Which Final Fantasy World Will We Visit Next

[Kresus]

So as of the Stormblood expansion, patch 4.41 we have visited the following Final Fantasy Worlds.

Final Fantasy III - Crystal Tower Raid/Allagan Empire
Final Fantasy VI - Warring Triad, Doma, & Omega Sigmascape(allusion)
Final Fantasy XII - Return to Ivalice Raid/Dalmasca
Allusions: FF1, FF7, FF9, FF11

So which Final Fantasy world would it be interested to see added into the mix? Personally I want more 9, XD.

If there is a god, then none. The devs will wake up, realize that 14 is an original numbered title, and promptly create original, exclusive-to-14 content to go with it. Deltascape and Sigmascape, while they had a nostalgic charm, from a logical viewpoint, were an outright insult.

[Ramesses]

If there is a god, then none. The devs will wake up, realize that 14 is an original numbered title, and promptly create original, exclusive-to-14 content to go with it. Deltascape and Sigmascape, while they had a nostalgic charm, from a logical viewpoint, were an outright insult.

Hmmmm...? An outright insult? Why so?

[Cilia]

Unfortunately Final Fantasy relies more on franchise nostalgia than original ideas at this point, so expect the nostalgic pieces to keep coming.

Don't get me wrong - I don't like the heavy reliance on nostalgia either - but I understand why it's there, and don't expect it to end any time soon.

[Iscah]

I would also much prefer FFXIV keep to creating its own original world, rather than drawing in set pieces from previous games.

It's different if the game clearly set out from the start to be a massive crossover of prior games. Kingdom Hearts does this well. You understand from the start that you're getting into a great big mashup of pre-existing stories.

FFXIV did not do this. It's presented mostly as its own unique mythology (with its own take on the 'standard' FF elements) but then crossovers start to creep in later.

I actually find the Omega series okay, with its explicit "this is not a real thing from our world" take on presenting the crossovers, but I wouldn't want them to keep doing it all the time.

Crystal Tower is also well-integrated into FFXIV's lore, and you can understand what's going on without even knowing it's a crossover. The bosses are kind of random but it's just a big strange tower that the Allagans left full of monsters and soldiers to guard their secrets.

Return to Ivalice is where it goes sour for me. It leans too heavily on familiarity with the original games - and if you haven't played them, all you get is a massive text dump of the original plot, and no reason to be emotionally engaged with it.

I feel like putting whole plots referenced from other games into this one, cheapens its own original lore and makes the story less appealing.

[Nalien]

I've no problem with XIV paying homage to past titles in reference, I mean that's kind of been something Final Fantasy has done a fair amount in one way or another (Cid/Moogles/Chocobos being the most obvious example). There certainly is a tipping point though, where it becomes too much and just feels out of place.

Something like Eureka pays homage to V very well, meanwhile Return to Ivalice does not for XII, IMO. Perhaps that's just personal bias talking (V is one of my favourites), or perhaps it's just that the Isle of Val had far more build up that the Ivalice areas... Can't point to either areas on a map currently (although one can point to where Val was), but Eureka has a solid grounding in XIV before you take the references to V into account. With Ivalice it feels like the opposite to me... They slapped on relevance to XIV after the fact... We knew the region existed in XIV for a while of course, but IDK... One could accuse Crystal Tower of being the same, but there is far more lore grounding it in XIV, perhaps that's just a case of it being around longer and having more plot relevance (it's tied to the Allag, so it has huge relevance), while something like Ridorana Lighthouse just feels out of place... The whole connection to Garleans tacked on... I hope they actually explore that more in the next expansion, but I wont hold my breath. Right now it really just feels like the raid series is taking us to XII, rather than anything grounded in XIV. I think the biggest issue is that it was too much too fast, we just suddenly go to these places and get these huge lore dumps. We just crashed into the XII references, where as references to other titles take a much slower approach. Probably a difference from a design standpoint as well, I very much think they started with "Lets make a XII/Tactics reference", rather than what they usually seem to do, which is build XIV up then sprinkle in references. Crystal Tower was probably the biggest offender prior to Stormblood, but even that just fit in place IMO, in 1.x we already had Xandes as a reference tying Allag with III, we already had Voidsent. We already had Auracite in XIV of course, but this was very much our introduction to seeing it used in this manner... Slap on something like Belias already being a Prrimal (at least named as such in passing) and it creates confusion that makes the recent additions seem somewhat lazy. I think that's also why Omega feels somewhat better than Return to Ivalice, it was clearly explained that Halicarnassus was taken from a story, so Halicarnassus also being a Voidsent (either that inspired the story, or is simply named based on the story as well) works. Meanwhile Belias is just there, nobody mentions him whatsoever.

[Cilia]

My ultimate issue isn't with homages or references - little bits here and there, like Cid being an (airship) engineer or the presence of common creatures such as moogles and chocobos doesn't bother me. Bosses and the like can get annoying (did they really have to make the endboss of the Burn the Mist Dragon?), but if it's just little tidbits not deeply ingrained into another world's mythos I don't mind too much.

When it's a cut and paste job of entire locales... that's when I start to get irritated. The Crystal Tower was a bit irksome, but they tied it into XIV's world well enough. The next big one was the Warring Triad, but their seemingly disparate origins made it tolerable. Then we get to Stormblood and the raid series is Omega... literally simulating major bosses and villains from previous Final Fantasy games (Deltascape's enemies supposedly come from Garlean legend; Sigmascape doesn't even bother with that thin excuse) with only two exceptions (Midgardsormr and Omega-M/-F). The Alliance Raid series is almost literally a cut and paste job of Ivalician locales and characters.

It's when it feels like Hydaelyn is being adapted to fit in the reference rather than vice versa that it gets... bothersome. "Return to Ivalice" is just the most egregious about it, in my opinion.

[ObsidianFire]

I'm a bit surprised people are getting annoyed by this now to be honest. Yoshida has be pretty up-front with FFXIV being the theme-park of all the other FF games from the start of his involvement with the game. Like, how else is that going to happen without references to previous games? And while I do think Omega is the weakest of the raids in terms of story, I am glad we've checked off a bunch of FF references that would be really hard to pull off in the "normal" world of FFXIV.

Part of the fun of playing FFXIV for me is anticipating what all the references are going to be and how they're going to be adapted for the FFXIV world. "Return to Ivalice" is some of the most fun I've had with this in a while. While all the references are similar, there's also a ton of differences. The biggest of which is that the Tactics events happened before the FFXII events this time around. That gives the entire history of why the events are different a very different feeling then the original games did. Then there's all the little differences that add up to make a different scenario this time around. As someone who obsesses over details, it rewards me for paying attention to all of them.

For better or worse, FFXIV's original content doesn't have that. While it is worthwhile to pay attention to the details, we don't know which details are important until the next patch or expansion comes out and starts building off those details. It's a lot more fun nowadays to go back and watch the 2.0 cut-scenes now that we know alot more about the Ascians, the Garleans, etc. then it was when they were first introduced. During content droughts, the references to previous FF games are a bit like this. We know that certain characters, events, etc. were important in those games and so similar things will probably be important in this game. And can have fun theorizing about both the similarities and the differences and how that effects FFXIV.

[Ramesses]

I'm a bit surprised people are getting annoyed by this now to be honest. Yoshida has be pretty up-front with FFXIV being the theme-park of all the other FF games from the start of his involvement with the game. Like, how else is that going to happen without references to previous games? And while I do think Omega is the weakest of the raids in terms of story, I am glad we've checked off a bunch of FF references that would be really hard to pull off in the "normal" world of FFXIV.

Exactly this, agreed!

As said in my last post on this thread Yoshi did say he envisioned FFXIV having several elements from other Final Fantasy games. This is definitely is a nod to the players who have been fans for more than 20 years and a refreshing way of bringing unique themes to the universe of Hydaelyn-- (while making all we lore mongers scratch our heads trying to speculate the tie-ins).

Obsidian, I must however kindly disagree with you about Omega's raid being the weakest in terms of story... I actually got the feels for two reasons: One, Omega was so desperately searching for an identity and an understanding of what made us tick that it actually morphed into us (Omega-M is a blatant take on Amano's original design for the WoL)

Secondly, this was the story arc that brought Cid and Nero together in a manner that gave both of them some much needed character growth.

[Theodric]

FFXIV doesn't just rely on nostalgia, it also taps pretty heavily into various real world cultures and mythology for inspiration; usually putting unique twists on them in the process. It's a large part of the game's appeal for many players and is unlikely to change.

I've said this before, though it's worth repeating. The three main 'Ivalice' games - Final Fantasy Tactics, Final Fantasy XII and Vagrant Story - have consistently been my favourite RPG's over the years that I've been a gamer. The entire reason I decided to try out FFXIV in the first place is due to how many 'Ivalice' vibes the game's aesthetics, characters and nuances gave me. My gut instinct was that if I stuck with it, I'd enjoy it immensely. As is often the case, my gut instinct proved to be true.

Would more 'original' content be welcome? Certainly - though so far the current approach has led to the game seeing quite a bit of success.

As for the future, Garlemald is arguably the best place for FF6, FF7, FF8, FF12 and FF13 references. So, too, is it an excellent place to reference some of the side games such as Final Fantasy Tactics, Final Fantasy Type Zero and Vagrant Story.

I'd also be very pleased to see some direct references to FF9. That's my second favourite main title after FF12.

To me, it doesn't even matter if they go full out with the references and we end up encountering a 'Shinra' when we go to Garlemald. The twists in the story are always unique enough that things end up not being a full on cut and paste job.

[Nalien]

(did they really have to make the endboss of the Burn the Mist Dragon?)

My biggest issue with this is that the Burn felt a whole lot more like VIIIs Salt Lake... Esthar foolery transformed that area, Allag foolery transformed the Burn... In VIII we travelled through it on the way to Esthar (the techno city), while we're not travelling through it on our way to Garlemald (the techno city), Alphinaud and Gaius did... Abadon felt like a more logical final boss for the Burn than Mist Dragon IMO, if we're going to have a reference... It just doesn't fit as a reference IMO, well not as anything more than a superficial one, only reason I can perhaps see the Mist Dragon being there is for a hint that Alphinaud is going to be doing a Rydia, given he is effectively the Scions Summoner, perhaps Mist Dragon being there is a "Hey, get ready for some IV style developments". Rydia returning to the party was quite a nice moment in IV, having Alphinaud recreate that would be fairly epic (Zenos' body controlled by Elidibus filling the role of Golbez?), and as always I'd like Cid to go down with his Airship just because Nero is the far better character... I'd rather have Nero sass me when we need tech support, than deus ex Cid...

Those kind of references are very much what I just expect from XIV. I mean 2.0 basically happened because of Sephiroth using the Black Materia to summon Meteor... Or was it Nael van Darnus using the Lunar Transmitter to summon Dalamud/Bahamut? I forget...