Sea of clouds must have been heavily inspired by Skies Of Arcadia

There's a game on the Sega Dreamcast I started playing for the first time called Skies Of Arcadia (it's a damn good game so far) and it features sky pirates, airships and floating islands. A part in it made me smile which was when

a giant shadow appears under your airship and turns out to be a large flying whale.

I knew immediately what the shadow was and how that game clearly inspired the sea of clouds area. That and there's even quests featuring sky pirates in the sea of clouds that you can undertake.

I've not found any other posts on this so wanted to see if there's anyone else that's played Skies Of Arcadia and noticed this? I actually wonder whether SoA or FFXIV inspired the

giant whale

in that anime Re:Zero which also emerges from clouds/mist.

It's true that all these things (games, shows) are often inspired by the same things. Standard thing is to mix in some old english with kings, queens, knights, vikings, romans, egyptions, roman gods, norse gods, greek gods, mix it about and get similar results as eachother.

I think they admitted they completely ripped off the Stormblood Samurai scene from somewhere else, so others ripped it off FFXIV.