Ask English Localization Lead Kate Cwynar Lore & Localization Questions

Did Elidibus have an any intentions for Unukalhai other than sending him to help with with the Warring Triad?

Now that Hydaelyn is dead, is it possible for people to awaken the echo?

How do dragons sire children? Since dragons do not experience gender in the same way as the human races, are they able to produce children on their own without coupling?

Was Travanchet what we would consider a black mask Ascian, or was he possessed by a higher ranking ascian?

Many of the Gunbreaker's defensive abilities use a naming convention based off of astronomy (Nebula, Aurora, Superbolide). Is this a reflection of Bozjan/Hrothgar belief systems, and how do these compare/differ from the ideas developed within Sharlayan Astromancy?

Many primals that we've encountered so far required corporeal aether in the from of crystals. Why did Zodiark specifically require souls? How could the third set of sacrifices be used to trade for the sacrificed people of Amaurot if their souls had been already consumed as an energy source?

We've seen examples of 'parallel' non-player classes, such as Doman Geomancy vs. Conjury. Velibor Azetina's Field Record (#7) likewise tells us of a Bozjan Martial Art by the name of the Verdant Path. Are there more examples of this, and would it be normal for classes/jobs in a non-Eorzean region to have their own variants of the ones that we are familiar with - are there a set of Bozjan-specific classes, for example? If they did have their own job stones, would there be any that the Warrior of Light wouldn't be compatible with?

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Originally Posted by Laun_dingo

I wonder where Amon/Hermes was taken when Asahi dragged him into a dark portal? Felt like a loose end since even when Metion at the end of Endwalker also wonders if Hermes will ever find the answers?

I seldom consider there ever being a 7 Hells as literal place (with it being mentioned in passing in Pandemonium Anabaseious 12) in the story, but the possibility of him being dragged to a place elsewhere in the Atherial sea is not out of the realm of possibilities.

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Following on from this question, what gives Asahi the authority to behave as he does with Amon in the aetherial sea? It felt very jarring.

Are the Thavnairian and Werlytian(?) Raen still technically "Raen" or does that term only apply to the clans living in the Far East? What do the other groups call themselves if they do not identify as Raen?

Why do we not see many Raen in Stormblood areas?

Hi kate,

The game will receive a graphical update once 7.0 is out.

So, will the minimal prerequisites for FFXIV change?

If so, some of us utilise a patato pc to run the game at a reasonable frame rate. So, it would be fantastic if you could not make any significant changes to the specifications.

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Originally Posted by Riiki

2.-If it's not a "closed loop" how exactly did the events in Elpis play out without us there since we couldn't have possibly went there if the Black Rose killed us in the "OG" timeline?

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Originally Posted by duckslap

In the Eight Umbral Calamity timeline where G'raha is woken up and sent to the First, the WoL perished before the Final Days could come to pass, meaning they couldn't have travelled back in time to meet Venat and tell her about it. How did the events in Elpis we played through ourselves unfold in this timeline without the WoL?

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Jumping in ahead of the official answer on this because there's a simple explanation that a lot of people miss.

It seems that the split timeline is Y-shaped (only branching off at the events around Shadowbringers) and everything before that point is a single timeline.

We travel from the "good future" branch of the timeline to the past in Elpis, which is the past of the "bad future" as well.

Meanwhile, G'raha's actions in Shadowbringers establish a way for the good future to happen before the bad future ever comes to pass, so there is never a time where the loop can't be completed. Our other self does not need to go to Elpis at any point.

We probably do need to get an official statement at some point because people keep being confused by it, but it's not something that we don't have an answer for.

Meta question: does the dev team want these forums to function well? Either the current moderation policy or the way it is being applied by the moderators is not functioning well. There are many threads that are clearly bait and/or set up to devolve into name calling or similar (like a current one setting off an LGBT debate not relevant to FFXIV, stirred up by an initial post accusing a Reddit community of being "political" about it). There is also no attempt by the moderators to stop people who bump up masses of posts at once, usually the same collection of threads about forum drama rather than the game, which stifles actual game discussion as other threads get lost in the deluge. It seems the spirit of the post is ignored as long as they stick to the letter of the rules, and it is incredibly hard to get moderators to act even if you report things.

In the most recent raid series, Athena references the seven hells when casting Ultima. Do the ancients also believe in the seven heavens/hells as Eorzeans do?

During the post 6.0 Q&A of the live letter Yoshida was asked how the sundered races came about and that he would bring the topic up with Oda-San. Has there been any follow up?

Why in the English version of the Codex entry for Zodiark and eluded by Erichtonios are the sacrifices have the usage of order by the Convocation when its not present in the other languages?

The current lore for Hrothgar claims that the rarely seen women are revered as "queens" and there seems to be a Queen for each small tribe of Hrothgar, but this description seems at odds with what we have been told in the Bozja storyline which revolves around a central "Queen Gunnhildr" with no mention of lesser queens at all. Meanwhile, several Hrothgar characters have mentioned having wives and children, which seems at odds with the alleged queen system.

Will this lore be kept or altered once female Hrothgar are playable?

If altered, what will happen to the current rules basing Hrothgar surnames on their queen's name? Current characters can't be renamed so does it become a solidified surname stemming from an ancestral system (as, say, Mr Smith is not a blacksmith but his ancestors must have been)?

Is the reason some people don't awaken to the echo due to being part of the new life/generation that was made by Zodiark after the 2nd sacrifice and thus wouldn't have memories of the Final Days?

Was Misija originally going to be a Hrothgar before plans changed to have the Hrothgar/Viera split instead?

Other Roegadyn in the Bozja storyline have Sea Wolf names while Misija is the only one with a Hrothgar name.

A meta request that is more of a UI issue but affects the readability of lore – can we please have some simpler "plain text" formats of the lore-heavy collection databases like the Unending Codex and Bozjan Field Record? The current ones (especially the field record) have a fairly small text field encroached upon by large images, poor-contrast watermarked backgrounds and even constantly moving animation along the bottom of the page. All this adds up to a text entry that needs lots of scrolling and cannot be easily skimmed.

When we first hear about the early signs of the original Final Days and what happened right before Khalzahl transformed into a Blasphemy we get told there was a sound or a keening coming from the direction of deep within the planet. What was this sound and what role if any did it have in both Final Days?

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Originally Posted by Iscah

The current lore for Hrothgar claims that the rarely seen women are revered as "queens" and there seems to be a Queen for each small tribe of Hrothgar...

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Uh... make that red-marked Q a lower-case "q" if you pick this question. It is an annoying battle against the phone autocorrect to stop it from capitalising things that don't always need capitalising, and I swear it goes and switches things again after I've already reversed it once.

Is the term "blasphemy" supposed to apply to all monsters spawned by the Final Days or only to certain significant individuals? The script seems somewhat inconsistent about this.

You and the team have done an amazing job in giving us diverse and varied cultures in game, and a big part of that is the diversity in language! We've been given some vocabulary in a variety of languages of Etheirys, but has there been any thought on fleshing some out into full Constructed Languages like some other fantasy and sci-fi stories have done?

Now that you finally threw a bone to those who kept asking about the Heart of Sabik could you please finally tell us what the presence at Silver Tear Lake is? We were told many a year ago we'd get told what it was soon, but that was back during Stormblood.

Why was the name "Ultima Thule" chosen for the final zone of Endwalker? I know it's been used historically to refer to a "place beyond the borders of the world", but (to me at least) it feels a little too linked to real-world geography and the expectation that it refers to an island, not a cluster of planets.

Did you consider any other names for this location?

What happened to the memory crystals that we gave to Elidibus? Did he keep them or did we take them back?

There are certain times where the English localization doesn't line up with the Japanese (for example, in 5.3, the title card switching from "Crystal Exarch" to "G'raha Tia" in the post-SOS cutscene, or Urianger calling out to Moenbryda in Trusts upon defeat). What prompts the decision to make these differences, and what prompts the decisions to go back and retcon them so that they DO line up (for example, changing the minion description of the Wind-Up Moenbryda)? For the former examples, would you consider going back to make those line up?

In the great ARR culling of 5.3, the quest "The Warden Works in Mysterious Ways" got removed, along with dozens of others. From a technical standpoint, I get why they removed it, but it provided a nice hit of lore. Are there any removed quests you would consider bringing back for lore reasons rather than their gameplay?

How was Thancred able to channel his aether into the crystal in 5.3, teleport using the experimental aetheryte to Thavnair, and go invisible in Garlemald? This confused me because as far as we know, Thancred is still unable to use magic, but we have these random instances of him being able to do things he otherwise shouldn't be able to. We also never got an explanation as to how his eye went back to normal, so if you could clear that up I'd appreciate it!

With the aetherial currents returning to normal after Zodiark's death and no more Ascians to cause Calamities, will the climates of zones thrown into extremes, like parts of Central Shroud and all of Coerthas, ever revert to what it once was? Will we ever see a green Ishgard again? Also, will we ever see the First's climate and landmasses restored, or will that occur over so long a period it's not feasible to expect it within the lifetime of our current WoL?

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Originally Posted by glitteringcosmos

In the great ARR culling of 5.3, the quest "The Warden Works in Mysterious Ways" got removed, along with dozens of others. From a technical standpoint, I get why they removed it, but it provided a nice hit of lore. Are there any removed quests you would consider bringing back for lore reasons rather than their gameplay?

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Echoing this. I feel like "The Warden Works in Mysterious Ways" could have easily been reformatted into a sidequest rather than removed altogether – the first part rewritten, and the whole quest potentially passed over to Swaenhylt, the priest of Azeyma in Camp Drybone.

Are there any plans to add latinamerican servers or more languages like Spanish?

Hello Kate and the entire Lore and Localization Team!

First of all, thank you for all your great and wonderful work throughout the years. Having seen just HOW MUCH you are translating every patch, I hope you get *some* rest in between ;) So thank you all :)

To my question:

Now that we've gotten a look at the whole planet and even got some glimpses of the other continents we haven't visited yet, there is still something that feels missing:

Nearly every time the continent to the west is mentioned, it's called "New World" and we only have a few mentions of the name "Mamook". Is that the official name for the whole continent, just a region or only used by some people?

What is the "real" name of the New World?

In Pandaemonium, we see Lahabrea and Athena merge souls. The act was very similar to how an Ascian prime was formed. I assume this practice wasn't common, since Themis seemed horrified by it, but was it something unheard of to the ancients?

Did Lahabrea have a special relationship with Igeyorhm before the sundering?

On a completely different but still the same note:

Now that the threat of the Garlean Empire has largely passed (and we've started to help rebuild Garlemald and help its citizenry), will we ever go back to the original three city states and deal with their government?

Will Ul'dah finally be freed of the Monetarists? (Unlikely, but we also thought Tempering couldn't be cured)

But more importantly: What about the Galadion Accord? Will we see Merlwyb retire as the Admiral and what will happen with the pirate factions in Limsa now that their "common enemy" has been defeated? Will Limsa turn itself into a true Merchant Republic?

Thanks again for your amazing work and don't forget to Pray Destroy the Walking Sands :)

The the 13th got flooded by darkness, did anyone besides Elidibus go to help save people?

Because of level cap progression and increases to ilevel, a lot of times story trials (especially the x.0 finale bosses) are just absolutely destroyed before they get to complete all their dialogue. Any chance in the future of ilevel-syncing these trials so that future players going through the story for the first time get the same experience as those who played them when they were newly released?

Knowing that New Game+ is a relatively new addition to the game and still receiving improvements, do you think we could eventually see NG+ chapters that would allow us to go back and replay the questlines that unlock the optional dungeons and exploratory content, such as Eureka and Bozja or the Pharos Sirius and Fractal Continuum questlines? Those quests have such interesting lore and it's a shame you have to make a new character to relive those stories!