Every XI Expansion Has A Female Companion.

This was originally figured out by Creaper of Ragnarok but I don't think many still know it.

Zilart, Lion.
CoP, Prishe.
Wings, Lillisette.
ToaU, Nashmiera.
Seekers, Arciela.
Rhapsodies, Iroha.
Voracious, Boudox (the goblin in black, gloom phantom)



Original post on reddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxi/comments/14aiy4n/ive_come_to_a_shocking_revelation_about_a/

loath as I am to consider TVR an expansion, at least they did that much. now, if only they had kept Shantoto's epilogue consistnt.

I've always known it. From a bygone era where having a groomed girl as a side piece was admirable.

Are you ok?



I think TVR was pushed through basically because Matsui was retiring and they simply were not giving enough money to do it at a level it should have been done to.

In a world where it was this or nothing I'll say I'm glad it was made, but yeah it's not exactly a high point. The entire unit was busy with another game so I'm amazed it was as good as it was honestly.

The Boudox II trust gon' be fire. Please look forward to it.

Please do not translate any anime

I think you're misinterpreting things. If anything it has strong female leads, that have their own impact aside from being someone's love interest. Sure some of them may imply a little interest in your character, but I'd say they did a better job showing women can be great lead characters better than most movies do the past few decades.

They're spunky but they are afterall supposed to be see as little *** by the male player.

I agree. They aren't perfect, but definitely way above average. They have personalities, goals, desires, and appropriate emotional responses to their environment.

....this took figuring out?

Tomorrow....Wings of the Goddess is actually in the past!

You knew Boudox was female?

The Boudox part was the point of the thread.

r u assuming its gender?

I stopped caring about SE's storytelling when they did. Everything after ToAU is in some way just recycled concepts and reskinned characters from prior expansions in personality, role, and mood.

That black blob you're talking about that was involved in way too many 14 minute cutscenes that weren't justified except they made an "expansion" that was barebones at best feel bigger than it truly was....ya don't care if its male, female, or tardigrade.

every expansion had a female protagonist and a player character companion*

I mean, they eventually tell you directly, but also Goblin naming convention in FFXI is that -ix names are men and -ox names are women. They kept this consistent in XIV as well, with Brayflox being a woman there too.

So even if they didn't directly tell you during the course of TVR, you'd know it when they said her name.

It is directly stated, yet I still hear people call Aurix a girlgob.

It's hard not to be "Um ackshually" about it.

Thought WotG went alright, though the time took to actually finish was absurd, to me though it felt like CoP was the last real expansion story

I thought goblins' naming conventions being gender-based was fairly obvious common knowledge, similar to tarutaru ones.

...And each expansion having a heroine has been known since it became an observable trend. But it is cool. (Well, less so when they started weirdly objectifying them with Arciela. She gets pretty rough treatment in her storyline too, sidelined by Morimar.)

You know what- ya got me on that first part. The actual storytelling in WotG was better, it just took over 18 months to get all the pieces. I think my personal disdain for that expansion looking back has a lot more to do with the content that came with it than the story.

Incorrect.

Lion is super hands off, to the point of being told not to come to Tu'Lia by Gilgamesh. She does anyway and is in less CSes than Zeid.

In CoP, Prishe doesn't even show up until the end of Chapter 2. She definitely takes center stage after she shows up, but she's not in literally every single part of the story, and CoP's goal was an ensemble cast, which is what it had. But even barring that, Selh'teus is a more important character, as he kicks off the entire plot, and is more important than Prishe and rides in the PC's soul the whole way through.

ToAU, Aphmau doesn't show up until like Ashu Talif. Which is like 33% of the way through the entire story. She's super important, but ToAU literally beats you over the head with the PC being the most important factor in stopping the Grand Vizier. And The Middle Lands stake in things revolve around your character being a double agent. So you don't get too full of yourself, they have Naja treat you like dirt (affectionately).

WoTG, Lilisette doesn't show up until several missions in, and while the story and your motivations are drawn from her a lot more than prior expansions she shares the stage with the Adventurer pretty much equally, to down right relying on them completely when she can't handle Lady Lilith and her very existence becomes temporarily fragmented. Am I really just playing the side character if all of the most important things hinge upon my presence and performance?

SoA, Arciela is there right off the bat. She's royalty. We're a nobody. She's got the key to everything in Otharsyne. Pretty strong case again for us being the sidepiece and yet... We're the one drawing the 12 orders' eyes. We're the ones told we're the only one who can understand/help Arciela in her endeavors. We're the ones who contend with the Xol Triumvirate in order to even get access to Hades's inner sanctum. We're the ones who retrieve Saj'akka's lost scales. Again, am I really just playing the side character if all of the most important things hinge upon my presence and performance?

That's fair, WotG was really a dead period of the game, where devs just kept throwing darts at the board for new content idea, giving maybe 1 more update to it, then dropping it.

Add in a story that got released in 3, then 4, then 6 month chunks, and only people on those missions could even do them, i think most people tapped out before WotG actually finished... which was like mid aby from what i remember, christ.

Edit: By missions i more mean the nation storylines, which they tied in with the main story, so if you wanted to do just your nation? Well hope everyone else is wanting to do that one too, or you're on your own.

These examples of how in our minds the female characters who accompany us in the expansions feel much more important than their actions actually end up being kind of reinforces the belief that they're just eye candy.

As much as I love them, they are all mostly just eye candy.

Prishe, Lilisette, and Arciela are the most active ones.

With Prishe really being super plot important, particularly with regards to Storms of Fate and Apocalypse Nigh (as well as being one of the only ones who can resist Promathia's psychic influence from the ensemble cast, the others being Selh'teus and the PC).

Lilisette gets marked as a Wing of Altana by Cait Sith(as does the PC), but she gets consumed by Lilith for power, and winds up becoming part of the antagonist in that final battle.

Arciela is the Founder King's descendant, and has great magical ability, but in terms of the fight she's just kinda there.

Lion is the most worthy of going to jail for

Well Lion's an adult, so you wouldn't.

Prishe is 40 or so, so you wouldn't. (Also she's taller than a S size Hume male)

Aphmau is the ruler of her nation, so you wouldn't.

Lilisette is also an adult, so you wouldn't.

Arciela is an adult and the monarch of her nation, so you wouldn't.

Boudox... is... a goblin. I don't know if there's any ethics about Beastmen x Enlightened Races (or w/e the 5 playables call themselves) to consider... But I mean, love is love right. I guess if you wanted to get jiggy with a goblin, you could... But I mean have you paid attention to their food lore? There's no way you aren't contracting some illness, holy ***.

XI was dominated by young men / teenagers when it came out, then older men over the years.

Men like going on a quest with a female character in a video game, men prefer them to be hot/cute/nice woman, men daydream about protecting women in a way women never do. More than that, we don't just like doing it but our brains are hard wired over hundreds of thousands of years of evolution to be the way we are as an instinctive behavior pattern. It being a digital medium doesn't matter, it still works the same way.

It works so they did it, and we liked it cause they did it and the it was a success cause of it. Then we went into the stupid years and now we have to pretend to not like it, or it's bad cause men like it. Rhapsodies was 1 million times a better story cause Iroha was female, cause she was your student and cause she was in danger. It works, to hook men emotionally into a story.

By the numbers: If bob needs saving from bowser, bob is seriously sol.

Games where you appeal to your target audience on a base level will be remembered, games that don't are the ones Square Enix makes that keep flopping lately.

2b in Nier Automata, best gril.

Indeed, the best waifu.

I think it was an attempt at sarcastic overexaggeration


Don't forget Iroha! (I know I know, technically not an expansion, but still a main scenario, would've possibly been
an expansion if it wasn't already 2015 when it came out)


Eh, the "Heroine" thing in every expansion is a Japanese thing (to have a young & endearing female lead).
Personally, I don't care if the lead character is male or female, as long as they're compelling and interesting, and do not feel like the choice of their gender is forced, to serve some agenda. In fact, when I noticed the trend with Aphmau, Lilisette etc, it kinda felt weird to me at first, but then I learned that it's just a Japanese thing.

I mean, camaraderie and brotherhood are still appealing to male gamers. And the notion that I'm way more likely to enjoy a game if it gave me virtual waifus irks me a little (and I like women as much as the next guy)

I do love Iroha, but I must admit when she calls the PC, "Master" it weirds me out a little.

I've been to Maid Cafes and such in Tokyo, and I got uncomfortable then too...

I almost feel like she inspired the character of Ashi in Samurai Jack's ending. What with the whole being torn apart by time travel so much.