Quote Originally Posted by Theodric View Post
It's a blend of various different real world cultures rather than a distinct style. The names, for example, are Germanic and the original concept art for the region looked rather different to what we ended up getting.

To me it looks like it was originally meant to be rather cold instead of arid. Particularly based on the mountains behind the city.
You can still have cold AND arid. In fact a lot of mountainous areas in the world are both including Tibet which is probably the most famous highland area in the world. Some Ala Mhigan NPCs mention how cold it is there so it seems like that's how it is. It's a shame we don't have white-capped mountains surrounding the landscape but then again it would be a little naive to assume that the zones we visit in the game look that way year round. And that's not the "original" concept art either, implying that it's old and unused. That's still the splash art if you log into the game while in Ala Mhigo.

Like all Eorzean hyur, highlanders have European names, in this case Germanic. They also all tend to have accents from the North of England to set them apart. But their architecture, weaponry, clothing, landscape, and geographical position on the edge of 2 continents shows that they have a lot of inspiration from Turkey. On top of that, like the Ottoman Empire, they have a history of being belligerent toward the rest of the continent and even gone to war with the Eorzean Alliance.

That all said, I think the original Eorzean 3 city-states generally are better written in regards to being their own thing without straight up copying and pasting real-life cultures in place of world building. To me, Doma felt a little lazy since they just took Tang China and then pretended it's actually Japan. And then Hingashi and Nagxia feel even lazier since they're just Japan and Vietnam ripped right out and pasted into our world with a few extra added fantasy elements but no real world building.