The HEARTBREAKING Story of Tsuyu! - My FAVOURITE Story in Stormblood

Well it has been a while - sorry for the wait while we took some much needed time over the holidays and got our new office in order. We start things off in our new home with a video talking about the story of Yotsuyu in the Post Stormblood MSQ - a story which really made an impression on Mike.
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Twitter: @Preachgaming
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[Preachgaming]

Hi all Chris here. Sorry for the wait everyone, between the Holidays and setting up the office we have had a lot of work to do and we wanted to come back with a bang. We are trying some new things to take advantage of the new space so we're still getting our eye in with lighting, sound and camera settings etc. so we would love to know what you think of the video.

We are currently working on the post-Stormblood MSQ video at the moment and getting a few others written and recorded before Mike heads to Mexico for a week.

[SteveMan]

"Wherefore did the kami spare us only to inflict this pain"

Props to the voice actor just for this delivery alone. The layers of pain, sadness, and anger in this line are heart-wrenching

[alyishiking]

One of my favorite parts of the Tsukuyomi fight is when her memory of Gosetsu tries to protect her from her memory of Zenos. It just shows that buried beneath all the trauma and pain of her life, she still remembers Gosetsu as her protector. It's quite a powerful moment.

[ninnoofthelastunicorn]

Her theme, Wayward Daughter, the leitmotif plays in Yanxia, Doma.
A small detail that goes unnoticed most of the time, something that it took me a few times watching others play through the story to notice.
She's Doma's Daughter, she's Doma's failure. She's a product of a country that was rotten before, rotten during it's occupation. Hien now has been given a massive reminder the failure of his country, his people, and there's so, so many times he sits, his eyes closed, silently reflecting on what has been presented to him as a leader.
That's what hit me the hardest, along with the mindless loss of life. She showed how we fail each other daily, how we can hurt others so easily with out knowing it for our own selfish reasons. If given the chance, I really do think she'd would have been an asset and a good friend to us.
Bless the Spider Lily, and Doma's wayward daughter. The wind blows from the west, and her tears lay in the east.

[hphunter]

The small blessing that Yotsuyu got was that she found someone that'd mourn her after she was gone.

[blueblazer]

"The Witch of Doma is finally dead"
"Tsuyu deserved a kinder fate"
"Her happiness was not meant to be"

This ranks highly amongst my favorite exchanges in video game writing

[ATchouMeuMeu]

I think the Yotsuyu story shines because it's not a generic "redemption" story, it's about compassion. Instead of pointlessly trying to show that she in fact wasn't actually bad you see, she had to burn the tree.... they instead show how she came to be that way, her struggles and through her question our own motivations as "freedom fighters". And so we come to understand and have compassion for her, regardless of her seemingly twisted nature. When she becomes defenceless and innocent, the life she didn't get to live, it shows her as another victim of the dark side of doman society, not a foe but someone we should be saving. But we couldn't save her, it was too late for her. Very bittersweet indeed, still one of my favorite character in the game.

[brynphillips]

For me Yotsuyu and Tsuyu represented a tale of the consiquinces of turning a blind eye to injustice for the sake of protecting your own way of life. Tsuyu was who Yotsuyu was before she became twisted. It was like she didn't so much just lose her memory as regress to the child she once was. We got to see who she had once been and how she had become the monster. Yoshi P once said that Yotsuyu saw herself as the hero of her own tale. In her mind she was punishing Doma for allowing her treatment to happen. Think back to the first time we meet her. She is literally making another person kill others to spare his own life. I think for me this gives Hein's final comments to Gosetsu have extra meaning when he said he wanted to make a country where all children could laugh and smile. Yotsuyu was a monster but she was a monster born from the people of Doma looking the other way and abandoning the child she once was.

[talemsplash]

"I wonder... was the fruit as sweet as he remembered?" This line is one of those single, character-revealing lines that shows that Yotsuyu died as both Yotsuyu AND Tsuyu. They were both her. She didn't get a redemption arc like many people are quick to claim. She wasn't redeemed, she was humanized. Her final act was freeing herself from her own trauma and accepting both parts of herself, and I think that's beautiful. I think it is a really good parallel to Misija's character later on in Shadowbringers as well.

[Lancun]

The thing about Yotsuyu is that she knew she was dead. Asahi knew she was dead. There was no way a primal like Tsukoyomi with a small amount of crystals would be able to stand up to the famed Eikon Slayer that is the Warrior of Light.

She genuinely felt remorse for what she had done to Gosetsu even after her memories returned. And knowing that, tried to kill herself until Asahi just ripped her heart out. This was essentially a suicide-by-cop. The cop in this case being the WoL.

[seekittycat]

My favorite thing is how to Yotsuyu the short time she spent with Gosetsu means he's stronger then even Zenos in her mind. Years of pain, years of trauma but Gosetsu is the strongest.

[RyuuHawke]

Ill be honest Preach, when I was at that point you said player would sympathise with her, I did not.

I followed the same mind set as Yugiri, to be distrustful, to be wary when if she gets her memory back she will still inflict the same sadistic pain she would before.
When she went missing, I was more annoyed with how incompetent the ninjas to keep watch than Tsuyu well being.

I kept that mindset even as we finally clash with her.
But then, when we all witness her inner self continually belittle herself, waiting for the stroke that will reopen the wound fresh, is held back by the good will of Gosetsu.

That moment I see how much his care meant for her. How no one else was willing to give any help at her lowest point, like her family, like the domans, or me the WoL.
It was there that I realize how tragic her lot in life was, how no different I was to all who decide to watch someone in turmoil and do nothing.
I consider that point in the story as my personal failure, doing the same as everyone before that she has met to be uncaring because of her previous standing.
Wether it be that she was an orphan, or a prostitute, or villain that is unable to harm others, much less defend herself.

[ProjectAwakeOnline]

Really glad you had this kind of reaction. I also felt that her arc was the most surprising and meaningful thing from Stormblood. The people that have a problem with her post-patch story say that trying to redeem her is cheap and doesn't work I think are misunderstanding. She is NOT being redeemed. No one can forgive her in the end, but you can much more understand and pity her.

[belld.s]

The post-SB was very good. I love revenge stories, so naturally I had sympathy for Yotsuyu. Revenge is just raw emotion, no logic required. She had no other motive other than satisfying her need to get back at the country that treated her like shit. She never was condescending to the WoL, or the Scions. From what I remember. Her sole concern was Doma. She even targeted the Confederacy (whom I share your opinion on), because they were made of mostly Doman refugees.

In my perspective, she had a happy ending. Spent decades ruining Doma, and at the very end of it all, killed her brother and parents, the very core of her bottomless anger. Some of her final words were, “Finally, I am satisfied.” And what is there more to life than fulfilling your purpose? There was no way she would live a regular life after all she’s done, memory lost or not. Hien was very naive on that regard. Was she a terrible person? Absolutely. In another reality, if she had lived a fair and good life, would she have been a good person? Maybe. Tsuyu was a very kind girl, so there is reason to believe. That was how I felt about Yotsuyu’s story.

[Merusdraconis]

I feel like the Yotsuyu arc, with maybe one exception, exemplifies the themes of Final Fantasy XIV better than anything. Here is an absolutely loathsome character, cartoonishly so. In most stories, their death would be cathartic and necessary, but instead FFXIV asks: are they capable of change? What does repentance, and forgiveness, look like for a person like this? The story asks that question many times, in multiple different ways, but it's so stark with Yotsuyu because characters like her usually don't get arcs like this, and it's one of the clearest moments where FFXIV makes its themes clear: what does it take to build a better future, in the face of oblivion, in the wake of your past sins?

(It is not hard to imagine why this would be on the mind of the FFXIV team.)

[shaderunner]

I love Yotsuyu as an antagonist because she's irredeemable, and doesn't look for redemption either, but the story still makes us feel pity for her. They don't want us to forgive her, but they do want us to feel pity for her, , and to think had things going differently we may not have had to come to blows. That's the part that hurts the most about this story arc, the possibility.

[Rakka]

Yotsuyu is an irredeemable monster, but she was created by a society that was just as monstrous as her. I like to view her as a twisted primal of Old Doma itself, and Tsuyu is the human who she "corrupted"

[TarossBlackburn]

Don't forget... When Yotsuyu got her memories back, the reason she went out there with that knife was to end herself. I do not condone the act. But with all things considered she realized that there was no redemption for herself, how much regrets she might have now. The only reason she went back full to the path that made her turn into Tsukyomi was her parents interrupting.

[Joe-itdh]

I have a small amount of hope (or maybe just some copium) that one day we will see Tsuyu and Gosetsu on a different world happy living out their lives together. Its hope based on the remark she makes regarding Tsuyu's happiness saying "was not meant to be, not in THIS world."

[stobiepiel]

The scene in this that got me most was when she's in Namai, and sees Isse and his sister, his kindness and love - things Yotsuyu never had. That little part, I find just absolutely agonizing. I do feel that bringing her back in any way would diminish the impact of her story. There's another spot, in another part of the game, where there's a message of, 'some things, you can't fix.' And I like that, things your WOL can't help, no matter how powerful or good you are. Though in Yotsuyu's case, I felt like she had a resolution, she's smiling, she seems at some level of peace. I feel like she'd spiritually move on (unlike some.) But I LOVE that they make you think & feel this way, about someone who you probably just loathe at first, and by the end, pity rises. I've never done her trial without someone commenting on it, one way or another. ("She should die!" "No!" Arguments break out - it's pretty wonderful.)