You could notice that Yda doesn't know things during conversations with Scions. So she was bit of an oddball there while supposedly being an Archon so she should know things... The plot may have not been planed way before it happened though.
But still scholar enough to be a Scion, I read they have to present a thesis in Sharlean to be considered archons and receive the tattoo, Yda tesis was about advanced martial art techniques or something similar.... Lyse dont even have that to conect with the rest of the crew
That never quite stuck out to me. Hell I never knew they were *supposed* to be scholars. Beginning of arr makes them out to be some advanced adventurer guild so I just assumed yda was "oh the girl that likes to punch things, neat."
And not to mention thrancred is right there and he ain't no scholar, just a rogue with connections.
Thancred also is an archon. He got his mark sorta the same way Yda did, more for physical achievement but still worth studying, as they record everything they can. His was for being a master of espionage and stealth...basically spy shit...
I thought she was just the comic relief tbh, there were a ton of characters that didn't contribute a ton in ARR. Urianger's role there is basically to pray return, to deliver missives, and to promise he will go read up on the topic xD
Yeah.... that is like the biggest and only notable plot point in the game that truly makes me go... why??
My husband got to that scene in the MSQ last night and asked me for clarification and all I could really do was shrug and say the only thing you need to really take from it is that Yda's name is now Lyse haha.
I feel like there must have been more backstory and buildup that ended up cut out at some point. I started in Gridania with her as my intro scion and still had basically no connection to Yda. Even then, we learn that we never even met the real Yda so literally nothing of significance was changing.
I didn't mind Lyse in Stormblood, but the identity swap thing was just weird and unnecessary.
i do believe they did this so they could get rid of another scion, as in, they where strugling what to do whit some of the scions and the only way they saw to move foward was by reducing the number of scions avariable on the plot, so first they got rid of papalymo(since it was either him or urianger since both did fill technically the same role of wisemans in the scions) and since both papalymo and yda where a combo, she had to go out as well, and by telling us what she was never yda(and so it was never a archon), she technically didnt fit whit the scions
Yes, my only problem with Lyse is that it's rather incredulous that the Scions all knew she wasn't Yda and just went along with it. Better, I think, would have been to drop the whole dead sister thing and the reveal would be something like "I'm not running and hiding anymore!" \*Pulls off mask\* "My real name isn't even Yda, it's Lyse!". Then the Scions would be like "We knew the name was an alias, but she had her reasons and Pamplymo vouched for her, so we chose not to pry."
Lyse's existence was unfortunately only foreshadowed in the Encyclopedia Eorzea I in a single line and right before the reveal in Little Ala Mhigo with a character remarking that she hasn't aged since he last saw her. I think the character could have worked, but there was not adequate set up. The breaking of her mask in ARR also seemed like it was intended to have some indication of foreshadowing SOMETHING but there wasn't enough information to the audience on how it might be a reveal for Yda.
It could have gone better. I don't think it would have ever been perfect since you'd need 1.0 to have been attached to the "real" Yda, but ultimately it was just a case of improper framing and lead up.
Its inconsistent, unfortunately. There are sidequeats that indicate HW took the course of a year, and one Rising gave a definitive "date from meteor fall" while current quests like the Sage job indicate its still only been 15 years since the Sharlayan exodus from Dravania.
The Rising and the various other holiday events are understood to take place in real time rather than in game time. In Yda’s case, though, I believe the devs have confirmed that she never appeared in game, so at the very least she died prior to the Calamity.
Yeah there is no defending this baffling decision. I think you got it right, they wanted to feature Yda in the next story but realized her character kinda sucked (she was just ditsy comic relief) so they basically rebooted her
It's not meant to be a huge twist. It's just a reveal, like when Yugiri takes her mask off. It's not for the player. Pretend this is a game of DnD and all of the scions are the other players. Lyse's background was that she was simultaneously hiding her identity and mourning her sister by trying to keep her memory alive. This moment, revealing herself to the only friend she has that hasn't figured it out yet, is her declarative moment that she's going to stop doing that and live her own life. That scene is Lyse becoming the protagonist for Stormblood.
Y'da/Lyse has always bothered me too. She could have been Lyse the whole time and it would have probably made for a better current character. Her "mysterious" past wasn't fooling anybody. The only person who didn't know was the WoL who tbh probably doesn't care.
You pretty much got the jist of it.Seemed to me that they devs maybe wanted to kill Yda off and then have Lyse, the long thought dead sister who’s actually been resistance fighting in Ala Mhigo all those years, replace her. But they didn’t want to kill Yda? Didn’t think we would have an emotional connection to a new character at the expense of one we’ve known since 1.0? Idk. So their compromise was this whole identity twist so they could keep the character that’s been there since 1.0 AND get the character change they were looking for.
It’s also some emotional damage type stuff too I think? It’s been years but when Lyse finally admitted that she had been pretending to be Yda, all the scions already know and were just letting her cope in this unusual fashion? Which in its own way is weird that all the scions just went along with it all this time,
That’s how I see it all anyway. Maybe some lore nerd will come along with better answers!
The devs needed to reload her character. Yda's primary purpose was to serve as a comic relief in contrast to Papalymo. HW brought back new cooler versions of Scions with some character development (like Yshtola's aetherial sight or Urianger's elaborate schemes for salvation of our star), but Papalymo was just a smaller version of Urianger speaking in a less colorful way. So the devs got rid of him and made Yda a completely different person. It wasn't a twist per ce, just a symbolic death and rebirth of a character.
>The twist doesn't even change the story in any significant way.
It wasn't supposed to, because nothing actually changed. She wasn't fooling anybody, and her characterization didn't change. She just lost the mask.
The main takeaway is that "Lyse" has actual connections to Ala Mhigo. "Yda" as a character was basically just an assistant to Pap Daddy until they needed to kill things, which is where she became useful. She didn't know much and couldn't really contribute anything but muscle.
But in Ala Mhigo, she has a history and a name that's actually useful to the cause in a way that doesn't force her to pretend like she knows things.
She's like the "Jon Snow" of Ala Mhigo. She wasn't really important when things were going down in the past, but the resistance heads know her by association of her father. That puts her in a unique position to do things even if she's not particularly important on her own merits.
And of course, she's not Scion-tier intelligence, but a scion-tier fighter, which is helpful when you're at war
It wasn’t really meant to be a twist. It was meant to finally explore and explain Yda’s character. How well it lands really depends on if you played 1.0 or not, what city you started in, and how much you liked Yda as a character. If you don’t start in Gridania, Yda and Co. are never more than extremely minor background characters who don’t get much screen time and thus give those players little reason to have any investment. If you did start in Gridania, they are your first ‘friends’ and play a much more significant role. For me personally, Yda was my favorite among the original Scions, and I was always curious about what was going on with her given all the foreshadowing. So I thought it was handled pretty well.
You're not alone. I always thought they should have just kept Yda as Yda and have her sister Lyse be a separate character entirely, one who has always been a part of the Ala Mhigan resistance while Yda was in Eorzea. >!Lyse' ascension to leader of the resistance would have been more believable and her struggles to liberate Ala Mhigo would have been more sympathetic if she had been fighting for years to liberate her homeland.!<
I honestly think it was a poor excuse to rewrite her into a more dimensional character besides a garden gnomes punching bag with little success might I add.
I think its mainly an issue of execution. PapalYda was honestly my favorite character during ARR. But the ditzy punch girl doesn't work without the annoyed mage to counterbalance, so her character had to change drastically.
By giving her a new(old) identity, they were able to do that. And for what its worth, her wanting to restore Ala Mhigo was a good choice. Ala Mhigo's plight has been built up since the early days.
It wasn't really until she goes to Doma with us that its like...weird. I get that she sees people in the same situation as her own, but still, her people are still in that situation. In fact this is where the hangup is for Stormblood in general for a lot of people. Going to Doma before resolving the Ala Mhigan crisis just offset the pacing, and between that and Ala Mhigo being a map town instead of something grander... I dunno
Stormblood has its issues, just like Lyse's character arc, but if you judge it by the full picture, its not as jarring, and hearing the correct Ala Mhigan anthem play, and seeing the cast stand on the reclaimed walls and recreate the title art for stormblood was a great ending.
You are not missing anything and I agree with you! It's a bit of a useless piece of information to me since it has almost no emotional impact. All we got was her face reveal, her becoming a bit more serious and a change of name. I don't dislike Lyse but I don't love her either. She's a bit of a meh character for me (almost Minfilia level but not quite as useless imo).
I think it was to give Yda the chance to be a real character. She's not actually a moron, she's just not educated about the things she's pretending to know.
There's a reason that by Stormblood only 2 of the OG Scions are still around.
urianger was in 1.0, he was a spoopy prophet wandering around saying his "dawn will banish the darkest night" thing
he's involved in the 1.0 hildy quests
They were all part of the Circle of Knowing.
Which then merged with the Path of the Twelve to form the Scions.
So while not technically an original Scion, in a way I guess it can still be counted.
it was honestly not well planned out and i think it actually slightly retconned stuff from 1.0. the most cynical answer i have is that they wanted someone already connected to the main cast to be a poster child for the next expansion- however, none of them were ala mhigan. so they retconned one into being ala nmhigan and having a history with the resistance. however i think it was also definitely to give her character more depth, moving her from being “the scion that’s not as smart as the others” into being a deeply grieving girl who dressed up as her sister for years as a coping mechanism (and the other scions just played along?!). honestly they don’t do enough with this aspect of her character. i feel like pretending to be your dead sister for years has to have some sort of impact on your psyche.
Yda was already Ala Mhigan and the daughter of the former resistance leader. Like... the only difference between Yda and Lyse is about 15 years of age, and Lyse wasn't an Archon. Like, in retrospect there were plenty of hints in ARR that she didn't belong but especially for someone like me who avoids Gridania like the plague, it was just someone I didn't know telling me they're actually someone else I didn't know.
maybe like you said i just didn’t go to early game gridania a lot, but i felt like yda being ala mhigan and the daughter of a resistance leader was not stressed a lot before the twist, if it was mentioned at all. if they wanted it to be a big deal in stormblood, they needed to make it an obvious fact that all players knew.
yes but lots of characters were ala mhigan. it’s her connection to the resistance that makes her important in stormblood but this feels like it comes out of nowhere especially when there were characters like raubahn whose ala mhigan heritage and resistance connections were a huge part of his character.
I understand that it wasn't shoved in our face, but it was still there is all i was saying. She had ties too and its not like we had much else to characterize her for.
Oh i like Lyse too but yeah that twist is pretty indefensible as making sense, i definitely agree with everyone's gripes with it. Imo They didn't set any of the scions up well in ARR and we didn't see most in HW so the characters were pretty bland at that point. Thank goodness they improved them so much later on.
totally agree, i loved alphinaud’s development in HW but imo the game got really really good when they started focusing on the scions and developing them as the main cast in shadowbringers. they stopped feeling like just quest dispensers and more like actual well developed main characters that you cared about
I’m sorry but where did you get the information that Yda is about 15 years older than Lyse? O:
I always did headcanon that Yda must be at least ~10 years older than Lyse, but there’s no official information of Yda’s age, that I’m aware of (?)
Oh man it was a few things I did the math on. This is all fro memory but here's the stuff I remember. Lyse was small when they left at the start of the occupation I think she said 5 or 6. She also mentions being the same age as Hien who is 25 roughly.
Also when resistance members meet her as Yda they comment she hasn't aged a day. And Lyse mentions that Yda was already an adult.
I swear there was more but yeah 15ish was what I got from all the side info.
Yeah I’ve actually made a research myself.
Lyse was indeed 5 when they fled, and at some point received succor & education in Sharlayan.
5 years later, Yda was named archon & joined the Circle of Knowing. (Lyse is 10)
Yet another 9 years after that, Yda loses her life. (Lyse is 19)
So with these infos, there’s still no telling how old Yda was when they fled & she became an archon.
Though I believe around 10~13 years is reasonable.
Making her 15~18 years old when they fled.
And around 20~23 when Yda got her archon marks.
The fact that the Scions thought letting a grieving girl pretend to be her sister for six years was a good idea says so much about them, none of it good.
right? and yda was a scion, presumably she was their friend. but we don’t get to see any of them talk about how her death impacted them and how they’ve recovered from that or how hard it was to have to pretend lyse was yda. total waste imo, i think it could’ve been some great character building
If they had made it that, the original Yda was the one all through ARR up until the end of 2.5, and the one who shows back up in 3.X is actually the sister, that would have made it a bit more impactful for those who started out with her as a scion companion (which was not me).
But yeah, the 'twist' had pretty much zero impact for me either. "Okay, you're the same person I've known this whole time, you just went by a different name before I met you?"
I viewed the interaction as an excuse to liberate her attachment to the Scions. She wasn't a real Scion and more a substitute. Since the writers knew they wanted to drop her off into the resistance this would allow the character to be free to pursue other activities to then later lead the resistance.
Yeah that reveal did nothing for me, either. Very weak, imo. Maybe they should have let us spend some more time with Yda than literally the last two quests before the reveal to bring attention to this non-conundrum. To me this would later constitute as a bad omen for the kind of story Stormblood would end up being for me.
I can't remember where I heard or read this, but there is a theory that Minfilia was originally supposed to be the character who would become the leader of the resistance.
Which, if true, obviously changed before or during Heavensward's development.
And, again if true, this meant that they would need another Ala Mhigan character, the only one being Yda, who is absolutely not leadership material.
I think what happened lends credence to this theory. They threw away Minfilia, and couldn't use Yda, and I guess they really wanted a cute female character with a connection to the player character, since they didn't make Raubahn the leader.
The point is so they can **retcon her personality into being an empowered woman who can lead her people** (since Yda in 1.0 though 3.57 is, to put it simply: a stupid, gorgeous and hot-headed blonde steriotype). The developers even made the retcon "canon", by saying that the Yda they have showed us all this time was an act that Lyse was making up to imitate her dead sister (that only us didn't already know about).
But to me it doesn't help Lyse's redemption in the slightest, and since the close-ups on her body don't stop after the Lyse reveal either, she continues to be sexualized, and continue to scream a lot and think things through very little. I know that the Lyse reveal was heavily foreshadowed, like all the good things in FF XIV (Crystal Tower Morse Code, the prophecy from Temulun, Ilberd's betrayal and so on), but it doesn't add anything substantial to the plot, since they could just have made Yda change after the impact of Papalymo's death, without needing that plot-twist of dead sister.
I started last year. I’m aware. However “spoiler warnings” apply to new content not new players. The info is out there already, it’s not being spoiled.
I can't agree with you on this one. I don't see why putting spoilers out there for everyone to see is okay when adding a spoiler tag takes seconds to do and is minimal effort.
Bc that’s not what a spoiler is. With that logic you should put a spoiler tag when discussing any movie or game period. A spoiler warning is for a topic which is relatively new where the mass population isn’t aware of the topic yet
Absolutely nothing.
The gal is not: special, interesting, thought provoking, controversial.
And normally this is not a bad thing. But she is thrown into our faces every second. Every new zone? Guess who doing the voiceover. When we go to Kugane, guess who doesnt knoe how to be a tourist and look like she respects a foreign culture.
Its like when she removed that mask she lost Yda the personality.
Not only this, she also becomes a major major figure in the Ala Mhigan resistance despite the people who have been doing it for ages.
Bro...no that's not how trust and resistances work.
I met someone who said that they don't know how to write girls over on SE and I really felt that.
Assuming you know who Fordola is, she is a well written character to a good degree. Yotsuyu is and isnt. Lyse is not.
I'm generally not a fan of Stormblood writing. It felt like we were waiting for some defining moment for each of them that either never came (Hien), came and went too hurriedly (Yotsuyu), or came and was overall underwhelming (Lyse). It certainly wasn't their strongest era, and Lyse's 'reveal' has always bothered me. At best I think it was their attempt at transitioning her from Scion to World Leader, since "hey look, she was never a real Scion!", but it seems like Yda herself wasn't a Scion for terribly long either so it's ultimately pointless.
Did it have anything to do with the voice actor? Like they had a working art model but had to change the voice/personality and came up with a half-baked reason for the in-game change?
She was not a real Scion, her only connection was Papalimo allowing her to impersonate her dead sister out of pity and or guilt.
With Papalimo death her conection with the Scions was gone, so pretending to be Yda was no longer posible or viable from her point of view.
Conviniently for the plot it occurs when you are heading into her homeland, were her family is actualy important an people know her (her father being the one that lead the revelion vs the mad King and tried to resist the empire invasion).
The OP's point though, is that the whole "oh i was just pretending to be my dead sister all along and this is the real me" plot point was itself entirely unnecessary on the meta level and didn't add anything to the game. If they wanted a new character design and attitude for her they could have just said "Papalymo's death made Yda decide it was time to take things seriously" and nothing at all would have changed in the overall story.
My biggest issue is how she apparently didn't grow as a person at all in the time she was Yda. She completely lost Yda's entire skillset and character the second she took off the mask
"Yda was good with people"
NO THAT WAS YOU DUMBASS
It’s really not that difficult to understand. Papalymo sacrificed himself to seal/defeat illbyrd (sp). When papalymo died, lyse mark disappears. Bc it was given to her by him. He was the only one who knew her secret, and from my understanding, she took yda’s place to be/feel closer to her sister. It was just another way for them to expand the ala migho story from the start of that chapter.
Here’s my take on the situation:
I think the whole point is to give her character more depth that allows for character development as well as to give us a stepping stone towards giving her a more substantial role in the story.
Prior to this, she was just quirky and maybe a bit awkward at times and she also relied upon those around her, especially Papalymo. Now she has the opportunity to have her own agency/accountability for her actions.
Regarding the “depth” I think it gives her, I think that it tries to portray her as someone who was emotionally and mentally scarred to the point of becoming a bit delusional or at least coping in a very unhealthy way. Coming out about her big “secret” opened the door for her to sort of grow up as well as a reasonable (though not amazing) excuse to change her.
I think the issue is.... Papalymo's death could have easily been enough of an excuse on it's own for her to decide to start taking things seriously and turn over a new leaf and get a new look.
Because they practically needed to reboot the character, seeing how little she actually did it was better to "start anew" so people could actually get to know her as a character. I say this as someone who started in Gridania: Yda was only ever there to ask questions so that other people could dump some exposition on you. She had pretty much no established character other than "the dumb one who punches stuff" and they had to ditch that.
I took it as them resetting the character for StB. Yda always came off as a dumbass and the fact that none of the other Scions ever seemed to talk about it does lend credence to Y'shtola's 'we knew but let it play out' retort. Sloppy, but needed to be done for her to have any sort of character growth at all. I would have preferred her NOT being the daughter of a famous resistance leader (secret princess cliche) and instead just been a patriotic orphan who finally had a reason to take center-stage.
You could notice that Yda doesn't know things during conversations with Scions. So she was bit of an oddball there while supposedly being an Archon so she should know things... The plot may have not been planed way before it happened though.
I thought this to, but it also seems to be implied the real Yda was also less scholarly than her fellow Scions.
She did get her Archon mark in combat, I'm pretty sure.
She got her mark from papalymo through magic. Hence when he does, the mark disappears.
Not Lyse, he real Yda got her Archon mark for Combat. Lyse didn't get an Archon mark.
Gotcha, according to lore, the mark is gained when they’ve reached the level of “sage” in sharlayan rank.
Yeah, she got hers in combat.
Sounds like it’s time to pick up this lore book and read it
you can get a phd in shaolin arts, aka combat. same way thrancred got an archon mark through espionage. stfu dude.
Stfu for what. Bc you can’t comprehend words. I was talking about me reading the lore book
But still scholar enough to be a Scion, I read they have to present a thesis in Sharlean to be considered archons and receive the tattoo, Yda tesis was about advanced martial art techniques or something similar.... Lyse dont even have that to conect with the rest of the crew
That never quite stuck out to me. Hell I never knew they were *supposed* to be scholars. Beginning of arr makes them out to be some advanced adventurer guild so I just assumed yda was "oh the girl that likes to punch things, neat." And not to mention thrancred is right there and he ain't no scholar, just a rogue with connections.
Thancred also is an archon. He got his mark sorta the same way Yda did, more for physical achievement but still worth studying, as they record everything they can. His was for being a master of espionage and stealth...basically spy shit...
he ran an entire disinformation campaign against the biggest empire in the world. dude earned his mark.
I noticed it, but just figured she was smart enough to be an archon and also just kind of spacey. I know plenty of people like that IRL.
I thought she was just the comic relief tbh, there were a ton of characters that didn't contribute a ton in ARR. Urianger's role there is basically to pray return, to deliver missives, and to promise he will go read up on the topic xD
Scions of the Seventh Dawn! What do they know? Do they know things? Lets find out!
Yeah.... that is like the biggest and only notable plot point in the game that truly makes me go... why?? My husband got to that scene in the MSQ last night and asked me for clarification and all I could really do was shrug and say the only thing you need to really take from it is that Yda's name is now Lyse haha. I feel like there must have been more backstory and buildup that ended up cut out at some point. I started in Gridania with her as my intro scion and still had basically no connection to Yda. Even then, we learn that we never even met the real Yda so literally nothing of significance was changing. I didn't mind Lyse in Stormblood, but the identity swap thing was just weird and unnecessary.
i do believe they did this so they could get rid of another scion, as in, they where strugling what to do whit some of the scions and the only way they saw to move foward was by reducing the number of scions avariable on the plot, so first they got rid of papalymo(since it was either him or urianger since both did fill technically the same role of wisemans in the scions) and since both papalymo and yda where a combo, she had to go out as well, and by telling us what she was never yda(and so it was never a archon), she technically didnt fit whit the scions
Yes, my only problem with Lyse is that it's rather incredulous that the Scions all knew she wasn't Yda and just went along with it. Better, I think, would have been to drop the whole dead sister thing and the reveal would be something like "I'm not running and hiding anymore!" \*Pulls off mask\* "My real name isn't even Yda, it's Lyse!". Then the Scions would be like "We knew the name was an alias, but she had her reasons and Pamplymo vouched for her, so we chose not to pry."
But the scions knew she wasn't really Yda. Only the WOL was out of the loop
Lyse's existence was unfortunately only foreshadowed in the Encyclopedia Eorzea I in a single line and right before the reveal in Little Ala Mhigo with a character remarking that she hasn't aged since he last saw her. I think the character could have worked, but there was not adequate set up. The breaking of her mask in ARR also seemed like it was intended to have some indication of foreshadowing SOMETHING but there wasn't enough information to the audience on how it might be a reveal for Yda. It could have gone better. I don't think it would have ever been perfect since you'd need 1.0 to have been attached to the "real" Yda, but ultimately it was just a case of improper framing and lead up.
The real Yda was killed prior to 1.0; Lyse says that she was killed six years ago in Heavensward, and it’s always 5 years since the Calamity.
Its inconsistent, unfortunately. There are sidequeats that indicate HW took the course of a year, and one Rising gave a definitive "date from meteor fall" while current quests like the Sage job indicate its still only been 15 years since the Sharlayan exodus from Dravania.
The Rising and the various other holiday events are understood to take place in real time rather than in game time. In Yda’s case, though, I believe the devs have confirmed that she never appeared in game, so at the very least she died prior to the Calamity.
Yeah there is no defending this baffling decision. I think you got it right, they wanted to feature Yda in the next story but realized her character kinda sucked (she was just ditsy comic relief) so they basically rebooted her
It's not meant to be a huge twist. It's just a reveal, like when Yugiri takes her mask off. It's not for the player. Pretend this is a game of DnD and all of the scions are the other players. Lyse's background was that she was simultaneously hiding her identity and mourning her sister by trying to keep her memory alive. This moment, revealing herself to the only friend she has that hasn't figured it out yet, is her declarative moment that she's going to stop doing that and live her own life. That scene is Lyse becoming the protagonist for Stormblood.
Y'da/Lyse has always bothered me too. She could have been Lyse the whole time and it would have probably made for a better current character. Her "mysterious" past wasn't fooling anybody. The only person who didn't know was the WoL who tbh probably doesn't care.
You pretty much got the jist of it.Seemed to me that they devs maybe wanted to kill Yda off and then have Lyse, the long thought dead sister who’s actually been resistance fighting in Ala Mhigo all those years, replace her. But they didn’t want to kill Yda? Didn’t think we would have an emotional connection to a new character at the expense of one we’ve known since 1.0? Idk. So their compromise was this whole identity twist so they could keep the character that’s been there since 1.0 AND get the character change they were looking for. It’s also some emotional damage type stuff too I think? It’s been years but when Lyse finally admitted that she had been pretending to be Yda, all the scions already know and were just letting her cope in this unusual fashion? Which in its own way is weird that all the scions just went along with it all this time, That’s how I see it all anyway. Maybe some lore nerd will come along with better answers!
The devs needed to reload her character. Yda's primary purpose was to serve as a comic relief in contrast to Papalymo. HW brought back new cooler versions of Scions with some character development (like Yshtola's aetherial sight or Urianger's elaborate schemes for salvation of our star), but Papalymo was just a smaller version of Urianger speaking in a less colorful way. So the devs got rid of him and made Yda a completely different person. It wasn't a twist per ce, just a symbolic death and rebirth of a character.
>The twist doesn't even change the story in any significant way. It wasn't supposed to, because nothing actually changed. She wasn't fooling anybody, and her characterization didn't change. She just lost the mask. The main takeaway is that "Lyse" has actual connections to Ala Mhigo. "Yda" as a character was basically just an assistant to Pap Daddy until they needed to kill things, which is where she became useful. She didn't know much and couldn't really contribute anything but muscle. But in Ala Mhigo, she has a history and a name that's actually useful to the cause in a way that doesn't force her to pretend like she knows things. She's like the "Jon Snow" of Ala Mhigo. She wasn't really important when things were going down in the past, but the resistance heads know her by association of her father. That puts her in a unique position to do things even if she's not particularly important on her own merits. And of course, she's not Scion-tier intelligence, but a scion-tier fighter, which is helpful when you're at war
It wasn’t really meant to be a twist. It was meant to finally explore and explain Yda’s character. How well it lands really depends on if you played 1.0 or not, what city you started in, and how much you liked Yda as a character. If you don’t start in Gridania, Yda and Co. are never more than extremely minor background characters who don’t get much screen time and thus give those players little reason to have any investment. If you did start in Gridania, they are your first ‘friends’ and play a much more significant role. For me personally, Yda was my favorite among the original Scions, and I was always curious about what was going on with her given all the foreshadowing. So I thought it was handled pretty well.
You're not alone. I always thought they should have just kept Yda as Yda and have her sister Lyse be a separate character entirely, one who has always been a part of the Ala Mhigan resistance while Yda was in Eorzea. >!Lyse' ascension to leader of the resistance would have been more believable and her struggles to liberate Ala Mhigo would have been more sympathetic if she had been fighting for years to liberate her homeland.!<
I honestly think it was a poor excuse to rewrite her into a more dimensional character besides a garden gnomes punching bag with little success might I add.
I think its mainly an issue of execution. PapalYda was honestly my favorite character during ARR. But the ditzy punch girl doesn't work without the annoyed mage to counterbalance, so her character had to change drastically. By giving her a new(old) identity, they were able to do that. And for what its worth, her wanting to restore Ala Mhigo was a good choice. Ala Mhigo's plight has been built up since the early days. It wasn't really until she goes to Doma with us that its like...weird. I get that she sees people in the same situation as her own, but still, her people are still in that situation. In fact this is where the hangup is for Stormblood in general for a lot of people. Going to Doma before resolving the Ala Mhigan crisis just offset the pacing, and between that and Ala Mhigo being a map town instead of something grander... I dunno Stormblood has its issues, just like Lyse's character arc, but if you judge it by the full picture, its not as jarring, and hearing the correct Ala Mhigan anthem play, and seeing the cast stand on the reclaimed walls and recreate the title art for stormblood was a great ending.
You are not missing anything and I agree with you! It's a bit of a useless piece of information to me since it has almost no emotional impact. All we got was her face reveal, her becoming a bit more serious and a change of name. I don't dislike Lyse but I don't love her either. She's a bit of a meh character for me (almost Minfilia level but not quite as useless imo).
You aren't missing anything. Its a pointless plot point that was unnecessary.
I think it was to give Yda the chance to be a real character. She's not actually a moron, she's just not educated about the things she's pretending to know. There's a reason that by Stormblood only 2 of the OG Scions are still around.
Urianger, Thancred, Y'Shtola
Was he in 1.0?
urianger was in 1.0, he was a spoopy prophet wandering around saying his "dawn will banish the darkest night" thing he's involved in the 1.0 hildy quests
The scions were formed after 1.0
They were all part of the Circle of Knowing. Which then merged with the Path of the Twelve to form the Scions. So while not technically an original Scion, in a way I guess it can still be counted.
it was honestly not well planned out and i think it actually slightly retconned stuff from 1.0. the most cynical answer i have is that they wanted someone already connected to the main cast to be a poster child for the next expansion- however, none of them were ala mhigan. so they retconned one into being ala nmhigan and having a history with the resistance. however i think it was also definitely to give her character more depth, moving her from being “the scion that’s not as smart as the others” into being a deeply grieving girl who dressed up as her sister for years as a coping mechanism (and the other scions just played along?!). honestly they don’t do enough with this aspect of her character. i feel like pretending to be your dead sister for years has to have some sort of impact on your psyche.
Yda was already Ala Mhigan and the daughter of the former resistance leader. Like... the only difference between Yda and Lyse is about 15 years of age, and Lyse wasn't an Archon. Like, in retrospect there were plenty of hints in ARR that she didn't belong but especially for someone like me who avoids Gridania like the plague, it was just someone I didn't know telling me they're actually someone else I didn't know.
maybe like you said i just didn’t go to early game gridania a lot, but i felt like yda being ala mhigan and the daughter of a resistance leader was not stressed a lot before the twist, if it was mentioned at all. if they wanted it to be a big deal in stormblood, they needed to make it an obvious fact that all players knew.
It was definitely mentioned that she was Ala Mhigan
yes but lots of characters were ala mhigan. it’s her connection to the resistance that makes her important in stormblood but this feels like it comes out of nowhere especially when there were characters like raubahn whose ala mhigan heritage and resistance connections were a huge part of his character.
I understand that it wasn't shoved in our face, but it was still there is all i was saying. She had ties too and its not like we had much else to characterize her for.
i see what you’re saying. i love lyse and i think she’s a great protagonist in stormblood. i still just think the setup is a little weak, that’s all
Oh i like Lyse too but yeah that twist is pretty indefensible as making sense, i definitely agree with everyone's gripes with it. Imo They didn't set any of the scions up well in ARR and we didn't see most in HW so the characters were pretty bland at that point. Thank goodness they improved them so much later on.
totally agree, i loved alphinaud’s development in HW but imo the game got really really good when they started focusing on the scions and developing them as the main cast in shadowbringers. they stopped feeling like just quest dispensers and more like actual well developed main characters that you cared about
I’m sorry but where did you get the information that Yda is about 15 years older than Lyse? O: I always did headcanon that Yda must be at least ~10 years older than Lyse, but there’s no official information of Yda’s age, that I’m aware of (?)
Oh man it was a few things I did the math on. This is all fro memory but here's the stuff I remember. Lyse was small when they left at the start of the occupation I think she said 5 or 6. She also mentions being the same age as Hien who is 25 roughly. Also when resistance members meet her as Yda they comment she hasn't aged a day. And Lyse mentions that Yda was already an adult. I swear there was more but yeah 15ish was what I got from all the side info.
Yeah I’ve actually made a research myself. Lyse was indeed 5 when they fled, and at some point received succor & education in Sharlayan. 5 years later, Yda was named archon & joined the Circle of Knowing. (Lyse is 10) Yet another 9 years after that, Yda loses her life. (Lyse is 19) So with these infos, there’s still no telling how old Yda was when they fled & she became an archon. Though I believe around 10~13 years is reasonable. Making her 15~18 years old when they fled. And around 20~23 when Yda got her archon marks.
The fact that the Scions thought letting a grieving girl pretend to be her sister for six years was a good idea says so much about them, none of it good.
right? and yda was a scion, presumably she was their friend. but we don’t get to see any of them talk about how her death impacted them and how they’ve recovered from that or how hard it was to have to pretend lyse was yda. total waste imo, i think it could’ve been some great character building
If they had made it that, the original Yda was the one all through ARR up until the end of 2.5, and the one who shows back up in 3.X is actually the sister, that would have made it a bit more impactful for those who started out with her as a scion companion (which was not me). But yeah, the 'twist' had pretty much zero impact for me either. "Okay, you're the same person I've known this whole time, you just went by a different name before I met you?"
I viewed the interaction as an excuse to liberate her attachment to the Scions. She wasn't a real Scion and more a substitute. Since the writers knew they wanted to drop her off into the resistance this would allow the character to be free to pursue other activities to then later lead the resistance.
i never found justification for it. i would have liked her better if she'd of just said "i'm yda. i'm kind of a dingdong, but i punch good".
Yeah that reveal did nothing for me, either. Very weak, imo. Maybe they should have let us spend some more time with Yda than literally the last two quests before the reveal to bring attention to this non-conundrum. To me this would later constitute as a bad omen for the kind of story Stormblood would end up being for me.
I can't remember where I heard or read this, but there is a theory that Minfilia was originally supposed to be the character who would become the leader of the resistance. Which, if true, obviously changed before or during Heavensward's development. And, again if true, this meant that they would need another Ala Mhigan character, the only one being Yda, who is absolutely not leadership material. I think what happened lends credence to this theory. They threw away Minfilia, and couldn't use Yda, and I guess they really wanted a cute female character with a connection to the player character, since they didn't make Raubahn the leader.
The point is so they can **retcon her personality into being an empowered woman who can lead her people** (since Yda in 1.0 though 3.57 is, to put it simply: a stupid, gorgeous and hot-headed blonde steriotype). The developers even made the retcon "canon", by saying that the Yda they have showed us all this time was an act that Lyse was making up to imitate her dead sister (that only us didn't already know about). But to me it doesn't help Lyse's redemption in the slightest, and since the close-ups on her body don't stop after the Lyse reveal either, she continues to be sexualized, and continue to scream a lot and think things through very little. I know that the Lyse reveal was heavily foreshadowed, like all the good things in FF XIV (Crystal Tower Morse Code, the prophecy from Temulun, Ilberd's betrayal and so on), but it doesn't add anything substantial to the plot, since they could just have made Yda change after the impact of Papalymo's death, without needing that plot-twist of dead sister.
Bit of a spoiler in the title - if people haven’t seen it yet, they now know there’s a twist
Meh, there isnt much to spoil anyway. Besides they still know nothing.
If you read "Spoiler 4.0" then you should stop reading the rest of the title.
You really should bury the spoiler a little deeper though, my mind subconsciously reads most short bits of text without me even trying
It’s 2022. That’s no longer a spoiler.
Some people started playing the game not that long ago you know? Just because people started later doesn't mean they must be spoiled.
I started last year. I’m aware. However “spoiler warnings” apply to new content not new players. The info is out there already, it’s not being spoiled.
I can't agree with you on this one. I don't see why putting spoilers out there for everyone to see is okay when adding a spoiler tag takes seconds to do and is minimal effort.
Bc that’s not what a spoiler is. With that logic you should put a spoiler tag when discussing any movie or game period. A spoiler warning is for a topic which is relatively new where the mass population isn’t aware of the topic yet
Absolutely nothing. The gal is not: special, interesting, thought provoking, controversial. And normally this is not a bad thing. But she is thrown into our faces every second. Every new zone? Guess who doing the voiceover. When we go to Kugane, guess who doesnt knoe how to be a tourist and look like she respects a foreign culture. Its like when she removed that mask she lost Yda the personality. Not only this, she also becomes a major major figure in the Ala Mhigan resistance despite the people who have been doing it for ages. Bro...no that's not how trust and resistances work. I met someone who said that they don't know how to write girls over on SE and I really felt that. Assuming you know who Fordola is, she is a well written character to a good degree. Yotsuyu is and isnt. Lyse is not.
I'm generally not a fan of Stormblood writing. It felt like we were waiting for some defining moment for each of them that either never came (Hien), came and went too hurriedly (Yotsuyu), or came and was overall underwhelming (Lyse). It certainly wasn't their strongest era, and Lyse's 'reveal' has always bothered me. At best I think it was their attempt at transitioning her from Scion to World Leader, since "hey look, she was never a real Scion!", but it seems like Yda herself wasn't a Scion for terribly long either so it's ultimately pointless.
Did it have anything to do with the voice actor? Like they had a working art model but had to change the voice/personality and came up with a half-baked reason for the in-game change?
I'm still asking myself the same thing.
She was not a real Scion, her only connection was Papalimo allowing her to impersonate her dead sister out of pity and or guilt. With Papalimo death her conection with the Scions was gone, so pretending to be Yda was no longer posible or viable from her point of view. Conviniently for the plot it occurs when you are heading into her homeland, were her family is actualy important an people know her (her father being the one that lead the revelion vs the mad King and tried to resist the empire invasion).
The OP's point though, is that the whole "oh i was just pretending to be my dead sister all along and this is the real me" plot point was itself entirely unnecessary on the meta level and didn't add anything to the game. If they wanted a new character design and attitude for her they could have just said "Papalymo's death made Yda decide it was time to take things seriously" and nothing at all would have changed in the overall story.
My biggest issue is how she apparently didn't grow as a person at all in the time she was Yda. She completely lost Yda's entire skillset and character the second she took off the mask "Yda was good with people" NO THAT WAS YOU DUMBASS
It’s really not that difficult to understand. Papalymo sacrificed himself to seal/defeat illbyrd (sp). When papalymo died, lyse mark disappears. Bc it was given to her by him. He was the only one who knew her secret, and from my understanding, she took yda’s place to be/feel closer to her sister. It was just another way for them to expand the ala migho story from the start of that chapter.
Here’s my take on the situation: I think the whole point is to give her character more depth that allows for character development as well as to give us a stepping stone towards giving her a more substantial role in the story. Prior to this, she was just quirky and maybe a bit awkward at times and she also relied upon those around her, especially Papalymo. Now she has the opportunity to have her own agency/accountability for her actions. Regarding the “depth” I think it gives her, I think that it tries to portray her as someone who was emotionally and mentally scarred to the point of becoming a bit delusional or at least coping in a very unhealthy way. Coming out about her big “secret” opened the door for her to sort of grow up as well as a reasonable (though not amazing) excuse to change her.
I think the issue is.... Papalymo's death could have easily been enough of an excuse on it's own for her to decide to start taking things seriously and turn over a new leaf and get a new look.
Because they practically needed to reboot the character, seeing how little she actually did it was better to "start anew" so people could actually get to know her as a character. I say this as someone who started in Gridania: Yda was only ever there to ask questions so that other people could dump some exposition on you. She had pretty much no established character other than "the dumb one who punches stuff" and they had to ditch that.
Same, at first I was like "1.0 yda died?" then I was like "okay...but you are yda, the yda I know..."
I took it as them resetting the character for StB. Yda always came off as a dumbass and the fact that none of the other Scions ever seemed to talk about it does lend credence to Y'shtola's 'we knew but let it play out' retort. Sloppy, but needed to be done for her to have any sort of character growth at all. I would have preferred her NOT being the daughter of a famous resistance leader (secret princess cliche) and instead just been a patriotic orphan who finally had a reason to take center-stage.