I just dont understand whats going on with the 24 man storyline

[DrWho2010]

can't please everyone :shrug:

[MikkoAkure]

There is an NPC on the airship that recaps everything going on and the background of the story as well as overviews on specific topics being brought up. If you’re lost during it, you can talk to him (I believe it is the dramaturge). Ivalice is a Garlean legend that our characters wouldn’t know about but they only explain parts of it at a time. The writer of the whole raid is the same writer of the games it pays homage to and his stories tend to be very long and convoluted so if you’re going through the raid without talking to the NPCs, you’re asking to be left confused. Yoko Taro is worse than Matsuno in that regard so the Nier raid is probably going to be even more confusing.

I don’t think we’ll see another raid that is super involved with the story and meshes well with the world after the outcry that happened with people not being able to complete coils and crystal tower back when they were new. That sort of leaves them with just doubling down on the MMO theme park aspect of the game and a lot of welding other games’ canon into this one.

[JeanneOrnitier]

Ivalice was far and away the highlight of Stormblood for me. So much more enjoyable than the MSQ it isn't even funny. And I'm not even that big of a fan of Tactics and XII, though I wouldn't say I dislike them either.

I can't help but wonder if Ultima is a sin-eater given what we know of Shadowbringers now.

As for her relation to Ultima Weapon and the Ultima spell - that's kind of a tangled mess. XD There was a big thread debating it a while back, but the basic problem is that Ultima Weapon was built during the time of the Allagans, and the Heart of Sabik (an even MORE ancient artifact which served as Ultima Weapon's core, and is what enabled the Ultima spell to be cast) was ancient even to the Allagans. All the stuff with the Zodiac Braves is far more recent - and yet, it is mentioned that the Ultima Spell was named after Seraph Ultima? Perhaps the Ascians knew Seraph Ultima long before she came to Hydaelyn? It's hard to say.

I did Orbonne Monastery only very recently, so I can say I recall someone (Cid maybe?) mentioning that legends of Ultima are far, far more ancient than the stories of Ivalice. Hydaelyn sealed her away a long time ago, and then when she started breaking free is when Ramza sealed her again. Ramza's fight wasn't her first time causing trouble.

The quests also establish that the Ultima spell was modeled after her magic, and it's magic that shouldn't be able to exist on Hydaelyn.

[SannaR]

The one thing I didn't get and how the game explains it is current time Ramza going from a omg can I pleaaaaaaaase smack him because of his attitude to not only us but his sister and the moogles to being so much nicer all because the aurricite made him? Like what? That's why he's no longer a jerk? And you know not player's being vocal about how how much they loathed this version of Ramza vs the Ramza everyone likes in Tactics. Along with everyone being fine with how he behaved and his change in behavior at the start of the last part in game. I just hope with the Nier raid I don't end up feeling like I need to have read all of the philosophy greats to understand some of the finer points of the story let alone the ending.

[Fenral]

I had no idea the Crystal Tower was a reference to another game until later, but I didn't feel lost at all. We were finally getting information on Allag, we were spending time with characters central to FFXIV, and the only stuff we actually needed to know to grasp the storyline was "there's a guy at the top of the tower trying to destroy the world - go stop him".

Honestly, you missed nothing. If you did know anything about FFIII and were able to piece together the dots, a lot of the final act felt sort of inevitable, like certain things had to happen, like Doga and Unei dying and G'raha sacrificing himself for the tower, even if the narrative groundwork wasn't quite as well laid as it could have been due what I can only imagine was a last-minute reduction in quest-chain length. A number of lines that are considered meme-worthy in Japan ("Though the body may perish, the spirit lives on!" etc.) also ended up so totally rewritten in the English adaptation that they were no longer recognizable as references, which is its own problem.


Fortunately the staff seems to be much more familiar with the Ivalice stuff. I imagine Alexander O. Smith is required reading for the English localization team.

[Daralii]

The one thing I didn't get and how the game explains it is current time Ramza going from a omg can I pleaaaaaaaase smack him because of his attitude to not only us but his sister and the moogles to being so much nicer all because the aurricite made him? Like what? That's why he's no longer a jerk? And you know not player's being vocal about how how much they loathed this version of Ramza vs the Ramza everyone likes in Tactics. Along with everyone being fine with how he behaved and his change in behavior at the start of the last part in game. I just hope with the Nier raid I don't end up feeling like I need to have read all of the philosophy greats to understand some of the finer points of the story let alone the ending.

Nier came about from a joke ending in Drakengard 3 that split off and progressed into something resembling the modern era, and then Automata jumped ahead to a point where aliens and their robots invaded Earth and humanity was forced to live on the moon with the full story split up among 26(?) endings. Yoko Taro is a brilliant lunatic that's created some truly amazing stories, but if they give him the amount of control that he should have with Dark Apocalypse, expect to be very confused.

[SannaR]

Oh I know how it came to be, but I also know he loves to throw in philosophy and that he might be crazy.

[Hasrat]

I've only just started, and just from what's been discussed/revealed so far, I can't tell if Dalmasca was meant to be some long lost city in the desert, or if everyone knew it was out there, it was just way the fuck out there and nobody really cared. "Father would bring back strange items" dotdotdot "Ok, we're landing at Dalmasca now."
I've played XII, but it's not really Final Fantasy as I'd come to know/expect/enjoy. Not a fan of the political intrigue.

[Cilia]

Kind of nice to see I'm not the only one who wasn't thrilled with the Ivalice raids... thought I was like the only one.

Ahem. While NieR does have a lot of story to it, if the title of the raid series is anything to go by (YoRHa: Dark Apocalypse) it's going to be focused primarily if not exclusively on Yoko Taro's most successful and well-known work, NieR: Automata. It's pretty simple so I'll give a Cliff's Notes version...

Way into the future (~12,000 AD if I remember right) aliens invaded the planet. Using a mechanical army composed of machine lifeforms, they were able to conquer the planet and drive the remnants of humanity into taking refuge on the Moon. From there it wages war to retake the planet through a mechanical army of its own composed of androids and gynoids. Said war continues off and on into the game's opening.

Of course, absolutely nothing is quite so simple.

Due to the events of the original NieR, humanity has gone extinct by the time of Automata. All that remains of humanity is brain scans and an incomplete genome stored in a data server on the Moon, which generates and transmits periodic messages to its armies to keep them hopeful. The YoRHa units (to which the PCs of Automata belong) are part of this endeavor; said YoRHa units possess repurposed machine lifeform cores and as such are meant to be disposable. They will also fall prey to a Logic Virus that will turn them into cyber zombies should they gain a decisive edge, preventing them from winning.

The machine lifeforms eventually turned on and killed their creators. After doing so they began to accumulate as much data as they could, which eventually included human data, giving the machines some measure of humanity. However despite possessing the power to do so they cannot win the war with the androids - because their prime and only directive is to "kill the enemy," they need an enemy to kill. To that end they evolve and diversify, leading to weaknesses that can be exploited (such as individuality, something special machines possess). They're strong enough to remain in control, but deliberately too weak to lose.

In short, the two sides are trapped in an eternal war that neither can win for the sake of creators who have been dead for a long, long time.

Of course, that's not what Automata is really about... it's mostly about the cast's responses to learning the above hide-boxed information, as well as a thorough examination as to whether or not mechanical lifeforms can have souls. (It's never stated outright, but the implicit answer is "yes.")

Somebody correct me if I got something wrong... it's almost time for Feh Channel...

[Zohar_Lahar]

They mentioned she was summoned by Ajora Glabados, and implied he was one of the earliest Warriors of Light. This suggests Ultima was contemporary with either the First or Second Calamity. Also, Unukalhai implicated the fall of the Thirteenth World on auracite, suggesting she was able to disseminate the stones across all the shards or copies of Ultima were summoned on the other worlds.