Tale of Emet [FF14 x Nier Reincarnation event story]

[EdwinLi]

No, he has not. At least, not in a way that requires us to spend every expansion travelling to a new one and having to start over on worldbuilding every time.

He has suggested it is something we should do at some point. No urgency.

It could just be the writers setting up the option to draw on it much later in the game's lifecycle when we've finished pursuing our current adventure and have exhausted ideas here.

Either way, we are all just guessing at this point since we are in Season 2 Prologue and the very early stages where the focus of the plot is just clean up work for any unfinished Endwalker storylines.

We won't get any confirmation on where Season 2 will focus on MSQ wise until maybe 6.4 or 6.55 like always with each expansion storylines. They can very much never allow us to even touch the remaining shards if they wanted to and have us only exploring the Source only.

[Rulakir]

I don't think we will ever get the fusing with a shard part of WoL again. If anything, it maybe just accepting these fragments of Azem as separate people and let them live their own life.

Frankly, I'm not interested in this at all. The only reason it worked with Ardbert is because we didn't know until near the end of 5.0 and merged shortly thereafter. I want my WoL to be whole not pal around with their fragments.

[EdwinLi]

Frankly, I'm not interested in this at all. The only reason it worked with Ardbert is because we didn't know until near the end of 5.0 and merged shortly thereafter. I want my WoL to be whole not pal around with their fragments.

No matter the choice, not everyone will be happy with SE choice on the storyline. That is just how things are since different people want the story to follow different directions.

Not to mention, I doubt WoL will get to pal around anyways if he/she meet his/her remaining fragments. At best they may meet but we won't know they are a fragment or know on the start due to the Echo, we never meet the fragment until a specific side content, we will never meet the fragment because he/she never crosspath with WoL, or the fragment has already passed on so WoL will never meet the fragment. I think the other part people focus too much on is that WoL must meet all fragments of Azem if they go to each shard when they do not need to do that. They all have their own lives to follow so there is no reason to force this type of plot into WoL's story if WoL does travel to each Shard in Season 2.

Heck, as I said before, SE may never touch the shard in Season 2 if they wanted so we may never meet the remaining fragments of Azem nor learn what life path they have taken. Though since Emet spoiled WoL will eventually go to each shard I won't be surprised the whole exploring the remaining shard becomes more of "leave it to the player's imagination" event for the ending of Season 2 as a way to send of WoL to a unknown journey no one will have stories about due to no one knowing what happened on the Shards in the Source. Part of FF14 plot is that all the current stories (both MSQ and side stories) we go through are actually stories being told by someone either through word of mouth or a book recording WoL's adventures on the Source.

Either way we just have to wait and see where Season 2 takes us Main story wise which probably won't happen until 6.4 or 6.55.

The best way to describe what to prepare for Season 2 plot is just be very open to MSQ going in a direction that is expect while also a direction that is not expect while also expecting it to go the direction not expect.

[Lyth]

The only reason why the rejoining with Ardbert made sense was because he had since given up his body, making him a soul without a host. If there was a fragment of Azem floating around in the 13th, that might be another possibility. But you can't go around randomly killing people just to claim their souls for your own.

[Iscah]

I honestly do not even want to hear another mention of Azem's shards. It would be contrived to keep finding them in every reflection (even if we do have our uncanny sense of attracting important people to us) and absolutely out of the question to go claiming all their souls.

We are not killing them, and having the story produce other guiltless convoluted ways to claim them on a regular basis is an unattractive premise.

[Rulakir]

Highlander rules. There can only be one. :P

It's no secret I hate everything about the sundering, especially having a split soul. I just don't know what purpose going to the other shards would serve, honestly. It would be interesting if we find out at least one of them is already dead having exterminated itself in one of the myriad of ways depicted in Ultima Thule. I doubt it'd happen, but it'd be nice if they addressed the fact that in trying to avoid one potential outcome, the sundering made them susceptible to many others.

Having 4 full planets + the void (and I suppose the possibility of returning to the First) just seems excessive, especially when we haven't fully explored the Source yet. Every one being some version of the First or 13th where for reasons we can only visit a small part of each would be ridiculous too. I'm definitely not interested in shard hopping to save mostly desolate star copies.

[EdwinLi]

Highlander rules. There can only be one. :P

It's no secret I hate everything about the sundering, especially having a split soul. I just don't know what purpose going to the other shards would serve, honestly. It would be interesting if we find out at least one of them is already dead having exterminated itself in one of the myriad of ways depicted in Ultima Thule. I doubt it'd happen, but it'd be nice if they addressed the fact that in trying to avoid one potential outcome, the sundering made them susceptible to many others.

Having 4 full planets + the void (and I suppose the possibility of returning to the First) just seems excessive, especially when we haven't fully explored the Source yet. Every one being some version of the First or 13th where for reasons we can only visit a small part of each would be ridiculous too. I'm definitely not interested in shard hopping to save mostly desolate star copies.

The whole exploring other shards is probably going to be explained in 6.4 to 6.55 or maybe 7.0 since we are still in the early stages of Season 2 storyline.

As I said before, if we have to go to each remaining Shard in Season 2 then it is most likely to stop the new Season 2 Antagonists since their plans on these Shard may lead to catastrophic effects on the source that we are unaware about currently.

The only reason why the rejoining with Ardbert made sense was because he had since given up his body, making him a soul without a host. If there was a fragment of Azem floating around in the 13th, that might be another possibility. But you can't go around randomly killing people just to claim their souls for your own.

I honestly do not even want to hear another mention of Azem's shards. It would be contrived to keep finding them in every reflection (even if we do have our uncanny sense of attracting important people to us) and absolutely out of the question to go claiming all their souls.

We are not killing them, and having the story produce other guiltless convoluted ways to claim them on a regular basis is an unattractive premise.

I honestly, don't get why people are so fixed on "if we go to each remaining shard we must claim the Azem fragments." SE can make a entire expansion storyline involving a Shard as the focus region without even meeting Azem's fragment in MSQ. Maybe do a small cameo for one of them at the end of a expansion story before WoL returns to the Source as a small moment in their life where they see each other but go their separate ways after because their stories are set on different paths that may never cross again. As I said before, there is no need to have the remaining Azem's fragments to play important roles in MSQ since they all have their own life to follow and a life that can be just put as side storylines or remain a complete mystery to follow the idea that while we know WoL's story, we will never know the story of the Azem fragment in that shard because he/she walks a different journey we don't follow. They can appear in side content or once in a while encounters but there is no need to make them MSQ plot relevent and force them to fuse with WoL.

I think people are far too focused on the whole Azem fragment side plot to really think about anything else involving why WoL will go to the remaining Shards MSQ wise at this point since we do not have the plot reason currently to go to each remaining Shard yet when we will obviously get that reason later.

The focus now in MSQ for Season 2 prologue is to finish up unfinished busniess from Endwalker and to establish how WoL will be able to travel to the remaining shards which Y'shtola is currently researching and just started making some kind of progress.

My best guess the reason to go to each remaining shard, beyond just Emet saying so, may appear in 6.4 or 6.55. The whole Zeno's Voidsent plot and 13th shard plot in Season 2 prologue MSQ currently, for me atleast, feels more like a red herring to the actual antagonists of Season 2. That or SE choose to not reveal the Season 2 Antagonist and anything relevent to Season 2 until 7.0 so they can setup 7.0 as the 2.0 of Season 2 so the Season 2 plot remains a clean slate beginning designed to establish our Season 2 goals like 2.0 did with Season 1.

If rumors are true that SE plan to have a "choose where you start" storyline for 7.0 involving players choosing to start their character as lvl 1 in 2.0 MSQ or lvl 90 with a new character, 7.0 may end up with slight dialogue changes based on players who are starting a New character in 7.0 MSQ and a character who reached 7.0 MSQ by going through 2.0 to 6.55. If they go this route then it will be better to have 7.0 focus purely on a new region in the Source to establish the importance of our character to the Season 2 storyline and what threats the Season 2 Antagonists will cause before WoL can start exploring the remaining shards in 8.0 and beyond. Though ideally, I think, that region should be the New World since now with the War with Garlemald over, the countries of Eorzea may dedicate more effort into exploring the unknown regions of the Source and establish exploration teams to these unknown regions.

Dedicating a entire expansion to the New World region may also give them a chance to establish lore areas in the New World we will not go to yet until future expansions. There is also opportunity to establish lore for new jobs based on New World Locations. While going to remaining regions around Eorzea is expect, current story looks like SE establish them to eventually open but mostly as small regions such as Meracydia due to establishling lore in advance most of these regions are too dangerous to explore outside a select amount of regions.

[KageTokage]

I have doubts that we're even going to have a dedicated larger-scale antagonist for the next story arc and instead will run into more incidental antagonists like Thordan whose goals just happen to be troubling the inhabitants of a region we're investigating to isolate the cause of some bigger problem (Which has been foreshadowed in some regards already).

[EdwinLi]

I have doubts that we're even going to have a dedicated larger-scale antagonist for the next story arc and instead will run into more incidental antagonists like Thordan whose goals just happen to be troubling the inhabitants of a region we're investigating to isolate the cause of some bigger problem (Which has been foreshadowed in some regards already).

That was kind of how Season 1 story played out for atleast the eyes of the public that do not know about the Ascians.

Each expansion story only ended up being connected because of Ascians but when you remove the knowledge the Ascians are involved, these stories appear to look like just isolated incidents involving different antagonists the WoL just happen to resolve and end up benefiting WoL's goals in the long run.

Makes me wonder how much of the Ascian being involved are even being told in the stories and books made about WoL's journey to the public. From the side stories so far, most of the stories focus more on the bigger battles without including the Ascians involvment a such as Thordan Ultimate as a example.

[RyuDragnier]

If we're going to do any shard hopping, it will likely be a singular expansion. Think about it. Excluding the 1st, there are 5 shards we would need to go to, 5 REGIONS, when we normally get 6. It would all fit into a single expansion that would probably end the 2nd Season, ending with a final area that would likely either be the Underworld, or some other unnamed area where we deal with one final threat dealing with the "Seven Wedges" plot. Because the wedge dealing with the 1st will likely be done in some manner before we even find out that's what we're doing.