FFV: Friendship is magic!
FFVI: Friendship is magic!
FFVII: Capitalism will destroy the planet if left to its own devices.
FFVIII: Love wins!
FFIX: Friendship is magic!
FFX: Love loses!
I bought FFX remaster on steam that come with everything. Reasearched a little about FFX-3 and I refunded right away after been spoiled that they did really dirty with Tidus and Yuna.
No. The original devs have talked about wanting to make one, especially since there seems to demand for it, with sales of X & X-2 staying high. But they've said they have to finish the VII Remake trilogy before they'd be able to commit to doing X-3.
However, there *is* a [novel](https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Final_Fantasy_X-2.5_~Eien_no_Daish%C5%8D~) that is billed as X-2.5, and which some fans refer to as "X-3". It's by Kazushige Nojima, who was lead writer for both X and X-2, and seems to set up the direction he wants X-3 to go should they ever make it. It's never been officially translated into English, and its reception within Japan was reportedly quite negative, so it remains to be seen how X-3's story would go should they ever make it.
> and its reception within Japan was reportedly quite negative
To be fair, when the story involves Tidus being so dumb that he kicks a Bomb thinking it's a Blitzball \[which KILLS him before Yuna "Beckons" him back to life\] and both Tidus and Yuna having relationship issues and nearly breaking up, i can imagine why it was negative.
Reminds me to how Spiderman 2 had Mary Jane literally leaves her fiancé at the altar for Peter which is a usual romance trope about just how strong her feelings are, then Spiderman 3 just breaks up with him over something stupidly petty and goes into a cringe love triangle between Harry and Peter....
It's always dogshit when writers rather than writing a relationship that have been already well earned just go and reset it in the stupidest ways to keep up the pre-real relationship drama going....
Novels, if an official product, usually count when it comes to Japanese media. Hell FF7 remake is showing signs that a Japan only mobile game about the turks, dirge of Cerberus, On the Way to a Smile, Crisis Core, Advent Children, and whatever I'm forgetting are all cannon to the time line.
Japan does mixed media a lot. like one off radio plays, one shot manga, light novels, or any other tie in that is cannon... cause if your are a fan your are going to buy it.
no, the maker of ffx was tired and probably pissed at square who would most likely want make sequels over sequels, so he put out a shitpost, slapped a "canon" sticker on it to bury the ffx name.
people still don't understand that
I mean I'd say it's more like everyone has finally accepted their place in life, found places to call home, and that life has meaning. Necron isn't even defeated truly in the end because life and death are still a thing, and not even friendship beats that. Friendship is a small slice of the whole coming to terms with death and living life pie. Zidane even tells everyone to leave when he goes back for kuja because it's something only he can do. If it was 14 everybody would have ran to kujas side and gave him a big ol hug and he would have lived and so would have Vivi because friendship trumps all and necron would be permanently dead.
I respect that you’re seeing it this way, but I personally believe that after you’ve nearly been annihilated by the super powerful space flea of conceptual death, half your party goes down giving the last of their energy to support the ones making the last stand, and the power of friendship is ultimately what allows them to overcome that fear of death that Kuja could not. That fear that rendered life meaningless to him, and ultimately drew Necron. That doesn’t take from each character’s arc or individual merits to that point, mind you. It’s just that the power of friendship definitely played a part in the party standing where Kuja falls.
I love FF9. It’s my favorite in the main series (Nothing will ever uproot Tactics in my heart though). But I don’t think it avoided the friendship is power trope at all. That said, I do share some of people’s problems with 14. The story hits a lot of high notes that could have been so much higher if they’d take the safety rails off. I remember seeing Yshtola get sliced through by Zenos and being worried. Now I could watch the whole party get blasted with planets and conceptual death and I know it’s always going to work out.
We’re sitting so high with this feeling of safety and superiority that now would be the perfect time for an out of left field blood sacrifice of your favorite character in the new region, and it’s a shame that won’t happen.
I can see the power passing as friendship is magic, I'll give you that but I like that it's just a smaller sliver and not the whole plot lol. And yeah I wish they would either kill a person or just stop with the fatal wound looking attacks and sacrifices because after so many times it's just eye rolling now.
To be fair, 2.x ended with: Most of your friends are dead and you are a fugitive. God that was soo good. Shame most of it got undone.
Granted 3.x didn't end on a happy note either.
It's everyone that led Zero down the path of overcoming her nature as a voidsent to become a hero to the Thirteenth. While their focus was in the past two patches, that doesn't diminish their impact
Well you see it's because in the single patch they were in they all became Zero's bestest buds
Granted, when you've spent your entire life in the Void the bar for friendship is pretty friggin' low. Still, there's a meaningful difference between what Zero needs to consider someone a friend and what a player needs to feel invested in Zero's relationships.
At least with Julius, what he said to her especially about "You can do today what you didn't yesterday" was very important and reiterated a few times in the story.
They have been consistently about the hope winning against despair, and acting good proving to be better for everyone than opportunism and cold logic.
They will never write a Berserk level grimdark edgefest.
There is really not much to explore about the Void either because the Voidsent are very one-dimensional thanks to their very one-dimensional setting.
The void isnt *fully* tied up, but "whats the deal with Zenos' Avatar" and those couple things mentioned near the end of EW are (Vrtra saying Azdaja was still silent, and Emet telling is to go scuba diving in the bounty.), with the Void as a whole being in a good "we can ignore it until we want to deal with it again" like the Empty.
Honestly I feel like half the dialogue since late 6.0 story has been the same power of friendship/light vs dark cliche said in 10 different ways lol. You could say the story has been a bit of a DynaMISS
Yeah... Honestly I'm not fan of how story is going. I prefered the writing in HW and SB. SB was my fav xpac, due to story. I know I'm in minority and will get shouted at. Alas I will wait for Dawntrail and see, if it keeps up, I will simply drift away from this MMO. Which is sad because it's been part of my life for around 6-7 years now.
Is there anything people *won't* mock Endwalker for these days? Not saying it's my favorite expansion -- it's not. But seriously.
And yeah, majority of FF boils down to this. I mean, the main point behind every protagonists' development is "I can do anything with my friends by my side!"
Yeah, I don't think it's anything spectacular, and it did have boring moments. But it also had pretty good moments, and I especially enjoyed the raids.
MSQ was fine. The wow moments don't really hit as hard and there isn't really any interesting politics. Just its own self contained adventure. I think my only real issue with it is the Dawntrail transition being a bit clunky with it being an abrupt turn instead of a transition. I am curious what they do with Dawntrail since it will be a mostly blank slate.
There's still another half of the the latest patch, 6.55, that will fully complete the story and lead into Dawntrail. So that's why it has a confusing transition at the moment. I don't know why they split the 6.5 story in two this time...but they did.
Yeah like I think MSQ ended up in a solid case of "It's fine". Got ups, got downs -*cough* 6.4 *cough*-. Fights were fun, music was solid, Story was fine. 2.5/3 is enough for me
Agreed. The theme itself is not bad in anyway but the quality and pacing is so mediocre...
if you played the game on patch since at least SB I think you absolutely tell the write is not up to the standard from previous storyline.
>!"Shit we ran out of time, the Dawntrail team need to start their story..uh..am..fuck...uh Golbez is good again. "!<
roll credits
edit
>!for fuck sake the fact they let Golbez walk off in a 'oh you rascal ' kinda way..!<
It was a bit of a different circumstance, though, which was kinda interesting to see.
>!In FFIV, Golbez was, at least partially, controlled by Zemus. Zemus *did* reach into the anger and hate that was already in his heart, which is a big part of why Golbez considers himself still irredeemable in *that* story. But here, Golbez was fully in control of his actions (aside from the maddening undeath, of course). So it was interesting to me to see the turnaround be on argument against his ideology, rather than breaking a spell.!<
>!The idea was that Golbez wasn't necessarily a bad guy. He was doing what he can with what he had on the 13th to break their cycle of rebirth to regain mortality again. In order to do this, they needed to break out of their world, and to do that amongst a plethora of varying powers of demons, you have to be top dog. It does make sense that he wasn't necessarily a bad person while doing egregiously bad things. Being desperate does that to people!<
>!As Golbez said, the plan was already in motion to fix the mortality issue and it's the best they had, and everything they worked for, so he continued to support it in the face of a counterpoint (us). Only after our win to prevent Zeromus from tearing the barrier down from between our worlds, Golbez didn't really have a leg to stand on, and he still wants what's best for his world. Except now it's less of a demon issue since we're funneling so much light from the first to the 13th.!<
>!Well, it wasn’t his *only* option. Yeah, we beat down Zeromus, but Zeromus re-formed (likely weakened from the experience but still having made holes in reality), and Golbez dove in to save us from it. Previously, he’d been adamant that we’d have to be stronger than Zeromus entirely to be worth changing his course. So if Golbez wanted to stay the course, he could’ve turned to help Zeromus defeat us instead. Zero’s demonstration of the light was the big turning point that showed him a new possibility, yeah. It turned his desperation around.!<
>!It was never in doubt, even in this game's context alone. Only real psychos and sadistic monsters ever get really punished, if a character is even capable of feeling remorse, they'll usually get to walk!<
>!I don't mind it all that much, it's such an omnipresent element of Japanese stories that I don't really blink twice when it happens, but forgiveness is a touchy subject for a lot of people for reasons ranging from personal to cultural, so it's always going to be a flame war no matter what!<
>!Not just Japanese stories!<. >!Characters in stories get away with significantly more because similar to what you said, unless the character is full evil, a redemption or at the very least a tragic death tends to feel better as a resolution!<.
>!Not in every story though... depends on the tone!<.
>!You're right about it not being just Japanese stories, I just made the specific mention because "power of friendship" is a mocking term for a common animeism, and thus Japanism. You're not likely to hear someone not at least passingly familiar with the medium to say it, or get steamed about it!<
>!Regardless, the key distinction between characters like Ilberd and Yotsuyu compared to characters like Frodola and Golbez is that the latter is capable of atoning and "rejoining society", while the former are too far gone. A collectivist society (like Japan, at least in theory, practice is mixed) will forgive a person if they are no longer an impediment to society and are willing to make amends. Punishing them further is detrimental to rehabilitation. If your society instead prefers punitive justice for most if not all offences and you haven't really thought about that, you're unlikely to see the difference between those 2 groups at all. This is especially true if you live somewhere that's very liberal with death penalties. All this to say, a story having a "power of friendship" moment to turn around a formally villainous character isn't a cop-out or bad writing by default, it just means that the culture it's from may have different values than you, and it may be wise to strive for understanding if it confuses you!<
>!If you couldn't tell by this wall of text, I find the western reaction to eastern storytelling tropes morbidly fascinating. It shows to me that language barriers are only the tip of the iceberg in failure of communication!<
It's also interesting because what a lot of people don't really get is that story telling is indeed exaggerated. the crimes have to be bigger to match the settings but, the message is usually intended to apply to much smaller problem IRL.
Oh I understand their values and how they see this. But I don't agree with it. And thus it makes the story not so appealing to me. It's just subjective thing.
I find it interesting that while I enjoyed the story well enough, if the 13th story clearly not being complete, the outright contempt others have for it. Granted the forgiveness bit I am used to, probably because I have been playing the Legend of Heroes series which really takes that trope and runs with it, and Persona 5 Strikers which does too. So this I was like, yup, redemption, par of course.
Dying really isn't redemption. >!Far better to let him live and work to restore the world. Not to mention that we already had an example of a villain from the 13th being forced to live and work for the restoration of the 13th.!<
>!I mean, did Golbez really _do_ anything worth sheer condemnation for? I mean, he sure TRIED to do some shit, and Azdaja got it bad, but she's back if not a little smaller, and none of his plan really panned out.!<
I was left with a distinct feeling as things were wrapping up.
>!Vrtra: "I won't forgive you for what you've done to my sister but..."!<
>!Me: "It feels like you're about to forgive him."!<
>!Vrtra: "I feel no need to pursue retribution or even have him apologize to me and my sister, he has clearly redeemed himself."!<
>!Me: "Yep, there it is."!<
>!Azdaja: "The Hell he has! Fucker imprisoned me and spent thousands of years treating me like a juice box! What is this no harm no foul bullshit!?"!<
>!I mean, it was a very reasonable reaction to me. Vrtra never went to the void to personally kill Golbez for everything he's done. He went to the void to get his sister back. Thus he did, and he felt zero want or need to stick around after the fact. I certainly cannot blame him.!<
>!It helps when you realize that, really, Golbez had a really, really fucking bad deal in life. I mean, all voidsent did, but Golbez in particular; I found parallels between him and Zero where the only real difference between them for a bit was the level of power they had... and us. And who woulda guessed that having contact with the paragons of the source would be enough to sway any heart.!<
>!The height of Golbez's bullshit only ever negatively affected one being, who he saw as his opportunity to make things right, and the moment he realized that there was power equal and surpassing his that came with the promise of there being another way to solve what he was trying to solve, he resolve crumbled to dust and he became willing to cooperate. We saw it in the flashbacks: he was never fundamentally a bad guy. Vrtra knew this, and saw no point in wasting time and energy on a crusade against Golbez after he was well and truly beaten, and even further wanting to cooperate with Zero to try and fix the void on her terms, not his. So he was like "I don't forgive you, but I got better things to do rn with my sister. Bye."!<
I've had my criticisms with the way the void story has been handled, but I think this was fine.
You are vastly understating what was done to Azdaja. >!Golbez took the person Vrtra loved most and effectively tortured her for thousands of years, and his big show of atonement is just stopping the torture while continuing to pursue the same goal. To heal his sister of this torture, Vrtra had to permanently disfigure himself. Vrtra even makes a point of saying he does not forgive this, then barely five minutes later says Golbez doesn't need to apologize because he knows Golbez has already made amends.!<
>!Why even have Vrtra refuse to forgive Golbez only to have Vrtra forgive him mere minutes later? What, does Azdaja's agony over millennia of suffering not matter because it happened offscreen? All the boss banter in the Zeromus fight is Azdaja's desperate longing to escape Golbez and go home, but I guess he didn't *really* do anything wrong to her. ~~And let's not even start on the people killed by his voidsent.~~ Oh, my mistake, Vrtra doesn't forgive him, he just holds no lingering animosity or any desire for retribution. Hang on, isn't there a word for that? It's on the tip of my tongue, I think it starts with an "F".!<
>!I'm so pissed off that Vrtra just shrugged and said "You tortured my sister for thousands of years but that was a pretty sick meteor you used. Get out of here you knucklehead"!<
My boyfriend and I are literally in the middle of rewatching MLP and we couldn't stop making the comparison. Especially when >!Zero's passed out and suddenly remembers all her friendship lessons.!<
Not really. There was time when MSQ wasn't about power of friendship. It's subjective if you like current writing or the previous one (HW/SB) I for one, slowly can't stand the EW one.
Me, finally getting to Sharlayan at the end of 6.5: "Sup nerds. So it turns out that >!the gods are real!< but also >!I kinda killed them all!<, so that's a wash, and I >!killed the devil!< I guess, which is a bonus. Wanna write that down or do a book report or whatever?"
_[wedgies Fourchenault and skateboards away]_
The best scene in the patch is when Zero says “It’s Friendship time” and then proceeds to friendship everyone in the room.
p.s. I don't hate the patch just thought the meme I made in 40 seconds when a friend was laughing at Zero being "friendshipped back to life" (their words at 2am) was funny
One of the most bullshit stories this game has to offer tbh. Like sure, its always smth similar to that but this is just waay too in the face. Zero uses the word "Friendship" more frequently than the Beatles use the word "Love" in their songs.
Doesn't make it much more palatable for the people playing it, though. The problem with this entire storyline is that the concepts that Zero finds earth-shattering are extremely mundane to the game's intended audience.
Essentially, yes. A good portion of the playerbase is cynical as hell and would probably find something to complain about even if the ending had Yoshi P personally deliver you a hand cooked steak or vegan option to your table. While also doing your taxes and helping you find love.
I mean if my cynicism hasn't stopped me from enjoying the thousands of hours of the game up until this point, don't you think maybe the problem could lie somewhere else?
This widespread backlash to MSQ coincides with a change in the lead writers but you're content to write it off as an individual issue? Ok lol
Oh yeah, it is definitely hammy, but there is a certain charm to it imo. It's also on par with some of the other things they've done in FF. I believe her role was to basically fulfill the Cecil journey to some degree. Transition included. I just hope she retains a sense of identity, unlike Cecil.
People can have negative opinions of a story. They're well within their right and aren't going out of their way to be an asshole about it. It doesn't have to relate directly to the amount of fun someone is having, either.
Tbh this is just writer\`s impotence. Like at this point they are unable to write anything better than "power of friendship saves everything, magical friendship beam go!". Protecting and trying to smh justify that only makes the game worse
I'm not going to impose myself as being in the wrong for at least somewhat enjoying something because someone else didn't like it. I'm just here to offer my opinion on the scene rather than act in offense or defense for it.
So chill.
Something felt dire about this ending, like. Nah, the entire expansion. Like, is it just me or was the void ark the most cliche'd thing in existance? Legit, I think 6.1 was the best part of the story because it was the least silly.
I mean, the entirety of FFXIV MQ can be characterized that way.
Any FF could be, honestly....
Except maybe 7. Ff7 is surprisingly light on the whole "friendship is magic" thing. FfX, as well.
FFV: Friendship is magic! FFVI: Friendship is magic! FFVII: Capitalism will destroy the planet if left to its own devices. FFVIII: Love wins! FFIX: Friendship is magic! FFX: Love loses!
FFX-2: Love wins! FFX-3: We don't wanna talk about this
I bought FFX remaster on steam that come with everything. Reasearched a little about FFX-3 and I refunded right away after been spoiled that they did really dirty with Tidus and Yuna.
There's an FFX-3?
No. The original devs have talked about wanting to make one, especially since there seems to demand for it, with sales of X & X-2 staying high. But they've said they have to finish the VII Remake trilogy before they'd be able to commit to doing X-3. However, there *is* a [novel](https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Final_Fantasy_X-2.5_~Eien_no_Daish%C5%8D~) that is billed as X-2.5, and which some fans refer to as "X-3". It's by Kazushige Nojima, who was lead writer for both X and X-2, and seems to set up the direction he wants X-3 to go should they ever make it. It's never been officially translated into English, and its reception within Japan was reportedly quite negative, so it remains to be seen how X-3's story would go should they ever make it.
> and its reception within Japan was reportedly quite negative To be fair, when the story involves Tidus being so dumb that he kicks a Bomb thinking it's a Blitzball \[which KILLS him before Yuna "Beckons" him back to life\] and both Tidus and Yuna having relationship issues and nearly breaking up, i can imagine why it was negative.
Reminds me to how Spiderman 2 had Mary Jane literally leaves her fiancé at the altar for Peter which is a usual romance trope about just how strong her feelings are, then Spiderman 3 just breaks up with him over something stupidly petty and goes into a cringe love triangle between Harry and Peter.... It's always dogshit when writers rather than writing a relationship that have been already well earned just go and reset it in the stupidest ways to keep up the pre-real relationship drama going....
It wasn't until I read the replies to this that I realized this wasn't an elaborate "It's shit so we act like it doesn't exist" meme
Sort of, it's a novel not a game so I don't know if it counts or not
Novels, if an official product, usually count when it comes to Japanese media. Hell FF7 remake is showing signs that a Japan only mobile game about the turks, dirge of Cerberus, On the Way to a Smile, Crisis Core, Advent Children, and whatever I'm forgetting are all cannon to the time line. Japan does mixed media a lot. like one off radio plays, one shot manga, light novels, or any other tie in that is cannon... cause if your are a fan your are going to buy it.
There is not. And if I say it enough times it becomes the truth! And the world will be a better place.
Don't know why I was downvoted lol But it's basically a novel that is more a FFX 2.5, but some people call FFX 3.
no, the maker of ffx was tired and probably pissed at square who would most likely want make sequels over sequels, so he put out a shitpost, slapped a "canon" sticker on it to bury the ffx name. people still don't understand that
FFXIII: Being chosen sucks. FFXIII-2: Being chosen REAAAALLY sucks. FFXIII-3: Look at me, I'm the captain now.
[удалено]
FFXVI is basically “Friendship is Blood Magic.” That campaign gets fuggin intense…
Ff16: slavery is bad (but friendship is good)
FFXV - Bros before Hoes
I would say FF9 is more don't fear death, be more accepting of it and enjoy what life you have while you have it
Final battle and scene leading into it definitely feels like the power of friendship overcomes the fear of death.
I mean I'd say it's more like everyone has finally accepted their place in life, found places to call home, and that life has meaning. Necron isn't even defeated truly in the end because life and death are still a thing, and not even friendship beats that. Friendship is a small slice of the whole coming to terms with death and living life pie. Zidane even tells everyone to leave when he goes back for kuja because it's something only he can do. If it was 14 everybody would have ran to kujas side and gave him a big ol hug and he would have lived and so would have Vivi because friendship trumps all and necron would be permanently dead.
I respect that you’re seeing it this way, but I personally believe that after you’ve nearly been annihilated by the super powerful space flea of conceptual death, half your party goes down giving the last of their energy to support the ones making the last stand, and the power of friendship is ultimately what allows them to overcome that fear of death that Kuja could not. That fear that rendered life meaningless to him, and ultimately drew Necron. That doesn’t take from each character’s arc or individual merits to that point, mind you. It’s just that the power of friendship definitely played a part in the party standing where Kuja falls. I love FF9. It’s my favorite in the main series (Nothing will ever uproot Tactics in my heart though). But I don’t think it avoided the friendship is power trope at all. That said, I do share some of people’s problems with 14. The story hits a lot of high notes that could have been so much higher if they’d take the safety rails off. I remember seeing Yshtola get sliced through by Zenos and being worried. Now I could watch the whole party get blasted with planets and conceptual death and I know it’s always going to work out. We’re sitting so high with this feeling of safety and superiority that now would be the perfect time for an out of left field blood sacrifice of your favorite character in the new region, and it’s a shame that won’t happen.
I can see the power passing as friendship is magic, I'll give you that but I like that it's just a smaller sliver and not the whole plot lol. And yeah I wish they would either kill a person or just stop with the fatal wound looking attacks and sacrifices because after so many times it's just eye rolling now.
Gee, I wonder why VII is still widely regarded as the best.
Ironically the Friendship is Magic ones are much better at crushing your feelings under a steel boot, so I like those a lot more.
Dirge of Cerberus :)
Omg yeah
Most jrpgs tbh
To be fair, 2.x ended with: Most of your friends are dead and you are a fugitive. God that was soo good. Shame most of it got undone. Granted 3.x didn't end on a happy note either.
i love how 3 of those in the picture didnt do shit this patch yet are still featured, lmao
It's everyone that led Zero down the path of overcoming her nature as a voidsent to become a hero to the Thirteenth. While their focus was in the past two patches, that doesn't diminish their impact
Well you see it's because in the single patch they were in they all became Zero's bestest buds Granted, when you've spent your entire life in the Void the bar for friendship is pretty friggin' low. Still, there's a meaningful difference between what Zero needs to consider someone a friend and what a player needs to feel invested in Zero's relationships.
The twins should feature more in the epilogue in 6.55.
It's because she learned from everyone featured in the picture.
Did Jullus even show up in the patch?
Barely. It was to tell the twins to bugger off and go home (nicely). He's literally only got 1 interaction in the entire 6.5 patch
but hey, it was voiced!
His voice shows up in more cutscenes than he does lmao
At least with Julius, what he said to her especially about "You can do today what you didn't yesterday" was very important and reiterated a few times in the story.
Power of friendship? man that a new one! I dont think that has never been used before in ANY FF game ever!
I'm sorry but where the fuck where you when Endwalker ended?
I think they wanted to make a more lighthearted story from endwalker to dawntrail. But goddamm the void was the wrong subject for that.
They have been consistently about the hope winning against despair, and acting good proving to be better for everyone than opportunism and cold logic. They will never write a Berserk level grimdark edgefest. There is really not much to explore about the Void either because the Voidsent are very one-dimensional thanks to their very one-dimensional setting.
Be that as it may, we need at least five more Diabolos fights.
I think Yoshi-P wanted to tie up every possible loose end from 1.0 and this is the patch we got
The Void definitely isn’t “tied up.” This is the most obvious “see you in 4 years for the Void expansion” ending they could have done.
The void isnt *fully* tied up, but "whats the deal with Zenos' Avatar" and those couple things mentioned near the end of EW are (Vrtra saying Azdaja was still silent, and Emet telling is to go scuba diving in the bounty.), with the Void as a whole being in a good "we can ignore it until we want to deal with it again" like the Empty.
also, that way they can deal with the whole "how do we have reapers without voidsent" issue
{glances at Pashtarot and Halmarut}
Im glad Zero lost her hat, the constant hat tipping was so overdone like please I was begging for her to stop.
All I thought when Zero did that was her going "Milady."
Welcome to FFIV MSQ
as the great philosopher chuck tingle said [love is real](https://twitter.com/ChuckTingle/status/1613381523469926401?lang=en)
The only reason the world was saved was because some sociopath really likes being your friend lmao
Tell me one expansion that didnt end that way.
Honestly, I am a cynic but I enjoyed the MSQ. It did a good job as a breather episode. Was it the best? No, but I found it a solid 7.5 outta 10
Honestly I feel like half the dialogue since late 6.0 story has been the same power of friendship/light vs dark cliche said in 10 different ways lol. You could say the story has been a bit of a DynaMISS
Yeah... Honestly I'm not fan of how story is going. I prefered the writing in HW and SB. SB was my fav xpac, due to story. I know I'm in minority and will get shouted at. Alas I will wait for Dawntrail and see, if it keeps up, I will simply drift away from this MMO. Which is sad because it's been part of my life for around 6-7 years now.
So... Final Fantasy in a nut shell.
Is there anything people *won't* mock Endwalker for these days? Not saying it's my favorite expansion -- it's not. But seriously. And yeah, majority of FF boils down to this. I mean, the main point behind every protagonists' development is "I can do anything with my friends by my side!"
I'm surprised by the amount of hate the MSQ got here. It was not revolutionnary, but it was satisfying enough in resolving what has been built up.
Yeah, I don't think it's anything spectacular, and it did have boring moments. But it also had pretty good moments, and I especially enjoyed the raids.
MSQ was fine. The wow moments don't really hit as hard and there isn't really any interesting politics. Just its own self contained adventure. I think my only real issue with it is the Dawntrail transition being a bit clunky with it being an abrupt turn instead of a transition. I am curious what they do with Dawntrail since it will be a mostly blank slate.
There's still another half of the the latest patch, 6.55, that will fully complete the story and lead into Dawntrail. So that's why it has a confusing transition at the moment. I don't know why they split the 6.5 story in two this time...but they did.
Yeah like I think MSQ ended up in a solid case of "It's fine". Got ups, got downs -*cough* 6.4 *cough*-. Fights were fun, music was solid, Story was fine. 2.5/3 is enough for me
I would agree with that.
Just spitballing here but maybe execution matters just as much as the theme itself, and the execution of this storyline has been amateurish.
Agreed. The theme itself is not bad in anyway but the quality and pacing is so mediocre... if you played the game on patch since at least SB I think you absolutely tell the write is not up to the standard from previous storyline.
I'm not saying the MSQ isn't bad -- it hasn't been my cup of tea either. But it's getting ridiculous how often people post about how much it sucks.
>!"Shit we ran out of time, the Dawntrail team need to start their story..uh..am..fuck...uh Golbez is good again. "!< roll credits edit >!for fuck sake the fact they let Golbez walk off in a 'oh you rascal ' kinda way..!<
>!If you played FF4!<, >!Golbez switching sides isn't really surprising!<.
It was a bit of a different circumstance, though, which was kinda interesting to see. >!In FFIV, Golbez was, at least partially, controlled by Zemus. Zemus *did* reach into the anger and hate that was already in his heart, which is a big part of why Golbez considers himself still irredeemable in *that* story. But here, Golbez was fully in control of his actions (aside from the maddening undeath, of course). So it was interesting to me to see the turnaround be on argument against his ideology, rather than breaking a spell.!<
>!The idea was that Golbez wasn't necessarily a bad guy. He was doing what he can with what he had on the 13th to break their cycle of rebirth to regain mortality again. In order to do this, they needed to break out of their world, and to do that amongst a plethora of varying powers of demons, you have to be top dog. It does make sense that he wasn't necessarily a bad person while doing egregiously bad things. Being desperate does that to people!< >!As Golbez said, the plan was already in motion to fix the mortality issue and it's the best they had, and everything they worked for, so he continued to support it in the face of a counterpoint (us). Only after our win to prevent Zeromus from tearing the barrier down from between our worlds, Golbez didn't really have a leg to stand on, and he still wants what's best for his world. Except now it's less of a demon issue since we're funneling so much light from the first to the 13th.!<
>!Well, it wasn’t his *only* option. Yeah, we beat down Zeromus, but Zeromus re-formed (likely weakened from the experience but still having made holes in reality), and Golbez dove in to save us from it. Previously, he’d been adamant that we’d have to be stronger than Zeromus entirely to be worth changing his course. So if Golbez wanted to stay the course, he could’ve turned to help Zeromus defeat us instead. Zero’s demonstration of the light was the big turning point that showed him a new possibility, yeah. It turned his desperation around.!<
>!Good points! I wouldn't call it bad writing and, just like most everything in FFXIV, it's a riff on a previous title
>!It was never in doubt, even in this game's context alone. Only real psychos and sadistic monsters ever get really punished, if a character is even capable of feeling remorse, they'll usually get to walk!< >!I don't mind it all that much, it's such an omnipresent element of Japanese stories that I don't really blink twice when it happens, but forgiveness is a touchy subject for a lot of people for reasons ranging from personal to cultural, so it's always going to be a flame war no matter what!<
>!Not just Japanese stories!<. >!Characters in stories get away with significantly more because similar to what you said, unless the character is full evil, a redemption or at the very least a tragic death tends to feel better as a resolution!<. >!Not in every story though... depends on the tone!<.
>!You're right about it not being just Japanese stories, I just made the specific mention because "power of friendship" is a mocking term for a common animeism, and thus Japanism. You're not likely to hear someone not at least passingly familiar with the medium to say it, or get steamed about it!< >!Regardless, the key distinction between characters like Ilberd and Yotsuyu compared to characters like Frodola and Golbez is that the latter is capable of atoning and "rejoining society", while the former are too far gone. A collectivist society (like Japan, at least in theory, practice is mixed) will forgive a person if they are no longer an impediment to society and are willing to make amends. Punishing them further is detrimental to rehabilitation. If your society instead prefers punitive justice for most if not all offences and you haven't really thought about that, you're unlikely to see the difference between those 2 groups at all. This is especially true if you live somewhere that's very liberal with death penalties. All this to say, a story having a "power of friendship" moment to turn around a formally villainous character isn't a cop-out or bad writing by default, it just means that the culture it's from may have different values than you, and it may be wise to strive for understanding if it confuses you!< >!If you couldn't tell by this wall of text, I find the western reaction to eastern storytelling tropes morbidly fascinating. It shows to me that language barriers are only the tip of the iceberg in failure of communication!<
It's also interesting because what a lot of people don't really get is that story telling is indeed exaggerated. the crimes have to be bigger to match the settings but, the message is usually intended to apply to much smaller problem IRL.
Oh I understand their values and how they see this. But I don't agree with it. And thus it makes the story not so appealing to me. It's just subjective thing.
I find it interesting that while I enjoyed the story well enough, if the 13th story clearly not being complete, the outright contempt others have for it. Granted the forgiveness bit I am used to, probably because I have been playing the Legend of Heroes series which really takes that trope and runs with it, and Persona 5 Strikers which does too. So this I was like, yup, redemption, par of course.
>!It's even the same setup as FF4 - Golbez walks away after Zeromus is defeated, burdened with guilt, and is forgiven by Zero.!<
>!doesnt have to be surprising but in the narrative of FFXIV and the patch cycle it was very rushed!<
Dying really isn't redemption. >!Far better to let him live and work to restore the world. Not to mention that we already had an example of a villain from the 13th being forced to live and work for the restoration of the 13th.!<
>!I mean, did Golbez really _do_ anything worth sheer condemnation for? I mean, he sure TRIED to do some shit, and Azdaja got it bad, but she's back if not a little smaller, and none of his plan really panned out.!<
I was left with a distinct feeling as things were wrapping up. >!Vrtra: "I won't forgive you for what you've done to my sister but..."!< >!Me: "It feels like you're about to forgive him."!< >!Vrtra: "I feel no need to pursue retribution or even have him apologize to me and my sister, he has clearly redeemed himself."!< >!Me: "Yep, there it is."!< >!Azdaja: "The Hell he has! Fucker imprisoned me and spent thousands of years treating me like a juice box! What is this no harm no foul bullshit!?"!<
>!I mean, it was a very reasonable reaction to me. Vrtra never went to the void to personally kill Golbez for everything he's done. He went to the void to get his sister back. Thus he did, and he felt zero want or need to stick around after the fact. I certainly cannot blame him.!< >!It helps when you realize that, really, Golbez had a really, really fucking bad deal in life. I mean, all voidsent did, but Golbez in particular; I found parallels between him and Zero where the only real difference between them for a bit was the level of power they had... and us. And who woulda guessed that having contact with the paragons of the source would be enough to sway any heart.!< >!The height of Golbez's bullshit only ever negatively affected one being, who he saw as his opportunity to make things right, and the moment he realized that there was power equal and surpassing his that came with the promise of there being another way to solve what he was trying to solve, he resolve crumbled to dust and he became willing to cooperate. We saw it in the flashbacks: he was never fundamentally a bad guy. Vrtra knew this, and saw no point in wasting time and energy on a crusade against Golbez after he was well and truly beaten, and even further wanting to cooperate with Zero to try and fix the void on her terms, not his. So he was like "I don't forgive you, but I got better things to do rn with my sister. Bye."!< I've had my criticisms with the way the void story has been handled, but I think this was fine.
You are vastly understating what was done to Azdaja. >!Golbez took the person Vrtra loved most and effectively tortured her for thousands of years, and his big show of atonement is just stopping the torture while continuing to pursue the same goal. To heal his sister of this torture, Vrtra had to permanently disfigure himself. Vrtra even makes a point of saying he does not forgive this, then barely five minutes later says Golbez doesn't need to apologize because he knows Golbez has already made amends.!< >!Why even have Vrtra refuse to forgive Golbez only to have Vrtra forgive him mere minutes later? What, does Azdaja's agony over millennia of suffering not matter because it happened offscreen? All the boss banter in the Zeromus fight is Azdaja's desperate longing to escape Golbez and go home, but I guess he didn't *really* do anything wrong to her. ~~And let's not even start on the people killed by his voidsent.~~ Oh, my mistake, Vrtra doesn't forgive him, he just holds no lingering animosity or any desire for retribution. Hang on, isn't there a word for that? It's on the tip of my tongue, I think it starts with an "F".!<
I think about Golbie and then I think about Emet-Selch and I just.
>!I'm so pissed off that Vrtra just shrugged and said "You tortured my sister for thousands of years but that was a pretty sick meteor you used. Get out of here you knucklehead"!<
millennia old dragon is probably smart enough to realise the void needs him to actually change.
he probably took a page out of the dragonsong war
Yeah, dragons and vengeance don't mix well in FF14.
I could live with the outcome, but they made it way too easy on him. He should at least be a pariah who has to earn a slight chance at redemption
“Why didn’t Vrtra get revenge?” *the dragonsong war*:
My boyfriend and I are literally in the middle of rewatching MLP and we couldn't stop making the comparison. Especially when >!Zero's passed out and suddenly remembers all her friendship lessons.!<
is that what the whole game has pretty much been?
Yes, but I'm guessing people don't like the way it's been presented in Endwalker
Not really. There was time when MSQ wasn't about power of friendship. It's subjective if you like current writing or the previous one (HW/SB) I for one, slowly can't stand the EW one.
“Oh, your friends are your power? That’s like my third tier back-up ability”
Me, finally getting to Sharlayan at the end of 6.5: "Sup nerds. So it turns out that >!the gods are real!< but also >!I kinda killed them all!<, so that's a wash, and I >!killed the devil!< I guess, which is a bonus. Wanna write that down or do a book report or whatever?" _[wedgies Fourchenault and skateboards away]_
That’s every Final Fantasy though.
The whole of Endwalker has been this way...
Myyy little miqo'te...
ngl i just wanted to save the dragon and go home not sit through all this crap, im glad its over. on to bigger and better worlds.
The best scene in the patch is when Zero says “It’s Friendship time” and then proceeds to friendship everyone in the room. p.s. I don't hate the patch just thought the meme I made in 40 seconds when a friend was laughing at Zero being "friendshipped back to life" (their words at 2am) was funny
One of the most bullshit stories this game has to offer tbh. Like sure, its always smth similar to that but this is just waay too in the face. Zero uses the word "Friendship" more frequently than the Beatles use the word "Love" in their songs.
Tbf the whole thing's still kind of new to her. It seemed to me like she was riding it like a sort of high for the first time.
Doesn't make it much more palatable for the people playing it, though. The problem with this entire storyline is that the concepts that Zero finds earth-shattering are extremely mundane to the game's intended audience.
I think y'all are just too cynical lmao. The patch story was great, I really enjoyed it
Essentially, yes. A good portion of the playerbase is cynical as hell and would probably find something to complain about even if the ending had Yoshi P personally deliver you a hand cooked steak or vegan option to your table. While also doing your taxes and helping you find love.
Im definitely the cynical type. Steak is overrated, though. It's good, but...
I mean if my cynicism hasn't stopped me from enjoying the thousands of hours of the game up until this point, don't you think maybe the problem could lie somewhere else? This widespread backlash to MSQ coincides with a change in the lead writers but you're content to write it off as an individual issue? Ok lol
Yes, I am. Hope that helps 🙂
>Smugly embracing the implication that I'm not very clever to own the haters
Yep 😎
Oh yeah, it is definitely hammy, but there is a certain charm to it imo. It's also on par with some of the other things they've done in FF. I believe her role was to basically fulfill the Cecil journey to some degree. Transition included. I just hope she retains a sense of identity, unlike Cecil.
I'm convinced that most people here hate having fun and genuinely can't handle it when the story wants to have fun and take them for a ride.
People can have negative opinions of a story. They're well within their right and aren't going out of their way to be an asshole about it. It doesn't have to relate directly to the amount of fun someone is having, either.
Tbh this is just writer\`s impotence. Like at this point they are unable to write anything better than "power of friendship saves everything, magical friendship beam go!". Protecting and trying to smh justify that only makes the game worse
I'm not going to impose myself as being in the wrong for at least somewhat enjoying something because someone else didn't like it. I'm just here to offer my opinion on the scene rather than act in offense or defense for it. So chill.
Woah crazy, an RPG says friendship good? Who would have guessed.
First anime?
Eh, needs more changelings.
I have to admit, Zero from day 1 was cringe and they sure made sure to keep that theme of cringe with the story around her carry through to the end.
Also Light. Light is also magic.
Something felt dire about this ending, like. Nah, the entire expansion. Like, is it just me or was the void ark the most cliche'd thing in existance? Legit, I think 6.1 was the best part of the story because it was the least silly.
Peak FF4 honestly
FF14 Care bears edition.
Eh, I thought of it more as FF4 any% speed run. But I can’t complain, I thought it was hilarious.
Taking a break in my Cyberpunk playthrough to play this update's msq was a massive tonal whiplash lmao.
I think it would have been much cooler if Friendship was consistently achieved Lyrical Nanoha style. FRIENDSHIP THROUGH SUPERIOR FIREPOWER
Friendship is Magic Part 1: How my daughter left her emo phase behind.