The Road to 5.0

[Jollyy5]

...

In my mind, the "requiem" is going to be dedicated to all those soldiers who fight and die in 4.5, and maybe some more notable individuals.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see SE just go and kill off several centric characters for some big chunky emotional impact, to make room for new characters and show they aren't afraid of doing big changes.

But after over 5 years of FFXIV, I just don't think they have the balls (or resources) for anything too drastic.

[Zohar_Lahar]

It'll probably also double in reference to the Return to Ivalice finale and the Tenzen storyline.

[Theodric]

One of the more common complaints in relation to Stormblood has been that it hasn't really felt like a real war and that there has been too many cases of characters 'dying' but then returning to the story immediately afterwards. I expect there to be at least one major death in 4.5 and my bet is on it being Lyse, Raubahn, Hien, Arenvald or Maxima. Of those, Maxima is the least likely in my eyes - since he seems to be set to be a major player in 5.0 and we've only seen him very briefly so far. The first three would be a major blow to the Eorzean/Eastern Alliance whereas Arenvald would likely be a second Haurchefant situation.

I couldn't help but notice that in the screenshot where Raubahn is shown sitting on a chair there's the symbol of Garlemald etched into the chair itself. It looks very likely as though the leaders of the Eorzean Alliance are in some sort of Garlean tent - perhaps in an effort to negotiate/mitigate the rising tensions. After all, this is a war that is pushed by the Ascians and that means it isn't likely to benefit anybody but the Ascians.

Given Varis' valiant efforts to resist Solus and Elidibus so far, I suspect this patch might mean the end of him - as much as I like him. A story where he escapes and survives a coup but finds himself with only a handful of allies would be very interesting - especially if it meant him teaming up with the Warrior of Light to reclaim the throne and push for meaningful reform. It'd also help make Regula's demise more meaningful, since his final words implied that Varis would need the Warrior of Light in the future.

As an aside, the description of the dungeon itself is intriguing. It's supposedly 'lost to the light' and very dark/bleak looking...but it also appears to be the very same place shown in the cinematic for Shadowbringers. Perhaps the area is special, somehow, so having a major conflict there causes something very bad to happen. It might explain why the cinematic shows 'Kiribu' showing up.

[ChaoticCrimson]

Looks like Alisaie at the very least will be going to the Burn to meet with Shadowhunter, and maybe even reunite with Alphinaud. I wonder why they would have her meet up back at the Burn though rather than somewhere else. Perhaps because it'd be less likely for unfriendly forces to be present? For that matter, we still don't really know why Shadowhunter was out there to begin with back in 4.3, because I doubt he was there simply waiting to rescue Alphinaud and his Galrean entourage. I also wonder how much longer it'll be before he decides to reveal his actual identity to the others, and how they'll react to the fact he's a former enemy.

Furthermore, it looks like the Empire will be attempting to reclaim Ala Mhigo for sure in this patch, as I expected. Based on the fact that the Ghimlyt Dark is somewhere "twixt Aldenard and Ilsebard" it appears it's located somewhere northeast of Gyr Abania and Ala Mhigo. This leads me to expect that the Alliance will be mounting their main defensive line here to prevent the Empire from advancing on Ala Mhigo. In which case, I still feel like something bad will happen to Ala Mhigo in the end. Portions of the city may survive, like the quarter we already had access to, but the city proper could be totally destroyed. Regardless, I also still believe there's a strong possibility that Black Rose will play a huge part in the upcoming events in 4.5's story. No matter what happens, I think we're about to see a huge momentum shift as we start to hurtle into Shadowbringers.

[Iscah]

hence [requiem] became a byword for any event that ends something, usually with much death and destruction

I've never seen it used to describe an event of destruction itself. It's more about the mourning that follows it.

Also, having checked my dictionary and Wikipedia, the primary meaning is a mass (church service) for the soul of the dead, and secondarily for the music that would be used in such a service - and by extension of the concept, a song of mourning.


So either way the title essentially comes to being "Mourning the Heroes".

[Iscah]

In my mind, the "requiem" is going to be dedicated to all those soldiers who fight and die in 4.5, and maybe some more notable individuals.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see SE just go and kill off several centric characters for some big chunky emotional impact, to make room for new characters and show they aren't afraid of doing big changes.

But after over 5 years of FFXIV, I just don't think they have the balls (or resources) for anything too drastic.

I don't see the excitement in "killing off an old set of characters to make way for new ones". It doesn't automatically make the story better.

Too many emotional deaths and they start to lose their individual impact.

It would seem a very sad thing to reach the end of this story and have none of the people left who were with us from the start.

As long as they build on that core group of people and make them interesting, there's no need to replace them. Introduce more characters, have other people take prominent roles, but still come back to the Scions and their group dynamic. We've lost so much of it already.

(After so much of Stormblood feeling rather empty and lifeless, characterisation-wise, it was wonderful being back with the Scions for those few missions in the Lochs. People I knew! With personalities! I still don't know what Yugiri is like, even after having her as a "party member" through Stormblood. I simply do not connect her with a personality other than maybe 'quiet'. I feel like she only ever delivered plot instructions.)

[Theodric]

It's a matter of balance. If there's too much death and misery then the story risks becoming depressing at every turn with very few opportunities for lighter elements to be explored. If there aren't any meaningful losses in what is meant to be a major conflict then death becomes cheap and many players are left rolling their eyes to the point where they assume that if something bad does happen it'll just be rendered obsolete a few scenes later.

We need something in the middle so the stakes can feel legitimately high at critical points in the story but without every last little plot point leading to bleak circumstances.

[Fenral]

Hoo, boy. Here we are again. Another season finale, another round of "people need to die for the story to be entertaining."

Killing characters should be for more than emotional impact, though. Loss isn't felt, it's experienced. Absence creates a vacuum, and that vacuum itself becomes a catalyst for further complications. FFXIV has historically been really bad about following through on character deaths (Ul'dah was the same with or without Nanamo, nothing happened in Camp Dragonhead with Haurchefant gone, the heretics simply stopped existing after Ysayle's death, and so on), so I'd personally rather not see any more long-term potential squandered for immediate thrills. Not up to me, though.

There's also a thing I like to call "the Berserk Threshold", where Anyone Can Die itself has been played out to the point where there stops being a narrative "good reason" for killing major recurring characters, especially without repeating the same predictable beats, so stakes are kept high simply by the sheer scale of the events that take place. I think we may have actually crossed it after Papalymo's death, which is why Alisaie spent most of Stormblood taking cheap shots at the writers. But we'll see.

[Xie_Belvoule]

"War looms once again. Scarcely has Ala Mhigo taken its first breath of freedom when the Empire reaches out with ironclad fingers to reclaim the bloodied nation."

Looks like I was right about the Garleans launching a massive counter attack. I expect they will be deploying the black rose aswell.

[Jollyy5]

I think I worded that poorly, what I wanted to convey was that it feels like SE is afraid of taking risks to a point where they "kill off a character" only for them to turn up hale and hearty some time later, which has me rolling my eyes. The ones that did die were usually rather insignificant, and their deaths indeed didn't have any kind of an impact on what we do or how we go about doing things.

That, and I guess I'm getting tired of the Scions... For the most part Thancred and Yshtola for example feel like impeccable individuals who are shaken by nothing and can do no wrong, so they've grown rather stale in my eyes.