Just A Heads-Up: Gamer Escape Interview with Koji Fox (Fan Festival 2018)

[Cilia]

I very much appreciate this, since as a hermit it would have otherwise gone unnoticed by me. All of it is interesting, but personal highlights:

GE: When did Zenos gain resonance? Even when he att—

Koji: I can’t say anything about Zenos…

GE: N—

Koji: I can’t say anything about Zenos!

Damn it!

GE: Speaking of stuff we talked about before that may have fallen through the cracks… Do you have any updates on the so-called mysterious primal? There was the idea that right after Gaius took Ala Mhigo, he was going to keep going, but a primal halted his advance. It could have happened in ’57; could have happened in ’62.

Koji: That was related to the whole, “What lies deep beneath Silvertear!?” Yes, something stopped his advance. And then there was the trailer beam, tons of primals shooting out. And then there was the seal. What is it sealing? What was going on in there? A lot of this is where the 1.0 story was supposed to go, and there’s a lore reason for that.

When the Calamity happened, it caused a lot of changes to Hydaelyn. Whether that was enough to seal off something that was already sealed, but the seal was getting weak, or… That I don’t know. There could be something like that. The hint was that Gaius was stopped for a reason, and that it was a powerful force. There’s a presence. It wasn’t just Midgardsormr there, it was more of a force, and I can’t say anything more, for now.

Can we take this to mean it wasn't a primal? Knowing whether or not it was one, specifically, would be a crucial bit of information.

When it comes down to it, there are tens of thousands of people in this world and most don’t know about Mothercrystals, just like most people don’t know that the planet is called Hydaelyn.

Can we take this to mean that my hypothesis - that every planet has a crystal, like IX, that serves as a sort of terminal for souls on a given planet (or perhaps celestial body)? It would be crucial to understanding the cosmology...

GE: In the game, they’ve gone over a few times how a calamity works. There are a bunch of disturbances, it blows out a barrier. Is that how it works or is it one interpretation of how it works? Some fans are even putting forward the theory that Hydaelyn is eating the shard worlds and leaving it out of Her side of the story!

Koji: (shocked laugh) Oh, man! The official answer, at least for now, which is believed by most of the people in Eorzea experiencing and studying what’s happened, is that it’s about the disturbances. Too much aether is drawn out from the planet, something breaks while that’s happening, and while it’s broken, it allows shit to happen, and things go crazy. Then you get this period afterwards where the planet is healing itself to prevent that from happening again.

So to the best of our knowledge Hydaelyn is not eating shards to survive, and Calamities are mostly about drawing as much aether out of Her as possible to break the dimensional barriers. Umbral Eras, then, are when aether is not plentiful because She needs it to heal Herself. This is useful information!

I hate how games just give you 100% correct information all the time. That never happens in the real world. There’s always a little bit of misinformation in there. You hear it and believe it; then all these people are saying it’s this though, maybe this is wrong, and this is this.

Misinformation is deliberate... there's a difference between being intentionally misleading and details being lost to historical drift / word of mouth...

Of course, the given example (the Void) is completely understandable in-universe. But if we can't get clear, concrete information out-of-universe, how are we supposed to understand how things work? (Oh, wait, the writing team just does what it wants and it's up to the world-builders to make the world fit the story, not vice versa.)

[W]e have auspices all over the place!

And now we have a good reason to exterminate all the squirrels in the Shroud; left alive they could become very dangerous auspices! Squirrel auspices, who look like Squirrel Girl in their aramitama forms! I kid, I kid.

#SprigganAuspice2019

[SannaR]

Oh geeze thanks for the mental image now I'm afraid of sheep auspice who went crazy from seeing all the slaughter of their kind just because we needed that new pair of wool boots or whatnot. ; ;

[ObsidianFire]

It depends on the writer. Some like having all the world-building rules figured out before hand. Others feel like their creativity is stiffled by world-building rules. It is worth noticing that Yoshida didn't say that the writers couldn't look at the developed lore and then write with it in mind. He just said that they didn't have to have to deal with the burden of having to make their stories fit the established lore.

I have seen how some writers deal with both world-building and writting. The two are rarely seperate. While there is some basic overall world-building that happens before the writing happens, a lot of it happens on the fly while the story is being written. Even more world-building happens in the editing process after the story is written and the writer is going back and making sure everything fits together. What Yoshida is describing sounds very similar to this, only it's happening within a team of people.

[Theodric]

I will be a very, very happy man if we get the ability to conjure a ceruleum tiger just like Regula did if a Gunblade based job is ever added. I could see it being similar to the Ninja ability that conjures a frog - brief but very satisfying to behold.

Cats are awesome, after all!

[Jonnycbad]

Koji curses a lot for such a good writer

[Anonymoose]

Koji curses a lot for such a good writer

This is interestingly not uncommon of writers, lol.

Even if you know all of the words and spend your days professionally presenting yourself with them, sometimes you want to just slip on your linguistic PJs and use the comfy ones.

[LineageRazor]

The stuff at the beginning seems to indicate that Koji agrees with my personal belief that the Thirteen Reflections is a localized phenomenon (but that he'll have to ask Oda to be sure). So, there aren't thirteen Dragonstars and thirteen Omega homeworlds to go along with our thirteen Reflections. Presumably, this also means that the only world visited by Midgardsormr and Omega is the Source. (Again, unless Oda says otherwise.) I'd also go so far as to postulate that Hydaelyn's and Zodiark's influence as "gods of creation" is ALSO local. They may have created the planet we live on, but they did not create the universe, or the heavens, or the other stars.

I felt a bit bad for the lore team when I read that the writers have totally free rein to write whatever they want, and then the lore team has to hammer these round story pegs into the square lore holes. That's gotta be aggravating at times!

So to the best of our knowledge Hydaelyn is not eating shards to survive, and Calamities are mostly about drawing as much aether out of Her as possible to break the dimensional barriers. Umbral Eras, then, are when aether is not plentiful because She needs it to heal Herself. This is useful information!

Unfortunately, the answer given does NOT allow us to discard the possibility that the big H is chowing down. People in Eorzea don't seem to think she is, and those that know about her seem to hold her in high regard, but it also notes that they don't know WHAT is happening, exactly - just that "something" breaks, then "things" go crazy, then healing "happens". That's a whole lotta vagueness, and that last bit is disturbingly unclear as to just HOW healing happens. It leaves plenty of room for a planet-munching scenario! Especially so, given that later in the same article it's noted that what the people believe may not be what's actually going on; they think Hydaelyn is great now, but maybe they don't know the whole story...

[Anonymoose]

So, there aren't thirteen Dragonstars and thirteen Omega homeworlds to go along with our thirteen Reflections. <...> (Again, unless Oda says otherwise.) I'd also go so far as to postulate that Hydaelyn's and Zodiark's influence as "gods of creation" is ALSO local.

Holy mixed feelings, Batman. I'm in the same boat regarding the former point, I think. It's going to get messy if there are fourteen (total) copies of everything. I like the idea of zooming out to find our "broken mirror" is actually just a small, cracked section of a larger, intact mirror. Though the idea of Hydaelyn and Zodiark being small potatoes compared to the rest of the universe would have to be done with grace in mind. It would fit some past Final Fantasies for there to be many world crystals out there in the universe, but I'd hate to cheapen what we've already done or keep the Warrior of Light ascending towards relative godhood. Especially with the idea of the natural order and balance between Light and Dark as a whole being supposedly at stake, what is the rest of the cosmos? If Hydaelyn created life as we know it, what is that life out there? What a balancing act. A fulfilling one if you can pull it off, but still...

I felt a bit bad for the lore team when I read that the writers have totally free rein to write whatever they want, and then the lore team has to hammer these round story pegs into the square lore holes. That's gotta be aggravating at times!

It's my knee-jerk reaction to dislike this, too, but I know it's just because we're so invested in this idea of lore as law. However, let's be honest, it's probably the right call, lol. A game needs a MSQ and it can't be hamstrung by world setting minutiae if it's going to live and grow and impress for successive years. So long as there's communication and compromise, we - the players - shouldn't have to deal with the fallout too often, and if we keep a catalogue of unnoticed problems, the world lore team is usually eager to solve the puzzles. Trust the system; squash the bugs.

they think Hydaelyn is great now, but maybe they don't know the whole story...

I'm sticking with the Flawed Mother Hypothesis for now. What has Zodiark done for me lately, aside from send his lawyer to lie to me?

[WhiteArchmage]

Koji curses a lot for such a good writer

One of the first things we learn in Creative Writing is that you can not be afraid of words, even "bad" words (how "curse words" are called by the more sanctimonious in Spanish). Sometimes curse words can be useful for a character's mental state, personality, and spoken out loud they help relieve stress. You'd be surprised how many "serious" writers swear like sailors in and out of their books.

[ObsidianFire]

Unfortunately, the answer given does NOT allow us to discard the possibility that the big H is chowing down. People in Eorzea don't seem to think she is, and those that know about her seem to hold her in high regard, but it also notes that they don't know WHAT is happening, exactly - just that "something" breaks, then "things" go crazy, then healing "happens". That's a whole lotta vagueness, and that last bit is disturbingly unclear as to just HOW healing happens. It leaves plenty of room for a planet-munching scenario! Especially so, given that later in the same article it's noted that what the people believe may not be what's actually going on; they think Hydaelyn is great now, but maybe they don't know the whole story...

One of the things FFXIV has been fairly good at so far is foreshadowing things before they happen. It is very, very rare that we don't get a heads-up that something fishy is going on with a situation before our characters find out about it. In fact, it's been confirmed by Youshida that he likes more foreshadowing of what is going to happen, rather then less.

Hydaelyn being being evil or lying to us is something that has basically no foreshadowing. At least, creditable foreshadowing. We don't seen any of the scholars on our side putting forth theories that are based on us not knowing enough about Hydaelyn. We don't even have neutral parties suggesting that. Heck, not even Elidibus has suggesting Hydaelyn isn't what she seems. The only people suggesting Hydaelyn isn't telling the truth about something are our enemies. Who are trying really hard to create more chaos then we can fix. There's yet to be anything to suggest they aren't just trying to confuse us.

I'd feel a lot differently about the possibility of Hydaelyn being anything other then benevolent if it was something we'd been getting hints about for a long time. Only we haven't. In fact, the biggest evidence for Hydaelyn not being benevolent is that we're in the middle of the story and we haven't had everything about her explained to us.