We have to talk about this Main Story Quest In A Realm Reborn

My journey through Final Fantasy XIV continues quickly. My bard and black mage are now at level 46 and I’m currently looking for the icy Coerthas, which seems strangely French with all names ending in -x and -eau. When I first started playing my circle was from FF14-playing friends all told me to be patient. An empire reborn would be slow, but the story would begin by the time I got to the first expansion, HeavenswardI expected a slow burn, a gradual build-up to a big showdown with the bad guys I’ve been looking for over the last 30 levels. What happened to me this weekend was neither slow nor gradual, but Square Enix took a glove fist through my chest, rooted around my rib cage before pulling out my still beating heart and eating it in front of my eyes as I thanked them for the pleasure.

Final Fantasy XIV Enthusiasts will likely recognize the quest I’m talking about, Bringing Out The Dead. Those who don’t, fair warning, here are spoilers.

This story starts 20 levels earlier. I was instructed to visit a village of sylphs – tiny flying insectoid-like creatures that look like they are made from plant leaves. The Sylphs had long been allies of the local government, but that relationship had deteriorated over the years. My job was to fix it and bring them back into friendly harmony. When they were done, the sylphs thanked me for my efforts and sent an ambassador to help me and my comrades – the Scions of The Seventh Dawn – in our fight against the dark forces that threatened war. I leave the ambassador named Noraxia under the care of my friends at our headquarters and continue my business.

Levels later I returned to HQ to give my final report. When I first teleported into town, I saw a new group of “Concerned Citizen” NPCs at the door. I realized that was strange, but thought, “Oh, this must be my next quest. The Scions operate with little surveillance, and they have to alert the local population. My job is to calm them down. “I walked into HQ and there was nothing wrong. I went down the stairs and through the door to get to my superior’s office, and I remember the visceral physical reaction I had to have to see the ground littered with the bodies of my comrades. “Oh no!” I shouted.

This is not the first time that I have been confronted with a meaningless death in an MMO. It occurs regularly. A place I once visited was full of life, and later it is filled with corpses. What pinched me about this experience was that the game went to great lengths to remind me of it I knew these peopleIn games, I am used to bodies being inconspicuous and indistinct from other NPCs. They’re usually a random assortment of the game’s races and genders, all with the same three sets of generic NPC clothing. But these were different models, wearing different armor. It was the people in the bar with whom I imagined my character would sit and have a drink after a long day of Scion work. It’s really devastating to be able to pick someone out of a multitude of bodies and think “that person sold me potions” or “that person restored my armor” or “that sylph came here with me.” You see, Noraxia, Sylph’s little ambassador, died too. Her death was uniquely disturbing, she was entrusted to me by her people, sent to help save the world. I imagined they had no idea they were going to send one of their sisters to death.

But Final Fantasy XIV was not content to leave me there with my grief. They intended to make my injury worse. After a few intervening quests, I was sent back to the site of the massacre, with the task of taking my comrades’ bodies to a cart to take them for burial. When I arrived I was met by an extremely heartless worker who is basically saying, “Oh, you seem like a sturdy girl, carry those bodies over there and hurry, they start to stink.” You accept the quest and you suddenly become aware of the pile of corpses dumped in an alley behind you.

The quest makes you pick them up like any other search item, but with a devastating twist: the bigger the body, the longer it takes you to pick them up – the action bar fills up faster or slower depending on the size of the body you have ‘interact with again. Meaty Roegadyns take longer to retrieve the crafty Miqo’tes. But none go as fast as the little sylf, her small, leafy body in stark contrast to the rest. Then, like any other quest, the bodies go to your main item inventory, and you must hand them over to the undertaker. In most MMOs, if you pick up more than one item of the same type, they will pile up in your inventory. In another cruel turn of the knife, Noraxia’s body doesn’t stack with the rest. She gets her own inventory slot with her own lashing taste text.

Every time you complete a collection job in FF14, you must “hand over” the most important item to the quest NPC. When it came time to ‘hand over’ the bodies (represented by a white flower icon with some completely inappropriate taste text), I didn’t want to do it. For a moment my cursor hovered over the “hand over” command and I couldn’t click on it. I started to cry. And my reluctance was well-founded. Whenever you ‘hand over’ something normal, you never see the item in question. Your character goes through the movement to get something out of your pocket, quest NPC accepts it, but nothing ever comes out. When I handed the bodies over to the undertaker, they appeared in the back of the funeral home, mouths limp in their howling to death, eyes open and staring without sight.

Fuck, man.

I love it when the mechanics of a game amplify its narration. In Final Fantasy XIV, the commands you thoughtlessly used throughout the game to complete missions – pick up, use, transfer – are now so heavily invested. The game forces you to think about exactly what you’re doing, while the heartless reactions of funeral directors teach you a meta lesson in compassion.

In most MMOs you are a merchant in death. So far I have probably completed dozens of quests asking me to dig through dead bodies for some trinket. I just did this mindlessly, the dead nothing more than a search box to tick.

The way the funeral directors talk to you, urge you to hurry up, and notice that the dead aren’t going to care about a bit of rough treatment, the script is reversed. It is the mindless seekers who are out to tick that box while you are the one left behind in the aftermath of destruction. How many times have I thoughtlessly clicked through the text boxes of a widow mourning the fate of her husband? And now, if that’s been done to me, I am furious that I somehow can’t kill these people with a Fire III spell.

This quest is something that will stay with me for a long time. It’s become one of my ‘this video game made me cry’ moments, alongside the Pacifist ending of Undertale and enter the menu moment Final Fantasy XVDespite all the pain and suffering this game has inflicted on me, this, as you all tell it, is just the beginning. I can’t imagine how the game’s future storytelling moments could top this, but I’m excited to see it try. As I went through this quest, I thought of writing a strongly worded letter to Square Enix outlining my grief. Here goes:

Dear Square Enix,

How dare you. What the hell is it? How dare you!

I love this. Hurt me again soon.

Love,
Me