This post is going to contain some pretty major spoilers for every part of Final Fantasy 14 up through the start of Endwalker because I can’t talk about Shadowbringers in any degree of specificity without talking about everything that led up to some of my favorite moments. So! There will be spoilers in pretty much every paragraph, both vague and incredibly specific, so many skip this one if you’re going to play the game (see this post if you’re on the fence) and hate spoilers.

One of the throughlines I’ve found while playing through four massive chunks of Final Fantasy 14’s story (A Realm Reborn, Heavensward, Stormblood, and Shadowbringers) is a preoccupation with what it means to be a hero. Your very first interaction in the game, at least at the time I started playing it, is a man breaking the silence of a wagon ride to ask you why you’ve taken up adventuring. Your answer doesn’t matter much beyond this interaction and setting the name of some pieces of irreplaceable (but kinda crappy) starting gear, but the game shows its preoccupation from the very beginning. Why, after all, are you doing this? What is your reason for carrying on with all of these quests, through all these victories and failures, and past every single point where others have decided to lay down this burden? The question changes slightly, as you start to get into the first few quests, going from “why are you an adventurer” to “what does it mean to be a hero?” where it stays for most of the rest of the game I’ve played so far, despite how often the game itself provides an answer. That’s one of the nice things about making a central theme a question rather than a statement: you can just keep answering it again and again, in different ways and with an entire world’s worth of nuance behind your subtle shifts in answer. Because that’s the thing: you ARE a hero. There’s no question in anyone’s mind that you, the Warrior of Light and protagonist of every private, cinematic moment of the game, are a hero and they’re basically shouting this opinion from the instant you unlock the ability to take an airship to a new city until probably the last story update this game will ever get. Instead of needing to prove your status to skeptics or struggle to maintain your heroic reputation, the game focuses on what it means that YOU, the player character, ARE a hero, because there is no denying that this little tidbit means something to EVERYONE.

Initially, the answer to the question of what it means to be a hero takes the “standard” form. You, a relatively unknown person, are showing up just in time to solve a lot of incredibly difficult problems that seem insurmountable to the people you’re helping. You are defining yourself as a hero in the classic sense, essentially answering the question of “what does it mean to be a hero” with “to show up and do heroic deeds.” The game will continue to toy with this idea for the rest of its story (so far), sometimes leaning one way (“you’re the person who shows up and fixes people’s problems without asking for payment, right? Please, save my child/sibling/partner/favorite pet” from every quest ever in Shadowbringers) and sometimes leaning another (“doesn’t the incessant begging for help make you want to scream?” from the Dark Knight job quests first available in Heavensward), but ultimately letting you feel your own way about it via the largely-inconsequential but still characterizing dialogue options (that get more and more characterizing as you get deeper into the game). For most of this iteration of the answer to the game’s question, though–central in A Realm Reborn and then at least touched-on throughout every subsequent expansion I’ve played so far–your character is cementing themselves at the center of the unfolding story (even if they’re not really an actor or agent in it since you’re kind of just there, watching stuff happen to other people for A Realm Reborn and Heavensward) and creating the base that every subsequent answer will further build on. You are a hero. A hero is someone who saves people. You save people, you are a hero, and you will always rise to meet the challenge since being a hero is not some power granted to you by an outside being but a recognition of the sort of person you are. Even if you sometimes find yourself frustrated with the demands placed on you (though this is mostly an out-of-game experience since the game itself doesn’t really give you much of an option to voice these feelings yet).

As you move into the second expansion–Heavensward–and find everything you once depended upon crumbling down around you, the game provides you with the opportunity to reflect on what it means to be a hero once again. After all, instead of acting on the world stage to save thousands of lives, oppose deific figures, and bring an army’s invasion to a screeching halt, you’re just stuck in some frozen theocracy as people who believe in your abilities do what they can to give you the support you need to get back on your feet. Hardly heroic, even if you still have the ability to occasionally intervene in the unfolding disaster you left behind, that drove you into these frigid climes. Until, of course–because you are the sort of person you are, who gets involved–you find yourself emeshed not only in what will turn out to be the culmination of a millennium-long war but in the destruction of the old, rigid power structures built on death, lies, and the abuse of stolen power. You get involved and, this time, being a hero means continuing to fight even though you can’t save everyone. It means moving on to the next thing because someone still needs to intervene, especially if the people who would have helped you no longer can. It means smiling through the tears, standing up even if you stand alone, and refusing to compromise on your vision for the future despite failure. It means, sometimes, that people around you get hurt because of the target you’ve placed on your back. And, as Heavensward wraps up, you find out that it means inspiring the people around you to reach for loftier goals than they ever thought were attainable.

This second set of answers arrives seemingly in conflict with the first set before ultimately revealing that they two sets of answers aren’t in conflict but conversation. This is perhaps best encapsulated by the Dark Knight job quests, where you find yourself trying to focus on unlocking the powers of the Dark Knight but keep getting sidetracked by people who know you to be a hero and ask or demand your assistance. You are a hero and many of the the people of the world believe that being a hero comes with obligations. They shackle you with their needs and the Dark Knight job quests give voice to the part of any hero that would chafe under those restrictions before you ultimately reject the notion that this voice represents the “true” you while the people around you assure you that, even if part of you says/thinks those horrible things about the people who need your help, they still love and appreciate you. After all, a hero isn’t some perfect paragon who helps people without fail, but someone who shows up despite it all and is there at the moments that matter. Heavensward’s answer to “what does it mean to be a hero” is not a negation of what A Realm Reborn says, but the addition of some much-needed nuance. It expands on the original answer and even helps to cover the moments that the much simpler “a hero is someone who saves people” falls just out of your reach. After all, as Haurchefant says moments after saving your life as he dies more or less in your arms, failing to save someone doesn’t mean you’re not a hero. Perhaps, the game goes on to say repeatedly, from that point onward, the most heroic act of all is carrying on despite the tragedy of your own failures and losses along the way.

Through the end of Heavensward and into Stormblood, the game continues to grapple with this answer, adding more nuance and even a greater scale to the provided answer as you must carry on despite further inidividual losses and then the failure to spark a rebellion that could stand up to the full attention of its oppressors. It even brings the first set of answers back, reminding you that all of these answers are in conversation and that being a hero means being all of these things as the situation demands, before pushing you in a new direction. What if, the game suggests, being a hero sometimes means listening to the will of the people who don’t want to be saved? Stormblood spends a decent amount of time considering that as your character leaves the first staggering, injured rebellion behind while rushing you off to the far east to help resurrect another rebellion that is currently largely dispersed and leaderless. Can you be a hero if people don’t want you to save them? Can you call it heroic to go against the wishes of the people you’re trying to protect? Ultimately, the answer to all three of these questions is that it is important to hear the people beneath you, but it is often up to you (and leaders in general) to inspire them to imagine a future they currently lack the ability to conceptualize. You must inspire people with your heroics by carrying on despite what feels like inevitable failure in order to save everyone from the forces that would doom them. It takes a while to get there, and it never states this confluence of all the previous answers directly in favor of focusing on a brand new answer, but this particular subtextual accentuation of the previous answer is an important stepping stone for what is coming in the next expansion, Shadowbringers.

Instead of focusing on that answer, though, when the game directs you to the aforementioned far eastern area of the map, you immediately go from saving people to fighting on when victory seems possible to inspiring people to reach for the freedom they barely dare let their hearts yearn for, cycling through every single answer they’ve already given as part of subtextually creating the answer I mentioned above, but also as part of laying the groundwork for the answer central to Stormblood. Once you’ve worked through all of that and reached the moment your (specific, individual) heroism must come into play, the game suggests that maybe being a hero means fighting the battles no one else can. This answer, an accentuating extension of their first answer to “what does it mean to be a hero?” is hammered time and again as you fight battle after battle that literally no one but your character could survive, let alone win, for reasons both mechanical (you’ve finally reach the end of this section of the story and are powerful enough to actually win against the final boss) and narrative (your protection from control by the deific figures you’ve been toppling that is the core of what it means to be a player character in the world of FF14). All of these answers stay in conversation right up until the end of the expansion and the start of the fourth one, Shadowbringers.

Shadowbringers makes it clear from the very trailer that the question “what does it mean to be a hero” is going to be a central theme, if not THE central theme (I will freely admit that this is likely a matter of perspective and might just be my read on this game). It takes the conversation between these answers, that was spiraling tighter and tighter toward the end of Stormblood, and sharpens it to a fine point that stabs through every major plot development and new character arc, including yours! For the first time, this story is actually about you. Sure, your actions and their results are mostly a given since there’s no real change in how any of it plays out, but you’re given more dialogue options in this expanion’s MSQ than in the rest of the game’s prior MSQ put together and each one of them invites a moment of deep characterization. You are invited, again and again, to pick from a wide range of options in order to answer what it means to be a hero through your expressed attitude and encouragement or discouragement of others who are going through their own heoric rises. One of these characters is an old hero who failed and needs must not only find the strength to rise once more as a hero but also make peace with the specters of his past failures. Another is a new hero who must learn to chart her own path and stand alongside the people who had been protecting her despite their efforts to continue shielding her. The rest are the people who have seen you enter into the scene, roll up your sleeves, and then get to work saving the world as often only you could. When you speak to one, you’re also often subtextually speaking to the others, teaching them what it means to be a hero as you choose how to respond to the world around you and to them specifically. You show them by example what it means to be a hero, saving people, carrying on despite what seems like ruinious tragedy, and fighting the battles literally no one else can, inspiring them in their own journey toward their own heroic fates. All of which reaches and inflection point when one of the characters literally asks you how you carry on being a hero despite it all and the game adds a second question parallel to the first one.

This time, instead of asking “what does it mean to be a hero,” Final Fantasy 14 ask you “what does being a hero mean to you?” For the first time in the entire game, it is directly asking you/your avatar “what does it mean to be a hero” rather than letting the question live solely as a theme the game itself is exploring. It gives you all three of the central options it has presented in the past, one from each of the main arcs of the three previous story segments. You can stay silent, showing that being a hero means silently standing strong in the face of whatever danger approaches you so you can save as many people as possible, in as uncomplicated a way as possible. You can say that fate is cruel, but “a smile better suits a hero,” indicating that a true hero is someone who carries on despite the tragedies that befall them by repeating the words of your fallen friend Haurchefant. You can also say you must keep looking forward like those who fell still hoping for a better world to suggest that a hero is someone who keeps looking forward on behalf of all of those who fell on the path to the battles only you could fight. They are all still the same answer if you boil it down far enough, but each one holds the important nuance the game has spent it’s entire MSQ up to that point developing and exploring, letting you pick an answer that aligns you with whatever you’ve been saying up to that point while still reflecting the tragedies that have forced you to learn along the way or by ignoring them entirely. Importantly, this decision is not plot-centric. You are not directing the would-be hero who is asking you this question. You are not swaying the heart of someone on the verge of despair. You are asked to give voice to your opinion and how you, specifically, can carry on doing the work of being a hero despite how rough the road can be and while the person you’re talking to remarks on your answer, it is incredibly clear that this isn’t about them. It is about you and why you’re doing this.

This expansion carries on past this point for quite a while, focusing on the broader story and it’s slow build toward a new answer to “what does it mean to be a hero” (inspiring others to fight alongside you, to fight battles you cannot, and to imagine a better future beyond the dim, impossibly bleak nature of their present) that it will hammer pretty heavily throughout the patch content potion of this expansion rather than what you’re thinking or feeling about being a hero. You’ve made your choice, after all, and made some pretty hefty commitments to that answer thanks to what was going on when you were first asked it. The why of it does not matter during this period of the game, just the how. You fight on, playing the part of a hero to the bitter end and the subsequent bitter-sweet victory, but are given the chance to once again decide what it means to be a hero and, this time, consider what that means to the people you’re fighting as they’re trying to do something that, unfortunate as it is, is no different in essence from what you’re trying to do. Do you reject them, suggesting that being a hero leaves no room for compassion and understanding in dealing with the unfortunately mutually-exclusive ends you’re both seeking as you both attempt to save everything you hold dear? Or do you accept them, suggesting that the other party is worth mourning after their defeat at your hands despite the pain they’ve caused and the conflict they’ve instigated? This decision is not important to the resolution of the game or the advancement of the plot, but every time it comes up again, or there is an echo of this moment, you’re given dialogue options that echo the original ones so you can change or stay firm to your stance. Again, none of this has anything to do with the resolution of the plot or the advancement of the story, but it is a way for you, the player, to decide (and express) how you and your avatar feel about what this world is constantly asking or expecting of you.

Final Fantasy 14 is an MMO, after all. Everyone is playing the same game and all the significant moments have to play out the same way because of limitations in how games are made for such sprawling audiences and because we’re all occupying the same world. Things have to play out the same way, narratively, so we can remain consistent in our understanding of the game and its world. The only place we can differ, then, is in our understanding of our avatar and what it means for us to be doing what we’re doing. These answers of “what does it mean to be a hero” don’t matter to the game in the end, but they matter to us. We’re the ones choosing to spend our time and money on this game. We’re the ones sticking with this massive, sprawling story after a thousand hours of gaming. So, what it means to be a hero matters a lot, actually, because that’s part of why we’re here to play this game after all. Initially, “to save people” is enough as we slowly begin to immerse ourselves in the game. It doesn’t need to be complicated all the time, especially when everything is so new and engaging. Once we’ve worked through all that, though, we need more nuance. No one would return to a game that doesn’t give them any new reasons to play it and while there are assuredly people who play these games for the mechanics and dungeons and all that, there are also a lot of us out here who keep coming back because we’re interested in what the game has to say and the conversations it slowly starts to have with us.

It might seem a little belabored and meta to think of it this way, but I can’t help but see one of my friends as one of the people who fell along the way. He started playing at exactly the same time I did, on the same world, and was arguably having more fun than I was initially, but he never made it through the first portion of the game. I don’t think he ever even made it to the middle of A Realm Reborn’s first fifty levels of quests. While I’m not certain that I could even imply that he had dreams of a better future for me to carry in his place, I still think about him and his character who fell by the wayside rather than continue to carry the burden of heroism. I can’t help but think of the friends who have begun to show interest in the game as I’ve talked to them about the story, the gameplay, and the immersion. I can’t help but also think about how none of them have actually tried to join me or how difficult my life has been over the past few months in a way that has often made it difficult to find time to play and enjoy this game, and yet how I’ve continued to do that for my own sake. It has taken effort to stay involved, to stay engaged, and to keep my mind open to what is going on. I’ve had fun, of course. I wouldn’t be doing this still if I wasn’t having a good time and didn’t find the whole thing a positively fascinating experience. I just also know that I’ve not chosen the path of least resistance at any point in this process as I’ve balanced life, work, and my fascination with this game. I can genuinely say that, if this game was not interested in having a conversation with its players at the level I’m currently meeting it, I would not still be playing it. This depth, made of meaningful statements and interesting questions, makes space for me to reflect and interpret, to find my own meaning in the story even as the story and game as a whole provide their own meaning.

So when the game asks me, or my avatar who is representing me in this world, what it means to be a hero, that means something to me. When it asks me what I’m going to do with the knowledge that the people I’ve been relentless fighting for one thousand hours of my life are just trying to do the same thing I am, I will think about my answer to that question. The game asks you to consider more and more as the story developes from the very beginning of A Realm Reborn into the first parallel chapters of Endlwaker, and so much of it is centered around that question it asks so very early into the game: what does it mean to be a hero? Even now, as I’m still chewing on the answers I gave and the answers the game withheld in Shadowbringers, I’m given more and more to consider as the shapened point that stabbed through Shadowbringers is refined ever thinner and sharper as we drive towards whatever end it is that Endwalker is walking towards. At this point, I’m not sure I even want to guess what answers the game is going to suggest next. I’ve mostly kept myself focused on the smaller scale stuff, on the more immediate things, as I’ve tried to keep myself centered in what is happening and what has already happened, but I occasionally find my mind turning towards that same question again and again. What does it mean to be a hero? What does it mean to my character as they walk around the world? What does it mean to me as I sit at my computer, balancing making in-game money with playing daily content with progressing the MSQ? I do not have a single answer, but I could be said to share every single answer I’ve already mentioned. I went through everything right along with my character, after all. I don’t think my answers would be any different at this point, if I was pressed to give them, and I probably would have arrived at this point the same way I did via the game: one additional bit of context and stipulation at a time.

By the time this story wraps up and they begin the slow process of starting something new in Dawntrail, I am sure I’ll have some kind of resolution to all of this, but I find it hard to imagine that whatever new story they tell won’t at least make reference to all of this. After all, they’ve repeatedly proven just how good they are at referencing past events throughout every chapter I’ve played up to this point. I can’t imagine that will go away anytime soon given the high expectations of the player base after all of these stellar stories and expansions. I just hope that they will allow me to continue to reflect on these questions and answers both as a player and as my character in the game. After all, we’re both forever changed by our experience. Me, in perhaps less literal and material ways, but I have had an experience like nothing before thanks to this game and I will be thinking about as long as my life and my memory remain to me. This game gave me a question that will change the context of every game I play from now on, so it will echo through my future as I consider, every time I play one, what it means to be a hero.