We need to talk about this main story: the search for a reborn kingdom

My trip to Final Fantasy XIV continues at a good pace. My bard and my black wizard are now at level 46, and I’m currently looking for Coerthas ice cream, which looks strangely French with all the names ending in -xi -eau. When I started playing, my circle of FF14-playing friends told me to be patient. A reborn kingdom it would be slow, but the story would resume when it reached its first expansion, Celestial. I was expecting a slow burn, a gradual build for a big showdown with the bad guys I’ve been chasing the last 30 levels. What happened to me this weekend was not slow, nor gradual, but rather Square Enix taking a gloved fist to my chest, rooting myself in my rib cage before removing the heart that was still beating and eating it in front of the eyes as he thanked them for the pleasure.

Final Fantasy XIV enthusiasts will probably recognize the search I’m talking about: Bringing Out The Dead. Those who don’t, fair warning, here are spoilers.

This story begins 20 levels earlier. They commissioned me to visit a village of sylphs: small flying creatures resembling insectoids that look like they were made from plant leaves. The Silips had been allies of the local government for a long time, but this relationship had deteriorated over the years. My job was to repair it and put them back in friendly harmony. Once done, the syllables thanked me for my efforts and sent with me an ambassador to help me and my comrades, the Scions of the Seventh Dawn, in our struggle against the shadows of the powers that be. they threatened war. I leave the ambassador, named Noraxia, in the care of my friends at our headquarters and I dedicate myself to my business.

Levels later, I returned to headquarters to deliver my latest report. When I first teleported into town, I noticed that there was a new group of “Worried Citizen” NPCs standing outside the door. I realized it was weird, but I thought, “Oh, this must be my next search. Scions operate under little supervision and should be alarming to the local population. It will be my job to calm them down. ” I walked into headquarters and nothing was going well. I went downstairs and through the door to get to my superior’s office and I remember the visceral physical reaction I had when I saw the floor full of bodies of my comrades. “Oh no!” I shouted.

It’s not the first time I’ve faced a senseless death in an MMO. It happens often. One place I visited was full of life and later filled with corpses. What made me break this experience was that the game went to great lengths to remember it I knew these people. In games, I am used to bodies being indescribable and indistinguishable from other NPCs. They are usually a random assortment of races and game genres, all with the same three sets of generic NPC clothing. But these were different models, with different armor. It was the people at the bar with whom I imagined my character would sit down for a drink after a long day of Scion work. It’s really devastating to be able to pick someone from a mass of bodies and think, “that person sold me potions” or “that person fixed my armor” or “that syllable came here with me.” You see, Noraxia, Silf’s little ambassador, also died. His death caused a unique disorder, his people entrusted to me, sent to help save the world. I imagined they had no idea they would send one of their sisters to her death.

But Final Fantasy XIV I was not content to leave myself there with my grief. They planned to add insult to my injury. After a few intermediate missions, they sent me back to the slaughter scene, in charge of carrying the bodies of my comrades in a cart that would take them to the grave. When I arrived, I found an extremely insensitive worker who basically said to me, “Oh, it looks like sturdy clothes, take those bodies over there and be quick, they’re starting to stink.” Accept the mission and suddenly you are aware of the pile of bodies thrown into an alley behind you.

The mission makes you pick them up like any other element of the mission, but with a devastating twist: the bigger the body, the longer it will take to pick them up; the action bar fills up faster or slower, depending on the body size you want. you are interacting with. Robust Roegadyns take longer to “pick up” the Miqo’tes. But none go as fast as the tiny sylph, its small, leafy body contrasts with the rest. Then, like any other mission, the bodies go into your inventory of key items and you have to deliver them to the funeral home. In most MMOs, if you pick up more than one item of the same type, they are stacked in your inventory. In another cruel twist of the knife, Noraxia’s body does not stack with the rest. Get your own inventory space with your own taste text.

Whenever you complete a collection search on FF14, you must “deliver” the key item to the mission NPC. When it came time to “deliver” the bodies (represented by a white flower icon with some totally inappropriate flavor text), I didn’t want to do that. For a moment, the cursor hovered over the “delivery” command and I couldn’t click on it. I started to break down. And my reluctance was well-founded. Whenever you “deliver” something normally, you’ll never see the item in question. Your character goes through the move of choosing something out of your pocket, the mission NPC accepts it, but nothing ever materializes. When I handed over the bodies to the funeral home, they appeared in the back of the hearse, with their mouths loose on the moan of death, their eyes open and their eyes fixed.

Caram, man.

I love that the mechanics of a game reinforce your narrative. In Final Fantasy XIV, the commands you unintentionally used throughout the game to complete missions (collect, use, deliver) have now been reversed with so much weight. The game forces you to think about what exactly you are doing, while the insensitive reactions of the funeral home teach you a meta-lesson of compassion.

In most MMOs, you are a death trader. Up to this point, I’ve probably completed dozens of missions asking me to throw dead bodies to look for one trinket or another. I have done it habitually and without any sense: the dead are nothing more than a message board to mark.

The script revolves around the way the undertakers talk to you, urging you to hurry up and realize that the dead won’t mind a little harsh manipulation. It’s the pointless search engines that want this box ticked while you’re what’s left after the devastation. How many times have I clicked without thinking about the text boxes of a widow lamenting her husband’s fate? And now, when this has been done to me, I am furious that somehow I can’t immolate these people with a Fire III spell.

This mission will stay with me for a long time. It has become one of my moments “of this video game that made me cry,” presented alongside the pacifist ending of Undertale and the timing of the menu Final Fantasy XV. Despite all the pain and suffering this game has caused me, from the way you explain it, this is just the beginning. I can’t imagine how future moments of storytelling in the game can overcome this, but I’m excited to see you try it. While doing this research, I thought about writing a letter with firm words in Square Enix detailing my anguish. Here it goes:

Dear Square Enix,

How dare you. What the fuck? How dare you!

I love that. Please hurt me again soon.

Love,
Jo

.