Patch 3.4 - Soul Surrender

[Nalien]

There are some surprisingly hardcore FATEs out there, though. *cough*Highbridge*cough*

Few and far between, and even then, ultimately meaningless... We have no Astral Candescence to defend and take back, instead we get a minion vendor... Do once and forget, pretty much... Then you've got stuff that just goes off the deep end, like Odin... Besieged was a rare enough little event, but at least I could actively monitor it... Been a very long time indeed since I've seen Odin, and even the new Heavensward ones I've rarely glimpsed... Don't even get me started on the rewards or repercussions... Nothing destroys my view of a world more than what we see with Odin... Beat him? Yay, the Black Shroud is saved! Failed to beat him? Err, the Black Shroud is still saved? Wat... None of these things have particularly relevant rewards, either... Odins drop could have acted as a nice entry requirement for his Trial, in a similar manner to how 1.x Trials worked, but we apparently can't have that level of complexity in the game... Lord forbid they build a world, rather than a glorified lobby...

Wait, what? This thread is about 3.4 lore? Not my personal misgivings with certain design choices? Oh shi-! *Scrambles to check what was being discussed earlier* Oh, the guy in the mask? It's Stanly Ipkiss, duh... Excuse me while I go edit the scene where Ilberd cast Enfire... Sssssmokin'!

No but seriously, if it's not Ilberd, or someone in cahoots with him, I'd be shocked... I could see 3.4 kicking off with us returning to the events of Ul'dah and tracking Yda/Ilberd down (he is still a wanted criminal, after all), trail leads us to the rebel base on Yavin IV in the Sunken Temple... Ifrit gets summoned, we rush to check it out, Derplander makes short work of him instead... Thancred and Alisaie show up, exposition dump that points us to Xelphatol, and the stage gets set for 3.5 and a final confrontation with Elidiboos (it's his new name, deal with it) best worst attempt at convincing me he has a point... I do wonder if Yda will return, given we'll seemingly be running into the group they've been staying with... Poor Tataru if so... She'll have to make a new outfit for Alisaie, Yda, and that other one...

EDIT

Excuse me while I morn a future full of FATEs as our only "serious" open world content...

Lily Hills confirmed to be for Apartments... RIP all my hopes and dreams... You'll be missed, Hamlet Defense... Instead it looks like we're getting glorified Retainer Ventures for our exciting new Grand Company content...

Sophia preview next please? Or a trailer? This is getting depressing...

[Cilia]

Lily Hills confirmed to be for Apartments... RIP all my hopes and dreams... You'll be missed, Hamlet Defense... Instead it looks like we're getting glorified Retainer Ventures for our exciting new Grand Company content...

Sophia preview next please? Or a trailer? This is getting depressing...

Hamlet Defense not coming back (not that I even know what that is)?

[Nalien]

Hamlet Defense not coming back (not that I even know what that is)?

Something that could have made the beast tribes, and their primals (heck, maybe even the Garleans) feel like a creditable threat... Not through cutscenes or dialog just telling us they are, but through good old fashioned organic gameplay...

You know... "Show, don't tell" pretty aptly sums up my issues with much of the game recently... How did we go from End of an Era, to this? 2.0 was pretty much perfect, nobody ever needed to tell you Bahamut was srs bsns, you saw that he was in the opening, you saw the destruction from his rampage everywhere... When people then said he was a thread, it wasn't hard to believe... Fast forward to now, and what has Alexander done? What have any of the primals done? There are a few exceptions, but I read;

Yet the Ixal have never forgotten that which was once denied them, and so they seek divine intervention once more─to summon Garuda and beseech her strike down their enemies. In the shadow of the First Mountain, the ritual nears completion, as a brave hero once more races against time to deliver the realm from destruction.

And I just can't take it seriously... What have the Ixali and Garuda actually done, what have we actually seen of them that really supports this kind of stuff? A bunch of Opo Opo are a bigger threat to Hyrstmill than the Ixali these days... Show me they're a threat, the same way Final Fantasy XI showed me that the Mamool Ja Savages were a threat... I don't think they ever said Gulool Ja Ja was dangerous in the story, they let the gameplay tell us that instead, and he was a serious threat, much more so than Garuda, or Alexander, or Odin... There were actual repercussions when he showed up, you didn't just die and respawn for a second attempt, you lost something in those battles... Sigh is that kind of subtlety and world building truly lost on modern gamers? Hamlet Defense could have been a truly amazing addition to this game, both for gameplay and for narrative... Instead they devolved it into FATEs and a bunch of pop culture references... Hamlet Defense was far from perfect, it was stuck in 1.0 after all, but the comparisons to Besieged were there, and one expected a shiny new engine to improve upon things, not the opposite... The lore of this game is really top notch, but some times I feel like I might as well just be reading a book or watching a movie, the gameplay often does very little to support it...

OK, I'm really done this time;