Solution 9 - Unfounded Speculation!

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Originally Posted by Alleluia

So, there's not one but two waterfalls in the middle of the ocean. I know magic is a thing, but still. Where is the water going? How is the ocean level not dropping after however many years of constant draining? This makes me even more curious. lol

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I mean at some point I fully expect the game to go hollow-earth-theory/underworld/Agartha at some point. I don’t expect it for DT.

Rather I expect the surprise zone to be the Dimensional Cleft a la FF5 (Hildibrand mentioned visiting the place with Greg after all…and Hildy often reveals massive lore tidbits…)

This also makes sense forward thinking for expansions as the cleft can serve as a means for dimensional travel and/or reuniting with characters from the first…allowing them to join the main cast or sunset others (like Y’shtola or Thancred)

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Originally Posted by kaynide

I mean at some point I fully expect the game to go hollow-earth-theory/underworld/Agartha at some point. I don’t expect it for DT.

Rather I expect the surprise zone to be the Dimensional Cleft a la FF5 (Hildibrand mentioned visiting the place with Greg after all…and Hildy often reveals massive lore tidbits…)

This also makes sense forward thinking for expansions as the cleft can serve as a means for dimensional travel and/or reuniting with characters from the first…allowing them to join the main cast or sunset others (like Y’shtola or Thancred)

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Aren't we there already with the hallow earth? We can literally dig down through the mantel and end up into where souls go to wait for their next life. Or if you two certain ancients put on a show for the rest of the Aetherial Sea.

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Originally Posted by kaynide

Rather I expect the surprise zone to be the Dimensional Cleft a la FF5 (Hildibrand mentioned visiting the place with Greg after all…and Hildy often reveals massive lore tidbits…)

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"Dimensional cleft" in the context of FFXIV just sounds like a mangling of "dimensional rift".

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Originally Posted by Iscah

"Dimensional cleft" in the context of FFXIV just sounds like a mangling of "dimensional rift".

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Exactly right, actually. Early translations of FFV (I believe most famously the fan-translation patch) opted for the Cleft of Dimension for the part that was later called the Interdimensional Rift.

It makes sense in that context; in V it seemed like the Rift was sort of the wound left from cramming the two worlds together, so 'cleft' was actually a pretty good term for it.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

"Dimensional cleft" in the context of FFXIV just sounds like a mangling of "dimensional rift".

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My point was not so much what the name is, but rather that it would be a physical place we go to.

In a similar vein to how the void was originally visited in the raid series but then later locales were added in Endwalker.

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Originally Posted by SannaR

Aren't we there already with the hallow earth? We can literally dig down through the mantel and end up into where souls go to wait for their next life. Or if you two certain ancients put on a show for the rest of the Aetherial Sea.

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I’m not convinced that took place literally in the planet’s core so much as its own thing. I always saw the aetherial sea as the FFXIV version of the astral plane of d&d fame.

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Originally Posted by kaynide

My point was not so much what the name is, but rather that it would be a physical place we go to.

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And my point is that we've been there and it seems to be a non-place that you can't actually stay and visit.

The World of Darkness seems plausible from the start to have more locations in it, or certainly once we had the more detailed explanation of what it really was. The rift is different, being a space between worlds and was never a world itself.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

And my point is that we've been there and it seems to be a non-place that you can't actually stay and visit.

The World of Darkness seems plausible from the start to have more locations in it, or certainly once we had the more detailed explanation of what it really was. The rift is different, being a space between worlds and was never a world itself.

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I mean if you want to get REALLY nerdy, there is an element of 'space' in the rift; there are locations, there are means of traversal. It's more a subject for the Dissidia games than anything else, because that's a game that technically is taking place within the rift (or more specifically a location with direct association with the rift), but it is technically a location that you could treat like a location.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

And my point is that we've been there and it seems to be a non-place that you can't actually stay and visit.

The World of Darkness seems plausible from the start to have more locations in it, or certainly once we had the more detailed explanation of what it really was. The rift is different, being a space between worlds and was never a world itself.

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The Omega series takes place mostly in it, so you most definitely can stay and visit, albeit to what extent we do not know, and to what extent it’s simulation/creations/matrix/“power of imagination”, we don’t know.

Hildibrand specifically states “I was with Nashu and Greg, wandering the bizarre shadowy realm known as the Interdimensional Rift”. Not just looking at it, but wandering around.

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Originally Posted by kaynide

The Omega series takes place mostly in it, so you most definitely can stay and visit, albeit to what extent we do not know, and to what extent it’s simulation/creations/matrix/“power of imagination”, we don’t know.

Hildibrand specifically states “I was with Nashu and Greg, wandering the bizarre shadowy realm known as the Interdimensional Rift”. Not just looking at it, but wandering around.

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Fair, I had forgotten about Omega, but that seems very much like we weren't so much "in the rift" as in a pocket dimension that Omega had constructed within the rift, which we saw collapse into nothingness once Omega's power ceased to support its existence.

Hildibrand... no comment. If anyone can manage to blithely end up out of bounds of reality, it's him.