#i mean they're already chaotic imagine if they weren't exes

[beanghostprincess]

oda made shanks and buggy break up because they would've been too powerful in the pirate world as allies and boyfriends

[astralartefact]

Anyways, let me talk about Jeuno for a second

I did another run for fun and because I already got my drop for the week I left my room at the end for a minute to do something. When coming back I realized I forgot to pass on the pieces I couldn't get anyways. Mortifying.

Can we keep Prishe. Can we just. Give them Alisaie or something. Prishe at least has the decency to call someone names.

#1 Raid Mechanics

I think this is the exact right difficulty I want them at, they're chaotic (well...) they're visually impactful and not just in a cutscene that halts the entire momentum for no good reason (direct eye contact with Nald'thal) (both of them) and they're not going to be boring the second time you do them because each boss only has 3 (relatively) basic mechanics that immediately loop in the exact same way you've already seen them in (Thaleia; exception being Llymi)

Because as much as I think they could go further I was just stuck for 30? Minutes at Shadowlord - which I find is easier than the Ark Angels, the biggest difficulty is that the cleaves are kinda weird - and this is just not the content for something even more involved. That's why they're doing Chaotic after all.

Special Shout Out to the Ark Angel HM mechanic where you have to kite him. That's so goddamn funny.

#2 The German Dub

I did my for fun run with german voice over to hear how the Prishe from the trailer turns out in the game and well...

She's amazing. The voice actress nailed the assignment. Please set your voice over to german for her fight even just once (you can just do that in-game in the system options in the instance, you don't need to download new data for that or reload or something) because you too can learn the power of SCHMACKES!!!!

If I figure out OBS for next week's gear run I'll record her and post it here, because I'm a fan and I need you to be too (the one thing I miss about playing on PS4 is quick record ._. can just click a button and save the last few minutes of whatever you did. kind of weird that they actively record what you're doing but so convenient)

Anyways, I ended up doing the entire run in german and I have to say, the entire raid's german va work is pretty good! I really liked Bakool Ja Ja's Voice Actors, they are a bit more your usual stiff german Anime/Video Game Voice Acting, same with the Ark Angels, but it's not stiff enough to be weird or anything.

Now Shadow Lord however. That guy.

After doing the fight to about 80% three times in a row I have to say I really like the voice actor's performance, it's definitely a different direction than the other languages but he really sells it.

#3 I found my new (second) least favorite thing about FFXIV my least favorite thing is still Myths of the Realm, fuck eulogia

This is a Shard Metaphysics Tangent.

I hate it. I don't know what they're thinking they're doing with it but I don't care anymore, it's something I roll my eyes at whenever they feel the need to go pseudo-scientific deep lore about it because they can pretend all they want, it does not make sense anymore because of weird mini retcons nobody asked for that weren't even necessary.

Imagine doing this whole cutscene in Shadowbringers where you show us exactly what happened to which shard in which order and then instead of working with what you establish there you bring it up after two expansions but now everything is labeled differently to conform with whatever whim you thought up and you just act like that's not weird at all - and not only that you also condescend to me about how look, it actually has to be this way because there's this other vague lore rule that we arbitrarily decided is more important. What, don't you know the lore? If you paid attention you would know we said this! what do you mean "other stuff"?

What fun to imagine that! Am I glad I cared about what you wrote when putting together my OC Lore in satisfyingly canon-abiding ways!

Minor Spoiler for Interphos EX, but since the ground in the Ice Phase is once again a Roman Numeral (making Wind -> X / 10, Earth -> II / 2, Ice -> III / 3) it does very much imply that those are the shards Sphene is connecting with (unless nobody in development noticed that the ground shapes are all numbers in which case... okay). Problem is of course that that doesn't make any fucking sense from any direction because the 2nd Shard succumbed to a Fire Calamity, the 3rd to Earth and the 10th to Water - and - the 2nd Calamity was Lightning (which was on the 12th) and the 3rd Fire (10th doesn't exist so don't know why I brought it up).

It's kind of impressive they didn't even manage to hit one of those.

But even pretending that Graha just labeled his Shard Power Point wrong and the Calamities are just in another order and on different shards it still doesn't make any sense because Alexandria being the Ninth and not the Twelfth is from a writing perspective - hopefully because otherwise the only reason for doing that is "Look, FF9" and that's a really stupid reason to upend your lore for - solely built around the "fact" that the Rejoinings leave nothing behind... but if Alexandria is from the 9th because LM can't be in the 12th "since it's rejoined" how is Sphene connecting to the Elemental Nothings of 2, 3 and 10, which are all Rejoined and therefore shouldn't exist anymore? So what you're saying is that there is a Twelfth Lightning Nothing that Living Memory could have been in!? So why ruin the Ninth with a Failed Rejoining you never mentioned before instead of just making this easy on everybody??? Ugh, I hate it.

Anyways. The reason I bring this up is that they're clearly setting up Vana'diel's place in this world building mess since they talk about it a bunch to set up the mystery they will presumably solve at some point and they show the ruins of Amaurot in that one Shadow Lord Attack (i'm assuming? it looks like ruined amaurot and what else should it be) to tie it all together - and I'm somewhat concerned about that because they made it very clear that despite what we're seeing of it being "fake" (we'll get to it) it still all comes from actual FF11 Vana'diel - and making FF11 a shard after all of the "The Shards are just mangled copies of the Source/Sundered World" you ended up doing would be so disrespectful. Like, no, you cannot do that, the things that would do to stuff like Altana and Promathia. The only thing of the sort I will accept is if Vana'diel is the sundered world in the far far far far far far faaar flung past - which would make Shadow Lord prevailing to stand in Amaurot's crumbling ruins even more metal btw - otherwise do not make Vana'diel involved with the Shards in any way shape or form!!!! DON'T DO IT.

#4 The NieR of it all

That's a Shadowlord Reference, right. This looks like Amaurot but Snow in Summer. They made a NieR reference, right. They connected the two Shadow Lords :)

Well... It's more likely than you think.

I want to boldly predict that this story line was written by the person who wrote Mamook (who I previously theorized to be Megumi Onozuka and who I assume was involved with Y:DA which means she know her stuff and is NieR-adjacent) and I want to be right about that because I want to be that person's biggest fan, I want to curse their name in delight when nobody else does

I get why people wouldn't be keen on them establishing that the Walks are just copies made of Electrope instead of just making the Eleventh a Return-to-Ivalice-esque Vana'diel or something where whatever's happening here won't disturb the original world. As established above I'm not particularly keen on it either but if this is going where I think it's going I think it could be an amazing idea and worth wobbling the lore for.

First of all, I think this is an Isekai. I think Alxaal is a Player. Not a player character, a Player - Prishe makes a clear distinction he isn't the PC of FF11 she knew - which is important because I think these memory constructs aren't built on the actual "facts" of FF11 which just happen to invoke Memories of the players but literally on the Player's Memories of them, all of their subjectivities included. Like, this is not just FF11 Prishe, this is basically the collective unconscious version of Prishe constructed through the audience of FF11 - which at the end of the day is what she is if this isn't directly written by the writers who wrote her.

But that's not the exciting part to me, that's not why this is the NieR part of this post. The reason for that is that doing that they set up a situation where we pose the worth our memories of what happened against the facts of what happened. They literally start a thing about Prishe having to figure out what she's worth knowing that she is a copy - but with this added nuance it becomes "What is this version of Prishe, the Prishe someone remembered, worth if she isn't the "Real" Prishe?" - and that feels very NieR to me, especially since looking at FF11 and FF14 it's a very topical discussion to have.

Compared to "normal" RPGs both FF11 and 14 are uniquely in the position of also providing a sandbox for players to make memories in - memories that the developers haven't planned in the form they can plan story moments and the like. This would be a very interesting way to acknowledge that - and affirm that those memories, that "subjective" view of Vana'diel (and Eorzea for that matter), is just as real as the factual version the developers created. And I think that's a really neat thing for a cross-over of 11 and 14 in particular to be about, since it is something only these two share among the other Final Fantasies.

In a similar vein both of these games are inevitably going to "end." Even if they somehow get an offline version that version will be different, the "original" FF11 will not exist once the servers are shutdown - and honestly it already doesn't exist anymore since playing FF11 nowadays is a whole different beast from playing FF11 back in the day. "What is this version of Prishe, the Prishe someone remembered, worth if she isn't the "Real" Prishe?" can just as well be about that.

So with all these thoughts bubbling in my head I'm very excited to see where they're heading with this.

I just really hope they don't pull a Myths of the Realm on me again and end this with the stupidest conclusion anyone could ever come to, maybe something like us having to delete our Prishe specifically because she's not the real one. As always, fuck eulogia.

Also, just to say it if that is what they were trying to do with that Shadow Lord attack above, I really love the idea of people that played FF11 and NieR using their chance to connect the two, even if it's just because of the name. Like now you can say "Oh yeah, 14's FF11 Shadowlord kind of has a NieR reference attack" and FF14 people did that. I think stuff like that is neat :)