We have to talk about this main mission in history in a rebirth of the kingdom

My journey through Final Fantasy XIV continues quickly. My bard and black wizard are now at level 46, and I’m currently investigating the icy Coerthas, which look strangely French with all names ending in -x and -eau. When I started playing, my circle of FF14-joking friends, everyone told me to be patient. The Realm Reborn it would be slow, but the story would start when I got to the first expansion, To the sky. I expected a slow burning, a gradual construction for a great confrontation with the bad guys that I have been chasing for the last 30 levels. What happened to me this weekend was neither slow nor gradual, but Square Enix giving a gloved fist to my chest, searching my rib cage before pulling out my still beating heart and eating it before my eyes as I thanked them for pleasure.

Final Fantasy XIV enthusiasts are likely to recognize the quest I speak of – Bringing the Dead. Those who don’t, fair warning, here are spoilers.

This story starts 20 levels earlier. I was tasked with visiting a village of sylphs – small, insect-like flying creatures that look like they are made of plant leaves. The sylphs had long been allies of the local government, but that relationship had deteriorated over the years. It was my job to fix it and bring them back to friendly harmony. Once that was done, the sylphs thanked me for my efforts and sent an ambassador with me to help me and my comrades – the Scions of The Seventh Dawn – in our fight against the dark powers that threatened the war. I leave the ambassador, called Noraxia, in the care of my friends at our headquarters and I will take care of my business.

Levels later, I returned to headquarters to deliver my most recent report. When I first teleported to the city, I realized that there was a new group of “Concerned Citizens” NPCs standing outside the door. I realized it was strange, but I thought, “Oh, this must be my next assignment. Scions operate with little supervision and must be alarming the local population. It will be my job to calm them down. ”I entered the HQ and nothing was wrong. I went down the stairs and went 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 my comrades’ bodies. “Oh no!” I screamed.

This is not the first time that I am faced with a meaningless death in an MMO. This happens frequently. A place I visited once was full of life, and then it is full of corpses. What bothered me about this experience was that the game went to great lengths to remind me that I knew these people. In games, I’m used to undefined and indistinct bodies from other NPCs. They are usually a random variety of races and genres in the game, all wearing the same three sets of generic NPC outfits. But these were different models, using different armor. It was the people at the bar with whom I imagined my character would sit and have a drink after a long day at Scion’s work. It is truly devastating to be able to choose someone from a mass of bodies and think: “that person sold me potions” or “that person fixed my armor” or “that sylph came here with me”. You see, Noraxia, the little ambassador of the forest, also died. Her death was extremely disturbing, she was entrusted to me by her people, sent to help save the world. I figured they had no idea they were going to send one of their sisters to their deaths.

But Final Fantasy XIV he was not content to leave me there with my sadness. They planned to add an insult to my injury. After a few intermediate missions, I was sent back to the site of the carnage, with the task of carrying the bodies of my comrades onto a cart that would take them to the funeral. When I arrived, I was met by an extremely insensitive worker who basically said, “Oh, you look like a sturdy girl, carry these bodies over and be quick, they are starting to stink.” You accept the mission and suddenly notice the pile of bodies lying in an alley behind you.

The mission makes you catch them like any other quest item, but with a devastating twist: the bigger the body, the longer it takes you to catch them – the action bar fills faster or slower depending on the size of the body you you’re interacting with. Fleshy roegadyns take longer to “catch” than the slender Miqo’tes. But none goes as fast as the tiny sylph, its small, leafy body in contrast to the rest. Then, as with any other mission, the bodies go to your inventory of key items and you must deliver them to the undertaker. In most MMOs, if you take more than one item of the same type, they accumulate in your inventory. In another cruel twist of the knife, Noraxia’s body doesn’t fit in with the rest. It gets its own inventory space with its own destructive flavor text.

Whenever you complete a collection mission in FF14, you have to “deliver” the key item to the mission’s NPC. When it was time to “deliver” the bodies (represented by a white flower icon with some totally inappropriate flavor), I didn’t want to do that. For a moment, my cursor hovered over the “pass” command and I was unable to click on it. I started crying. And my reluctance was well founded. Whenever you “deliver” something normally, you never see the item in question. Your character makes the move to take something out of your pocket, the NPC mission accepts, but nothing materializes. When I handed the bodies over to the undertaker, they appeared at the back of the funeral wagon, gaping in their death lament, eyes open and looking without seeing.

Fuck, man.

I love it when a game’s mechanics reinforces its narrative. At the Final Fantasy XIV, the commands you used without thinking about the entire game to complete missions – take, use, deliver – now have a lot of weight. The game forces you to think about what exactly you are doing, while the insensitive reactions of the funeral directors teach you a compassionate meta-lesson.

In most MMOs, you are a death trader. Up to this point, I have probably completed dozens of missions that ask me to search for corpses in search of a trinket or another. I have done this in a habitual way and without thinking, the dead are nothing more than a search box to be checked.

The way the gravediggers talk to you, asking you to hurry up, noting that the dead won’t care about rough handling, the script is reversed. They are stupid missionaries, eager to see this box checked while you are the only one left behind in the wake of devastation. How many times, without thinking, did I click on a widow’s text boxes lamenting her husband’s fate? And now, when this was done for me, I’m furious that I can’t somehow kill these people with a Fire III spell.

This search is something that will stay with me for a long time. It became one of my “this video game made me cry” moments, filed together with the Pacifista ending of Undertale and the moment of the menu in Final Fantasy XV. For all the pain and suffering that this game has put me through, from the way you say it, this is just the beginning. I can’t imagine how the game’s future storytelling moments can overcome this, but I’m excited to see it try. While doing this search, I thought of writing a letter with strong words to Square Enix detailing my anguish. Here goes:

Dear Square Enix,

How do you dare. What the hell is that? How do you dare!

I love this. Please hurt me again soon.

Love,
I

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