Future direction of FFXIV

[SamsaraTrickstar]

Yoshi-P actually denied this and said it was the plan all along since Emet-Selch was created as a character.

You can see it's not the case. At what point in 6.0 you can say that you see the things was planned for years.

[Jeeqbit]

You can see it's not the case. At what point in 6.0 you can say that you see the things was planned for years.

If we want to debate how long they had been planning the story (vaguely), let's go back to ARR...

where Lahabrea outlines everything in Praetorium that we now have far more context for. The one true god, we know who that is now. A chaotic confluence of untold proportions must be brought about, we understand exactly what now. The Warrior of Light was growing an imbalance that if permitted to worsen, would make the laws of existence unrecognizable and we now know what would happen if we counteract the dark-aspected aether that is preventing the final days.

Or Heavensward's 3.2 where...

Hydaelyn literally tells us that Zodiark is bound on the Moon, that she sundered the star, that it was split across 10 and 3 each possessed of a shard and a part of Zodiark, that the Ascians want to tear down the barriers between these shards and merge them, creating a calamity/rejoining and that this has happened 7 times. Yet lacking the context we have now this was incomprehensible in 3.2 and all you could take from it was "Ascians = bad guys".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hl9AWSWBp94&t=260s

[KizuyaKatogami]

If we want to debate how long they had been planning the story (vaguely), let's go back to ARR...

where Lahabrea outlines everything in Praetorium that we now have far more context for. The one true god, we know who that is now. A chaotic confluence of untold proportions must be brought about, we understand exactly what now. The Warrior of Light was growing an imbalance that if permitted to worsen, would make the laws of existence unrecognizable and we now know what would happen if we counteract the dark-aspected aether that is preventing the final days.

Or Heavensward's 3.2 where...

Hydaelyn literally tells us that Zodiark is bound on the Moon, that she sundered the star, that it was split across 10 and 3 each possessed of a shard and a part of Zodiark, that the Ascians want to tear down the barriers between these shards and merge them, creating a calamity/rejoining and that this has happened 7 times. Yet lacking the context we have now this was incomprehensible in 3.2 and all you could take from it was "Ascians = bad guys".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hl9AWSWBp94&t=260s

Except they literally said in a recent interview that they havent planned the story that long. Theyve just went with it.

[Beddict]

If we want to debate how long they had been planning the story (vaguely), let's go back to ARR...

where Lahabrea outlines everything in Praetorium that we now have far more context for. The one true god, we know who that is now. A chaotic confluence of untold proportions must be brought about, we understand exactly what now. The Warrior of Light was growing an imbalance that if permitted to worsen, would make the laws of existence unrecognizable and we now know what would happen if we counteract the dark-aspected aether that is preventing the final days.

Or Heavensward's 3.2 where...

Hydaelyn literally tells us that Zodiark is bound on the Moon, that she sundered the star, that it was split across 10 and 3 each possessed of a shard and a part of Zodiark, that the Ascians want to tear down the barriers between these shards and merge them, creating a calamity/rejoining and that this has happened 7 times. Yet lacking the context we have now this was incomprehensible in 3.2 and all you could take from it was "Ascians = bad guys".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hl9AWSWBp94&t=260s

Yeah you're giving them waaay too much credit. There was a recent Famitsu interview with Yoshi-P, Ishikawa, and Oda and the translation is on reddit. Ishikawa rewrote the Endwalker ending in late 2019 during the middle of Shadowbringers, "the team didn’t really think about how the story would continue long term" back in Stormblood, and the backstory of the Ascians was only planned in the leadup to ShB. This particular snippet from the interview blows my mind:

Yoshida: Even back during ARR, HW and SB, it was said “we don’t have detailed lore yet for what the Ascians’ goals are, so let’s just have them be doing bad stuff in the background.”

Ishikawa: Its easy to think we planned it out in advance, but in truth thats wrong, the original Ascian lore we had only went as far as “looks like they’re doing bad stuff”.

Oda: Ofcourse, we made use of some lore we came up with earlier too.

Frankly I'm amazed they managed to even finish the damn story, but they did and it came across feeling pretty half-assed to have "the Sound from within the earth" turn into a sentient version of Twitter deciding that humanity is shit and deserves to die.

[Jeeqbit]

Yeah you're giving them waaay too much credit. There was a recent Famitsu interview with Yoshi-P, Ishikawa, and Oda and the translation is on reddit. Ishikawa rewrote the Endwalker ending in late 2019 during the middle of Shadowbringers, "the team didn’t really think about how the story would continue long term" back in Stormblood, and the backstory of the Ascians was only planned in the leadup to ShB. This particular snippet from the interview blows my mind:

Frankly I'm amazed they managed to even finish the damn story, but they did and it came across feeling pretty half-assed to have "the Sound from within the earth" turn into a sentient version of Twitter deciding that humanity is shit and deserves to die.

Whether they only decided to do it later on or not, the amount of accuracy in that 3.2 cutscene shows a vague outline was there all along that was eventually followed. Heavensward even began the idea that Minfilia had gone to the First. Whether or not it was always outlined in storyboard form, they decided to follow the outline that had been created in their previous cutscenes.