Final Fantasy Essays

Posted: May 24th, 2024

Reblogging this because I want to comment without it getting broken up-

This right here is one of the best examples of one of my favorite thins about video games as opposed to TV and movies, and even books to some extent. It is the need for interaction. The need for player contribution for the story to continue on. The impossibility of inactivity, and the fact that you make the final decision for what comes to pass and when it happens.

You see, in video games, the story does not progress unless you act to progress it. Aerith does not die unless you, the player, put in the effort to approach her. She just kneels at the top of this staircase, praying forever, until you press forward and activate the series of scenes that will lead to her death. Aerith does not die until you let her.

If it's your first time playing FFVII you don't know what's coming and pushing onward probably wouldn't lead to that much mental turmoil, because hey, you're just doing what you always do, moving forward to continue with the story. It's natural. It's normal. You've finally found Aerith, so this is probably the part where you reunite, find out what she's doing, and move on! But if you're someone who's played FFVII before, then you know what's coming and what will happen when you move forward, and it leads people like you and me to just stand and wait because you know what's coming, you don't want to happen, and it takes more effort to make it happen than to prevent it. You have to press the button to move forward and kill her. You don't have to do anything for her to kneel there and stay alive.

In TV and movies, the natural state is for the story to keep going. When you turn on a movie, you do not have to interact with it in any way other than watching for the story to continue. It plays out for the whole length. Same thing with TV (at least within one episode, and debatably across episodes now that streaming services default to auto play). You don't need to put in effort for the story to continue. You need to put in effort (press a button) for it to stop. So when something terrible is coming, unless you act to stop it, it will happen. This is the opposite of video games where when something terrible is coming, it will not happen unless you act to make it happen.

To put it simply: in TV and movies, it is your inaction that leads to things happening. In video games, it is your action that leads to things happening.

And oh man does it hurt here. Because like I said- until you, the player, put in the inputs necessary to walk up to her, Aerith does not die. So long as you wait, whether on this screen or on one of the next few before the cutscene begins, Aerith is alive. She is immortal. She comes back to life if she dies in battle. When she dies here, it's over.

Moving on to books, you do have to put effort into continuing the story. You have to turn the next page. That's different than a movie or TV.

But video games are still special because unlike in a book, you can create your own filler. In a book, if you don't want the character to die on the next page, you can just not turn the page and not read it, sure, but there's nothing else for you to do besides rereading. There is nothing new to be found if you don't want the plot to progress. It's progress it or nothing.

In a video game, you can usually go off and do something else if you don't want to progress the story. There will be other content for you to spend your time on, and new (even if only slightly) things to enjoy. Before the Temple of the Ancients, you can go take Aerith and grind for a few hours to get Great Gospel if you don't want to lose her just yet. You can spend forever in the Gold Saucer when that's open, and pad out your time with her there. After Temple but before the City, you can run around the world and talk to people, you can do some side content you've put off, you can explore the world, and you can do so many different things that are still you enjoying the story in new ways...because you can't make yourself push the button that will kill Aerith. Even if she's not with you, while you're running around the world Aerith is alive. She does not die until you ascend the steps. She may not be out living a fun life with you, but she's alive.

Until you pull the trigger.

And god, the feeling of that gives me the chills. Aerith doesn't die until you allow her to die. You might not want her to die, but you can't reach the end of the story until she dies. Until you, the player, the one who has to approve the plot the writers created when you walk up the stairs, kill her.

It's amazing. It's terrible. It's what makes video games so good and so gutwrenching.

Because sure. You the player weren't the one who originally decided Aerith was going to die, and you might not want her to die at all. But unlike with a movie or TV, you are not a passive viewer. You have to press the button. You have to move toward her. And ultimately, you're the one who decides how long she has left to live by deciding how long you're going to wait. It's not a movie where she'll be there for ten seconds then die. If you can't pull the trigger, she can be there for 10 hours, not dead, but also not really alive, because her death has been written in stone and it's too late to bring her to safety. And in some ways, prolonging her life can feel worse. Because once she's dead she's dead. There's nothing you can do. But in the time before, when she's kneeling there and it's just waiting on you, you're free to dread what's coming and mourn a loss that may not have yet come, but is unavoidable all the same, and that's what hurts the most.

Gives me the chills every time.

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Posted: May 21st, 2024

In the original FFVII, when your party first visits Cosmo Canyon, Barret has the following speech:

I want to highlight a specific part of this speech:

These three lines from Barret are SO important to me, especially because of when this concept comes back at the end of the game. Or this message, really:

The message that it's okay to do good things for selfish reasons. That there's nothing wrong with benefiting from the good you're trying to do for others. That gaining from giving does not invalidate that which you have given.

This got really long, so I'm putting the rest of it under a cut to not clog dashes! Just a warning: I get into some heavy topics like mental illness/health and death. If you aren't really in a space where you feel like you can read that, I can redo this without those references. Just let me know!

It doesn't matter that Barret wants to save the Planet to avenge his friend's death or to find some justice for them; saving the Planet is a good thing to do, and in the end it's the whole Saving the Planet thing that deserves doing. So what, Cloud is going after Sephiroth because of a personal vendetta; the Planet will die if no one does anything, and if Cloud can do it, that's great.

In an ideal world people will want to do good things purely out of the goodness of their heart, but that's often not the reality we live in. So, I think it's fine to take what we can get. And beyond that I just really hold the above message close, that in the end it's okay if you do good for a somewhat selfish reason if that good still ends up being done. Good is good. And that is good too!

On goodness being “better” if it's completely non-selfish (which I don't always think matters much), I have a little anecdote to share. When I was in high school, I and all the other students had to do 30 hours of community service to graduate. You could argue that making teens do 30 hours of community service doesn't really benefit the teens because their hearts aren't in it, but how much does that matter for the community they're helping? Does it matter at all?

Sure it would be better if the teens learned some lessons about humility and aid and all that, but even if they don't, isn't that still 30 hours of benefit for the community? Aren't those beaches now free of plastic bags and litter? Didn't some folks who got to listen to free live music still get a little bit of joy injected into their day? Aren't there now homeless people who got to eat some warm meals? Isn't there now more blood for bloodbanks that people in need will be able to use when the time comes (yes giving blood gave you 4-10 hours of community service)? Sure, most of the people making those things possible might've only done it it because they had to, but does that matter when good was given to the world? Would the person receiving a life saving blood transfusion be upset if they heard that the person who donated some of the blood that saved their life only did it because it was a graduation requirement? I mean, maybe a handful of people might be a little uppity about it, but I think most people would just be grateful to be alive and in good health. I think the homeless person getting their first meal in a week would just be happy to finally be able to eat something substantial. The animals living in the ocean that won't die from eating plastic thanks to a beach cleanup surely wouldn't care about the motivations of the giant land creatures that they will never know saved them; they will just get to live longer (and hopefully happier) lives.

In short: sure, it can be good to do good things for a ‘good' reason. But sometimes it's okay to do a good thing for a selfish reason. Whether you're doing community service because helping people makes you happy or because you have to do it to graduate, in the end people will still be fed, people will still be saved, people will still be happier than they would have had the good not been done.

And being able to accept that is something that I think FFVII helped me with. In an ideal world everyone will do good for good's sake, but we don't live in an ideal world, and that's okay.

FFVII says that it's okay to do good for selfish reasons. It's okay if you want to do good for a selfless reason AND a selfish reason alongside it! And that's what's so important to me. It tells you you should not feel guilty for doing good for selfish reasons. For good is good, and good is better than bad or nothing.

Be like Barret. “If there's anything I can do, to save the Planet…or the people livin' on it… Then I'm gonna do it! I don't care if it's for justice or revenge, or whatever. I don't care… Urrrrrgh! I'm gonna do it!” Do your good, and do it using whatever reason you have to. The world will benefit from your actions either way.

I will say that in the case of FFVII it's actually hard to find someone who doesn't have a personal connection to the cause. In the end everyone lives on the Planet, so everyone will benefit from it being saved. But it just so happens to be that pretty much everyone in the party also has some sort of personal motivator to go along with that. So in this case it's doing good for both selfish and selfless reasons, really.

The game goes into this more in one of the Highwind scenes at the end of the game when everyone explains their reasons for fighting so I won't dive too deep into it, but basically, pretty much everyone takes turns saying “I will gain something from this beyond just stopping Meteor and saving the Planet”. And the game, to me, implies that “there is nothing wrong with this” either.

If the selfish gain you're getting from helping people doesn't hurt anyone, what's wrong with that? Whether Cloud's going after Sephiroth because he has a personal vendetta or whether he's doing it because he wants to save the Planet doesn't change anything at all. He's not doing anything different. Now if Cloud having a personal vendetta meant he'd go around slaughtering innocents or something that would be different, but in this case the end result does not change and thus the motivation doesn't really matter. It's the difference between him killing Sephiroth and walking away uncaring or him killing Sephiroth and feeling an immense sense of relief. Sephiroth dies and the Planet is saved either way. Whether Barret saves the Planet because he wants to have a good future for Marlene, because he wants to avenge AVALANCHE, or whether he's just helping out his friends doesn't matter, because the end result is not different. The Planet is saved. And that's what matters.

If it doesn't change the result, why would it matter that there might be a hint of selfishness in there, or that the person doing the good might gain a little? I don't think it does. Not in cases like these. Again, it's okay to do good for a selfish reason if that selfishness is what you require to do a little good (or even if it's just a wonderful little bonus!)

Going back to real life, I think a lot of the time people act as if there's something bad about getting some sort of personal benefit out of helping others, or like gaining something from your efforts somehow cheapens the effort. We praise the person who slept 3 hours a night for two years because they were out helping people, or the one who spends five hours a day letting all of their friends vent to them for several years straight?

But what about when only getting 3 hours of sleep catches up with that person and they die at age 35? What happens when the person who spends their day counseling others cracks because they've spent so much of their emotional capacity helping others that their own mental state has completely degraded and they can't do anything anymore because they've lived so long without trying to support their own happiness they've forgotten how to be happy? I've heard stories of the first, I know someone who lived the second. I know other cases of things like this, but I'll stop here. The point is: what happens when people who do good for good's sake end up suffering themself because of how hard they're trying to do good? What happens when selflessness becomes self harm?

I believe there is no inherent virtue in suffering. At times you might have to suffer to do a good thing, and sometimes that good thing is worth the suffering that must be endured to get there. But that good thing is not worth it because you suffered. It is worth it despite the suffering. The suffering is not a prerequisite; it is an unfortunate side effect.

So just as it can be worth it despite suffering, it can be worth it without suffering too. Doing good for good's sake can be good, but doing good for a selfish reason can be good too, if the good is still done in the end.

You don't have to be miserable to do a good thing. It's okay to do a good thing because you want the benefit that good thing is going to bring you in addition to the good it'll bring others. You need not make yourself suffer to help others. Because don't forget; you're a person too, and if others deserve good, then so do you.

It's okay for Barret to want to save the Planet because he wants to avenge Biggs, Wedge, and Jessie. It's okay for Cloud to save the Planet because he wants to defeat Sephiroth. It's okay for Yuffie to fight Shinra and save the Planet because she doesn't like what's happened to Wutai. It's okay for Vincent to fight Shinra and save the Planet because he wants revenge against Hojo and to put Lucrecia's son to rest.

It's okay for every character to do good because they have a personal reason pushing them forward. It would also be okay if they were just doing it for the sake of saving the Planet, but that first reason does not invalidate the second.

In the end, what matters is that they're the ones saving the Planet. It doesn't matter why. No one else is doing it. And if it's between my saviors saving me because they have personal vendettas against the guy trying to destroy it, or no one coming to my aid at all, I'm going with the revenge squad. Something is better than nothing. Good for a selfish reason is better than no good at all.

So yeah. It's okay to do good for selfish reasons.

And as someone who often feels extremely guilty over the smallest things, and who's done a lot of self sacrifice over the years that I've sometimes felt was worth it and sometimes felt wasn't even close to breaking even, this point is so, so, so important to me. The fact that our heroes in FFVII can do good for both selfish and selfless reasons- and that they can coexist- means a lot.

“If there's anything I can do, to save the Planet…or the people livin' on it… Then I'm gonna do it! I don't care if it's for justice or revenge, or whatever. I don't care… Urrrrrgh! I'm gonna do it!”

That's the kind of mentality I want to take forward. I don't want to question myself and stop myself from helping others just because helping others happens to make me happy. If there's anything I can do to help others, I'm going to do it. I don't care if it's because making others happy makes me happy too. I don't need to suffer to do good. Helping others is a good thing and at the end of the day, most of them will be grateful for the help anyway, regardless of why I did it.

There's nothing wrong with being a little selfish from time to time. Indulge. Do good for others, but do good for yourself too. The two can coexist, and when they do, I think it often leads to some of the best results of all.

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Posted: April 7th, 2024

This is probably going to be part 1 of a series of posts/mini-essays so I'll write more on it later, but while doing one of the Chapter 12 Sidequests in Rebirth, I finally figured out how to phrase one of my biggest issues with this game:

There are several places in Rebirth where they include special gameplay at the cost of good atmosphere. This often, but not always, accompanies either a change or new addition to the plot.

I've put some elaboration on what I mean below. For now, it's only looking at that one sidequest in Chapter 12, though it happens all over the game. But the tl;dr is that sometimes game shoots itself in the foot/misses completely when trying to create a certain atmosphere because it prioritizes a certain type of gameplay that is antithetical to that atmosphere.

The Monsters Aren't Real, and How That Hurts the Atmosphere

The sidequest in question is Lament of the Damned, the sidequest in Shinra Manor where you go with Vincent to explore reports of a crying woman. The thing that got me about this one was the combat trials.

What's in the Game

When you go explore under the manor, both Vincent and Hojo mention deadly combat trials, which is a great setup for some horror and an overall creepy atmosphere. Because wow! If Hojo has no qualms about putting his own experiments to death if they don't prove worthy, that means he's really messed up! (And that Vincent in particular has had an even more disturbing past than we thought). The manor was definitely creepy in the original with all of the monsters roaming the halls and the pop up Ying Yang in particular. There are no more battles in the Shinra Manor (besides Cait Sith's section), so maybe this is their way of making up for that.

Except... in the Remake, the combat trials are just simulations. You don't have to face any real monsters. It's all fake. There are no monsters roaming the halls unchecked anymore, nor are there caged monsters, created for the sole purpose of testing your strength. And this lack of real monsters totally kills the deranged/creepy haunted house atmosphere the original Shinra Manor had.

(Which, to be fair, is already changed by the under-manor laboratory being a huge complex rather than a couple of rooms, which is part of the larger shift in atmosphere done for the entirety of Nibelheim. I won't go into to detail in this post, but while I thought the Cait Sith gameplay segment was actually a lot of fun, I was disappointed by how it killed the vibe too).

Room for Improvement

I personally believe the combat trial aspect would be much creepier and much more effective if you were trapped in a room and real monsters were suddenly let loose on you. Then it would feel like a real fight for your life, and make Vincent's comments about how subjects were disposed of via combat trial all the more impactful. Because simulations can't kill you (or at least, don't seem like they should be able to), so in the simulation verse, there should be no direct consequences to losing. It seems a lot dumber to be killed by a simulation than ripped apart by real monsters. Less scary, though I suppose there's a certain appeal to being killed by the unreal. Still, I don't think they leaned into that hard enough. Maybe they meant to imply that creatures which lost to the simulation would be disposed of either by real monsters or just euthanasia afterwards, but meh. I still think that's less disturbing than throwing test subjects into a room where they either defeat the monsters that have been loosed on them, or die a grisly death. And even if they do somehow die to the simulations, something about it just doesn't hit the same.

Having the monsters only be simulations also loses the disturbing aspect of the basement being inhabited by monsters of Hojo's creation that exist for the sole purpose of testing other experiments of his. Because isn't that messed up? For Hojo to create beings whose sole purpose is to, ideally, be killed by his more successful test subjects? To have to face creatures which may have once been normal animals or innocent civilians who have been twisted to fight but can never be saved, so you must either kill them or die yourself? When the monsters you fight are just simulations, you lose that thought/fear of "oh no, look what he's done to these real living creatures, not only mutating them but sending them to their deaths for his amusement."

When the monsters are fake/just simulations, it means Hojo isn't hurting as many real people, and you don't have to face the disturbing idea of having to put down real beings who probably once had real thoughts and feelings. (Which would've been SO GOOD with the line Vincent has after the combat trials, where he DOES talk about Monsters having feelings. But the monsters you fight aren't real. Not until the very last one. So it doesn't hit the same).

So tl;dr of this section: the fact that the simulations are just that- only simulations, i.e. not real- both reduces the threat level in terms of danger to the character, and eliminates the disturbing realization that Hojo has created creatures who are (if his experiments are successful) are meant to die. Both the atmosphere of the manor and Hojo's character lose out there, imo.

Why the Monsters Aren't Real, or the Gameplay Reason

After beating the combat trials, I came to realize (the likely reason) why they made the combat trials simulations rather than real battles: so they could include combat objectives and so you can take the trials at your own pace (i.e. leave and come back).

Repeating the Trials/Combat Objectives

First, the combat objectives.

There are two types: timers and stagger. If you were fighting against real enemies, having a stagger requirement wouldn't make as much sense, since a real battle should really just be about surviving. Why would you need to stagger them? What would happen if you didn't? Would a monster be more likely to kill you if you didn't stagger it? That's not how it works in gameplay. As for the timer, I could see there still being a timer requirement in the form of these enemies doing some sort of enrage move after a set amount of time, but the stagger one doesn't make as much sense. (For people who don't know what enrage is, it's the idea that an enemy will use an unlivable attack against you. An unavoidable OHKO.)

By making the fights simulations rather than real battles, it then makes sense for Hojo (cough cough the devs) to implement certain specific requirements to progress. It also gives them a better excuse for why you might need to repeat the trials- you didn't meet the combat objectives, so now you have to do it again. Because the trials don't auto-fail if you don't meet the combat objectives, you just don't get to go forward.

But I think it loses sight of the creepy scientist and horror basement thing if what you're fighting isn't real. There is no penalty for not doing the trial "right." If there was an actual enrage at the end of the timer (i.e. if you just straight up lost/died), then that would be terrifying! Because wow, Hojo is willing to kill his subject if they're not fast enough! But no, he just doesn't pass them and has them try again. Which makes him less creepy/insane seeming, because now he's kinder because he's willing to give things a second chance. It's less impactful.

In my opinion, being able to implement combat objectives isn't worth that loss of impact. Because combat objectives don't have to be in this part of the game. Chadley has combat objectives in his simulator. If they want us to do combat simulator stuff, have us do it with Chadley. Don't hurt the atmosphere in the manor to include this dumb requirement, which not only means there's less threat in the form of the monsters not being real, but also kills any sense of urgency because you can repeat the trials as many times as you want, or even come back later if you don't have the time. It's a loss of atmosphere for the sake of gameplay in a bad way. They didn't have to write it like this, but they did. And it happens several times through this game.

Backing Out/Limited Creature Game Logic

Speaking of which...I think it's okay to have the occasional unskippable battle, or occasional battle arena where you have to beat them all to progress/do them all over if you run, but the devs sure don't. If the battles weren't simulations, it would make a lot of sense for them to be one after the other. Battles where you've got to do them all to make it through.

Since they're not real battles and are simulations you have to execute, it makes sense that you can come and go. But I don't think that's the order that concept was conceived in; instead I think the devs went "in order to allow the player to come and go at any time, we should make it so you only have to do the battles one by one, and a simulation would be great for that!" And the game really hand holds you with that. Most of Chadley's simulations have multiple battles in a row where you have to beat them all to proceed, but the ones in this sidequests are all individual battles with individual goals.

Now, I am all for accessibility and quality of life in gaming, and I really like that, for example, you can save basically everywhere now instead of needing a save point. But it's fine to remove a little bit of Quality of Life/Accessibility for a single sidequest where you face a battle gauntlet! I mean, the game already has points where it limits your access to Fast Travel so you have to progress the plot. And like I mentioned before, most of the Chadley battle simulations have multiple rounds too! Why not do that here, where you have to do the battles (at least the 4 simulation ones, I would be fine with stopping before the boss) before moving on? You can save right then and there! You're healed between battles too! It's okay to make things slightly less convenient sometimes for the sake of atmosphere! How cool/exciting would it be if Hojo set 4 rounds of monsters on you in a row, where you had to beat them all or game over? I'd love it. That would raise the stakes. And, it would make for a more unique atmosphere. But this isn't something that seems to be a high priority for Rebirth, which I find unfortunate.

(Sidenote, this happens with both gameplay and visuals. At least in the Cave of the Gi they had runestones instead of Jukeboxes... but they didn't bother to change the Jukebox in Vincent's room for some reason. Or to put it somewhere else if they didn't want to change the model. The jukebox and potion bench are so weird man. They kill the vibe made by the rest of the creepy basement full of coffins and candles. It's supposed to feel old and out of time, but the jukebox and bench ruin it.)

I could also see the argument that the devs made this a simulation rather than a real battle based on the logic that having an infinite number of monsters (for infinite tries to complete the objectives) makes less sense when they're real monsters rather than simulations, but I don't think that matters. This is a video game. There are already infinite monsters in the overworld. There can be infinite monsters here.

Finally, going back to the idea of stagger and time objectives from above...you could technically do those with real enemies too. Have it so Hojo will just send more monsters at you if you fail. Make it real Hojo instead of hologram AI Hojo. Or have the AI be able to detect that the enemies weren't staggered/killed in time! Now that I think about it, there are combat objectives against real enemies in the overworld, so they technically didn't need to make these battles part of a simulation for combat objectives. But I still feel strongly that these battles were made to be simulations instead of real battles for the sake of combat objectives.

Last Thoughts (for now!)

FFVII Rebirth has leaned very strongly into AI, simulation, and advanced technology that had not been conceived/wasn't in the public consciousness when the original was released. At times, the game wants to lean very hard into this new technology at the cost of the atmosphere that made the original so great. It's a different type of horror. A different type of creepy.

Being trapped in a virtual world can be terrifying, but it's a different type of terror to being trapped in the real world. Being killed by simulations sounds disturbing, but it's a different type of disturbing than being killed by real creatures. The writers may have done this because they felt it was an equivalent exchange (hehe), but for me at least, I find what the original did so much more striking.

Full disclaimer, I am not, and have never been, big into sci-fi. Remake and Rebirth lean into high tech sci-fi more than the OG did (which 100% had its own sci-fi aspects! I mean, the villain is an alien for starters, and the evil scientists' actions are central to the plot!), at the cost of some of the more down-to earth horror/other aspects of the original. I find this disappointing. It's a different choice that is sometimes really cool (ex. with so much technology it becomes much more obvious that Shinra has constant global surveillance, which is very distopian), but sometimes worse (ex. President Shinra only being a hologram rather than the real guy in Reactor No. 5 makes him seem a lot less cocky since he doesn't show up in person).

I think Shinra Manor as a whole has absolutely lost the atmosphere that made me love it so much in the original. It went from a grimy mansion to a sterile lab. Both are good settings for horror, but they just don't hit the same. This sidequest suffered from wanting to be part of that sterile high tech lab, instead of the low-tech horror of the original where people/Hojo seem(ed) to be playing god in much more material ways. Which is...a different point better left for another essay.

We'll see if I ever get to writing it, lol. For now I uh. Haven't actually finished the game. I have 91 hours and am only about an hour slash two sidequests into Chapter 12, but I haven't had much free time to continue. Hopefully this weekend I'll be able to push through some more!

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Posted: June 5th, 2024

Thinking again about Yuna's story in FFX and how powerful it is to see a character who, after having spent so long not only anticipating but accepting her coming death, decides she wants to live.

The scene in the Macalania Woods is good for several reasons, but it's that part that gets me the most. She is meant to be a martyr, and for so long she was content to be a martyr- or really just a sacrifice, she wasn't doing it for her own glory but the salvation of her people- but after actually going out and experiencing all the world she wished to save had to offer, she decided that she didn't want to die after all. But! Even though she wants to live! She's so devoted to her people and the cause that she can't turn away no matter how much she may want to live now, even though her eyes have been opened to how good life really is.

And that to me is the tragedy. Which, to be fair, doesn't end up turning out how she expected, because in the end the one who pushed for her to live is the one who not only had to die, but came to accept his own death. But in the moment? When you don't know how things will go? God it killed me. Even now, every time I get to that scene in a playthrough I have to stop and take a deep breath because my knowledge is not Yuna's knowledge, and knowing how scared she is and how uncertain her life has become just before its supposed end is a punch in the gut.

I don't know. I'm just rambling here. But that moment was so, so important to me as a person. Still is. There are so many things to live for. People love you, and they want you to live them. If you sacrifice yourself, it will not fix everything, because there will be those left behind who will mourn you.

For so much of her life, Yuna had been okay with the idea of dying. Not because she had a death wish; Yuna didn't seem actively suicidal. But her attachment to life was less than her devotion to her cause. Death was a worthy sacrifice she was fully expecting to make.

…Until finally, after seeing the world she wanted to save and meeting Tidus, who had not grown up in a world which normalized such sacrifice and questioned why things had to be this way, she had that eureka moment of realizing how good life was and that she wanting to live. And as she sobbed in Tidus' arms, it made me cry too.

Because man. Man. The power of wanting to live. The switch that was flipped. The beauty of life and all it has to offer in the short time in which you have it!

There's a point to living. Yuna learned to want to live. But she still had to die (or so you think), and man is it a punch to the gut when the sacrificial lamb, who for so long accepted the inevitability of its sacrifice, realizes it does not want to die as it is in the final stretch of the march to the altar.

FFX is an amazing game and Yuna is one of my top FF characters. I love her so much. I love FFX so much. What a character! What a game!

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Posted: December 19th, 2021

After a throwaway line in Endwalker reignited my love for the topic, here are some thoughts and theories about the mix of Estinien and Nidhogg's souls post-Heavensward (that I'll probably use for fic material someday when I feel like I'll be able to do them justice). Some of this is very much canon, some is headcanon, and I tried to make sure I distinguished between what the game tells us and what I like to imagine from it. This turned into way more of an essay than I meant it to be, but meh. Includes some caps and ideas from Heavensward and Shadowbringers, as well as spoilers for Endwalker under the cut! You've been warned!

"My Eyes": The Mothercrystal Quote

A.K.A. The Whole Reason I Wrote This Ridiculously Long Essay

The first thing I want to talk about is this quote from the optional pre-battle conversation before The Mothercrystal fight. Mostly the last part, but I'll include all three pictures to capture the entire thing.

There's a lot to unpack here, but I want to focus on the quote that I've thought of on a daily basis since beating Endwalker.

My eyes. My eyes. Obviously he's referring to the Eyes of Nidhogg here, which were bound to Estinien's person. That much I would say is not up to debate. In that respect, they could be "his" (i.e. Estinien's) eyes, since they were technically a part of him at the time. So the "I" or "me" or "self" that Estinien is referring to could be himself as the man that has always been Estinien. A less exciting, but sensible reason for that phrasing. Or... the perhaps less likely but much more enticing/interesting option... is that the "I/me/self" that he could be referring to could be the part that was once Nidhogg. My eyes he says, thinking of his true eyes which were once in his own wyrm skull, not the foreign eyes which were embeded in his elezen shoulder and wrist. My eyes, as in the eyes which came from him and were originally his. Him, thus, being Nidhogg.

And thus, I looked at this quote and thought, "ah. Estinien is refering to Nidhogg's eyes as his own, and thus not differentiating between the being he is now and the being that was once Nidhogg. He sees (at least parts of) Nidhogg's past and being as his own."

It's worth noting that this comes right after he talks about "people I cared for," and then refers to people Estinien knew (Alberic, Alphinaud+WoL or Aymeric, and Ysayle). So there are three potential levels of self here - The "I" that was originally Estinien, the "my" that seems to be Nidhogg after taking Estinien as his vessel, and the "I've" that is surely both. The Estinien who is Estinien, who seamlessly carries pieces of Nidhogg, as if a blended version of the two. Three points in time, three kinds of self. Three levels of existing as two beings eventually merged into one.

I want to say that I believe Estinien still sees himself as being different than Nidhogg. He's still Estinien, and he has always been Estinien. Before this quote, I imagined him not thinking of himself as Nidhogg, but instead as the bearer of Nidhogg's legacy. But when I saw this...He's still Estinien, and he has always been Estinien, but I think there are times when the line blurs a little. He's not confused about who he is at all. He knows he was born Estinien, and Nidhogg was something separate. But there are things that seamlessly merge, just the slightest bit, when they get too close. The eyes were Nidhoggs, but they were also Estinien's for those few days (...Lucia says something that implies the whole possession thing only lasted a few days. In my head, it lasted closer to 6 months, or about the patch time, because I don't like the whole "all of FFXIV takes place in about a year" thing. But I acknowledge that canon says that only lasted a few days.). They belonged to both. And so what was more Nidhogg's than Estinien's may now seem wholly Estinien's. Because both were one. There was no difference at the time. And now? Well.

The Heavensward Soul-Merge

Part of this train of thought comes from something I've rambled about in other scattered posts: the idea that a part of Nidhogg's soul has stuck around with Estinien since Heavensward. There are a few components to this. First, in Heavensward when Alphinaud asks Y'shtola and Krile about saving Estinien. Sorry about the lower quality of the following screenshots, as these are phone screengrabs from YouTube rather than my own snaps. I repeat the important parts in the indented sections below.

If we take their word as absolute truth and not exaggeration or some sort of dramatic flourish, then these two quotes tell us that Nidhogg's and Estinien's souls were once connected. Entangled, if you go with an earlier comment from this conversation about Nidhogg's aether and Estinien's form. So their souls were once merged, to an extent. Probably not in a healthy way, especially given Nidhogg's Final Steps of Faith quote about Estinien, but an unhealthy connection doesn't necessarily mean a weak one:

Again, this is a case where you can either take Nidhogg for his word or imagine he's being dramatic, but for the purposes of this post I'm going to imagine he's being (mostly) honest.

But let's put that all together: after the eyes were merged to Estinien's form, Nidhogg's aether had all but smothered Estinien's, entangling his form. This led to a definite connection between, partial blending of their souls (whether it's merging is up to interpretation. My HC says yes. Canon simply implies a hard-to-break connection). During this period of connection, Estinien's soul began to shrivel, or was otherwise damaged.

Shadowbringers, and How to Mend a Damaged Soul

We know from Ardbert and Shadowbringers that adding a soul to one's own broken soul can fix that damage. Take the following quote from Ryne about the WoL, after Ardbert rejoins with the WoL for the Hades trial:

Ardbert and the WoL's situation is a lot different than Estinien and Nidhogg's. Ardbert and the WoL were fragments of the same soul. Pieces that were meant to be together. And when Ardbert was rejoined unto the WoL it fixed the cracks that had begun to form under the pressure and corruption of the Light aether. Estinien and Nidhogg most certainly weren't fragments of the same soul. Nidhogg's presence (his aether, I would say) itself was what was damaging Estinien's soul, if said soul was actually damaged. What else would have "shriveled" Estinien's soul during his possession? Nidhogg's aether was far greater than Estinien's, which even if not explicitly stated is just plain canon because dragons have a TON of aether. Estinien's would've been minuscule in comparison, and it's no wonder Nidhogg won out (until the very end when, after expending aether to fight Hraesvelgr-powered WoL, Estinien finally managed to break through). Where the foreign Light Aether fractured the WoL's soul, Nidhogg's foreign natural Aether could have damaged Estinien's soul.

But just as Nidhogg damaged Estinien's soul, I argue that he could've fixed it. Probably not intentionally? But intent is unimportant in this case, and I don't have any evidence to either support or counter any claims of intent..

Now, this is much more Headcanon-territory than a lot of what I've said before, which I would consider pretty much canon. But in this HC territory, I believe that Estinien would not be nearly as functional as he was post-HW if his soul remained damaged as it was. The WoL sure wasn't doing too hot when their soul was fracturing. But Estinien recovered post-possession, and I would like to say that it was because Nidhogg's soul filled the cracks his Aether had created in Estinien's soul. Similar to how Ardbert's soul filled the cracks the Light Aether had created, except Nidhogg was both the problem and the solution instead of one or the other.

At the end of 3.3, we can see Nidhogg's soul, or something that looks like it, rise from Estinien's body and dissolve in the air. Nidhogg as we knew him was then gone. By pure canon, it looks like Nidhogg's soul completely left. But for tge sane of some fun HCs, what if a few tiny pieces of him stayed behind? If, as I proposed, they stayed to fill the cracks and fix the damage that had been done to Estinien's soul and aether? As Y'shtola and Krile discussed earlier, the souls of dragon and man were tangled in a way they worried might not be possible to separate. So what if most of Nidhogg left, but not all? An imperfect separation, if you will. Enough of Nidhogg having left that the elezen who remained would call himself Estinien, as he had always been and still was Estinien, but had a few fragments of Nidhogg so deeply entwined in his being that he didn't regard them as "other"? Not Nidhogg and Estinien as two conscious beings in one body, but the lone being Estinien who has pieces of Nidhogg so well- or near-seamlessly integrated or blended with his own being that even if he recognizes some thoughts or feelings as originating in the part of him that was once Nidhogg, they don't come from some separate consciousness. Just a thought he'd have that he could identify as being more of a Nidhogg thought, but he'd think and feel is all the same, and the voice and feeling would be in essence his own.

The Great Patch 5.5, A.K.A. The Other Quote That Made Me Lose My Mind

There. There it is. Confirmation from the man himself. I don't even know what to say about that other than look at it. Now, it's important to note phrasing here. He doesn't say "I am Nidhogg." He doesn't say "His emotions are my own." It's that Nidhogg is a part of him, and he feels Nidhogg's emotions as or like his own. He's still Estinien. Not Nidhogg. He still thinks of Nidhogg as someone else, separate from him,, so there's still a distinction...somewhat. But functionally? Considering how deeply they're connected and how much Estinien bows to those feelings? Not really.

Whether or not it's a fragment of Nidhogg's soul that has remained with Estinien, something has stayed behind. Memories, feelings, aether, something. And it isn't just a throwaway line - his conversations with Tiamat and Vrtra just hammer this in. He has specific ideas of how dragons should act that clearly aren't just what some dragonslayer turned dragon-friend would think. Actions befitting a great wyrm are something that only another great wyrm can and should comment on. And his facial expressions (or the zooms that just barely cut off his eyes...) when talking to the First Brood and to the residents of Ultima Thule (the remnants of the Dragonstar) show how deeply he cares and how he's impacted by them. More than just a guy who now cares about dragons would. It's Nidhogg's emotions rising to the top, but so integrated with Estinien's that I don't think he feels that much of a difference. Maybe he can tell which part of him they come from, whether it's the Estinien part or the Nidhogg part who they probably originated in, but does it really matter? They're his feelings now, and it's hard to ignore them. It doesn't matter who is at the core, or what part - Nidhogg or Estinien - they might have come from. They're his. One. Not two shoved in the same body. Nidhogg's emotions are his own. And throughout Endwalker, I really saw it. There was a lot of pain and grief there. More than the other Scions showed. And while Estinien says it himself up above: "I've not a heart of stone," the others don't have stone hearts either. So for him to seem so much more bothered by all the things happening to the dragons...that's definitely Nidhogg showing right there. The Nidhogg that is now a part of Estinien, but will never forget its past or its family or all the love it had for them all.

In Summary

I've done a whole lot of rambling here just to say: I firmly believe that within canon, Estinien and Nidhogg's souls were once at least partially merged, and even though Nidhogg's soul has departed, many of his memories and feelings have remained behind with Estinien. Canon doesn't give any explicit evidence that this soul-merge lasted post-3.3, as shown by Nidhogg's ghostly form dissipating post-FSoF.

To get into more Headcanon territory, I would like to believe that part of Nidhogg's soul has remained with Estinien. That soul helped fix the damage done by Nidhogg's overpowering Aether. Estinien knows that he is not Nidhogg, in that Estinien does not think that he was once Nidhogg in the past, but instead thinks that he's a man who carries on Nidhogg's legacy and should honor it. There are, however, certain points at which Estinien does not make a distinction between the two of them. This is a subconscious thing. He probably thought nothing of saying "my eyes" instead of "the eyes" or "Nidhogg's eyes" or anything any less possessive. I think of it in the same way he might mourn the loss of a sibling - it would be, in an offhand comment, about both Hamingant and Ratatoskr. He would have specific stories about Hamignant, of course, and might be more likely to talk about his lost younger brother than a dead wyrm that was once a younger sister. Hamignant's would be a potent loss, and he wouldn't confuse or necessarily equate Hamignant's murder with Ratatoskr's murder. (Though I will say another headcanon of mine is that every year on the anniversary of Ratatoskr's death Estinien feels a grief the likes of which he's never felt. Nidhogg felt. And he felt for a thousand years. That grief would be passed on to Estinien more than anything else.) So if you asked him what it felt like to lose a sibling he'd recall both the rage at Ratatoskr's loss and the sorrow at Hamignant's, but then speak of Hamignant, who was his true brother, as opposed to Ratatoskr who...wasn't really his sister. Except...

Regardless, the parallels are there. Just as the comment about "my eyes" could be seen as referring to Estinien's eyes, as something that was a part of Estinien, or Nidhogg's eyes, as something that was once a part of Nidhogg. They are in effect synonyms, though not quite. Metonyms? Also doesn't quite work. But hopefully you get what I mean - a sort of blended interpretation. He can tell where Nidhogg ends and he begins if he thinks about it. But from time to time that line is blurred subconsciously. Nidhogg is a part of him. And at times, that part doesn't feel so foreign or separate anymore. Because it's him too.

Final tl;dr, Endwalker I love you. There were some Estinien moments I didn't love that much but then there were ones like this that made me lose my mind so. Yeah. My eyes. My eyes. Ahhhhhh I've wanted to talk about this since like December 5th... it's so good.

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Posted: October 20th, 2022

Otherwise summarized as: the Estinien we saw in Endwalker did not feel like the Estinien we had in Heavensward (and the DRG quests, and ShB, though StB he was barely in), and I'm breaking down why this is and why I personally did not enjoy it.

Someday I'll make a better post about this but whenever I see people comment on the problem with Estinien's character in EW I feel so validated... So I'll preface this all by saying this is fueled by my personal opinion. You're free to disagree. I'm sure there are things I prefer that many people do not, and I want to emphasize that I don't think Estinien in Endwalker was a wreck by any means (he had some fantastic moments that I absolutely adored when they got it right, and he very much served the story). I do however feel like his character in EW was not a good progression of his charcacter arc beforehand, even if his progression wasn't completely nonsensical/out of the blue and I get the logic behind it.

The tl;dr version is: his EW character was good for/worked well for the story of EW, but I don't think it was good for Estinien himself (as in his character consistency/arc, but we'll get into that below).

What's the problem? Estinien is still Estinien, just...different.

I think the first time I really tried to express this was while talking with some of my friends while running HoH, so our minds were busy with other things and I couldn't fully expand upon my thoughts, but they didn't quite get what I was saying when I said Estinien felt "different" in EW (I was also trying not to seem like I was completely fangirling, because I like many characters, Estinien just happens to be my favorite. And the one I've studied the most. I have parts of his character I prefer, and parts I may write about more than others, but I feel like I generally have a good idea of his general character/emotions/vibes.). Their thing was that his EW portrayal was not out of the blue- he's shown most of those characteristics before. And I agree. However, EW toned MANY of them up to 10. For better or worse. EW, while an enjoyable expansion, got very tropey at times for better or worse. I enjoy cheesy things, I enjoy tropes, and some of what EW did was amazing. I laughed and cried and overall it was a wondeful experience! However when it came to Estinien, with a few exceptions, his trope-exaggeration felt...well...too exaggerated. He was different, and not in a way that felt good.

Overview of Estinien's Character Traits in HW and EW

Estinien, especially in HW (plus the ARR DRG quests and some of his ShB appearances, though those aren't *that* long even if I really enjoyed them), was multidimensional. He was smart, he was witty, he was troubled, he was angry, he was combative, he was sincere, he was kind, he was thoughtful, he had moments of self reflection, etc. I can think of specific moments to illustrate all of those, which I may or may not elaborate on below, but for now it can all be summarized as: Estinien had several layers, and many of these required a lot of thought. Estinien was clever.

Estinien in Endwalker had several of these layers stripped away for the most part. Please note the "for the most part." Some moments shone through and made me remember the Estinien I'd been so entertained by and had grown to love. Others not so much.

He cracked jokes, but many of them were simplified, and many of the jokes he was involved in were not things you'd laugh at the subject of, but things you'd laugh at Estinien for. He mentioned his faults and that he was once troubled, but they often felt less like someone stewing over a problem and more like someone trying to give a motivational speech (putting a pin in this: he had some motivational speeches that I LOVED. He made good points, and as I will mention several times they served the story very well. However he suffered a bit from what I'd call Hope in late game FFXIII syndrome. If you've played it, you probably know what I mean. Excess of motivational speeches done to help other characters to the detriment of themselves as they're sort of placed into a box that they may have touched before, but used to be so much more than. By this Estinien worked almost as a prop, and while he was a good prop, that did not make him a good character).

His anger I actually thought was done well; he moved past this part of his life for the most part, but acknowledges it was once there, and on occasion it still slips through (I have very mixed feelings on the Garlemald scene with Y'shtola). He...honestly felt less combative? But in EW it was more like being defensive of himself because he was being made the butt of a joke (i.e. he was receiving personal attacks, indicating he has faults as a person at his core or purely of his own making) and less the HW case of being defensive because the way he'd been shaped was put into question (so, not exactly Estinien at his core, but who he'd been molded to be, and how much he let his core be impacted). He lost his combative side in anything other than self defense for joke moments, which when you solely focus on him being less combative makes sense because he's matured and calmed down, but when you focus on him being defensive just isn't flattering. He did calm down from his ARR and early HW self which I think was good. It just sometimes felt off.

He still was sincere in moments, they're just proportionally fewer and often shoved into those Fifth-Motivational-Speech-of-the-Day (from a mix of characters, not solely him) moments, which lessens their impact by overload. He was still kind, and they did this well. Him being thoughtful was very Nidhogg-centric as I'll get to later, but in summary while it isn't *absent* he is no longer sigmificantly characterized as a thoughtful person and it is a much smaller part of his character (which is a regression from where he went from 2.X->early3.0->late 3.0->3.3). The self-reflection and thoughtfulness are merged together yet again, thus lessening them because he doesn't seem very capable of looking beyond himself oftentimes (the 6.1 scene was a good one, but again it's played as a joke).

And the first thing I said, about him being smart... I would not say EW Estinien is depicted as "smart." As in, that's not his defining characteristic. He could be smart from time to time, and he did have moments where he said or did something really intelligent and helpful, but that was not a *defining* characteristic. He wasn't a smart guy who sometimes lost his temper and did dumb things- it was more like he was a neutral or even kind of dumb guy who could pull himself together to do something smart. Thus is mostly because the number of times he said or did something clever did not majorly outweighs the times he did something decidedly unthoughtful. It's about proportion! And that is my biggest issue with him. It's like he regressed, throwing all that character development out the window. Maybe it's just because the Himbo became popular right before/during Endwalker, but man did I see way more people calling Estinien a Himbo than before and honestly I see why they might do that given his EW self, even if I don't think he quite fits the bill.

How/Why EW Estinein Felt Like a Step Back, or the Regression of Estinien's Character

I want to reiterate that these things are mostly fine in moderation. A character who is never questioned and never opposed and always held up as the perfect paragon of virtue is not very interesting. I don't want Estinien to be that man- him getting questioned in HW and him eventually questioning himself in HW is part of what made me love him so much. However EW did it too much. I mentioned it above and I'll mention it again- HW was about the fault of the system, which Estinien was manipulated by but also submitted to. You can't say he wasn't complicit, as we saw him both participate unquestioning early on and then cling to the system even after the truth began to emerge, but I also wouldn't say he was entirely at fault. He didn't know. His family was killed. He had a reason to act as he did, even if it was forged on falsehoods. EW's treatment of Estinien was about the faults with Estinien alone. Over and over and over again. And while self-reflection is good in theory, it felt kind of poirly done (it happened so many times, and usually during a group "I messed up :(" event). Now I will say Estinien was one of the strongest, if not the strongest agent used to convey HW's message, while Estinien was not so much an active agent of the message as a supporter in EW. HW's story cannot be told without Estinien. Estinien's story cannot be told without HW. EW could remove Estinien for nearly every scene and be about the same save some of the Vrtra ones where you'd basically need an Estinien copy to achieve the same result. However, this does not excuse EW's treatment of Estinien as a constant joke. As a walking ball of faults. It just explains why it happened- he was often used as a prop more than a character.

Estinien in Endwalker honestly felt like an idiot at times. Not always. He shone in some moments. He shone really well in some momemts and they were great. However...most of my favorite moments with Estinein were actually the ones that were really about Nidhogg. His initial interaction with Vrtra is one of the shining moments of this. I really love exploring the misty boundary between Estinien and Nidhogg post 3.3, and I love the way they bleed into each other. I find it fascinating. I mentioned tropes earlier, and the "slowly overwritten by an older/stronger/divine being" trope is one of them. I want to explore this side of him more, but disproportionately to the attention it's actually given.

Still- my mind in these scenes was drawn to Nidhogg and the tragedy that was Nidhogg moreso the tragedy that is Estinien and his issues. There are parts where you cannot separate the two. They have common experiences. Estinien himself admits this in the infirmary scene at the end of 3.3. But Estinien is not 50% Estinien and 50% Nidhogg- so why did so many of his smarter/more thoughtful scenes get relegated to obviously-Nidhogg scenes? To me, it felt like the game was trying to make a distinction between Estinien-as-he-originally-was and Estinien-as-he-now-is-with-Nidhogg's-influence, and that distinction requires OG/pure Estinien to have been kind of dumb and only gained the thoughtfulness either from Nidhogg, or at the very least post-Nidhogg.

Do I think he got more thoughtful after the possession? Yes. Did he charge in and ask questions later in HW? So-so. Ysayle had to hold him back a few times. He wanted to. But he still had the restraint not to go kill crazy (grumbles about Garlemald scene again). He had those moments in the Churning Mists where he reflected upon his surroundings and thought as he compared what he saw to what he'd been taught and the implications of it all. He thought as he weighed what Hraesvelgr told him of the origins of the Dragonsong War against what he'd always believed, weighing what Nidhogg had done and why he'd done it and ultimately concluding that yes, Nidhogg had a good reason, but that didn't excuse what he'd done, and though it was the spilling of dragon blood that had begun the war, only dragon blood could end it. Only Nidhogg's blood. And, importantly, not the blood of every dragon. Just enough to earn peace. He would stop the cycle of vengeance. So to summarize all that rambling: Estinien pre-Nidhogg was not some thoughtless idiot. He wasn't a genius either. But he thought. Yet in EW it's often presented as an exception, or again solely for Nidhogg. In those moments I felt like Nidhogg was poking through, and while I loved it, I wish Estinien had been allowed to do that in other situations too.

Estinien in EW serves the story very well. The game needed someone who didn't get what was going on so that the game could have an excuse to explain things. The WoL served that purpose on occasion, but the WoL doesn't have much dialogue. So I feel like when the writers realized they wanted exposition, instead of having the equally-clueless WoL express how clueless they were, they relegated it all to Estinien. And yes, many times he shouldn't have known what was going on so I get it. But it's about proportion. The proportion or percentage of times he was clueless was so off that it just made him seem dumb or unobserved or uneducated and it frustrated me. In HW that was balanced between Estinien and Alphinaud for the big road trip, and even Ysayle got her time to shine occasionally. And with more scenes for each of them, it didn't feel overwhelmingly. It felt reasonable. Estinien didn't feel like a dumb or clueless guy- he felt like a normal guy who doesn't know every last thing in the world because who does? No one! Yet in EW he was among scholars. The only non scholars were him and the WoL. And with WoL being mostly silent...It was just too much. It served the story. It did not serve Estinien. That is my main conclusion of his EW characterization, though I'll elaborate more.

Examples of "Poor" Characterization in EW

I played Endwalker over the course of 3 days during Early Release. I took over 1000 screenshots, I've re-read a lot of the dialogue and watched cutscenes, and I read every bit of dialogue as it happened, but I went through it fast. My memory thus isn't perfect, and I'm sure if I went back through my screenshots I would fine more gripes. But three big ones come to mind: the hair tie, Y'shtola in Garlemald, and that one line about stabbing paperwork.

First, the hair tie. I came up with this kind of dumb explanation for it in a fic once, and it's not out of the blue based on that side story when he and Orn Khai went broke in Kugane. However, it still felt way too exaggerated. Why? Take the Orn Khai story- there Estinien is traveling with, essentially, a child, and it's basically his first time away from Ishgard. They run out of money and have to work. But there it seemed to me like poor planning on a trip that went way longer than expected because they went on a wild goose chase, and like something Orn Khai probably had a hand in. Of course it's entirely possible they went broke right away and that it was all Estinien's fault...but he's an adult. He's not an idiot. He probably should've figured out "oh, I'm getting swindled" or at least learned his lesson and been more careful in the future.

Which is the important point- Estinien's character arc in both the DRG quests and HW is about learning his lesson (and more complex things, but it's there in both). So...shouldn't he have learned his lesson in Kugane? Why did it take WoL running up to him after already buying the tie for him to realize it was overpriced and that he'd been swindled? The short answer here is that EW was very much into WoL pandering and so to score both on the WoL pandering and the funny-haha-Estinien-dumb comic relief, he had to mess up. Because of the side story, this is not out of the blue. But that doesn't mean I think it's good for Estinien. It serves the story, it sets Thavnair up as a foreign location where the WoL and friends don't have the renown they normally do, and it makes the people there more human.

But is it good for Estinien? No. 1) he should've learned his lesson. 2) in what world is Estinien so out of touch as to think a hair tie would cost that much? It just doesn't make sense. Sure he has no hobbies according to his Encyclopedia Eorzea entry so maybe he has a lot of savings from never spending his military salary, but come on. He has to know how much food costs. He has to know that a hair tie should not be that much more. That scene just made Estinien seem like 1) he hadn't learned his lesson, and 2) he's completely out of touch with society. I personally interpret him as not being a huge people person and yes he lived on his own for a while but again it's just exaggerated way too much. It's progression of his character in a way you could argue makes sense, but does not serve it.

Second, there's that scene with Y'shtola and killing the guys in Garlemald. I'm not at my computer at the moment and don't have my screenshots in front of me, but I think Y'shtola's line is something along the lines of "You're supposed to subdue them, not enthusiastically murder" to which Estinien kind of shrugs it off. Now I have mixed feelings on this scene as I said before. There are multiple ways to interpret the scene, and the interpretation of his "why" majorly impacts its read on his character.

The first time through I was really irritated because I felt like Estinien, having been in the military so long, should've been capable of listening to and following orders, and should have not only known how to subdue people without killing them, but also if he did do that, should've responded with more respect. He has restraint. I go back to the interaction with Vidofnir when Estinien threatens her but does nothing because of Ysayle- we've seen him in a situation where he has way more reason and drive to enthusiastically murder things and does not. So why here?

That gets to a later interpretation I had of the scene- what if Estinien was very enthusiastically murdering people and Y'shtola wasn't just exaggerating to make a point that he should be more careful? What if it wasn't because he was being careless/disregarding orders, but because he was having fun? This is a side that I like if you interpet the scene as a bit of Nidhogg showing through. We know via Estinien's zoomed in crazed smile in the Nidhogg kill scene that he can have a whole lot of fun killing something. Nidhogg obviously caused a whole lot of deaths and a whole lot of suffering. So if you consider that perhaps that bit of lust-for-violence resonated with or was amplified by Nidhogg, and then imagine that Estinien momentarily lost himself in it and started just going ham because he was having a great time and forgot that he wasn't supposed to be found that in the haze...well that's fascinating food for thought. I think that would be super interesting.

Except...Estinien's reaction to Y'shtola would then be...mixed feelings. Him shrugging it off could be him sort of giving in and accepting the feeling. He seems to have accepted Nidhogg being a part of him as of 5.5 (if anyone has read my essay on that lol), so I could get this. But I feel like even if he does have a lot of fun...he's never been a maniacle horny-for-murder guy. He should've been more respectful I guess. Or shocked by it. I don't know. As I said, I'm unsure on this scene. I get where it's coming from - Estinien loves to fight and we know he had happily killed things before - but him dropping back into that and being so nonchalant about it feels at odds with some of his other character progression.

So on the one hand I hated it at first. On the second, if I interpret it differently I think it's fascinating territory, but I don't feel like that interpretation is what the writers were going for. I think they were trying to show he was careless and irresponsibly violent. I can interpret it otherwise, but I don't feel like that was the intention.

Then there's that line about stabbing any paperwork that gets put in front of him. Or something like that. I think this made me the most angry of all. I know he doesn't seem to enjoy picking up papers when searching for the heretics and finding their hideout. But Aymeric mentions Estinien gave a detailed report to him in HW, and while it IS entirely possible it was a purely oral report, I had always interpreted that as a written report. By context, it seemed to me like a written report. Estinien was Azure Dragoon, and a soldier for many years before that. There is absolutely no way he got through all that without writing a single report. As he got higher up he probably got some more leeway, but he had to have written on his way up, and I doubt he didn't write anything as Azure Dragoon.

So there's that first gripe with it seeming like an exaggeration. But my problem here isn't (solely) that many of Estinien's more negative character traits have been exaggerated. It's what they do. Estinien saying he wants to stab paperwork? Sure Estinien cracks jokes. I really enjoy it when he does, and he has some clever ones. But thay specific line just makes him sound dumb. The sort of "write papers take much brain power me no have, head hurt to write, oh no, me stab instead, yes, grrrr." Estinien seems much more the macho man. The brawn to supplement all the brains between the rest of the Scions. Why can't he have both? To say that makes him seem like he's insulting the idea of writing and doing paperwork when he should really know the importance and just...

...

Final/Overall Thoughts.

I don't know. It all boils down to feeling like EW Estinien is much too often characterized as dumb, or thoughtless, or careless, or clueless, all for the sake of cracking a joke at his expense.

Jokes were made at his expense in HW. I loved how he went from "Oh these Moogle things are interesting, I wonder what's up with these" to "I want to strangle each and every last stupid flying rodents because I think they're making fun of me and they're definitely making me do menial tasks" was hilarious. It was a joke at his expense- it starts with misunderstanding and ends with being taken advantage of. But that comes from inexperience and never having dealt with the Moogles, not a lack of capabilities or thought. He's not dumb, just a little bit gullible (which he LEARNS FROM).

Endwalker is probably my 3rd favorite expansion, behind Heavensward and Shadowbringers. Its highs were really high, but its lows were very low. It had a lot of WoL pandering (Ex. Much of G'raha's character, which while present a bit in CT and definitely important to G'raha's character, felt so overboard I missed the Exarch) which could be fun, but sometimes came at the expense of other characters. It had some harsh, really well done scenes, but it tried to compensate by matching the hardness of that with super high silliness of something else to even out to a neutral, which while sometimes nice, other times felt like too much. That's Endwalker. Too much.

I said before that Estinien had a lot of scenes that I DID like in Endwalker. Him with the kids. The Mothercrystal everything (my eyes...). A few of his motivational speeches. Many of his Vrtra interactions. It goes on. Well. Not that much. But I just want to emphasize I don't think Endwalker was trash (I'd still probably give it an 8/10? Maybe 8.5) and I don't think Estinien's character was trash.

I do think that it was done a disservice. I think they quickly wrote down his character traits, compared them to the rest of the cast, and decided to focus on only a handful of them, particularly the more joke-worthy ones. By putting so much of the focus on only a handful of traits, it thus made him seem like an almost different character personality wise, and it wasn't very flattering. It was still Estinien at his core, but what I really loved Estinien for- and where his character seemed to be going by the end of HW and in 5.5- was mostly put on the back burner.

Games don't have to pander to me. They don't have to. Many of the things I love writing about for Estinien are things I don't necessarily want to see in the game, and certainly wouldn't want emphasized proportionate to how often I choose to write on them. But when the game not only goes away from what I like, but ALSO seems to go away from where it had been leading him pre-EW? That's where it feels like something went wrong.

So all in all...Estinien in EW was a character who served the overall story, not a character who served himself or the character arc that had been made for him. Estinien at his core, but wrong. Someone who had some especially great moments I'll think about and love for a long time, but had way too many bad ones to make up for and overtake that. I hope in the later patches he's allowed to distance himself from comic relief, because that's not the character he was made to be. It's something he can do, but not who he is. And EW really dropped the ball on that.

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