#QuestionOfTheDay character in a work of fiction that died or otherwise left the narrative and they should never have brought back but did?
You can answer this multiple times if you want, just make sure you say the character name, the work, and why they shouldn't have come back, you can spoiler tag if needed
#fiction #Videogames #comics #comicbooks #superheroes #anime #manga #books #scifi #fantasy #movies #film #TV #television
@ami_angelwings Kill the main characters! 
But for real though... I think they played up the stakes too much for the end of post-ARR (the banquet), and because it's a MMO, they have to backpedal on everything which just makes it feel really bad. Nanamo should've just died.
And after Heavensward, they just keep doing fakeout deaths, especially in Shadowbringers.
As much as I like Y'shtola, she should have been left in the lifestream for using Flow again (I didn't even care for her apparent sacrifice because I just knew the writers would bring her back right away, and they did, without even giving her a further handicap).
Arguably Thancred should've died fighting Ran'jit, but I guess his reconciliation with Ryne makes up for it.
@ami_angelwings The Exarch/G'raha should've been left for dead. I liked his character, but then we get G'raha back in the Source and his personality got a 180 degree change. He's just the Warrior of Light's ultimate fanboy and it's just kinda icky.
I barely knew the starry-eyed G'raha; we were only together for the Crystal Tower raids which wasn't really that long. I knew the Exarch more, but like, the Exarch part of his personality has completely vanished.
And I heard in Endwalker, they mass-sacrificed the Scions only to bring them back right away. Lol, okay.
I rather they just don't bother with fake deaths if they can't afford to kill off characters. It makes me care for them even less.
@rgbunny @ami_angelwings It’s part of why I quit. The main ensemble ended up with permanent plot armor and so the story wrote itself into a corner.
On top of that, most of the classes have been normalized to a common denominator, and the game takes zero risks with world building or dungeon design.
The game has taken its final form as a Final Fantasy theme park with a weak visual novel story with fetch quests tying it all together.
@trashwizard I also quit after finishing Shadowbringers too, for a lot of the same reasons.
I'm someone who only started last year, so I can't say much about the prior changes, but it's still rippling forward to this day. I had so much fun learning black mage until 7.2 lobotomised it, and I also didn't like the changes to the Sunken Temple of Qarn for the sake of duty support.
I also didn't like the direction Shadowbringers took the story. ARR may be a slog, but I did enjoy all of the worldbuilding and politics. It made the world feel larger and more alive than it is. In Shadowbringers, the focus is all on you and everything in the story exists to facilitate your excursion around the First, which makes it all feel really hollow.
@trashwizard The complete glossing over consequences for the Eulmorans was shocking and disappointing; they were a pain for most of the MSQ up to this point and they are suddenly friends with us and totally good guys now.
These people came to Eulmore because they gave up. Even if we accept they were fully brainwashed (which Alphinaud says otherwise), they need to have some adjustment period before they help out.
And again, they didn't lose total control of their actions; they are culpable for the atrocities they committed to the bonded citizens, like pushing them off the upper decks of Eulmore (which is highly dangerous, if not fatal). But there's just a few quests where they say sorry and the bonded citizens are totally happy with them too.
@trashwizard The funny thing is the game even points out how quickly the Eulmorans changed their tone. Alphinaud likened his character development to the Eulmorans in 5.3, and I was like, yeah, the character development that took Alphinaud 3 expansions to go through took the Eulmorans 3 seconds. Great writing.
(I also heard the same happened to Garlemald in Endwalker; that's even more disappointing when we've been dealing with them for the entire storyline since 1.0.)
The post-game content isn't much better. What the fuck was even happening in Eden's Verse? "Two primals at once is dangerous, but let's do it anyway; not like I'm the one out there fighting lololol" and Ryne being the vessel for Shiva even when she's told it's totally unneeded. Why.
@trashwizard Ruby Weapon is said to have nigh impenetrable armour that no one can figure out how to crack, yet somehow the Warrior of Light got massively power crept at some point to just shatter that armour with their bare hands?
The writers forgot that we weren't the "chosen one" because we were super duper powerful, but because we could resist primal influence and absorb the lightwardens' light without turning. But suddenly, up against Ruby Weapon, we're suddenly super strong. How.
We went from needing deus ex machinas to save us to "yeah I can just punch through metal".
The story went downhill massively in Shadowbringers. If this is the best the game can muster, than yeah, I'm just gonna read something else that is more well thought out.
@rgbunny Yeah, probably a good place to stop, then. EW had serious “walk for your lives” energy, and DT is an unhinged mess with a giant cat lady that inserts herself into every scene and the same tired crew slogging behind the WoL.
ShB at least had some gorgeous scene designs with the Crystarium and Il Mheg. EW has a great 8-man raid series going for it, but the main story was pretty disappointing for reasons like the “everyone died lol jk” one.
Ami Angelwings
Velvet
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