8.0 speculation

An interesting thing to note is that the announcement of the trial implies that "Enuo" is the name of the trial/duty, and not the boss. Even though the boss uses Enuo's design, we can't assume they're called Enuo. The inclusion of "Enuo" in the MSQ makes me wonder if they might reveal the existence of The Void as a new thing that is separate from The Thirteenth, and The Interdimensional Rift.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

The interesting thing to note here is that, despite looking very Garlean in structure, style and climate, and Yoshi-P specifically pointing out that it's Garlean, there's not a single reused Garlean asset. Even the street lamps are a different design. Which is a weird amount of effort to go to; if it's part of Garlemald, either the city or the nation, why not reuse a building or two? Why rebuild everything from scratch? I don't have an answer for that, but I do think the elephant in the room for answering that is 'maybe it isn't Garlemald'.

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And no, the symbol behind [Enuo's] head isn't an Ascian thing, honestly doesn't look that much like one anyway, and I'm really hopeful that theory goes nowhere fast. If this fanbase has a worst habit when speculating, it's finding the first answer that lets them say 'Ascians' and then never accepting any other theory until that one is COMPLETELY dead; we saw it with the Arcadion's symbol, we saw it with Endless Sphene's crest, and I really hope we don't see it a third time soon.

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The lack of reused assets is something I noticed; while the Clyteum appears to use the brutalist architectural style the Garleans are known for, it doesn't look anything like we've seen out of them before. That could be for various reasons, but more noticeable to me was the fact the Garlean emblem they love to plaster on every available surface is completely absent. For a capital district not seeing it anywhere, combined with the architectural differences, is raising a lot of questions.

I'm not of the "It's obviously an Ascian glyph" school (the Arcadion emblem never looked at all like one to me), but we know they're back in play after 7.4 so looking for a match is just due diligence. It's just a noticeable difference from Enuo's V incarnation, which may or may not be relevant to his role in whatever plot he shows up in. (Sounds MSQ, but like I said, with Occult Crescent already being a V homage vehicle in Dawntrail...)

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Originally Posted by Cassar

Highly doubt this trial is anything other than an MSQ trial. We of course don't know the context of it but I can't imagine them making people do Occult Crescent just to be able to do the trial.
Also, by the way, does anyone else find it extremely weird (and ugly) that the trial name is the same as the boss name? We always have cool titles like "The Ageless Necropolis", "Hell on Rails", but this one is just... "Enuo"? I want to believe this was somehow a mistake in the live letter, or maybe they don't wanna reveal the real title for spoiler reasons

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I definitely subscribe to the idea that we'll be beginning the process of opening the way to other reflections. Looks like 8.0 might not be in the source after all, although I wonder if they'll do the entire expansion in the same reflection, or if half the zones will be in one, and half in another. Of course, this is all speculation.

What do you think?

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Originally Posted by Zero-ELEC

They don't always show the name of the trial the first time they mention it in a Letter from the Producer LIVE, especially since the Japanese titles of trials are just "[name of boss] showdown".

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Basically, yeah. JP trial names lack the eloquence of EN's, so just "Enuo" makes sense. EN's tend to provide context since they're named after the location more often than not, so not having that known is sensible enough.

As to whether Enuo will be an MSQ trial... if I remember right they said he would be, but it's weird putting him in the MSQ with Occult Crescent being a V fanservice vehicle already. Worth noting that the Varis EX fight wasn't advertised, but all of the Bozja content is, to my knowledge, accessible without clearing earlier segments of the storyline, so having him easily accessible through Occult Crescent makes sense enough and resonates with the V fanservice. There's also the possibility of him being a part of the Hildibrand storyline as Asura was in Endwalker, but I dunno; Hildibrand's stuff is always out of left field (which is part of his charm) but...

It's just weird to put a V homage boss in an expack that already has a huge V homage vehicle as an MSQ fight, even if it's thematically resonant with the direction the plot seems to be headed. (And no, I don't think we're going to explore outer space; we're already doing that with Cosmic Exploration.)

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Originally Posted by Zero-ELEC

They don't always show the name of the trial the first time they mention it in a Letter from the Producer LIVE, especially since the Japanese titles of trials are just "[name of boss] showdown".

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And incidentally, that's frequently the reason they hide the title for trials; to us 'The Ageless Necropolis' is kinda vague nonsense (albeit one with just enough context clues for us to figure out in that case), but to the Japanese audience it says 'Necron Showdown'*, and yeah, there's no ambiguity there. The only time they hid the name for a duty for our sake was actually Alzadaal's Legacy, and that one they were open about 'if we said what the name was, you'd get excited about the wrong thing'.

(*Well, it's 'Eternal Darkness Showdown', but 'Eternal Darkness' is Necron's Japanese name)

Giving Enuo's name like they did is unusual, but it might be because he's a more unusual trial. Like, perhaps he's not actually his own duty, but is himself a component of the North Horn.

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Originally Posted by Cilia

The lack of reused assets is something I noticed; while the Clyteum appears to use the brutalist architectural style the Garleans are known for, it doesn't look anything like we've seen out of them before. That could be for various reasons, but more noticeable to me was the fact the Garlean emblem they love to plaster on every available surface is completely absent. For a capital district not seeing it anywhere, combined with the architectural differences, is raising a lot of questions.

I'm not of the "It's obviously an Ascian glyph" school (the Arcadion emblem never looked at all like one to me), but we know they're back in play after 7.4 so looking for a match is just due diligence. It's just a noticeable difference from Enuo's V incarnation, which may or may not be relevant to his role in whatever plot he shows up in. (Sounds MSQ, but like I said, with Occult Crescent already being a V homage vehicle in Dawntrail...)





Basically, yeah. JP trial names lack the eloquence of EN's, so just "Enuo" makes sense. EN's tend to provide context since they're named after the location more often than not, so not having that known is sensible enough.

As to whether Enuo will be an MSQ trial... if I remember right they said he would be, but it's weird putting him in the MSQ with Occult Crescent being a V fanservice vehicle already. Worth noting that the Varis EX fight wasn't advertised, but all of the Bozja content is, to my knowledge, accessible without clearing earlier segments of the storyline, so having him easily accessible through Occult Crescent makes sense enough and resonates with the V fanservice. There's also the possibility of him being a part of the Hildibrand storyline as Asura was in Endwalker, but I dunno; Hildibrand's stuff is always out of left field (which is part of his charm) but...

It's just weird to put a V homage boss in an expack that already has a huge V homage vehicle as an MSQ fight, even if it's thematically resonant with the direction the plot seems to be headed. (And no, I don't think we're going to explore outer space; we're already doing that with Cosmic Exploration.)

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Then the question remain is where is this new dungeon located? And how is it related to the great winter? The structure look like it was made by Garlean hands at first glance. Could it be from the ninth shard? Or is it separate city that Garlean traitors made? Honestly it is kinda hard to tell. But if this is from the ninth, we need to ask ourselves how there is snow while the shard has thunderstorms 24/7?

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Originally Posted by Pimsan20

Then the question remain is where is this new dungeon located? And how is it related to the great winter? The structure look like it was made by Garlean hands at first glance. Could it be from the ninth shard? Or is it separate city that Garlean traitors made? Honestly it is kinda hard to tell. But if this is from the ninth, we need to ask ourselves how there is snow while the shard has thunderstorms 24/7?

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The Ninth is RIGHT out, we've seen that place's weather, and... well, frankly, this place is too nice. Plus the architecture's completely off from where the Ninth was, and the other screenshots we've seen are drifting Eorzea-way.

I also think associating the Winterers with winter is, while an understandable mistake to make, undoubtedly a mistake. Nothing of the little we've heard about the Withering from Halmarut suggests it's in any way related to cold weather (and in fact has never been called a 'great winter'), and in fact given 'winterers' as a term are for things like hummingbirds that specifically aren't around for cold weather, we should just assume no coldness is related to the Winterers in turn.

With something like this, I suggest thinking of the most low-key possible answer: that rather than jumping to the most grandiose possible theories, you instead consider something that most readily answers all of our questions, in a way that's as small as possible, with the logic that the real answer will be somewhere between the two--and, given all context, probably closer to the lower end, because they're not gonna stake their game-changing reveal on a dungeon that looks like a boring part of New York in December.

In this case, the smallest possible answer I can think of is that it's just another part of the city of Garlemald; far enough away from the military and political center we visited that it didn't get hit by the same treatment, but still basically got abandoned. You walk around whatever your nearest big city is, and you'll definitely see architectural differences between the commercial areas and wherever government house is; this could just be that. Alternatively, it's a neighboring city that's just far enough out to have a slightly different arcitectural style; maybe Landis.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

The Ninth is RIGHT out, we've seen that place's weather, and... well, frankly, this place is too nice. Plus the architecture's completely off from where the Ninth was, and the other screenshots we've seen are drifting Eorzea-way.

I also think associating the Winterers with winter is, while an understandable mistake to make, undoubtedly a mistake. Nothing of the little we've heard about the Withering from Halmarut suggests it's in any way related to cold weather (and in fact has never been called a 'great winter'), and in fact given 'winterers' as a term are for things like hummingbirds that specifically aren't around for cold weather, we should just assume no coldness is related to the Winterers in turn.

With something like this, I suggest thinking of the most low-key possible answer: that rather than jumping to the most grandiose possible theories, you instead consider something that most readily answers all of our questions, in a way that's as small as possible, with the logic that the real answer will be somewhere between the two--and, given all context, probably closer to the lower end, because they're not gonna stake their game-changing reveal on a dungeon that looks like a boring part of New York in December.

In this case, the smallest possible answer I can think of is that it's just another part of the city of Garlemald; far enough away from the military and political center we visited that it didn't get hit by the same treatment, but still basically got abandoned. You walk around whatever your nearest big city is, and you'll definitely see architectural differences between the commercial areas and wherever government house is; this could just be that. Alternatively, it's a neighboring city that's just far enough out to have a slightly different arcitectural style; maybe Landis.

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Or what if it was a city made by the winterers? I mean considering that they want to outlast the great winter, making a city like the dungeon would make sense. It’s also a possibility that the Ascians had created the city in case if something went wrong with their plans? We know there is an Ascian that is a master of construction, so it highly possible that they are the one who made the city.