Which Final Fantasy World Will We Visit Next

As an aside, here's the text associated with the Mist Dragon's Triple Triad card acquired from the dungeon itself:

'Captured by the Allagan Empire and altered by aetherochemistry, this ghostly dragon was consigned to living out its unnatural life in the vast wastes of the Burn. The glimmer of intelligence faded from its eyes, the creature is driven purely by instinct, and brings its mastery over mist to bear against all who dare to set foot in its domain.'

I'd say it fits into FFXIV rather nicely, personally.

It fits but it's just sort of there with no greater context when, given the relevance in IV, I'd have expected some. It's like if they put Jenova as a dungeon boss with no greater story implications. A boss like that I just expect to be part of something bigger.

Thinking on it a bit more though, Mist Dragon could also lead up to more XII related Mist references, which again just highlights how often Final Fantasy relies on nostalgia; XIIs Mist seemed like a pretty strong throwback to IVs Village of Mist/Summoners. I guess you can also look at it as still a solid IV reference, just from Alphinaud perspective rather than our own (perhaps why it feels so odd). Past the Burn and the Mist Dragon lies an encampment King Baron just wiped out with some Bombs, sorry, ElidiZenos just wiped out with Black Rose.

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Originally Posted by Nalien

Those kind of references are very much what I just expect from XIV. I mean 2.0 basically happened because of Sephiroth using the Black Materia to summon Meteor... Or was it Nael van Darnus using the Lunar Transmitter to summon Dalamud/Bahamut? I forget...

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The similarities between Nael and Sephiroth go much further then that. One of the biggest discussions about Sephiroth's motives in FFVII is if Sephiroth wanted to destroy the Planet because he really wanted to or if he wanted to because he had been influenced by Jenova who originally wanted to destroy the planet herself. Nael has the same thing going on. Bahamut might have tempered Nael so she would cause Dalamud to fall, but in Binding Coils he reverses Nael's tempering and it turns out Nael wanted Dalamud to fall without Bahamut's influence in the first place. Like... the only main difference between Sephiroth summoning Meteor and Nael summoning Dalamud is the specifics of how they do so. And that's not even counting how Meteor had Aerith to lessen it's impact while Dalamud had Louisoix/Phoenix in the same roll...

So yeah... why exactly are we complaining about references to previous FF games five years after FFXIV launched? The game has literally been unsubtlly doing this since year one. At this point, all that can really be hoped for is for the impact and details of the references to be a tad different. IE: At least Nael never messed with the main character's head to go find, retrieve and give to Nael the one thing she needed to cause Dalamud to fall. And Dalamud has an even worse danger to the Planet lurking in it compared to Meteor; the Aerith parallel character basically gets corrupted by the Jenova parallel character for a while... thank goodness that didn't happen in FFVII...

I think the issue is more with the quality of the references, rather than the fact that they're relied on so heavily, at least IMO.

Personally I find it fun to look for such references so I enjoy it when the developers hide them away and make connections to XIVs lore/etc., but that's why something like Return to Ivalice is a bit jarring. It's very much a nostalgia raid and it just feels lazy compared to the type of nostalgia baiting we're used to. Like I said earlier, I think it was too much too fast, there's just not much you can do with three raids... Crystal Tower is arguably the same, but the subject matter was vastly simpler compared to what we have with Ivalice. "Bad guy at the top of a tower made a deal with the devil" is much simpler than the Ivalice plot, and then you've got the fact that we're spread across a lot with the Ivalice raids. Crystal Tower was just the last areas of III, with the Ivalice raids it seems like they're just trying to cram as much of Ivalice in as possible, we're darting across the world rather than focusing on a specific area. As a result, what we do get feels less developed.

I want only small hints and callbacks to other FF with the next expansion. Because at least for me it had felt like all those instances where they used too much fanservice, the story itself has suffered a bit and for those that dont know the FF it would be hard to understand whats happening. Thus some nice little fanservice pieces are quite fine.

I mean they say a lot that FF14 has nothing in canon to do with all the other FF (because people speculated that the shards are the FF worlds) but at the same time you take over whole monsters without changing them much, whole zones and names (and even NPCs that only have a bit of a different story ending) and then wonder why people still believe that we share a universe with them all.

So less fanservice and more original stuff because otherwise I do wonder if they are just a bit out of own ideas.

(And maybe less obvious jokes and 4th wall breaking and more jokes that could fit the world)

@ObsidianFire:

For me I have always been a bit skeptic about the amount of fanservice but at least felt that it was feeling more like these parts do fit in FF14 even if they are taken from other games. I could for example understand crystal tower without knowing about the game it came from. But SB was really heavy on fanservice. Both raids are not original and both are mostly just there for fanservice. We do not just have iconic places but also bosses, NPCs and the lore. And that imo is too much. They could have taken Ivalice as a place but put their whole new story in it. Or they could have a new zone and some iconic NPCs from 12. The same with Omega. Here 90% of the bosses dont even fit the world at all and next to some being old stories from Garlemald, they also dont even see it necessary to give them any ground in the lore. So as someone who has only played two FF games, I honestly did not care for these bosses at all.

Thus why I hope they get more original with the coming expansion.

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Originally Posted by Alleo

I mean they say a lot that FF14 has nothing in canon to do with all the other FF (because people speculated that the shards are the FF worlds) but at the same time you take over whole monsters without changing them much, whole zones and names (and even NPCs that only have a bit of a different story ending) and then wonder why people still believe that we share a universe with them all.

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The thing is, all FF games do this. A Behemoth is a Behemoth, a Flan is a Flan, a Chimera is a Chimera. The same six summons just keep getting used (Shiva, Titian, Rahmu, Ifrit, Leviathan, Bahamut). We keep having broody heroes getting mind-controlled (Kain or Cloud or Estinean). We keep getting people named Cid who give us airships. And yet none of the games are supposed to be happening in the same universe unless the creators say they are.

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For me I have always been a bit skeptic about the amount of fanservice but at least felt that it was feeling more like these parts do fit in FF14 even if they are taken from other games. I could for example understand crystal tower without knowing about the game it came from. But SB was really heavy on fanservice. Both raids are not original and both are mostly just there for fanservice. We do not just have iconic places but also bosses, NPCs and the lore. And that imo is too much.

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I have a hard time seeing the difference between the way the Crystal Tower raid was set up and the way the Return to Ivalice raid was set up. And if you take any look at FFIII, you'll find that the Crystal Tower raid follows the story-line of its last dungeon really closely like the Return to Ivalice raid follows it's story-line. I've never played either FFXII or FF Tactics and I have really good idea what is going on the Return to Ivalice raid because I like to go back and look at cut-scenes and re-read the quest dialogue. FFXIV does do a good job explaining what's going on in the Return to Ivalice raid so you don't have to be familiar with the source material for it to make sense.

What is different is that since the Crystal Tower raid series, the Allagans have had a two expansions worth of world-building done about them. The Allagans now feel much more grounded in the world then they did back in 2.0. When the Crystal Tower raid series came out, the main things known about Allag was that they were the ones who had created Dalamud and left a bunch of ruins all over Eorzea that were revealed when the Calamity happpened. Oh, and they really like their tech and weapons and didn't care a lot about scientific ethics. Why the Allagans were that way wouldn't come until the midpoint of the 3.0 expansion (Azys Lla and the Warring Triad) and even 4.0 (Ultima Weapon's impact on them).

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They could have taken Ivalice as a place but put their whole new story in it. Or they could have a new zone and some iconic NPCs from 12.

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I think it's too early to make this claim about Dalmasca and all the other Ivalice places until we see what the new zones of 5.0 are. The 4.4 and 4.5 patches are about where we will be going next expansion and while all signs point to Ilsabard, Ilsabard itself is huge. I can see them introducing Dalmasca in the 24-man raid series as a way to introduce us to parts of a place we will be going to in 5.0. It kinda reminds me of the treatment Ishgard got in 2.4 and 2.5, but that was in the MSQ, not a raid series. They could very well still put a new story in Dalmasca in a coming expansion. At the very least, we know Matsuno wants to get it out of Garlean oppression...

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The same with Omega. Here 90% of the bosses dont even fit the world at all and next to some being old stories from Garlemald, they also dont even see it necessary to give them any ground in the lore.

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To be fair, this is even pointed out in-game by the raid itself. Hardly anyone in-game has any idea who the bosses are and Omega all but says it doesn't really matter what you are fighting so long as he gets his combat data. What you are fighting in Omega has no impact on the lore of FFXIV until O11 when we see Omega's version of Midgardsormr.

Again... FFXIV is supposed to be the FF theme park. If it's not obvious to the majority of people who play the game that something isn't a reference (whether that be to one game or a concept from a bunch of games) the dev team doesn't think they're doing their job right. FFXIV is basically the dev team creating a creator-approved self-insert fan-fiction game about other Final Fantasy games. Sometimes it leans more heavily on the self-insert part, sometimes it goes more for the fan-fiction part. SB leaned a lot more on FFXIV being a fan-fiction then on it being a self-insert. Only time will tell if the next expansion goes the other way.

I would like to see something in reference to FF2.... say what you will about it, however you can't deny that Emperor Mateus' boss fights were some of the coolest in the whole series. Especially in the dawn of souls versions.
That said though... 5, 12, and Tactics are my top 3 FF games so I can say I'm satisfied. But I also think that something really interesting could be done building off of the lore of FF10.

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Originally Posted by ObsidianFire

The thing is, all FF games do this. A Behemoth is a Behemoth, a Flan is a Flan, a Chimera is a Chimera. The same six summons just keep getting used (Shiva, Titian, Rahmu, Ifrit, Leviathan, Bahamut). We keep having broody heroes getting mind-controlled (Kain or Cloud or Estinean). We keep getting people named Cid who give us airships. And yet none of the games are supposed to be happening in the same universe unless the creators say they are.


To be fair, this is even pointed out in-game by the raid itself. Hardly anyone in-game has any idea who the bosses are and Omega all but says it doesn't really matter what you are fighting so long as he gets his combat data. What you are fighting in Omega has no impact on the lore of FFXIV until O11 when we see Omega's version of Midgardsormr.

Again... FFXIV is supposed to be the FF theme park. If it's not obvious to the majority of people who play the game that something isn't a reference (whether that be to one game or a concept from a bunch of games) the dev team doesn't think they're doing their job right. FFXIV is basically the dev team creating a creator-approved self-insert fan-fiction game about other Final Fantasy games. Sometimes it leans more heavily on the self-insert part, sometimes it goes more for the fan-fiction part. SB leaned a lot more on FFXIV being a fan-fiction then on it being a self-insert. Only time will tell if the next expansion goes the other way.

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Yes FF uses certain iconic names and monsters and that would be fine, but those are for most of the time common enemies. No end bosses or anything. I have played FF13 and that game may have had some callbacks but as far as I know never whole zones from other games, including the iconic NPCs. And that is exactly what FF14 has done with SB.

I have read the story behind the crystal tower after my first post and have to correct myself on this a bit. Its not that much different from Ivalice but at least at that time it still felt like it belonged in this much better. It could be that I give the Ivalice raid less a pass because I already know the extent of how much fanservice there is. Maybe even because I care less about the characters in it? Or maybe because we also had void ark as a raid which, as far as I know, is original which felt like it had a better story. (Which is subjective anyway)

Omega: I know that its pointed out ingame and thus I find it even worse. They just wanted to have a tournament arc and put these bosses in there with barely any reason (and towards the end they even forgot about that). The last part of Omega has shown me that they can tell a good story if they want to but thanks to the other parts just being tests with monsters that are just myths, it just felt flat.

Thus both raids are mostly fanservice ones, while in HW it was quite less and yet still did some, which felt much better for me.

In the end they can still do a themepark imo without leaning so heavy on older FF. Let the lore about the game stand on its own while still having certain stereotypes if they want to use them (like how Thordan was probably the evil one because he is a pope) And next to that you could use some enemy models from other games, can use summons and important names too as long as they still have their own spin on it. (The Cid from 13 is really different from 14 for example) You can have some smaller hints in the game where fans of the FF can find them and like it while the rest does not notice that.

It should in a way feel natural.

But of course this is only my personal opinion on this. I am not going to quit the game if the next raids are similiar like the SB ones but I do have to say that it would make it at least less appealing.

Crystal tower feels more naturally integrated into FF XIV's own lore than Ivalice so far. Ivalice feels more...slapped on, more directly transplanted, but still not as blatant as the first nine Omega bosses were.

What made the Crystal Tower easy to integrate into Hydaelyn is that, even in the world of III, it's just kind of... there. No backstory, no history, no explanation. It's just there as Xande's stronghold. As such giving it a backstory and history makes it very easy to put in.

The Ivalician locales, on the other hand, have history and backstory. Things happened in Rabanastre, Iselia, and the Pharos at Ridorana. The locations around them are significant (Dalmasca / Ridorana Cataract). All that needs to be adapted and explained as well... which makes it feel like Ivalice is starting to encroach on what should be an original world.

The Omega bosses... I'm still not happy about them, but they are explicitly stated to be fiction made real.

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Originally Posted by ObsidianFire

The similarities between Nael and Sephiroth go much further then that. One of the biggest discussions about Sephiroth's motives in FFVII is if Sephiroth wanted to destroy the Planet because he really wanted to or if he wanted to because he had been influenced by Jenova who originally wanted to destroy the planet herself. Nael has the same thing going on. Bahamut might have tempered Nael so she would cause Dalamud to fall, but in Binding Coils he reverses Nael's tempering and it turns out Nael wanted Dalamud to fall without Bahamut's influence in the first place. Like... the only main difference between Sephiroth summoning Meteor and Nael summoning Dalamud is the specifics of how they do so. And that's not even counting how Meteor had Aerith to lessen it's impact while Dalamud had Louisoix/Phoenix in the same roll...

So yeah... why exactly are we complaining about references to previous FF games five years after FFXIV launched? The game has literally been unsubtlly doing this since year one. At this point, all that can really be hoped for is for the impact and details of the references to be a tad different.

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That's a very different sort of "reference" to what's been done with things like Ivalice. The lore is entirely local to FFXIV, even if it has close parallels to events in a different story. Being familiar with FF7 makes no difference to how you understand the situation, it just lets you see the similarities.

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Originally Posted by ObsidianFire

I have a hard time seeing the difference between the way the Crystal Tower raid was set up and the way the Return to Ivalice raid was set up. And if you take any look at FFIII, you'll find that the Crystal Tower raid follows the story-line of its last dungeon really closely like the Return to Ivalice raid follows it's story-line. I've never played either FFXII or FF Tactics and I have really good idea what is going on the Return to Ivalice raid because I like to go back and look at cut-scenes and re-read the quest dialogue. FFXIV does do a good job explaining what's going on in the Return to Ivalice raid so you don't have to be familiar with the source material for it to make sense.

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I also like to go back and re-read quest dialogue, but the Ivalice plot just feels incredibly hard to get into. I might be able to re-re-read the massive text dump until I can remember whatever it is that Ramza did and Delita did and what makes them so important but I have nothing to connect it to. I haven't seen any of this play out, I haven't been to any of these places, it's all nebulous facts and I've forgotten half of it by the time I've finished reading it. It feels like a chore to spend time memorising it all when I haven't been given a reason to care about it. The game just seems to assume you do.

Without that assumed core knowledge of characters, places or events, even with all the "catch-up information" given in the dialogue, Ivalice's lore is just a pile-up of things I don't know and haven't got a basic familiarity to build on. We meet another character, get another lore dump about how X happened in Y location, maybe involving another few characters that I also don't know. We don't see any of it happen, we just get told that it happened, and then the modern-day characters keep referencing all those past events so you have to be paying attention (and I feel lost).


Compare to the Crystal Tower, which (for all I needed to know playing this without awareness of FFIII) involved only three characters: Unei, Doga and Xande. We see and interact with all of them. The entirety of the lore you need to know is "Xande is the revived emperor of Allag, and he made a pact with a voidsent. He's up the top of the tower." There are passing mentions of other events and characters, but I never felt like I had to know them in detail, I just figured the dots would connect up if and when we got more information about them. So far, we haven't.

Ivalice feels like it threw all the dots on the table and hasn't told me which ones are actually important. I could try to memorise them all, but get no enjoyment out of it, and then they may turn out to be totally irrelevant.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

I might be able to re-re-read the massive text dump until I can remember whatever it is that Ramza did and Delita did and what makes them so important but I have nothing to connect it to.

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Overly-simplified version - first leg. The story of the Zodiac Braves is a fable told to garlean children. It is especially popular because it tells how a commoner(Delita) became king by vanquishing a great evil and marrying a princess. The guy who runs the theatre company has an old family journal apparently passed down for many generations that tells the story differently and implies that it really happened. In this version, the great evil was actually defeated by his ancestor Ramza who was a friend of Delita's but isnt mentioned in the normal story. The kingdom this was supposed to have taken place in doesnt exist on any map, so the theatre company manager has spent years doing research to see if he can find any truth to the story. His research sent him to Dalmasca, and found him a very special stone that might be related to the story... then he went missing and his family came to us for help finding him.

Overly-simplified version - second leg. The guy who stole the stone at the end of the first raid has gone mad and his friends came to us for help. We track him to the old abandoned lighthouse located by a seemingly bottomless hole in the world. We have learned that these special stones can change people into monsters based on their desires or otherwise imprint on their personality in some way. While investigating the lighthouse, we find that it is linked to a city from the "fable" that no one thought was real. By the time we catch up to the guy who stole the stone he is too far gone and we have to put him down, getting our stone back. The end of the story so far seems to show present day Ramza being temporarily possessed by ancient history Ramza via one of these stones.

As for how to connect all the dots and which ones are most important, we dont have all the info yet. Come back to me when we've seen where the third raid takes us.

Regarding the void ark raids, I couldn't help feeling some IX allusions were present.
Not merely limited to Ozma, but the asthetics around Machi struck parallels with ancient Terrans of IX, and with Black Mages being set up as all but a race it itself.
There's some visual connections there between the headstones of Oeilvert, and the architecture of the Desert Palace, with the Ark itself being loosely related to Ark from IX, using the void in the capacity of a 'world within a world', and the predominance of Airships in general.

It's much more vague than the Crystal Tower or Ivalice, but it also seems like far too much to be mere coincidence.

The "Shadow of Mhach" series was intended to be a mostly original raid series - other than some bosses, it's very steeped in Celtic myth and for the most part is its own thing.

Even some of the legacy references (Cait Sith, Cu Chulainn) are Celtic, along with the majority of the new characters (Cessair, Forgall, Ferdiad, Scathatch, Dun Scaith).

The focus on airships / sky travel is more a reference to XII, where the main protagonist(ish) wanted to be a Sky Pirate like the Leofard & co. (Yep, more Ivalice.)

The Void Ark was... well, an original bit. The game's main reference to the Ark summon from IX is the Cruise Chaser, the penultimate boss of the Alexander raids - the Ark was based on an old Squaresoft game called Cruise Chaser Blassty, which is why the Cruise Chaser identifies itself as having the designation "Blassty," and why it looks, transforms, and fights similarly to IX's Ark (albeit more put together). It even has the Ark's signature "Eternal Darkness" as its super, using a similar (if not identical) rune and powered up by the Ark's key gemstone from IX (Lapis Lazuli).

The Weeping City themes echo parts of the FFIX battle theme:

FFIX:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZ9O1Gh58vI

FFXIV:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfAXRqkgrtk

Looking it up again it (as I’d forgotten most of it) I’m more convinced that there was some IX inspiration there.
Void Ark is visually very similar to Pandemonium, and the background of using voidsent as power is reminiscent of Terra’s soul-powered technology.
Weeping City takes some obvious cues from Burmecia and Oeilvert, plus the inclusion of Ozma and the IX battle theme.
Dun Scaithe shares similarities with the Desert Palace and Memoria, and the background behind Dun Scaithe draws parallels with Terran’s plan to abandon their home to the oncoming disaster, and move to a different land, Gaia.

Overall, the Black Mages of Mhach seem to be very similar to the Terrans, and their war against the White Mages of Gelmorra strikes me as some sort of reimagining of Terra vs. Gaia in IX. Both practice soul-magic, one is wasteful/self-destructive while the other is more wholestome/natural.

In addition, while the term ‘Sky Pirate’ might come from XII, their portrayal is far more similar to Tantalus. There was no real ‘piracy’ in XII, but Leofard and co. are a rag tag band of thieves living in the sky, and the entire plot kicks off when their scheme to steal the ‘Queens Coffin’ goes wrong.

Maybe they wanted to try out something ‘original’ while drawing inspiration from IX, maybe they didn’t want to overtly fanservice IX, given that IX was essentially fanservice itself, would have been a little too on the nose, not to mention it would be hard to reconcile IX’s lore with XIV’s without drastically changing it beyond recognition anyway.

I was hoping for a temple of chaos raid but O9 obviated that. :(

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The similarities between Nael and Sephiroth go much further then that. One of the biggest discussions about Sephiroth's motives in FFVII is if Sephiroth wanted to destroy the Planet because he really wanted to or if he wanted to because he had been influenced by Jenova who originally wanted to destroy the planet herself. Nael has the same thing going on.

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The FF7 reference goes deeper than that. You know how the Ascians cause calamities to force Hydaleyn to absorb one of the shards to repair the damaged aether? It's similar to how after the first Meteor had hit the planet in FF7, the planet drew energy to heal the scar. Remember what Jenova was called by the Cetra? Calamity from the skies. The Ascians cause calamities to force Hydaelyn to heal, and by doing so force her to absorb one of the shards. Once all the shards have been re-absorbed (rejoining), Zodiark is free. This is also a homage to the REUNION. Whereby Jenova's cells are scattered and Sephiroth wants to revive her by bringing all the cells back together, then cast Meteor to hurt the planet and absorb the resulting planet's energy to be reborn as a god.

With the alleged release of the VII remake somewhere on the horizon (something I'm not exactly fond of them doing, but hey, who am I to deny long time fans what they want?) would it make sense for the next world to have allusions to VII?

In terms of marketing I'd say it makes sense, and maybe it's an alternative reason of them releasing the Cloud bike mount. (Which in itself is kind of out of place in the world i think but then again we have flying sand drakes... for whatever reason)

Assuming that SE wouldn't have any legal issue doing so, I would like to see small potential nods towards mote spinoff titles and other IPs like Crono Trigger

There's a Wind-up Tifa in there too...

Without context I'd wager it's just Fanfest goodies, but with KHIII finally getting close to a release, who knows... maybe we will get some info on the VII remake.

There's more than enough allusions to VII as is. Materia, anyone?

Considering the new informations from KHUX, I sincerely hope that Kitase has a good rein over a certain someone

I have been wondering what raids are going to be in 5.x. For the 8-player raids, maybe we'll have Eden up next? It could be a "big mysterious floating and possible living citadel" with elements of FF8 & FF13. The world map does show floating landmasses near Garlemald so we'll probably have some aerial stuff again in next expansion.

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Originally Posted by Zohar_Lahar

I have been wondering what raids are going to be in 5.x. For the 8-player raids, maybe we'll have Eden up next? It could be a "big mysterious floating and possible living citadel" with elements of FF8 & FF13. The world map does show floating landmasses near Garlemald so we'll probably have some aerial stuff again in next expansion.

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I've always imagined the VIII aesthetic to suit Sharlayan.
I'd imagine Eden as an accidental primal, kinda like Alexander.

Garlemald I think would suit an FFVII aesthetic much better, perhaps some XV thrown in there too.

I feel like I am one of a handful of FFII fans. I would absolutely love for them to add Mysidia if and when we go to Thavnair. I always felt that Mysidia was meant to be an Arabic/Indian esque place where mages lived and worked together. I feel like this could fit perfectly in the Thavnairian theme and could be an interesting plot point in the story. I am also low key praying that Minwu makes an appearance XD, don't mind me fanboying over hear.

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Originally Posted by Haxaan

I feel like I am one of a handful of FFII fans. I would absolutely love for them to add Mysidia if and when we go to Thavnair. I always felt that Mysidia was meant to be an Arabic/Indian esque place where mages lived and worked together. I feel like this could fit perfectly in the Thavnairian theme and could be an interesting plot point in the story. I am also low key praying that Minwu makes an appearance XD, don't mind me fanboying over hear.

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Isn't Thavnair already confirmed to be "middle eastern", they refer to it as the near east which, to be fair, is on par with our term. And most Thavnairian garments have an Arabic style to them as well.