Revelations from PAX West 2017

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Originally Posted by YianKutku

Minor correction:



It's Gan'en's Tomb, for the first King of Doma. Katakana is ガンエン.

Koji Fox elaborates that Japanese players seeing it would understand the reference to 岩燕, which means "cliff swallow" (it's literally the words for rock "岩" and swallow "燕"), but read as a name. It would be difficult to localize into English, though, so he just took the "swallow" part of it, and added a reference to the feng shui compass.

(Completely unrelated tangent: I'm always puzzled by the way feng shui in the game is translated as "geomancy", which is like saying FFXIV and FFXV are the same thing. Technically not untrue, but...)

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I still don't get where Koji was going with that. They took something which was sort of obvious and then went into an arbitrary unrelated direction...? Cliff/Rock Swallow makes sense I guess, swallow is weird but since the thing is built into the cliff it is easy to make the connection. But what does compass have to do with anything? Nothing at all so it just seems random and dumb. It's like a reference/inside joke only you get so what is the point lol.

The compass is almost assuredly to do with geomancy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luopan

Which is what YianKutku says, actually. I don't understand the confusion? Perhaps you're missing the key fact that Ganen, the first King of Doma, is also the founder of Doman geomancy.

I'm actually more confused by your confusion, lol, since the geomancy-compass relation was stated several times in the previous posts!

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Stormblood Visa Record 033
The Swallow's Compass

Enshrined within this tomb, his likeness carved on an imposing scale into the cliffside, is the person of Ganen, the great general who united the warring clans of Yanxia to arise as the first king of Doma. A skilled swordsman and mage both, he is credited as the founding father of Doman geomancy.

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Didn't keep up with any of this in advance so I never posted to the PAX thread, but one of the questions I'd like to have seen a response to:

With everything we saw associated with Doma (aesthetics, Ninja, Samurai, etc.) being very heavily Japanese-influenced prior to the expansion, why was it decided to make Hingashi the FFXIV version of Japan and Doma some sort of odd, stylistic blend of China and Japan?

I noticed in the Lore panel, when talking about Doma at times (for instance when discussing Hien's names), Koji seems to talk about things in terms of Hingashi instead. Something akin to 'we knew we were going to Hingashi' when explaining why they went with the names they chose, so I'm wondering if the concept of the two locales got flipped at some point.

Also curious to know why/when the decision was made to make Doma contain only one province.
Based on the 2.X Ninja quests alone, I'd expected a much larger locale. :-(

Doma is Nara era Japan, Hingashi is Tokugawa era Japan.

From what I've read before and from how i see in the game, Doma is like China, Azim Steppe is like Mongolia and Hingashi is like Japan, the hydealyn map is almost like the earth map and the locations of those three in-game locations similarly match the Earth counterparts.

The other similarities, eorzea is like the African map, meracydia the wasteland to the south, is like Antarctica and the new world to the west of eorzea is well you know what place is new world in earths history. Interestingly Europe is not represented, there, maybe the original sharlayan lands?

Anyway, Basing on that, garlean empire would be.... well your guess is as good as mine. :)

Yo Moose! Were you at PAX?! Where were you sitting??

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Originally Posted by Rasler_Heios

Anyway, Basing on that, garlean empire would be.... well your guess is as good as mine. :)

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Aside from the Garleans borrowing many words from the Roman dictionary, their consulate in Hingashi has a distinctly European look to its, so it seems safe to assume that Garlemald or perhaps Ilsabard in general is going to be Eorzea's equivalent of Europe.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

Aside from the Garleans borrowing many words from the Roman dictionary, their consulate in Hingashi has a distinctly European look to its, so it seems safe to assume that Garlemald or perhaps Ilsabard in general is going to be Eorzea's equivalent of Europe.

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Could be, probably, as I said your guess is as good as mine. In fact, what you said is interesting and logical. Just to point out though that Europe is directly north of Africa, and there's nothing directly north of Aldenard/Eorzea.

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Originally Posted by Rasler_Heios

Could be, probably, as I said your guess is as good as mine. In fact, what you said is interesting and logical. Just to point out though that Europe is directly north of Africa, and there's nothing directly north of Aldenard/Eorzea.

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Technically the Aerslant islands, far to the north. And despite the name, the Northern Empty is not really all that empty, having islands dotted here and there.

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Originally Posted by YianKutku

Technically the Aerslant islands, far to the north. And despite the name, the Northern Empty is not really all that empty, having islands dotted here and there.

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Ah my mistake then, though garlean empire would still be not directly north. :)

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Originally Posted by Rasler_Heios

Ah my mistake then, though garlean empire would still be not directly north. :)

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The Northern Empty area is one of those cases where we think the islands are just for decorations, until suddenly it turns out one of them is Origin/Nagyn, and the Roegadyn believe it is the origin of all life.

Which seems like it's pretty important, and Koji Fox encourages us to speculate, but given he is allowed to talk about it in the first place and not, say, Daitenzan, there is still the question of whether it is that significant.

Overall I'd say the real-world equivalents of the various regions are more like the pop culture versions, in much the same way "Japan" brings to mind samurai and ninja, and "America" either cowboys for North America, or Mayincan/Aztec tribal-jungle stereotypes for Middle and South America. (I suspect the New World Mamool Ja would be depicted as the latter.)

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Originally Posted by Rocl

The compass is almost assuredly to do with geomancy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luopan

Which is what YianKutku says, actually. I don't understand the confusion? Perhaps you're missing the key fact that Ganen, the first King of Doma, is also the founder of Doman geomancy.

I'm actually more confused by your confusion, lol, since the geomancy-compass relation was stated several times in the previous posts!

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Maybe so? But I was not told it in-game so how am I supposed to know? I guess if you know about this stuff already you can "get" it but, if his point was to remove some hard to translate stuff then why insert something even more esoteric? I am not familiar with geomancy and it is not in the game so it is not something I would have ever thought about.

In regards to the "Swallows Compass", I kind of feel that is a 'translation fail' in terms of which of the two possible pun meanings to get across, in that "Swallows Compass" gives no indication of the structure's actual purpose (as the king's tomb). Unless, of course, the structure actually does function as a giant geomancy instrument (but I don't play AST so I wouldn't know).

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Originally Posted by Balipu

Well Koji did say that more answers will be comming to the forums in the next few weeks.

By the way, Theo: Did you like that bit during the territorial anthem discussion that Garleans aren't interested in destroying the culture of occupied territories because they want them to feel at home?

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I'd just like to mention that this has actually been known since the first lore panel. Most people missed it though.

I'd just like to give Koji a reminder that he promised to grace the Lore forums with answers to some of the questions that were not read aloud at PAX. I know you're busy, but I thirst for knowledge!

(Also, you and Bayonne signed the Lore book my girlfriend brought with her to PAX, so thanks for that!)

Ugh, *Bayohne. This is why I need to turn off auto-correct.