3.5/4.0 Speculation & Discussion (Spoilers)

[Dualblade]

Maybe Zenos will be an agreeable guy, but for one reason or another will kill off someone we like.
Thordan was and awesome villain and he undoubtedly had good intentions (not to mention he permanently killed Lahabrea) but he tortured Aymeric and was indirectly responsible for the death of Haurchefaunt so KUPO him.

Holds up sign saying "Lahabrea's just hiding"!

Until the eye are destroyed I will hold this sign.

As for Regula, while I did hope to see more of him I think he'll be offed in 3.5 one way or another. Even if not, he said that Varis doesn't tolerate failure, so if he goes home empty-handed... yeah. He could survive and have a presence in Stormblood, but what would cause that to happen and what his role might be I haven't the foggiest.

This sorta thing, alongside him supposedly being a Kefka expy makes me believe he will survive whatever happens in 3.5. Possibly not for the best for him but still survive.

[Fenral]

how tiresome the Hydaelyn's Blessing, The Echo and 'Cid's airship' have become as a means of evading any and all meaningful danger and consequences.

Add "ally with no definite purpose after this arc making the ultimate sacrifice" to that list and the game might as well just end.

We also need less 'dead but not really, just kidding' moments

I'm sorta with you, sorta not, on wanting people to die for realsies. I only want people to die if it has some sort of serious impact on the plot, and not because they "chose" it. But at the same time there's nobody I really want or could accept that to happening to, besides Minfilia, and hers was just so mishandled (and had a 'back for the finale' flag set anyway).

Stuff like [redacted] getting killed in FFXV conveniently right after their powers became no longer needed by the plot is the sort of stuff I can't stand. Nobody dies that perfectly.

[Moomba33]

It's interesting how differently people can view the same story. Some of my friends are still annoyed over the fake outs of 2.55 and hoping the story gets darker with more actual deaths while other people I've talked to feel we lost so much in Heavensward that they don't want to see any more major exits anytime soon.
I don't feel strongly about having more protagonist deaths but I do hope we don't have a repeat of 2.55 with fake outs for the sake of drama that don't amount to anything.

I'm not expecting Zenos to be sympathetic or at least not intentionally. I suspect any Garlean allies we find will be working with us because they believe Zenos to be detrimental to Garlemald's interests and we may offer them some help if the Resistance goes too far.

I hope we don't get Lahabrea or Gaius returning and I'd prefer if Regula was dealt with before Stormblood. Recurring villains just make me feel like we're not making any progress.

[Cilia]

It's interesting how differently people can view the same story. Some of my friends are still annoyed over the fake outs of 2.55 and hoping the story gets darker with more actual deaths while other people I've talked to feel we lost so much in Heavensward that they don't want to see any more major exits anytime soon.
I don't feel strongly about having more protagonist deaths but I do hope we don't have a repeat of 2.55 with fake outs for the sake of drama that don't amount to anything.

I'm not expecting Zenos to be sympathetic or at least not intentionally. I suspect any Garlean allies we find will be working with us because they believe Zenos to be detrimental to Garlemald's interests and we may offer them some help if the Resistance goes too far.

I hope we don't get Lahabrea or Gaius returning and I'd prefer if Regula was dealt with before Stormblood. Recurring villains just make me feel like we're not making any progress.

The biggest contention I had with 3.0 was how neatly it wrapped up the Ul'dahn Revolution arc and made everything go back to "business as usual." I don't mind if protagonists die, but don't have fakeout deaths and don't have major things like that have no real consequence. Besides implicitly pushing Ilberd into becoming the Griffin, but that is unsubstantiated speculation as of yet.

I don't think the Garleans were ever intended to be sympathetic at all. The main reason any of them are is because, well... Gaius may have been a power-hungry conquistador, but he had standards for kupo's sake, unlike just about every other named Garlean that's not an expatriate, and had valid criticisms of the city-states' governments. As far as villains go, Gaius had honor and class (until you remember he ordered the Waking Sands raid anyway). Other than that... all we've seen of Garlemald is the stereotypical "evil empire," and while that's overdone and boring to some people I get the feeling that's all they were ever intended to be. Stop trying to force your moral desires onto Garlemald! Just let them be a stereotypical evil empire, for now anyway!

I don't mind recurring villains, but they have to pose a credible threat in the first place and continue to do so. While he posed a legitimate challenge in the first (solo) fight, in our last duel he was an utter pushover (I finished at +90% HP). If you're going to have recurring villains, make them a genuine threat. (And Gaius is almost certainly dead; Lahabrea is ambiguous until the Eye is destroyed but since Elidibus had every opportunity to free him but did not I think it's safe to say even the villains don't really care about his survival any more. Elidibus puts Lahabrea into the same category as Igeyorhm, who we know died, so...)

[Moomba33]

The biggest contention I had with 3.0 was how neatly it wrapped up the Ul'dahn Revolution arc and made everything go back to "business as usual." I don't mind if protagonists die, but don't have fakeout deaths and don't have major things like that have no real consequence. Besides implicitly pushing Ilberd into becoming the Griffin, but that is unsubstantiated speculation as of yet.

I don't think the Garleans were ever intended to be sympathetic at all. The main reason any of them are is because, well... Gaius may have been a power-hungry conquistador, but he had standards for kupo's sake, unlike just about every other named Garlean that's not an expatriate, and had valid criticisms of the city-states' governments. As far as villains go, Gaius had honor and class (until you remember he ordered the Waking Sands raid anyway). Other than that... all we've seen of Garlemald is the stereotypical "evil empire," and while that's overdone and boring to some people I get the feeling that's all they were ever intended to be. Stop trying to force your moral desires onto Garlemald! Just let them be a stereotypical evil empire, for now anyway!

I don't mind recurring villains, but they have to pose a credible threat in the first place and continue to do so. While he posed a legitimate challenge in the first (solo) fight, in our last duel he was an utter pushover (I finished at +90% HP). If you're going to have recurring villains, make them a genuine threat. (And Gaius is almost certainly dead; Lahabrea is ambiguous until the Eye is destroyed but since Elidibus had every opportunity to free him but did not I think it's safe to say even the villains don't really care about his survival any more. Elidibus puts Lahabrea into the same category as Igeyorhm, who we know died, so...)

Yeah the neat wrap up was really underwhelming. It reminds me of FFIV though at least the fake outs there served the practical purpose of shuffling people out of the party. I still find it frustrating as a player since it's basically our emotions being played with for no payoff.

I've never found the Garleans sympathetic personally but that's because I have a passionate hatred of imperialism as a concept. You could tell me they conquered a park bench and I'd be on board for kicking their butts in 4.0 to take it back. From what we've seen so far I get the impression they were meant to be closer to the evil empires of II and VI than the more humanized one of XII but there's room for SE to introduce more grey characters as we move forward.
I do appreciate when characters bring up criticisms of the city states. Y'shtola became my favourite scion when she called out Merlwyb during the Titan storyline. It would be nice to see the city states attempting to improve things like their relations with the beast tribes but realistically I can see those issues persisting through the rest of the game's lifespan to maintain the status quo.

Recurring villains can work for me if they're comedic like Gilgamesh. My problem with serious ones is I can't accept them as an actual threat when they either a) Keep losing and running away or b) win but keep leaving your character alive stupidly due to convenient villain arrogance. So we get a "serious" villain I can't take seriously and that the game won't let me get rid of making me feel like my character isn't accomplishing much at all.
I find it unlikely they'll be back.....but I won't lie. When we first saw the WoDs talking about retrieving the eyes my entire FC sighed and predicted that SE was going to go the route of bringing Lahabrea back. I'm hoping they're just going to try to use the eyes to store aether for their primal or something instead.

[Balipu]

Well if given a choice between Nidhogg and Lahabrea I would bring back Lahabrea.

Again an MMO problem: If we don't have recurring villains we will just kill them all. And as we go stronger, so do the villains we kill. MMOs need to go on for years. You can't go on for over a decade if you can kill Ascian overlods left and right. Soon there won't be another credible threat left.

A bonus question to debate: After being missing since 3.0 Yugiri is back. What do you think? How much of her absence was planned and how much of it was due to what happened to her voice actress? It's not really a lore question but it technically IS about how the story could have gone.

[Theodric]

Nidhogg, to be fair, was the main antagonist of 3.0 - I do think his return could have been handled better though. For starters him taking over Estinien was a pretty cool moment but...it ended up being yet another 'fake out' by the end of it all. I do like Estinien, mind you, but after Haurchefant's demise I felt like there was just too much 'fake danger' when it came to Estinien, Aymeric and a handful of other Ishgardian NPC's.

Nidhogg also damaged the Steps of Faith and slaughtered many nameless generic soldiers but all of allies, both major and minor, emerged unscathed. I know some people will dislike me saying this but I feel like the main cast is too bloated at the moment and that some characters need to be written out of the plot one way or another. With any luck the events at Baelsar's Wall will at least result in some minor characters biting it. If it's just generic soldiers that we've no reason to care for or it ends up with yet another 'fake out' in regards to character deaths then it's going to be pretty disappointing and predictable.

As for the whole 'Garlemald was also meant to be evil' angle? Eh, I doubt that very much. It's no secret that there's a handful of vocal posters on this board who don't particularly like Garlemald and fight tooth and claw to try and paint them as stereotypical villains at every turn with little to no justification for their actions. They did this with the Dravanians, too, at first - as well as with the Ascians. Those of who did some digging and pieced together the subtle hints that existed, however, figured out pretty early on that was there much more to Garlemald than what was immediately apparent.

Thankfully we can take comfort in our righteousness, for we were correct in our speculation and much of what was revealed in the lore book was similar to what had been speculated. So I, for one, look forward to seeing what the future brings for Garlemald and I have faith that the developers really do have a satisfying, morally grey approach to their ongoing storyline.

[Balipu]

My preferred way to handle his return would have been: "Don't". He is a boring one dimensional jerk. It's not easy to make dragons boring, but HW managed to pull it off rather nicely.
Okay, but who to write off? Although Minfilia is alive again she has been sent to the first shard so she won't be around. Y'shtola is the poster girl, Yoshie-P said he has plans for Estinien to grow and later officially join the Scions and Yugiri just got her new voice. I'd say they have plot armor for now. Yda will probably play an important role so I think she's unlikely to die and there is no chance Aymeric will bite it. Cid can't die either. We need a cid. Honestly I can't see anyone dying. Well Livia maybe. F'lahminn will likely won't do anything so there no point in writing her off and since we are moving out of Dravania we will likely see less of Matoya. If any at all.

[LineageRazor]

For starters him taking over Estinien was a pretty cool moment but...it ended up being yet another 'fake out' by the end of it all.

I didn't really feel like this compared to Nanamo's situation at all. For Nanamo, we were given every indication that she really was dead and gone, all they way up to the "whups! Nope, just kidding!" moment when we learned that it wasn't lethal poison. We, as the main character, never made it our mission to save her as, as far as we knew, there was nothing to save. All we could do was mourn and press on, much as with Haurchefant - except all that mourning was made a mockery when it all turned out to be a lie.

Estinien, on the other hand, from the moment he was possessed, there was always hope that he could be saved. It was never a sure thing, and we had to consider the possibility that he couldn't be, but finding a way to save him was one of our goals - and, as it happens, we succeeded. Really, it could have gone either way. Estinien, a character whose "usefulness" had ended, was in a perfect position to be conveniently written out of the story by tying his death to Nidhogg's (maybe even in a trite, "I've temporarily regained control of this body, finish us off, please!!!" cliché moment), but SE decided to make this seemingly hopeless case one that we were actually able to accomplish.

That's the biggest difference in my mind; in Ul'dah, our character was a helpless passenger on an emotional rollercoaster with an empty payoff, while in the case of Estinien our character was actually an agent in the whole process. I didn't feel like saving Estinien was a cheap cop-out at all, not like I did Nanamo's revival.

On the topic of Characters Who Could Die Off In 3.5-4.0, I actually think that Yda is a contender. It was brought up in the last patch that she has something she's hiding, she's got close ties to the Ala Mihgan conflict... I'm expecting her to attempt AT LEAST once to go out in a blaze of glory. Whether this actually results in her death or not remains to be seen. Heck, she even apparently has a sister who could conveniently be brought in to replace her if Yda bites it. In fact, I'm guessing that if Yda doesn't die, her sister will.

[Balipu]

I don't they'll go with the backup twin route with Yda. I mean Ada would start as the Scrappy cause we obviously get her in place of a beloved friend that got killed off just to make room for her. Besides if ew do a 1-1 switch, the cast won't be any less bloated. Something will definitely divide the Scions though. In HW having the relatively small Tataru, Girlpants, Estinien and Ysayle team worked quite well. Let's put Cid in charge of one of the raids, Urianger the extreme primals again and let us leave Y'shtola and Krile alone to have some more BFF times. The main team does not have to be bloated. Just make sure Alisae is on it. She really grew on me. (Sorry Yugiri, you are not the alpha Waifu anymore)