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swingbeard · 5 years

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Matt Reviews... Shadowbringers

Tossing a review of the Shadowbringers MSQ below the cut.

I ended up writing a lot more than I ever thought I would.

WARNING: HERE THERE BE SPOILERS.

I’m not exactly honest where to kick things off here, as I have a lot of thoughts.

WoW has been the MMO I solely dabbled in and played for the longest time before hopping into FFXIV in late 2017. I had tried it out before, but hadn’t really committed in the way I wanted to. When I finally got into Stormblood, something clicked there for me. A large part of it was finding the character I wanted to play finally, and another was being engrossed in this story centered areas of the lore that always had me interested.

I found Heavensward and Stormblood to be rather intriguing stories that continued to push the narrative along between expansion and building out the world, and expected more of the same from Shadowbringers.

But I had some worries too. The last time an MMO tried to pull off the “alternate dimension/universe” idea? It didn’t go the way a lot of folks wanted, and much was left on the cutting room floor.

Of course, that was a different game and company but I still had my concerns. My quibbles with previous FFXIV expansions also came into play; the story of Stormblood, which I liked, was uneven due to moving between two different locales and there have been examples over the years of some expansion events dragging a little bit*.

* I’m looking at you, post-A Realm Reborn MSQ content.

Nonetheless, I headed into the expansion with reasonably high expectations. Said expectations were not only met, but shattered. Shadowbringers is legitimately the best story I’ve ever seen implemented in an MMO, and it’s also one of my favorite stories in video games in a long time.

Shadowbringers is a story of sequences, of tension and release that pays off not only threads and plot points introduced early on in the expansion but from previous expansions as well. SE has always focused on long-term storytelling as part of their MSQ, but it’s more evident now than ever with this expansion.

For folks unfamiliar with the premise, your character - the Warrior of Light - is teleported to a world similar to their own but essentially on the precipice of total destruction and tasked with saving it alongside your companions from previous games. In the FFXIV universe, light and darkness are palpable concepts and balance is important. One without the other can lead to total destruction. In the player character’s world, the threat of world-ending calamity comes from the forces of darkness but in this alternate universe the threat comes instead from the Light.

In this world, your counterparts defeated the forces of darkness and disrupted the balance. This led to an apocalypse by way of The Flood, a wave of Light that engulfed the planet and destroyed everything except for a small section that you explore throughout the expansion.

Those who remain are scraping by and praying for a “warrior of darkness” to arrive while attempting to avoid the wrath of the Sin Eaters, the Light’s army of monsters that seek to eliminate and convert the remaining people. For a near century, the sky above is hidden under a layer of Light, a constant oppressive reminder.

The expansion does a fantastic job not only telling a tight and cohesive story that moves throughout the land, but it also succeeds in building out the world and making you give a damn. Sidequests that appear simple have a depth you usually don’t see in MMOs, and I’ve already had conversations with friends about certain side characters that most people would just meme at.

In a way, the MSQ works off a familiar premise that you see in most Final Fantasy games: you’re the big gods damned hero who’s arrived just in the nick of time to push back the big bad and save the world. It’s simple. It’s easy. But what Shadowbringers does differently is the emotional twists and turns throughout.

Long-standing characters like the Scions have new motivations, new things to care about, and new characters are given simple yet effective backstories and personalities that make you care in a matter of moments.

The latter makes me think of the Hrothgar character Runar, who has been living in the forests; even in a cult centered around the idea of darkness and bringing that back, he proves a warm and friendly character who cares about the people around him.

There’s also a Miqo’te couple in the opulent city of Eulmore that could have been the butt of so many bad jokes, but instead they’re woven into the main narrative with thought and care; they’re given a character arc and prove to be one of the more heartwarming stories of the whole expansion.

It’s these smaller interactions woven into the fabric of the narrative at large that make it so good. An attention to detail you don’t see in MMOs often is showcased throughout, and you have the ability to chat with numerous NPCs about events, both past and present.

While Shadowbringers has plenty of hope within its narrative, there’s so much heartache and tragedy too. There’s terrifying moments, pure body horror on display - yes, no joke. There’s a scene in the expansion that made me get out of my chair and have to stop for a moment. In fact, this happens on multiple occasions.

The moment of body horror I refer to surrounds a character named Tesleen, a young woman living in the Ahm Araeng desert. She is a healer who looks after the terminally wounded and dying, those who will become Sin Eaters post-death; she seeks to ease their pain in any way possible, including poison in their last meal that will carry them off to an endless sleep. It’s their way of life, what they do.

She becomes close with Alisaie, but unfortunately… things take a turn for the worse. Tesleen goes into the desert to seek out a child from the encampment and protects him from a Sin Eater, who converts her into one. What occurs is a terrifying scene, body horror on display as she is transformed into one. It is a raw and emotional display, one of many throughout the expansion.

It’s a tough watch, but it’s also how the expansion hits you in the heart. Some characters are lucky enough to escape from some tragic events, but they’re changed for the experience. When you think something might be happening, it often ends up getting worse.

The First is not a kind world. Yes, there are moments of hope but there’s an oppressive feeling throughout the expansion that the next moment could be your character’s last, that any of this could go wrong at any point.

But you have your friends. It’s here again I mention the Scions, your group of companions dating back even to the original release of FFXIV. Some have been on the First for years, and have been tasked by the Crystal Exarch (who we’ll get to later) with trying to help the people, to save them from the Sin Eaters and push back the Light. They have their own character arcs, their own development; some have changed for the worse, and others have changed for the better.

The new Minfilia stands out to mind here. She’s a character who is aware of her heritage, where she comes from, given the tales that have been relayed to her but she isn’t sure how to handle it, what to do with the information. She struggles as she learns about the world around her, but her character development is so fantastic to see.

Near the end of the story, she decides to become her own person and even takes on a new name where I thought she would embrace the role of “new Minfilia” and continue along that same path, which probably would have upset some folks.

Instead, it’s an idea of the twists and turns of the expansion. You think they’re headed one direction, and totally turn the other way. I can legitimately only cover a handful here because there are so many without feeling like being too overbearing.

I think it’s here where I talk about the villains of the expansion, as there’s a full array. Vauthry, the larger-than-life leader of Eulmore, regards himself as a leader free of sin when really he’s perhaps the worst of all. He is callous, cruel, vain, and has aspirations of becoming a god, of controlling the Sin Eaters.

His general Ran’jit is a great foil, an older man who fights with fists and feet. While Vauthry has been corrupted from consuming the flesh of Sin Eaters (yes, this happens), he truly believes in the righteous causes of his leader. There’s more than meets the eye with both characters; they are fascinating studies in how righteous causes can go so horribly wrong.

Then there’s Emet-Selch, an Ascian who has taken on the body of the previous Garlean emperor Solus. He was introduced in the post-Stormblood content, coming across as a wicked madman who appeared to have deeper motives. There wasn’t much to work off of then in terms of who he was.

There’s very good reason.

At some point in Shadowbringers, as you have begun to establish your resistance against the forces of the Light, he decides to accompany your party, to see just what drives you, keeps you going. He helps with reviving Y’shtola, as she decides to sacrifice herself during the story, as a way of gaining your trust.

Then he drops a bomb, a revelation. He does this time after time. In a way, Emet-Selch reminds me of a favorite character in Kreia from KOTOR 2.

They are liars and destroyers, but they also will lay the truth of their world out for you to clearly see, giving their own rational reasons for why they’re doing what they’re doing. Whereas Zenos was a fantastic villain in his own right, as he was an unapologetic villain, Emet-Selch is a different sort.

He’s a tragic villain.

He reveals the Ascians, this group of villains that didn’t really have much inspiration or any context outside of “we want to summon our dark god and take over the universe” before this expansion, as a tragic force. They were once a utopia, a society of thinkers and bureaucrats with unlimited power in the form of creation magicks that ended up destroying their world.

It’s here Shadowbringers really dives into the cosmology of the FFXIV universe in unapologetic fashion. It reveals insane truths about how the First, the Source, and other worlds are connected, how when worlds are “rejoined”, it causes cataclysmic events and thus leads further to the endgame of the Ascians.

They just want to go home and bring their people back, the majority of which were sacrificed in an effort to try and salvage their utopian home. As you get into the endgame of the Shadowbringers MSQ, you learn more about what exactly happened, what led to this, and how Emet-Selch is truly a tragic villain, someone who just wants to go home, wants to bring their people back. You see it in the way he walks, in how he talks; he is burdened by the hundreds of thousands of souls he considered his friends, his family.

They are gone. Only he and a few others remain, steadfast and committed to their cataclysm task of death leading to new life, a new chance.

This is only the surface of his arc and the backstory surrounding the Ascians. SE went ahead and made a group of villains I didn’t find particularly interesting into one of the most fascinating parts of their lore and universe.

It is because of this the ending of the MSQ is so tragic, so devastating, but also it’s a release. The sequence leading up to the final trial (boss) of the expansion is parts inspiring and heartbreaking, as your character - who has taken on the overpowering Light of the world into their body - nearly succumbs and becomes a Sin Eater.

But then you’re saved by another soul, a former Warrior of Light-turned-Warrior of Darkness named Ardbert. If you’ve played through the post-Heavensward MSQ, you know of him as a more antagonistic force-turned-tragic-villain but in Shadowbringers, he is a spirit, your guiding light. The reason why he eventually joins forces with you is an absolutely insane one, but it’s earned by the story at that point because they explain it. They show it.

It’s here where I find it difficult to really explain just what happens in this MSQ at times because I truly believe you have to see it and play through it. So many moments are earned, tragic or heartbreaking, and to explain it by way of a review in text would do it a disservice. You know a game’s story is good when I haven’t even really touched upon the zones you explore or the gameplay.

When the Shadowbringers MSQ finally ended, I just kind of sat there. Just thought upon everything I had seen, had played through, had watched. There’s some post-credits content that gives information on just what is happening back on the player character’s homeworld and it’s… interesting.

In a way I wondered just how they’d play up the threat back home because the threats on the First are so cosmic-spanning that it would be tough to go back to Eorzea and deal with the Garleans, but SE as always looks long-term and sets up some interesting pieces and plot threads that I feel like will be handled in the post-MSQ patches.

While I know some folks aren’t a huge fan of FFXIV’s gameplay, the main differentiation comes down to story and character development. SE gives a damn about keeping a consistent lore and storyline that covers multiple expansions, not at all letting up on the gas pedal especially in Shadowbringers. It is in this expansion that they completely triumph in all aspects: worldbuilding, tension and release, character development, and numerous revelations that fit so well within the lore they’ve established.

At the end of the day, there’s nothing more I can say or do than this:

Go play Shadowbringers.

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