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maddiebiscuits · 4 years ago

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Personal Opinions on FFXIV Villains (in general order of appearance)

As a note, I will not be including any pre-A Realm Reborn villains (as I did not play the original Final Fantasy XIV) nor will I be including any one-off primals, raid bosses, etc. I will be trying to focus on villains as they appear in main or side storylines, in cut scenes, that have some over-arching influence on the story they participate in with something akin to a clear presence - Garleans, Ascians, and so on. Also SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS.

Rhitahtyn sas Arvina

Rhitahtyn gets the shaft out of Gaius’ three main players in A Realm Reborn. A conscript from a Empire-conquered land who rose to power and respect, directly honored by Gaius himself, and possessing an even temper and noble ambition really helped to level out Nero and Livia’s general nonsense. Unfortunately, Rhitahtyn is provided almost no screen-time, development or exploration, and as years have passed, his in-game 8-man trial can now be completed in a regular synced party in mere seconds. He deserved a lot better than what he got, yet remained too sidelined to really leave me feeling invested in wanting to see what sort of story this character could be used to tell.

Livia sas Junius

When first playing through A Realm Reborn my feelings on Livia were...tepid, but optimistic. Of Gaius’ three main players, Livia was easily the most active and ruthless, lacking the shady “long game” and self-serving ambitions of Nero or the more honorable, measured personality of Rhitahtyn. Suffice to say, the dawning (and then confirmed) realization that Livia’s sole motivation seeing the plan of the man she loved through to completion by any means, to the point of tunnel-visioned, murderous intent, was...disappointing. Add to that Livia was raised by Gaius in her backstory, the man being a father figure to her, and the romance motivation becomes even more unhinged (especially since it is largely considered to be a reciprocated romance, at least physically, by Gaius - barf)

Nero tol Scaeva

Nero has become a fan favourite character over the years, thanks to his continued development into Cid’s boyfriend foil rather than outright villain of the main storyline. This development was easy to spot early enough though, as it was clear Nero’s fealty to Gaius was largely self-serving. He didn’t care much about conquering Eorzea or felling primals/eikons - he just wanted to show that he possessed the brilliance to build weapons capable of doing so. His speech/squabble with Cid during the Praetorium sequence paints that picture even more clearly if the players missed the not-so-subtle implications for Nero’s character already. The man lived, breathed and seethed with inferiority when compared to Cid, and in the end he did ultimately prove his engineering mastery, even if the Warrior of Light took it (and him) down. Ultimately though, Nero serves as a much better supporting and “redeemed” character than a villain, so I do have to rank him pretty low.

Gaius van Baelsar

Aside from whatever...weird...thing was going on between him and Livia (again - barf), Gaius in A Realm Reborn was a pretty solid villain, with clear-cut motivations that I actually understood, and begrudgingly agreed with to a small extent. As legatus, Gaius was still the tyrannical arm of the Garlean Empire, but a level-headed one who was more interested with the purging of the primal/eikon threat from Eorzea than subjugating other peoples. Further development of this character into something of an anti-hero and glimpses of how other characters viewed him in flashbacks in later expansions ends up providing his A Realm Reborn rendition with more strength in retrospect. The heads of the three city-states deciding to accept Gaius off to willingly join the Empire is a pretty good sticking point for the validity of his plan as well. Ultima Weapon is...you know, pretty impossible for Ul’dah, Gridania and Limsa Lominsa to face down if they refuse, but more enticing is its ability to, indeed, single-handedly defeat primals/eikons - something the city-states desperately need at their disposal, having been plagued by such threats constantly, for years and years.

Gaius cuts a pretty direct swath to the truth of the Twelve as well - they’re no different than the primals/eikons he seeks to eradicate, and the more stock Eorzeans put into them, the more empowered they become should someone ever try to summon one, making Eorzeans no better than the beastmen and their ‘gods’. Join the Empire and have protection from such powers, and put faith into the leadership of man, versus that of fictional deities that can be given terrifying form...in the world of Final Fantasy XIV, that’s not a terrible proposition. But it would still subject thousands of people to the Empire’s tyranny, so even if Gaius has the oft-coveted ‘Point’ that most villains wish they had, he still must be stopped. Eorzea will simply find other ways to endure the primal/eikon threat rather than bend the knee, and I like that defiant angle the Warrior of Light represents to counter Gaius’ character. Also, Ascian meddling and Hydaelyn shenanigans, sure, but I don’t feel that takes away from the core conflict that Gaius presents. He was a good villain, and I’m happy to see him return and go through the motions of penance for his past deeds and aid the supporting cast now, elevating him even higher into a good character, in general.

Lahabrea

I admit I have a soft spot for Lahabrea, only because he seems to be a universal punching bag for heroes and villains alike in Final Fantasy XIV. He lacks the more subdued, long-term planning of Elidibus or the explored nuance and sympathy of Emet-Selch - he’s sort of the odd one out between the trifecta that make up the unsundered Ascians. Just a blindly-tempered zealot of Zodiark, seemingly more enthused by the ancient primal’s return than the promise of the world being set back to how it was before The Final Days. Even the other Ascians don’t seem to like Lahabrea that much - Elidibus seems keenly aware that Lahabrea has gone off the deep end, constantly needing reminders and wrangling-in to keep the plan in motion. But I will admit, he serves his purpose well enough, and the additional side-story that reveals that Lahabrea was a brilliant scholar unmatched in the Amaurotine field of ‘phantom creation’ was a nice touch to explain why he’s pretty dang good at getting people to try and summon primals and conjuring or corrupting monsters himself. By no effort of Square Enix themselves, I sort of feel bad for the guy. He really was just Doing His Best, and getting no respect for it. His end was also anti-climatic, but by the time it happened, there were far more interesting characters and stories to tell, and he was unnecessary - it was just better this way, Lahabrea.

Nabriales

This one-bit player served one substantial purpose, and it was to see an Ascian get obliterated permanently and thus provide the means and understanding to battle Ascians in the future. Except that the cost to do so was a throw-away villain, a throw-away damsel-in-distress 8-man trial, and turning Moenbrya, a character with a lot of potential to be great, into a throw-away character who has to make an untimely sacrifice because the script says so. Nabriales you’re boring, you’re bad, you’re a waste of time and your mutton chops are dumb as hell.

Ilberd Feare

You know what, I like this villain. I absolutely want to punch his face in, but I figure getting that sort of rise out of me on sight is intended, since, you know: villain. His motivations aren’t bad either, even if his methods are deplorable. The speech he gives at the very end of A Realm Reborn to rile up Raubahn is pretty effective too. Despite both being refugees of Ala Mhigo, Raubahn fought his way to wealth and status, and Ilberd was never afforded that chance, or at least never quite managed. Raubahn pledged himself more to Ul’dah and the Immortal Flames with his new privileges, however, and Ilberd was perhaps right to resent that, with Ala Mhigo still under the yoke of the Empire, and so many refugees left to flounder in The Black Shroud and Thanalan both, Raubahn seemingly unwilling to step in. Ilberd saw the opportunity to change the status quo and took it, and proceeded to rally others to reclaim Ala Mhigo. If the city-states would not help, then they would be forced to help, and for all his dirty tactics, punch-able face and Shinryu-summoning finale, Ilberd’s plan did work: he forced the hand of the city-states to fight against the Empire to reclaim Ala Mhigo, and did indeed remind Raubahn and other passive Ala Mhigans that there was still an important job to do. So, good job Ilberd. Gold star. Now perish.

Teledji Adeledji

I thought the politics at the very end of A Realm Reborn were intriguing, and Teledji’s heel-turn pretty fun, since of all the Monetarists, he seemed to be painted as the most reasonable. Though I found his game plan a bit...suspect. Yes, a poisoned goblet assassination attempt on the Sultana that he could frame on someone else, while usurping control of the Crystal Braves so he could make a bid for full Monetarist control of Ul’dah (with him at the helm) makes sense on paper, but I’m not sure why he sought to frame the Warrior of Light for it, and implicate the Scions either. While it’s true that the Warrior and the Scions would be an obstacle and want to investigate the death, and would prove tenacious foes, if you think about the scenario a bit more, it seems unnecessary. The Warrior and Scion efforts were likely going to start swinging towards Ishgard and the Dragonsong War, to better embellish the northern city-state’s relations with the Eorzean Alliance, nor are the Warrior or Scions people you’d want to make an enemy, especially with the Warrior being one of the only people who can defeat primals (a very active threat in Thanalan).

Framing Lolorito would have been a wiser idea, as he was already disliked and untrustworthy in the eyes of many, powerful and dangerous to compete with though he is. If Lolorito had been framed, Raubahn and the Scions may not have questioned it, and Teledji could have enjoyed planting himself in the eye of the power vacuum that was to come while the Warrior of Light focused their energy up north. Instead, Teledji bet on the wrong chocobo and paid dearly for it - his plan fell apart (and so did he) in more ways than he could anticipate, but on the whole? This was a pretty intriguing and entertaining storyline, I enjoyed it.

Lady Iceheart / Ysayle Dangoulain

I debated putting Ysayle on this list because by the first act of Heavensward, she’s not a villain - but, she certainly was in A Realm Reborn and going into Heavensward, so we might as well just keep representing how good Heavensward is and include her here. Aside from Minfillia, this is one of the only ever characters you meet early(ish) who shares The Echo with the Warrior of Light. Unlike Minfillia or the Warrior, though, Ysayle doesn’t really adhere to the call of Hydaelyn. Instead, her powers allowed her to hear and learn the truth of Ishgard’s history: that it was a lie, and that King Thordan broke the peace in a bid for power for Ishgard, turning Nidhogg to rage and setting the Dragonsong War into motion. Having witnessed Ishgard’s cruelty at a young age when her home was destroyed by snow and ice after the Seventh Umbral Calamity, and knowing what she knew and maintaining close bonds with dragons throughout her life, it’s sort of easy to see why Ysayle would be set upon the path she is. She wishes to end the war much like how Thordan does: ending it, with the dragons as the victors.

Her slap in the face is when she confronts Hraesvelgr though, her bid to sort of not only take the form of Saint Shiva but embody her memory being dismissed as a pale imitation. Saint Shiva wished for true peace, whereas Ysayle demands it through bloodshed - she realizes this, and changes her current course. This is why I debated to list her as a villain, because her gradual change into a supporting character and hero is a logical conclusion as she and Heavensward’s story develops. She starts a villain and dies a hero.

Igeyorhm

Full disclosure: I completely forgot this character existed. And I still don’t actually know why they exist. They’re a second to Lahabrea during the events of Heavensward, and is easily shut down by the Warrior of Light before being annihilated permanently by Thordan. Despite this, I don’t find their existence as offensive as Nabriales’, so...that counts for something.

Archbishop Thordan VII

When I first encountered Thordan (”pope grandpa”, if you will), I thought “oh, he’s evil”, because “church bad” isn’t exactly and uncommon trope and it’s apparent that Ishgard is a broken and unjust society, with this man sitting at the highest seat of power and consorting with Ascians. Yet to my surprise Thordan was...pretty reasonable. At least to start. He makes his audience with the Ascians known and seems unaffected by them and their schemes, is polite and cordial to the Warrior of Light...he doesn’t seem so bad. But the gut feeling remains, and slowly builds as Thordan’s true plan is revealed, becoming a primal-esque deity. And much like Nidhogg, I do get his motivations. Trying to broker peace with the dragons, to him, is just not going to happen - in fact, it’s insulting to ask dragons and Ishgardians both to make a bid for it, when so many people have died and live with the burden of hatred and grief. His solution is more direct: end the war entirely, by winning it for Ishgard.

After assuming his new form and powers, him and his Heavensward have the power to thwart any dragons that oppose them, perhaps even Nidhogg himself if the dreadwrym were to re-appear. Fueled by the generations’-worth of prayers from the Ishgardian population, Thordan was set on ending the war and ousting the dragons from the land, ushering in peace and prosperity. But the Ishgard he sought to protect and defend was built on a history spun of bloodshed and lies, and the dragons were not the true enemy and did not deserve to be put to the sword. Thordan’s plan would have worked in the way he envisioned it, and he made a good argument for it, even if it was ultimately wrong, and that’s a good villain.

Nidhogg

Having come to Final Fantasy XIV from World of Warcraft, a giant, scary black dragon that rants on and on about suffering and misery and pain and vengeance was something of a red flag for a Very Bad Story. Imagine my surprise when Nidhogg was given the screen-time to be properly fleshed out and explored, his motivations and hatred more sympathetically-human than his giant dragon body would have one believe, his presence menacing and well-paced, and his overall being representing the true, dark heart of the Dragonsong War: the cycle of hatred. For dragons, centuries are like days, and the pain Nidhogg feels is no less than what he felt when the Ishgardians brutally broke their pact. Because of this, with each re-emergence of him and his brood, the wheel of suffering turns anew, breathing new hate-filled life into the ongoing Dragonsong War, generation to generation. Time has no effect on his turmoil, and his existence ensures that no other Ishgardians will ever be able to move on from the war either, even as generations continue on.

I find Estinien being consumed by Nidhogg’s rage very thematic as well, Estinien truly embodying the countering hatred the Ishgardians feel towards the dragons, and it makes the final trial with Nidhogg bittersweet. He defeats Hraesvelgr, because as long as Nidhogg exists even the brightest hope for peace will be squashed under the cycle of malice and war. The Warrior of Light must put him down because he cannot be saved - but Estinien still can, and can choose to move on and pursue the peace that Nihogg strived to prevent and Ysayle died to see come to fruition. And he does, and it’s touching, and Heavensward is SO FUCKING GOOD I LOVE THIS EXPANSION.

Quickthinx Allthoughts

I don’t care much for timey-wimey storylines, but I found the Alexander plot easy enough to follow, and the timeloop it creates to be manageable. The truth about the Enigma Codex and the journal Quickthinx has isn’t exactly hard to figure out though once time travel becomes a part of the plot, and beyond beind a fun goblin with a cute kitty cat friend...there’s just not much in the way of compelling character writing here for this gobbo.

Diabolos

Big ancient demon is revived and wants to wreak havoc. Uninspiring, but its also not necessary for Diabolos to be anything more than what he is either. The heart of the Void Ark storyline is the tribulations of Cait Sith, the sky pirates and the history of the Mhachi, Diabolos just being an excuse to explore those characters and lore.

Regula van Hydrus

Regula deserved better damnit. This is the last Garlean villain with nuance and humanity before Stormblood turns everyone who is so much as associated with the Garlean Empire into a cartoonishly-evil, absolutely twisted, reprehensible confusing mess of a person.

Fordola rem Lupis

Stormblood has a lot of story, pacing and character problems. A lot. It has its moments and some people love this expansion, but I do not and its villains are a very large reason why that is. Fordola, for example, had the potential to be quite interesting. She was raised to believe in what her father did: that Gaius and the Empire were not all bad, and then watched her father die trying to protect her from angry, almost barbaric Ala Mhigans who decided that pelting a little girl with rocks because her parents were Empire-sympathizers and supporters was an okay thing to do (as the Garlean soldiers just watched on and let it happen without intervening because they didn’t feel like it - a fact that Fordola knows and remembers). You would think this event would have a sort of polarizing effect on her, feeling betrayed by both her people and the Empire her father believed in, feeling caught in the middle, in need of finding her identity and sense of self. Instead she...basically throws her entire stock in with the Empire, deciding that if she’s a good little soldier for the Empire, then Garleans will have to change their minds about Ala Mhigans and respect them because, see, look: an Ala Mhigan is a respected Garlean asset.

Except this backfires over, and over, her Ala Mhigan team nothing more than vicious dogs that never bite the hand that feeds them, turning their teeth on their own people instead. Fordola is constantly belittled and ridiculed for her heritage and even her gender by the Garleans, and at no point does she ever stop and go “wow maybe the Empire sucks hot ass and I’ve been terribly wrong about my motives this whole time”. And yet, no...Zenos offers her power in some magitek-aether experiment, she kills her own Skulls team, she finished the expansion jailed for her crimes, believing until the very end that the Garleans will win (they did not). She utilizes her anti-primal abilities once, and vanishes from the plot entirely, only to re-appear in a bad side-story where the Immortal Flames have her hooked up to some penalty-of-death submission collar so she doesn’t act out so they can use her synthetic Echo abilities to fight a re-summoned Ifrit.

Bad character, bad writing, and a waste of her new, game-changing anti-primal abilities.

Grynewaht pyr Arvina

This is such...a stupid character. His design, his voice and dialogue...I can’t tell what Grynewaht is supposed to be. Is he comedic relief? Because he’s not funny. Is he a character that you’re supposed to pity or despise? Because I felt nothing towards him. Is he supposed to be a rival? Because...no. I had to look up what his name was. The only thing I can clearly remember about him is that he was the final boss of the Doma Castle 4-man dungeon. That’s it. If you removed him from the plot entirely, nothing of value would be lost.

Yotsuyu goe Brutus

Between the two female villains of Stormblood, Yotsuyu is the more popular. It’s easy to see why: she has a cool design and a lot more screen-time and development, with a big 8-man trial to finish things off. But like Fordola, something is just off about her writing.

I don’t understand her motives or how she even came to feel the way she does about Doma, specificially. And anything bad that could happen to her, has happened to her. She suffered an abusive childhood under her adoptive parents, was sold off to an abusive husband, then sold off again to a brothel after her husband died to repay his debts. She later became a spy for the Garleans, rose in rank and was appointed acting viceroy of Doma, to keep the masses terrified and under her heel. At first, it seems pretty reasonable for her to turn against Doma, and lash out as she does on its people - her Doman upbringing left her used, abused and powerless, and with the Garleans she found power and strength. But this reading falls apart when you quickly realize that Doma was already occupied by the Garleans during the course of her upbringing, her family obedient to the Empire and her suffering just as much the fault of the Garleans. There’s an argument to also be made that not enough time was really spent portraying Doma as the disgusting place Yotsuyu sees it, as from the onset of Stormblood’s story journey into the Far East, Domans are only ever portrayed as a terrified, broken people, scared of the Garleans and Yotsuyu. I also don’t personally care for “character was abused, so now they’re sadistic and crazy” clichés either.

What does work well for Yotsuyu is the theme of power and control. Yotsuyu is a woman who lived a life not her own, weak and frail, until she obtained power. Now that she has it, her drive is to do anything to maintain it and survive - yet for some reason the story is written in such a way as to downplay this much stronger theme of her character, and play up this slightly confusing, all-consuming hatred for Doma instead. Her transformation into Tsukiyomi is also a bit odd (though decently thematic, with her ‘cold, uncaring and distant as the moon’ comparison), with not enough time paid to explore her understanding of Doman deities and why the mirror would trigger this change (and why would she even keep Doman deities in her mind, with her supposed hatred of Doma?)

I also take some issue with her “Tsuyu” arc, where she reverts back to the last time she was ever truly good or innocent, and has the personality of a child while still being an adult woman (and suffering amnesia). I find these infantilizing tropes pretty offensive, especially when Yotsuyu’s arc here is largely just to reinforce and reiterate what cartoonishly terrible people her family were, and provide Gosetsu with some development instead. Aside from killing Asahi and having a cathartic death herself, everything about Yotsuyu just baffles me. Every time I think I like something about her, athe bad writing twists it around.

Zenos yae Galvus

I don’t like Zenos, he’s a bad character, and I hate that Square Enix decided this limp-haired sullen-faced clown was going to be their poster-boy villain for Final Fantasy XIV.

What is the appeal of this character? Yeah, some people find him attractive. I don’t, but I also didn’t find Sephiroth attractive so, okay, whatever - like what you like I guess. But what else does Zenos have going on besides people seeming to think he’s their buff bishonen thicc daddy or whatever the kids are saying these days? His entire character can be summed up in one sentence:

“While the Warrior of Light was practicing empathy, Zenos studied The Blade.”

He’s a Garlean lordling with a bland and cold upbringing who likes katanas and blood sport. That’s it. He’s a sociopath, finding no joy or meaning in life for whatever reason: he just wants to collect Cool Swords and push his bizarre love-hate fight narrative on the Warrior of Light. Because they are opposites, you see: the Warrior of Light is a cardboard cut out of a Good Guy and Zenos is a cardboard cut out of a Bad Guy. He’s not even entertaining about it. He doesn’t want to watch the world burn, he just wants to fight the Warrior because the battle will make him Feel Something. Meanwhile, all I feel whenever I see him in-game, either in a cut-scene or when I’m locked in an unskippable “survive the drawn-out battle!” sequence with him, is a groan coming on. And sometimes villains who are evil just for the sake of it can be fun! But Zenos is not fun - he’s dull, he doesn’t get me hyped up for a fight...I feel nothing.

When he died after using his uber-synthetic Echo to possess Shinryu by taking his own life I thought, “well, at least that’s over” and I felt relieved. And then he came back, bigger and worse than ever! Yippee! I love confusing, unrelatable, boring villains who are recurring. Whatever Square Enix wants to do with Zenos, they need to hurry up and get it done. I care so little about him and just want to explore other stories and characters. I’m assuming he’s going to like, possess Zodiark or something, and then the Warrior will possess Hydaelyn, and there will be some big anime light fight showdown where Zodiark and Hydaelyn both shatter for good and Zenos dies and the Warrior lives another day and uuuugggghhh. How the hell did an expansion like Stormblood follow up Heavensward? Who let this happen?

Asahi sas Brutus

Bowl-cut twink hates his sister because he’s a Zenos fanboy and is angry Yotsuyu got all of Zenos’ attention instead of him. Filled with spite and piss, cartoonishly evil just like everyone associated with Yotsuyu or the Empire in Stormblood. Rest in pieces you little shit.

Varis zos Galvus

I’m lukewarm on Varis. He’s a better villain than Zenos, but that’s like saying a flat three-day-old glass of soda is better than sewage water. The bar is set very, very low. He’s ruthless, but not entirely unfair in his thought processes. Hell, he doesn’t even seem to like his own son (and really, if Zenos was my kid, I wouldn’t like him either). But Varis is a bit too...static, in my opinion. He doesn’t feel like a major player, and his batshit “let’s all just burn so the world resets and we can stick it to the Ascians” is pretty asinine and plays so transparently into the Ascian’s hands. I was originally bummed that Zenos killed him pretty unspectacularly, but...like with Lahabrea, it was probably better this way.

Omega

I don’t have much to say about this villain, really. The heart of the Omegascape storyline hinges on Cid, Nero, Alpha and the abstract concept of free will and accepting imperfection. It’s almost hard to say if Omega really is a villain, simply acting out a series of programs and statistics in a cold, robotic way, not really with malicious intent, so I think where Omega sort of shines is just as a being to build this sort of story off of, and provide a lot of fun boss fights as well.

Ran’jit

I had no strong opinions on Ran’jit for a long time, so I guess he improved for me as I now have An Opinion of him. He’s fine. He’s an okay villain. His Zenos-esque “survive the timer” encounters are annoying, but I find his persistence and presence more inspiring than any time crummy ol’ Zenos showed up. The biggest issue with Ran’jit is the lack of time devoted to developing him. This is a man who lost his home in the Flood of Light (which was the First’s equivalent to the Source’s Far East), and has essentially trained and raised numerous Minfillia reincarnations to battle Sin Eaters, just to watch these poor girls he saw as his own daughters die and die and die again. That cycle of loss would break down anyone, and make Vauthry’s postulations of paradise in Eulmore until the end finally comes appealing. Ran’jit pursues the Scions and Minfillia/Ryne not because he’s resolute in following orders, but because he just wants to bring this one psuedo-daughter back and keep her safe - something he could never do for the others who came and went in his tenure.

Naturally, this protectiveness leads to giving in to Vauthry’s nihilistic promises and stifles Minfillia/Ryne as a person. Thancred eventually learns to let the Minfillia he knew go so that Ryne could floruish into her own person - she was not ‘his’ Minfillia and it was terrible of him to ever impose that upon her. But where Thancred can move on and let Ryne develop into the wonderful person she is, Ran’jit cannot. And I’m disappointed this aspect of his character couldn’t be more at the forefront of his narrative.

Vauthry

If you ask me, this is more in line with how I figured Zenos might be. Vauthry lived a life or privilege and power, a child born of divine providence with no true regard for life, just his own desires. He’s spoiled and unreasonable, but his nihilism isn’t really nonsensical in the world of the First. All but a fraction of the world is destroyed, and Sin Eaters are a constant, devastating threat, so why not just relax in luxury, in the safety of Vauthry’s control over the monsters, and live in peace until the world truly ends? The battle against the Sin Eaters is exhausting and has no hope of victory anyway (until the Warrior of Light/Darkness arrives, that is). Even without the meol subplot, it makes sense why so many would flock to Eulmore once Vauthry takes over. Goofy as he can be, I do think Vauthry’s embodiment of just giving in to nihilism, hedonism and annihilation stands as a good thematic contrast to Shadowbringers strong themes of stubbornly striving for hope in even the darkest, bleakest hour. His trial is also fun and a slight swerve. All the Light Wardens up to that point had been monstrous, and Sin Eater transformations the thing of nightmares (Tesleen), so to see Vauthry take on the form of Innocence (ironically appropriate, as he truly believes he is blameless in all he has done) and become a golden-haired, angelic being of beauty - how he likely has always seen himself - is very entertaining, and defeating him feels great.

Emet-Selch / Solus zos Galvus / Hades

Ah yes. The Big One. Most people like Emet-Selch and his involvement in Shadowbringers. He’s sardonic, he’s entertaining, he’s honest, he’s explored, and he’s even sympathetic. The revelation of how Zodiark (and Hydaelyn) came to be, Amaurot and The Final Days is truly tragic. Emet and the rest of the Convocation were trying to save their world, and the cost was staggering - the lives of so many of their own, their minds, and eventually even their own world in the Amaurotine schism that followed. Being able to see a shadow of what Amaurot and its people were like really helps drive home the sorrow of it all, and Emet himself admits that he did try to learn to appreciate what the fragmented world had become. He’s also one of the most “successful” villains in Final Fantasy XIV - his intertwined association with death and masterful ability to raise up and lead empires like the ancient Allagans and modern Garleans to their self-destructing, Calamity-inducing downfalls (of which he was almost successful did with Varis and the Black Rose in the latter’s case) is pretty impressive as far as villainous plans and activity is concerned. Being forced to work alongside him in Shadowbringers because your goals are aligned while attempting to guard yourself from his inevitable schemes - which he’s pretty blunt about admitting he has - is an interesting way to develop him as a villain too. He spends most of Shadowbringers actually helping you rather than outright antagonizing you.

His conundrum is sympathetic as well, if not entirely relatable. If you had the ability to bring back your world, your friends and loved ones, at the cost of countless lives that are trivial in the grand scheme of the cosmos and start again, anew, in a better world that could repair and rebuild, would you do it? Tempered by Zodiark or not, Emet would, and while I don’t agree with him, I don’t entirely blame him either, for feeling how he does. Similar to Ran’jit and Vauthry too, Emet is nihilistic: he clings to something long-gone and will burn the current world down to get it back. To him, the Rejoining and Zodiark’s return is inevitable, and people like the Warrior of Light/Darkness are futile, frustating obstacles that cannot understand not only his plans, but just how he feels. They don’t remember what they lost. Emet does.

And yet in his final moments, Emet seems at peace. He seems to realize, as he is fading into oblivion, that the Warrior of Light/Darkness isn’t just the reincarnation of Azem, but what Azem believed in that made Azem part from the Convocation. Fractured life is still life, and Azem believed that the world and its beings was worth learning about, loving and protecting, capable of great things even when faced with insurmountable odds. The last act of good will Emet can do after requesting that the Warrior not forget about Amaurot, is to free the Warrior from Elidibus’ binds so that the last unsundered Ascian can be put to rest at last. It’s a very emotional throughline for Emet’s character, rather than a more logical one, but it works very, very well and really helps push Shadowbringers into that amazing high its story can get to.

Elidibus

I never liked Elidibus all that much for the longest time. It’s not that his character was “bad’, per se - he’s polite, diplomatic, and enigmatic, providing a much more leveled, intriguing villain to counter-act Lahabrea’s more active plays and cackling. But Elidibus’ long game always left me sort of wanting: I was never really sure what he was trying to accomplish expansion to expansion and how it related to the Rejoining that would bring about Zodiark. His plans also seemed to just regularly...fall through. Sending the Warriors of Darkness to antagonize the Warrior of Light in the Source ended up bringing about the halt of the Flood of Light on the First entirely. Picking up Zenos’ body and squashing Garlemald uprisings while nudging Varis to make and use the Black Rose was promptly halted by the true Zenos making an unspectacular return. I don’t know, I just feel like any plan Elidibus sets into motion gets stopped before it really gets started.

My opinion of him did change, however, during the course of the Shadowbringers expansion. Being the heart of Zodiark, manifesting as the First’s...uhh, first, Warrior of Light, summoning them from across the other shards to wreak havoc and empower himself, only to finally be put out of his misery not just be the true Warrior of Light/Darkness, but Emet-Selch’s last act of will and revealing that he had been an over-working, sad youth who just wanted to save the world he knew was...well, sad. And his first (and last) real gameplay with the various hero summonings was a pretty amazing set piece too, though it also tells me how devastating Elidibus could have been earlier on if he’d taken a more pro-active approach, access to the Crystal Tower notwithstanding.

Valens van Varro

Much like how I wanted to punch Ilberd, because Ilberd is a deplorable person but an effective villain with decent motivations, Valens is just...I just want to punch him, in general. He’s just Disgusting On Purpose. And since we still haven’t shaken Stormblood’s insistence that Garleans are Evil So Evil Oh My God Evil You Guys they’re trotted out a demented borderline sex-offender who forces his child wards to brand subjects who are out of line with red-hot irons. Valens is...entertaining, I guess, in that regard. And Valens does serve as an appropriate counter-part to Gaius in this storyline, the themes of which seem to largely deal with fatherhood and penance for past misdeeds. I just...really miss Garlean villains with nuance.

Fandaniel

Oh god damnit Asahi is back. Square Enix stop doing this, stop bringing back bad characters. Though it is unfair to say Fandaniel is anything like Asahi. Oh sure, he’s using Asahi’s body (and therefore the Brutus’ family inheritance to fund his machinations), he fawns over Zenos, and he’s cartoonishly evil, but at least this go around there’s a certain...goofy charm to it. Fandaniel is a sundered Ascian - he doesn’t care about the Rejoining or Zodiark, he’s aware that he’s a broken being and he is, quite frankly, loving it. He lays his intent out pretty plainly to the Warrior of Light/Darkness: he’s evil, he loves destruction, and he’s doing it because that’s just what he feels like doing. Don’t reason with him, don’t try to understand him, just fight back and cry about it. On some basic level I appreciate that brutal honesty, so much so that I’m comfortable writing my thoughts about him now because I don’t think they’re going to change. What you see is what you get with Fandaniel, and he’s just having such a good time. He’s a terribly-written villain but gosh darnit I just can’t bring myself to hate him.

#don't @ me zenos fans or i will always win need rolls on mount drops by one point in your queues #ffxiv

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mamthew · 5 years ago

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On Final Fantasy XIV and Asymmetrical Memory

I plan to spoil large chunks of Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn and its expansions in the following write-up. I will probably go most in-depth into the Heavensward expansion, but I expect to at least allude to plot details from other expansions in such a way that people who haven’t yet played them might work out what happens, so steer clear if you don’t want that to happen.

Every time I play a Final Fantasy game, I constantly think about what a remake/demake would look like. The cutoff for this is between IX and X – from X on, I parse out a potential demake in the style of VI or IX, while from IX earlier, I think about what a potential remake of the game could look like. I figure this cutoff is pretty indicative of what I most enjoy about Final Fantasy games. I really like the ATB battle systems of IV through IX, but I want the stories to be presented with voice acting and cinematic cutscenes (I was a little disappointed in the gameplay depicted in the XVI trailer for that reason, but that’s only sorta tangentially related).

I don’t think I’ve ever been so invested in the potential for a demake as when playing FFXIV. The game is an MMORPG, and I do not like MMOs, so that’s definitely part of it. I kept thinking in the back of my mind that I would much rather be going through dungeons with the characters accompanying my character in the story, rather than the random fellow players rushing me through them. The developers, clearly, had heard this criticism before. As the game progresses into newer updates, more options become available to make the story feel more like a single-player experience, culminating in the ability to choose to explore dungeons with a party of NPCs and a story explanation for why randos appear around the protagonist for boss fights (neither of which apply retroactively, unfortunately).

Over the course of the game, then, I went from wishing I could play a game with this story in the style of VI or IX to wishing I could play this game, but developed from the beginning by the developers who made the Shadowbringers expansion with six years of experience under their belts. That’s not to say I don’t sometimes fantasize about the ways this story could be handled in a more traditional style, but with Shadowbringers, the game has essentially become a single-player game I am made to experience next to other players, which is much more bearable than a traditional MMO.

Like many games in the series, FFXIV is about memory, but it tackles this theme in a very different way from most. Rather than focusing on amnesia or memories fading, it looks instead at the conflicts that arise from asymmetric memories.

The second expansion, Heavensward, is about a holy war fought for centuries between dragons and humans (slash-elves). Over the course of the story, it is revealed that the main disagreement in this holy war arose from the differences in the lifespans between these two species. The humans have developed a religion explaining to them why dragons attack them every few decades, in which it is taught that their original king was murdered by the dragon Nidhogg, and one of his loyal knights took the dragon’s eye in revenge. The dragons, this religion teaches, are a scourge on the earth. It is heretical to consort with them in any way, and those who do often change into dragons themselves. Thus, from the humans’ perspective, not only are humans and dragons locked in a constant war, but the dragons are the aggressors for attacking every few years and for turning their own fellows against them.

Dragons, however, live for a much longer time than humans. Nidhogg is, in fact, still alive, as are several of his siblings, and his father. The dragons are at war with the humans because those many centuries past, the humans discovered that they could gain strength by killing and eating the dragons, and they did just that to Nidhogg’s sister. There is an asymmetry of memory to this conflict, meaning neither side is truly in the wrong. The humans, who only live for a hundred years or so, can only remember the dragons’ attacks to their cities. From their perspective, they are attacked by these monsters without reason. The dragons, however, still vividly remember the inciting incident of the conflict. The wound of the murder of Ratatoskr is still fresh, to them.

The game has an overarching conflict that’s framed in much the same way: neither party believes themselves to be at fault because the discrepancy in their respective lifespans has created an asymmetry of memory. Summons in the FFXIV universe take on different forms depending on what stories the summoner had heard about the god, meaning that the look and behavior of staples like Shiva and Ifrit can vary wildly depending on the memories of their worshippers. The game suggests, too, that the perfect empire would be one that can create and manipulate this asymmetry of memory, to have subjects who do not remember ever having not been subjects, but who the imperial structure still remembers are not sovereign citizens.

Difference in experience can allow for this asymmetry in memory, too. The protagonist has counterparts in parallel worlds, but each of these counterparts is, by any metric, their own person, with their own life and experiences. The protagonist’s power allows them to view others’ memories, which works well as an expository tool, but also maintains in the forefront of the player’s mind that everyone’s actions and ideologies are informed by their experiences and memories. Our diversity, the game reminds us, is literally a product of an asymmetry of memory.

This way of exploring memory is a pretty stark departure from the rest of the series; it’s much more subtle than the series’ usual focus on the acts of forgetting or chronicling experiences. This theme was absolutely informed by FFXIV’s status as an MMO; I can watch as hundreds of fellow players experience the same story events in radically different ways. Everyone’s protagonist is a different race with a different name, aesthetic, and class. They start in different towns, each of which has its own unique first thirty or so story quests. How we each experience dungeons and bosses is determined by our “role” - do we deal damage, or heal, or sponge damage from enemies? Our characters essentially do everything alone but with company, and we can stand and watch as others’ characters criss-cross fields, spawning enemies only they can attack, or standing in front of random NPCs, experiencing stories we ourselves are not seeing. Some players are “legacy players,” and the story is very different for them, as it is a continuation of a story us newcomers cannot access.

While this theme was made for the MMO medium, though, I think it is also well-suited to the Final Fantasy series as a whole. We all experience the series very differently. Some were introduced through Final Fantasy I on an NES in the ‘80s, others were introduced through VI, or X. Some were introduced through Kingdom Hearts, or Super Smash Bros, or a Dissidia arcade machine. We all picture a different character when we think of Cid, whether that’s the spandex-clad Cid from IV, the cantankerous astronaut from VII, or the cranky garage-owner from XV. When a Final Fantasy game references a previous game, we all might have different games we connect that reference back to, informed by our differing memories and past experiences.

I saw a complaint once that FFXIV fails to be its own game because it is too caught up in nostalgia. It would rather remind people of other games than stand as its own game. I disagree, especially when it comes to the stories of Heavensward on. I find it and Shadowbringers to have some of the better plots the series has ever done, with characters who earn their right to stand among the most iconic characters in the series.

I do think, however, that it is impossible to play a game in a long-running series without your experience being affected by your memories of other games in that series. Humans naturally have a tendency to seek out and find patterns, and we write connections and patterns into series, pretty much by definition. This is what I do when I imagine remakes and demakes while playing Final Fantasy games. I use my memories of other games to inform my understanding of the one I am playing. I find throughlines between vastly different games and cross the yawning void of divergence to imagine what it would be like if they weren’t so different after all.

#final fantasy #final fantasy xiv #shadowbringers #heavensward #ffxiv

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bjy-on-ao3 · 5 years ago

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Choices, Choices

(Note: If you don’t want to see any of my mostly text posts where I just blather on about things, I’ll be tagging them all with ‘rambling’ or ‘nonsense’ so you can filter them if you like. Just thought I’d put that out there.)

After recently expanding my gaming since I am waiting to be able to play P5R, I am finding myself wanting to write for several more character, yet not really settled 100% on whom. For those who enjoy my Adachi stuff, don’t fret - I still have concepts for those and am still in the process of writing one and in fact hope to have another complete next week or so, depending on how my nightly writing sessions go.

So, what are the other options plaguing me currently (That I will need to research in depth before actually committing to writing, of course - I need to be able to feel out the characters well enough, which means seeing through more story and character development as said story progresses). Well, the games themselves are Final Fantasy XIV and Obey Me!. FFXIV I am an old veteran of and Obey Me! only about a week into. Zenos yae Galvus from FFXIV certainly has my interest, while with Obey Me! I am waffling between Lucifer, Asmodeus, and Belphegor. Still, I don’t feel like I know any of these characters well enough yet to write for them, so it’ll likely be several weeks before I get anything done with them if I do - but that hasn’t stopped me from writing down a concept or two here and there. This has all just been rambling mostly, but I’ll keep things updated here. Otherwise you can still mostly expect fic updates and randomly reblogged pieces of art and writing related fuzzy feelings.

#rambling #thoughts #choices #writing #fanfic #fanfiction #progress #nonsense #kind of fandom related #ao3 #archive of our own

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illegiblewords · 6 years ago

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FOR CONFUSED BYSTANDERS

I know that I have a lot of followers who have been (very patiently) witnessing a stream of pictures, commentary, and general posts related to Final Fantasy XIV. This is going to be my attempt to present the game and its story with context for you guys who have no idea what’s going on.

I’m doing this for two reasons, the first being I LOVE THIS GAME. If I can share the positive experience I’ve had with other people, I’d like to do that. The second reason is, for people who still follow but aren’t necessarily going to play themselves--it might offer enough background info to make posts that go up more entertaining at least. I know I don’t personally mind seeing bloggers, writers, artists, etc. share something I’m unfamiliar with, but it gets more fun when I have some clue what it’s about.

Parts of this post will be just about my own subjective experience, some will be recapping the story, some will be going over different ways I’ve seen people play in case that appeals. So on and so forth. I’m aiming to offer an honest reflection on whatever seems important.

Putting this under a cut because really, this is fucking long. Not as long as it looks because pictures are included but even still. For anyone who reads, I hope you enjoy and if you have questions don’t hesitate to hit me up! :)

BACKGROUND - NON-MMO PLAYER LOVES THIS MMO

I have never played an MMO before this. I’m pretty apathetic about them for the most part. When I play games I like to design things, get good pictures, and kill baddies for stress relief. I'm here to immerse in an exciting world and story, meet characters I can invest in. Stuff in that vein. So far as gaming goes I’m pretty simple.

There are people who put heavy emphasis on the social elements of FFXIV. They’ll play with their friends specifically, either because they’re focused on fighting together or because they want to roleplay or just to hang out. I’m not really in that category.

I entered knowing no one, and while I’ve made some friends through FFXIV I mostly interact with them outside the game itself. This can happen on tumblr, on forums, on the official blog platform, etc. In-game, I encounter other players all the time but it is generally something like “I was running around the city doing stuff and other people were also running around the city doing stuff”. You can approach people. You can message them and do little emotes like waving or hugging or slapping or whatever. You can do these emotes directed at nobody and just see your character go through the animations, which can be fun for taking pictures.

More detailed encounters with other players happen in dungeons, trials, and raids. These are called registered duties. Guildhests and PVP (player versus player) exist too, but I haven’t done them. I’ll elaborate later, but the gist you need to know here is that you are grouped in with a fixed number of additional players and then placed in a setting with a pre-set encounter or encounters to overcome. Some of these are straightforward, some require strategy.

In FFXIV, people usually chat to varying degrees during duties. Most are polite, pleasant, and focused on gameplay. At least where I am, which I’ll also go into later. Occasionally there are people who are jerks in the sense that they are inconsiderate or rude to other players. Also occasionally, people are incompetent. More often though I’ll encounter someone with a great sense of humor or people who have helpful tips to improve.

This is a game where, if you see a player marked as new struggling with low level monsters, a more experienced player might pause to oneshot that monster so the newbie can escape. People are casually nice most of the time.

Since I’d normally be doing single-player anyway, for me this is very refreshing. I get to do all the things I’d be doing in a single-player video game, but I also get light exchanges with other fans in ways that aren’t disruptive. There’s enough meat to the Main Quest Scenario (MSQ) and side quests that I don’t feel bored or lonely at all.

FFXIV does cost money to play and has a subscription. This can be paid in varying increments. I personally think it’s worth it because 1) the developers are adding new content on a pretty regular basis 2) the developers actually care about quality and having happy fans 3) the game keeps getting better over time 4) there is SO MUCH you can do in the game. It is truly expansive beyond anything else I’ve seen. I might not be ready to do a subscription with every game, but for this one absolutely.

This essentially plays like a normal final fantasy game in most respects. You might run around solo by-and-large, but there is an NPC supporting cast. They and the villains get fleshed out very well. Same goes for civilians and other background characters. The biggest difference off the top of my head is the story’s beginning...

OBSTACLES

I’m going to get this out of the way early, but in essence I think there are two main obstacles as a beginner. The first and most notable of these is that the game’s entry point, called “A Realm Reborn”, is less well-written and EXTREMELY LONG.

Seriously. I’ve only gotten one character past this point and it took me a stupid amount of time. Some of the quests at this stage are things like “my dad doesn’t like the stinky chocobo please spray it with perfume so it is less stinky”. Or “jump through all these stupid hoops so you can fight the exciting boss you’ve been waiting for”.

However, the length at least is slotted to be fixed in the future. I’ll probably announce that when it happens in case that’s the deal changer for anyone.

On writing quality, it starts off mediocre. However, later writing is so strong that it actually manages to make past scenes WAY more interesting. The initial setup also kind of lures you into a false sense of security, at which point shit gets real very fast.

The second obstacle for beginners involves a degree of not knowing what you don’t know. For example, there is an extremely powerful attack that can be used in registered duties called “Limit Break”. Initially I didn’t even know where to find it to put in my move hotbar. Then I didn’t know that using it would take limit break away from other players in the group. Then I didn’t know that the limit breaks of different jobs needed to be used under different circumstances. An example of this would be that spellcaster SHOULD use a limit break attack on freakishly large groups of enemies, but SHOULD NOT use limit break on a lone boss unless there is literally no other damage class (DPS) available to do it. This is because the overall impact of caster limit break is comparatively low, but effects more enemies at the same time. Using limit break inappropriately can frustrate people.

There are other things similar to this, such as when you use Duty Finder (a roulette that sets you up with completely random people interested in the same registered duty) and when you use Party Finder (where you announce what registered duty you want to do with what circumstances, then people volunteer to join), or being aware of which moves are supposed to be used in which order for top efficiency. That said, if you tell people you’re completely new they’ll usually be willing to explain.

If it’s something like “how do I use the glamour plates to switch into designs I made easily” or “how does crafting even work”, youtube is very helpful too! Overall just take initiative and communicate to people your experience level while in groups and things tend to work out.

THE STORY

Disclaimer: Recaps get less detailed over time to avoid spoiling too hard.

SHORT VERSION

You are a god-slayer, or more precisely the slayer of false-gods. False-gods drain the land to make it lifeless and are prone to brainwashing people. You also regularly fight the rough equivalent of angels who believe the world as you know it has gone horribly wrong and are trying to force things back into their natural forms. Excessive death ensues anytime they are successful, so high stakes. Meanwhile, an authoritarian and technologically advanced nation is causing issues on the regular and has to be stopped.

PRELUDE/LEGACY

Final Fantasy XIV had a rocky start with patch section 1.0/the true beginning, which I did not play. While there are videos online of what it was like for those curious, the gist is that five years before the current opening the world was stricken by a terrible calamity. The nation of Eorzea (an allied collection of city states) was at war with the Garlean Empire--otherwise known as Garlemald. During this war, one of Garlemald’s scientists implemented a genocidal strategy against the Eorzeans by dragging the lesser of two moons down upon their heads. This moon was called Dalamud. However, what took this situation from bad to worse was that Dalamud wasn’t actually a moon but a prison.

Thousands of years prior, the technologically advanced nation of Allag had been performing experiments using dragons and entities known as primals. Primals are summoned into being using a combination of aether (life energy, the source of magic), ritual, and the belief of their summoners. One of Allag’s experiments involved murdering a powerful dragon then using the tortured prayers of his lover and his kin to summon a warped, primal imitation of him. This primal was then trapped as a power source and left to fester in rage and insanity.

The dragon’s primal is Bahamut. Dalamud was his cage.

When Dalamud burst open above Eorzea, Bahamut was released in all his apocalyptic glory. A collection of heroes, allied to an organization called the Scions of the Seventh Dawn (dedicated to eliminating primals for the toll they take on the land and its people) stood against Bahamut. A man named Louisoix Levellieur, leader of the Scions, cast a powerful spell by summoning the Twelve Eorzean gods to stop Bahamut. This spell cast the primal, Louisoix, and the heroes five years into the future. It also wiped the heroes, known thereafter as the Warriors of Light, from memory.

Part of what makes 1.0 really cool looking back--when the developers saw how many problems existed in the MMO, they knew they would need to reboot it. There was a date set for that to happen, which would involve taking Final Fantasy XIV offline until an improved version could be released. Players knew the real world reasons behind all this. What they didn’t know was how the hiatus and reboot would be presented within the narrative.

People who were up-to-date in the storyline knew that war had erupted and that the moon was falling. They also knew that a particular time, the game would be taken offline.

This is what they saw.

A REALM REBORN

The average player, and likely anyone reading this, will not have played patch 1.0. For us, Final Fantasy XIV begins five years after Bahamut’s calamity. The world is still recovering and has been irrevocably scarred in the dragon’s wake. Refugees from both that event and Garlemald’s conquered territories pour in even as the empire bides its time for another invasion.

The player is a fledgling adventurer endowed with a gift called The Echo. The Echo is an ability that first, prevents them from being brainwashed (or “Tempered”) by primals. This is important because like I said before, one of the things that gives primals their power is belief. This extends to prayer. If a person is tempered, they will worship and empower the primal responsible until they die. This means most people can’t even approach primals safely, much less fight them. More than one character (including NPCs) possess The Echo, but it remains a rare ability.

Another aspect of this gift is that it allows someone (without any deliberate control) to see into the memories of others, superimposing emotions and perspectives of the event over the witnessing Echo-user. It also translates all direct speech into an understandable form to the Echo-user. There are additional abilities that become unveiled over the course of the story, but these are most important and consistent going in.

The player initially is just one of many such adventurers, a guild of independent mercenaries willing to undertake odd jobs using their skill in combat. After coming into conflict with a mysterious, masked organization, however, it becomes clear that the player has been chosen as champion to Hydaelyn herself.

Because you see, Hydaelyn isn’t just the name of the planet. This is also a sentient mothercrystal claiming the role of protector to all life on Her surface.

The masked organization consists of spirits with varying degrees of immortality. They also have the ability to body snatch. These are called Ascians. Ascians argue that the world was split into fourteen pieces thousands of years ago by Hydaelyn, and that their dark crystal god--Zodiark--is the true will of the star and represents a natural state of being that must be reclaimed. Their way of pursuing this objective requires causing a series of apocalypses or near-apocalypses, always coming with innumerable casualties.

As Hydaelyn’s champion the player joins the Scions of the Seventh Dawn in combating primals, fights against lingering threats from Garlemald, and thwarts Ascian plans to continue rejoining the world through calamities.

A trailer for this arc can be viewed here.

HEAVENSWARD

Shit goes pear shaped in a big way and you have to flee territories held by the Eorzean Alliance--city states including Ul’dah, Limsa Lominsa, and Gridania. Ishgard, now a frozen, mountainous landscape ruled by a religion dedicated to the goddess Halone, takes your character in.

Ishgard has been at war with the draconic nation of Dravania for thousands of years. Dragons are immortal by natural means, but can be slain. Ishgard no longer remembers, by and large, why the war even started except that they have been losing loved ones in horrifying ways for as long as they can remember. They refused to send aid during the struggle against Garlemald specifically because they couldn’t spare forces from their war with Dravania. They have a reputation for being hostile to outsiders, having extreme class divides, and inquisition-style zealotry. Nonetheless, there are good people here and over the course of A Realm Reborn the player manages to befriend some of them.

This arc delves into Ishgard’s war, and involves the player taking part while clearing their name in the Alliance. Toward the end, it is also extremely important to note that the player encounters a group calling themselves “Warriors of Darkness”, who are in-league with the Ascians. It comes to light that they hail from one of the divided worlds, that their world is in terrible danger, and they believe the path to survival comes from confronting you.

A trailer for this arc can be viewed here.

STORMBLOOD

One of the antagonists we encounter forces the Alliance to involve itself in freeing Garlemald’s conquered territories, namely the nations of Ala Mhigo (largely Middle Eastern) and Doma (East Asian). In undertaking this task, the hero comes into repeated conflict with Garlemald’s crown prince, Zenos yae Galvus. Zenos is basically a serial killer with the resources of a prince but no actual investment in being a prince. It’s pretty wild.

A lot of this plot focuses on the consequences of Garlean rule. Over time though, it comes to light that the founder of Garlemald was a high-ranked Ascian and is still very much alive.

A trailer for this arc can be viewed here.

SHADOWBRINGERS

The plot set into motion with the Warriors of Darkness resumes as the player is forced to travel to their home world. Dealing with a setting on the brink of Armageddon, this current arc has a ton to do with examining different perspectives while getting much clearer insight on lore metaphysics. Most notably, we finally learn why the Ascians act the way they do and discover more about the nature of the player character and Hydaelyn.

I’m aware this is vague, but honestly this is my favorite of all the expansions/arcs so far. Seriously it is fucking killer.

A trailer for this arc can be viewed here.

YOUR PROTAGONIST/THE CHARACTER CREATOR

The main character of Final Fantasy XIV is known as the Warrior of Light, regardless of whether you play from the Legacy version of the game or A Realm Reborn. Similar to the Dragon Age games, in Final Fantasy XIV you get to design your own main character and shape their identity to varying degrees through the story. Some people like to imagine their protagonist as existing within a completely different role in the world of Hydaelyn for roleplay purposes (so not a Warrior of Light), but that involves essentially disregarding the main quest scenario narrative provided. It’s fine to do that of course, but I’m going to be explaining things that essentially fit within the canon approach.

There are currently eight playable races for the Warrior of Light. These include hyur (human stand-ins), elezen (elf stand-ins), roegadyns (orc or giant stand-ins), miqo’te (cat people), lalafells (dwarf or gnome stand-ins), au ra (tiefling or draeni stand-ins), viera (female-only bunny people at the moment), and hrothgar (male-only lion people, the beast race).

Each race option has two subraces attached. The most dramatic differences between subraces come up for hyur, where there are Midlanders (shorter and slighter frames) and Highlanders (taller and beefier/curvier). Otherwise it’s more minor differences.

It is common for players to develop their own personal interpretations of who their Warrior of Light character was before the story begins and how that impacts progression. This can be shaped by what race they belong to and what lore is attached to that race according to region. It is also possible to shape things according to which of the Twelve (Eorzea’s pantheon) the Warrior of Light worships. These deities are loosely described and made available for selection at the beginning of the game.

It isn’t unusual for people to pick names in-keeping with lore. A good site to turn to for this is over here, although there are also spots that go into what different names actually translate to. Other people just go with whatever they feel like. I think I saw someone named Cheese Whiz once.

Stat variation is pretty negligible between races, and it’s mainly an aesthetic/tonal choice. Currently there is some pressure on game developers to make Viera and Hrothgar playable for male and female gender options both, and it seems likely that at some point this will happen. Currently there are indications that the release for Viera and Hrothgar was somewhat rushed due to some behind-the-scenes circumstances, so while they are less versatile than other options this is likely to change at some point.

As someone who is a sucker for character customization, I want to mention that while it might be easier to get some of the fantasy races to fit a particular ethnicity--Final Fantasy actually does a great job in terms of visual versatility and has made it possible to hit a wide range of options well. For example, it might be easier to make an East Asian au ra or a French elezen, but you can easily break with that in totally believable ways. You might not have the precision adjustments of Dragon Age: Inquisition or Bloodborne, but the options presented are pretty flexible.

In terms of how the Warrior of Light works through the game, again while there is some wiggle room there are certain aspects to their identity that stay pretty consistent. They get jaded and worn out by the narrative as time goes on, they experience loss, they become increasingly chatty and sarcastic. They have powerful neck muscles from years of communication by nodding. Commonly, the personality of the Warrior of Light is also influenced by the job they choose.

THE JOBS

Something I wish got explained to me early--you only get certain jobs as options starting out, and any others you hear about getting added are only accessible at higher levels. In Final Fantasy XIV, basically when it comes to combat you start with a very basic class, which graduates to a job (better versions of the class) when you fulfill certain requirements.

There are notably three main roles a combat class or job can fall into. These include tanks, healers, and DPS. Tanks are responsible for leading the charge, provoking aggression, directing mobs, and enduring attacks in groups. They don’t deal the most damage but have the highest defense and are generally right in the thick of the action. Healers can deal damage but their main purpose is to keep themselves and everyone around them from dying, especially in groups. At the moment all of the healer jobs use magic. DPS (Damage Per Second) are the jobs that are mainly responsible for taking chunks out of the enemy’s health. Within DPS there are additionally three subcategories, these being Melee DPS (non-magical and close-range), Physical Ranged DPS (non-magical and fighting from a distance), and Magic Ranged DPS (magical and fighting from a distance). There is also a limited job and Crafter/Gatherer classes, but I’ll get to those later.

Some DPS jobs, additionally, focus more on playing support to other party members while others are geared toward boosting their own damage output.

The classes you can choose from in the character creator include:

Gladiator (Tank, Sword and Shield)

Marauder (Tank, Axe)

Lancer (Melee DPS, Lance)

Pugilist (Melee DPS, Fists)

Archer (Physical Ranged DPS, Bow)

Conjurer (Healer, Wand)

Thaumaturge (Magical Ranged DPS, Staff)

Arcanist (Magical Ranged DPS, Tome)

At level 10, if your armory system is unlocked (you need to complete a quest for your starting class NPC mentor to do this) you can approach an NPC in Limsa Lominsa to unlock the Rogue class as well. This is a Melee DPS class and uses twin daggers. If your character starts with Marauder or Arcanist this takes less time.

To graduate each of these early classes into a job, the following requirements need to be met:

Paladin (Sword and Shield): Requires Gladiator level 30, Conjurer level 15.

Warrior (Axe): Requires Marauder level 30, Gladiator level 15.

Dragoon (Lance): Requires Lancer level 30, Marauder level 15.

Monk (Fists): Requires Pugilist level 30, Lancer level 15.

Bard (Bow): Requires Archer level 30, Pugilist level 15.

White Mage (Wand): Requires Conjurer level 30, Arcanist level 15.

Scholar (Tome): Requires Arcanist level 30, Conjurer level 15.

Black Mage (Staff): Requires Thaumaturge level 30, Archer level 15.

Summoner (Tome): Requires Arcanist level 30, Thaumaturge level 15.

Ninja (Daggers): Requires Rogue level 30 and completion of quests Sylph-Management and Cloying Victory.

I’ll describe these in more detail in a bit, but there are waaaay more combat jobs than this. Currently the others are:

Dark Knight (Tank, Greatsword): Requires having purchased the Heavensward expansion and having completed all of the Seventh Astral Era Quests up to Before the Dawn, which is needed to unlock the city of Ishgard. This job starts at level 30.

Gunbreaker (Tank, Gunblade): Requires having purchased the Shadowbringers expansion and having a Disciple of War or Magic job at level 60. This job starts at level 60.

Astrologian (Healer, Star Globe): Requires having purchased the Heavensward expansion and having completed all of the Seventh Astral Era Quests up to Before the Dawn, which is needed to unlock the city of Ishgard. This job starts at level 30.

Samurai (Melee DPS, Katana): Requires having purchased the Stormblood expansion and having a Disciple of War or Magic job at level 50. This job starts at level 50.

Machinist (Physical Ranged DPS, Firearm) Requires having purchased the Heavensward expansion and having completed all of the Seventh Astral Era Quests up to Before the Dawn, which is needed to unlock the city of Ishgard. This job starts at level 30.

Dancer (Physical Ranged DPS, Chakrams): Requires having purchased the Shadowbringers expansion and having a Disciple of War or Magic job at level 60. This job starts at level 60.

Red Mage (Magical Ranged DPS, Rapier): Requires having purchased the Stormblood expansion and having a Disciple of War or Magic job at level 50. This job starts at level 50.

So total, right now the jobs include 4 Tanks (Paladin, Warrior, Dark Knight, Gunbreaker), 3 Healers (White Mage, Scholar, Astrologian), 4 Melee DPS (Dragoon, Monk, Ninja, Samurai), 3 Physical Ranged DPS (Bard, Machinist, Dancer), and 3 Magical Ranged DPS (Black Mage, Summoner, Red Mage). Total is 17 jobs. When I describe these combat based jobs, I’m not going to focus on the actual gameplay aspect because frankly I don’t know how to play all of the jobs. This is gonna be a quick and dirty explanation based on the scientific approach of “idk that’s just my impression”.

Paladin: You are a holy knight and you can heal a little sometimes maybe (???) and you are very good and noble with great defense.

Warrior: You are a beserker who loves to release your inner beast and kill shit in really violent ways and are kind of a badass and do the most damage of the tanks.

Dark Knight: Super super edgy and kind of magical but also straight up crazy, you hate corrupt authority figures and are willing to get your hands dirty and darken your name in order to protect others. One of the most beloved job questlines.

Gunbreaker: You have a sword that is also a gun and you can shoot people with it, soldier style. Basically if you have ever fantasized about having a knifegun this is like that but better.

White Mage: Very pure, focused on nature and communing with elemental beings, all about that land/sea/sky thing with ties to the elements earth, water, and air. One of three magic traditions that got involved in a next level magic fight, this one stemming from the city of Amdapor. Amdapor is full of fungus and poison spores now.

Scholar: Takes a highly intellectual spin on magic with ties to weird geometries and so forth, figured out how to summon fairy familiars from aether. Does a lot with shields and preventing people from taking as much damage in the first place. One of three magic traditions that got involved in a next level magic fight, this one stemming from the city of Nym. Nym is a floating city and is basically hovering in ruins now, with any surviving residents having been transformed into tonberries. Tonberries are little green creatures that like to stab people.

Astrologian: A fortuneteller take on magic that combines tarot cards, astrology, and crystal balls. The idea here is that Astrologians are messing with fate and time in order to heal you, sort of undoing damage. Snazzy dressers, intimidating moveset.

Dragoon: Jumpy people with spears who struggle to live down their legacy of animation lag-related deaths, my understanding is that today’s Dragoons do solid damage and are decent at survival. Their reputation, however, is that if someone is going to die in a fight it’s probably them. They are very broody and like to hang out in high places with capes billowing in the wind. They also wear spiky armor and fight dragons and have the soul of a dragon. People make jokes at their expense a lot but with affection.

Monk: You punch people to death and get gauntlets of varying levels of sharp. You also get to master chakras and go through forms associated with different animals. In a series like Final Fantasy where people carry swords bigger than they are, you’re the job that said lol who needs that and made your body the weapon.

Ninja: Very very sneaky, used to be sort of a state-sanctioned criminal. If anybody is a spy it’s you. You are very fast and can basically turn invisible and sometimes smoke bombs go off. Mudras are used and I don’t understand.

Samurai: Deal a solid amount of damage and are very flashy and cool, probably one of the highest damage outputs for Melee DPS. Very neat and fancy katanas.

Bard: Draws a connection between the strings of a harp and the strings of a bow, is able to both shoot the crap out of enemies, make enemies more vulnerable with some songs, and make allies more powerful with other songs. I think Bards are very pretty and fancy.

Machinist: These are tech nerds who realized that guns are an option. So are flamethrowers. So are robots. This job has a reputation for being ungodly complicated to play but this has apparently been rectified recently.

Dancer: Similar to Bard in that they do a lot to boost allies in a fight, do lower damage as a result but damn do they boost their allies. Also have ridiculously swanky outfits and are super flashy in fights.

Black Mage: The edgy magic users, they are disciples of Eorzea’s death god and all of their magic ties into destruction. If you wanna make the biggest explosions Black Mage is where you go. Magic ties to fire, ice, and electricity but primarily puts focus on the shift between fire and ice. Black Mages also have a reputation for being involved in demon summoning because they were kind of the assholes in that magic war against White Mages and Scholars. Black Magic as a discipline has ancestry in Mhach, which is of course now crawling with demons. Black Mage is the DPS king in the sense that if you want the biggest numbers of damage dealt, this is where you go. They are however tragically slow and squishy so expect the Black Mage to be somewhere between standing right where an attack will land or dodging frantically between spells.

Summoner: Has the ability to summon small familiars in the form of defeated primals, these being namely Ifrit (fire-based), Titan (earth-based), Garuda (air-based), Bahamut, and Phoenix. Apparently their questline is covered in Ascians too. One of two DPS capable of raising fallen allies.

Red Mage: Very fancy, fast-moving swordsmen covered in ruffles. The founders of Red Magic were Black and White Mages who came together in the wake of that magic war mentioned above. They essentially work to balance Black Magic and White Magic alongside physical attacks. They don’t get the numbers of some DPS but are again extremely fast and are also capable of raising allies. Versatile.

The limited job is called Blue Mage, currently being lamented because it’s unable to fight in dungeons or main quest situations to the extent of other jobs. Blue Mage gets abilities by fighting monsters and learning magical abilities from them. They use a cane and are massive dandies who will hopefully get the opportunity to do more in the future.

If you want to actually make in-game money without blood sacrifice, you want to get involved in a Crafter or Gatherer job. These don’t deal with combat but instead let you acquire, develop, and sell in-demand resources to other players.

Gatherer jobs include Fishers, Botanists, and Miners. Crafter jobs include Carpenters, Blacksmiths, Armorers, Goldsmiths, Leatherworkers, Weavers, Alchemists, and Culinarians. I am not good at these and so can’t explain them properly, but some people do play the game exclusively so they can level these jobs. I think that besides getting mad cash, this is probably because Crafters and Gatherers also get to make really fancy houses and get very pretty clothes with their vast amounts of wealth, skill, and resources.

THE SETTING

There are three city states that, at the start of A Realm Reborn, comprise the Eorzean Alliance. Your character becomes a hero to the Eorzean Alliance before any other nation. The three nations are Ul’dah, Gridania, and Limsa Lominsa. Ul’dah is a desert city (someone mentioned it being Byzantine), ruled by a Sultana, and watched over by the dual-aspected god of death and commerce. Gridania is a forest city (to me it looks Western European but unsure?), ruled by a spiritual Elder Seedseer, and is watched over by the nature goddess Nophica--her will embodied in the form of spirits called Elementals. Limsa Lominsa is an ocean city (Greek influenced, although some territories read Caribbean), ruled over by an Admiral, and is watched over by a sea-goddess.

Ul’dah is a major trade center and known for having a solid amount of crime and corruption, harsh wealth divides, huge reverence for the dead, and general canniness. Gridania is super spiritual and has massive reverence for the forest and maintaining both it and the boundaries necessary to co-exist peacefully with Elementals. Limsa Lominsa is literally pirate town and have the most kickass military/naval fleet ever.

Depending on what job you choose in the character creator will effect which of these three cities you start out in. It’s ambiguous where the Warrior of Light comes from so conceivably you could be a native to that city state or a foreigner from somewhere else. It mainly matters in terms of if you’re making a story up for your character or not.

Another city state is Ishgard (technically Eorzean but isolationist), which has parallels to Norse mythology, France, and the Catholic church. It is covered in snow and full of mountains. Ala Mhigo is also a city state, and while like Ul’dah it is also a desert environment this one seems to place higher emphasis on different regions within the Middle East and India. One part looks strongly reminiscent of the Dead Sea, for example. Idyllshire was formerly a territory of the nation Sharlayan, which dedicates itself to the scholar-god. However, Sharlayan up and bailed when Garlemald showed up so that whole city got evacuated.

Those city states are all based on the continent Aldenard. Garlemald comes from a continent called Ilsabard that we haven’t gotten to see yet. It’s supposed to be cold and shitty there. Also worth mentioning, Garleans are on the one hand atheists and on the other hand borderline worship their emperor.

Othard is the Far Eastern continent and represents Asia. The two main city states we’ve seen there are Kugane (Japan) and Doma (China). There are other nations in the surrounding areas that we know about as well but haven’t explored. Both Kugane and Doma worship entities known as kami, omnipresent spirits who appreciate treasure and sometimes play a role in manipulating the fates of mortals. There are also animal spirits who through wisdom and longevity gain power and the ability to change form. These are called auspices. Special shout out to the Azim Steppe of Othard as well for representing Mongolian tribes and a plains environment.

There at least two other continents around but we don’t know a lot about them yet. One is The New World and draws from pre-Columbian North America. The other once housed a nation called Meracydia that opposed the ancient Allagan empire.

Shadowbringers takes place on a world called The First, which is one of the fragmented realities split by Hydaelyn. This world is called Norvrandt. It parallels Hydaelyn in some ways but not others. The desert environment of Ahm Areng geographically resembles the red deserts of the Southwestern US, but the architecture doesn’t match. The Rak’tika Greatwood is an A+ perfect jungle setting and heavily modeled after Mayan civilization. Eulmore kind of reminds me of the idea of pre-French Revolution excesses surrounded by poverty but with almost neon circus aesthetics married in. Il Mheg is rainbow fields and glassy lakes and fae creatures fucking with you 24/7. Very pretty and art nouveau.

The Tempest is full of secrets.

THE COMMUNITY

People focus on different things in this game. It’s huge enough to make that extremely doable.

One group involves the combat-focused players. These are people who just want to take on content labeled Extreme or Savage and beat it as smoothly as possible. Very talented bunch but tend to be short tempered sometimes, also often can’t wrap their heads around people playing any other way.

Glamour hounds are people who are in this for the A E S T H E T I C S. They want their characters to look a very specific way with certain gear in certain colors and god damn it if they have to run savage to achieve their goals they are going to do it. Often also are very into exciting mounts and housing, will frequently do artsy screencaps and share them online.

Lore hounds are people who focus mainly on the main quest scenario, overall storytelling, NPCs, setting, metaphysics, etc. Some of these people just want to analyze and make predictions. Some are independent fan creators. Some are roleplayers.

Worth noting--the most active roleplay communities are on the Crystal server, on the worlds Balmung and Mateus. My understanding is that these worlds are pretty packed and come with their own collection of pluses and minuses. More drama and a high likelihood of being ambushed for erotic RP, but fun community storytelling too. You can absolutely join servers outside your geographic location, by the way.

I’m on Primal server. It’s pretty chill.

Crafters, gatherers, and gamblers as far as I can tell are out to get top tier gil and fabulous prizes. I think some just honestly like the process too tbh and it happens to pay swimmingly. By the by, yes there is an in-game casino.

Last major group off the top of my head is the people who are mainly, specifically there to hang with friends and otherwise socialize with the game as a medium for that.

OKAY BUT I FOLLOW YOU SPECIFICALLY, WHO THE HELL ARE THOSE CHARACTERS YOU KEEP REBLOGGING?

EMET-SELCH

He is an Ascian who showed up fashionably late, would rather be napping than villaining around. Massive troll and also responsible for single-handedly making the fandom care about Ascians after four arcs of apathy. Secret sad boi. I am omitting a bunch because he’s basically a walking spoiler, but someone once described him as having absolutely relentless theater kid energy and I have yet to see it put better than that.

ELIDIBUS

Another Ascian known as the Emissary. Talks more about balance than ZODIARK!!!??!!!?11111!! and sometimes tries to have conversations instead of fistfights. Is not as good at having conversations instead of fistfights as Emet-Selch but is significantly better at it than Lahabrea, who will be described next. Elidibus is notable for spontaneously adopting a child and then passing that child off to the heroes as discreetly as he could.

LAHABREA

The third major Ascian and the first recurring one players meet in A Realm Reborn. Lahabrea seems like he is probably a few screws loose, fucking loves to blow shit up, embarrasses all of the interns who get stuck with him, and spent years in charge of PR before his colleagues realized that was a mistake. Makes very poor life choices. Apparently he used to be a fantastic orator and was praised for his imagination but these talents have since been replaced by ZODIARK!!!??!!!?11111!! and explosions. Has been described as an idiot by Emet-Selch and “unique” by Elidibus, who needed to take a very long pause before saying so.

G’RAHA TIA/THE CRYSTAL EXARCH

Honestly this is only pseudo spoilers, basically everyone figured out who he was well before Shadowbringers got released. Catman is currently doing battle with another character called Haurchefant for the position of #1 fan to the Warrior of Light. Has some wild misadventures with you that involve exploring ancient ruins, excessively long fetch quests, clones, and getting sucked into a demon world. Later runs across time and space to save your life but kind of almost gets you killed in the attempt. Says he is very sorry for this later. Just doing his best.

NERO TOL SCAEVA

A scientist who fights with a massive hammer, formerly worked for Garlemald but finds himself unemployed later. Is better than the engineer Cid, who gives you all your tech. He is also a troll, an egomaniac, and fucking hilarious. It takes a while for the extent of this to be revealed because A Realm Reborn still had some issues.

AYMERIC DE BOREL

Basically in charge of Ishgard, for a while literally but now only mostly. A very reasonable authority figure, runs the the Warrior of Light across several countries when you get injured in battle then chills at your bedside. Thinks you should relax sometimes. Encourages this by taking you to dinner once.

ESTINIEN WYRMBLOOD

Broody Dragoon McAngst of Ishgard, fucking hated dragons for the longest time because they murdered his whole family. Goes on an extended journey with you and in the process reveals he also hates moogles with a burning passion. Chills out a lot later, has demonstrated he is in fact a real bro.

YSAYLE DANGOULAIN/ICEHEART/LADY SHIVA

Delusions of grandeur and good intentions, also chosen by Hydaelyn and possessing The Echo. Figured out she could use her possession of The Echo to literally become a primal without losing her mind or body. Wants peace at any cost and will kill shitloads of people in the name of peace. Morally questionable but an interesting lady. Disagrees strongly with Estinien about moogles.

HAURCHEFANT GREYSTONE

Name sounds like a sneeze, is currently fighting G’raha Tia for the title of #1 fan to the Warrior of Light. Apparently there was an event where he said he wants the Warrior of Light to be his pony, as in he wants to ride you. Has shirtless men doing squats in his office. Saves your ass when shit gets real for Heavensward and then saves your ass again when the Pope’s bodyguard tries to murder you. It does not go well.

ZENOS YAE GALVUS

Absolute serial killer who feels like you complete him and give his life meaning and are his BFF. Probably wants you to fuck him. Also the crown prince of Garlemald and has spent years trying to engineer situations that will produce someone who can actually fight him as an equal. Doesn’t give a fuck about most things but jesus does he go yandere.

FRAY

If you become a Dark Knight, Fray becomes your NPC mentor and basically takes the Warrior of Light on a journey in becoming batshit insane. 10/10 Best teacher hands down.

SOPHIA THE GODDESS

A primal who I love to pieces, basically shows that the only way you can have perfect balance forever is if you are literally dead. We know this because the song that plays during her fight is about her murdering an entire family because they were unstable.

SRI LAKSHMI

Another primal who I love to pieces, just full throttle lotus eater in action where she encourages you to go fuck everything and be happy. Super pretty.

SEPHIROT THE FIEND

One of my top fav primals, pure id and distorted Kabbalah. I have a lot of feelings about him and have analyzed his fight to pieces.

CENRIC ASHER

Lol he just my Warrior of Light. I have a story for him but it is not official or anything.

THE FIVE BILLION OTHERS

Probably other people’s characters! I just really love seeing what people come up with, whether it’s their version of the Warrior of Light or going full-throttle into OC territory. It’s really refreshing to me, seeing how passionate and inventive people get. ^^ There are plenty of other important NPC characters, some I would even consider favorites of mine, but I just don’t post them as much.

IF YOU MADE IT THIS FAR JESUS CHRIST GET YOURSELF A COOKIE OR SOMETHING. GOD DAMN.

#final fantasy xiv #final fantasy xiv screenshots #final fantasy 14 #ffxiv #shadowbringers

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pepeangogoan · 5 years ago

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I’m not dead (yet)

Hey remember that time I disappeared from tumblr for a while and then came back and said I wasn’t going away again... and then I went away again? Good times.

Just like before there are a number of contributing factors.Tumblr for some reason not responding whenever I try to upload anything (I REALLY hope I’m able to upload this one). Real life starting to build up again. Finding it hard to motivate myself to do anything in Final Fantasy XIV. Not that I like the game any less, I still love it, but some days all I can really do is log in maybe do a roulette or a raid run... and that’s it. Though with the recent patch introducing new Blue Mage spells I do find myself staying on a bit longer now.

But due to all this and more it’s been hard to actually get anything posted on this blog. This is a shame because I really wanted to conclude the Pepean VS R’atohna stuff. In the past I’ve started plenty of lore things with my characters and I haven’t finished them (bringing up that Eliza’s father is still alive being the first example that comes to mind), and I really wanted to break that cycle this time... but sadly I ended up falling back into it. I may not have a huge following, but I do like sharing my ideas and finishing what I start. However, as thing stand right now I really don’t think I can finish the Battle of the BFFs stuff.

That said, this is partially the reason I wanted to do this post. Instead of just abandoning it outright I thought I’d give a basic summery of what I was originally planning to do. So if you’re one of the three people who were actually interested in where I was going with my characters please feel free to read on. Otherwise thank you for reading this far, and I’m sorry for my absence for so long. Hopefully I can make a comeback in the near future, but we’ll see.

Right so, I believe the last post I did on this was Pepean staring at Eulmore and monologuing about how he’s likely going to have to fight his best friend again when they assault it. I did have panels on their interaction before this inevitable fight made, but as I said before: tumblr wouldn’t let me upload them. It would have taken place just after the final battle with Ran’jit and would have Pepean making one final attempt to reach out to his friend, only to find that he’s still completely in Vauthry’s control. The two would fight once again with Pepean ultimately being the victor this time, leaving R’atohna unconscious.

After Vauthry escapes and Eulmore is liberated Pepean would find his old friend again, now free of Vauthry’s control. It would turn out that when the two of them crossed over into The First something happened to separate them on the journey through. While Pepean got sent to the Crystarium, R’atohna landed in Eulmore. Seeing the light within him Vauthry knew he could use him, so brought him in and started feeding him meol, R’atohna being completely unaware what it was made of. Just like with his other servants, this gave Vauthry the ability to control the Miqo’te’s mind, and after having him test his combat skills against Ran’jit he made him one of his generals. While R’atohna had no control over what he was doing his Echo made him completely aware of his actions. Now free from Vauthry’s control he heavily regrets his actions and begins to question whether or not he’s still worthy of being a hero and fighting by Pepean’s side. However his Lalafell friend is quick to give him a pep talk, reminding him that his actions weren’t his own and that there’s still a chance to make things right. With that R’atohna agree to rejoin the fight, with he and Pepean shaking hands as they acknowledge each other as “Brother”.

After this the main story didn’t give me a heck of a lot to work with as far as incorporating Pepean and R’atohna went, though I thought it would be best to have R’atohna on the sidelines for a bit, still injured from his fight with Pepean (he’d even joke that “For such a little person... you hit hard!”). He would of course help out with getting the giant Talos built where he could, but would be unable to assist in the assault on Gulag. From here the plot would have played out pretty much how it did in the main game, with Pepean defeating Vauthry, only to find himself becoming a Sin Eater, to the reveal of The Crystal Exarch being G’raha (with R’atohna even noting that he looks like him, because I partially based R’atohna on G’raha), to Emit-Selch reminding everyone “Hey, I’m the bad guy remember”, to the whole “I’ve got a sympathetic backstory so you can’t totally hate me” stuff, to the final fight with Hades, The First being saved and so on. Like I said, I didn’t have a heck of a lot to work with in terms of Pepean and R’atohna interaction here, especially now that I’d had R’atohna become free of Vauthry’s control.

However, the next advancement I’d have for my characters would come in their return to The Source. Upon arriving and reuniting with their friends again, Pepean and R’atohna take a much needed rest. Pepean would return home to a loving reunion with Eliza but would quickly find something’s still not right with him. He can no longer communicate with nature. He can’t create Aetherial being anymore. He’s unable to harness the power of the elements. Pepean lies awake at night realising a horrible truth... he’s no longer able to use magic. Upon further examination it turns out that the light of the Lightwardens he absorbed did more damage to him during his corruption than he thought, namely disrupting the Aetherflow within his body. Pepean would consult his friends on this, his heart sinking as he realises his dream of becoming the greatest magic user has now been torn away from him. Thing is, I wanted to show more of a character to Pepean, rather than having him just be an upbeat Lalafell. I wanted to show him vulnerable, scared, and even disheartened. I wanted to advance his character a bit and I thought a good way of doing that would be to take him out of his role as a White Mage and into the role of a Gunbreaker. This gives him a bit more tragedy in his life (not that he didn’t have enough of that already), now his dream, the thing he lived for, the whole reason he became an adventurer in the first place, has been torn away from him. This would just be a lore thing however. While I love Gunbreaker, I still plan on maining Healer roles within the game itself and mastering all magic classes. This is just a lore thing to advance Pepean a bit more for this blog.

While Pepean’s friends do try and comfort him during this difficult time, it’s still a heartbreaking situation for him. But hope does come to him from a very unlikely outcome. As Eliza, Terry, and Selaine try to comfort the depressed Lalafell, R’atohna comes in wearing his basic adventuring clothes (the starting gear) again, with Misago by his side. He says he’s thought long and hard about it, and he’s decided to quit the life of a Dragoon once again, though this time for good. The life brought him nothing but difficulties, both during the Heavenward stuff and after being used in the role to fight his best friend. He says that with the Dragonsong War over, Ishgard no longer needs an Azure Dragoon, something he understands Estinien realised as well. Pepean its quick to point out to him that he had a dream of being like a lance wielding hero who saved him as a child, but R’atohna explains that he has a new hero he wants to be like now: his best friend. He’s decided that if Pepean can’t achieve his dream of being a great magic user then he’ll do it for him, saying that if Pepean’s going to defend them as a Gunbreaker he’s going to need someone by his side to keep him healthy. As such R’atohna is now pursing learning healing magic (with my intention of having him become a Scholar). While Pepean does say he wishes he could be there to teach him everything he knows but he’s unable to now, R’atohna tells him not to worry as he looks to Misago and says he has a great teacher already, to which Pepean agrees. So the two begin pursuing new paths, with Pepean promising to become the best Gunbreaker he can be, while R’atohna promises that no harm will come to his friend as long as he’s around.

At first it seems like Pepean is in a similar position to Thancred, being unable to enchant his ammo, he eventually develops his own work around to it which he calls “Drawing”. While he can no longer use magic he’s able to find a way to Draw it out of the creatures he fights in order to charge his ammo (yes, this is meant to be a homage to Final Fantasy VIII).

If you’ve actually read through all this thank you very much. This is as far as I’ve gotten with character lore stuff so far. 5.1′s MSQs didn’t give me a whole lot to work with in regards to moving this plot forward. I imagine Pepean dealt with the stuff in The First alone, while R’atohna began his training at the Arcanist Guild. Soon I obviously plan to incorporate Eliza, Terry and Selaine into the story, having them come to The First too, but I thought it better to suss things out with just Pepean and R’atohna first. Pretty much any posts I make going forward are going to be continuing on from this lore. I hope you enjoyed what I’ve come up with and will continue to support my blog. Now, hopefully I can get this posted and get back to work on more FFXIV related stuff.

Thank you all so much.

#FFXIV #FFXIV A Realm Reborn #FFXIV Heavensward #FFXIV Stormblood #FFXIV Shadowbringers #Final Fantasy XIV #Lalafell #lalafell master race #lalafell tank #Pepean Gogoan #miqo'te #R'atohna Tia #character building #character lore #lord vauthry #the first

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theartofmedia · 6 years ago

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Kotaku and the Art of Game Leaks

(Full disclosure: this piece was commissioned by a friend. The topic has changed from the initial pitch, but still. I don’t know how that may or may not affect your view on this piece, but I still feel it’s important for me to be transparent about this.) On May 30th, 2019, Laura Kate Dale announced her departure from Kotaku UK. Dale is a controversial figure among the games journalist community for... multiple reasons (please note the latter link lacks any actual evidence and how she apparently didn’t report this Uber driver for ‘nearly kidnapping her’ despite posting it publicly on Twitter, hence the controversy around it), but that’s not what we’re talking about today. What we’re going to be discussing is what she is known for the most: video game leaks.

LKD is most known for leaking video game information prior to their release, from information about Dark Souls Remastered, to unboxing a PS4 Slim before Sony itself even announced its existence, to Switch software. It got to the point where LKD was blacklisted by Nintendo UK, most likely for leaking so much information.

Now as I was researching LKD, there was something I noticed. A lot of people supported LKD’s leaks, calling it “real journalism,” and commending her for doing her job so well. As shown by the link above, many people mocked Nintendo UK for blacklisting her for “doing her job too well.” People are always scrambling for new leaks, new information, though in many cases, this can lead to fake leaks, misinformation, and confusion among players.

And it got me to think: how do leaks really affect both the devs and the consumers of games?

The conclusion I’ve come to about it is: it does more harm than good on both sides, but especially to the devs.

Here we will be defining four categories of leaks (three of which are explained here by Griffin Vacheron of Game Revolution), though our main focus will be on two.

Accidental leaks are just like they sound: they’re accidents. Something happened, something went wrong, and people got a hold of information before they were supposed to. Like when Capcom put all the pictures of the roster of Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 on their website when a good portion of the roster hadn’t yet been announced, and the unannounced characters could be found via a small URL change. Or when Walmart’s Canadian site revealed around 40 unannounced titles due to a(n alleged) glitch in their system just weeks before E3 2018. Or when Bethesda accidentally streamed their E3 2015 rehearsal which ended up confirming the existence of Dishonored 2. Yeah.

The main component of accidental leaks is just that--accidental. Someone did something wrong, something in a system went wrong, someone didn’t think through the consequences of what probably seemed like a good idea at the time--it happens! Nothing is perfect, people included, and shit happens. But the key part is that it’s not intentional. Someone may (or, really, will) be reprimanded, punished, or even fired depending on the leak, but there was never any intention to reveal this information.

Company leaks are... not entirely proven, from my research. This is the idea that the developers themselves leak information in order to draw attention to their game and hype it up. Often, this will be the other determination of certain leaks--was it an accident, or a PR stunt? There’s no real definitive proof and seems to simply be rumor, but the possibility still exists, as there’s no real way to disprove it, either.

Ethic leaks are generally the exception, not the rule. These are leaks of working conditions, such as an employee from NetherRealm talking about the toxic work environment, or Rockstar employees opening up about how they were mistreated and underpaid and burned to ashes, or Blizzard’s layoff of 800 employees. (Further reading here on the abuse of game devs, as well as what can be done about it.) These are things that need to be talked about, because these relate to the treatment of actual, real people. These aren’t issues then of game content or development, it’s an issue of ethics in the workplace. Same with the leak of this document that details how AI can be used to encourage microtransactions, though that is an issue related to the consumer rather than the workers. Shady tactics and the maltreatment of workers is something that needs to be shown and discussed and talked about, because these things affect the actual workers, as well as the quality of a product and the company’s integrity in relation to the consumer. (Basically, if you intentionally make your game in such a way that players have to use microtransactions to make any significant progress, you’ve ruined your integrity as a company by trying to drain your player base of more money, regardless of the base price they paid for the game anyway. It’s a scummy business practice, and that kind of thing should be revealed to the public that you’re going to try to bleed dry.)

Intentional leaks are just as they sound: they’re the intentional leak of information. This is when people outside the company hack in and reveal secrets, or when people inside the company reveal information (whether directly or indirectly via being sources for journalists) before they are to be officially announced. The information given is given with the knowledge that yes, someone is going to reveal it to the public.

So let’s talk about the ramifications of intentional leaks on game devs.

Remember Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle? The cover image had been leaked before the team had a chance to actually showcase the game. Nobody knew anything about the game other than the cover, and universal reception at the time was: “This is going to be terrible.” Because of a leaked image, the public already had a strong negative opinion about it. However, the showcase that showed off actual gameplay was well-received, and the Metacritic score is 85. So the game itself was pretty damn good, according to the critics. An unlikely crossover turned out well! But the initial reaction was incredibly demoralizing to the team. It’s one thing to have criticism given to a game based on a trailer or gameplay showcase; it’s another to get criticism based on a single image and the concept alone with no other information given. As the director and music composer explain, the dev team was very worried and stressed not just about the game reception but about the showcase, as they were afraid that the reception to the showcase was going to be bad due to the already-negative opinion on the game.

Let’s also talk about how CD Projekt Red had demo gameplay and audio of Cyberpunk 2077 leaked by a journalist (who later complained about not being credited, about how his relationship with CD Projekt Red and the PR person he was friends with) after being asked not to. The company had their trust in the journalists--someone who they had a fifteen year relationship with--used and abused, leading to secrets being leaked. The devs had politely asked the journalists not to do so, but one did, and apparently saw nothing wrong with leaking private information and posting it to the public.

Or let’s talk about how, way back in the day, the entire source code for Half-Life 2 was revealed to the public and Valve (allegedly) lost $250 million dollars. The article actually states some of the effects of the leaked source code: “Meanwhile, the team at Valve, which had been in crunch mode for months, was left reeling by the leak. The game was costing the company $1 million a month to build and the end was still far from sight. The leak had not only caused financial damage but had demotivated a tired team. One young designer asked Newell, "Is this going to destroy the company?" (found under the heading “A Red Letter Day”).

Or we can talk about the Sm4sh leaks back in 2014 and how it led to an employee (allegedly) being fired and sued due to leaking this information. Now, this can very easily be viewed as justice being served to the leaker, and I would agree. But what is the issue here can be summed up by PlatinumGames producer JP Kellams:

The people working for years and years on a project suddenly have parts of their project--that they wanted to surprise players with, this particular instance being the Sm4sh roster--given out to the public before they wanted it to be. Imagine working for years on your life on a project, and then having someone reveal your work to the internet without your knowledge or permission. I know I would feel dejected, exhausted, hopeless, hurt, regardless of any positive reception to what was revealed. You, as someone who has worked so incredibly hard--and, in many cases in the game industry, been thoroughly abused--apparently don’t have the right to reveal the thing you’ve been working on the way you want.

I want to make this clear: I am not talking about “the Big Corporation” here. I don’t care about the higher-ups who put the pressure on the workers. I care about the workers, the little people that are being trampled on and forced to work in abusive, toxic conditions in order to meet a deadline and the outrageous demands of the higher-ups. They are the ones suffering.

Case in point: the Blufever leaks for Final Fantasy XIV. The details are a bit murky, as is with most leaks, but the story as I understand it is: user Blufever is/was an employee at Square Enix who leaked massive amounts of information on upcoming expansions/patches for FFXIV. Then, their account went dark, as they apparently feared for being found out by Square Enix. Vergeben, a known reputable leaker within the Smash community, had this to say about the situation:

Now, of course, there is no way to truly verify these claims. However, due to Vergeben’s reputation as an accurate leaker (and the fact that he was right about one of the upcoming DLC characters being from Square Enix) leads me to believe him. Assuming that his claims are true, someone leaking all of this information to the public put a lot of innocent people in the line of fire--and it’s very possible that these

So, what does this have to do with Kotaku?

Here’s something interesting.

When known E3 leaker WabiSabi was given a cease & desist warning from Nintendo for leaking information, take a look at some of the top replies. (Note that a lot of them are ninja gifs, here’s a sample so I don’t have to do it for every one.)

Not all of the replies are against WabiSabi, however, though a majority seem to be:

(About the above: I can’t really find anything suggesting that LKD was leaking things for “customer advocacy,” other than confirming that the next gen console (now known as the Switch) was not using the Wii branding like its predecessor did, thus easing some fears because of the bombing of the Wii U. Other tweets about that are here, but don’t really sway me in terms of “consumer advocacy.”)

As shown, the replies seem to be pretty divisive on whether or not it was a good or bad thing that WabiSabi got hit with a cease & desist.

However, let’s have a look at some of the replies to LKD’s tweet about how she was blacklisted by Nintendo.

And again, not all are supportive of her:

I actually had to look quite a bit to find any negative comments. Many were supportive of her.

(I would like to take this moment to get unprofessional for a second and unleash my full opinion of this: NO FUCKING SHIT YOU GOT BLACKLISTED, SHERLOCK. THEY TRUST YOU WITH THEIR SECRETS AND THEN YOU DISRESPECT THEM BY REVEALING THEM BEFORE THEY DID. I DO NOT FUCKING UNDERSTAND WHY PEOPLE WOULD SAY IT’S A COMPANY BEING “SHADY” WHEN IT’S JUST INFORMATION ABOUT UPCOMING PRODUCTS. NOTHING ABOUT ETHICS OR CONSUMER TRUST OR PRODUCT QUALITY. anyway,)

Now, you can say, “But Sakra! That’s a three-year difference!” And I rebuke with: people still support her to this day in spite of this. Kotaku UK kept her on though all of this and then some. It wasn’t until a kerfuffle happened in April with the “Persona 5 OST Has A Disability Slur” thing happened, and soon after, LKD left. It seems that the immense backlash with that was what fully pushed her off. (Now whether she was forced to resign or legitimately wanted to leave, that’s something only Kotaku UK and she know for sure.) The point is, her departure from Kotaku UK seems to have been completely unrelated to her leaks.

And why would it when Kotaku themselves--not just the UK chapter--are clearly very supportive of video game leaks of this nature?

Just have a look at their recent posts. All I did was put “leaks” in the search box. You may say “they’re just reporting the news of leaks!” But they put some of the leaked information IN the articles. The one on Watch Dogs Legion even confirmed the leaks. “Kotaku can confirm that this one’s real, as we’ve heard the name from several sources plugged into the company.”

Oh, and let’s not forget this lovely fucking article from 2015 where a Kotaku writer apparently speaks for the site and basically victimizes themselves for being blacklisted by Ubisoft and Bethesda. In fact, we’re going to dissect it, just because there is so much bullshit in here from the author, who is clearly speaking for Kotaku as a whole!

Buckle up, kids, your local Sakra is about to get fucking pissed.

The author describes how the Bethesda blackout came after “we reported insiders’ accounts of the troubled development of the still unreleased fourth major Doom game. In May of that year, we reported that Arkane Austin, the Bethesda-owned studio behind Dishonored, would be working on a new version of the long missing-in-action Prey 2 and that some at the studio were not pleased about that. When top people at Bethesda started making statements casting doubt on our reporting, we published a leaked internal e-mail confirming that those statements had misled gamers and that Arkane had indeed been working on a version of Prey 2.”

However, Kotaku at that time had also posted “our December 2013 report detailing the existence of the then-secret Fallout 4.” Reporting on troubled development isn’t an issue. Leaking emails just to confirm a game when Bethesda was desperately trying to preserve their secrecy that you had broken (probably not first, but Kotaku has a lot of mainstream reach) is an issue. I don’t like Bethesda, don’t get me wrong, but they were trying to salvage the secrecy of a project. Do I think trying to lie to the audience in order to keep the existence of a project secret is okay? No, not really. But I understand what they were trying to do. And whether you agree with their choices or not--no shit you would be blacklisted, especially if you have insiders as described here! You can’t go crying victim and martyr yourselves when you do this kind of shit. Especially if you were reporting on Fallout 4, a major fucking entry in a popular franchise!

As for the Ubisoft blackout...

“The current Ubisoft blackout is actually the second in as many years. The company tried a similar approach in the spring of 2014 after we published early images of the then-unannounced Assassin’s Creed Unity—images that had been leaked to us by an independent source. That article confirmed news about the company’s extraordinary plans to release two entirely different AC games in the fall of that year, one for new consoles and one for old. Ubisoft had warmed back to Kotaku by the summer of 2014, several months after the Unity report, but has cold-shouldered us since the Victory story one year ago. It’s possible other articles angered them, too. But that Victory piece is a safe bet.”

Ubisoft actually gave Kotaku another chance after leaking Unity, and the Victory (now Syndicate) story was, guess what, more leaks. You broke Ubisoft’s trust once, then you broke it again. Frankly, it’s fucking disgusting, knowing about how these leaks really affect devs, that Kotaku would dare to turn itself into a “journalism martyr,” as it were, because they were ignored by the devs whose trust they broke.

Now, you can say that maybe they didn’t know the information of how it affects devs--but a) the Sm4sh leaks and the fallout had already happened by then (it was 2014) and the Half-Life 2 source code fiasco had happened in the previous decade. Also, if they had insiders, wouldn’t they know just how serious leaking this information was and how it puts their sources and other devs at risk? Maybe Ubisoft and Bethesda aren’t as strict on their leak policies as Square Enix and Nintendo are--we don’t know. But I can’t imagine that they like it at all.

“I’m sure some people will sympathize with Bethesda and Ubisoft. Some will cheer these companies and hope others follow suit. They will see this kind of reporting as upsetting, as ruining surprises and frustrating creative people. They will claim we are “hurting video games,” and, as so many do, mistake the job of entertainment reporting for the mandate to hype entertainment products.

“We serve our readers, not game companies, and will always do so to the best of our ability, no matter who in the gaming world is or isn’t angry with us at the moment. In some ways, the blacklist has even been instructive—cut off from press access and pre-release review copies, we have doubled down on our post-release “embedding” approach to games coverage. We’ve experienced some of the year’s biggest games from street level, at the same time and in the same way as our readers.”

No.

It isn’t just about “spoilers” and “ruining the surprise.” In some cases, yes, a lot of people don’t like or actively avoid leaks because they do want to be surprised. But that’s not the only thing.

By “serving your readers” and trying to dig for this information, you’re putting devs at risk. You’re putting your “sources” at risk. Now, if you were reporting on development or shady tactics or awful work environments or specific negative incidents behind the scenes or things that should be talked about, I would absolutely agree with you that you should continue digging deeper. But that’s not it. The companies trust you not to reveal something until a certain time, and you go and do it anyway.

By claiming victim and demonizing the “big bad corporation” for blacklisting you, you minimize the actual stress and hardships it put on the smaller guys in the company that the entire company is built on. You completely brush it aside and paint the entire company as irrational. You completely neglect the plight of the actual people working on it, and disrespect them by revealing their information before they do, when they have worked for SO LONG on whatever project it is. Like JP Kellams said, devs earn the right to talk about their product because they worked on it for so long. You haven’t.

And then... this paragraph.

“Too many big game publishers cling to an irrational expectation of secrecy and are rankled when the press shows them how unrealistic they’re being. There will always be a clash between independent reporters and those seek to control information, but many of these companies appear to believe that it is actually possible in 2015 for hundreds of people to work dozens of months on a video game and for no information about the project to seep out. They appear to believe that the general public will not find out about these games until their marketing plans say it’s time. They operate with the assumption that the press will not upend these plans, and should the press defy their assumption, they bring down the hammer. We make our own judgments about what information best serves the news value of a story, and what our readers would prefer not to know—which is why, for example, we omitted key plot details from the Fallout 4 scripts that were leaked to us. We keep covering these companies’ games, of course. Readers expect that. Millions of people still read our stories about them. The companies just leave themselves a little more out of the equation.”

I never thought I’d see the day when video game companies were being victim-blamed.

Frankly, by leaking information, it ruins the relationship between the companies and the journalist, because then the company will start to make generalizations about journalists and not trust them, thinking that they will reveal whatever information they give them, which makes journalists like this press harder for information, and can you see where I’m going with this? It’s a cycle of mistrust, perpetuated by journalists like these who go against the wishes of a company that just wants to keep something a surprise until a certain date.

And then this motherfucker has the audacity to frame companies blacklisting reporters that leak information as bad! “They operate with the assumption that the press will not upend these plans, and should the press defy their assumption, they bring down the hammer.” Why are companies wrong for trusting journalists? Are you implying that all games journalists are untrustworthy, because they won’t respect the wishes of a company that gives them the information in good faith that they won’t leak it? You do say that “it is nearly unfathomable to me that a reporter would sit on true information about what’s really happening in gaming, that we would refrain from telling our readers something because it would mess with a company’s marketing plan,” so I don’t know, maybe you DO think that all games journalists should immediately report on confidential information that the game companies are going to eventually reveal anyway and while only really receiving clout in return. Oh, whoops, got a little bitter there.

“They appear to believe that the general public will not find out about these games until their marketing plans say it’s time.”

Maybe because people like YOU are the ones who leak it! You can just as easily, you know, not fucking do that! This feels more like an excuse to not accept responsibility/deflect criticism, because ‘the companies shouldn’t have expected us to stay quiet!!!’ This is just straight-up victim blaming. Like it’s actually kind of scary.

It’s this ideology that Kotaku seems to stand by, as LKD once stated that higher-ups look over the written articles to approve them, and to my knowledge, Kotaku hasn’t redacted any of these statements, so I’m assuming that they still stand by it. Them spreading this ideology is what perpetuates the idea of game leaks (of the non-accidental, non-ethics-related kind) being “good journalism,” and with how much reach Kotaku has, it has the power to be legitimately damaging.

“They have done so in apparent retaliation for the fact that we did our jobs as reporters and as critics. We told the truth about their games, sometimes in ways that disrupted a marketing plan, other times in ways that shone an unflattering light on their products and company practices. Both publishers’ actions demonstrate contempt for us and, by extension, the whole of the gaming press. They would hamper independent reporting in pursuit of a status quo in which video game journalists are little more than malleable, servile arms of a corporate sales apparatus. It is a state of affairs that we reject.”

And here it is: Kotaku was just the humble, underdog reporter just doing their job, and the publishers show off contempt for the entire industry (rather than just Kotaku itself, I guess blacklisting one site means you hate all of games journalism) for Kotaku simply doing their jobs!

No, you ignorant twat, you broke their trust, so they don’t want to talk to you anymore. You don’t get to play victim when YOU were the one who blew the whistle.

Now, I cannot stress this enough: I am only talking about leaks related to game announcements, content details, etc. that are deliberately leaked to the public from an inside source. I am not talking about leaks related to ethical violations or troubled development or other negative things within companies. Those are things that should be reported on. But that kind of thing isn’t primarily what Kotaku is talking about and promoting; they are promoting the reveal of information because it’s “just good journalism.”

Except, as shown above, it has some very dire, very real consequences for the people you don’t see, and maybe that’s why Kotaku is so adamant about defending themselves in this regard. Maybe they don’t see the living, breathing people who get affected by their leaks, and so they think they’re fighting against the Big Bad Corporation when, in reality, it’s much more complicated than that. It doesn’t feel real to them. Or, maybe they do and they just don’t care. I genuinely cannot say so one way or the other.

I really, truly hope that by reading this, you the reader have a new perspective on how leaks of that kind affect the industry, and the little people whose backs the companies are built on.

As for the article and Kotaku as a whole...

“Kotaku readers always deserve the truth. You deserve our best work. It doesn’t matter which company is mad at us today, or which companies get mad at us in the future. You’ll continue to get it.”

Fuck yourselves.

#kotaku #video games #games #games journalism #hooo BOY this one got angry #but!! it's done and i like it

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fantasyfinal · 6 years ago

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Hello again, and Happy New Year!

Greetings followers! It’s been a looooong time since I last posted here. I actually went back through my blog to see when the last time I personally posted something, which was back when FFXV came out in November 2016... yikes.

Below is a (lengthy) post about what I’ve been up to, what I have planned for this blog, and some the new Final Fantasy content expected to come out in the new year, including my thoughts on the highly anticipated FFVII remake.

I’ve been pretty busy the last 2 years. I moved, had major surgery, got a new job, got promoted at said job, traveled to Europe, and moved again. Although I kept my main Tumblr fairly active, this one kind of fell by the wayside and I’m sorry about that. Part of me wanted to let this blog lay dormant, part of me wanted to delete it all together (fresh start and all.) But there was a voice in my mind that kept nagging at me to come back to this blog. The Final Fantasy fandom is a small but passionate community, and I really enjoy exploring the content that fans post on here and other websites.

One of my 2019 goals is to be more active on this blog, and in order to do that I will need help from my followers. I don’t have Photoshop to make gifs anymore (new computer) and I don’t have the time I used to have to really search for new creations. So if you guys can start submitting quality stuff, it would really help keep this blog going. What do I mean by quality stuff? In full truth, I mean commission-worthy content from skilled artists and musicians. While I applaud amateurs who want to share their passion for the series, I try to maintain a high standard of work on this blog.

So if you or a friend has a truly fantastic piece of Final Fantasy artwork or music or gifset, please submit it to me and I would be thrilled to share it with my tens of thousands of followers! It would give you/your friend some exposure and it would make me feel good about keeping this blog active. If you do submit something, please make sure you attribute it to the correct source.

On a separate note, here’s what to expect from the Final Fantasy realm in 2019:

-New Final Fantasy XV DLC: Square Enix originally planned to make four new DLCs for next year. But due to some dumb corporate SE bullshit, plans for three of the DLCs were scrapped (including Episode Aranea and Episode Lunafreya, both of which I am very disappointed about.) Episode Ardyn is still expected to be released in 2019 and it looks cool. You can watch the trailer for it here:

-Final Fantasy XIV: The third expansion pack to the MMORPG is coming out in Summer 2019. I haven’t played FFXIV so I’m not that familiar with it, but it looks awesome. You can read more here.

-Final Fantasy Dissidia NT: There is at least one more DLC character expected to come out in February 2019. It is expected to be a male character from the newer half of the numbered series. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see a few more in 2019.

-Final Fantasy VII: The original FFVII will return on the PS Classic and the Nintendo Switch next year. Now I really hate to be the buzzkill here, but I think it is very unlikely that we will also see the FFVII Remake in 2019. Tetsuya Nemora gave a Q&A last month where he said progress on the game is going well. But where have we heard that before? Answer: a zillion times during FFXV and KHIII′s developments (remember the first KHIII trailer was released back in 2013!) So I’m treating this just like KHIII’s release, meaning it’s not out until it’s out. If I was a gambler, I would put the odds of the FFVII remake being released next year around 5%. I think it’s a more likely that we see a new trailer or a possible release date reveal in 2019.

-Kingdom Hearts III: This isn’t main series-related, but I thought I’d post it anyways. Unfortunately, SE says there may not be as many FF characters in the final installment of the series, as the last chapter will focus on Sora and his friends. However, I think it’s safe to say that we will see at least some of the minor characters from the previous games (Squall, Cloud, Cid) will return in KHIII coming January 25.

So that’s where things stand as we head into the new year! I know 2018 has been really rough for a lot of people, and I’m eager to turn the page on this year as well. I think some really exciting things are in store for 2019, including the reawakening of this blog. Stay tuned!

Peace, love, and a happy new year <3

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tetsemi · 2 years ago

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What games am I currently playing? Part (1/4)

Caveat: I am a story first person, I only care about game mechanics as they relate to the head cannon I have for my characters participating in the story of the game. Having put that out there, I was an endgame raider in the original Everquest (EQ),as well as a heroic/hard mode raider up through Wrath of the Lich King in World of Warcraft (WoW). I dropped to a Normal Mode raider in Cataclysm (WoW), Mists of Pandaria (WoW), Warlords of Draenor (WoW), Legion (WoW), and part of Battle for Azeroth (WoW). I have since become and LFR raider, at best, for Dragonflight (WoW). I did not do any raiding in Shadowlands (WoW).

Currently I was playing 4 MMO's: World of Warcraft (WoW), Star Wars the Old Republic (SWTOR), Final Fantasy XIV (FFXIV), and Elder Scrolls Online (ESO), but recently made a decision to unsubscribe from SWTOR. Each of the four MMO's all have had great story, at one time, and I would say that FFXIV and ESO currently do, WoW has yet to be seen with where the story goes in Dragonflight, and SWTOR ... well, they've lost me for a variety of reasons. Let's get that out of the way, first. Why did SWTOR lose me? I have a love/hate relationship with this game, mostly over story, and lately over gear grind. I loved, absolutely adored, the level 1-50 story content. It had one story thread for the overall story, it had another for each planet you visited, and it had a third group of threads, tied to your companions. It absolutely made you feel invested in the class you were playing and experiencing the story lines through. Being a Bioware game, of course you could romance and eventually become life mates with your companions. You really could feel a connection to them, and why they existed in the story world. After launch (and I will not get into any random speculation about dev team size/goals, etc) the next big patch was Rise of the Hutt Cartel and it started the consolidation of story down to Empire verses Republic. No longer did it matter, in the story, if you were a trooper or a sith sorcerer, it just mattered which faction you were on. And so on through expansion after expansion, patch after patch. No new companion story lines (other than to have them ALL taken away from you at the start of Knights of the Fallen Empire (KOTFE), and years, literal years later, only getting most of them back, with about 5 minutes of 'story' And the KOTFE/KOTET (Knights of the Fallen Empire) expansion absolutely made faction choice matter very little, if at all. Yes, you got new companions in those expansion, but they also introduced the "Choices Matter" mission in which you had to pick which of two companions would die. If you were a Sith Warrior or a Bounty Hunter you were forced to chose to let one of your original 5 companions permanently die a meaningless death. If you were playing another class, same choice, it just didn't have the same impact, it wasn't a companion your character developed a relationship with. And after KOTFE/KOTET the story was delivered in small, story beats, released sporadically through the years. When the 10th anniversary was coming around and the 7.0 expansion was announced, I believe a lot of people had high hopes for the story and the feature/systems that were going to be added. And then did provide meaningful overhauls of existing system, ongoing today, as well as accessibility features (thank you, I'm color blind) and other UI improvements. But the story just got dribbled out in story beat patches that were a couple hours at best of content and then you were expected to fill your time doing a gear grind at an ever increasing item level. I am just done, unless the story starts involving your original companions and they stop doing companion of the month through the battle pass system, I don't see myself returning, which is a shame. Because, let me tell you, they do have some amazing characters who should become new companions (I'm looking at you Major Anri) and be able to explore the story with them, not just a one time hookup and 'miring' through in game mail notifications. I realize I've rambled on, but I'll cover the other three in future posts, I've wrung the muse dry on this one for now. To be continued ...

#story #mmo #swtor #wow #ffxiv #eso #companions

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kenjinasagi-blog · 7 years ago

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“Its the little things.” - A look into Final Fantasy through the eyes of a 13-Year WoW player.

Hello everyone, Often do I talk about why it is that I quit World of Warcraft after 13 years of nigh-uninterrupted subscription in favor of Final Fantasy XIV. Though with this post, I hope to set the record straight and give examples in one concise post that aim to explain it a bit more fluidly. This will mostly cover the visual aspects of the game, though if you don’t know the epic score that is expected with every Final Fantasy game I would suggest looking that up yourself. As the title suggests, most of it is the little things. Details that WoW lacks. And while the argument can be made that “They’re two different games.” there are some parts in here that are so disappointing. Things that make Blizzard just look lazy in comparison. I’ll be starting with some of the larger details and eventually move on from there to the nuts and bolts that really make this game stand out. I hope you enjoy the read, and consider joining up with us on the Mateus server. One of these spells is not like the other:

This is likely to be one of my favorite talking points. One of the greatest things about FFXIV is the casting animations. Not one class ability animation is shared between two classes. Red Mage abilities are cocky, confident and the Black Mage just seethes with raw power. Class fantasy is something oft talked about with Blizzard when these guys just nail it. Just look at how as I cast Fire IV, you see the sound barrier breaking as the energy leaves my hands to turn into the explosion that it is about to become:

And whats more? Most of the abilities even for the same class don’t share an animation either. While the Red Mage ability ‘Fleche’ has you bring your arms up to call upon swords of ice to pierce your target, ‘Contra Sixte’ has your character vaulting off of their own blade to get up into the air and send a blast of energy straight down at a target. Ninjas when they use their finishing abilities physically jump onto the shoulders of their enemy, no matter how large, just to jab their daggers into its throat. This isn’t even my final (fantasy) form!: I did say that I was starting big, didn’t I? In WoW, I have never in 13 years experienced a fight where I was awestruck at its magnitude. Every single one of them lacked impact, even as we faced down Argus’ world soul to free the Pantheon did it not feel truly breathtaking. This is where Final Fantasy shines. So many of its boss fights, especially in Heavensward and Stormblood are so ridiculously creative and unique. I’d like to present one of my favorite examples: Susano, Lord of the Revel. He is someone faced around level 63 as part of the leveling experience where you and 7 others need to best him in combat. After taking a bunch of damage, he disappears into the floor... only to emerge as a 10 story tall monolith made of water, to which he rips a massive sword out of the ground and proceeds to attack the tank with it.

Alright, sounds par the course. Tank takes damage, fight goes on. Right? Wrong! Your tank engages Susano in a clash of blades, parrying and holding back his massive sword with their own weapon while the raid destroys the sword. And after his second swing when the force of the shattered blade strikes the ground it leaves a broken tear through the middle of the ground for the rest of the fight. This was a leveling boss, and I was blown away by the sheer scope of the encounter throughout.

Home is where SE’s heart is: We’ve wanted it. We’ve asked for it, and eventually we were answered with... Garrisons. While this is a feature that has only recently gotten a lot of love from the developers, the housing system in FFXIV is robust. The way that you design your apartment or house is limited only by your imagination (and a generous item count). You can create anything that you set your mind to, memorable places with character and many different themes from coastal shanties to Eastern diners. I won’t spend a lot of time on this part, its something that you need to see for yourself. And it won’t even cost you a raid tier. ;)

Hide Helm? No thanks: I’ll begin with one of the first things that I noticed when playing this game as it was one of my largest minor gripes about WoW because it, to me, is the penultimate sign of indefensible lazyness that has become Blizzard’s commonplace; Hats and helms. Have you ever put on a really cool looking hat in WoW only to find that your character suddenly has all of their hair chopped off? It ruins the look, and for me makes me almost never want to show helms because of how atrocious it can appear. Final Fantasy not only shows hair under their hats, but it does it differently for every single one of the massive amounts of hairstyles in the game. To where it looks natural, and like that particular hairstyle has been put under the hat.

And for my long-eared friends, such as the Elezen, Miqo’te and the horned Au Ra? Your ears don’t just clip through the armor that you’re wearing. Look closely below and you will see that extra stitching has been added on to make the ears coming through seem natural, like it is meant for that. And even those that don’t do this have armor that comes out over the ears and looks like it was bolted onto the original design, with rivets and all.

The Aesthetic: Yes, I know. The most pretentious and overused word of 2018. Though I would be doing this game a great disservice by not mentioning it. Look at how the rain falls in Kugane which is one of the main cities, the ground becomes slick and players’ cloth armor looks like has soaked through. Even going inside of a building can you hear the rain falling upon the roofs above.

Or how about when fog or a blizzard sweeps through Coerthas, reducing visibility and feeling so natural and real:

When your hair and robe billow in the wind, and outfits look natural and intricately designed. Chestpieces aren’t just either one solid mass, or a body-covering robe. You have jackets, and coats that aren’t just made for casters. And the robes don’t always cover the body, but they always compliment it. And what’s more? Your legs don’t even disappear when wearing them.

Again, Class Fantasy: Some of the issues that show WoW’s age are also related to how stiff and symmetrical everything feels. You run with a staff the same way you run with a sword, the same way you run with an axe. With FFXIV’s design, every animation is different. Here we see the Samurai sprinting animation which fits them, the blade out to the side while their other hand holds the sheath:

And if you don’t like the way your character poses in their idle stance?

Then just change it! All it takes is using /cpose and you can change everything from the way that you hold your weapon, to the style that your character sits in chairs with.

Once more, with feeling!: The game’s engine is extremely smart. Are you doing /hug to a female Au Ra, or Miqo’te as one of the towering male Au Ra? He will kneel down to bring his arms around her. Is she standing on a chair and closer to his height? He won’t kneel down, because he doesn’t need to. Your character will look toward their target, and even some of the emotes change based upon whether you’re targeting something/someone or not. You laugh differently when you’re sitting down than when you do standing up and if you don’t think that’s the tightest shit ever, get the hell out of my face.

At last, the end: In all, Final Fantasy XIV is a labor of love and every single bit of it shows so prominently in the details that they put into this game. From the moment that they decided to rebuilt the failed 1.0 game from the ground up and relaunch it, they have proven themselves over and over again that we, the players, are who they do it for. This is a game that is constantly evolving, growing even larger with every new patch, it has story moments that will make you cry (unless you’re a heartless monster and make it through The Vault’s ending cinematic) and deliver big budget film or novel quality writing. And just in case you haven’t been convinced that this is a project with heart and soul put into it; Here’s something from just last month where Naoki Yoshida, the director of the game and man responsible for rebuilding it dropped by on Mateus, the server that I play on, just to hang out on the E3 Stream and be bombarded by the love, respect and thanks that the players do not owe, but willingly give to him. Show me Chris Metzen walking around Stormwind and I’ll eat my keyboard. My name is Kenji Nasagi, and I’m a switcher.

#FFXIV #mateus #world of warcraft #screenshots #FFXIV Screenshots #gaming #mmorpg #square enix #final fantasy

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meandering-mind · 8 years ago

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Meandering Alts - Mundane to Less Mundane

Meme created by @bride-and-bride, Tagged by: @ever-searching This meme is all about showing off your range. If you don’t have alts I am sorry, maybe do it with past characters instead? Tagging: @mischiefandmystics, @forthepursuitofknowledge, @myosotis-xiv, @zevet-xiv, @lockerinannis, @farm-boy-ffxiv, @samhyurai and anyone else who wants to do it.

Maril Hawker - A conjurer from Gridania, Maril comes from a standard family, her aspirations involve doing them proud and using her abilities for good. Something many, many Gridanian Hyurs could be heard saying. She has found her purpose in life, and the most abnormal thing about her is that she’s willingly decided to move to Ul’dah because there’s more needy people there. She hasn’t gone through any tragedies, she’s never faced tough times and she doesn’t travel beyond her known world very often. Thala’to Relahna - This old character of mine gets the second most mundane spot, because absolutely nothing special or grand has ever happened to him or is likely to happen. His story springs out of the miserable tones of Ul’dah, and so compared to Maril he’s much more unfortunate - but he resides where the kind of unfortune he has been exposed to is an accepted norm. Desperation leads to desperate things, and as it most often goes for people like him, he occasionally does petty crime. The thing that sets him apart the most is his race - Keepers don’t usually get raised in Ul’dah, but it does not come to his fortune. Othercatte - Is somewhere around the more adventurous norm, with more elements that sets her apart from the bulk of seekers. She has no special abilities, but her still-developing set of interests lands her with curious experiences and curious items. She is most certainly on a slippery path, it’s just a question of what kind of trouble her curiosity is going to end up dropping her into.

Akhutai Khatayin - He isn’t like Xaela is most, when it comes to his interests, aspirations/goals and his way of relating to the world. He carries a sense of apathy with him, a catalyst for his departure from The Steppes and a catalyst for his going-on’s in Ul’dah. Due to also be a catalyst for a return to The Steppes - The way he grows disillusioned with places and people after a time keeps him moving. His moral compass is skewered, he doesn’t pay much attention to the law, and out of all of my characters he’s the one most likely to fuck your shit up.

Ninimu Nimu: Daughter of a Thaumaturge, she herself a Thaumaturge. But did something go wrong? Was she dropped on the floor when she was little? Is she actually alright? No one really knows. But she does her job well, and she gives people Blessed Sammiches. She is the least mundane of my characters, maybe because she wasn’t meant to be a lasting character - with her I embrace the curious, endearing and worrying signs of an unstable mind (not to be confused with any mental illness, she’s not ill.) and I adore playing her when I get the chance.

Hello my name is Meandering Mind and I really like to explore the not fantastical elements of roleplay. I had enough of that in the grand past, in other games. To me, mundane does not mean boring, it’s a challenge that I am headbutting straight on.

#tagged meme answer

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a-gert-lush-holiday · 6 years ago

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Day 1 continued, and Day 2

I eventually woke Lucy up at 7pm and advised her that we had two options. 1, she could go back to sleep, however we would be unable to pick up the tickets needed for the Final Fantasy Eorzea Cafe as they had to be collected today, and we would lose the reservation. Or option 2, which was go to Lawson, pick up the tickets and food, come back, eat and sleep.

Needless to say we went for option 2. I cannot tell you how much of a faff getting tickets to Eorzea Cafe has been. I tried to pre-book a few weeks ago, but for holding a reservation for more than 3 days, you need to pay upfront with a credit card. Let me tell you now, upon research online and trying it myself, it seems the only card that will work is AMEX as it can’t be linked to a foreign country. Therefore, I had to hope that 3 days before our trip there were spaces left, go through the booking site in Japanese, and then use the Loppi machine at Lawson also in Japanese. I lucked out on a space near the end of our trip, but trying to find out where to pay for the tickets was even more of a faff.

Sure, I know they’re collected at a Loppi machine in Lawsons, but did you know there are multiple types of Lawson combini in Japan? I was about to say 2, but having just googled it to find out why, apparently it’s 4. 4 shops, same name, different focuses and slightly different products. There’s a Lawson 100 (or as the clerk put it, Green Lawson), and then there’s normal Lawson (Pink and Blue Lawson). And no, Google will not tell you which is which (otherwise I really wouldn’t mind, as it didn’t for us) as it just calls all of the combini Lawson. We had so much trouble, that honestly I would check where the Lawsons are in relation to you, and then use street view to determine whether it had a pink and blue striped sign or not.

Once I had found the right type of Lawson, operating the Loppi machine was fairly straightforward as I had read a few walkthroughs beforehand, and seemed to remember most of the instructions.

Essentially, when you make a reservation you receive a QR code by email. On the machine, you want to hit the middle button with ‘Loppi QR’ on it, scan the QR code, and then it will ask you for the phone number used when making the booking.

What you need to remember then is to basically press the orange button (yes/continue), apart from on the screen where you’re asked about Ponta cards (hit the grey button). You then get to inputting your name, which looks confusing with all the buttons and no English language button, but you can input the name in the Roman alphabet by pressing the third button down in the list to the right of the characters. Input the first name, press the second button in the list for a space, enter last name, then hit orange ok buttons to confirm until the machine spits out a receipt at you.

I’d love to say that’s the whole process, but no. Almost there though. Take the receipt to the counter within 30 minutes (you can pay for shopping at the same time too), pay, sign the receipt as prompted, and the Pink and Blue clerk will kindly hand you the tickets.

Gotta love that bureaucracy! I’m sure there are things at home just as convoluted, but honestly if Lucy hadn’t been bugging me about this for weeks and I myself getting into the game in the past month or so, I probably would have stopped somewhere around my card not working online.

If you’d like to know how to make the reservation, my recommendation would be to follow this excellent guide: https://riikorinkoko.wordpress.com/2017/05/15/riikos-eorzea-cafe-reservation-guide-and-how-to-use-s-loppi-machines-at-lawson-ffxiv-final-fantasy-xiv/amp/

Only addition to this would be to open the page in Chrome if possible, so it can be automatically translated.

Back at the hotel, we ate the snacks we’d purchased, called home (or tried to, in any case), before finally heading off to bed.

I woke up again at 9am on our first full day, after setting my alarm. I spent an hour checking things like emails and trying to trace our bags, of which there was currently no news, before I woke Lucy up. Over the next hour or so we got ready as best we could with a mishmash of clothes, no makeup, and no deodorant (as that’s...kind of not a thing here due to Asian genetics?), before heading out the door around 11:15.

On our way along to Kaminarimon Gate and Asakusa shrine and temple we spotted a shop that essentially was a bit like a Superdrug back home, where Lucy managed to find some basic makeup.

I really enjoyed walking round the shrine and temple; despite the insane amount of people in places the atmosphere was very serene. We both pulled a fortune, and as per usual with me, I get bad luck xD As is traditional, I tied it on the special rack and hopefully that means our bags won’t get even more delayed >.<

We also both got these wooden sticks you write your name and date of birth on which have a wish, and somehow this is supposed to bring you closer to that wish? Nothing particularly special for this, get wooden stick, write on stick, hand back stick to guy you just brought from, done. I mean, when in Rome, but somehow I feel like I just got conned into paying 200 yen to scribble on a stick.

We both picked up a drink at this point from one of the vending machines as the weather had heated up considerably, and then headed to the incense counter where you can buy incense, light it, and then waft it on yourself before putting it in the big burner so that it can be shared with others wafting the incense onto themselves. Wafting incense is believed to cleanse you.

After this we wandered round the local shopping streets and found a nice cafe for lunch. Lucy went for a cola and sandwich toastie with pizza filling; I went for a melon soda float, and spaghetti neapolitan. Both of us enjoyed the food; the soda float was the perfect thing after being in the heat.

After lunch, we headed out to the Tokyo Skytree for our prebooked tickets. We were also fortunate that prebooking allowed us to jump the long queue for the elevator and zoom right to the 350m deck to enjoy the sights of Tokyo from above. However somewhere along our travels the weather turned overcast, and therefore whilst still a decent view of Tokyo, we were unable to see Fuji-san at this point. As we also had galleria tickets, we then went up again to 450m, which again was very impressive. They also had a a barbie exhibition for some reason up at this level and a little pop up barbie themed shop. A browse around later and we both ended up buying a compact mirror each with a pretty illustration on the front.

On the way back down, we went in the main Skytree gift shop where I got a fridge magnet with a stained glass effect for our fridge back home :) At this point, we felt kind of done with crowds and queues, so it was back on the subway to the hotel for us. Unfortunately, our luggage had still not arrived >.< I had received a message earlier in the day advising me that the bags had arrived at the airport, and that they would therefore be passed to the delivery company.

I had to take a break at this point as not long after we got back to the hotel I developed a thumping headache, for which I honestly have to praise past me, who usually forgets everything but her electronics, for packing paracetamol in the hand luggage. I took one of these and lay down for a bit, and by around 7pm this had died down considerably.

At this point I decided to get a drink, so I hit up the 12th floor as the details we were given stated there is a vending machine up there; there very well might be. However, the 12th floor turned out to be the roof, and as it was raining considerably we went down to the ground floor where another one was supposedly located. And there was, only it was outside the back of the hotel, in the street past the parking lot, after going down a flight of stairs 😣 The only upside of this is that I ended up teaching the front desk clerk who helped us the words ‘vending machine’ as he did not know the phrase in English.

At this point we also needed food, so we went back upstairs to grab our coats before making a mad dash across the road to Family Mart. I have to say, combini food in Japan is honestly as amazing as everyone makes out.

In England you go to the ‘to go’ section of ASDA and maybe get a mayonnaise sandwich with a small bit of ham on soggy bread if you’re lucky. Here, you can go to the corner shop, get a meal made with fresh ingredients, have it heated up for you, and then if you really want you can eat it at the counter provided. Buy a pot noodle and want it now? Use the hot water machine to soak your noodles. Not about that life? Have freshly baked proper pastries, or warm chicken instead.

I would go on, but I’m too busy thinking about the hot royal milk tea I had out of a bottle, which was perfect in the drizzle this evening on the way home, the bacon wrapped onigiri, and caramel pudding parfait I had for dinner. And of course, I brought a few packets of kitkats to take home too whilst I was at it.

The rest of the evening was spent resting, as we needed to be up early the next day for our Mt. Fuji trip.

#japan #japan travel #japan trip report

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spicynbachili1 · 7 years ago

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Why Final Fantasy XIV’s job system is more restrictive than XI’s

Though it isn’t as restrictive because the servers exploding into flames

This time of yr means quite a bit to a sure subset of the Ultimate Fantasy fandom. Fifteen years in the past from nearly immediately, Ultimate Fantasy XI launched in North America. Roughly eight years later, Ultimate Fantasy XIV launched. About three years after that, Ultimate Fantasy XIV launched once more, however this time it was good…like, actually good.

FF won’t be the primary traditional JRPG collection to make a transition into the world of massively multiplayer on-line video games, however it’s simply essentially the most profitable out of those who did. Even after the gold rush of MMOs, even with its shinier sequel far forward of it, even with the curtains closed on its last growth and its console variations, Ultimate Fantasy XI nonetheless persists on PC and Sq. continues to think about its future as a result of its neighborhood stays so strongly hooked up to it. And Ultimate Fantasy XIV’s reputation… nicely, its continued prominence speaks for itself. These two video games signify a zenith of MMOs.

Or somewhat, they signify two totally different zeniths of MMOs. Within the decade-long hole between XI and XIV 2.zero, quite a bit has modified inside MMO design conventions. XI and XIV have related roots, but play nothing like one another, and related issues might be mentioned about most different MMOs rooted round their respective time durations. There are some philosophies shared between FFXI, RuneScape, and EverQuest which can be changed by similarities between FFXIV, TERA, and Guild Wars 2. And Future, in the event you rely that as an MMO. It’s supposed to be one, however I’m not satisfied it’s being supported like one.

These not-so-final fantasy video games signify how mainstream MMOs as a complete have modified over time, primarily relating to gameplay philosophies. I need to discover what which means to my favourite side of MMO design, the participant characters and what they do. And what they normally do is preventing. So… largely the character bits that relate to fighty stuff.

Each time I ask Ultimate Fantasy XI gamers what they like about it over XIV, I normally get a response alongside the strains of, “XI has higher character customization.” Reasonably than look, they’re referring to customizing a personality’s skills. XI offers extra management over which abilities/spells to study and use, what gear to wield, and even subclassing with few sufficient limitations to permit each job to make use of a majority of some other job’s mainstays.

XI’s character development programs extra carefully resemble conventional job programs of offline RPGs, with some tweaks to accommodate for an MMO infrastructure. Most fight abilities are discovered by grinding weapon mastery or acquiring spell scrolls as objects, and job-exclusive skills have lengthy cooldowns. Many gamers on the identical stage with the identical job shall be very totally different merely due to all of the little selections they make to construct their loadout on the way in which.

The circulation of fight itself additionally extra carefully resembles typical JRPG conventions. Making use of and re-applying buffs to the get together over the battle’s size. Exploiting enemy elemental weaknesses and shoring up acceptable elemental defenses. Comboing methods with different get together members to proc particular results. The identical guidelines you observe in most conventional JRPGs. It is the primary logical route to take on condition that Ultimate Fantasy XI is, nicely, Ultimate Fantasy however on-line.

Ultimate Fantasy XIV’s fight follows a very totally different philosophy. Social gathering-wide buffs are rare and, whereas useful, are simple to disregard. Many skills have results that combo and work together with different particular skills, difficult gamers to get right into a rhythm of a selected rotation. No job has skills that combo with different get together members, encouraging gamers to grasp their very own rotation. Designated roles restrict every job’s flexibility, however give them extra distinct functions in bigger battles — tanks distract and herd enemies, healers maintain the tanks wholesome whereas salvaging the get together’s errors, and DPSs optimize their injury whereas eyeing that they don’t construct an excessive amount of aggro. It doesn’t play like most offline RPGs, it performs like… one thing that most individuals simply describe as MMO fight. The closest analog that exists in any offline JRPG is the Xenoblade collection.

Character development can be extra inflexible. Every job has one, and just one weapon sort. All skills are discovered by leveling up and finishing job-specific quests (that are solely locked by stage and progress by way of earlier job quests). Elemental and stat preferences chosen at creation turn out to be more and more much less skewed as characters stage up, till some extent they turn out to be unnoticeable. Few abilities might be cross-classed, and so they solely turn out to be extra restricted as gamers progress. Any character of a given job in XIV performs identically to each different character of the identical job.

I mentioned earlier than that customization choices are vital to MMO gamers, however that goes past simply visible customization. Playstyle customization additionally permits gamers to affirm their preferences in gameplay and, if they need, stand out from allies with an identical jobs due to considerably totally different and quirky builds. There’s admittedly one thing cool about doing one thing particularly since you see so few different gamers do it. The enchantment of enjoying as a Thief with a Black Mage sub-job is very similar to enjoying Dungeons and Dragons as a rogue with ranges in sorcerer. Range amongst their teams means quite a bit to MMO gamers, so having far more range even inside the identical jobs and roles helps gamers discover their niches even once they share related bases. So FFXIV’s stricter character programs rubbed me the mistaken approach… at first.

To somebody concerned about clearing as a lot content material as potential, only a few of these selections really matter — solely the optimum ones do. Endgame content material is normally balanced assuming gamers use such builds. It must be; even absolutely decked out gamers need one thing that may problem them. Late recreation development has steadily turn out to be increasingly outstanding to MMO gamers to some extent the place essentially the most vocal gamers insist that the whole lot earlier than the extent cap is just a tutorial. And because of the rising accessibility of GameFAQs and different on-line sources, it’s turn out to be simpler and simpler for communities to find and unfold optimum builds. Which introduces a brand new query for gamers — is constructing your favourite playstyle value it in the event you don’t measure up with optimum builds?

There isn’t an goal reply to that query. Completely different folks play MMOs for various causes. We nonetheless have on-line RPGs with that form of design philosophy as a result of many individuals benefit from the idea of certainly one of their favourite RPGs being on-line greater than a superbly balanced on-line expertise, and that viewers is all they should stay viable and thriving communities. I’m a agency believer that having extra choices is at all times intrinsically good design, assuming these choices are fine-tuned to be equally interesting.

But it surely’s simple for FFXI gamers oblivious to the internal workings of its programs and its neighborhood’s expectations to make selections that drastically gradual their progress come the inevitable endgame gate. The neighborhood considers many prospects inside its customization programs to be much less like choices and extra like traps gamers ought to keep away from. Certain, a Black Mage might use Scythes, that appears like a enjoyable construct I’d gladly use myself (I am not a lot of a hardcore end-gamer, I simply love Rule of Cool), however Black Mages have few-to-no Scythe choices that flatter them in addition to Staves.

This largely applies to the endgame neighborhood, so individuals who plan that far forward care much less about personalizations than individuals who want foolish builds and benefit from the journey greater than whether or not they ever attain their vacation spot. However this concern inevitably rears its head for all gamers who get that far. It’s an issue that dangers stopping some gamers from enjoying collectively as time passes, character builds mature, and gamers retroactively uncover how their chosen playstyles might fail to satisfy expectations set by later battles.

FFXIV’s stricter character system solves that drawback by addressing its root trigger. Gamers do nonetheless have many choices, given its dozen-plus roster of courses, and these choices have significant variations. Every has distinct mechanics that form their playstyle, thus permitting them the power to experiment and uncover their favorites and discover niches amongst their events. However as a result of gamers have much less customization past these broad strokes, gamers who’ve progressed by way of related ranges stay on equal footing by default.

XIV’s mechanics do a greater job of serving to gamers stick collectively, and its numerous modes (raids with many distinctive mechanics to strategize round, sprawling positioning-awareness-based PvP warzones, the inside ornament market, and so forth.) are constructed to reward communication between gamers. Something that impedes that could be a drawback as a result of in the event you don’t have any curiosity in interacting with different gamers, MMORPGs are undoubtedly not the form of recreation you are on the lookout for. Solo MMO gamers will at all times exist and it’s nice to cater in the direction of them anyway, that’s why trendy MMOs like XIV make their tales and scripted sequences so outstanding.

But when their gamers aren’t sociable and supportive of one another — or aren’t capable of be — that isn’t taking advantage of what’s going on throughout them. That’s why many gamers contemplate impractical builds to be “traps”. These builds bodily separate gamers who use them from pals who don’t, no less than with reference to greater issue challenges.

MMOs are equal components social area and co-op recreation, and the most effective components of each of those video games revolve round each of these points not directly or one other. The place they differ in character-building mechanics is how they reinforce the previous by way of the latter. Like rounding out a roster of get together members in offline RPGs, it feels extra satisfying to make new connections in an MMORPG like FFXI when you understand these characters have totally different specializations even inside a selected area of interest. However these connections solely stay as robust because the time you proceed to spend collectively, and whereas each video games have lots to do on all ends of the casual-core spectrum, FFXIV‘s mechanics are higher at retaining gamers on each ends inside attain whereas nonetheless rewarding its most hardcore raiders.

My private preferences lean extra in the direction of XI’s job system (if that fan request for a PS4 port goes wherever, contemplate me ), however a significant a part of XIV’s reputation and my enjoyment of it hinge on its totally different focus. My time in Eorzea was stuffed with romps with pals and enjoyable conferences with random gamers I may need in any other case simply ignored. Each are strong philosophies to construct an MMO round, however it’s solely pure that the most well-liked ones advanced in the direction of the extra restricted form of the latter. In spite of everything, folks sticking collectively is the guts, blood, and soul of a web based recreation… and its writer’s income. That is additionally a factor that issues.

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pepeangogoan · 7 years ago

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Thoughts on Patch 4.3′s Main Story Quests *SPOILERS AHEAD*

Hey it’s been a while! Not just since I’ve done one of these but since I’ve posted anything on this blog in general. Reason for that is largely due to my real life job and having gone on a trip to Germany with a friend recently. It’s been hard to do ANYTHING FFXIV related. But I plan to fix that now by discussing the new MSQs in Patch 4.3. But before we begin:

Behold Pepean’s new look for Patch 4.3! He’s going for something a little bit different this time.

Anyway, as always MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD! DON’T READ ON IF YOU HAVEN’T DONE THE MAIN STORY QUESTS UP TO THIS POINT! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

Anyway, woo boy have things been an emotional roller-coaster with the story lately. People losing their memories, people who seemed nice turning out to be psychopaths... Though in Final Fantasy XIV that’s just another day at the office I guess. Well, let’s start with the Elephant in the room.

Tsuyu... Dear sweet Tsuyu... I call you that because I want to believe that part of you still existed in there somewhere. Beneath all the anger and hatred... I believe truly what was in your heart was a frightened little girl... I can’t begin to say I forgive you for your crimes as Yotsuyu... but know that... when you were Tsuyu... I loved you. I wished you could stay like that forever... to find a life of peace and innocence away from the the pain this war has brought on you... I hoped that some day I could wear your panties on my face... Wow I REALLY have issues don’t I?! In any case... sadly it was just not meant to be...

I suppose it made sense though from a story standpoint. She was going to HAVE to face punishment for her crimes as Yotsuyu eventually and bring resolution to all we learned about her backstory. Thinking about it, having her “Have amnesia and starting anew” would probably have been quite an anticlimactic conclusion for such a complicated character’s story. Even though part of me hoped she and Gosetsu would start a life as father and daughter together, this was probably the better outcome.

When you think about it... could she really HAVE a peaceful life? It’s brought up when she stumbles into the nearby village. Even with her memories gone... even if she had started life as a Doman citizen... the pain that she caused as Yotsuyu would still have been there. The people likely wouldn’t have forgiven her and she’d have to spend her entire life scorned for something she can’t even remember. Heck, if you want to look at the long term effects, that could then cause psychological damage to her child-like mind... and then we’d be right back at square one. It’s a vicious circle, and I think that’s what Square wanted to show with this scene when you peel back the layers.

Though I will admit: When she regained her memory and went back to her old self I did say to myself “Oh no... the bitch is back!”

But let’s move on to talking about another character that needs addressing:

To me this seemed like the perfect conclusion to Gosetsu’s story. While I think we’ll likely see him again in the future, probably to warn us about an oncoming threat, this felt like it closed the book on his character development. I REALLY liked how his relationship with Tsuyu was handled, particularly with his reaction to her death. He hated Yotsuyu as much as anybody... but when he saw that she truly had lost her memory and become nothing more than a scared lost girl he truly began to care for her. Got to feel sorry for the guy... he’s lost not one but two daughters in his life... His reaction upon seeing her dead body showed that he HAD truly grown to love her as if she were his own daughter. It’s with this act of forgiveness, this act of chivalry that we see that he is a noble and true Samurai through and through. Even her final words about him showed that there was still a part of her that loved him as well. Maybe because he was the first person to ever show her true kindness and love. The fact that a spiritual manifestation of him appears as a guardian during her boss fight speaks volumes about their relationship. At least to me it does. Farewell Gosetsu. May our paths cross again someday.

Alright, you want me to talk about HIM don’t you?

Asahi... this little bastard... this little psychotic prick... Now, I can see many people saying he was wasted potential... and to be perfectly honest... I don’t disagree... They really built him up as if he was going to be a bigger deal than he was. Don’t get me wrong, he was a MAJOR player in the plot while he was in it but... the fact that he meets his end without so much as a boss battle with him... was a bit of a letdown. I like that it was Yotsuyu that took him down ultimately but... at least let us have a swing at him first!

They seemed to be building to a bit confrontation with him with the big revelation that he was Zeno’s disciple all along and his hatred towards our characters for defeating him but in the end... he’s just abruptly killed...

Still, to give him credit: In EVERY single scene with him in during this patch I found myself saying “You bastard... you absolutely bastard!” Just because his end came a bit suddenly doesn’t mean he wasn’t well written while he WAS around. He was a cold-hearted psychopath through and through. He showed how blind obsession and loyalty can be toxic to a person and cloud your logic... something I’m more familiar with than I’d care to admit... For the brief time he was around he was a delightful villain. Just SO horrid and cruel. With every trick he pulled I wished all the more that we could wipe that cold, smug grind off of his face!

So, the idea that Zenos is possessed by an Ascian. Given his dialogue here and his sudden obsession with summoning I think that is likely the answer to how a man can be alive after STABBING HIMSELF. As Thancred says, we’ve seen their powers of possession before with him, so why not with the dead? The most obvious answer to this new Zenos’s identity is Elidibus... but for now it’s best to just wait and see because you never can tell with Square. Still, possession doesn’t quite explain how this body can walk around despite having a huge hole in its neck but... the answer is likely “magic”.

Though this may be somebody else walking around in Zenos’s skin...

... THIS is a very Zenos thing to say! We’ve seen this kind of thing happen before as well WAY back in A Realm Reborn when a Sahagin priest transferred his life into another body when summoning Leviathan. So it’s not that far-fetched to imagine that Zenos’s spirit still lives in another body... the question is: HOW?! YOU STABBED YOURSELF IN THE NECK! HOW IS YOUR SPIRIT STILL AROUND ON THIS PLANE?! All questions to be answered in time I suppose... Are we going to get a Zenos VS Zenos confrontation in the future? Body VS Soul?! This is getting trippy...

Finally one last thing I want to talk about:

... Did... did was just play as Alphinaud?! Did we just play as somebody OTHER than our characters in a battle?! I know we’ve been glamoured to look like other characters before... but this is the first time we’ve ever PLAYED as a NPC in this game... at least as far as I can remember! Don’t really know what this means for the future... probably nothing, but it was still cool while it lasted. I particularly love the “Roleplaying” status effect you have during this moment. A really nice meta joke there Square. Brief and easy though it may have been, this was still an interesting moment.

So THIS dude is the biggest thing to take out of this sequence. I have a few theories who he MIGHT be but that’s all they are at this point: theories. I’m likely wrong as well so we’ll just have to wait and see what his deal is. But it’s clear that he’s going to play a pivotal role in the plot moving forward... especially considering all the Ascian masks he’s carrying... What was his name again?

Shadowhunter?!

Let’s not make assumptions about this guy for now. All we know is that he’s Garlean though not part of the Empire, he knows the Scions, and he has a hatred of the Ascians.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on all the major goings on at the moment. As always if I missed anything out please feel free to ask me about it. Let me know what you thought of Patch 4.3′s MSQs and developments. It’s been a lot of fun doing this again and hopefully I’ll have more stuff as both Pepean and Teral coming in the future.

#FFXIV #FFXIV A Realm Reborn #FFXIV Heavensward #FFXIV Stormblood #Final Fantasy XIV #Lalafell #lalafell master race #Pepean Gogoan #patch 4.3 #patch 4.3 spoilers #patch 4.3 main story quests #patch 4.3 story #under the moonlight #under the moonlight spoilers

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