Revisiting Amaurot/Dreamer Expansion Idea

[Alleluia]

So, I dunno about all of you, but the Tales from the Shadows stories that have dealt with Amaurot and the Hades/Azem/Hythlodaeus trio have left *me* wanting more. I want to see Amaurot in it's hayday. I want to see what the world was like then. Most of all, I want to see Hades and Hythlodaeus and how they interacted with us.


So, I have an expac idea: We experience our time as Azem in our minds.


Premise: We want to learn about the Sound that caused the End of Days, and we have to do that by remembering what Azem found out. And we do this by hypnosis or something similar, letting us essentially see the memories in our dreams.

And thus, we could have an entire expac where we get to experience a bunch of adventures that Azem had back then as side quests, with the MSQ being the Sound investigation as things were ramping up to the Final Days. We get to experience the ancient world, its characters, etc, while still being able to wake up at at any point and do present day stuff in Eorzea (like that level 15 CUL quest you never finished) at the same time.

Think the animus concept from Assassin's Creed, essentially, but we have control over when we wake up back to the real world.

We can keep our looks/glam b/c its in our heads, so no one actually reacts to how we're out of uniform. And it can still functionally be just another MMO world b/c the ancient world had other people in it and Azem had friends. Heck, non robed people in Amaurot that aren't us could simply be handwaved as Amaurot being the capitol of the ancient world and people visiting it. As for the Tempest Glamaurot, Hades just cared about the friends he'd lost, and all of them were his robed peeps so that's what we saw. (Alternatively, they could make it so we see every PC as robed while in Amaurot, if they really wanted, with normal looks active outside the city.)

We get to keep any knowledge we learn, so you can have the equivalent of role quests for job progression. We get to do side quests cus Azem was an adventurer anyway. We could see Azem's installment as Azem in the first place, which could be cool. We'd get to interact with the Ancients we know before they were tempered nutjobs.

More Hades and Hythlodaeus! And we could also see the tragic end and go through those feels. Plus, we might see how/why Hades and Lahabrea escaped unsundered.

And the MSQ could consist of adventures in our memories and then reporting our findings to the others by waking up, acting on said findings, then sleeping to see more, etc.

Heck, with Azem's gender being player-dependent, they may already be planning something like this. That might be why they made that, rather odd, choice.

And all of this could either be accomplished using some specific place/tech like an animus machine thing, or it could just be done in Inn Rooms, which I think would be funny.

EDIT:

To clarify, in case this wasn't clear, I'm thinking this would be post-6.0, with 6.0 dealing with Zodiark/Hydaelyn's conflict. So, like 7.0 or 8.0 with 7.0 being a chill expac (chillpac?) that's relatively self-contained or at least focuses primarily on the less esoteric conflicts of the FF14 world, with the final days question building in the background.

[ObsidianFire]

I fully expect us to at least see parts of our past now that we have our Memory Crystal. But I think they will just be cutscenes the same as every other Echo Vision we have.

What you are describing was done with the Echo in 1.0 and it was.... very confusing for a lot of people. Who didn't even realize they were in the past while they were interacting with it.

The entire point of Shadowbrings was "stop living in the past" in a very big way. The Ascians are trying to bring the past back while the Scions and the WoL living in the present and are trying to pass things on to the people who will come after them. Having large chunks of the story be about the past kinda flies in the face of what Shadowbringers was all about from a thematic standpoint.

[Rannie]

While I'd like to know more about Azem as my characters past life, I do think that it would be better off done as an echo vision or two.. Obsidian was right about some of us 1.0 players being confused about the echo... i admit that that it didn't even click to me when I played until someone explained it to me.

[Alleluia]

Cleaning up my idea a bit with some numbered lists b/c my enthusiasm may have been a bit disorganized. lol

Premise:

Seeking information regarding the source of the Final Days, we turn to the ancestral memories within us of our time as Azem, the Shepard. Thru some means (technological or magical), we access those memories via dreaming, experiencing the world they contain as vividly as if we are really living it again. Thru this method, we find out the information we need about the Final Days for use in the present world.

Possible groundwork laid in the game already:

1. At this point, the prime cause of the Final Days, signified by the Sound that emanated from the earth, is a hanging thread in the plot. Storywise, it would make sense to clear this point up. This could be done during the Hydaelyn/Zdoiark arc, but, if it is a significantly involved plot point, it would make better sense to hint at it with the conclusion to the two primals' story and then cover the cause in greater depth in its own expac. Similar to the way the Warriors of Darkness were introduced as part of Heavensward's arc, but we didn't deal with their overarching problem until Shadowbringers. I believe the story is primed for that to be the case with the Sound now.

2. When we meet Hythlodaeus in the Tempest in 5.0, he refers to our past self's gender in a comment. He says "he" or "she" depending on the player character's gender. This never made any sense to me. Surely Azem is their own character, which would presumably include a gender. Why does it change depending on our present WoL? How can the present effect the past like that? They could be trying to match the soul tot he PC for aesthetics, but Ardbert being male regardless of your PC throws a wrench in that.

But what if the gender of Azem in the story changes b/c we are going to BE Azem at some point? With this dreamer idea, we'll be experiencing Azem's life in our mind, talking to NPCs, and having them refer to us. We might not even look any different to ourselves. Thus, for simplicity, the devs may be laying the groundwork for Azem to be referred to by our gender to avoid confusion later on.

3. Zenos dreams of the Final Days. When he does so, Fandaniel speculates to himself that "Is it possible Emet-Selch found a way..." A way to what? Access ancestral memory. Via dreams! So the ability to do so and access Azem's memories may very well be within our grasp.

[Alleluia]

Advantages:

1. We get to see the ancient world while avoiding time travel. Its a memory, so the end is still the end. But we get to live it out just like any other expac storyline.

2. We can experience the ancient world. Azem was a traveler, so they show us any pocket of the world they wish. Amaurot, Aldenard, locations on the other continents; its all up for grabs. (And we can experience it to scale, too, since Azem was relatively as tall as every other adult in that time period. lol)

Azem was an adventurer, so we can experience his/her adventures just like any other quest chain. This includes sidequests, landscape quests, FATE encounters, and class/role quests. And we are remembering and learning things, so we have a story excuse to still gain exp and level from it all.

And we'll get to talk to NPCs and learn all about the world from them b/c Azem met all of these people. Think of it: Interacting with the convocation before the sundering. A less crazy, but still mouthy, Lahabrea! A hero-worshipping Elidibus.

Which leads to my next point...

3. More Hades and Hythlodaeus! As well as the rest of the Ascians, since the convocation members weren't our enemies then. But mostly Hades and Hythlodaeus. I know I'd like more of Hades. This way he could be our reluctant companion. Essentially the Convocation could be our Scions in this memory world, with Hades and Hyth being our closest companions.

4. We could still interact with the "real" world with no problem. Since its a dream/dream state, we can theoretically wake up whenever we want. Thus, we are still free to do content we've missed in regular Eorzea or Norvrandt at our leisure.

And we can also use this in the main quest of course, by periodically having the MSQ tell us to wake up and report what we remembered to the Scions.

Possible Issues:

1. Its an MMO with other people. How do you have other people in your head? And how can they look like they always do, since Hades showed everyone wearing robes?

Solution 1: Other players are just the peoples of the world in our memories. Alternatively, our "real" friends from Eorzea are being subconsciously projected onto our Azem memories in place of the real people of the world back then.

Solution 2: Using phasing tech, the devs can make all PCs look robed when in Amaurot.

*Addendum: We'll look the same as we always do regardless. Its a memory, and our memory at that. The people we interact with won't react to our lack of robes b/c Azem had robes.

[Alleluia]

@Rannie and ObsidianFire:

What I'm talking about would be very obviously not the current world, though. It'd be like travelling to Norvrandt. Only instead of teleporting, you'd have to interact with a specific object. Ie, you'd use a magiteck animus machine in Sharlyan or something, or a bed in an inn and choose to dream and enter the memory "world". Or we'd have to use our memory crystal, even.

The reason 1.0 was confusing is cus it was meant to be obfuscating when you were in the past or not. This premise wouldn't.

This idea is essentially identical to traveling to another world as it was done in Shadowbringers as far as how players interact with it. But with the story trappings of it being a journey into our memory, not physically dimension hopping. No time paradoxes to worry about, no "is this real or not?" questions. You know it's a memory, though for all intents and purposes you interact with it like its real. And everything that happens there is what "actually" happened way back when. You don't change anything, your questing like you do in every other zone in the game is simply you 'recalling" what you've forgotten by doing it.

[Iscah]

The entire point of Shadowbrings was "stop living in the past" in a very big way. The Ascians are trying to bring the past back while the Scions and the WoL living in the present and are trying to pass things on to the people who will come after them. Having large chunks of the story be about the past kinda flies in the face of what Shadowbringers was all about from a thematic standpoint.

I'm with you on this. Shadowbringers was very much about us being champions of the present in contrast with Hades and the Ascians clinging to the memories of the dead. To then dedicate a whole story to that long-lost past would be strange at least, and detrimental to people's view of the plot at worst - developing personal attachments to the people of that time will inevitably some players to wish they could reject the WoL's plot-ordained position to side with the Ascians instead and bring them back.

I also just don't have the love for Hades that so many people seem to. He worked well as a "noble adversary" but the prospect of actually being old friends was introduced too late and it just doesn't feel quite right to me.

[Alleluia]

I would counter that learning from and remembering the past was also a strong thematic point in Shadowbringers. Hades' asking us to remember them, the investigations into ancient Ronka, Amaurot/Anemnsis. G'raha, who is a historian by trade, being so front and center. Also, his role as the only one who remembers the 8th umbral timeline in this one and being the bearer of their hopes was emphasized.

In this idea, we'd be doing the same thing, thematically. Learning and remembering the past to preserve and protect the future. We're not recalling this information to recreate the past, or live in the past for its own sake, but to safeguard the future against what caused the end of the world.

To clarify, in case this wasn't clear, I'm thinking this would be post-6.0, with 6.0 dealing with Zodiark/Hydaelyn's conflict. So, like 7.0 or 8.0 with 7.0 being a chill expac (chillpac?) that's relatively self-contained or at least focuses primarily on the less esoteric conflicts of the FF14 world, with the final days question building in the background.

[Morningstar1337]

I'd think that at best, it might be better served as a Chronicles of a New Era esque sidestory quest chain than its own expansion, especially considering the theme of shadowbringers. As bar a Stormblood scenario they likely aren't gonna try putting whatever plotline they have planned on pause for this kind of story as a MSQ chain.

That said I do think if such a premise were to happen I can see both Mikoto and the Pixies being relevant given that theformer's a memory expert and the latter had been established to to have interactions with dreams.

I can also see this being the expac where the WoL-as-Azem would fight the archtypes of which the current Primals originate, such as Ifrita.

EDIT: missed the bit about it being post Zodiark, in which case it might be possible, and it might also triple as a prequel per se and a new starting point for adventurers

[Alleluia]

That said I do think if such a premise were to happen I can see both Mikoto and the Pixies being relevant given that theformer's a memory expert and the latter had been established to to have interactions with dreams.

I can also see this being the expac where the WoL-as-Azem would fight the archtypes of which the current Primals originate, such as Ifrita.

Great point about the pixies. I had only considered Sharlyan, but they would be very useful for the method. I've been trying to think of how to have Feo Ul stay relevant in the story cus I love her and this would be an excellent inroad in that direction.

And as for Ifrita, I was thinking that the whole thing around the "I Like Their Grapes" Incident could be a questline, with the Ifrita fight being group content (possibly with some NPC backup). Probably involved in the MSQ, since it'd be a primal fight.