Or: A Review of FF14 where I like the game but put forwards the idea that using sexual abuse as a McGuffin is Bad, Actually
Note: If you’re not aware, I’m going to critically talk about a lot of FF14’s plot in content going up to post-Stormblood. If you haven’t played that, there are spoilers here. YMMV!
With the pandemic happening everywhere and with it a coming complete inability to focus on anything or generally exist, I downloaded Final Fantasy 14. Friends said it was great, and it appears that I’m not alone in starting it during the pandemic, just from a cursory glance at Twitter (where I follow, perhaps, too many people). I’ve finished playing it now … four months after starting, so here’s my review of FF14.
A lot of the game is pretty great! I’ve played it for 600 hours for a reason at this point! FF14 is very plot-heavy, and in a lot of ways plot-focused, but the plot isn’t itself heavy — there’s just a lot of it. (There are a few heavy things, but it’s heavy in a very ‘everything will (probably) end up ok!’ way … usually, as we’ll get into.)
Most of FF14 is just … JRPG comfort food. Grind for a few hours doing dungeons and quests, dress up your character … everything is great! You have 18 (17 if you don’t count Blue Mage, a partial class) combat classes, and they all feel fun in their own way, and you can level them all within the same actual character (there’s no real reason to have another character other than wanting to be on different worlds, but take it from someone with five characters — that way madness lies). There’s a joke that Glamours(items to change the appearance of a character) are the endgame of FF14, but … it’s kind of true, and I kind of love it?
There’s also the main story, which is absolutely gigantic. This is the longest RPG, story-wise, that I’ve ever played. You even have a bunch of crafting classes, which means you can craft items and farm things to make more items! I … haven’t done any of that, but I mean, you can, and that’s pretty cool!
And as I went through the main story, and then Heavensward, I was having a great time! There are negatives — in particular, the story starts very slowly, with a lot of fetch quests between interesting things happening until you get to the ton of level 50 quests at the end of the main game (A Realm Reborn, or ARRRRRR, like a pirate).
When the plot does pick up, the writers almost immediately introduce a cool character to fridge them (Moenbryda), and then they do it again after some plot(Ysayle) … and it feels like it’s almost always women being fridged. But … at least the second fridging was /way/ less terrible than the first one, which reminded me of nothing so much as the Cedric Diggory death from Harry Potter (Wow! This person is so smart and great at everything! You’ve seen them for an hour! But we need to make you think the main character is in danger. TIME FOR THEM TO DIE).
I’d be more mad at it but you expect this sort of thing in JRPG comfort food … to an extent. The story doesn’t need to be great, it just needs to have its heart in the right place. My review of the beginning and middle of this game is basically: “The first two expansions are great, I don’t regret playing it so long, even just singleplayer. If you want JRPG comfort food, it’s totally worth it.”
It even has a free trial! What is there to lose?
And … then I got through Stormblood, and went to post-Stormblood content, and … long story short, the Yotsuyu plot post-Stormblood made me quit the game. I cancelled my subscription after not playing for over a month.
The TLDR: the game forces you to do nothing while someone who you learn has been traumatized by every single member of their family is re-traumatized by said family.
That sounds pretty terrible, huh? Well, it is!
Let me paint a picture for you. In this part of the game, you’re finally going to the land of Doma after it being built up for a long/ (there’s a character you meet in the level 50 quests who is from Doma, and this is the level 65–70 quests! This is Maybe 200, 300 quests later?), to free Doma from the Big Evil People (Garlean Empire).
There’s an evil, Doman-born woman who rules Doma. Her name’s Yotsuyu. Almost every time she’s onscreen, she’s trying to torture random people. The game also dwells on how attractive she is a lot - she was a courtesan, and now she’s the viceroy because she’s really evil.
At this point I’m a bit like, “Whatever.” It’s very dumb, but that’s fine. That’s FF14’s calling card! It’s dumb and I don’t necessarily love it, but it’s /fine/!
So after some plot, your group storms Doma Castle. You get through it and come to Yotsuyu. When you get to her she’s already been hurt by the castle — which is starting to fall-but though she looks incapacitated, she magically picks up a gun and shoots one of your members, Gosetsu, while he’s trying to hold the castle up so you and your party can escape! He gives a five-minute-long speech while the castle continues to fall. Somehow your party doesn’t die, because of course. The castle falls to pieces right when you leave, and Yotsuyu and Gosetsu remain inside, presumably dead.
My immediate reaction here when this cutscene ended was “Fuck. They’re going to bring Gosetsu back, aren’t they. I really hope not.” Because this is a fine end for them, but Gosetsu isn’t a woman — he’s a friendly guy! You can’t fridge the likable guy, they’re the only type of character the writer can actually write.
… Also, to be fair — people falling off of a cliff and you not seeing them die are characters that JRPG’s always have to bring back. There’s some sort of proverbial itch where if they don’t do it, they can’t say they’re making a JRPG. I think it’s a rule.
So some time passes in game, and people are missing Gosetsu but the game doesn’t really seem to point to him coming back. I’m kind of relieved, like, “Oh, thank goodness. They really aren’t going to bring him back. We don’t have to spend hours dealing with that bullshit.”
Immediately after I think that, they bring him back, ALONG WITH YOTSUYU. Surprise! They’re both alive!
However, because this game wants to fridge women as much as possible, Yotsuyu has had a concussion, which … makes her a child with no memory, and also a nice person now. I tweeted this:
Everyone in your party is very confused, but they try to make it work … sort of. Nobody trusts her, except for Gosetsu, who is now calling her Tsuyu. (This is really stupid, so I’m just gonna … keep calling her Yotsuyu, thanks.)
Right after she’s found, another person from the Cartoonishly Evil Garlean Empire comes here. He says he wants peace and to exchange prisoners with Doma! His name is Asahi. He reveals himself to be Yotsuyu’s brother. … Cool cool cool. No possible way this will end poorly at all! He … gives her stuff to trigger her memory, and you hear her verbally abusing his sister and prodding her.
One minute, I just want to talk directly to the writers of FF14 real quick.
Hey, writers! Looks like you’re traumatizing this character in front of the Warrior of Light and won’t let us intervene, for no reason! I’d really love it if you didn’t do that! If the Warrior of Light just lets people abuse other people in front of them maybe they’re not actually a Warrior of Light!
Can I retroactively go and lose to the Warriors of Darkness? Thanks.
I tweeted this:
After that first meeting, you talk to Lord Hien about Asahi being evil. (Lord Hien, for what it’s worth, is the ‘Good Ruler’ in this story. You’ve literally just helped him retake Doma, he can do no wrong and is kind, etc.) He says the equivalent of “OK. We have to watch that.” Cool. Sounds like he’s going to do … *checks watch* … nothing.
…
Wow! What a great ruler! I feel like I helped society get better!
You can also see through this that Yotsuyu is regaining parts of her memory, but she isn’t like … becoming evil right away. It’s almost like … she wants to get better.
At this point, I’m thinking something like:
“If this Lord Hien guy lets her get traumatized again and she becomes evil, I kind of hope she kills him.”
… So from here, everyone in your group (which includes Tsuyu now) sees Asahi again to continue to negotiate for a prisoner exchange. They talk about prisoners for like 2 seconds, and then Asahi goes, “Oh! I arranged this thing so she can see her parents to see if I can make her remember who she was!” The parents barely hide their complete contempt of her at all, and basically insult her to her face several times.
… Great! Looks like it’s happening! I really hope this doesn’t end how it looks like it will!
Afterwards, you talk to Lord Hien about it, and he ignores the abuse but doesn’t like that the parents are here, saying something like “That was a dirty trick, bringing her parents! But we have to sacrifice anything we can for my dream of ending this war by getting peace with the Garleans, and saving those Doman civilians.”
The dream the obviously-evil Asahi dangles over your head while he doesn’t believe in it at all? You’re trusting the guy who keeps lying through his teeth and trying to verbally abuse his sister until she breaks?
Great!
Gosetsu and Yotsuyu talk some, and he actually attempts to help her get better and relearn some things that the concussion made disappear, and she attempts to help him get better (he’s still recovering from his injuries he got from … getting shot by her … and then having a castle fall on him … and washing up on a beach). It’s a small, nice moment.
But she’s still re-remembering things from her past, oh no! And they make her feel like she needs to run away! (And she needs to get a parsimmon for Gosetsu, which they stress for some reason? Trying to make it funny or something???) So … she just sort of leaves. Of note is that this is while there’s a plot point for the last 10 hours or so that’s roughly:
“YOTSUYU MUST BE UNDER HEAVY WATCH. NOBODY MUST KNOW THAT SHE’S UNDER HOUSE ARREST HERE. WE HAVE TO KEEP HER INSIDE.”
Yotsuyu escapes where she’s staying because they remove the guard on her or any watch outside of a single servant, because … she didn’t get out when they did put those things on her? So they had to change that, I guess.
When you find this out, Lord Hien takes responsibility and everyone goes to try and find her right away! Oh no, terrible things and mob justice are going to happen!
Yotsuyu goes pretty far away, all the way to … the only mostly-human Doman town you’ve visited, where she killed a bunch of people before. Everyone recognizes her, and they all hate her!!! But they all … end up forgiving her, since she doesn’t remember what happened.
And she gets a parsimmon. (tada!)
This part is kind of dumb, but FF14 is kind of dumb. They do get Yotsuyu to come back to the compound afterwards, though. Lord Hien says he’ll ensure the watch is better so she doesn’t escape again.
… … …
As you may have guessed, Yotsuyu immediately escapes again.
The difference with this second escape is twofold. First, it’s nighttime. Second, Yotsuyu has continued remembering more things about herself doing evil, evil things — she remembers a ton of things when she’s at that village and they’re just running through her head. So she runs through the streets near where she was being held. These streets, which you never see empty at any other time in the game, are now suddenly empty for convenient plot reasons.
She runs to a tree near the front of the place she’s staying and almost breaks down, pondering the things she’s done, and the darkness in her soul - she can remember everything she’s ever done, and basically goes, “wow. I’m the worst. I don’t think I can ever atone for what I did.” And she pulls out a knife, intending to use it on herself.
At this point, I’m getting ready to cry. This ending would be really tragic, but it works in terms of plot I guess, and it’s just stupid enough while also kind of endearing to work. She pulls the knife back, about to commit suicide.
Someone rounds the corner and she turns around, hiding her knife! It’s … it’s her parents. It’s her parents??
This is the part where my brain sort of stopped working, and just started saying /no/ repeatedly. No fucking way. There’s no way they would do this. The writers have snatched the stupidest defeat possible from the jaws of victory (which in this case would be doing literally anything else).
Her parents start to say that she was worthless before and she’s still worthless now. She’s an idiot, etc. She’s only good if used for sex. One of them goes, “Well, now that you made us not have money, at least we can sell you into sex slavery again to get rich here.” And the other one agrees that that’s a great idea!
And her expression goes slowly from a pretending mask, trying not to appear like she’s about to kill herself, to a sadistic smile. She reveals the dagger she was holding.
At this point I’m actually sort of rooting for Yotsuyu to kill them all, right? Like … if Doma is this bad at protecting its people two weeks after the invasion — still basking in the glow of success! — maybe she should’ve been successful in burning it down? At the very least she’s justified in killing her parents, who have literally said that they’re going to sell her into slavery to get slightly more money.
As soon as her parents see that Yotsuyu has a knife and appears not to be her concussion self anymore, they suddenly change their tone and start to beg for help from the air around her. They refuse, to the very end, to actually talk to her or treat her like a human being. No apologies. No “we should’ve been better!”. It’s like they’re literally fake humans, they’re so cartoonishly evil.
And … she kills them. Her brother Asahi is watching in the shadows, and asks her to come back with him to be evil again, and she agrees to do it, because she is fully back in the mindset that Doma should burn.
A bit after that (again; for convenient plot reasons), the whole group of people who’s with you — again, you are all supposed to be good people — find Yotsuyu’s parents’ corpses. The whole group pauses there, and Lord Hien’s like “Well, we all knew she was evil in the end. I guess this shows that you can never become a better person and conquer your demons.” Gosetsu doesn’t say many words, but his demeanor is basically like “I’ve been betrayed. Yotsuyu is evil now that she killed her parents for being child abusers who wanted to sell her into prostitution again! That was evil! I am so sad. I am never going to be not sad again.” And you, the Warrior of Light with the power of the Echo who knows exactly what happened, agree with everyone else.
There’s a little more to the story — Asahi is killed by Yotsuyu as she dies, after she becomes a primal for a god and you defeat her— the spectre of Gosetsu, like, helps you protect the good part of her soul from the evil one? It’s weird, but whatever. Again, FF14 is weird. I didn’t mind it — it was satisfying to see Asahi die, and I guess Yotsuyu gets her denouement here, and that part of the story is OK in and of itself.
But I couldn’t get out of my head that the writers chose to have your player character see an NPC get mercilessly abused by her entire family for maybe an hour of cutscenes, makes your player character have no option to stop the abuse, and then has your player character — along with everyone else in your group — blame the person who was abused for ensuring, in the only way that it appears that they can, that they are no longer abused.
What?????
I played through a little more of the game; I think I got through two more story quests before I put the controller down. But my heart’s not in it anymore. This Warrior of Light isn’t mine. And — even though I was playing it to play with multiple friends who have max-level characters — it probably won’t be mine again, at least not for a long time.
Thanks, FF14.
/unsubscribe.
Note: I wrote this from memory almost entirely (as I haven’t played the game for over a month …). If you don’t like parts of it, feel free to comment.