Thematic issues. Why all the sci fi.

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Originally Posted by Rinoa_353

You may want to rethink that when there are literal ancient hunter gather societies still in the stone age deep in the Amazon and more on Earth today, so their statement is correct.



https://assets.survivalinternational...010-18_600.jpg


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncontacted_peoples

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We already had this conversation earlier in this thread, They do not represent large populations. The context matters too. None of these uncontacted tribes are influential in global affairs or, as aptly described "in contact". To say that Limsa + Gridania + Uldah are in the same league as any of the examples mentioned is laughable, in fact, they are a global super power at this stage. Not only did their combined forces alongside you beat back Garlemald but their alliance is the strongest on the planet when you factor in they added the East, Ishgard, and Radz as allies.

In this game, and as far as the map goes, we have no known enemies anymore and everything is under our control. Even the beast tribes settled down and have fought alongside us when needed.

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Originally Posted by kaynide

How is anyone homeless at this point? or starving?

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Yeah. How?
https://unequalscenes.com/south-africa

The game's had mecha since ARR.

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Originally Posted by Rinoa_353

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It really feels like they’re speedrunning their expansion ideas.

Endwalker alone had two full expansion-worthy stories mashed together into one. Which, for me, ended up feeling lackluster. They tried to connect them in, let’s put it kindly, creative ways, and then they crammed a third storyline about the 13th into the patches, instead of giving it the space it deserved.

Now, with Dawntrail, it seems like they had enough ideas for two expansions again, one about Tural and another about the 9th Reflection, but they mashed them together once more. At least this time, they seem to have slowed down a bit and haven’t introduced a third post patch storyline to wrap up in a rush.

I just hope 8.0 has more breathing room. Say what you want about Stormblood, but I actually enjoyed it and the lore it added. It introduced new cultures in a way that, honestly, Dawntrail just didn’t manage to pull off as well.

Maybe we could get something like Stormblood again, but without a sidekick this time? Or at least someone on Hien’s level.
Damn, I loved that guy.

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Originally Posted by kaynide

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Unless Sharlayan is deliberately restricting teleportation of goods to control the spread of technology and population, or maybe nobody can afford the teleportation taxes.
After all, in-game teleportation fees are literally a tax to Sharlayan for using their service. So, who’s to say they aren’t doing the same on a global scale?

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

I was going to say, by OP's own logic, the only jobs we should have now are GNB, MCH, and SGE because every other job is "outdated and impractical" if technology was really that sweeping and all encompassing within weeks of being introduced.

Hell, we shouldn't even have medieval settings at all by this point, everything should be Garlean magitek MINIMUM because there's just that much of it lying around to "advance" the rest of the known world (and they're not in any position to stop us from taking it from them).

That said, I don't find the mix of fantasy and sci-fi jarring as a whole, given it's nothing new for Final Fantasy, but I can see how it might stick out awkwardly when the Final Fantasy game in question is a "living world" and not a one and done storyline like the rest of them, and where we just assume great lengths of time have happened between expansions but in actuality the game doesn't even act like a year has passed, which also creates the excuse for WHY technology hasn't suddenly super-advanced the whole world because as far as the narrative is concerned the world hasn't been exposed to it for very long.

As far as we know, we discovered Alexandria just a month after we walked into our first Allag ruin, hardly time to study it all much less re-create it and spread it to all our neighbors.

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Even if you ignore Alexandria and electrope specifically, I find the mix of classical fantasy and modern/sci-fi in FFXIV a bit off. The fact that you can have a knight in a suit of armour and a catgirl in streetwear standing next to each other makes the game feel pretty aesthetically inconsistent.

In the older FF games, they would always blend fantasy and sci-fi a bit more consistently throughout the world. Some games leaned much more heavily into sci-fi and wouldn't have much in the way of fantasy beyond magic and swords, others were much more traditional fantasy and the sci-fi elements would be more steampunky.

It definitely feels like the devs have been leaning more and more heavily into the IMVU modbeast aesthetic since Shb and feels out of place to me.

I understand that sci-fi has always been part of FF. Yes, Allagans and Garleans are a thing. My complaint about the sci-fi is that the different looks of it are so incongruous. Allagan tech looks different from Garlean tech. Then you have the NieR raids which, once again, look completely different. And Dawntrail stuff looks like modern "cyberpunk" (which is mostly just cyber, very little punk).

And I understand the argument that if we have all this tech, why are some city states still using medieval ships? Why do people in them dress like middle ages peasants?

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Originally Posted by PercibelTheren

And I understand the argument that if we have all this tech, why are some city states still using medieval ships? Why do people in them dress like middle ages peasants?

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1. Garlemald was literally at war with the rest of the world until very recently, and therefor unwilling to share their technology.

2. Allagan tech is poorly understood by the everyman and generally (justifiably) seen as dangerous.

3. Nier raids literally exist in another reality(well, shard), they are also crossover stuff so it's questionable how much it should count.

4. Sharlayan was isolationist until very recently.

5 Alexandria was literally another reality(shard) until extremely recently.

6. Time bubble bullshit preventing things from dots 1, 4 and 5 from changing the world in meaningful ways.

I really feel half the complaints here are caused by the time bubble, an idea they decided onto over 10 years ago and it gets dumber and dumber the more is added to the world.

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Originally Posted by BigCheez

Even if you ignore Alexandria and electrope specifically, I find the mix of classical fantasy and modern/sci-fi in FFXIV a bit off. The fact that you can have a knight in a suit of armour and a catgirl in streetwear standing next to each other makes the game feel pretty aesthetically inconsistent.

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To me the big thing is that glamour exists as a lore thing, that alone justifies so much of what are aesthetic inconsistencies, the knight in a suit of armor and the catgirl in streetwear could be wearing the exact same equipment as far as we know, but they have vastly different aesthetic tastes, so they choose to use the common illusion magic of the setting to express themselves in very different ways, and for that, both sides only need to exist in the setting.

It's also why glam limitations per job are incredibly stupid even in lore, glamour is literally illusion magic, there should be nothing stopping anyone from casting the image of anything over anything else.

The thing that I have noticed is most off about aesthetics and technology (which I inherently have no problem with) is the fact that eorzea was originally said to be a “technological backwater” overly reliant on traditional magic compared to the rest of the world.

That is really only true comparing it to garlemald before it collapsed. Hingashi and orthard are pretty much just medieval far east (like how eorzea is medieval Europe), thavnir is medieval India and the new world is like “early colonialism” Americas. Besides garlemald who is more technologically advanced than eorzea because everywhere seems to be stagnating

If you want to get technical, Eorzea is less of a high fantasy world and more an advanced society that has beat itself to the stone age in multiple senses of the word. Not just with technology (Allag being the biggest example, but even Mhach had some pretty wild magic-technology hybrids like the Ark), but magic itself. Esuna--back in ARR--was seen as a miracle in the SCH questlines. The most basic spell in FF14 lore. The OG spell. One of the very first. In the Second Astral Era. A lot of this came from knee jerk mob mentality against technology in the 4th Astral Era, and Arcanophobia in the 6th, in response to the wanton destruction of the respective Calamities, which also would have destroyed a lot of records.

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Originally Posted by Hallarem

Allagan tech used to be this ancient mysterious technology that was hard to recreate and was LOST for a reason, now it seems that the plot farts out tech and modern things on a whim. THERE IS NO REASON IN THIS GAME TO HAVE MIDDLE-AGE VILLAGE TYPE SOCIETIES IF THIS IS THE CASE. Can't any of you people understand world building and how decisions like this affect it in the story and in the world they are supposedly trying to portray us?

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Ah hell with it, I'll ball. I enjoy a good lore debate. Taking this separately because character limits suck.

So Allagan technology...yes. It was lost for two very, very good reasons: The destruction caused by the earthquakes of the Fourth Umbral Calamity, as well as the destructive movement against all knowledge created by mankind's panic in this Calamity's wake.

It is very difficult to recreate for multiple reasons. From what I recall--Allagan metal is difficult to destroy, but that also means its difficult to manipulate. The technology to manipulate that metal likely either does not exist, or at least does not on a widespread level.

However, there's also the matter of aetherochemistry which--in case you are not aware--is the application of magical arts to technology to enhance that technology's performance. In other words, to recreate this technology, you need not only the technological knowhow to do so, but you also need a competent enough mage to imbue the necessary magics into the machine in question. Competent. Mages. In the Seventh Astral Era. As far as humanity is concerned--from what we see in game--your most widespread job crystal jobs in FF14 for magic that isn't heavily restricted are most likely Sage and Blue Mage. Black and White magic is highly regulated, Scholar, Pictomancer and Red Mage are borderline dead arts that are at the very beginnings of revival--and Red Magic in and of itself is very difficult to get into because you essentially need to be a skilled mage who can lift. Summoner benefits from an Ul'dahn initiative of taking those who have faced a primal and lived with their wits to tell about it but this is kind of a limited time offer with the Beast Tribes no longer feeling the need to resort to primal summoning by and large--could that change in the future, sure? But only if the knowledge provided by the Ascians survives that long.

So where does that leave us? A bunch of Thaumaturges, Arcanists, and the odd Conjurer. You're basically, charitably, asking a bunch of level 30s to make Allagan tech run. And to be fair, you may have had some such people in those positions doing just that, especially Arcanists, but so as the mage is limited, so too is the technology that is created as a result. And this is before learning how all the technology works, and explaining to laymen how to use it. People are stubborn about their ways, look at real life--we can't even get off QWERTY keyboards, for God's sake.

Part 2 because character limits still suck.

Now for Alexandrian Technology...it's made pretty clear you need Electrope, and there is no known source of it at this current time on the Source, aside from--obviously--raiding Everkeep to do so--and doing so comes at great risk because in the current political climate, you'd be engaging not only Alexandria, but their diplomatic ties and proximity to Tural suggest Thavnair could get involved too.

But say despite all that, an attacker succeeds in procuring all the electrope Alexandria has to offer--that's still finite. At the most you'd have one nation, maybe a couple of trading partners, with goodly amounts of electrope. It would still be rationed to a degree, or incredibly expensive due to short supply--remember, even with all the Electrope on its native shard, wars were fought over its alleged scarcity. Even with current Eorzean technology there's a wild imbalance between what each nation has access to and considers commonplace. And I'm not even counting Sharlayan in that mix. That reflects real life, too.

Now, all of these problems could sort themselves out in due time, and you could be right--that in the future, the fantasy from FF14 is gone and we all live in a pseudo cyberpunk reality.

But here's the thing, none of that is going to happen before the twins hit their legal drinking age. And we all know that's never going to happen.

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Originally Posted by PercibelTheren

And I understand the argument that if we have all this tech, why are some city states still using medieval ships? Why do people in them dress like middle ages peasants?

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Because the Sci-Fi technology sucks.

When Garlemald attacked Eorzea with battle mechs and laser guns, they were repelled by axeman and magicians. When Garlemald threw a moon(!) with a terrible demon inside at their enemies, it was repelled by a guy with a staff.
When Alexandria's Star Wars Army attacked Shaaloani, they were repelled by some cowboys with rubber bullets /s/, and a guy with a lance.

Why would the classical Fantasy population want to use a technology they do not understand, and which is proven to be inferior to their axes and fireballs?

That being said, I'm absolutely ok with some level of Sci-Fi in FF14 - Magitek, Allagan, time travel, and the like. But a future mega city with neon lights and Starbucks? That's just a big no in my book.

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Originally Posted by Basteala

Part 2 because character limits still suck.

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You can bypass the character limit by posting the correct limit and then editing and adding the rest to your post.

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Originally Posted by Gwenkatsu

Because the Sci-Fi technology sucks.

When Garlemald attacked Eorzea with battle mechs and laser guns, they were repelled by axeman and magicians. When Garlemald threw a moon(!) with a terrible demon inside at their enemies, it was repelled by a guy with a staff.
When Alexandria's Star Wars Army attacked Shaaloani, they were repelled by some cowboys with rubber bullets /s/, and a guy with a lance.

Why would the classical Fantasy population want to use a technology they do not understand, and which is proven to be inferior to their axes and fireballs?

That being said, I'm absolutely ok with some level of Sci-Fi in FF14 - Magitek, Allagan, time travel, and the like. But a future mega city with neon lights and Starbucks? That's just a big no in my book.

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This is actually an interesting point. I think the "magicians" are being understated here a little bit. In a combative sense, the gap between the two isn't that large, if at all.

Which might make sense. All magitek does is manipulate the six elements of aether to create a desired result--this is literally no different than what a mage does. Magitek devices ultimately just create a surrogate body to manipulate the aether that Garleans can't (obviously past a certain size like transport vessels this becomes an entirely different argument, but at a footman and fireball vs walker argument it kind of pans out).

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Originally Posted by Rinoa_353

You can bypass the character limit by posting the correct limit and then editing and adding the rest to your post.

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You are my new favorite person on these forums.

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Originally Posted by Basteala

This is actually an interesting point. I think the "magicians" are being understated here a little bit. In a combative sense, the gap between the two isn't that large, if at all.

Which might make sense. All magitek does is manipulate the six elements of aether to create a desired result--this is literally no different than what a mage does. Magitek devices ultimately just create a surrogate body to manipulate the aether that Garleans can't (obviously past a certain size like transport vessels this becomes an entirely different argument, but at a footman and fireball vs walker argument it kind of pans out).



You are my new favorite person on these forums.

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You're welcome lol.


To add to the tread topic, Electrope technology is also magic based where the circuits imprinted on the Electrope is based off the Arcanist runes from the South Sea Isles. So it actually fits into the lore, it just looks like Mass Effect but they explain the underlying concept of how it functions. This is speculation but I think it's reasonable that the Source would also have deposits of Electrope since the Reflections are all based off of the Source. It's just that Allag existed and developed their advanced technology that didn't need Electrope since holograms, robots and spaceships exist in the Source from Allag without Electrope. Another theory could be Allag did use Electrope in their technology and maybe exhausted all deposits since their empire spanned nearly the entire planet at their height and the Fourth Umbral Calamity may have buried any remaining deposits deeper underground perhaps?

Garlemald was over there with cars and trains but we didn't see that in their occupied territories like Ala Mhigo and Doma. So even with a situation where Garlemald was in control of them, there wasn't a requirement to abandon their own traditions. There's nothing that says Tural has to embrace technology and they're more likely not to because tradition is heavily valued there.

And we have like, what, two sci-fi places? The moon, which was intended to be a spaceship to shuttle everyone away from certain doom. And a fragment of an alien culture with advanced technology that developed on Etheirys completely isolated from the rest of it for 30 years. It's not going to be business as usual there.

Final Fantasy games have been doing this since the original. You go through nearly all of FFI traveling from little medieval village to little medieval village. Then boom, you're in a flying fortress created by the Lufenians that has a completely different technological appearance and where you can run into robots. Then you go to another place where you can travel through time.

I like the fusion of sci-fi and more "traditional"/medieval-inspired fantasy. If done well you can mix these themes up very creatively for world-building and storytelling. Whether it's done well in Dawntrail/FF14 is another debate (I think there are hits and misses) but I'm a fan of the core idea.

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Originally Posted by Rinoa_353

You're welcome lol.


To add to the tread topic, Electrope technology is also magic based where the circuits imprinted on the Electrope is based off the Arcanist runes from the South Sea Isles. So it actually fits into the lore, it just looks like Mass Effect but they explain the underlying concept of how it functions. This is speculation but I think it's reasonable that the Source would also have deposits of Electrope since the Reflections are all based off of the Source. It's just that Allag existed and developed their advanced technology that didn't need Electrope since holograms, robots and spaceships exist in the Source from Allag without Electrope. Another theory could be Allag did use Electrope in their technology and maybe exhausted all deposits since their empire spanned nearly the entire planet at their height and the Fourth Umbral Calamity may have buried any remaining deposits deeper underground perhaps?

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Good points regarding the application of arcanistry to electrope--I forgot about that. Where Electrope is concerned I feel there are two possibilities--either the fact that there is electrope somewhere on the Source as you're saying, or it could be a side effect of the shard becoming so heavily aspected towards lightning, thus putting the conquest and submission of lightning and stone into a slight imbalance, allowing certain stone to become what we now know as electrope.

The theory you have with Allag is interesting, especially given the striking similarity between electrope's application and the art of aetherochemistry. The fact that the calamity the Allagans caused being the calamity of Earth might really give that theory legs.

Those are some very interesting thoughts.

OP has never played any other Final Fantasy game in their life.

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/fi...rLandscape.jpg

as far as i remember there was a limited amount of electrope on the shard.
when they relied more and more on it the balance tipped and created more electrope which resulted in them relying even more on electrope and fighting for it... which made the whole shard spiralling down faster and faster

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Originally Posted by Ath192

xD Yes, let’s cite the one cannibal island with a barely contacted tribe as the example for what most of the world actually looks like. I was hoping you'd use this as an example just so people see how far you need to go to make things make sense in FFXIV.

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Okay so better examples - Amish communities literally live “next door” and are pretty much exposed to our world, yet they didn’t give up on their style of living.
While anticlimactic another example would be a fax - while we have much better technology right now, there are still countries that use them widely eg. Japan.

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Originally Posted by Ath192

We have started delivery quests to rebuild an obsolete train. It is unrealistic to think Turalli engineers would not realize this and begin analyzing Solution 9 for the most efficient mode of transportation to build next. From day 1 of contact.

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Studying Solution Nine technology isn’t an activity for one night, it may take them years to understand it and the train could have been fixed now because that’s the technology they know or already studied prior to solution nine appearance. There is also the mentality of we don’t need it, which makes technological changes harder even in real world (a real life example would be my parents neighborhood that wasn’t connected to fiber internet until december 2023 (!) due to people claiming they have good internet (no) and don’t need a new one)

I don’t know where you come from and how fast your country adopts to new technologies but i can assure you it’s not happening overnight as you imagine

I remember when first "casual wears" started to appear (I think late shadowbringers) BTW this was not the first TIME it was released, what I mean by it, it became more "common release" than ever before, before it was often only crafting map outfits and/or deep dungeon sacks. (correct me if I am wrong, I am not an experienced player) yoshiP mentioned in live letter in a small talk "I personally don't like it. In my games, if I had the option I would prefer medieval style and fantasy gear/outfits" something like that if memories serves right (no direct quote) I remember it well because I felt very guilty at that time. I am a super fan of "casual attires" and "cute outfits" and whatnot, totally not fantasy and unrelated. To me that they wanted to include it was a huge thing because I knew YoshiP hated to implement them but they are requested so much, so I always appreciate it.

Now however the whole technology and booming intelligence of advance technology makes little sense to me, however, as the game is over ten years old and it growing in time we also are getting photocamera pose emote, so I think people like what people are used to. I like them doing a lot of different things, but I think they could've executed it better by better ways of introduction. we were slowly introduced to the advanced technology through time, in good pace but this was a little bit too sudden for me. I remember the sci-fi style appeared in PVP first time (even if it wasn't first time most likely it was for me) and suddenly it has become a major thing, also I think looking at popularity - so it makes sense. I am not VERY into sci-fi but I love the casual wears regardless. It shows also how Vanguard was very popular dungeon despite the dungeon design being awfully tedious, it was worth farming for the glams (I just hate the class specific lockouts)

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Originally Posted by VeyaAkemi

To me the big thing is that glamour exists as a lore thing, that alone justifies so much of what are aesthetic inconsistencies, the knight in a suit of armor and the catgirl in streetwear could be wearing the exact same equipment as far as we know, but they have vastly different aesthetic tastes, so they choose to use the common illusion magic of the setting to express themselves in very different ways, and for that, both sides only need to exist in the setting.

It's also why glam limitations per job are incredibly stupid even in lore, glamour is literally illusion magic, there should be nothing stopping anyone from casting the image of anything over anything else.

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Glamour isn't the problem. I'm fine with people fighting in non-combat gear. Armour in FF has traditionally been mostly on the lighter to non-existent side. The problem for me is that it feels like we have Steiner and Tifa in the same universe and it's aesthetically confusing.

Hmm have you played other Final Fantasys?
It's literally part of every game. Every game has sort of like out-of-place hi-tech part. It's a core element of the franchise.

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Originally Posted by tsuchii

Hmm have you played other Final Fantasys?
It's literally part of every game. Every game has sort of like out-of-place hi-tech part. It's a core element of the franchise.

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This.

Although that being the case you have a lot of people who prefer one side or the other. While I’ve been enjoying S9 and Alexandria, I’m ready for the pendulum to swing the other way for awhile, hopefully by leading us to Meracydia for a more dragon/fantasy expansion for 8.0!

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Originally Posted by BigCheez

Glamour isn't the problem. I'm fine with people fighting in non-combat gear. Armour in FF has traditionally been mostly on the lighter to non-existent side. The problem for me is that it feels like we have Steiner and Tifa in the same universe and it's aesthetically confusing.

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This all tends to show that appreciation of thematic dissonance mainly lies in the eye of the beholder. I have a hard time dealing with a tank running a dungeon in a bikini unlike someone wearing a science fiction suit that comes from somewhere in the world. But I guess the bikini can be waved away by glamour right?

FF1 had a sci-fi flying fortess. Didn't look much like it on release but that's what it was.
FF2 had it's own flying fortress though that was more steampunky.
FF3 gave us the base for the alagan empire with the crystal tower the life work of a paranoid emperor magician to be immortal.
FF4 have mad a mad scientists turning people into robots.
FF5 Probably one of the few ones that the least technology.
FF6 The empire is all about magitech.
FF7 Shinra is again a highly technologically advanced empire.
FF8 Oh boy, flying cities, space cities and gods knows what other trippy sci-fi things going on.
FF9 Alternate dimention world that was sci-fi advanced.
FF10 Post apocalyptic sci-fi
FF11 Blank ( Don't know enough about this chonker)
FF12 Starwars, but final fantasy
FF13 Two sci-fi worlds entwined ruled by petty gods on each.

A few years ago, there was a livestreamed lore Q&A event featuring the producers. Fans began asking really niche questions, and at one point it prompted the staff (it might've even been Yoshida himself) to say something along the lines of, like, "don't put so much thought into it, we just wanted to make something cool." For me that was further confirmation that the msq just isn't worth taking seriously. Initial confirmation was in their willingness to sell story skips. If the msq is soooo worth doing and sooooo meaningful, then why would you let us skip it by paying you? Imagine if you planned an incredible night out for somebody you cared about, full of exciting events, wonderful food, just a real good time that you sold them on, you convinced them that this night out would be really fun and most of all that it would be important and worthwhile... and then you told them they could just not-do the night out but say they did, in exchange for like 30 bucks. What does that say about your belief in the meaningfulness of your event, if on the one hand it's so valuable but on the other hand it's worth skipping for 30 bucks? Not much imo. Imagine a writer selling you his "important" novel and then saying you can pay him another 20 dollars to just skip the whole book. It's bizarre that this is even an option and cheapens the value of the experience. Every time these devs try to say the msq is important, remember that they'll let you skip it for 20-30 dollars. But I digress.

Ever since I started this game, people have been coping hard over the intrusive sci fi garbage. I was real immersed and walking around the woods outside Gridania when a damn flying car sped past me. I was like "wow that's pretty jarring" and had a dozen people I didn't even know screaming at me about how "ackshually it's fine because allagans" or something. Now I guess they need us to once again go into space, and instead of using any established cool magical teleportation type stuff, they just put us in a rocket because creativity is dead.

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Originally Posted by virianna

Okay so better examples - Amish communities literally live “next door” and are pretty much exposed to our world, yet they didn’t give up on their style of living.
While anticlimactic another example would be a fax - while we have much better technology right now, there are still countries that use them widely eg. Japan.


Studying Solution Nine technology isn’t an activity for one night, it may take them years to understand it and the train could have been fixed now because that’s the technology they know or already studied prior to solution nine appearance. There is also the mentality of we don’t need it, which makes technological changes harder even in real world (a real life example would be my parents neighborhood that wasn’t connected to fiber internet until december 2023 (!) due to people claiming they have good internet (no) and don’t need a new one)

I don’t know where you come from and how fast your country adopts to new technologies but i can assure you it’s not happening overnight as you imagine

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Actually the Amish do use tech. So this wouldn’t be a good example as even they have been affected by the world around them.

Hard to say about the fax. It is still modern enough imo. But yeah, some old stuff does stick around. It doesn’t stick out in an office like a papyrus scroll and desk would. An example that would convince me I’m the one with the incorrect perspective is a country actively wielding swords and shields plus plate armor for combat and a wooden ship navy with black powder cannons.

And no, when there are obviously superior ways to transport people don’t just keep pouring millions into obsolete projects, even if it takes longer they stop and study the better solution to implement it. I feel like this is how you’re trying to rationalize them building a steam engine but it’s not something that makes sense in the larger picture economically.

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I mean I found a solution for myself, at this point I just pretend anyone wearing plate or medieval attire is a renaissance fair weirdo and just wear timeless and high tech gear and weapons. But that doesn’t mean I enjoyed making the transition from a high fantasy setting to cyberpunk.

I don’t feel that was the game that was sold to me when I bought it.

And I like how they've kind of flipped the script with Alexandria, because it's a high tech city built on top of a fantasy medieval castle. Visually, The Underkeep looks like a cool dungeon, getting Old Aperture vibes from it.

I feel like allot of you never played ff before this is a culture shock....Final Fantasy is a science fantasy series, It blends sci-fi and fantasy together. o. o so this is perfectly align with the ff brand narrative also its more science leaning than high fantasy.... so yeah alexandrea and solution 9 fit perfectly in the world of ff14

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Originally Posted by Zakuyia

I feel like allot of you never played ff before this is a culture shock....Final Fantasy is a science fantasy series, It blends sci-fi and fantasy together. o. o so this is perfectly align with the ff brand narrative also its more science leaning than high fantasy.... so yeah alexandrea and solution 9 fit perfectly in the world of ff14

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I've played a lot of FF and I'm not sure I agree. This is starting to become kind of incongruent. What we had before Endwalker was more in line with how technology and fantasy are usually presented.

I feel like they need to introduce some reason as to why the technology of Solution Nine can't or wouldn't be exported to the rest of the world.

While Final Fantasy has always had this mixture of futuristic sci-fi and medieval fantasy, I feel like with XIV in particular, the elements that got introduced over time have felt more jarring than anything else.

We've always had Garlemald and Allagan tech, with Garlemald in particular using their tech to manipulate aether to overcome their natural inability to manipulate it themselves. This felt more in-line with the tone and feel of the early releases where it was more an infusion of tech and magic for something more steampunk (magicpunk?), very much similar to what VI did. Allagan, while much more high-tech, was always something of an "unknown", its something that couldn't be replicated easily, and as such outside of Allagan ruins or Cids workshops, you didn't get much in the way of Allagan tech running everything in Eorzeas day-to-day life. The average thing you'd see technology wise wasn't much different from something you'd find during the renaissance period with a little magic-based steampunk thrown in. At worst, Omega felt out of place during Stormblood, but I can forgive that with knowing the backstory behind the dragons and Omega.

Fast-forward to Endwalker and now we suddenly have intergalactic space-ships that can travel to the edge of the universe in the blink of an eye and a moon colony of rabbits that throw rave parties. I don't think that can easily justified with "but FF8!". FF may have always done a mixture of sci-fi and fantasy, but it usually felt appropriate in their respective games outside 1 or 2 of them, here it just feels like a tonal mis-match once we get to Endwalker.

Personally, I think XIV does best when it handles more mythical and fantastic elements anyway.

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Originally Posted by Zakuyia

I feel like allot of you never played ff before this is a culture shock....Final Fantasy is a science fantasy series, It blends sci-fi and fantasy together. o. o so this is perfectly align with the ff brand narrative also its more science leaning than high fantasy.... so yeah alexandrea and solution 9 fit perfectly in the world of ff14

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Nah, I’ve played plenty of Final Fantasy games.
Most of the time, the technology has more of a fantasypunk or steampunk aesthetic, which thematically fits with what we saw in ARR through Shadowbringers.

Even in other FF titles, the most advanced tech usually fits within a Mhachi or Allagan-style design, rather than outright modern sci-fi.

FF8, the FF13 series, and FF15 (plus parts of FF7) are the outliers in the series, which lean much more into modern aesthetics and sci-fi.

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Originally Posted by Zakuyia

It blends sci-fi and fantasy together.

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I don't think its blending as much as it is pouring oil and water in this game TBH.

3-4 numbered titles isn't exactly a small chunk. I think it's pretty all right to bring it over to a game that's filled with references to all sorts of games across the series.

I'm of two minds on this. I don't mind the magitech and the hints of sci-fi, but the aesthetic they've chosen is horrendous. Before, it was some glowy bits on a robe. Now it's techwear. Which for those that like it cool beans, but for me, it's ugly as sin. But again, I'm not mad at the players who like that. All I'm saying is I want my fantasy and less Cyberpunk.

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Originally Posted by Ath192

I don’t feel that was the game that was sold to me when I bought it.

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ARR's raids had us going into Allagan spaceships and parts of a fallen satellite filled with robots and the 1.0 trailer featured dragons fighting giant airships that were shooting them down with full-on 20th century machine gun fire so the anachronistic levels of technology have been here since before the original iteration of the game even launched. The infamous ARR MSQ dungeons have control rooms with giant computer screens, wrist-mounted radios, electronic jamming, and a fight with a giant robot in a sleek elevator.

The original art director for 1.0 was the same that did FFXII which also has airship dogfights with machine guns alongside knights with bows and chocoback so it's not a surprise. Anachronism has been a key aesthetic of the Final Fantasy series for decades.


I'm also not sure what your OP is about in regards to the three starter cities because most of the whole world is just as medieval as they are. The only contemporary technological societies are the Garleans and the Alexandrians and one of them has only just teleported into our world. Our nations are still adapting to sudden influx of technology from defecting Garlean engineers but we still have airships. Ul'dah has ceruleum derricks and refineries, and Limsa has guns, cannons, and ceruleum-powered pirate ships.

Everyone who isn't the Garleans doesn't need super high-tech to fight them anyway. When the average peasant can augment their strength with aether, let alone adventurers running around flinging fireballs and augmenting arrows to pierce through Garlean chestplates, technological research is going to be slow. Especially in a realm full of city-states that did not even have strong diplomatic ties with each other until 5 years ago. Technological progress requires necessity and communication and the Garleans and the Alexandrians are the real outliers here.

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

Amusingly, when the first screenshots of Solution 9 came up, people thought it was going to be FF8 themed instead because parts of it looked like it was lifted straight out of Eshtar.

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Yeah, I also thought it would be related to FF8. :D

Though, it's been a pretty long time since I've played the FF series, so my memory is hazy on stories and names, and they all tend to blend together.

I've been on a quest to replay the whole series, but stopped after finishing FF4 about six months ago.

I really should get back onto it.

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Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

ARR's raids had us going into Allagan spaceships

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Anything Allagan isn't what's being argued against mostly. It is well blended and it feels more like ancient magical tech than star trek. You could tell they thought about how the Allagan technology and derived magitek would fit into the world.

It's the recent introduction of pop culture scifi and minimalism that doesn't blend well into the games aesthetic. When you walked into Azys La it the theme was clearly lost ancient technology and both you as a person and your character were in awe and wonder of what was introduced, likewise it looked much more retro-futuristic.

Now a days you're literally walking into trashy cyberpunk with shien streetwear and if you listen close enough you can probably hear the NPCs hollering at you YO YO YO WASSA HOLMES, YA GOT SOME ECSTACY ON YOU? all while they breakdance and drink fourlokos. I wonder if some people literally can't tell the difference. Like maybe an Allagan orb really is the same aesthetic as a harley davidson chopper or a DJI style drone to them.

https://i.imgur.com/0qwx34T.gif


I bet were a few patches away from the /reuseneedle emote. Sold separately of course.