The New Sage Icon, Thoughts?

[Laerune]

I dont like the new icon, but I understand that the old icon invoked a fear into players. I respect SE decision.

[Awha]

I suffer from Ailurophobia can we get rid of cat like people.

[AnotherPerson]

More impactful, yes, but I don't know if it's a positive thing or not. The thing that piss me off is that him surviving is clearly due to being the fan's favorite. Two things that I have problem with:

1) the Exarch merging his memories AND soul to young g'raha is morally questionable, and were it attempted by other npc people probably will riot.

2) why merging with the Exarch suddenly makes current g'raha to be super OP? Before sleeping, he was more of a Scholar than fighter and his weapon is a bow. Now he suddenly a caster? Since when did he got photographic memory that even able to remember the cure for freaking tempering in just seconds? As the Exarch he's able to fight only because he link himself to the crystal tower and also use Allagan tech.

Merging memories is the equivalent of the Echo, which never gave indication that it strengthen the echo user. Merging soul is the equivalent of rejoining, which again, doesn't mean you're stronger after that.

And speaking of Crystal Tower... Why did we wake g'raha now? The Eorzean still haven't reach a technological age where they can use the CT, it was the future time line who did. And now g'raha isn't asleep anymore, what if he died or his Allagan blood lost its effect? The CT will be unguarded and unusable to us.

As Emet Selch mentioned in the storyline, when Hyadelyn strikes a target, she splits them apart. "Two individuals, identical in appearance, yet reduced in all aspects, strength, intelligence, the soul itself - all is halved."

The rejoining is meant to reverse this process, thus making people "whole".

As you can tell, when Hydaelyn split the world into 14 parts, we were 1/14 strong. The rejoining 7 times meant the WoL is 8/14 whole since ARR. By the end of Shadowbringers, we become 9/14 with Ardbert's soul and thus can contain the light. In fact, Emet thought he have seen a glimpse of us as when we were an ancient when we were 9/14.

Thancred also still not being able to use aether in The First indicates the soul (and not the body) is directly related to the control of aether/ abundance of aether as only their souls have been transferred over, but only Thancred still has to rely on others to imbue his cartridges.

As for G'raha, he was already 9/14 when Shadowbringers began - due to being from the distant future when the First was rejoined to the Source. By the end of ShB 5.3, he merged with his soul in the source. It's been said that if the souls rejects each other, then Exarch would've died, but they merged without an issue. This implies young G'raha accepted the Exarch's soul and merged with them. In fact, G'raha mentions in his dialogue it's like he's recalling the events and life he lived as an Exarch as memories from the past, so it's not like Exarch overwrote G'raha's personality, rather G'raha was 'awake' while he slept, as if everything that happened was a dream, and he's just recalling the events that happened.

If we count his fragments joining together, he'd be actually 17/14, stronger than when he was an ancient - the only difference being that his fragments are from the same source as opposed to 14 different fragments, so he's not 'whole'.
As for why he became A white mage, paladin, and Black mage when he was an archer back in the First? Well, he DOES have 100 years of experience in learning the other three jobs while he was an Exarch.
Since he has a staff that uses part of the Crystal Tower as the focus, he can pretty much use the tower's power to fuel his spells and remain in the same level of power as before - just without the limits of his previous body locking him down to be near the tower to prolong his life.

And as for the lost CT knowledge, the Crystal Tower was already reawakened in the future to prevent a tragedy of the past - implying that the Tower already did its job as a Beacon of Hope, and now he no longer needs to continue staying watch inside the Tower since it has done its purpose in The First. He can now live his life the way he wants to. All the secrets of the Allagan Technology is pretty much available in the First at this point anyway - e.g. Mowen taking records from the CT to help fill the library up.

In the end though, that could still be a point in the story for Dark Knight storyline in the next expansion. We do a lot of self-reflection in the DRK storyline after all.

[ReynTime]

There's often one "fanboy" character moment in a JRPG, no matter how dark it is. Look at Tales of Zestiria, Sorey (the lead) fanboys over a lot of stuff the entirety of the game, even at the end of the game.

As for the plot armor, I suspect that's coming to an end. The Japanese VA for Thancred mentioned on Twitter that it feels like the end, and he's not sure how it can continue. Considering it's the VA for him...it's possible we're about to see consequences and characters being lost.

The Tales of series is the worst example of jRPG writing. That may or may not change with Arise, but the series has a history of being a mcdonalds of the jRPG genre made entirely of predictable story and character tropes because no one expects any different from it.

[KizuyaKatogami]

The Tales of series is the worst example of jRPG writing. That may or may not change with Arise, but the series has a history of being a mcdonalds of the jRPG genre made entirely of predictable story and character tropes because no one expects any different from it.

Sounds like 14 as of late…

[Theodric]

The Tales of series is the worst example of jRPG writing. That may or may not change with Arise, but the series has a history of being a mcdonalds of the jRPG genre made entirely of predictable story and character tropes because no one expects any different from it.

To me, they're something of a guilty pleasure. They don't pretend to be something they're not, so I go in knowing exactly what to expect. Much like with many JRPG's, the antagonists end up having deeper motives and are generally more intriguing to me than the protagonists - though I did like Eizen a lot in Tales of Bersaria.

My beef with FFXIV is that at times it does not appear to know what it wants to be. ARR and HW had a fairly gritty style grounded in relative realism and embraced consequences for both the antagonists and the protagonists. Now, though, we have major antagonists going multiple expansions with no victories of note that specifically impact the protagonists on a long term basis. Even Zenos and Fandaniel, touted as being unworthy of sympathy, are limiting most of their chaos specifically to Garlemald - which only really serves to benefit the protagonists by ensuring they never have to deal with the consequences of invading a foreign nation's core territory and dismantling it from within even as their civilians speak out and resist.

Which begs the question - once the Ascian and Garlemald storylines come to their conclusion, what's next? Will the game as a whole decide to shift to a generic 'adventure' JRPG? I wouldn't necessarily mind, honestly - but I want the game to stop pretending it cares about depth, nuance and differences in opinion when it consistently only allows one side to ever win out.

Conveniently, I note, with the exception of Hingashi. Isn't it intriguing that the in-game equivalent of Japan, in a Japanese game, is subjected to a failed attempt at a revolution via the samurai job quests whereas every other nation is forced to undergo drastic change that erodes away much of their culture, history and grit? Heh.

[ReynTime]

I wasn't trying to shame anyone for liking Tales of. Just that no one plays them with high expectations for writing and characters because they really don't try to push anything with either. Nothing wrong with enjoying the series.

[VictorTheed]

What is Trypophobia and how does it relate to the Sage job icon?

I've never heard of that before, I seen a meoni vid on this and I'm guessing that it's people afraid of holes but I don't know, any explanation would be appreciated.

[RyuDragnier]

I wasn't trying to shame anyone for liking Tales of. Just that no one plays them with high expectations for writing and characters because they really don't try to push anything with either. Nothing wrong with enjoying the series.

It's true, not every Tales game can be a Vesperia, Abyss, Xillia 2, or Berseria. Those 4 are among the best written in the franchise IMO.

[KizuyaKatogami]

It's true, not every Tales game can be a Vesperia, Abyss, Xillia 2, or Berseria. Those 4 are among the best written in the franchise IMO.

Vesperia was so well done. It was the only tales game i played but i loved that the main character wasnt some goody two shoes. A lot of the cast had flaws that they addressed. I wish that was more relevant here.