Zanarkant

erenville is so funny to me. everything about his backstory wants him to be a protagonist but he's so effortlessly normal that it just never happens. he worked for the secret government space-ark of noah project. he's childhood friends with the princess of unified continental america. his mother was essentially one of the american warriors of light and told him to find the legendary golden city that nobody ever returns from. his hometown got swallowed by the tokusatsu dimension and that same mother died as part of an underground resistance movement in the tokusatsu dimension but persists as a cyberghost. erenville is normal though. he's a guy with a job and he never learned how to fight. his special skill is being a completely regular wildlife expert and he is far too employed for any of this high stakes sweeping epic business.

Changing your appearance in ffxiv is so funny to me, like you need to ring a dainty crystal bell to summon a fancy gay elf just to put on a swatch of a different colour lipstick. And you have to pay him 2000gil for the privilege. You can only do this after convincing a passerby that he is actually a hairdresser not a serial killer, then he'll allow you to skip his years long waiting list and summon him with the bell. And he calls you dishevelled.

mostly... i think the main virtue of this game is how honest it is. how every xpac has you be part of the most epic story you've ever heard of... and then the patches are about doing the real work. sure, you've ended the dragonsong war/liberated former imperial provinces/avoided the 8th umbral calamity/literally saved the entire universe but NOW we are going to REBUILD and tackle the complexities and differences between all the people who now have to reinvent their entire lifestyle (clergy, lowborn, highborn in heavensward; former resistance/collaborationists, different factions and tribes in stormblood; dismantling eulmorean hierarchies & dealing with the Empty, healing the wounds left by a century of horrors in shadowbringers...). and it's all very honest and hopeful and it's not saccharine at all. thinking especially of the healer RQ in endwalker like. wow

#and the way it is set up too like #daily quests (= a constant effort!) #collectable deliveries (= a real job that has you create/interact respectfully with the world) #etc etc #like. ykwim? #you have the epic part it is capital and you cannot avoid it #and it is very good #but it's ONLY the beginning #the explosion that clears away the rubble #but then you need to actually #clean it out. AND rebuild#also! why the DoH/DoL jobs are getting a lot of attention #i say this having only leveled botanist to lvl 90 so i know ive missed a lot of content but#the actual crafting and gathering jobs are as important as your fighting ones! #creation and destruction and death and rebirth etc etc #like this is very... honest and true and demanding. do you know what i mean #and YES this is about my rambling about le guin #ursula le guin's works: the videogame (now with catboys!)