Final Fantasy XIV - Kiwi Free Company

[Zeke Von Genbu]

I've liked most of Heavensward aside from the tiresome 'evil pope' plot twist. It's a pet peeve of mine that this trope is so common that as soon as I see a religious figure in a game I expect them to be secretly evil; at this point it would be mind-blowingly subversive to have a church in a fantasy setting that just sang songs and did bake sales.

Thordan is somewhat subversive because unlike most evil popes I've seen he actually has a point beyond "People are dumb, so they need GOD to rule". If anything Thordan barely cares about what his religion actually is, but more what its current structure accomplishes and symbolizes for Ishgard as a nation and what disrupting it would actually do. Which if you actually consider what he's saying, he isn't exactly wrong. I think people really don't give him enough credit and just forget what he actually said because they're too busy memeing about "lmao evil pope".

That quest makes sense if you did the ARR Hildibrand as one of the character is the main NPC

You actually have to complete ARR Hildi if you look at the requirements for the quests, which is really strange at first considering Hildi is mostly a comedy side quest while Scholasticate is well...not.

 

[Gravemind]

You actually have to complete ARR Hildi if you look at the requirements for the quests, which is really strange at first considering Hildi is mostly a comedy side quest while Scholasticate is well...not.

It's exactly because the ARR Hildibrand quests introduces that one NPC who becomes the main investigator for the Scholasticate questline.

 

[Zeke Von Genbu]

It's exactly because the ARR Hildibrand quests introduces that one NPC who becomes the main investigator for the Scholasticate questline.

Yes I know, but the tone difference between Hildibrand and Scholasticate is so different considering...

Spoiler: Scholasticate ending spoilers

We learn that the way Ishgard hid the truth for so long was due to stealing orphans who no one would remembered, locked them in a basement for life, and they acted as effectively living books who'd recite the truth to the upcoming Archbishop but would otherwise just be left in a basement. Wacky Hildibrand blasting off again to...kidnapping orphans and enslaving them for life. What a mood whiplash.

 

[BarberFerdinand]

I've liked most of Heavensward aside from the tiresome 'evil pope' plot twist. It's a pet peeve of mine that this trope is so common that as soon as I see a religious figure in a game I expect them to be secretly evil; at this point it would be mind-blowingly subversive to have a church in a fantasy setting that just sang songs and did bake sales.

And then they follow it up with that one priest. His grievance with how Aymeric came to power wasn't unreasonable, then they forgo any actually development on it to just have him start chucking peasants off the roof. Waste of a decent plotline.

 

[Übertroon]

Yes I know, but the tone difference between Hildibrand and Scholasticate is so different considering...

Spoiler: Scholasticate ending spoilers

We learn that the way Ishgard hid the truth for so long was due to stealing orphans who no one would remembered, locked them in a basement for life, and they acted as effectively living books who'd recite the truth to the upcoming Archbishop but would otherwise just be left in a basement. Wacky Hildibrand blasting off again to...kidnapping orphans and enslaving them for life. What a mood whiplash.

There are plenty of comedic moments as well though, like the double take the player character and the Hildy NPC makes when you meet

 

[Agarathium1066]

I've liked most of Heavensward aside from the tiresome 'evil pope' plot twist. It's a pet peeve of mine that this trope is so common that as soon as I see a religious figure in a game I expect them to be secretly evil; at this point it would be mind-blowingly subversive to have a church in a fantasy setting that just sang songs and did bake sales.

This is a point with fantasy settings that I've even taken to trying to subvert whenever I write a character or do a story involving these sorts of things. Either in the FFXIV universe or otherwise, having the religious figure not be a giant asshat seems to shock people quite often. They always jump to the priest and his congregation being behind a cult or whatever reason has them snooping around.

The XIV writers really don't seem to have much of an idea what the actual religion in the world is, if anything at all. The Ishgardian culture carries all the trappings of late medieval catholocism yet simultaneously does nothing but have a lot of influence and fancy cathedrals. Hell all I can tell you of their doctrine is 'Dragons are bad, the land will be littered with the blood of the heretics. Praise Halone!' And that's literally it, I'm not even sure they have actual services or rituals.

 

[Mukhrani]

This is a point with fantasy settings that I've even taken to trying to subvert whenever I write a character or do a story involving these sorts of things. Either in the FFXIV universe or otherwise, having the religious figure not be a giant asshat seems to shock people quite often. They always jump to the priest and his congregation being behind a cult or whatever reason has them snooping around.

The XIV writers really don't seem to have much of an idea what the actual religion in the world is, if anything at all. The Ishgardian culture carries all the trappings of late medieval catholocism yet simultaneously does nothing but have a lot of influence and fancy cathedrals. Hell all I can tell you of their doctrine is 'Dragons are bad, the land will be littered with the blood of the heretics. Praise Halone!' And that's literally it, I'm not even sure they have actual services or rituals.

I think this is a problem with Japanese people in particular. They're usually really bad at understanding religious motivations and writing religious characters. Probably has to do with most of their own religious experience being either soft atheism, diluted Christianity, or attenuated, weirdly snobbish animism. To be fair, I think a westerner would have just as hard a time crafting a convincing, authentic character that was steeped in Shintoism.

 

[Kane Lives]

I think this is a problem with Japanese people in particular. They're usually really bad at understanding religious motivations and writing religious characters. Probably has to do with most of their own religious experience being either soft atheism, diluted Christianity, or attenuated, weirdly snobbish animism. To be fair, I think a westerner would have just as hard a time crafting a convincing, authentic character that was steeped in Shintoism.

Hot take, but I think the writing is better off at having such a diluted religious influence to begin with. Sure we can commiserate that Ishgard was a giant missed opportunity at actually showing the religious aspects of Ishgard... but honestly, the game's about you fucking up primals and gods and magitek. I'm okay with them dispensing with the inner rumination of bad pope on religion.

 

[Piplup]

Went to go watch that one guy named Pyromancer because he likes lore and shit. He fucking gets so ass mad at his chat so easily and at him self for wiping. He was not built at all to be a streamer. One person asking if it was smart to take in sprouts for the extreme and he put it into sub only mode. than banned like 10 people and mocked chat. wtf man why do WoW fuckers have so much salt in their blood?

 

[MooseGump]

Hot take, but I think the writing is better off at having such a diluted religious influence to begin with. Sure we can commiserate that Ishgard was a giant missed opportunity at actually showing the religious aspects of Ishgard... but honestly, the game's about you fucking up primals and gods and magitek. I'm okay with them dispensing with the inner rumination of bad pope on religion.

Besides they went all out with making the Thordan fight the entire summoning sequence from FF7, the fanservice is absolutely nuts in this game

 

[John Titor]

Series took a weird turn when they try to incorporate a fictional religion. There were churches in VII and IX but you just kind of fill in the blanks there.

 

[Agarathium1066]

Hot take, but I think the writing is better off at having such a diluted religious influence to begin with. Sure we can commiserate that Ishgard was a giant missed opportunity at actually showing the religious aspects of Ishgard... but honestly, the game's about you fucking up primals and gods and magitek. I'm okay with them dispensing with the inner rumination of bad pope on religion.

Yeah I don't blame them for not going into depth with that part of the story, it's a wise choice in terms of writing for an MMO. Most won't share my opinion that the religion and lore around the gods needs fleshing out (or.. any flesh at all really). That's a part of why I'm interested to see what they do with the tales about the twelve in Endwalker, even if it's small tidbits it will be something to learn. It's also done in a way that if you're not terribly interested in the story beyond this is why you're about to beat this thing's ass along with a cohort of other adventurers your feet aren't being held to the fire.

 

[Mukhrani]

Hot take, but I think the writing is better off at having such a diluted religious influence to begin with. Sure we can commiserate that Ishgard was a giant missed opportunity at actually showing the religious aspects of Ishgard... but honestly, the game's about you fucking up primals and gods and magitek. I'm okay with them dispensing with the inner rumination of bad pope on religion.

I agree with that, I was more talking about characters with religious motivations than the fleshing out of religious lore. In anime or JRPGs, I've pretty much never encountered a character with the aesthetic of a Christian religious person who acts anything like a person with strong religious convictions. Nuns don't act like nuns. Bishops act like secular authorities with little religious aspect to their motivation. Priests pretty much function like village wise people. The religious aspect is almost always purely aesthetic. It's skin deep, and it always conveys this weird sense of a world without religion at all but with all the trappings of medieval Europe.

 

[Fcret]

I agree with that, I was more talking about characters with religious motivations than the fleshing out of religious lore. In anime or JRPGs, I've pretty much never encountered a character with the aesthetic of a Christian religious person who acts anything like a person with strong religious convictions. Nuns don't act like nuns. Bishops act like secular authorities with little religious aspect to their motivation. Priests pretty much function like village wise people. The religious aspect is almost always purely aesthetic. It's skin deep, and it always conveys this weird sense of a world without religion at all but with all the trappings of medieval Europe.

This is largely a result of a few separate forces:

1) Christianity today simply isn't like it was in the medieval era. Back then, bishops really were secular authorities (especially in Germany), priests were more often the village wise person (being one of the few people who could read and write unless you lived in a free city with tradesmen), and the rules for being a nun were taken a lot less zealously than they are now (same principles but it was more acceptable for nunneries to be a dumping ground for unmarried women and leaving a nunnery to marry was not really seen as that big of a deal). Any fantasy story that wants to capture Western Christianity prior to the Reformation and Counter-Reformation really has to approach it from this perspective.

2) Pre-Modern Japan and pre-Modern Western Europe both had very similar modes of social organization. Namely, they were both decentralized agrarian societies ruled by a hereditary military caste that swore fealty in exchange for land and also possessed a spiritual leader that acted as a counterweight to that military class. This makes it very easy to just write a medieval Japanese story, slap a coat of western european paint on it, and call it a day without domestic audiences really batting an eye.

3) Japanese religion largely concerns itself with form over intent. Outside of Buddhist monastics, most Japanese people are more concerned with performing religious rituals precisely rather than caring too much about the meaning. This is very different than how most Abrahamic religions operate, where performing religious rituals without the right intent is almost akin to blasphemy. So in the paradigm of Japanese religion, a nun is nun because she wears nun clothes and does nun things even if she's secretly a massive yuri-baiting slut.

 

[Mukhrani]

This is largely a result of a few separate forces:

1) Christianity today simply isn't like it was in the medieval era. Back then, bishops really were secular authorities (especially in Germany), priests were more often the village wise person (being one of the few people who could read and write unless you lived in a free city with tradesmen), and the rules for being a nun were taken a lot less zealously than they are now (same principles but it was more acceptable for nunneries to be a dumping ground for unmarried women and leaving a nunnery to marry was not really seen as that big of a deal). Any fantasy story that wants to capture Western Christianity prior to the Reformation and Counter-Reformation really has to approach it from this perspective.

While I agree with the other two points, I don't necessarily agree with this one. I think the polar opposite is true. Today we have jetsetting pantsuit nuns who often spend as much effort attending conferences as they do praying the rosary, meditating on scripture, or ministering to the poor. Orders like the Carthusians or Discalced Carmelites, while rebounding, are still very small. Back in the Middle Ages vows were much more strict, and you saw a lot more very sincere religious members who really did renounce the world. As to bishops, it's true that they had more power. You pointed out the prince-bishops of the HRE, but this was the case in France as well (the Concordat of Bologna gave the king incredible influence over the French Church) or in some of the Italian city states. But when you look at what these bishops actually did, you'll find a lot more backbone and real conviction than you will today. St. Thomas Beckett was a powerful secular political figure who was put into the position of bishop because the King thought he would be politically useful there. But once he became a bishop he started excommunicating bishops loyal to the king and was eventually exiled and then murdered over political rancor, because he took his religious duties seriously and the King's annoyance with this was misinterpreted by a few knights. The reunification of Italy also saw a large amount of religious figures refuse to compromise with worldly power, causing a political rift and 'homeless' papacy until Mussolini came to power. I don't see very much of this spirit at all in the church today, and I think that political calculation and temporal pragmatism are much more common now that the church has less political power, and that standing on principle is much more rare.

 

[Übertroon]

With everything else being achievable in a reasonable time, the relic weapon grind is a real pain.
At least by FF14 standards, in anothet MMO grinding hundreds of raids is expected, but xompared with everything else in FF14 the relic grind sticks out quite a bit

 

[Gravemind]

With everything else being achievable in a reasonable time, the relic weapon grind is a real pain.
At least by FF14 standards, in anothet MMO grinding hundreds of raids is expected, but xompared with everything else in FF14 the relic grind sticks out quite a bit

At least the older relics have had their respective grinds somewhat nerfed. You used to have to no life current relics if you wanted to get them done in any sort of timely fashion, and you had time locks with certain upgrade steps on top of that.

 

[Sunflower Samurai]

Anima is easy if you dump your capped poetics/seals into relic mats/pneumite and moonstones

After that currency grind its just a matter of running either like 50 brayfloxes unsynced solo or making a PF light farming party for A9S Unsynced

 

[BarberFerdinand]

I think people are looking a little too deeply into why the Japanese portray Christianity the way they do. I sincerely doubt they do meticulous historical research in order to come to reach their current depictions. They probably just say "ooh, weird foreign religion! let's take the things in it that seem interesting and exotic, sensationalized it up a bit, and call it a day!"

 

[Fcret]

With everything else being achievable in a reasonable time, the relic weapon grind is a real pain.
At least by FF14 standards, in anothet MMO grinding hundreds of raids is expected, but xompared with everything else in FF14 the relic grind sticks out quite a bit

It's also almost never worth doing pre-nerf if you're capable of clearing extreme a few times. I'm unironically of the opinion that the relic is undertuned at the stages before it becomes BiS and it should instead be around the same ilvl as an unaugmented tome weapon during even patches and then +5 during odd patches.