Theonehio wrote:
This was my point in by it being cliched - It COULD have went numerous ways but it followed the typical trope. They could have easily risen Raubahn further into power and tried governing it more via the Flames or even a new structure altogether since in Uldah's case, while he does run the Flames, Uldah is ran by the rich more so than military. As for the hints, it did start becoming apparent, especially if you noticed the unrest growing as the story went on which further got towards the boiling point when the Domans were coming over.
What would have invoked more emotion, though? a "peaceful coup" or death of someone beloved? Even when the other leaders walked out it was more because it's an Uldah problem that they had to take care of themselves. This is why I say in almost every FF, death happens be it important NPC or player character or even attempted death, e.g Celes trying to kill herself - it's done to invoke emotion and drive the story a certain direction, which is neither bad nor good, but VERY overplayed, especially in this series.
So downplayed? Far from it. I'm just old enough that tropes start popping out at me and I simply can't overlook it. Think of it like Animes, if you know NOTHING of the Manga/Visual Novel and you start watching the first episode and you see the guy is in love with cute quiet girl but his Tsundere childhood friend loves him but won't admit it, you know full well by the resolution, the main character ends up with none of them due to being so dense and they need to drive the series further and further, or he ends up with the childhood friend - very rarely does it deviate. It's simply part of the genre. You'll pick up on that, the predictable nature isn't bad, it just means you can see it coming. So just because I didn't give it absolute praises doesn't mean I downplayed it, especially when I even said it was a good way to end 2.x.
Raubahn taking the helm would've been more than expected, considering his position as an equal to the other two city-state leaders (at least in his portrayal in the story). The unrest only made apparent that there is a coup coming, not how it would actually play out. If not Raubahn, what was made apparent is that Teledji was the mastermind and that it wouldn't have been a huge stretch to see him become the leader of the new Ul'dah either. Yet these developments are so god awfully boring and expected I'm not so sure why this self-proclaimed "typical trope" is
worse. In fact I would really like to hear where in the story had it been hinted that Teledji would get cut in half and Raubahn would lose his arm in the process of becoming Gutts?
Your issue (in this case, I have no time to make an essay) is that you take the "typical tropes" while completely removing yourself from the context of
FFXIV in which these "typical tropes" have been excluded for the most part so far. Thinking what would happen based on how much
emotion is invoked is a prime example of this indeed. Basically nothing happened to Minfilia and Thancred in 2.0 even though
emotions would have been invoked by something happening, and with nothing happening the whole development was basically a dud. In this context your hindsight-after-the-fact is nonsensical. Regardless of what your typical tropes happen to be the story had not gone there before 2.55, so there was little reason to assume it would have gone there in 2.55 either. In fact the previous developments of either no important good guys dying or good guys dying heroic deaths while bad guys died non-graphical deaths was the precedent SE had set in the story of FFXIV to that point.
So to put it in simpler terms, just because some development is a typical trope doesn't mean it was going to be used in
FFXIV since a precedent did not exist even though it could have and these tropes turned the atmosphere of the game to something completely different than before. After only bad guys dying in a very non-graphical and mild manner or in an epic "saving the world" kind of way you suddenly think it's completely normal for a good guy to die in a non-heroic manner, arms to be cut off and lalafells to be cut in half? It's like after the timeskip One Piece started featuring Berserk-style explicit violence and séx. "Oh this is just like in Berserk, how predictable."
In the context of One Piece it is not. Edited, Apr 7th 2015 9:03am by Hyanmen