Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers – review

The climax of Dead Pixels, E4's recent sitcom from the creators of Peep Show and based on a group of friends obsessed with an online fantasy video game, was surprisingly affecting. After years of questing together, the friends, for whom the game had become the crucible in which their bonds had been made and reinforced, successfully plant the "Orb of Uncreation" into the slug queen's egg sac and thereby triumphantly conclude the game's story. "No, this was totally, totally worth it," murmurs one of the players into the head mic she uses to chat to her teammates (one of whom plays from the adjacent bedroom). It's a joke about the fallacy of so much human endeavour, from stamp collecting to Westminster jostling: the hollow realisation that the appeal often lies in the striving, not the attaining. It also strikes at the heart of a truth about a certain kind of online video game, played at a certain point of early adulthood.