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@“tapevulture”#p84679 a more successful and beloved RPG franchise
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I made it through the test of patience/will that is 7th Astral Era and am officially into Heavensward. LFG!
@“kighan”#p84847 Yeah I‘m waiting to see what the big deal is tbh. So far it’s a well told story about liberation and the dungeon/trials I feel have been noticeable step ups in terms of the fights and presentation. Susano fight was sooooooo cool. Having a wonderful time so far and like you said, the music especially is absolutely stellar.
I was spoiled on one thing that seemed pretty whack out of context but I am curious to get to the point where the politics of the story crater, or at least become questionable. This is the main complaint I've heard.
also gotta say that Stormblood is really cementing Alisae as my favorite character in this game. I really really appreciate her being a more sardonic voice when compared with most everyone else. Also she makes fun of Alphinaud constantly which is my favorite thing.
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https://twitter.com/MAZEiro0/status/1573427661715693580
https://twitter.com/MAZEiro0/status/1567612133713616901
@“treefroggy”#p77654 I listened to this while out running so many errands today and it‘s terrific! Feels like XII, there’s some X-2 and VIII in there. And it‘s huge too, I’m only about halfway through. Thank you for posting about it!!
@“connrrrr”#p86418 it's the only modern classic style nobuo soundtrack, some of the instruments feel like PSX midi, some of the melodies sound like famicom and super famicom tracks. I like the 1.0 GUI and music a lot.
Almost to the end of Stormblood and I’ve been having the most consistently good time with this of any of the distinct arcs so far. I’m pretty confused about having bad politics or whatever. Like yeah it’s a little smooth brain shonen-y but that’s…fine. Good even? Idk! Maybe people expected it to have something more radical about liberation.
Environments are still so hot. This game is always missing(at least on this forum) among the many discussions about good open worlds, maybe because MMOs reach beyond that distinction for whatever reason, but I’d put this game near the top in terms of scale, grandeur, enjoyment, and nebulous hang outitude.
https://imgur.com/OCUDohk
Like the Ala Mhigo zone has a bonkers amount of uniquely beautiful lighting features
https://imgur.com/mRjw1wS
Changed my guy’s look because I still haven’t found clothing I’m happy with(though this is p good)
https://imgur.com/hFZCUxL
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@“Syzygy”#p87322 You should go into the royal tomb in the far north of Ala Mhigo. It’s almost a little open world dungeon that the story doesn’t force you to go into.
I'm pretty sure I went in there to complete an air current quest and yeah it was super cool to wander around in there among the ghosts
@“kighan”#p84847 idk how I missed this post but it certainly hit different for me for similar reasons…
_Stormblood_ ending spoilers
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The moment it‘s revealed that the anthem that is the constant musical motif for the whole expac, which they first showed being sung by the prissy professional choir Garleans with empire buttsniffing lyrics, was in fact the true Ala Mhigan anthem all along, and is revealed to be that when the rough voiced resistance fighters all sing together with the real lyrics in celebration of Ala Mhigo’s liberation… It hit me like a ton of bricks. Actually I can‘t truthfully put that in the past tense, I’m getting misty eyed typing this post
[img width=400]https://i.imgur.com/rL1g4Rk.png[/img]
Oh, relevant to more recent posts too I suppose…
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@“sabertoothalex”#p87317 Almost to the end of Stormblood and I’ve been having the most consistently good time with this of any of the distinct arcs so far. I’m pretty confused about having bad politics or whatever. Like yeah it’s a little smooth brain shonen-y but that’s…fine. Good even? Idk! Maybe people expected it to have something more radical about liberation.
Huh?? What the heck do people say about _Stormblood?_ I mean, I'll openly confess to a pronounced weakness for smooth brain shonen junk, but even having no idea how the zeitgeist feels about _Stormblood,_ I can't imagine what would be, like, _bad_ about it.
Just to be clear I'm not assuming that you think it's bad or that you're missing anything, I'm specifically wondering what kinds of assessments of it you're referring to. Also I am already fairly well aware I am an absolute fanatic for it, no one has to like it as much as I did lol.
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It’s DISSIDIA 012{[size=11]DUODECIM[/size]} DATA INSTALL installing… time.
Well that only took an hour and sixteen minutes!
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@“Syzygy”#p89093 I hadn’t thought of it til today but the EW changes to DoL gathering to have no HQ reduce all gathering beast tribes (including the new one) to completely tedious busywork fetch quests.
I was about to comment as if I found this surprising, but looking back at it, I never leveled DoL using Beast Tribe quests at all, so I don't even have a frame of reference.
So perhaps what I actually should have said was "hello Syzygy, I hope you're well"
@“Gaagaagiins”#p87769
Some criticisms I've heard about Stormblood from folks in my FC and around other discords
I didn't get to Stormblood until a year or so after it's initial launch so I never experienced the launch or game balance issues.
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@“Syzygy”#p89160 Kinda 
but thanks for asking
I hope you'll be a more well _Earthbound_ sprite soon!
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@“kighan”#p89109 Some criticisms I’ve heard about Stormblood from folks in my FC and around other discords
This is all very interesting, thank you for the summary!
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@“kighan”#p89109 It had a really rocky, buggy launch that irritated people
Ah, yes! Raubahn (Savage)! I expertly dodged this bullet by using my secret technique: only resubbing shortly before _Stormblood's_ launch after having skipped _Heavensward,_ so I was, I think, still doing post-_Heavensward_ content while people were dealing with this. I think I might have had _minor_ difficulty (or moderate but more spread out difficulty, same thing) doing anything that involved accessing the Duty server, but by the time I was actually in Gyr Abania, the dust had settled.
Did the exact same thing for _Shadowbringers,_ too! I don't sub to MMOs lightly, I guess, and time it in a very particular way. I wasn't as far behind that time I don't think, but I am almost certain I was at least a few days to a week behind my friends.
Which might have also contributed to my impressions of...
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@“kighan”#p89109 Dissatisfaction with the way ||Lyse|| is developed as a character. I agree with this one. They could have done better.
Maybe I would have felt this more if I had a stronger recollection of the character from before that big development, but I was kinda just like... oh worm? You go girl
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@“kighan”#p89109 After the epic dragon war of Heavensward, Stormblood’s story felt small and “boring”. I strongly disagree
I imagine we agree for equally strong and likely highly overlapping reasons! _Shadowbringers_ felt "small" to me in relation to it, even if you were pretty explicitly ||saving an entire plane of existence from omni-genocide.|| I mean, I do that all the time in _Final Fantasy,_ I _don't_ do what _Stormblood_ portrays often _enough_. Definitely wouldn't call Shadowbringers boring, though!
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@“kighan”#p89109 A story split between two regions (Othard and Gyr Abania) ||doesn’t allow you to develop both and Gyr Abania got the short end of the stick here. I personally would have loved more time with Raubahn and the people of Ala Mhigo||
I, reluctantly if comprehensively, agree. ||I think it makes up for it from an emotional perspective with some of the symbolic scenes like the one I talked about in my last post (@"Gaagaagiins"#p87767 ), and definitely gameplay and spectacle wise with the Dungeonizing and Trialification of the climax of the story. However, I'd still have preferred both that as well as more focus and zooming in on the culture and communities of Gyr Abania. The spectacle of it doesn't make up for the reduced narrative focus.|| I guess I would also say that the established background specifically in _ARR_ for the occupation of Gyr Abania is more front and centre than the equivalent in Othard, but yeah, I played _ARR_ in, like, 2015. I got caught up in _Stormblood_ pretty quickly all things considered but, yeah, I was primed for it anyway.||
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@“kighan”#p89109 Disappointment with how the story continued in the Stormblood patches - particularly ||Yotsuyu’s|| arc
Hidden for spoilerz/size
>!Weird because I thought that arc, especially in sequence with ||Fordola's arc,|| was overall well done and meaningful. I definitely think how it concluded was fitting. Well, "overall" might be doing some heavy lifting there... it maybe could have used an edit or two more and been less coy about going back and forth with the conclusions being, like, a twist to be a twist in the emotionally manipulative sense, rather than the dramatic sense. Still, by the end I appreciated it.
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Those two post expac patch arcs are two parallel but contrasting stories dealing with some very complex aspects of colonization–assimilation, cultural alienation, healing from the specific trauma caused by that, sexualization/objectification of indigenous women within the context of colonial occupation, lateral violence, perhaps the most extreme form of lateral violence in race traitors (perhaps for lack of a better term), ideological variance among indigenous peoples (aka indigenous people are not a monolith) and, maybe this gets almost into spoiler territory, restorative justice. Especially within the frame of restorative justice, I appreciated how the two stories portrayed a meaningful challenge to some of the core tenets of restorative justice: harm is simultaneously something that happens to an individual but also to the community around them, one can be simultaneously a perpetrator of harm and be victimized by harmful circumstances, and except for the most extreme forms of violence and the most unrepentant perpetrators, to address harm in the community, the whole community, victims and perpetrators of specific instances of harm alike, must collectively take responsibility for and holistically address harm.
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In the case of the two stories, I suppose one illustrates an instance of where someone who had been simultaneously victimized by the colonial occupier and then weaponized against their own community, even knowing most of her community would not forgive her any time soon and many will never do so, was able to pull back from the brink and begin to take responsibility for the harm they perpetuated by ending the cycle of perpetual lateral violence (through some sick ass violence on an upward trajectory to be fair, but, you know, it‘s still a high fantasy videogame). It was retribution well earned, at least from my perspective who is admittedly probably projecting no small amount of it onscreen lol. If these Japanese writers were interested in restorative justice specifically as an indigenous developed system of justice and healing from the other side of the planet, I’d be shocked to say the least. As an aside, I‘m always wondering about the actual politics and such of the writers of the game, ’cause like, I dunno, they seem to write this danged fantasy videogame in a way that status quo adoring neoliberals would simply not be capable of. Maybe whoever was the lead(s) on these stories were aware of restorative justice? Or perhaps, at least geographically more likely, they‘re aware of it from Māori practitioners? Perhaps there are people belonging to or knowledgeable about minority indigenous nations of Japan like the Ainu or Okinawan nations, and they have similar practices as well? I guess I can’t do much more than muse about this sort of thing, but I sure do enjoy musing about it.
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Anyway. Perhaps with the latter story, I can kind of see how people might rankle at it after the back and forth of the way it is presented, or feel that the whole situation was rather contrived, which I can‘t really disagree with. It’s certainly a more… hamfisted iteration on the above narrative. One thing I will definitely say, though, is that if the reason anyone found it disappointing was because it teased retribution for that character only to snatch it away at the last second, I couldn‘t disagree more with that being unwarranted. Amnesia (and the dispelling of it, with deus ex machina timing) as a cheap device for teasing dramatic tension where there isn’t any or doesn‘t need to be, but fundamentally, the arc I felt was the opposite demonstration of the one before it. There is no shortcut or magic spell or contrived situation for healing and meaningfully taking responsibility, even when, in this case, there seemed to be one (also there are magic spells but they’re seemingly better for making fireballs than healing spiritual harm). It‘s something that comes from within and has to be made as a deliberate choice. You can’t love or care for someone hard enough to impose healing on to them, and positive influence and support and understanding sure can help, but it is ultimately not possible to make a choice for someone else. Again, the contrived circumstances of the events aside, if someone would still rather commit to destruction and venom to the very end, well, you can‘t stop them from making that choice (and because it’s a high fantasy videogame the way in which you prevent further harm from this dedicated bad actor with finality is an exciting spectacle unlike the horrible and depressing grind it is in real life, which I again can't fault the game for doing).
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…so, in a way, the person who underwent a meaningful restorative justice process was in fact Gosetsu, not Yotsuyu, as he attempted to enact a restorative justice process on an individual-to-individual basis, in a way that is more than is perhaps proper. Certainly he did so with the best intentions but he also did so without fully considering how it would have an impact on the greater community, who have their own ideas of justice just as they did with Fordola. Perhaps if FFXIV were more for babies, we'd have gotten a happy ending there, but especially in contrast to the arc that comes before it the ultimate impact was still making a compelling point on the subject. And, so, in realizing his mistake, Gosetsu chose to take responsibility for the impact of the harms he perpetuated, without hiding behind his own genuinely pure intentions.
Anyway--videogames!
New XVI trailer:
https://youtu.be/u-SdiYbSGIQ
Looking HOT
Fuck I wish a single thing after three trailers would excite me about this game. I hope they’re just holding their cards close to their chest about why a RPG fan is supposed to care about a Devil May Cry wannabe. This is so, so far away from what I expected with the « FF14 Online team does FF16 » premise.
(I am sorry for the negative vibe but I need to vent somewhere away from my stressed out Square Enix friends who don’t need to hear that kind of stuff.)
I do have big questions about the combat and what the systems are gonna be, and how it’s gonna straddle the line between twitch action and more generous VIIR style commands.
I am completely bought into the story stuff they’ve shown so far though which is carrying the vast majority of the excitement I feel for the game.
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it has been 1600 years since the fall of our forebearers
hey is that Ranni the Witch's VA speaking in the new FFXVI trailer?
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