So about that Zenos' dream

Remember that dream back in Shadowbringers that Zenos had about the final days?

Was that ever explained? What happened with that?

I feel this was far too close to endwalker to simply be something they missed.

Best guess is that's maybe how the Echo manifested for Zenos. The Echo as we understand it doesn't quite make sense for Garleans, so it's plausible it manifested differently.

From a storytelling perspective it's basically the way that Zenos learned about the Ancients and the End of Days, because otherwise nobody would've told him. Beyond that I'm not sure it really matters, because neither Zenos nor Fantastic Daniel actually cared all too much about Amaurot.

Word of god claims it was simply a memory passed down to him by virtue of being a descendant of Emet-Selch.

The fact that it wasn't important enough to be addressed in-game makes me feel like it's an abandoned plot thread they decided against doing anything with at a later point in the writing process.

Twist, he dreamt of a certain armored figure and his four cohorts.
...For a serious answer it possibly was going to be a clue to the events that transpire pre-sundering. My money is on something that hints at our time travelling or Meteion.

My guess is that it would've been more important if the original plan of a Garlemald-focused expansion followed by a finale expansion had happened, but when both were condensed into Endwalker, it wasn't deemed important enough to make it.

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Originally Posted by TheMightyMollusk

My guess is that it would've been more important if the original plan of a Garlemald-focused expansion followed by a finale expansion had happened, but when both were condensed into Endwalker, it wasn't deemed important enough to make it.

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Not plausible, at least not from the pacing we know.

We know from Ishikawa herself that the general skeleton of an expansion has to be done right around when the last one is released, to give the CGI trailer people appropriate lead time (they're apparently usually further along than that, but for Endwalker we know it was pretty close to the wire). This means that Theoretical All-Garlemald Expansion and Theoretical All-End-Of-Days Expansion were compressed into Endwalker before Shadowbringers, and so the vision from 5.2 was after that point. At that point they did know the framework of Endwalker, albeit probably not a textbox-by-textbox breakdown. The finalizing of the script and recordings happen around the .4 patch, so after .4 even that level of rewrite becomes implausible.

So if you want to claim that this was a dropped plot point it's not completely implausible at that stage, but it can't be from some lost expansion; it has to fit into what we got, somewhere. Maybe Zenos was at one point planned to be involved in Elpis, or more engaged with the End of Days events, which would've either given explanation to the dreams or given more purpose to the fact he had them?

Or maybe--and this is also completely plausible--it was always meant to be a minor beat with little to no explanation, that was just included so that Zenos has plausible knowledge of the End of Days so he's not just going 'what the hell is this nonsense' for the entire back half of the expansion. Not everything is a major plot hook, sometimes things just happen.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

This means that Theoretical All-Garlemald Expansion and Theoretical All-End-Of-Days Expansion were compressed into Endwalker before Shadowbringers

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Based on the way Yoshi P talks about it, the two supposed expansions weren't compressed until after he saw the fan reception of ShB. Also they don't start the CGI order/general outlining of the expansion until after the current one is launched, for example they only decided that we would be going to the first until a few months after SB, and I remember Yoshi P talking about how he still had to submit the plan for the EW CGI trailer 2 or 3 months after ShB.

I also recall them saying at some point that Endwalker was originally supposed to be 7.0 and finish at level cap 100. But then covid happened and we lost an entire story driven expansion to that. Which is why EW is so clunky and rushed. A lot of story elements got retconned last min and others were entirely abandoned. The chip shortage also didn't help the situation and their focus/staff team was very split on where things needed attention most. Now with all the WoW players coming over, they have decided that revamping the early game takes priority.

They basically pulled a Stormblood where the expansion was split between Ala Mhiego and Doma. Except EW was worse with it because we went to way more places around the world globally in one expansion, and somehow travelled to the Edge of the Universe faster than Omega could fly to Earth. They REALLY need to stop trying to shove so many locations into one expansion. It makes the world feel smaller not bigger. Like in HW we basically stayed strictly in the northern parts of Eorzea. But then we get EW where an entire large continent is shoved into one zone. An entire moon is shoved into one zone. It's really unappealing.

They at least seem to have plans for the rest of Ilsabard with the map being totally covered up.

Thavnair on the other hand could've reasonably fit another zone or two in it, though and I think it would've been better to have an entire zone proper dedicated to dealing with the effects of the Final Days. It would've left a much stronger impression were we to perhaps visit one of the regions of the island that were devastated by the blasphemies, then actually getting to see things gradually be restored in post MSQ content.

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Originally Posted by Nav_Fae

I also recall them saying at some point that Endwalker was originally supposed to be 7.0 and finish at level cap 100. But then covid happened and we lost an entire story driven expansion to that. Which is why EW is so clunky and rushed. A lot of story elements got retconned last min and others were entirely abandoned. The chip shortage also didn't help the situation and their focus/staff team was very split on where things needed attention most. Now with all the WoW players coming over, they have decided that revamping the early game takes priority.

They basically pulled a Stormblood where the expansion was split between Ala Mhiego and Doma. Except EW was worse with it because we went to way more places around the world globally in one expansion, and somehow travelled to the Edge of the Universe faster than Omega could fly to Earth. They REALLY need to stop trying to shove so many locations into one expansion. It makes the world feel smaller not bigger. Like in HW we basically stayed strictly in the northern parts of Eorzea. But then we get EW where an entire large continent is shoved into one zone. An entire moon is shoved into one zone. It's really unappealing.

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Just curious. How does a chip shortage affect whether or not they’d do another expansion?

I feel like we're gonna need to dig out the citations for expansion timelines, because suddenly we have three different claims for when Endwalker took the form we know; at Shadowbringers' launch (so, July 2019), two or three months after ShB's launch (so, September or October 2019), or the pandemic (so, March 2020 at earliest). Those first two mean that the dream couldn't be foreshadowing for Theoretical All-Garlemald Expansion, because it was already off the table by then (5.2 releasing mid-Feb 2020, and patch story being easier to edit and change before release).

And I can safely hurl the third one out the window, because my source was the big Famitsu interview. Translations over here, but the relevant part:

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Interviewer: When did you decide to bring the story so far to a conclusion?

Ishikawa: After Shadowbringers released, around the end of 2019, Image Studio [note: the CGI studio within Square Enix that produces the high-quality cinematics in various SE game] had to be provided with storyboards. In autumn and winter of that year, we went on a residential together in order to decide the main points of the story for the next expansion. But the problem was… we’re used to the writing process, and so feeling that “here and here are the remaining parts of the story we have to talk about, so let’s accept the rest”, the residential went very smoothly. I was in charge of filling in the details of the story elements, but when I looked at the structure of the content again, I thought “this might be okay for just another expansion, but if this is labelled the ‘finale’ is it really okay?” So I reworked the story from the plot outline. The end result was ready 2 days before the deadline.

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So yes, the deadline was brought into being by the CGI studio needing the outline that early. The story retreat over 'autumn and winter of that year' (so at some point in September to December) was when it took form. So it seems like the general guess of 'September-ish' for when the structure was nailed down is accurate.

Which means by the time of 5.2's writing and scripting in early 2020, Theoretical All-Garlemald Expansion was off the board, meaning that it couldn't have been an intended plot thread for that. Again, there was still probably room for a lot of rewrites that meant things got cut, but it was cut from the structure of Endwalker as we know it, not from an entirely theoretical expansion that you can build up to be anything you want because of its absence.


Incidentally, another question in that interview confirmed that when Theoretical All-Garlemald Expansion was in the cards, the idea was that Anima would be the final boss, which gives us the general idea of where exactly its part of the story would've ended. ...but that also confirms that Anima would've existed, meaning that it still would've had the Telophoroi and the towers.

I am inclined to agree with Cleretic because even without having knowledge about the FF14 xpac design process, mmorpg players know full well that the next xpac is mostly finished by the time the current xpac is finishing.

I would think that it was a dropped plot point if it was early in the xpac but considering it was placed literally at the end of shadowbringers means it was done when endwalker was mostly finished so it cant be just a dropped plot point unless they had big last minute content cuts.

So i would like to HOPE that maybe that is something we might learn about in the future? Maybe Zenos coming back hopefully xd