Which Final Fantasy World Will We Visit Next

[Iscah]

The similarities between Nael and Sephiroth go much further then that. One of the biggest discussions about Sephiroth's motives in FFVII is if Sephiroth wanted to destroy the Planet because he really wanted to or if he wanted to because he had been influenced by Jenova who originally wanted to destroy the planet herself. Nael has the same thing going on. Bahamut might have tempered Nael so she would cause Dalamud to fall, but in Binding Coils he reverses Nael's tempering and it turns out Nael wanted Dalamud to fall without Bahamut's influence in the first place. Like... the only main difference between Sephiroth summoning Meteor and Nael summoning Dalamud is the specifics of how they do so. And that's not even counting how Meteor had Aerith to lessen it's impact while Dalamud had Louisoix/Phoenix in the same roll...

So yeah... why exactly are we complaining about references to previous FF games five years after FFXIV launched? The game has literally been unsubtlly doing this since year one. At this point, all that can really be hoped for is for the impact and details of the references to be a tad different.

That's a very different sort of "reference" to what's been done with things like Ivalice. The lore is entirely local to FFXIV, even if it has close parallels to events in a different story. Being familiar with FF7 makes no difference to how you understand the situation, it just lets you see the similarities.

I have a hard time seeing the difference between the way the Crystal Tower raid was set up and the way the Return to Ivalice raid was set up. And if you take any look at FFIII, you'll find that the Crystal Tower raid follows the story-line of its last dungeon really closely like the Return to Ivalice raid follows it's story-line. I've never played either FFXII or FF Tactics and I have really good idea what is going on the Return to Ivalice raid because I like to go back and look at cut-scenes and re-read the quest dialogue. FFXIV does do a good job explaining what's going on in the Return to Ivalice raid so you don't have to be familiar with the source material for it to make sense.

I also like to go back and re-read quest dialogue, but the Ivalice plot just feels incredibly hard to get into. I might be able to re-re-read the massive text dump until I can remember whatever it is that Ramza did and Delita did and what makes them so important but I have nothing to connect it to. I haven't seen any of this play out, I haven't been to any of these places, it's all nebulous facts and I've forgotten half of it by the time I've finished reading it. It feels like a chore to spend time memorising it all when I haven't been given a reason to care about it. The game just seems to assume you do.

Without that assumed core knowledge of characters, places or events, even with all the "catch-up information" given in the dialogue, Ivalice's lore is just a pile-up of things I don't know and haven't got a basic familiarity to build on. We meet another character, get another lore dump about how X happened in Y location, maybe involving another few characters that I also don't know. We don't see any of it happen, we just get told that it happened, and then the modern-day characters keep referencing all those past events so you have to be paying attention (and I feel lost).


Compare to the Crystal Tower, which (for all I needed to know playing this without awareness of FFIII) involved only three characters: Unei, Doga and Xande. We see and interact with all of them. The entirety of the lore you need to know is "Xande is the revived emperor of Allag, and he made a pact with a voidsent. He's up the top of the tower." There are passing mentions of other events and characters, but I never felt like I had to know them in detail, I just figured the dots would connect up if and when we got more information about them. So far, we haven't.

Ivalice feels like it threw all the dots on the table and hasn't told me which ones are actually important. I could try to memorise them all, but get no enjoyment out of it, and then they may turn out to be totally irrelevant.

[Frizze]

I might be able to re-re-read the massive text dump until I can remember whatever it is that Ramza did and Delita did and what makes them so important but I have nothing to connect it to.

Overly-simplified version - first leg. The story of the Zodiac Braves is a fable told to garlean children. It is especially popular because it tells how a commoner(Delita) became king by vanquishing a great evil and marrying a princess. The guy who runs the theatre company has an old family journal apparently passed down for many generations that tells the story differently and implies that it really happened. In this version, the great evil was actually defeated by his ancestor Ramza who was a friend of Delita's but isnt mentioned in the normal story. The kingdom this was supposed to have taken place in doesnt exist on any map, so the theatre company manager has spent years doing research to see if he can find any truth to the story. His research sent him to Dalmasca, and found him a very special stone that might be related to the story... then he went missing and his family came to us for help finding him.

Overly-simplified version - second leg. The guy who stole the stone at the end of the first raid has gone mad and his friends came to us for help. We track him to the old abandoned lighthouse located by a seemingly bottomless hole in the world. We have learned that these special stones can change people into monsters based on their desires or otherwise imprint on their personality in some way. While investigating the lighthouse, we find that it is linked to a city from the "fable" that no one thought was real. By the time we catch up to the guy who stole the stone he is too far gone and we have to put him down, getting our stone back. The end of the story so far seems to show present day Ramza being temporarily possessed by ancient history Ramza via one of these stones.

As for how to connect all the dots and which ones are most important, we dont have all the info yet. Come back to me when we've seen where the third raid takes us.

[Seraphor]

Regarding the void ark raids, I couldn't help feeling some IX allusions were present.
Not merely limited to Ozma, but the asthetics around Machi struck parallels with ancient Terrans of IX, and with Black Mages being set up as all but a race it itself.
There's some visual connections there between the headstones of Oeilvert, and the architecture of the Desert Palace, with the Ark itself being loosely related to Ark from IX, using the void in the capacity of a 'world within a world', and the predominance of Airships in general.

It's much more vague than the Crystal Tower or Ivalice, but it also seems like far too much to be mere coincidence.

[Cilia]

The "Shadow of Mhach" series was intended to be a mostly original raid series - other than some bosses, it's very steeped in Celtic myth and for the most part is its own thing.

Even some of the legacy references (Cait Sith, Cu Chulainn) are Celtic, along with the majority of the new characters (Cessair, Forgall, Ferdiad, Scathatch, Dun Scaith).

The focus on airships / sky travel is more a reference to XII, where the main protagonist(ish) wanted to be a Sky Pirate like the Leofard & co. (Yep, more Ivalice.)

The Void Ark was... well, an original bit. The game's main reference to the Ark summon from IX is the Cruise Chaser, the penultimate boss of the Alexander raids - the Ark was based on an old Squaresoft game called Cruise Chaser Blassty, which is why the Cruise Chaser identifies itself as having the designation "Blassty," and why it looks, transforms, and fights similarly to IX's Ark (albeit more put together). It even has the Ark's signature "Eternal Darkness" as its super, using a similar (if not identical) rune and powered up by the Ark's key gemstone from IX (Lapis Lazuli).

[Theodric]

The Weeping City themes echo parts of the FFIX battle theme:

FFIX:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZ9O1Gh58vI

FFXIV:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfAXRqkgrtk

[Seraphor]

Looking it up again it (as I’d forgotten most of it) I’m more convinced that there was some IX inspiration there.
Void Ark is visually very similar to Pandemonium, and the background of using voidsent as power is reminiscent of Terra’s soul-powered technology.
Weeping City takes some obvious cues from Burmecia and Oeilvert, plus the inclusion of Ozma and the IX battle theme.
Dun Scaithe shares similarities with the Desert Palace and Memoria, and the background behind Dun Scaithe draws parallels with Terran’s plan to abandon their home to the oncoming disaster, and move to a different land, Gaia.

Overall, the Black Mages of Mhach seem to be very similar to the Terrans, and their war against the White Mages of Gelmorra strikes me as some sort of reimagining of Terra vs. Gaia in IX. Both practice soul-magic, one is wasteful/self-destructive while the other is more wholestome/natural.

In addition, while the term ‘Sky Pirate’ might come from XII, their portrayal is far more similar to Tantalus. There was no real ‘piracy’ in XII, but Leofard and co. are a rag tag band of thieves living in the sky, and the entire plot kicks off when their scheme to steal the ‘Queens Coffin’ goes wrong.

Maybe they wanted to try out something ‘original’ while drawing inspiration from IX, maybe they didn’t want to overtly fanservice IX, given that IX was essentially fanservice itself, would have been a little too on the nose, not to mention it would be hard to reconcile IX’s lore with XIV’s without drastically changing it beyond recognition anyway.

[Jonnycbad]

I was hoping for a temple of chaos raid but O9 obviated that.

[Jonnycbad]

The similarities between Nael and Sephiroth go much further then that. One of the biggest discussions about Sephiroth's motives in FFVII is if Sephiroth wanted to destroy the Planet because he really wanted to or if he wanted to because he had been influenced by Jenova who originally wanted to destroy the planet herself. Nael has the same thing going on.

The FF7 reference goes deeper than that. You know how the Ascians cause calamities to force Hydaleyn to absorb one of the shards to repair the damaged aether? It's similar to how after the first Meteor had hit the planet in FF7, the planet drew energy to heal the scar. Remember what Jenova was called by the Cetra? Calamity from the skies. The Ascians cause calamities to force Hydaelyn to heal, and by doing so force her to absorb one of the shards. Once all the shards have been re-absorbed (rejoining), Zodiark is free. This is also a homage to the REUNION. Whereby Jenova's cells are scattered and Sephiroth wants to revive her by bringing all the cells back together, then cast Meteor to hurt the planet and absorb the resulting planet's energy to be reborn as a god.

[Dreggit]

With the alleged release of the VII remake somewhere on the horizon (something I'm not exactly fond of them doing, but hey, who am I to deny long time fans what they want?) would it make sense for the next world to have allusions to VII?

In terms of marketing I'd say it makes sense, and maybe it's an alternative reason of them releasing the Cloud bike mount. (Which in itself is kind of out of place in the world i think but then again we have flying sand drakes... for whatever reason)

Assuming that SE wouldn't have any legal issue doing so, I would like to see small potential nods towards mote spinoff titles and other IPs like Crono Trigger

[Cilia]

There's a Wind-up Tifa in there too...

Without context I'd wager it's just Fanfest goodies, but with KHIII finally getting close to a release, who knows... maybe we will get some info on the VII remake.

There's more than enough allusions to VII as is. Materia, anyone?