It’s so so sooo funny to me that Estinien started as a faceless edgy shounen antagonistic grump in the 1.0 Legacy/ARR Dragoon quests. Now he’s a main supporting character and part of the Scions of the Seventh Dawn.
And he’s also becoming FFXIV’s official thirst trap at this point. Like.
Remember that official promo illustration (x) that was posted on the FFXIV Twitter during the height of the pandemic? The one with a very sweaty, very scarred, very ripped Estinien in naught but boxer shorts doing one armed pushups. No other character had an illustration that was so overtly horny bait.
And then in Endwalker, Estinien shows up at your room in leather pants and a mostly unbuttoned shirt with rolled up sleeves in a scene straight out of a dating sim. It’s one of the more expensive scenes in the expansion according to Yoshi P (x) because of the part where they animated Estinien jumping out of your window. But not before a lingering shot of his foot stanced on the balcony railing and his leather clad thighs and crotch region. But not before it looks like he’s walking towards your bed when he enters your room. But not before he tells you that you have his lance in a tone of innuendo. Also he never wears those clothes again. Estinien shows up in a glam of which the pants and shirt together typically run at over one million gil… just for that optional scene.
I don’t know who on the FFXIV dev team is leading the march of making Estinien into fanservice fodder… but I’m not complaining.
Game with hyper-detailed soulslike movement mechanics but it’s about children playing tag.
Bonus points if it’s still got the medieval fantasy aesthetic and NPCs who cackle madly but it’s still fundamentally about children playing tag and that fact cannot be escaped
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