6.0 Story Speculations

[YianKutku]

Back on topic... sorta... anyone got, "Krile's got Scriptwriter's Doom" on their 6.0 Prediction Bingo card? I got a bad feeling about it.

I agree that if any of the Scions were to be kicked off the stage, Krile has the highest chance.

Having said that, I don't actually think she'll be killed as such. More likely that she'll be simply written out as "doing other things elsewhere". She still has a big role in Eureka, which is a large enough piece of content that I don't think the "content is stuck in the time of their patches" can hold for very long, unlike the aforementioned Estinien DRG issue, or Zombie Nanamo in the CUL 50 quest. (Or Urianger casually hanging around the Waking Sands until you finish the ARR Extremes, at which point he casually walks away.)

On a tangent, I've been playing FFIV in preparation for Endwalker, and it reminded me once again of how the complaints of FFXIV always having character death fake-outs is somehow "cheap". FFIV is full of character death fake-outs; FFXIV has a much higher actual bodycount, while still being comparable with the number of "oh no, this character has sacrificed themselves in a way that surely they cannot survive, even if nobody has seen the body".

[Iscah]

(Or Urianger casually hanging around the Waking Sands until you finish the ARR Extremes, at which point he casually walks away.)

To be exact, all the quest chains involving him at the Waking Sands conclude somewhere else. The extreme primals conclude with him sending you to Revenant's Toll to give the ritual foci to Rowena in exchange for weapons; the Binding Coil ends with Alisaie at the Burning Wall.

I'm not sure if I tested it directly, but I assume he's simply gone the next time you go back to the Sands.

[Vyrerus]

To be exact, all the quest chains involving him at the Waking Sands conclude somewhere else. The extreme primals conclude with him sending you to Revenant's Toll to give the ritual foci to Rowena in exchange for weapons; the Binding Coil ends with Alisaie at the Burning Wall.

I'm not sure if I tested it directly, but I assume he's simply gone the next time you go back to the Sands.

Not until after One World for One Life. Though after that I'm not exactly sure what the precise point is that he's never in the Waking Sands again. I will check through my LP to see if I can ascertain that moment. It's very late HW or early Stormblood though... at least if you've completed all of the Ex Primals/Coil etc.

I agree that if any of the Scions were to be kicked off the stage, Krile has the highest chance.

Having said that, I don't actually think she'll be killed as such. More likely that she'll be simply written out as "doing other things elsewhere". She still has a big role in Eureka, which is a large enough piece of content that I don't think the "content is stuck in the time of their patches" can hold for very long, unlike the aforementioned Estinien DRG issue, or Zombie Nanamo in the CUL 50 quest. (Or Urianger casually hanging around the Waking Sands until you finish the ARR Extremes, at which point he casually walks away.)

On a tangent, I've been playing FFIV in preparation for Endwalker, and it reminded me once again of how the complaints of FFXIV always having character death fake-outs is somehow "cheap". FFIV is full of character death fake-outs; FFXIV has a much higher actual bodycount, while still being comparable with the number of "oh no, this character has sacrificed themselves in a way that surely they cannot survive, even if nobody has seen the body".

She's also involved in the Warring Triad, which are not yet mandatory... I wonder if they will make anymore side content mandatory. I don't imagine they'd make Eureka mandatory, ever, but Warring Triad I could see.

And yeah, that was Square's mode of writing characters out of your party. It actually started in FF3 with Desch... but like half the cast of IV gets in on it. Actually every single party member except for Cecil, Edge, and Rosa. I'm sure they won't miss a chance to subject us to that. Again... lmao.

[Tensaihime]

Back on topic... sorta... anyone got, "Krile's got Scriptwriter's Doom" on their 6.0 Prediction Bingo card? I got a bad feeling about it.

I do.

I’m expecting one leader (this group includes Hien), two or three Scions (this group includes Krile and Estinien), and someone who’s not part of either group.

Krile is the type who knows too much. By this I mean we could obtain information and knowledge from her that would solve the plot a lot faster, so to stop us from getting through the story too quickly, the writers could either make sure we don’t reunite with her, or allow us to talk with her a short while and then prevent her from sharing extra-helpful thing XYZ by giving her the kind of treatment G’raha Tia got after Mt. Gulg. But permanently. I hope I’m wrong. I like Krile.

[Tensaihime]

FFXIV has a much higher actual bodycount, while still being comparable with the number of "oh no, this character has sacrificed themselves in a way that surely they cannot survive, even if nobody has seen the body".

I admit I have fallen for it every. Single. Time. I remember being mad in ARR-HW when they kept talking about hope and I thought we had a pile of dead bodies. (Even in ShB when characters were going “oh cheer up, eater!”, while I was over here thinking my WoL really was going to start hurting people.) Maybe the devs like targeting the sort of player who sees things go horribly wrong and believes the worst till they get proof the worst hasn’t happened. But the first bodies to drop were permanent (the tempered Flame Soldiers, Noraxia, Moenbryda), and every now and then we still get a death, so how are we to know?

Maybe I should have played FFIV too. I know a guy who tried, and he warned me I would just ragequit when/if I got to the moon. Which prompted the question “wait, why are knights going to the moon?” and then a pretty interesting summary of the recent developments.

[Fenral]

FFIV is full of character death fake-outs; FFXIV has a much higher actual bodycount, while still being comparable with the number of "oh no, this character has sacrificed themselves in a way that surely they cannot survive, even if nobody has seen the body".

Outside of endings, Final Fantasy has never actually been that bloodthirsty with party members (aside from FFII), opting to focus instead on their reactions to the death around them. Granted, we didn't even have real "party members" until 5.0.

Maybe the devs like targeting the sort of player who sees things go horribly wrong and believes the worst till they get proof the worst hasn’t happened. But the first bodies to drop were permanent (the tempered Flame Soldiers, Noraxia, Moenbryda), and every now and then we still get a death, so how are we to know?

You have to ask yourself if the emotions you feel in the moment are invalidated by a positive outcome. A lot of people these days seem to think so, because it's better to get angry than admit you're invested in fictional characters (or something). Me, I still find myself asking, "Wait, is that really it?" even for characters that "obviously" can't be harmed like Y'shtola and Thancred.

I think 6.0 will give us just one death (maybe not a party member) where the usuals will inevitably insist they feel nothing because survival is guaranteed, only for reality to finally set in much later. Like this latest season of Lucifer...

[RyuDragnier]

I agree that if any of the Scions were to be kicked off the stage, Krile has the highest chance.

Having said that, I don't actually think she'll be killed as such. More likely that she'll be simply written out as "doing other things elsewhere". She still has a big role in Eureka, which is a large enough piece of content that I don't think the "content is stuck in the time of their patches" can hold for very long, unlike the aforementioned Estinien DRG issue, or Zombie Nanamo in the CUL 50 quest. (Or Urianger casually hanging around the Waking Sands until you finish the ARR Extremes, at which point he casually walks away.)

I don't think she'll be kicked off the stage. If they retire the old Scions, we're going to need one in the know who happens to be a skilled researcher and healer to replace Urianger...meaning Krile. So I don't think she'll be kicked off the stage, but may end up getting "promoted" in the 6.1 and further patches into Urianger's replacement.

[YianKutku]

To be exact, all the quest chains involving him at the Waking Sands conclude somewhere else. The extreme primals conclude with him sending you to Revenant's Toll to give the ritual foci to Rowena in exchange for weapons; the Binding Coil ends with Alisaie at the Burning Wall.

I'm not sure if I tested it directly, but I assume he's simply gone the next time you go back to the Sands.

To clarify, I was thinking about the part late 4.x where Urianger is among those who got called to the First, and yet when I dropped by the Waking Sands, Urianger is also there.

And when I finished his quests, Urianger did the "walk away and fade out" thing all NPCs do when they're going from place to place as the questline dictates. Which was hilarious to me, because it looked like he was merely pretending to be unconscious initially while commuting to the Waking Sands, and then once his job in the Waking Sands was done, he sauntered off to the Rising Stones to be unconscious for real.

She's also involved in the Warring Triad, which are not yet mandatory... I wonder if they will make anymore side content mandatory. I don't imagine they'd make Eureka mandatory, ever, but Warring Triad I could see.

An interesting thought on the Warring Triad. I've been wondering how the game might handle any exploration into the Thirteenth, since it requires Unukalhai's presence on the First (meeting Cylva and Taynor), and to do so you need to have done the Warring Triad questline. If the Warring Triad is made mandatory, that frees up both Unukalhai and Krile.

Having said that, Unukalhai also provides the Ravana EX and Bismarck EX trials, which actually require them to be done to complete them (unlike the Warring Triad EX, which are just unlocks). And I really don't think EX trials are going to be made mandatory. One potential workaround may be for Unukalhai to leave behind documents to replace his actual person in the Rising Stones, or to give the quests to other people entirely.

Maybe I should have played FFIV too. I know a guy who tried, and he warned me I would just ragequit when/if I got to the moon. Which prompted the question “wait, why are knights going to the moon?” and then a pretty interesting summary of the recent developments.

I don't think the Moon in FFIV is very rage-quitty, personally, but I might be forgetting something. Personally the rage-quitty part is how FFIV was made in the era where having a 0.4% drop rate for important items is considered perfectly fine.

I admit I'm not sure if I should be talking too much about FFIV. On the one hand, not everyone has played it (as you say), and I'm wary about spoilers. On the other hand, it's a 30 year old game, so I don't know how much of it can be spoiled.

[Vyrerus]

The original version of IV isn't really rage inducing. Those rare items are wholly unnecessary in that version. Not sure about remakes. If you go for the DS version, people say it's hard, but basically it just requires a little thought and making party members play their role/giving Kain Edward's skillset for Haste Song... a singing DRG hmmmmmm... a little more nuance to have him constantly sing rather than hand him a two handed sword that auto berserks him.

I would recommend any of the SNES rom versions. JP has an easier start of things, since Cecil has Dark Wave. The English version people tell you to stay away from, but it's easier in the end game, because monsters had most of their status afflictions neutered. Everything's fairly consistent enough that you get the whole story in both, though obvs the translation on the OG English version fails in a few areas due to the time... like prayers = wishes instead etc.

And if you decide you really love its world, you can get the After Years... which is basically Final Fantasy IV: Guren Lagann Season 2 edition.

[Tensaihime]

You have to ask yourself if the emotions you feel in the moment are invalidated by a positive outcome. A lot of people these days seem to think so, because it's better to get angry than admit you're invested in fictional characters (or something). Me, I still find myself asking, "Wait, is that really it?" even for characters that "obviously" can't be harmed like Y'shtola and Thancred.

The first time I should have been happier to get everybody back than I was. All the misery, my WoL getting treated like a useless doormat in a bad otome game, babysitting Haurchefant’s idiot brother... then the game went “LOL no harm done right?” (apart from poor Minfilia), actually having something to that effect spoken by the ungrateful no-consequences-facing dillhole who let us get thrown under the bus, and I had to do a sidequest to find out what was happening to Y’shtola. It felt like I was getting mocked for caring about the characters.

Every time since that, I’ve thought “they‘ve already dicked me around and had their laughs, this time is permanent, isn’t it? Crap, crap, crap!” And then when it’s not, I’m relieved. If a singed and battered Papalymo had staggered up to us halfway through Stormblood, I would have been shocked but happy.