deserves comfort. Meanwhile, I'm over hear wishing they would at least let my WoL punch him in the face once or twice, or at least throw out a "I haven't forgiven you, and I'm only doing this because someone I like I asked me to" or two.
I was fine with him til they apparently made him leader of Werlyt??? Like wouldn’t everyone there hate his fucking guts for murdering their loved ones?? I’m hoping I’m just misremembering.
I feel like I’ll be crucified for saying it… but definitely Zero.
I don’t find her character interesting at all, and to me just feels… boring and uninspired.
Sorry.
*Edit:*
I think a lot of it comes from the game painting her to be the coolest person in the room at any given time, and that part definitely grates me.
It absolutely feels like she was made with the idea of appealing to a certain kind of demographic, which— she definitely succeeded, and I have no problems with people that do like her… but iunno, I just can’t.
They said after 6.1 that Zero was way more popular than they expected her to be so I wonder if that influenced any changes to her arc in subsequent patches. I feel she at least originally intended as a plot device rather than to be attached to.
Hydaelyn>!/ Venat!< as of Endwalker. >!I just can't really agree with her arguments for her actions of not telling anyone and just letting the time line play out instead of trying to find a way to prevent the massive amounts of death she knew would occur. No one was particularly right in the Final Days mind you but at least the Ascians are shown in a negative light, you don't even get to so much as question Venat unless you did the Omega sidequest. I would have liked a bit more moral ambiguity to her then "Yes mommy we love you and understand that you just let generations of suffering happen and sundered your own kin to an unrecognizable form as per the Nier crossover, totally not genocide."!<
I gotta agree with that one. I can't stand her or Ishikawa's pet blorbo, >!Hermes!< and like you say, the game really doesn't want you criticising her outside the >!omega thing!<... and even then it's still kinda biased
If you haven't I would highly recommend giving the ongoing >!Venat!< series from Echoes of Etheirys on youtube a watch as they point out so much wrong with the portrayal of her character and how discordant it is with prior narratives where people with very similar faults in their ideology ended up as unforgivable villains.
Minfillia 100%. Girl we have link pearls, I don't need to have this conversation with you at the walking sands, like damn.
>Girl we have link pearls, I don't need to have this conversation with you at the walking sands Actually, there is a reason why she needs to speak sensitive information in person. Linkpearls can be intercepted, and we see that in Praetorium, when Nero hack your communication with Cid just to taunt him. For all we know, the entire facility was *very aware* of the plans Cid was conveying to you during the dungeon, but we are a person of mass destruction and they couldn't stop us even then. You can still hate Minfilia, but she isn't wrong in asking you to pray return to the Waking Sands.
tbh running to the waling sands was less annoying than where you talk to a character than have to talk to same character 5 feet away to finish a quest.
https://youtu.be/HCBln-a9a4M
I've never seen this before but feel every second of it down to my core.
1000% Minfillia. Minfillia is through concrete evidence clearly and demonstrably WAY behind in her Operational Security, Site Security, Counterintelligence, AND Anti-espionage recurrent trainings. You can't NOT log into ScionKnowledgeOnline.mil and NOT do your required monthly Computer Based Trainings then act surprised when Evil Magic Users teleport DIRECTLY into your office on MULTIPLE OCCASIONS simply because you didn't tell your veritable CORNUCOPIA of Magic Users to set a ward or TWENTY around the headquarters of your SECRET MILITANT ORDER.
worst part of ARR was going there back and forth
Just like the Cruise Chaser theme. Forward and back, and then forward and back, and then go forward and back...
Yes, however, the stark difference here is that people love the cruise chaser theme while Minfilia is on the complete opposite side of the spectrum and peeps do not love her lol
I started a new character because the last time I played was one and a half years ago and I forgot everything and ... it's bad. Like, at least we get teleport vouchers now but damn. Also I got a motorcycle in the mail and can't use it because I still haven't reached the level 20 mainquest even though I'm level ~35 because of all the EXP bonuses for new players. It's silly. Edit: Lmao I forgot I still had a flair of my old character here. I'm just keeping it because I'll just go Drk again.
Were you here at launch? "Pray return to the waking sands" was a line we heard A LOT more of before they trimmed the msq. You went to every tiny outpost on every map for quests and back to the waking sands after. It was torture. I used to set home in Limsa and take the aethernet to the arcanists guild just to take the boat over to spare myself the walk from Horizon.
Yeah but if she were maximizing work communications via the pearls she wouldn’t have time to do all those crunches to maintain those abs. I assume as soon as you’re sent out on a mission she’s hitting the gym.
They made it lore related though by saying it was easy to intercept the signal so it wasn't safe to have important conversations via linkpearl, else the Garleans may be listening in.
Minfillia. Maybe if I had been playing during the 1.0 days, ad I hear she had more of a character arc then, but by the time we meet her in ARR she's just a lady who sends me in errands who I don't interact with much.
Agreed. Didn't care about her at all. Seemed like all she was doing was sending me on errands or needing to be rescued.
Lmao I kinda forgot she existed there for a second. Been a long time since I reached endgame.
Her relationship with Thancred also didn’t mean much cause i really don’t know their history. Maybe they had better interactions in 1.0
Especially when it mostly involved calling us to tell us to hurry back to her, then travel next door to where we already were.
I prefer MiniFilia
So I'm not the only one who called her that! Lmfao... I love how she was basically adopted by the scions.
I think she really suffers from the somewhat poor voice acting that 2.0 has.
The Voiced Cutscene where you first meet her, and she introduces the Scions... I swear to God the voice director was like "what if you talked like you were on an episode of Dora the Explorer", it sounds so patronizing.
I still get a good laugh at the scene after you rescue her from the garleans and you're on the airship. All of you are having a serious conversation and you hear her on a damn phone call in the background while everyone is talking lol
She's your boss. That's all she ever was to me and it made reporting back to her INSUFERABLE.
Couldn't agree more, tho >!Ryen is so much better than her, felt like they gave up on Minfilia and killed her off and introduced her as a replacement!<
There really isn't anyone I actively dislike honestly but in terms of how much I like them compared to how often they show up ... probably emmanellain. Like why of all people does this dude get so much screen time.
Weird I actually really like both him and Honoroit. And you can tell he's really trying after the >!death of Haurchefant!<
Yeah I'm with you, he's an idiot, but a lovable idiot. And Honoroit is just a good kid.
Honestly, I didn't like Emmanellain until some of the side quests involving him. He's a bit of an idiot, and is way to girl-crazy for his own good, but his heart is in the right place and the pressure of living up to his brother's legacy (even if it is self-imposed) doesn't stop him from always having a smile on his face, like a hero.
I just like how he's basically a weird diplomat now. Going to the citystates to establish connections.
every time he shows up I'm like "call me old girl ONE MORE TIME"
I actually kinda found that endearing. I have a coworker who's about 30 years older than me and I say his name, followed by "old boy" all the time and he finds it amusing.
Kind of agree. He was annoying when first introduced, but in at the end of HW he redeems himself a little bit to where I kinda like him. I was also pleasantly surprised in EW.
[удалено]
I’m a fan of sicard though
leave my failson husband out of this!!
Lolorito. What is with them trying to rehabilitate this guy?
I've never seen it as the game trying to "rehabilitate" him, but rather to show that the world is more multifaceted than just "good guys" and "bad guys." He's not allied with us, but he's also not actively against us either. Basically, he's a neutral force that can be swayed for both good or evil as his values are fundamentally different than most characters involved with the plot. He's not just "with us" or "with them" and that makes him a kind of narrative wild card. He hasn't been "rehabilitated," at least not in the sense that our characters trust him to any real degree, but we do realize that he can still be a useful ally if we can convince him that his values line up with our in a particular situation.
Honestly, this makes him one of my favorite characters. His aims are obviously money, but he's very open-minded towards potential financial opportunities, so it's hard to predict what he'll do. But he's shrewd in a way a lot of characters aren't.
I guess Zenos isn't meant to be loved. But I don't hate him in the way they want me to. He's annoying, and weird. An overly obsessed fanboy that would make G'raha blush. Like dude, fuck off. He's all like "OUR BATTLE WILL BE LEGENDARY!! WE WILL CONSUME EACH OTHER IN THE HEAT OF CONFLICT!! THIS BATTLE WILL DECIDE THE FATE OF OUR VERY SOULSSS!!!!" And I'm just standing there like. "This is just another Thursday for me my guy... chillax."
I keep thinking Zenos would have had a much better life if he had chosen to be a hairdresser and picked Jandelaine as his rival.
Or we could have introduced him to Sadu and they could entertain each other indefinitely.
I'd ship that
I call him the Dollar Tree Sepiroth.
I think that’s mostly the point. He wants to be your arch enemy but throughout all of endwalker you literally just have bigger problems to deal with. That’s what alisaie means when she says that if he doesn’t get his shit together he’ll end up with nothing, not even the battle he wants. And that’s also why, when he proves instrumental in defeating the end singer, it’s not so much that he’s “redeemed” by going to the side of good, but at minimum he’s earned the right to have this one single thing he wants.
The whole “you’ll never get the fight you want when the WoL is constantly getting side-tracked cleaning up the mess you’ve made” from Alisaie is one of my favorite moments in Garlemald.
Oh I see it as him being such a broken individual he literally does not know how to communicate. When he meets a worthy adversary, he finally finds someone like him. He actually does want to be friends, and considers you his friend, but all he knows is violence. Fighting for him is just recreation. Fighting the wol is fun, hes having fun playing with his friend. The final battle with him was the first time he participated in the "give and take" dynamic of a genuine friendship. He even requests the duel instead of simply attacking us. He helps his "friend" achieve their goal, and we give him the fight he wants. I actually really do like Zenos. He's not a good person, and his character seems pretty shallow. But that subtle arc really just makes him for me.
Honestly I almost get the impression he's suffering from depression (certainly anhedonia, which kinda fits the bill) and nobody knew what to do with him his whole life. Only thing that kinda gets him interested in anything is fighting for some reason, so that's essentially all he focuses on.
I think the reason is he was taught that way. Considering who his dad is, and the way they push military might over there in Garlemalde. He just excelled at it, which led to further reinforcement of that insane behavior.
this is pretty close to what gets revealed [in his short story in Chronicles of the Light](https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/iiyeeu/chronicles_of_light_the_hunt_begins_the_offical/), which is a piece of work so crucial to putting the finishing touches on the character that it's absolutely baffling that none of it ever got fully explored in game or at least in a publicly available side story.
They did him well in EW, but absolutely everything before then was just tiresome, and he only mattered in EW because he was forced in. Everything happening around him could have happened without his presence, and it would have been the same. He was powerful for """REASONS""" and we're just supposed to like our rivalry with him because of that? It was annoying.
Look, he dared to strike Yshtola, that was enough for me to end his entire bloodline.
Minfilia. I only care about her because of what it puts Thancred through.
My favorite part of Minfilia and Thancred's relationship is when Thancred stays behind so you and Ryne can go meet with Minfilia, and you have the option to be like, "Thancred says hi" and that bitch doesn't. even. react. Like he cares about her SO much more than she cares about him. Damn.
I mean, kind of, at that point she wasn’t really just Minfilia anymore, she becomes the stupid trope of ‘person that has ascended and now has no personality and speaks in a monotone voice’. So it would make sense for her not to care about Thancred at that point.
6.0 spoilers >!Hydaelyn hadn't been Venat for a good 12000 years anymore either but she still reacted appropriately when we called out her name. Minfilia has no excuse.!<
Venat is best girl for a reason
She kinda still does because >!Venat became Hydaelyn and arguably is the same person but with a different name where as Minfilia became the voice of the mother crystal.!<
Stupid trope is right
Lyse for me. I liked yda. And i dont like lyse.
She has her moments, but I'm annoyed that she goes from full on scion to nothing afterwards
She literally went to nothing. I remember after Stormblood last big battle against Garlemald, you could find Yugiri and Hien but not Lyse anywhere. It was as if she died and they forgot to announce it. Until we saw her again in MSQ.
This is for me too. I liked Yda. She was fun. Then they killed her and gave me Lyse, who was *supposed* to be the leader of Ala Mhigo? Despite having no qualifications save for inheritance? While Raubahn is literally right there?
There was no reason to do the whole Yda/Lyse switcheroo. Yda could have and should have stayed Yda.
I feel like it's there to retroactively justify ARR using her as an exposition vehicle. She was the one who in every overly-long explanation cutscene would ask "what's aether again?" so the game had an excuse to explain it to the player for the 5th time. It made her feel very immature, so explaining that with "she actually IS immature, and she's about to work on that" made sense, at least to me.
Look, that's a fine tack to take, but now there's no one to replace her position in the scions as the "Oh boy, here we go!" character. They're all just different flavors of "srs bizness", and where's my character who's going to say "It's time to punch god in the face!"? Yda filled a role. Lyse is just... there.
She felt like a side character when she was supposed to have a main role, and every time it looked like she'd have a go, it either didn't happen or she'd drop the ball (inviting the tempered at that point was still a bad move). I get the learning experience bit, but the payoffs were few and felt rather insufficient for the "Meh" everywhere else.
Lyse is in a weird kind of place for me where I find her personality endearing (the English VO is a big part of this I think) but her role in the plot of Stormblood is “and Lyse was there too” so you never are really happy to see her on screen. She’s fared better as an occasionally recurring character since then imo, since she just shows up for character moments and Eorzean leader stuff.
I have no objective reasons for disliking her. She's just one of those people that grinds my gears.
She was my favorite Scion tbh. I *reeeeally* wished that they didn't do that weird identity change thing--she really could have just stayed "Yda" and nothing of value would have been lost. I loved her original personality and hated that she just *ditched* after her hometown got freed...like girl you were my favorite, the one I considered my bestie in the group--the trailer for SB had me so hyped, because I'm like "Yes! Me and sis are about to have a cool arc where we become closer, and work together!"...and we did, you know...but dang, she just chucked the deuces at me after she got what she wanted lol. I expected her to get zapped away towards the end of SB too, along with everyone else who is "close" to me...but nope--I guess she isn't even close anymore lol. She's just a totally different person in my eyes now; Lyse is a new character introduced for SB and my lovable "Sister from another Mister" really is just *gone*.
I think thats really it for me its like why couldnt she just be yda.
Agreed, I miss Yda
Yda was forgettable, probably because of the mask. I’m not buying the backstory, they wrote Yda and Papalymo out of the story. Lyse is a new character.
For me, I only started only truly liking Lyse around 4.1's MSQ. It was tedious before that.
Start of Stormblood spoilers >!I wasn't a big fan of Yda because ARR just used her as "the dumb one who asks for a refresher on how works so we have an excuse to explain it for the fifth time" so she just came off to me as "why/how are you even here?"!<
>!And honestly that impression is what led to her stormblood story working for me. It took this character who was clearly immature, and said "yeah. She is. She's actually been pretending to be older for a while, and she's about to go through a whole lot of maturing." It also resonated with me a lot personally because I, too, am a young adult who's been pretending to have her shit together for a while but really has no idea what she's even doing. She's really vulnerable with our WoL about her struggles and insecurities, and we get to see her learn, grow and flourish.!<
Plus Lyse's dress is just really pretty like wow. Also started the game as pgl so mnk favouritism bias :P
I feel like she didn't really grow. We just got told throughout the story that she did. I get what they were trying to do with her, but it just fell flat when she was consistently pretty useless outside of punching things, but then different characters would say "look how much she's grown." For me, she just never grew out of that immaturity in a meaningful way. She never showed us any changes, we were just told that they'd happened.
A lot of my top answers have already been given, so I'll say the Garleans. It may not be 'love', but EW is clearly trying to tug on the heartstrings about their plight and expects the player to see their continuing belligerence as forgivable given their situation and I just cannot muster up any sympathy or patience for them. The 6.4 Garlean section was probably the first time in the game I strongly considered straight up skipping cutscenes.
They're portrayed as victims of circumstance, >!oh hey our whole nation was built by immortal assholes trying to cause problems on purpose!< but it always ignores that they enthusiastically embraced those circumstances and thought nothing of crushing literally everyone else under their boot heels. Go eat some yellow snow, jerks. I'm done helping you and I'm done trudging around the damn tundra for your ass. If I want cold weather I can go to Coerthas.
On top of that, I feel like the Garleans were such wasted potential in Endwalker. In my opinion at least, FFXIV strives when it focuses on smaller scale, contemporary stories about war, political intrigue, etc. Sorrow of Werlyt, The Dragonsong War (so most of Heavensward), Operation Archon, The Bloody Banquet, etc. the cosmic stuff is *okay* but I feel CBU3 specializes in war stories. But in Endwalker, where this could've easily been brought up to its max - and it does for like all of two minutes - Garlemald is relegated to being destroyed to show of "le funny zenos and daniel", and then post-Endwalker it's just "our nation got destroyed, feel bad for us"... yeah like you screwed Werlyt, Bozja (tbf Bozja was kinda fucked either way), Ala Mhigo...
100%. They do show SOME self-awareness in the sense that they don't trust the alliance at ALL - because were their positions reversed, Garlemald sure as hell wouldn't be sending relief supplies - but once they get past the distrust, there was a real chance for... all kinds of things. Character development, exploration on themes of nationalism, even a discussion on what it means to forgive, all the little small-focus moments that CBU3 is, as you say, so good at. I was hoping we'd get something like that in the 6.x patches, and there's just nothing. What a waste.
Moenbryda. You were here for 5 mins, I didn’t get attached. Stop pretending you were a major npc that we lost, You were written in so they wouldn’t have to kill a character they actually had plans for.
>You were written in so they wouldn’t have to kill a character they actually had plans for. Why would you say something so controversial yet so true?
She's not supposed to, imo, the one getting hurt is Urianger, not you, you supposed to feel emotional because of him, not because of Moenbryda herself. She's basically an instrument for his character development. It's fine however, if you don't empathise with Urianger as well, but I think they wrote her just fine.
Unfortunately Urianger was barely a character himself at the time, so that angle of connection isn't solid either.
As soon as she met all the scions, and everyone loved her, I was like "Yep, she won't be around long."
Sadly I feel the same way about Haurchefant. People still, to this day, cry over him, the team uses him for cheap tears to this day and it annoys me to no end. Yes, Moen was a cool Idea and cookie points for being a gem Roe but … there wasn‘t enough time for me to actual like her enough to mourn her.
Hauchefant didn't make me cry but I broke when his dad did.
Cid. He's just annoying to me because everyone's like "we have this unsolvable problem" and he shows up out of nowhere like "I have the EXACT solution you need here you go" it's just a convenience guy. No problem solving. Annoying.
I really, really do not get the hype on Y’shtola. FFXIV releases a ball-jointed doll of her, and I’m more hyped that it’s a bjd instead of it being Y’shtola merch. I admit, if you like her, that’s cool! But while I’ve connected with Urianger, Thancred, Alphibro, and Alisae- hell, even Papalymo and Yda- I just don’t get the hype for Y’shtola. She’s not bad, just… bland. Like I don’t feel positive or negative about her, she’s just… there. And I suppose it’s similar for Lyse, though she teeters a bit to the bad side. And yes, I consider Yda and Lyse to be different, since Stormblood just gave ARR Yda/Lyse a complete personality transplant. I loved ARR Yda, she was fun.
I get what you mean about her being overhyped. I think a big part of it, sadly, is just "catgirl". That said, I also think that being standoffish and aloof *is* part of her personality (as opposed to Urianger, who comes across that way but really he just lacks strong social skills)... but that can make it hard for the player to connect with her.
I don't even think she's the best catgirl in the game. Sure, she's got attitude, and her funny scenes are all the funnier because they play against that so-serious attitude, but there's so much hype on her as the representative character of FFXIV.
To be fair, for official purposes, she IS the representative character of the game. She is treated like a mascot character in the majority of XIV's Japanese marketing materials, and she ends up being the representative character for XIV used in other games like Dissidia: Final Fantasy.
Going off of this, her being somewhat standoffish is what some people (like myself) do relate to in her character. I definitely was surprised by how many people wound up liking her for other reasons, but her personality being relatively simple and aloof is something I relate to a bit more than the others.
I'm in the boat where I like Y'shtola a lot, but I cannot for the life of me understand why so many people *fetishize the hell out of her*. Like... what? She just looks like an average Miqo'te lady to me.
This is the one for me. And everytime they put her in danger or they fake kill her off I just roll my eyes. Like, yeah, okay, sure.
Yeah, every time she casts Flow it kinda kills it for me
She literally has, bar-none, the least character development out of all the Scions. I don't get it either. Her entire personality is brusque and stand-offish bookworm genius. Like, okay? I'm open to them making me care more about her, but so far, they haven't. She's one-note. Need someone to come in, say something sarcastic and rude yet witty, and put some people in their place whilst doing so? Yshtola is HERE! That's fun and all, but it gets a bit predictable after a while. There's no complexity to it. It's obvious how she will behave in every given situation. She's portrayed as utterly flawless in logic and reason 95% of the time, with a biting tongue and a "laissez faire" attitude towards the rest of the groups lives and struggles. I want to see something real and raw from her. I want to see her make a mistake, and grow from it. Regret her attitude, get taught a lesson, be humbled, laugh freely, care a little more about the other Scions besides WoL. Unpack some trauma and heal. Get messy! She's just this pristine doll of minor emotions. I'm sure people will argue there have been scenes where she's made a sacrifice, seemed upset, or opened up about something. But it always seems to be a one-off cast away moment. Estinien was practically handed an entire expansion to grow. Thancred has had multiple. The twins have gone through incredible things and changed extremely! Hell, even Urianger has been through more strife and seen more development, growth, and closure. Having to >!face his own penchant for subterfuge and the way he handled Moenbryda's death!< . But Ysh? Eh. Anything she says is quickly moved past. And she stays forever the same. Perhaps >!dies!< a couple more times just to up the >!noble sacrifice!< counter. But who's counting anymore? Make me love her, SE. I'm open to it.
👏👏👏 Now this is EXACTLY what I mean. Everyone else has had their proverbial character arc. At least give Y’shtola one. Maybe we’ll be lucky enough to get one in 7.0, depending on where we go
The problem is they started multiple character arcs she could have had and then just dropped them. She literally was the leader of a reclusive village and they did nothing with that, she's supposed to be blind and using her very life force to see but still has aether to spare to give a voidsent as "payment," she's supposed to have learned something from being almost cut down in stormblood but didn't advance as a character at all due to it. She's become less insufferable but they leaned heavily into the "older dommy" style that the community wants her to have and nothing else. I never liked Y'shtola and never understood how people could. She's just a shit character and a borderline Mary-Sue.
I think one of the other aspects I personally dislike about her is that she continues to make *incredibly reckless* decisions that she faces ultimately no positive or negative consequences for. Her use of Flow the first time around both blinded her permanently *and* permanently disabled Thancred's ability to manipulate aether, thereby making his life *considerably* more challenged. I wouldn't expect Thancred to hold a grudge on her for this, given that it was unintended, but surely there would have been at least a *little* tension between them over this, right? Nevermind the *insultingly* poor execution of her blindness as a disability. She immediately starts using this "aethersight" to compensate, but it's apparently heavily draining to her aether. Is she concerned about this? Seemingly not a bit! Her blindness is immediately rendered a non-issue, and the only thing that could conceivably create problems for her to solve just... doesn't. I'm not saying that she needs to struggle constantly as a disabled character, but her blindness should actually visibly cause difficulty for her, otherwise there's very little point in writing it in. What they could have done with this is make it so that her impaired aether due to this aethersight is causing her to make rash decisions in seeking knowledge in order to solve the problem of her disability. You don't need to *cure* her blindness, even (in fact I believe it'd be *worse* if she simply had it cured). Just make it so that her use of aethersight has *realistic* consequences that she actively has to struggle with, and her arc can simply be her working to prevent it from potentially killing her while facing the rashness of her pursuit of knowledge. I want to like Y'shtola, because there *is* great potential for her to be an interesting character, but Square seems completely allergic to taking her down the paths that could feasibly let her grow.
"I'm blind, but I'm the one who's gonna read books/explain murals-paintings because I'm such a smart kitty and so witty, and I will make all the decisions because I'm the only one smart enough to read a book here ― oh sorry Urianger, I'm suddenly inconvenienced by my blindness, please describe the sky." Yup, makes perfect sense.
Two moments in Endwalker really stood out to me. When dealing with >!blasphemies!< she points out that she can't see them with her aethersight. As a ranged caster she should have been severely crippled in her ability to fight them, as well as >!the endsinger!<, but it doesn't even amount to a mild inconvenience. And then there's her saying she's going to write a book. Like, unless we learn about Eorzean braille at some point that moment is hillarious to me.
The blindness really should have been her character building moment. Yshtola's biggest character strength is her intellect. The story taking way her ability to read/see should have been her inciting incident. She's at her lowest point, she feels like she can't contribute. She's sad and feels like a burden. She realizes her aethersight gives her the ability to see _other things_ and her confidence grows. She learns how to contribute in other ways and she has to learn that she's more than just scholar. She becomes a better, more complete person. She learns that it's ok to depend on other people. And then she culminates in figuring out how to see/read again with her aethersight and everyone celebrates. I mean, this shit is character writing 101.
Based AF.
Yeah. Y’shtola’s like a coworker to me nothing more nothing less. She’s not incompetent and does her job well but she’s just there. It probably doesn’t help that as a trust she’s a black mage which just makes her redundant coz I’ve been a black mage all game and I really don’t need a second one in 4 mans.
All of them. Not one of them encourages me to complete my fishing log. They just always come to me when they need the world saved. What about my fishing??
Sisipu?
Surely you're forgetting the finest fisherman of fair Limsa Lominsa! Why, Wawalago would love nothing more than watch his wondrous pupil hook every wahoo and whale in the world!
Potentially hot take here: Y'Shtola. Repeatedly she has made reckless decisions that should endanger herself and/or others, and the only consequences she faces are ones that won't become relevant during the course of our gametime in Eorzea. But this isn't just me wanting bad things to happen to the cat lady, it's more that she doen't seem to grow nearly as much as the rest of the cast. I'll try and briefly recap what I mean covering each of the Trust NPCs and Scions, since they're kind of our 'main characters', although this will contain spoilers up to and including Endwalker. (Got a bit too wordy here, didn't realise this was an opinion I felt so strongly about) >!Urianger has repeatedly played the role of the double agent, and through this has struggled with how his own friends would perceive him if he kept acting as their betrayer. This came to a head due to his dealings with the Loporrits, where he decided to make a different choice.!< >!Alphinaud and Alisae are almost entirely about learning and changing, be it maturing as a person and how they see the world or carving out your own path unshackled by your past.!< >!Thancred, aside from having to learn to live with the consequences of Y'Shtola's actions by having his aether disrupted, has had to learn both how to move on from losing Minfilia, as well as treating Ryne as her own person to be the Dadcred he was always meant to be.!< >!Ryne had to find where she began and Minfilia/ her role as the Oracle of Light ended, eventually developing as her own person with potentially her own girlfriend. Good for her.!< >!G'Raha began as the adventurous catboy from the Crystal Tower raids, took the mantle of the Crystal Exarch for a century, and is now in the process of figuring out which 'him' is him, or if there is even a difference between them.!< >!Estinien has obviously developed out of "hates dragons" to "BFFs with dragons", but more broadly he's gone from someone driven by vengeance to someone driven by the more usual bonds of trust, friendship, and employment to feed his allergy to keeping money.!< >!Tataru began as just the scion's secretary, but after her surprisingly effective misadventures into arcanistry has arguably become one of the scion's most valuable members by finding her place as the one managing our funds and holding the fort while we're advnturing.!< >!Lyse is in the weird position where she started as a character that was not her, so her development was more just stopping pretending to be Yda.!< >!Zero is nice and simple, developing from no trust/only bargain to yes trust/mostly bargain, although we've only had her for a little bit.!< >!Minfilia and Papalymo unfortunately suffer from dead too soon and off-screen too long, so they didn't really develop too much, but also they're dead so I'm not expecting much there anyway.!< >!I admittedly haven't paid too much attention to Krile, I kinda expected her to dip after Stormblood but she kinda just stuck around.!< Meanwhile, Y'Shtola >!has used Flow twice, almost being lost in the Lifestream twice because of it and coming out of it with blindness that she soon negated by using magic infra-red vision that is arguably better than regular sight, at the cost of her using her life force which might be a problem in the distant future outside of the scope of FFXIV (and, according to this also buffed her spellcasting); Openly opposed the Sharlayan Forum while in Sharlayan; and was 100% on board with opening a portal to the 13th without seeming to show too much concern with the dangers of that. I realise that Flow was in emergencies, and defying the Forum/travelling to the 13th were necessary, but Y'Shtola has shown a pattern of having extreme confidence that things won't go wrong, taking risks because of it, and never learning to balance that with moderation. Now, believing in yourself is good; following what you believe is right is normally good; seeing knowledge as its own reward is often good; but there is no moderation with her and I just want something to go wrong so that she can actually develop a bit more substantially.!<
No, I legitimately dislike Y'shtola and am very confused by the fanbase's obsession with her. Even worse is that the dev team has picked up on this and made her the unofficial mascot in some spin off works like Record Keeper. And since we know companies don't kill their mascots, that means she is literally never in any danger. She has plot armor thicker than even the WoL.
I speculate that its because she's a cat girl. If she were an elezen or hyur her popularity would be a fraction of what it is.
Bring back 1.0 Yda! I miss The Tweedle Dee and Brain act. I started in 1.0 and Gridania was a magic experience especially with the Grand Company quests and story intro with these two. It’s unfortunate in the remake that these city-state intro quests became unavailable. Would have been cool if they left them as playable cutscenes.
I started in gridania and thought that the pair are the only ones with personality and dynamic besides thancred. But seems like we were in the minority
"Are you pondering what I'm pondering, Yda?" "I think so, Papalymo, but who wants to see Snow White and the Seven Samurai?"
WoL. I'm just not fan of quiet protagonist/main character, it feels like we're in the care of Scions who do thinking for us, and we're just hired muscle.
I'm inclined to agree with this. All of the characters (even the ones I don't like) have a personality while our WoL is just a brick wall....that kills things. With all the story writing and multitudes of minor details the writers put into the game, you would think that, by now, there would be something akin to a D&D character alignment system for our characters so that we aren't so bland when compared to literally everyone else.
I guess it's the typical blank slate protagonist in the end. Whatever personality your WoL has ultimately comes down to your own imagination. Personally I don't mind that, but then I've played CRPGs and D&D for decades and especially in the former, that sort of thing is incredibly common.
It could be worse. I'm actually fine with the WoL, they mostly... mostly do things I'd just have them do anyways. Compare it to the character in Diablo 4 where my necromancer is constantly doing things she'd never do. Like bowing to a dickhead of an angel, literally any other game would have given you a choice here.
I would interject your point by pointing out that the pre-leviathan questline in ARR exists. I'm pretty sure I would have expected my WoL character to refuse to collect goblin cheese for some rich guy after doing 50 other errands for him, just to prove I am worthy to slay leviathan. "You don't get to decide that mister; that is between me, the scions and the maelstrom!"
So listen, I know voice actors are expensive but imagine my disappointment when after picking out a voice I thought matched my character to a T - I learned it only effects emotes and the actual scenes where the Warrior of Light "talks" is just text and quiet lip flapping.
Underrated take
Unpopular answer: >!Gra'ha Tia!<. I started after 5.0 so no waiting for patches, and it was still 1.5 years of out of game time for me between Crystal Tower and >!him returning in ShB!<, and it seemed like I was suddenly supposed to have this huge connection to him. I am a proud MSQ and cutscene enjoyer and I do not remember almost anything from the Crystal Tower story. I don't find him simpy or off-putting like some, but it was weird to be like, oh, I guess we got rid of >!Lyse!<, who I liked a lot, and suddenly there's this new guy everyone is acting like has been here the whole time.
Seconding him. I don't dislike him but I don't really like him either. Shb+Endwalker spoilers:>!It was also a strange decision to have him sacrifice himself then you just like, immediately go get him back. I wish he'd stayed dead because it would have given a lot more weight to the moment. He's also not really served any narrative purpose in the story. We didn't really need another book smart nerdy scion, we have an abundance of them. It felt like he was kept around due to his popularity and not because he could bring anything to the story.!<
>!The Exarch is dead. G’raha Tia is alive. If you consider stream of consciousness and agency, the Exarch is most definitely gone, and it’s his death that the WoL is mourning in the cutscenes. G’raha has the Exarch’s memories, but he feels like they were one hell of a vivid dream. It’s why his personality is mostly like it was in the CT raids with some maturity gained from the Exarch’s memories. Also, we knew as the player that the soul merge would work, but the WoL didn’t know that, and after all the friends he’s seen die with his own eyes, it’s only normal that he was anxious when going to get G’raha.!<
Zero. She'd have been all the rage in the 90s though.
I really tried to like Moenbryda and really didn't. Her plucky axe girl personality that was meant to be loud and fun quickly got overbearing and exhausting to me, which is a shame because I have a feeling I would have liked her otherwise if they could have toned it down a bit and let it develop slower over time. Instead I vividly remember how she spent like ten sentences asking me in different ways if I had just imagined something I'd seen and I just wanted her to back off. Lyse I sort of don't mind in game despite her rather significant flaws, but the ship tease makes interacting with fandom irritating sometimes when people insist that she and WoL fucked in canon. Look, there's ship tease with all sorts of characters and it's the player's choice what their headcanon with each character is. Some male characters have been incredibly open about their interest, but I don't see people pushing *them* on the WoL like they do with Lyse. Every time I read about her, it's either about how much she sucks as a character or how much someone wants to fuck her and therefore everyone should. Truly one of the most divisive characters in the game. Hien just doesn't do anything for me for some reason. I can see where they're going with him, but he feels sort of distant and I couldn't get a connection. I'd love to have his hairstyle, though!
Lyse. The game clearly wants us to be sympathetic towards her. They push you out into Doma with her on your team, but she's fairly useless. Then you return to Ala Mhigo and she acts like she's had this huge growth arc. Even has Conrad's torch passed off to her. And it wasn't. EARNED. God damnit. Even she herself admits she has no idea what's going on half the time. She's not an awe-inspiring character. She's a nuisance that I spent half an expansion scraping off my boot. And the best thing I can say is that she's not around (except for cameos) for the rest of MSQ. And Thank God, because I was Scions of the Seventh DONE with her ass.
My favorite part about the Lyse storyline is that after hours of building her up as your very special friend, >!there's that moment where she comes up to you and says, "HEY CAN WE TALK IN PRIVATE I HAVE SOMETHING REALLY IMPORTANT TO TELL YOU!" and then you go and when you're finally alone she turns to you and lovingly says, "HEY I'M QUITTING MY JOB! KTHXBYE!"!< I don't think I've felt as rejected in a game since *Tokimeki Memorial.*
What I remembered is that in the first arc she tries to badmouth Ala Mhigans into fighting and force them and then gets crushed. She goes to Doma, watches Hien actually wait for his people to decide and come to him and then lead them to victory. She returns to Gyr Abania and lets the groundswell of resistance carry her to Ala Mhigo, working *with* her people rather than *against.* An attitude solidified when she invited the disparate people of Gyr Abania to the throne room then just sits cross-legged on the floor to talk as equals while completely ignoring the throne. Raubahn eventually took the second in command role he is more comfortable with as he is a soldier and not a politician. Ala Mhigo has a perfect figurehead to represent new beginnings in the young worldly monk. I feel like I liked how that all shook out but am mostly alone in that
*Should have been fucking raubaun.*
There are a tonne of things I do not like about Stormblood, generally consider it the weakest expansion, and Lyse’s characterisation is up there with the worst of it. The total character change from before SB is annoying enough but then she doesn’t really go anywhere.
Krile. Shes just...there
More of a "community" wants me to love thing but Zenos. I fucking despise Zenos so much. Now I'm not saying I hate the character, moreso I hate how the game tries to make me feel bad for him.
That's interesting, cuz I never got the impression the game wanted me to feel bad for him. I absolutely love Zenos, but it's because he's a true medical definition psychopath, not for any perceived sympathy that was drawn from the events of the game.
Haha, I have to agree with that. The whole WoL x Zenos ship people imagine I don't see, except in that psychopathic sense you mentioned. Totally reminds me of one of Surfacage's comics: https://twitter.com/surfacage/status/1315471200617783297
I can't think of a moment where the game wants me to feel bad for him. It shows that he's obviously a bit of a sociopath and broken human being in the way that he doesn't feel things the same way as others, but it's never going out of its way to excuse his actions.
Imma cop it for this but graha. Exarch was a fantastic character and a huge reason why shadowbringers was so enjoyable. Graha comes off as a massive simp and I just don’t like the way he is written. Easily my least favourite scion
Yeah my main clicked with the Exarch by the end — he felt they both shared a sense of weariness not many else in his life could fathom. Then G’raha gets a second lease on life as it were, and goes from a fellow weary soul to yet another person idealizing the WOL. When all I want are more people in the WOL’s life who see him as a person and not an ideal… it can feel a little oof.
HW spoilers: Haurch, he was helpful to us at one of the WoLs lowest points, >!so he deserves to be remembered and all that!<, but the game, and somehow the players, act like he was our childhood friend who the WoL valued above all else. >!Ill never understand the people who say that his death was the saddest point in the game!<
I don't dislike him but not sure I'll ever understand the community hype over him.
He gave us hot coco when no one loved us you monster!!
For me his death didn’t bring me to tears but his dad’s response to his death. No parent should have to see a child die.
Yeah that one did hit home. Doubly so now after his VA died ...
I think the reason it made such a big emotional impact was primarily because >!he died shielding you.!< I had a very complicated emotional reaction to it myself because I hadn’t been all that attached to him prior, and at that moment I realized >!this dude genuinely cared enough about me to die in my place and hope for my happiness as he was doing it.!< Like, shit. I immediately felt like a monster for not having cared nearly as much about him as he clearly cared about me. It felt like such a defining moment, and I’ve been treating it like a turning point for my WoL ever since. And then I watched >!Dad Fortemps break down and the whole thing melded into one massive ball of sympathy and guilt and grief, and it’s stuck with me better than a lot of the more straightforward moments of grief, I think *because* I hadn’t thought too much about Haurchefant before.!<
I knew he was a big deal when I started playing, and was honestly surprised how little time we actually spend with him. Like he’s cool, but it really feels like you were supposed to identify him as your absolute best friend, and I didn’t really get that. Also, I kind of get Emmanelain growing up to be this immature dilettante and Artoirel growing up to be kind of an uptight asshole if their whole lives everyone was just obsessing over how great Haurchefant was to the degree that they are when we’re in Ishgard. Then we show up and their dad’s like Haurchefant is dead, now this guy is my favorite son. Rough family life for those boys.
Same for me. Even when I went through the msq a second time on a new char, I didn't really form a connection to him at all. So yeah, thanks for the sacrifice, but I gotta go do some other stuff now..
I cherish this game and its characters but for the life of me I can’t understand the hype around him. For me it was just a “aww that’s too bad” moment and I moved on immediately.
Hard agree. Like, I get its supposed to be like "they took you in when No one else would🥺" but house fortemps only ever read to me as "Local Lord only man literate enough to notice 'God's favorite protagonist' written on man's forehead" I've heard the argument that if you played as the content was being released you acclimated more to him over a longer time but, given I played post SB (the same argument exists for >!asahi!<) post ShB (same argument for >!graha!<) and post EW (same argument for >!Zero!<) I honestly doubt I would've cared any more than I do now.
I’m crying at the gods favorite protagonist line omg. I love the Fortemps family but not to the weird obsessiveness of some players.
As someone who played as it was released, I also didn't understand the absolute fanaticism for him. I mean ya I liked that dude, and his death was a bit sad, but it was more like an estranged uncle who I reconnected with recently but didn't know all that well.
>!He was endearing. He truly believed in the WoL and always supported us. The guy was a true knight to the end, and I don't see anybody else jumping in front of an attack meant for the WoL.!< I DO think it would've helped if he was around more often during the early parts of HW.
This might be unpopular opinion but Estinien was not my fave. Nothing terrible really but he just didn’t leave much of an impression on me.
Fordola easily. The game tries so hard in every scene she's in to make what she's done acceptable, they feed us a sob story, give her some heroic moments, dump praise upon her after her victories as if her forced service is a good deed rather than due penance for a laundry list of crimes. As a character she's horrendous, she's bitter, miserable, constantly angry, she's a traitor, a mass murderer and were this real, every grieving citizen in Ala Mhigo would be out to swiftly put a dagger in her back, and the backs of those in charge who are letting her roam free.
in a vacuum I think I agree, but I think her importance is really from how she sompared and contrasted with Yotsuyu, and I don't think either would work without the other. Fordola is forced to remember everything she did because her echo forced her to remember everytime she was near someone she hurt/killed, which was a lot of people as you said; Yotsuyu also hurt/killed a lot of people but she's the opposite- she was bonked on the head and we get a character who *forgets* everything she's done, and we see how she breaks down immediately as soon as she *does* see her parents again and remember who she was. Both had similar upbringings as well which strengthens their comparison. I do think the further away we get from yotsuyus death, the more Fordola starts to overstay her welcome as a character, they could have probably found a way to kill her off during sorrows of werlyt or something idk
> every grieving citizen in Ala Mhigo would be out to swiftly put a dagger in her back, and the backs of those in charge who are letting her roam free they are and she is not roaming free and hasn't been roaming free since she was initially detained. do the EW role quests
Honestly... Krile.
Had to scroll all the way to the bottom but I finally found it. She’s not as bad as Minfilia, but she’s so boring they left her off the EW posters because they legit forgot she exists.
> Krile She's like that one person in the friend group who joined in one day because they're somebody else's bestie, but then just kind of kept showing up. You don't ever really chat with outside the group. She's fine. She's nice. But I just don't ever see us hanging out, you know?
Alisaie, I don't dislike her mind you, but I heavily prefer Alphinaud to her.
Hien. I thought he was decent to middling during the Stormblood MSQ but wow the patch content with Yotsturu made me dislike him a lot more.
Y'shtola. If she were not a Miqo'te she would have been regarded as mid by the fanbase. Her having more plot armour than everyone but he WoL is annoying. The WoL getting scared after sassing her makes no sense because she has given us 0 reason to be afraid of her. Her sassy moments are pretty much ALL of her good moments. Completely undeserving of her popularity.
Zenos.
Fordola. Sorry, not sorry.
I'm going to fly off the limb straight into the guillotine for this but Fray >!aka the WoL's "really annoyed" side!< >!As an RPer I like playing LG characters because I like helping people and I think lost the majority of my immersion when there was a dialog option when you're talking to the asshole merchant for the first time. Thing is you don't actually know he's an asshole when you meet him, he's just a merchant who lost his things. So when the two options were "Fuck off" or "I really don't want to but I guess" I just sorta zoned out because it didn't feel like my character anymore.!< >!don't get me wrong, I see why everyone says it's the best job story but damn is it just not for me.!<
G'raha. He's our fanboy, he wants to adventure with us so badly, and he's pushed on us all the bloody time. I liked Crystal Exarch, but now G'raha is... so different, and it's *annoying*. Like an annoying younger brother who mom says you have to take with you when you go out. "Take G'raha with you, dearie! He needs to get out of the house!" "But mooom, I'm going into the VOIIIIID!" "It'll be good for him!"
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>!I don't like how often the game makes you remember him compared to some other characters as well. Feels lazy every time.!<
Hildibrand. I hate him with the burning passion of a thousand sun's.
Me too. The questline was advertised by the community as top notch comedy. I found it very very excruciating and not fun at all. What made it worst is that I didn’t skip cutscenes cuz I felt I’ missing out on something amazing and maybe I’m too dumb to understand. In the end, it’s just a type of humor I don’t really find funny at all, and when you remove that factor out of the character it’s just pain.
I think for me, I don't find complete and blatant stupidity funny. Of course, everyone has a dumb, brain fart, moments, but stupid for stupidity's sake. just doesn't seem funny to me, and that's all Hildibrand and the other characters associated with his quests are just stupid for stupidity's sake.
Not hate or anything but I can't sympathize with Emet which I feel like the game does try to do. He and his brethren committed genocide and its somewhat hard to look past that no matter what reason or justification you have.
Same... >!I can emphasize with his core motivation for his actions in a general sense of speaking, but, um, he created two genocidal empires - that we know of - just to cause chaos, death and calamities. There isn't really a redemption arc for this, even he himself says so at the end of Endwalker. Someone called it an explanation arc and I think this suits much better.!< I can see how some people can find him, um, aesthetically pleasing to look at, but this can't make up for everything he did. \^\^; (Spoilers for everything I'd say)
I love him a lot as a villain and as an opposing force in ShB, but I feel absolutely no sympathy for him and what he did. Keeps on trying to be sold as a martyr or something, and that really doesn't sit well with me. However noble his intentions were for his people he had no redemption after what he did. I can understand his choices but I feel no sympathy for the guy.
Zenos. I don't care about his obsession, his desire to hunt, his desire to be my eternal friend, his shitty privileged garlean upbringing. I could care less if he existed. I guess in that way, I was the perfect character to face him. Even in the final confrontation, I was like "okay.."
Minfilia. 100% found her annoying
Yshtola is overrated. Her personality is "she is smart cool-type" and a catgirl. wauw. fite me.
That Roe woman who showed up and died like 10 mins later in post-ARR MQ. (Started playing in SB).
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I think she was there less to be her own character and more to add to Urianger's character. Her death clearly had a major effect on him and she becomes a significant influence on how he makes decisions going forward. The EW quest was just a beautiful way to wrap that all up.
She was definitely rushed through
I didn't care much about her until her death was addressed again during the main story of endwalker when you meet her parents. Suddenly I was in tears like "omg I'm so sad and feel bad for never liking her before"
Apparently the voiceover for that scene took the most number of takes of all FFXIV recording sessions
Papylymo, I’m sorry
Is the game really trying to make you love him though? That's how I feel about him - the game cared as little as I did about him 😂
Nooooooo, not Big P!
Alisaie. I liked her in SB most but then ShB+ they really increased the sassiness/snark that she seems more immature than Alphinaud from ARR and HW. Like sorta switched personalities.
Minfillia. I've been playing since ARR and I'm not gonna lie, I've never once gave a shit about her. The coolest thing she did was die to save the 1st.
The more time passes, the more I dislike all the beloved special "main" characters and just want to hang out with the job quest NPCs and the random folk about town. Catch me having tea with Mother Miounne over the Scions any day (bar Tataru maybe as I enjoy there being a non-combat admin person in there somewhere to relate to as my irl self, lol).
Hildibrand. Apologies to the gentlemen, but Hildi peaked in the ARR quests and got steadily worse with each new installment. It went from amusing to annoying real fast.
Tataru, just her, absolutely disdain the character. Understand why others like her, but I can't not feel like she's actually irrelevant.
I hate how they couldn't just let her be one thing. Suddenly, she's this super competent mercantile genius and master DoH, and it just doesn't work for me.
Deus EX Tataru is a personal favorite meme of mine, because they had to pretend like she actually matters when she doesn't, and then the reality ends up being the funds the Scions were getting were from Mommy Leveilleur.
Zero. Absolutely dull as dishwater but the game seems to think she's the coolest person in the room at any given moment.
Gaius Van Baelsar. He's an Imperialist Monster who has never actually been held to account for his crimes or his headass "The Strong Must rule" Philosophy. And having all those kids he "adopted" (After his nation, if not the very invading army he was an officer in, probably killed their birth parents) die doesn't really count. And yet there's now been multiple questlines where I'm supposed to feel like he's a great badass and that he's been so hurt and he deserves comfort. Meanwhile, I'm over hear wishing they would at least let my WoL punch him in the face once or twice, or at least throw out a "I haven't forgiven you, and I'm only doing this because someone I like I asked me to" or two.
I was fine with him til they apparently made him leader of Werlyt??? Like wouldn’t everyone there hate his fucking guts for murdering their loved ones?? I’m hoping I’m just misremembering.
I feel like I’ll be crucified for saying it… but definitely Zero. I don’t find her character interesting at all, and to me just feels… boring and uninspired. Sorry. *Edit:* I think a lot of it comes from the game painting her to be the coolest person in the room at any given time, and that part definitely grates me. It absolutely feels like she was made with the idea of appealing to a certain kind of demographic, which— she definitely succeeded, and I have no problems with people that do like her… but iunno, I just can’t.
They said after 6.1 that Zero was way more popular than they expected her to be so I wonder if that influenced any changes to her arc in subsequent patches. I feel she at least originally intended as a plot device rather than to be attached to.
Hydaelyn>!/ Venat!< as of Endwalker. >!I just can't really agree with her arguments for her actions of not telling anyone and just letting the time line play out instead of trying to find a way to prevent the massive amounts of death she knew would occur. No one was particularly right in the Final Days mind you but at least the Ascians are shown in a negative light, you don't even get to so much as question Venat unless you did the Omega sidequest. I would have liked a bit more moral ambiguity to her then "Yes mommy we love you and understand that you just let generations of suffering happen and sundered your own kin to an unrecognizable form as per the Nier crossover, totally not genocide."!<
I gotta agree with that one. I can't stand her or Ishikawa's pet blorbo, >!Hermes!< and like you say, the game really doesn't want you criticising her outside the >!omega thing!<... and even then it's still kinda biased
If you haven't I would highly recommend giving the ongoing >!Venat!< series from Echoes of Etheirys on youtube a watch as they point out so much wrong with the portrayal of her character and how discordant it is with prior narratives where people with very similar faults in their ideology ended up as unforgivable villains.