The Road to 5.0

[Anonymoose]

If you're talking about the alleged-leak I think you are, it struck me as odd for a different reason: idiolect.

Word choice and sentence structure seemed different, and the main meddler there hadn't changed it up prior.

Though I agree that some of the things in there are eventualities, anyway. Minfilia flat out told you that she was coming back because she wanted to do what you'd done; to leave to help others with confidence and her head held high even though nothing was certain, and come back anyway. You can't have that be your goodbye and not make at least one more appearance, even one that hurts.

[Alien_Gamer]

Might've been mentioned already, if so, I'm sorry, I tend to be a bit shy around you 'Lore-Pros'.

Anyway, ever since they said that the teaser we got for Shadowbringers is just a small part of a longer movie, and considering how Arbert and generic WoL/Derplander just look quite the same... What if the part in the Teaser we assumed to be with WoL was actually depicting Arbert and the First? Might explain why the landscape there seemed to be so barren while the 'new areas' we got a sneak peek of seemed to do pretty well...

Koji and Yoshi gave very strong hints that the landscape during the fight was actually one of the MSQ dungeons, The Ghimlyt Dark. If you watch this twitch video of the live letter around 5:44 they start talking about the new dungeons. They show an image and Koji coyly states we saw a preview of this somewhere yesterday (the day they released the teaser trailer).

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/3371410...ives&sort=time

So if its a dimension/time travel dungeon it will be limited to just that dungeon and not a permanent shift in where we are in the world.

[Fenral]

Though I agree that some of the things in there are eventualities, anyway. Minfilia flat out told you that she was coming back because she wanted to do what you'd done; to leave to help others with confidence and her head held high even though nothing was certain, and come back anyway. You can't have that be your goodbye and not make at least one more appearance, even one that hurts.

She's still ostensibly the main character of 1.0 and the Hydaelyn/Zodi-arc, so I figured she's waiting in the wings to be a deus-ex-machina (humana-ex-maxhina?) when things start going really sideways.



If time travel shenanigans are afoot, though, the mystery kid could be Ascilia?

[Anonymoose]

If time travel shenanigans are afoot, though, the mystery kid could be Ascilia?

That's one of the top five theories I kept hearing at Fan Fest, lol.

Ascilia, Hydaelyn incarnate, "Princess Sarah", unpredictable new character, and ... for some reason ... Unukalhai, lol.

[Cilia]

Ascilia was my first guess as well.

It depends on whether or not time travel will be involved. Or perhaps it's her first shard counterpart (assuming they do such things, despite historical drift making such direct parallels ponderously implausible)?

Minfilia Lily!

[SynthielLyrin]

Unukalhai I think was because of sheer "pls let us have sidequest charas/plot points tag into msq"; Ascilia/Minfilia is the likeliest bet by dint of being related to Hydaelyn and someone Thancred would want to protect come hells or high water.

"Mysterious figure in a covering robe+hood in the middle of a calamity" does leave plenty up in the air. If it is -our- Shard, but changed, it could be either; if it is a parallel shard, then we have to start making far more assumptions. I would guess it is still our Shard, so still "our" Thancred (... but that leaves a lot to take pot shots at) and he would protect "a Minfilia"; the main question then is how in the [kupo] do we get her back from... Aetherial Sea? First?

... if it is the First, what did we do to set the Voice free, and what does it mean for us? Was that one of the Dooms?

[ObsidianFire]

My favorite theory I've heard is that it's a Princess Garnet type character. As in, someone in the Garlean royal family wants out of Garlemald to see what's really on in the Empire and Thancred is getting her out.

[Fenral]

If they do got the route of introducing a new princess character, her name would have to be Sarah. There's simply no way around it. There's even wiggle-room to misspell it slightly (Sara/Sarah/Serah), as needed to best fit naming conventions.

Or perhaps it's her first shard counterpart (assuming they do such things, despite historical drift making such direct parallels ponderously implausible)?

I believe that level of historical drift is already canon, down to even languages being different between shards. (Arbert wasn't the WoD's real name, and he had the Echo to get around language issues.) I think the closest analogy is the various parallel Earths seen in the original Star Trek. There may have been some similarities in the distant past, but they would have since spiraled out to the point that nobody has a parallel-world twin or anything.

[Cilia]

I believe that level of historical drift is already canon, down to even languages being different between shards. (Arbert wasn't the WoD's real name, and he had the Echo to get around language issues.) I think the closest analogy is the various parallel Earths seen in the original Star Trek. There may have been some similarities in the distant past, but they would have since spiraled out to the point that nobody has a parallel-world twin or anything.

Well, it would be preposterous... I was thinking back on Dragon Ball a bit when I wrote that, and as anyone still following that knows, it introduced a multiverse that has mirror counterparts. (I.e. Kale is Broly's counterpart; the latter is now canon as of the post-Super film.)

It's incredibly implausible based on what we know of how XIV's fractured reality works.

The key issue is Thancred saying "Well, this town has certainly changed... and not at all for the better." That means he's been there before. If it's a time travel thing, the Flood of Light is reaching back in time. If it's a world-jumping thing, Thancred would have had to been on the First Shard for a while (which is plausible if he obtains a vessel). His companion (for lack of a better word), if it is Ascilia and they are on the First Shard, would have had to been de-aged as a consequence of trying to "clean up" the excess Light.

If they're not on the First Shard, it all goes out the window and it could simply be a place Thancred visited during his recon mission in Imperial provinces, and his companion could just as easily be a new character. (Imperial Princess Sarah wir Galvus?)

[Fenral]

If it's a time travel thing, the Flood of Light is reaching back in time.

I'm going to assume you haven't yet had the pleasure of playing Bayonetta. The third option is Ascilia pulled forward from the past. Thancred could be either in the near future or simply commenting on how things have gone since 4.5. A pulled-forward Ascilia is liable to latch onto Thancred as he's someone sho whe knows in her original time.


If it is time-travel shenanigans, anyway.