Anyone Else Feel, That the World is Too Pretty?

[Enkidoh]

For a planet ravaged by a global calamity? It's only been what, five years since Bahamut laid waste to the world?

Anyone else think it should be more like The World of Ruin from FFVI? Or, at least have zones that conjure that imagery.

The world is amazing, but I get the feeling I'm in a post apocalyptic world, minus the apocalypse. We're not really shown the devastation. We're not shown how it affected people, just told through occasional dialogue, but you wouldn't really know it from the day to day life of these people.

I dunno, I can get past this minor gripe, but it seems like a dropped ball. Hopefully we'll get new zones/content that display the effects of the calamity more closely, so we can get a feel for the impact it had.

Actually the devastation caused by Dalamud's fall and the rampage of Bahamut was not as widespread as you would think, it was far more localized, as it didn't actually affect the whole planet of Hydaelyn physically, but just Eorzea (specifically the Aldenard continent and the island of Vlybrand) - this is shown right at the start for a new character where the player is basically regarded as unaware the Calamity had even happened by other npcs because they're evidently just arrived from another country outside Eorzea.

And the effect it had on the general population is still being felt five years later - you just have to look at the refugee camps surrounding Ul'dah to see just how many people were left homeless and destitute (and a cutscene during the main storyline actually references how hard life is in the aftermath of the Calamity).

There's also plenty of areas shown where the land is obviously damaged and warped by the Calamity, especially areas where the aether released during it has erupted out of the land, breaking the very land apart and then cooling into surreal shapes (the Burning Wall area near Highbridge in Eastern Thanalan and pretty much most of Mor Dhona is a case in point).

Not to mention the Black Shroud is totally different to how it was pre-Calamity - the Shroud was so named because the forest canopy was so think it bathed the forest floor in perpetual shadow - that's no longer the case, especially in the North Shroud where most of the trees are still burnt and their foilage brown from the firestorm that raged through it.

There is plenty of examples of the result of the devastation found and mentioned during the game, you just have to actually read what's being said during quests and actually look at the landscape to see it.