#really enjoying stormblood so far!

[bespectacledpaladin]

Sunset and nighttime on the Azim Steppe

[eemamminy-art]

If you're willing, would you share some of your thoughts about zenos? I just met him in my playthrough and I'm already obsessed and curious about how people misinterpret him

I have many thoughts on Zenos ahaha you can find a lot of my long-winded rambles about him in my tag for him! There will definitely be spoilers in this for both stormblood and endwalker, so if you're just going through stormblood for the first time I'd advise saving this to read later!

But in reference to the thing I was talking about with my partner yesterday was mainly like, how there's this idea people have of Zenos that he enjoys killing when it's simply not the case. Now don't misunderstand-- he doesn't hate it either. He's not remorseful. He's not even trying to justify the action. It's just totally meaningless to him.

When he's urging on the wol to be more violent and to let themselves loose against him, it's not for the sake of simply sowing more destruction. He wants to bring the wol down to his own level in order to debase himself. The reason he wants to encourage the wol to hurt him is because being challenged by them is the only thing making him feel alive. The destruction is something of just a natural consequence of that, of showing the wol that Zenos sees them as two sides of the same coin. Zenos is the emperor's attack dog more than his son, the wol is in turn the alliance's attack dog more than their ally (or so he thinks!).

When he talks about "the hunt" it's less this whimsical mass murder that people point it out to be, and really him seeking purpose, meaning, and happiness in the only messed up way he knows how. As a child he was only given praise and attention for causing harm, so he seeks an opponent that can harm him in return so he can feel something, anything. When he's collecting weapons from fallen warriors, they're not trophies or spoils of war, he's specifically interested in the history of the weapons.

I think it's maybe easy to forget, I mean stormblood was so long ago now and while the characterization is still there in endwalker, it's colored by the perception of others. Isse and the other Domans choosing freedom over fear, no matter how hopeless things are.

Jullus wanting to know why he would betray his countrymen and pleading to his empathy, when Zenos was shaped into a weapon by that empire and holds no love for his nation. Alisaie telling him that while he may have found a spark of joy in fighting with the wol, without empathy for others he will find himself alone and bereft of the one thing that makes him happy.

Zero trying to wrap her head around the way Zenos discarded lives as though they were nothing, while bearing some undefinable emotion toward the wol (obsession, competitiveness, devotion, fondness-- she's not able to define it and I think it's meant to be vague for the player's sake). All these characters in their words with and about Zenos do lay it out clear that he is someone who is devoid of emotions except for the relationship he has to the wol, but I think because they are rightly condemning him for the lives he has taken and destroyed, people misconstrue that to mean he likes killing. There's a sort of malice attributed to his actions when it's really just nihilism.

Now, I'm not saying that because he didn't like it, it means it's fine or something. I know people like to interpret it that way when you like a villain in anything lol. All this to say, this idea of Zenos being a psychopath gleefully murdering people is so far from the truth. He's a very broken man with deep traumas and depression, finding happiness only in wanting to be hurt and killed by the wol.

Maybe at the end of the day, it doesn't matter whether he likes it or doesn't-- I find to most people it makes no difference, so it's easy for them to conflate the two things. But I think Zenos' very existence challenges how the player views their own actions. In the same way that Elidibus in the ShB 5.3 quest Faded Memories reflected back at them all the death and destruction that the wol has caused-- intentional or not-- I think Zenos serves a similar purpose narratively. He questions why, he questions what are good or evil really, and asserts that there's no point in trying to find a justification for death and murder.

I can see why it makes people uncomfortable! He's reminding the wol that they have killed just as much as he did, and questioning the "justice" behind the wol's actions. It's an uncomfortable thing to think about. I think it would be fun to have a wol that comes out of endwalker as a pacifist tbqh!

(Not to get on a tangent, but I totally thought post-HW and especially with the DRG 70 quest, that Estinien was going down that road. I was really sold on the idea just by my own interpretation of his actions and words, only for him to be not only just fine with fighting still but to be actually kind of into it for the sport, just with more humility and empathy now. Total missed opportunity imo! But this is not a post about Estinien!! 😤)

Going back to Zenos though, I think it's easier for people to not grant him a shred of empathy and to write off all his actions as those of a madman. He does after all say he wants the world to burn, for the selfish reason of having the wol all to himself. I get it's uncomfortable for the player character to be the one at the center of his attention. I get it!! But gosh there is a much more interesting character in there than just "guy who gets off on killing", if you just open your eyes and ears for a moment.

I do think that, given the themes in ffxiv's story overall, that granting empathy and forgiveness to even the worst of people is kind of the driving force behind a lot of characters' motivations. Raubahn recognizes Ilberd did all he did for the sake of their shared nation's freedom and future; Estinien recognizes Nidhogg was grieving and in pain as much as he was, leading to vengeance; Hien recognizes the cruelty of her family and others in Doma failed Yotsuyu every moment of her life, shaping her into a tyrant; Lyse recognizes the unrest in Ala Mhigo failed Fordola, pushing her into the false hope the Empire offered; all the scions and the wol recognize how the unsundered ascians bore the responsibility of their entire people on their shoulders and did the unthinkable to try to save their own; Wuk Lamat recognizes Sphene acts out of love and preservation for her people, no matter what it takes. On and on and on.

So I find it odd that Zenos never gets that sort of grace! It's easier to just make an enemy out of him than to see things from his perspective, even while most of the other antagonists are given some degree of empathy while still acknowledging they were wrong and had to be stopped.

He's really neat. I'd put him under a microscope and study him if his ass wasn't too big to fit on the slide.

[sunderedazem]

okay so, I finally finished Dawntrail, patch quests notwithstanding of course! And now I have some thoughts, though they're probably kind of disjointed? Because- I have a lot of opinions on this expac, and some of the dismissive attitudes of other people I've seen floating around are just. Really annoying to me. Anyway. It's under a readmore, Dawntrail spoilys abound, I am talking about the WHOLE thing but rambling

So! I liked Dawntrail better than A Realm Reborn, (which I think is the accurate measuring stick/expac to contrast it against). It's very clearly setting up future expansions and story, introducing new characters and plot devices and generally giving us something to pursue in the future. The world is fun and beautiful, the music SLAPS, the characters are mostly well rounded, especially Wuk Lamat and Koana - their arcs were very well done and I genuinely enjoyed them far beyond anything in ARR lol. Or Stormblood, to be honest. The initial plot of about level 95 and below makes sense and is well-executed. But while I *like* it more than ARR - I think it's much less well executed in one regard - the sheer lack of tie-in to what came before.

ARR goes to great lengths to preserve pieces of 1.0's story- a story that is literally inaccessible to new players except in video or privately hosted servers and etc. Louisoix's sacrifice, though never seen outside of 1.0, is constantly referenced, even up through Endwalker! It sets up the bones of a story that is very clearly built on what came before, even though most new players will have no ability to experience that story whatsoever.

In contrast- Dawntrail has ten years of worldbuilding to sprinkle throughout, mostly in regards to previously-established global phenomena - like stories of Turali Warriors of Light with the Echo, the Umbral Calamities, the loss of an entire second moon now well over five years ago, the Final Days manifesting (surely not just over Eorzea and Ilsabard?), the Blasphemies - and it ignores all of that, to the detriment of FFXIV's worldbuilding. And look- I get it, it's a new story, the writers want to distance themselves from the previous ten years I guess, but the result is that this feels disjointed as hell to me. It's like the previous ten years of still-playable story has been completely discarded, and for what? Marketing? Like, we know the Echo wasn't just an Eorzea thing, that Warriors of Light exist across every reflection, and yet- we hear nothing about the Turali ideas and mythos about these? Not even in passing, when it would make sense for it to be discussed?

I get that some people disliked the previous story and thought the WoL thing was overdone but- it was the central story for ten years. It is central to the worldbuilding here now. Tossing it out so easily feels sloppy as hell, and it's a choice that even ARR didn't make despite how easy it would have been for them to do so!

That all being said- I didn't really have much of a problem with this during the first half of the expansion. It was the promised low-stakes vacation, Wuk Lamat had a fantastic arc showcasing her growth, the WoL kind of gets to hang out and let Someone Else deal with the plot - and it's all honestly pretty great. Yeah, I was really feeling the lack of cohesion with the previous expansions, but the worldbuilding in Tural was making up for it, with how diverse the different regions were and how cohesive everything felt within itself here was actually fantastic. (I am still mad that kitty girl never got to eat her tacos! Let Wuk Lamat eat her tacos! Taco cat!)

I also really liked that she was going to the different homes of the people she knew from Tuliyollal and learning some of their ways as well. Because she definitely knew them from her life in the city, but clearly lacked familiarity with some of their more traditional beliefs, and seeing an aspiring ruler interact with and value those parts of her communities was really well done, I think. And I think it also was a really important point to make- that to rule over (elected or otherwise) and make decisions for a people, you really have to make the effort and keep making the effort to know them.

And...and this is all where the second half falls apart, for me.

Solution Nine and Everkeep and Alexandria, and the lightning-drowned shard are really cool setting ideas, and they're gorgeous as hell, but the plot stops making sense to me here, like at all. Wuk Lamat leading the charge into the dome initially I can see, as it's a Turali village that's been swallowed up, but the moment it becomes clear that not only has thirty years passed inside the dome, but this is an entirely separate world and nation that has somehow fused with our own Source- it...I'm sorry, but it doesn't make sense for her to take the plot lead role. She's a national leader - but she's not an expert in dimensions and reflections and world ending catastrophes. The Scions are (Y'shtola or Krile are right here). The WoL is. And I definitely agree that she should have been along for the ride - these are her people, after all, at least in part! Tuliyollal was attacked by these people, she needs to be there to negotiate - and I get that the WoL as a character very, very rarely actually initiates plot, but this very much felt like we were entirely just along for the ride instead of a member of a once-again secret organization whose entire job it is to deal with shit like this and the person that literally saved the star by facing down Meteion.

This second half of the story would have been the perfect opportunity, imo, for WoL references and Ascian references and Echo references, because this is all a set of circumstances that aren't too far out of the WoL's wheelhouse of "just another Tuesday. Damn" crazy happenstances. We known the Ascians were working to unbalance the shards and maybe still are, we know that levin sickness and the sin eater transformations likely have the same cure, we KNOW that we managed to stabilize the First (and in Eden quests even helped restore it!) and could probably help Sphene do the same and- none of this is mentioned. It is literally a golden opportunity to tie in what we know from previous expansions (because this is the same overarching setting. let it have a cohesive story!) even in a momentary mention of just "oh, we've helped with something similar before, if you want our assistance."

But we don't really get that. What we get is this- kind of half-assed attempt at making Sphene and Wuk Lamat foils for each other and also friends?, and meanwhile the WoL is sitting there with the answers to at least some of the questions being asked, and just not saying anything about them. And it's very clear - at least to me - from the get go that this is going to be more learning about the Alexandrians' way of life to try and reach a common understanding (which don't get me wrong, it's fun). But even from the outset, I can tell that was never going to be the issue here. The conflict here isn't actually between the people of Alexandria and Tural, it's between Zoraal Ja/Sphene and Tural. The Alexandrians are pretty neatly stripped of any agency in this with the memory modifications of the Regulators (re: those few lines about the resistance twins' father being dragged off after a minor incident with the military and then forgotten. if that's not a guy getting Disappeared....yikes), and it's clear that most of the living people don't really know or care what Endless are.

And so when we follow Wuk Lamat around as she wanders about learning about Alexandrians, like how we did with the villages in Tural, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Not because we're learning about the people here, but because this is held up to be somehow relevant to defeating Zoraal Ja and Sphene - and in the end, we won't learn enough to actually understand the Alexandrian people anyway. This isn't the same thing as a princess from the capital city visiting the traditional villages of the people she's grown up alongside in order to be a better leader for them, this is two madmen (one an AI bot, the other...apparently having lost his inner motivations in the last 30 years in favor of proving himself better than his father? I dunno, I wasn't sure I understood this slide for him) using their people as a crutch to further their goals. And in between all this, we have like, four quests where we cooperate with an Alexandrian resistance, tops. And that resistance isn't even against Sphene, it's against Zoraal Ja!

But in Living Memory, we're still forced to erase the memories of (probably) hundreds of thousands of Alexandrians, with zero provision made for their preservation somehow - like would it have been impossible to record them on floppy disks or allagan tomestones somethin, or even just some of them - with zero provision made for the return of the memories of the people of Alexandria so that these simulacrum people aren't just. deleted from history. The people of Alexandria- are they ever told that they were harvesting souls from other worlds to maintain a simulation of everyone who had ever lived and died in Alexandria? Not to maintain their current lives in Everkeep? Are they ever told that Sphene was an android, that she actually died hundreds of years ago? Are the Alexandrians ever actually given the opportunity to remember their own people?

Because- not from what I understand of the current story? We get hamfisted into following Cahcuia's wishes (and she's not even Alexandrian) and shutting down the terminals wholesale (which probably condemns all the preserved and living plants in that conservatory to withering away and dying, too). And the most we get in passing is a "we will remember them" from Wuk Lamat and....no. we won't. We've barely met these people, barely comprehend their way of life. This isn't our or Wuk Lamat's culture, it's the Alexandrians. And this isn't the last plea of a dying relic (a la Emet-selch in ShB) this is- we're outsiders coming in and erasing massive chunks of a people's history. This isn't us promising to remember that they existed after they've been wiped from history, this is us actively erasing them.

And the question this particular expansion asks, via Sphene and Cahcuia and in other ways is "could you have found another way, if it were you?" and this is a question that the WoL has already answered! With Ardbert, with Meteion - but we're not allowed to give that same answer here. We're not allowed to say "yes, and here's how we helped start fixing the First and Thirteenth, do you want in." Instead, it feels like we're backtracking on one of the core themes of Endwalker (i.e. letting the memory of those you lost push you forward and keep you going - for those we have lost. for those we can yet save). Hell, G'raha's conversation with the Omicrons in Ultima Thule is all about if they can still count as living people- and then we're reneging on that here, and destroying the Endless and being told they're not living and not even given the chance to treat their memories with dignity in trying to memorialize them somehow.

Not to mention in the very end where the ruler of the neighboring country you were just at war with (you think, do you even remember or know that?) turns up having just murdered your beloved queen (who was maybe an AI, you heard, but you're not sure?) with a small boy who looks like your tyrant king from That World that just Slaughtered all your people for their souls and- you're told he's the new king now? what the fuck. and what the fuck kind of international incident-

Like, I get that the Endless needed to go, because they did. That Sphene was who Wuk Lamat was getting to know so she could be remembered (versus the Alexandrian people) even if I think that they really did not have enough time to end up as friends. I get that this is an expansion After the Other Story is Over. But the Other Story Still Happened and affected things including worldstate (and reflectionstate, lol) and it feels like that was just ignored. The memories of the people the Endless became still deserve tribute, somehow, still deserve preservation - the Alexandrians deserve to have much more agency in the decisions made about their way of life. This was still a global threat that should've probably had the Global Threat Ending Organization acting at bit more hands on about it, while Wuk Lamat did a bit more actual diplomacy.

Overall, the expansion is fun. There's a lot of fun questions I'm wondering about the answers to. Wuk Lamat is a bean, and while my WoL probably isn't calling her Lamaty'i (it took him like three expacs to be that relaxed with the Scions) he's nevertheless a friend of hers and is very willing to play pranks and cause mischief around Tuliyollal with the excuse of "yeah well I know the Dawnservants :3." The setting design and Turali internal worldbuilding is fucking incredible - honestly HW-levels of hella. The entire first half of the expansion was awesome. It's all WAY more fun than ARR, or StB in some cases. But - especially the second half - it's much less narratively cohesive with the rest of the game, and appears to backtrack on or ignore themes that really hit hard for me in Shadowbringers and Endwalker and that's frustrating to me.

I guess in the end my reaction boils down to- I got an expac with the internal worldbuilding work of HW, but with less of an explicit connection to the rest of the game than ARR had to 1.0. And as someone who's invested in the overarching story...that's last part is disappointing to me. Probably won't NG+ the second half like how I don't NG+ ARR, and I'll hope the patch quests will resolve some of the upset I felt about just. deleting giant swathes of Alexandrian history.

I definitely like the expansion, from an "is it fun?" perspective. I don't know if I like it from a "does it make sense?" perspective. And I honestly I think I would have enjoyed it more if it was all more like the first half of the expansion.

[rontra]

drop your ffxiv lore

asking me to drop my pants in public would be less embarrassing..... you have to understand crucially that i don't know anything about anything and dont want The Knowers to see me

LMAO well i can talk about it a little but only on One Condition. as i mentioned before im a Certified Stormblood Gamer . in fact according to the wiki i am about this deep (level 64 questing atm)

so basically the condition is this: if something wasn't explicit in ARR or HW you cannot under any circumstances talk to me about it...! if you have any sort of reaction to this post that has to do with any later material than that i ask you Don't say it to me. if you are in doubt about whether something "counts", the safe answer is yes it does, and just going "neat!" instead & moving on will do fine. i really don't want to play spoiler chicken with you and don't want to know anything i don't already know. i'm enjoying taking my time with the game, so please refrain from correcting or corroborating anything i have to say about it atm!!!!!!! i'm still baby! thank you....!!! 😭👍

anyway my xiv characters are 1 a dude who was born in a wet cardboard box all alone and might be scared of women . & 2 a scary woman who did definitely kill her wife but is also the most Wife Guy for like secret reasons. the second one's lore is being ironed out as we speak so its all subject to change but the concept is there

1. ZT

love this guy. i even made an amv about it when i finished arr

(every xiv player voice) my wol is the most special boy in the world.

i actually had a whole thing typed up here about like his fucked up mom and whatever but i got shy and deleted it. i might go over it if someone's actually interested . but basically he's a poor little meow meow who, up until the beginning of the game, was abused pretty consistently bc of [evil cat people family dynamic reasons]. his family members mostly hate his ass and were rarely all that nice to him, so he has a lot of issues with self-worth and things like that--he doesn't feel like he's particularly good at anything or really "worth" much

he's from southern ilsabard which is a place i uh do not know much about. as a stormblood gamer. but it's fine the details don't really matter (walking away quickly)

his most prized childhood possession was the ruined scraps of an old arcanist's tome, and through sheer tenacity he managed to teach himself his first rudimentary spell from the incomplete paragraphs therein. he mostly chalks that feat up to the fruit of Time + Boredom and not talent or love, but those pages were the only thing he took with him when it finally came time for him to follow his older brothers' footsteps and leave the family.

gets on the boat. goes to limsa. enlists in the arcanists guild to cultivate what he sees as the One Single Skill He Has. people in the guild ???praise him??? and encourage him?? to keep at it??? which he is not at ALL used to, but it motivates him to work even harder at his training. he's pretty far from home and deeply unsure of himself, but he absolutely does not want to go back to the limited world he knew until now. so that unwillingness to look back sort of inherently keeps him trucking in search of a new purpose to latch on to

he's very sensitive to people being niceys to him, because he's not used to it at all. he's 4x weak to it and might cry if it's coming from an older woman who is even vaguely maternal, due to his horrific mommy issues. also, he wants to be useful to people ("for once"), so he has a hard time saying no to all the million quests and sidequests in the game. perfect

his inability to say no to people who request his help puts him on the Old Nymian Scholar Investigation Mission of course. i am Scholar Guy for a reason and that reason is ZT. this dude never had anything his family valued, and lived as the expendable runt of the litter his whole life, and now is suddenly entrusted with something important for the first time in his life--something bigger and older than him, a way of life, a legacy to uphold and carry forwards into the future

and that mantle is pretty heavy. but he'll carry it! and that's how he becomes a healer boy who will defend any random tonberry with his life. he feels very strongly about the extinct art of the scholars and also about being a healer in general--boy finally found his calling! also he has the echo and is our funny warrior of light but like that's fine. i'm sure the "not being able to say no to people, no matter how tired/hurt/etc he himself is" thing is not catching up any time soon. i did play DRK up to 60 though and lmao. well. hang in there. i even made an amv ab

there's some more stuff about him like how his path through eorzea and as a healer specifically is in lockstep with death at every turn and also how he's a blue mage on the side and whatever but this is long enough. here's a pic of him with one of my favorite "no one else gives a shit about this character" npcs

he's a pretty kitty and very sweet altho he does need to learn to assert himself (and starts doing so through the course of the game). he's very attached to his friends. he doesn't have any love interest or w/e for now he's figuring his own stuff out. gaining confidence. classic stuff. easy protagonist recipe. my meow meow. i played pvp just to get him a haircut. the things i do for zt

2. KRALJICA

the new baby. kraljica is not her original name, but she's never going to use her original one again. her surname is Radinasch, which used to be Aradina, before she killed her own queen who may or may not have been also her wife (ofc by hrothgar convention she then changed her surname to represent the loss of her queen) (despite being the killer) (it's a memento :) )

she is a bozjan hrothgar so we're back to ilsabard shenanigans (which remains kind of problematic for a stormblood gamer, but It's Fine). she actually knows ZT's mother, but not in a good way. Radina's group was in local political tension with ZT's mom's group, so there's some history there (notably in that kraljica would recognize ZT as "zahsa's runt" (derogatory) and not be very nice to him about it, but they don't really share a Personal history beyond the Faction Squabbles)

back to the point though, kraljica killed her queen, and most of the other followers of said queen were not very happy about that. killing the queen is like really high up on the list of things hrothgar do not want you to do. so she is branded queenkiller and exiled. some of the other hrothgar choose to follow kraljica out (having faith in her leadership for various reasons), making her their new queen as they venture to eorzea together (and all of their surnames become akraljica to match).

kraljica takes the surge of enmity against her as a natural consequence of what she did, and doesn't correct anybody who identifies her as a queenkiller in her journeys. she basically does not care about her shattered reputation or having to leave her home, because she is on, a secret, Other Scheme.

what they don't know of course is that radina asked her to do it. for scheme reasons. #women

kraljica is acting in accordance with radina's will. not even her own loyal followers know what her plan is, but they can clearly tell she has conviction; even when being hated by her people and ousted from her home, kraljica moves with that same inexhaustible willpower

(maybe she has questions, when she's alone, and wonders how much radina kept from her in the final days. and maybe she misses and mourns her. but all of that is only for her, in private, when no one can see... in front of the others, she's unflinching, and a leader they will follow no matter what...!!!)

she doesn't seem to have the echo and isnt a warrior of light. ZT can do that stuff. she's like busy with her own thing. she's running around collecting suspicious amounts of aether and being suspiciously driven and faithful to her cause. suspiciously

ok fine it's because radina asked her to cut her loose from mortality, venerate that, and bring her back as a primal. because she wants to become a war god strong enough to take revenge on the empire. something that will keep coming back, no matter how many times it's destroyed, as long as her chosen can still call for her....<3 that's so romantic

of course, what returns will not be radina-the-person. it will be an image of her will, shaped by kraljica's mind and the bloodpool of radina's aether. radina is dead for good; what kraljica is summoning is a representation of radina's goals and dreams, fueled by pure belief and a lot of aether. That Which Resembles Wife But Is Not will cast one megaflare for every minute of suffering inflicted upon bozja. (speaking to the empire thru a megaphone) this is your final warning

their summoning is pretty unorthodox and and "partial" (the primal does not manifest a corporeal form at this time, but it is certainly present in its vessel to some extent)--the game already allows a few different quirky summonings, so we're just playing calvinball and making up Another Special Case (this time owing to the specific setup and execution of radina's plan, her and kraljica's synchronicity about the whole thing, kraljica's unique position in her life, and some sprinkles of Rule Of Cool to taste) . imo the game is flexible enough about it that putting in Just One More Weird Summon Strat is not gonna break anything (LMAO) so it's fine <3

all you have to do is write in a side character who goes "but! that's not possible..." while the thing is happening in front of them

anyway suffice to say no one is doing it like radina's weird ass, and she couldn't do it without her wife guy who is willing to do whatever she wants. suffice to also say that kraljica's own aether is noticeably Weird and over-aspected by her beloved primal, and that "radina" (that which resembles wife but is not) Could Be lowkey tempering her right now and nobody would even notice it because her goal and the primal's goal are already one and the same. but that's probably fine. radina would never do that to her <3......

unless of course there are things about her even kraljica never understood. but surely that wouldn't happen

its really hard for other people to get a grip on kraljica because she won't let anybody close to her emotionally and she definitely won't spill the beans on radina's secret scheme. her boys are with her no matter what (#hrothgang) (they also picked up a viera whose city name now includes "akraljica" hahaha). other people are just like um that is a shady lady who is casting spells we dont even know how to classify. scary. also she's got a situationship with a nasty bandit milf (my friend's hrothgal<3) so we better just leave her alone. bad vibes all around

radina was a gunbreaker. kraljica is very good at manipulating aether and a strong fighter too, but i havent rly settled on a canon class for her. because her actual "canon class" is like. "a summoner from a hypothetical Other FF game. not even a specific other FF game, just Very Much Not This One" LMAO

she would just be like ah its um secret ancient arts from my homeland . you wouldnt know her. shes from a different continent. not like how they do it in limsa. not at all. goodbye (walks away mid conversation) and the arcanists could not stop her. like

anyway i'm not used to playing a female char so i keep getting distracted by her breasting boobily around. they dont let ZT jiggle like that so how was i to know... and basically, so-called free thinkers when dalmascan draped top 👇

she almost had a different face marking way back in the benchmark character creation era, but looking at it now it looks so weird without her big X . like who is that

(metian vest so important for the shoulder bulk... not gonna lie)

anyway kraljica would hear about the final aeon from ff10 and be like that's fucking right.

[aotopmha]

Tl; dr on general impressions of Dawntrail intro MSQ:

(I currently stopped at the second branch of lvl 90 MSQ.)

I was expecting a better paced A Realm Reborn/Stormblood and I'm getting a better-paced A Realm Reborn/Stormblood.

The dialog is super straight-forward and the characters and circumstances really simple, but I'm enjoying it exactly for that reason.

This game can be so incredibly long-winded that when simple prose and motivations pop up, it can almost feel jarring. And I suspect a bunch of people will be put off by that alone. Especially if this kind of is indeed half or so of the MSQ.

I think it's a mild, chill kind of fun, a good 6-7/10 so far, as opposed to a frustrating 6-7/10 like ARR or StB were, with ideas being explored in a much more streamlined way and a tangible goal and a way to get there immediately set the moment we get the story going as opposed to meandering and finding its feet in how to get where they want to go in terms of writing.

It's only level 90, but I get the sense this vibe will indeed last the entire first half or so.

[astralartefact]

FFXIV Dawntrail Review Part 1 - Where I tell you if I liked it and also Bingo(?)

This post contains spoilers for all of Dawntrail's Main Story up until the Ending!

Hmm.

I'm a little bit embarrassed to write this. I genuinely didn't expect this. Should I have? No. I was perfectly right to not see this coming.

I really loved Dawntrail. Like. You don't understand.

I don't really rank the FFXIV Expansions (except that Heavensward is last) but Dawntrail might be up there. It's 2:00 am and I will probably delete this when I reread it when I have slept over it, but I might genuinely call this my favorite X.0 so far. (read over it and at least for now i will stand by it) (keep in mind most enjoyed =/= best and "best art" doesn't exist)

I know it won't be popular in the community, I've already known that 30% through and by the many, many posts proudly announcing that they do not like Wuk Lamat it seems like that Dawntrail truly will be Stormblood 2.0 in the eyes of the public - but what can I say, I loved it. I had a fantastic time.

There is a bunch of criticisms I've read that I disagree with. I thought the WoLs place in the story was great. What do you people mean by 'We're not the main character anymore' it has literally always been like this except that usually we don't only have one dedicated Expansion Character that gets this much of a monopoly on screentime (see Ryne) - by which I mean, are you jealous? - but also that isn't 'bad', they're allowed to do that and I liked it. also how do you go through this expansion and arrive at "we weren't the main character" - bro, everybody told us at every corner how happy they are we're here bc without us none of this would remotely work. also they literally teased the key is an azem thing clearly this is build up for something

I liked the pacing, I enjoyed the slowburn build-up of Wuk going through the nuances of her people's individual problems before turning to the actual crisis. I know people are big mad that the MSQ gameplay is mainly just Fetch Quests and Cutscenes - which is something we'll get back to - but tbh I didn't even think it was that bad? I feel like we had expansions that were far worse about it....

I also loved Wuk Lamat! I liked that she grew relatively quickly and continouosly, aside from the Seasickness Joke they repeated too often, and I was surprised how much genuinely smart and thought through things she added to the conversation. One example I remember is her bringing up that she would rather learn and fix why people are committing crimes in the first place instead of just 'adding police' - without anybody prompting her to learn that. I don't know, I just really appreciated that.

I even liked Bakool Ja Ja, there I said it. I knew people would be really mad about Wuk just forgiving him and his dad especially after the kind of stuff they did - the internet has become really weird about forgiveness the past few years especially if it's "unearned" whatever that means - but like, you guys know this is a story, right, he didn't threaten to murder someone in real life. Immersion is good and all, but you know you're playing FF14, right, a game that's 50% a Saturday Morning Cartoon, 50% Game of Thrones for a Young Adult Audience. also it's kind of necessary for the theme of the whole narrative for him to do something we 'hate' him for more than the others - and i guess i would agree that they could have written the details around it better - but what's there is there for a reason. if you want to know more that's what Part 2 is going to be for.

Which brings me back to the Fetch Quests. Listen, I'm not really defending anything here, I do agree that the MSQ gameplay could probably be a little more engaging - There's just a thing I thought that keeps coming up in other contexts too:

At which point does this become a "Consumer Problem" instead of a "Developer Problem"?

We're five expansions in. If all expansions before have been structurally exactly like this, at which point is it your problem for expecting it to be different. What I mean is, if you played four parts of a Visual Novel and then you play part 5 and complain that the gameplay is getting stale, I hope we can agree that, like, that's a you problem. If you don't want to read then why are you playing a Visual Novel.

Again, I'm not really trying to 'defend' the core issue - even Serialized Mediums, for all the security their regularity brings them, should mix it up a little sometimes and expressing that want as an audience member is completely fine with me - but I feel like this is also at least a little bit a perspective issue. Like. I'm so sorry to tell you that this is just the game you're playing. This probably won't change and it's probably better to not expect it to for your own sake - and yes, I'm so sorry but to some degree navigating your experience of this game is your own responsibility. What I'm saying is Skip Dialogue if you're bored. Farm a Dungeon. Are you guys not doing Fates on your way to a quest marker? I keep seeing people say 'I didn't fight against a single monster as part of the msq' - Well, That wasn't a problem I had, I fought constantly! There are monsters right there for you to fight! Like. Make your own fun!

Anyways, time to look at my bingo card!

(My WoL = Happened, Krile = Depending on who you ask, Sphene = Jury is still out) Certainly better than my Endwalker one!!

One thing I noticed while playing Dawntrail is how bitter exactly Myths of the Realm has made me about this game and i'm so sad!! Like, how did I forget how completely this game is made specifically for me. I will just fail to not like it, because I get it and it gets me. at least until 8.0 when whoever wrote Myths of the Realm gets to write the expansion

Let's go through the noteable ones.

ill-advised azem lore drop - is in hot water, because they did seem to imply that the novelty wine glass of shard travel has to do with azem.

someone sundered knows more than us - krile's parents count and also Gagool Ja Ja's party too to some extent

the forgotten people went to tural - for two seconds!!! technically correct!!!

questionable armor design choices - some of the second dye slots. choices were made.

somebody "important" (but not too important) dies - i didn't expect them to write meaningful side character deaths, but they did so... i guess on a technicality i win?

the twelfth shard is involved // they talk about sundering meta physics

this room. they're so mean. they talk about the silly masks but not about the fact that apparently whatever shard this is either has three moons or two other planets in its solar system. you knew what you were doing q_q

y:da did it better - hahahahahahAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA I AM A FOOL! MEGUMI ONOZUKA! I KNOW THIS WAS YOUR DOING AND YOU CANNOT HIDE ANY LONGER! YOU ARE NOW ON MY LIST OF NAMES TO SHOUT!!!! If my theory in Part 2 turns out incorrect then I'm so sorry about this, buT IF I'M NOT THEN---!!!!

Shaaloani did not win me over - it being the padding zone really didn't help.

Erenville did not Outfit Change - but given the ending he's probably going to at some point. And I hope he stays around :)

who needs eternal life anyways - They tried to be a little bit more understanding about it and make it a "it's just not worth what it costs" sort of thing, but they did still say at least once - verbatim! - that "Eternal Life is Bad, Full Stop, you people suck and are failing the human game by not dying"

Something Actually Unexpected Happens - I was surprised by the Final Zone. Maybe it's not Actually Unexpected because in a way it's just "Amaurot meets What Myths of the Realm should have been" - but if that doesn't count I still didn't expect the devs to fully ugly down that zone when you're done with it lol. Shutting down the first one and realizing they didn't just mean it would be left empty, it's dead and fully without music physically hurt and it made going through the other three hurt so much more. I loved it. Like. Wow.

I guess to that, I was indeed reminded of Myths of the Realm - but not in the way I intended this square to be so I didn't mark it. Like. I wrote this in another post but how were these two in development at the same time???? What??? They come to radically different conclusions on the exact same premise and the only difference is that one is about Religion and the other about Eternal Life????

Was the last zone the original draft for Myths of the Realm and then they were like 'no that's too good, let's do that in the MSQ instead' and then they panicked and produced godly waste?? God, I kind of hope, that would mean that whoever wrote it didn't wholeheartedly mean what they wrote.

I'm not willing to let Wuk Lamat Distaste be Asinine Community Reaction - sadly that was to be expected given how people still fervently hate Lyse. Similarly I haven't looked into what funny theme changing English Localization Moment they decided to add to the plot today. Btw German Localization, you are as always my heroes. Don't let the Haters tell you different, I will always love you!!! I wanted to screenshot your names in the credits for this but i HIT THE WRONG BUTTON SOMEHOW

Anyways, look forward to Part 2 where I will talk some more about why exactly I really like Dawntrail - which is mainly the Themes - about why I think Megumi Onozuka is to blame and about YORHA DARK APOCALYPSE, THAT'S RIGHT, I WILL NEVER BE FREE

[winterdeepelegy]

My Thoughts on Dawntrail

So having finished DT, here are some of my thoughts on the expansion as a whole. Expect spoilers below the cut, do not click if you haven't finished. Again these are entirely my opinions, I don't intend to present this from a perspective of fact.

Hmm. I don't hate DT, but it's not high on my list: 1. Shadowbringers 2. Heavensward 3. Stormblood 4. Endwalker 5. Dawntrail 6. ARR That said, I don't hate any of the installments of this game, but there are some definitely high and low points. Let's rip the bandage off and get the blanks out of the way: 1. DT has a dialogue problem. I don't hate Wuk Lamat as a character, it was kind of refreshing to see a green, earnest character take center stage while our characters stepped aside and provided a guiding hand. The big problem I have with her is her dialogue. She's basically a shounen character, complete with the 'I'm gonna be king of the pirates'/'I'm gonna be hokage!' schtick, and it really wears on me after a while. That's not the character's fault so much as it is the writing team. That being so, this game is best played in short stints, 1-2 hours at a time instead of trying to marathon the whole thing in short order. Any more than that and it really becomes repetitious. If they want to script it to sound like an episodic anime series, it will be best enjoyed in smaller bites. Sphene suffers from the same problem. I wanted to enjoy her more as a character, but the script made that a challenge. 2. Pacing and exposition. God. The first few hours of EW were enough of a slog with its slow pacing before getting to the first dungeon, this felt like an eternity by comparison. Up to about the level 95 content, it is a long span of exposition and lore stuffing (far be it from me to complain about abundant lore!), so much of which could have been covered in less time and with less repetition. They really wanted to hammer the tribes into our heads, and it felt like too much at times. They wanted us to care about the tribes and the people therein, but few things make me care less than overdoing it. Level 95-ish is when things start becoming more interesting, in my opinion. That's a long way to climb to reach the proverbial cookie jar. 3. The music. I'll be honest, soundtrack wise, this is not my favorite. I appreciate all genres of music, but swing jazz doesn't quite fit the feel of Tulliyolal. I would have liked to hear something closer to a cultural aesthetic to match the visuals and themes presented throughout the areas and civilizations therein. We didn't get that, and it's kind of a weird choice. The main themesong, also? Ehh... I didn't care for it in the trailer. This opinion hasn't shifted since my playthrough. I didn't really start finding enjoyable area music until Shaaloani. 4. 'My people are more important than your people'. This plot point has been done. We just dealt with the Ascians and pretty much got the same shpiel from Hades. They made Sphene and her subjects a little more sympathetic, though, so... good, I guess? 5. Erenville deserved better. Fussy Bunbun got done so dirty in this expack, the very least anyone could have done was give him a hug. He didn't even get that from his mother who, frankly, was the worst character out of all of it. He was also deadnamed repeatedly, which could have been a teachable moment. 6. Wuk Lamat and/or Bakool Ja Ja still owes me tacos. ------------ As for the positives? There are some. Thanks for sticking with me so far. 1. Pretty graphics updates - better over all. 2. No weirdly split zones - thank the Twelve for this. StB, ShB, and EW all had zones that you could only cover in part, and couldn't finish until later. The zones in DT flow pretty well for the most part, and the transition between upper and lower areas of Yak'Tel are nothing short of beautiful, especially in flight. 3. More Reflections - I'm glad to see more of these and I hope this trend continues. 4. For once, I'm not luke warm on the bard AF gear. It's actually a fresh look, but haven't found a dye pairing I like yet.

[tankclub]

how would you rate the expansions so far?

it really depends on the criteria. overall i think that ffxiv has gotten better with every expansion, even if i dont always like all of the changes.

more details and rambling under the cut

ok so i broke it out into a few different categories, and i'll rate the expansions on each one:

X.0 MSQ

stormblood

endwalker

shadowbringers

a realm reborn

heavensward

here I'm just talking about the basic MSQ as it launched for the expansion. I put stormblood much higher than most people because I loved the lesbian road trip arc and I loved the azim steppe. the expansion certainly has flaws, but the strong points were really strong.

endwalker tops shadowbringers for me because the elpis section was the only thing that really got me to care about the ancients/ascians, and i think it was necessary context for the whole story arc of the game thus far. endwalker has some issues with pacing and with weakness in the downtime sections (and they clearly didnt know what to do with garlemald, a casualty of the game's shift in focus around shadowbringers).

the others i think are relatively straightforward. i've posted in the past about how i dont like the heavensward story, i think that it kind of botches its themes and the writers got too horny for killing women (in this case ysayle) to tell a good story. it also absolutely squanders the 2.5/55 setup with the ul'dah stuff.

Patch MSQ (X.1, X.2, etc.)

endwalker

a realm reborn

heavensward

shadowbringers

stormblood

endwalker is miles ahead in this category. although its patch story has weaknesses, being able to tell a whole coherent story from 6.1-6.5, without having to have the weird "second climax" for the X.0 story in X.3, puts it ahead of the competition.

ARR scores highly mainly because of just how well the banquet/ul'dah/crystal brave stuff hits. they wasted all of these story threads in heavensward, but especially at the time they absolutely worked.

heavensward makes third because i think it's the only expansion that really made the "x.3 climax" actually work, which is partly down to how the themes of the story worked with "oh and theres more even after you win the climactic battle".

shadowbringers is pretty low for me because i think that its a casualty of the change in narrative leadership. elidibus had been being set up as "the ascian you will talk to", so introducing emet to take that role left him kind of at loose ends. ive played the patch storyline several times to try and understand why people love it so much, and it just never landed for me.

stormblood patch story is the worst this game has ever been. i would put it lower than last if i could

Raids and Jobs

I kinda combined the experience of endgame play into one category, so I'm rating both job design and raid quality here. as the devs said recently, these things are linked, so i didnt think it made sense to separate them. more than the other categories i think this one is influenced by my personal circumstances

shadowbringers

endwalker

heavensward

a realm reborn

stormblood

shadowbringers takes the top spot for my favorite job design (in my beloved shb summoner), a top-class raid series in eden, and the best ultimate raid in TEA.

endwalker i think is really good and a step forward in many ways, but i think the issues with the centralization around 2m burst and inflation of boss hitbox size hold it back from the top spot for me. however, i do like a lot of the additions like criterion, and i hope they continue a lot of what theyve done in this expansion.

i had to put heavensward above arr because it's a straightforward continuation of arr, and also had my second favorite job design in the history of this game (in heavensward warrior, which was broken, goofy, and always fun). also alexander is a fantastic raid, even though coil is more nostalgic for me personally.

stormblood takes the last spot because i didnt enjoy the way the jobs played during that expansion, and mostly skipped it. i was unsubbed for a substantial portion of it, and really only started playing again in the leadup to shadowbringers. possibly i should leave it off this list altogether, simply because i couldnt have evaluated it properly.

Overall

so, i if i combine all of those ratings (weighted equally), i end up with:

endwalker

shadowbringers

a realm reborn

tie between stormblood and heavensward

which i think summarizes my opinions fairly nicely, although as you can see each of the expansions has their strengths.

overall im very excited for dawntrail, and i think it has the potential to be (and likely will be) the best expansion the game has had to date.

[nothingxs]

Light

The Crystarium. I don't generally do Warrior of Light Celica stuff, but I wanted to try and capture the bizarre, amazed feeling I had when I first started playing Shadowbringers and arrived to the Crystarium, and how baffled I was about everything I was seeing.

While I know this post is just outright spoilers for Shadowbringers (at least visually), I will be discussing the game more after the jump, for those of you who haven't made it that far. For the rest of you: I hope you've enjoyed my posts so far. This has been really fun! Can't wait to do more.

I almost didn't really stick with Final Fantasy XIV. I really enjoyed Heavensward, to be sure, but many of the parts of Stormblood felt like homework. The pace of it turns a bit into a slog, with the stakes of things being all over the place. The villains were not particularly deep (fighting the equivalent of an overpowered petulant child is not particularly interesting; Zenos doesn't get interesting until they start filling in the gaps of his past and upbringing later, as well as change the nature of his interactions with you two expansions later).

But then Shadowbringers hits, and the world is covered in everlasting light, and everything is awful. And then you see someone get turned into... a monster. And the stakes are immediately real, and horrifying.

Reny complains a lot about how death in this game feels unearned; how healers simply would make those situations fairly irrelevant. Why did any of your friends have to die when you can just cast Benevolence on them? The game logic and the story the game is trying to tell don't line up. The major death in the game would've been better if you could see their aether burn up, or some other reason for why healing was no longer an option—but they never really do the work of fixing what is basically a plot hole between mechanics and storytelling.

Shadowbringers ups the stakes in that regard... significantly. Off rip. And Endwalker doubles down on those... well, it can hardly be called death. But those final steps are brutal, and harrowing, and scary. When you see people start falling to despair, it resonates. You feel it more, because you know that's not an end anyone can truly fix.

Shadowbringers is where i imagine a lot of people will really start to vibe with the story, particularly if they can't stomach the sort of... intrigue that expansions like Stormblood are putting forth. And it's not even that Stormblood is particularly bad, but the bad parts are... rough. But Shadowbringers?

Fucking hell. I love Shadowbringers. It may be the one expansion I replay fully as I spam-level my alt.

[anneapocalypse]

Thoughts Before Endwalker

As I'm about to start Endwalker, I thought it was high time I actually write up some closing thoughts on Shadowbringers, and since I really haven't done this for any of the other expansions, this has turned into a general "thoughts so far" kind of post! And also long. This is not any kind of an essay, just a big long thoughts dump. Spoilers for everything through the end of the Shadowbringers patches.

And I trust I don't have to say this to my own followers at least, but just for the record: please do not tell me anything about Endwalker here, even if you think it's minor, even if you want to hint at something I'll like. I know very little and I'm looking forward to watching it all unfold.

How it started!

It's been a year and change since I started playing this game in the fall of 2022. I didn't actually expect to play very far (I only picked it up in the first place because I was helping a friend set it up! I swore I would never play an MMO! I hated multiplayer games!) and I certainly didn't ever expect to get as deep into it as I have! ARR is very handholdy for new players, which was exactly what I needed to enjoy playing and keep playing. I love the story and the characters and the world and while I do enjoy the solo aspects of the game very much, I've also ended up really actively enjoying playing with other people! I enjoy dungeons. I enjoy raids. I run roulettes more or less every day. Free Company life hasn't always been smooth sailing (long story I won't get into here), but it's also brought me a lot of fun times and some new friends, as well as seeing me step into an active leadership role and not hate it. Who am I? 😂 I don't know! It's not that I've never tried to step out of my comfort zone before when it comes to games and hobbies, it's just that most of those experiences haven't been good and I've ultimately walked away from them. I don't know why this has been different, but it has. It's challenged me to tackle and let go of a lot of old insecurities, which I'm glad for (and grateful to friends who've been patient with me along the way). It's also just been a really good time, and continues to be.

How it's gone! (ARR through Stormblood)

So here I am, in 2024, about to start the last current expansion! Shadowbringers is easily my favorite expansion thus far, but I have really enjoyed the whole ride.

I enjoyed all of ARR, because while I don't think it has the strongest writing and certainly not the strongest characterization, it's really more a very long introduction to the world and its major players and conflicts, and while slow-moving, it does serve that function, and for someone brand-new to MMOs like me, slow was okay. It gave me time to get my bearings and learn the game.

I did really love Heavensward. It hits on several aspects of Fantasy Politics that I enjoy (generations-long war, class politics, structural reform), and postwar Ishgard, while maybe still a little rosy, still doesn't shy away from the growing pains of social change. Also the dragons were cool. I loved Haurchefant a lot, and was heartbroken by his death even as I knew it was coming; I also wouldn't change it. I think his death was meaningful and the natural culmination of his character. A Knight lives to serve. I think Haurchefant was always going to go out sacrificing himself for someone else. If it hadn't been the Vault, it would have been somewhere else. He was a delight and I miss him dearly, but it was a good narrative beat and one I wouldn't change.

Ysayle, on the other hand, I really don't think needed to die. She undergoes a fascinating character arc in Heavensward which I think the writing really drops the ball on at the end. Ideally, I think Ysayle coming to terms with her missteps while continuing to fight for what she believes in would be fantastic. She could have been a meaningful figure in Ishgard's reforms, and she would have made a great Scion. Her death also simply isn't treated with the same reverence as Haurchefant's, and I think that's sad. Heavensward has a bit of a Women Problem, in that it really doesn't give us a lot of female characters who are central to the plot, in contrast to a lot of great and memorable male characters. And the one who is most central dies with a lot less fanfare than WoL BFF Haurchefant. (And I'm not knocking Haurchefant, whom I love dearly, or Aymeric or Estinien! The imbalance is just very noticeable and I wish it wasn't so.)

Stormblood tends to get a bad rap among FFXIV's expansions. It's so common to hear people say it's their least favorite, it wasn't as good as Heavensward, etc. It came up recently in a server I'm in, where a newer player said they were having a bit of content fatigue after Heavensward, and having heard that Stormblood wasn't very good, they were considering buying a story skip. Other responses were, not outright negative, but mostly lukewarm, and I felt like I was the only one who really came out for Stormblood's story. First of all, I don't agree that it's not as good as Heavensward! I grant you that not everyone is as enamored of Fantasy Politics as I am, but as mentioned above, Heavensward is also very political, so I don't really think that's the big difference. Stormblood is maybe a bit grittier in its depiction of war, and that's something I like about it; it's really about the horrors of imperialism and the cost of resistance, and it doesn't pull its punches on that.

Ironically where it does pull its punches is with character deaths, heroes and villains alike. It does feel a little like someone thought they might have hit us too hard in Heavensward, given that we haven't had a lot of major character deaths stick since. I'm not complaining about Gosetsu's return, as I liked him very much and was very happy he lived. I will grumble a little about Zenos, though I'll go easy because I know a lot of people like him. 😛 He just doesn't do much for me. Yotsuyu was a great villain, and I was really dubious when they brought her back, but was pleasantly surprised with how her story ended, to the point that I'm willing to eat a lot of what I said about memory loss as a plot device. They did well with it, and her ultimate death did feel appropriate. Yotsuyu was never going to have a redemption arc, because she didn't want to be redeemed.

It was very refreshing in Stormblood to have more female characters taking essential roles in the plot. Colorism issues aside, I do really like Lyse as a character, and I also loved seeing Yugiri and Alisaie taking prominent roles, especially Alisaie who really hadn't gotten to be in the main plot much before. Rolling around with the three of them was a blast. Raubahn is also a favorite of mine, so seeing him play a major role in Ala Mhigo's liberation and get some character development was excellent. I'm happy that he's stayed involved with the Resistance in the time since.

I also just think Stormblood's new areas are absolutely beautiful. Kugane and the Azim Steppe are particular faves, but I just think they did a great job with the environments and I loved exploring them, including the underwater bits! Eorzea and Ishgard are so European-inspired, and I really enjoyed seeing Asian cultural influences in a fantasy setting. It is after all a Japanese game!

Just this week I finished the reconstruction of the Doman Enclave. As a player who's joined the game more recently, it's always bittersweet to learn about game elements that were temporal and are now lost to time, like the evolution of Mor Dhona during the ARR patches, or the Ishgardian Restoration in the Firmament. I can go hang out in the Firmament and craft and do fêtes and custom deliveries, but I'll never get to see the Firmament being built. It was done when I got there, which for me was after completing 3.3, very soon after completing the main story of Heavensward. The Doman Enclave goes in the other direction. It is a solo experience by necessity, but it's an experience that every new player can have: making their donations every week and watching the Enclave grow. Such things are always a trade-off for an MMO, but between the two, I would definitely choose the one that doesn't lock new players out of the experience.

And to give one last shout-out to Stormblood, I think it's pretty essential setup for what's happening when Shadowbringers begins. It's not just that the Scions are dropping like flies, it's that this is happening on the brink of a full-scale Garlean invasion. Said invasion is also critical to the bad future that G'raha is ultimately trying to prevent. The state and history of Garlemald is inextricably tied to the Ascians who are tied up in all of this. Stormblood is arguably more important to the events of Shadowbringers than Heavensward is, though Heavensward is also not unimportant, both with the continued presence of Estinien (reluctantly so if we believe him 😉), and with the involvement of Tiamat in the Shadowbringers patches. It's all connected!

How it's going! (Shadowbringers)

Urianger is, unsurprisingly, a big part of why I love Shadowbringers so much, as he gets some wonderful character development there and actually gets to be in the plot! But it's not only him—I like how character-driven Shadowbringers is overall, how much the major characters are driving the story and not merely reacting to events. ARR was largely driven by the world itself; the expansions are where the story starts to become character-driven. The driving forces of Heavensward's are much bigger than the main characters, but Haurchefant and Ysayle and Aymeric and Estinien bring a personal face to the conflict and a reason for us to be invested in it. Stormblood's emotional core is Lyse, Yugiri, Gosetsu, and their collective drive to liberate their homelands from Garlean occupation.

Shadowbringers, to me, really brought all of that home. It's not only character-driven but it brings a much more personal touch, I think, to the Scions themselves, with the major players being characters we've known since ARR but now get to know in a deeper way. I've always liked Y'shtola as a character but never felt I really connected with her, and Shadowbringers changed that, even as her story in Shadowbringers is in many ways about her isolation from the others, her (sometimes justified) mistrust and the way she closes herself off even to the people closest to her. Yet there is a deep caring beneath Y'shtola's prickliness as well, which we see in her leadership of the Night's Blessed, the new family she is willing to risk her life for. She's complex and difficult, sometimes angry and stubborn, and we all know I love that in a fictional woman. I really gained a deeper appreciation for her as a character here.

I've said my piece on Minfilia already, so I'll try not to repeat myself too much. I will say that Thancred is the main character I have the hardest time with in Shadowbringers. I appreciated the additional character development given to him at first, but as the story made Minfilia's death more and more all about him to the exclusion of everyone else, the more I started to kind of resent it. It really gets under my skin how he treats Ryne for like, the entire time until Minfilia Prime's final departure. The narrative kind of treats it like oh, he just has a hard time expressing how he really feels! and honestly I don't fully agree with that framing. I think Thancred's cold and harsh attitude toward Ryne does reflect how he really feels at that time—namely, he's angry and lonely and upset for valid reasons, but he's taking them out on a teenager who's fully dependent on him for her survival, to the point that she admits she thinks he hates her. His legitimate pain doesn't justify that to me, and it really kinda chaps my ass how everyone just agrees that he's the one with the most claim to call Ryne family, when Urianger was far kinder, gentler, and more comforting to Ryne than Thancred ever was. And Urianger was in pain too. He also regrets what happened to Minfilia, and his part in it. He was carrying a terrible secret that he couldn't tell his closest friends, which put one of those friends' life in danger. He just owned his feelings, instead of taking them out on a scared kid. I know my bias is obvious, and I swear I don't hate Thancred 😛 but I really didn't like his behavior here and I wasn't really satisfied with the way the narrative handled it.

Probably my least favorite part of Shadowbringers was Vauthry. I just do not like "fat" as shorthand for "evil" and I think there could have been better ways to design him that didn't fall back on that trope. Even Dulia-Chai, a very lovable character in the end whomst we stan, does fall into some fatphobic tropes, and it's unfortunate that in a game without much body diversity (not to single out FFXIV, that's a problem for games generally), we only got fat character models as signifiers for "rich person" (yeah, I get that "fat cat" is the joke, it's just not a good joke) and "repulsive, evil abomination." No love!

On a lighter note, the return of G'raha Tia as the Crystal Exarch was simply wonderful. G'raha was very cute and fun during the Crystal Tower story but his presence was quite short-lived, so we didn't fully get to know him then. I think it's pretty easy to guess that it's him under the hood; he has a distinctive voice and lip shape and also the tower is right there. So the question becomes why he is hiding his identity, what his true motives are, and that's all intriguing! The fact that his plan hinges on his pretending to be the villain at the end and he utterly fails at convincing anyone is… deeply charming. But one of the things I love most about him is the kindness he extends to the people of Norvrandt. Even though his primary mission is the salvation of the Source, he gets attached to these people, offers up the resources of the Crystal Tower freely to improve their lives, helps build a home and sanctuary, fights for the First and becomes deeply invested in their survival as well. He has a huge heart, and I love him. I'm delighted that he gets to return and join the Scions at the end, and it's already been a lot of fun to have him along on the patch quests.

And of course, Urianger my love. 💜 He really shines in this story and every scene with him was a delight, even when I was climbing the walls needing to know what he was hiding. He gets so much good character development in Shadowbringers I could go on for hours about it, but I did especially love the Echo scene where you see G'raha asking him to lie—and you see how much he doesn't want to do it. Urianger's really been on a long arc ever since Moenbryda's death, and I don't think that arc is over yet, but my biggest worry for him as the cracks started to form in his story was that we'd find he hadn't changed, and was lying here for the same reasons he did in the Heavensward patches, and as easily. And that's not the case at all. He hated doing it before, and he really doesn't want to do it again, but G'raha's reasoning is just too strong for him to refuse. I brought it up recently but I think Shadowbringers reveals an Urianger who despite his long isolation really doesn't want to be alone, and does want his friends' understanding and approval and their trust. The look he gives the Warrior of Light if they say they trust him, and then the way he submits himself to their judgment when things go wrong while begging to be allowed to help fix things… god. I love him. And I'll stop there for now, since I'm sure I'll have a lot more to say about him in the future. ;)

Emet-Selch is a fascinating villain, certainly the most interesting Ascian we've seen so far, and the one who finally turns what have been fairly two-dimensional powerful bad guys into a truly motivated and complex faction. My favorite villains are always the ones who believe they're the hero, and there are a lot of parallels between Emet-Selch and Solas from Dragon Age: Inquisition which will be obvious to anyone who's played both games. FFXIV being a more linear story afford the player a lot less choice in how they respond to their villains true motives and history, but there's definitely still an expectation that we will sympathize somewhat with Emet-Selch, and recognize the tragedy of what happened to his people.

Ardbert's ghost, too, was a welcome addition to the story. Between his presence and the role quests (which were 100% worth doing in their entirety), I felt like we finally got to actually know the Warriors of Darkness against which we briefly clashed back in the Heavensward patches, and I really felt the pathos of their story, all they fought for and lost, but also their friendship and how they cared for one another.

Shadowbringers is beautiful in so many ways. The design of the Crystarium is gorgeous. Il Mheg is probably my favorite location in the game so far. Eulmore is a fascinating dark mirror of Limsa Lominsa. The way the game takes the idea of "a world being swallowed by light" and interprets that visually is so stunning. The sky over Lakeland arrests you immediately upon arrival, and the crystallization of the Flood of Light where it was halted at the edged of Amh Araeng is a chilling reminder of how much the First has already lost. The music has also been a highlight for me! I really adore the Shadowbringers music, and it has prompted me to go about collecting orchestrion rolls more deliberately than I had before.

The more I sit and write about how much I loved this expansion, the more I think of, so while I could definitely go on, I think I'll wrap it up there. 🙂

Onward to Endwalker. I'm not making any predictions this time, because I have done my absolute damnedest to stay unspoiled for this one and I know very little about what's coming other than what the locations are, what's been revealed in the Shadowbringers patches, and that it's the end of the big story arc we've been on since ARR. I'm extremely excited.

[dearestcherry]

my thoughts on dawntrail so far, level 92. cut for a bit of story discussion spoilers, and a few photos!

i'm really enjoying it! i just finished the duty with gulool ja ja, and my goodness, was that exciting. i loved figuring out the attacks by myself, and felt like the stakes were high, similar to the zenos fight back in stormblood when he beats you. i wasn't sure how it would go, honestly, and if he would beat the warrior of light or not. i loved how they made a massive deal in the cutscene before the duty over how large gulool ja ja is.

but! while the stakes are high, the story doesn't yet feel dark and gloomy, which is what i'm really enjoying. endwalker had issue after issue, which is to be expected for the end of the world theme. however, once we got around to golbez, a formidable foe like no other etc. etc. i felt them begin to lose their effect on me. how many times can you keep introducing "the worst guy yet"?

dawntrail feels like that perfect reset. it isn't jumping in with awful themes, it's fun. the characters that we're fighting so far aren't battling us to destroy the universe. the rivalry with some of the scions. the gulool ja ja duty was lighthearted. i keep finding myself smiling over these big moments, because they're both touching and exciting.

[eemamminy-art]

Would you be comfortable elaborating on "whatever they were building up to in 4.X [that] got changed pretty drastically in Endwalker"? I've seen this mentioned only vaguely in the past, so I'm still unsure what it is they were initially planning before they pivoted.

Oh yeah, so there was some interview with Ishikawa, Oda, and Yoshi-P after Endwalker where they were talking about the story a bit and apparently the initial plan was to have a garlean-themed expansion before Endwalker! The details of it haven't been disclosed as far as I know other than in that interview, they mentioned Anima being the planned final boss but most of the story beats would stay the same.

So I can only imagine that what's there already and what's been set up during 4.X (varis' plans to do his own rejoining and cause a calamity through black rose, the existence of the populares and their swift downfall to dissuade any uprisings among citizens) and 5.X (Gaius being framed for regicide, garlean civil war 2 electric boogaloo, tempering and all the 5G towers, and Nerva doing anything at all) would have been the basis for that expansion but we'll never know. And the fact we'll never know is what bums me out since I find garleans to be really interesting as villains but I've accepted it by now. It seems like they're dripping in bits from whatever they'd planned for that expansion into both 6.0 and its patches so I'm certain that it didn't all go to waste but at the very least whatever arc they'd planned for Varis (and most likely Zenos and Nerva too) didn't actually manifest into much of anything.

The setup for Varis as a villain in the back half of stormblood was one of my favorite things that ended sort of lacklusterly, and that's more what I meant with that remark! I do really enjoy the couple of scenes he had in 5.0 and the reveal of anima in 6.0 but it did fall short of what I had hoped for.

But I get that the decision to cut whatever the garlean expansion would have been was probably above even Yoshi-P, and it may have had pacing issues that might've turned off some players. As it is a lot of people don't like the sympathetic lens of garleans in endwalker so I can only imagine the reception a full on expansion might have received! I think because it did get squished into Endwalker the pacing in Endwalker is a little too quick for my tastes, but the msq of this game has always struggled with being either too fast or too slow so that's not just specific to endwalker.

[koukoupepia]

hi boss! played much dawntrail yet? curious what your feelings were on it. the graphical update has been such a high for me

I meant to answer days ago but im MARINATING!! i talk more about ffxiv on my twitter but yea i finished msq a few weeks ago and i enjoyed it :)) i have been meaning to ng+ all of the msq for the longest time for a better perspective but my tierlist is currently shadowbringers>endwalker>heavensward>dawntrail>stormblood>arr but that doesnt mean i dont like dawntrail cause i liked it quite a bit and im looking forward to seeing where patches goes. also the graphics update is really nice (BETTER GRASS IS SO COOL) (i love new the mount tilt/yaw thing its so neat) and the only things i dont like about it are it stresses my old hot gpu a lot more and that they made catboys have a very slight upturned lips on their neutral face so it looks like theyre always smiling now, which i dont like bc on some cutscenes it looks like my wol is smiling when he is supposed to be frowning. i kinda miss his resting bitch face :(

ALSO i like that the fights are more spicy. i liked endwalker's base msq dungeons a lot but after troia they were snoozefests mechanically. ive only done the first extreme so far but it was really fun and after im done farming it im looking forward to doing the second and i know when the third one comes out its gonna be insane! and im looking forward to savage bc the normal raids were pretty interesting! and im so excited for what they are cooking up in the field operations!

[glacierbash]

thinking about that one post about "he's a girl to me" or whatever. and that has me thinking about heavensward so much. and also stormblood! kinda just ffxiv in general but I feel the later expansions have this issue less but ESPECIALLY like. estinien, aymeric, and zenos when compared to the actual women in the expansion. it feels to me like the women of the expansion are by and far overlooked by people for the sake of the men and that general "he's so girl to me" contributes to it. Like there ARE women right there you know. like there are very very very good women just a few feet to the left. you can talk about how girlie estinien is to you but like. ysayle is right there. you can talk about how babygirl zenos is but also. there's fordola. you know that right. like you can enjoy the women too. it's ok.

and ofc genuine actual transfem headcanons are SO fucking good. I love them so much. keep going. But like that post has said, when it's only men in the fandom being treated as "he's so girl" (AND NEVER WOMAN!!!! ALWAYS GIRL!!!!!) it gets really really fucking tiring.

i love estinien! I really like Zenos! I get it! And if they are your favorite characters and you want specifically content about them and to make content specifically about them that is FINE!! but also, holy shit is it exhausting when it's like 99% about them and not a single glimpse towards the women of the story. yeah ffxiv's writing has a huuuuuuge fucking issue with women. and also.

[motheatenscarf]

I think my biggest issues with Dawntrail can be summed up by the reconciling of two facts.

It is very much like a typical shonen series in tone and execution, down to "Let's dress our hero in orange!"

I am thirty three godforsaken years old now and have matured beyond the point where I would enjoy something like this.

Even reconciling the first fact with "Ah, I see. This is no longer all ages storytelling, this is just... for babies," like... there are stories for children that I enjoy. I didn't really like shonen even when I was younger, so this doesn't even have like. A nostalgic appeal for me. The only shonen series I ever liked for the storytelling was Fullmetal Alchemist. For everything else I just picked one blorbo to get weird about for the sake of enduring a series my friends wouldn't shut up about.

This is... cute. It's fine. I can see someone who does have nostalgia for like, idk, fucking Naruto or DBZ or whatever the new hotness is or was, having a good time with this. It's serviceable for delivering the story but it really feels like nothing special. It's not bad it's just. It's very simple. It's very surface level. A decent amount of charm amidst the tedium but nothing with any substance. Characters say what they think and feel and all conflicts are resolved immediately without any tension or catharsis.

There is a narrative quietly building in the background regarding Krile's grandfather and Erenville's backstory, even if both of them are barely in this story at all. Whatever is going on with the Yok Huy seems to be tied into this as well. That quieter story percolating over in the corner is far more intriguing to me than the rite of succession. I'm not sure if that's because it's actually letting me think about things and not just spoonfeeding me answers or if it's actually interesting, but it is nice to have room to like. Y'know. Think about things.

Well. We'll see where it goes, I guess. I'm almost at the halfway mark, doing level 94 quests now. At this point, it compares to like... patch ARR in terms of quality. It's fine. It gets the job done of shepherding the player character from point A to point B so you can unlock the new duties for roulettes and getting the zones unlocked for gathering quests. It's inoffensive, at least. Not pissing me off the way Stormblood did. Then again, the things I liked about Stormblood I really loved, but there's just sort of a beige malaise of "fine" that Dawntrail's awash with. Maybe I prefer a mixed bag if it means I get a gold nugget sprinkled in amongst the turds as opposed to a mountain of adequate nilla wafers.

Eh. Idk.

[aotopmha]

I did the first wing of Myths of the Realm and I think it's my favorite Alliance Raid wing so far.

I love the Ivalice and Nier raids mechanically, but I really like how Aglaia has really cool, unique fights AND super cool FF14 lore/beautiful spectacle.

And neither Ivalice or Nier exactly lack in spectacle, but Ivalice's story as its own thing never did anything for me and I have no reference or attachment towards the Ivalice games, so I can only judge that raid based on mechanics and the spectacle itself.

And while Nier had cool tidbits, as its own story it was just okay.

In turn, looking at the CT and Void Ark raids, while Crystal Tower had some cool, far reaching lore, it was super uninteresting mechanically and while Void Ark was an improvement over Crystal Tower, it still wasn't as interesting as what came after with Stormblood, Shadowbringers and now Endwalker.

So Aglaia is the perfect combination of really cool lore and really cool mechanics.

On my very first run, I think Azeyma's fight felt like the weakest/the least distinct out of all of the fights, but on a subsequent roulette run, I appreciated some of the wind/fire mechanics a bunch.

But Rhalgr, Byregot and Nald'thal had such cool, lore relevant arena mechanics going on with them: the crafting elements of Byregot's shifting arena and figuring out positioning based on the hammers at the arena's edge, Rhalgr's arena literally being the hand of the statue of Rhalgr and finally all of the balance-themed stuff with Nald'thal.

I also like that we get mini-bosses between the fights rather than just mobs.

I know at this point people can skip many of the mechanics, and particularly the final one with the balancing act is annoying to people because it involves a fairly long cutscene and can be really frustrating when someone is in the mood to troll the group, but I love it all the same.

The armor sets you can get from here are also really good and the music is standout among standouts from other alliance raids.

I've seen quite a bit of negativity regarding this raid series in terms of mechanics being "easy" and "not unique", but I really enjoyed this first bit.