Rewritten MSQ - Garlemald and EW

[Rymi64]

“Killing magic,” in my view, is when the major magical forces or entities of a game are eliminated by the story’s end. Depending on the game, the protagonist may or may not lose their powers and abilities as a result, but more often that not it comes along with not only that but also the disappearance of creatures like Espers/Aeons too. I feel that this quite literally saps the magic out of a game world, especially if it’s an MMORPG that is meant to continue onward. I think that eliminating both Hydaelyn and Zodiark without any entities to “inherit their will” was a poor choice that led to the Void being pushed on us so rapidly, instead of taking the time to ground Season’s 2 story with a Heavensward-type expansion. It also eliminates the possibility of using religion as an intriguing plotline in the MSQ, because we already know that the entities who were in charge are no more so there’s no mystery to that.

With two new entities slowly building up their strength over time, the WoL/Adventurer would be free to spend an expansion or two resolving local conflicts in a given region. Heavensward is the most brought up example of this because it is a lot more concise and less spread out in scope compared to Stormblood or Shadowbringers. People have expressed wanting to see places like former Imperial territories, Meracydia, etc. but there are also people who are understandably concerned that we’ll be shipped off to the Void as early as 7.0. A comparison is often drawn between that possibility and WoW because of that game’s trend in sending the player character into more and more alternate worlds and realities/dimensions, culminating in way too much cosmic-level storytelling to make any sense.

With the death of Hydaelyn and Zodiark we literally lose nothing. We still have the travelers ward, people will still summon primals in desperate times, nothing really changes with their death other than the remaining ascians can do whatever they want to do but thats more from the death of the unsundered. The void wasn't really pushed on us rapidly since we've been dealing with it and it's denizens for years on the back burner in every expansion. We've only had 1 patch and we dont know if we're going to go into the void or somewhere else, could be we deal with the void by 6.5 (as side content or msq) or could be we completely go in 7.0 but one patch is not enough to even make such a guess. You can still use religion as a plot point since you don't have to narrow it down to just hydaelyn or zodiark. I wouldn't even consider hydaelyn central to any religion since she's not really worshiped, the twelve are but not her.

We don't need to have two new entities that are on the scale of H&Z to take their place to just go adventuring and its better not to since if you need a new overarching villain you can just make them fit anywhere in the world and be in the background and can stop using them at anytime without going to the same scale as endwalker. Shadowbringers isn't that spread out in scope compared to HW and ARR since its basically the arr map anyways, SB and EW are the most spread out expansions we have unless they're saying SHB is spread out because its on the first instead of the source which in that case still doesn't make it spread out. And unlike WoW the ff14 writing team is actually good at what they do.

[MikkoAkure]

Thing is, was it a pre zenos or post zenos lore guy? This is an important question.

Don't even know what this question means.

The lore people have been the same since mid-1.0 and are still on the production team.

It'd be pretty bizarre for Garlemald to be declared a 'bad country' for having few women in positions of power if the various matriarchal societies in game are not also declared as such.

It's not that they don't have many women in positions of highest political power, it's that they can't.

There have been male leaders of the Eorzean city-states before, they're not "matriarchal societies". That implies that only women can be in positions of power and that's not true. The only matriarchal societies I can think of are the Sahagin and the Ixal. What are you thinking of?

[Theodric]

It's not that they don't have many women in positions of highest political power, it's that they can't.

There have been male leaders of the Eorzean city-states before, they're not "matriarchal societies". That implies that only women can be in positions of power and that's not true. The only matriarchal societies I can think of are the Sahagin and the Ixal. What are you thinking of?

The Hrothgar are a prominent example when it comes to one of their clans. There's an all female tribe of Xaela as well, though equally there's an all male tribe to balance it out. Then there's the setup of Viera society where the men are made to fend for themselves in the wilds and only return when it's time to breed.

None of this bothers me. It makes for interesting flavour! Though if the writers are indeed attempting to portray Garlemald doing something similar as uniquely bad or worse then I would question how much attention they pay to their own world building.

Not that Endwalker itself was not already making me do as much, of course...

Either way, if it's not too much trouble a link to the source interview would be deeply appreciated!

[Foxowl]

I do have one or two clarifying questions to OP— namely about this Grand Duchess Svetlana you’ve created.

Is Svetlana Garlean? And more specifically a member of the Galvus family? Because I’m pretty sure every Garlean other than Cid (and Midas which is a Greek name) have Latin/Roman names. Svetlana is a Russian name, and while certain aesthetics of the Empire are Russian, wouldn’t it make more sense for her to have a Roman name, especially if she’s a member of the royal family.

[MikkoAkure]

The Hrothgar are a prominent example when it comes to one of their clans. There's an all female tribe of Xaela as well, though equally there's an all male tribe to balance it out. Then there's the setup of Viera society where the men are made to fend for themselves in the wilds and only return when it's time to breed.

None of this bothers me. It makes for interesting flavour! Though if the writers are indeed attempting to portray Garlemald doing something similar as uniquely bad or worse then I would question how much attention they pay to their own world building.

Not that Endwalker itself was not already making me do as much, of course...

Either way, if it's not too much trouble a link to the source interview would be deeply appreciated!

Ah, my bias against Hrothgar and Viera seems to have blocked that part of my brain. To be fair to the Hrothgar, only one of their clans revered the queen and that government was said to have been super corrupt and bad for the majority. Viera are just copy-pasted in from another FF universe and were just created as an excuse to have a single gender race of hot bunny girls.

I had tried to find that interview before I posted, but it was likely almost a decade ago and the closest I can find on a quick google search at work takes me to interviews where Koji says he's going to talk about it later. I don't know if anyone knows of a repository of Koji interviews?


Speaking of copy-paste from other FF Universes, Landis would have been a better use of another country in Ilsabard other than Rozzaria. We already have the names of several cities in Landis, which already makes it bigger than most countries in the game by virtue of having more than 1 city. We also have characters who were from there and with how much it was talked about in Bozja, it seemed to have been the preeminent power in Ilsabard before the Garleans took it over. One of it's cities, according to Bwagi's field notes, seemed to be happy or at least normal and at peace under Garlean rule. The problem with it in regards to the OP's story though is that it was a republic.

[Theodric]

Yeah, no worries. I think some sites have made room for new stuff by getting rid of older interviews since there's a few I remember reading that I haven't been able to find despite knowing exactly what phrase to put into a search engine in order to get them to appear. I set out to bookmark some for a while but there's honestly so many that it became too much work. Especially when accounting for different language variants.

[anhaato]

>Literally eradicates 7 and 90% of shards civilization to rejoin the Source

>OMG Emet Daddy never did anything wrong!!

So there's this little activity called reading, it's typically recommended before you respond to a written post. No matter which course of action he chose it was going to be bad.

I swear if the good option is by letting all Ancients sacrificed to Zodiark for a world like The Dead Ends's 3rd world, I'll leave any lore discussion in this forum because how dumb the Venat haters here.

Personally, and this is just me, just my honest opinion, I think the best option is preventing the sacrifices happening in the first place by telling the truth. Try calling me dumb after you've actually read my post, I know it might be hard for you but I promise it's possible.

[Rulakir]

I feel some people are forgetting the whole "time aspect" when judging Venats actions.

I haven't forgotten, I think it's a terrible justification. "She had to commit genocide because time travel!" No, absolutely not. She's not going to be spared judgement due to a plot contrivance that, IMO, not only ruined EW but retroactively the rest of the game.

Personally, and this is my own taste, I would've removed timetravel entirely and have had instead use our Echo to peer into the past to find out all of this. Also, having the sundered Ascians show up to help us out -- I wouldn't blame you if you forgot about them, it seems like the writers did too. Venat, I think, works plenty well as a 'villain with good intentions' in the game as is without the narrative propping her up, but her motivations could've been elaborated on instead of being a weird confused mess of a generic 'she loves you!' support blob.

This is essentially my critique too. The only issue with Venat is the game doesn't address her as the ideologue she is. Frankly, all things could remain the same if Hydaelyn tempered. EW actually makes a lot of sense if that's the case. Otherwise, you'd just need to have the characters act accordingly, especially as Venat embodies ideologies the Scions have fought against and condemned in the past. Conversely, you could lean into them being hypocrites and have it be called out that they don't have an issue with villainous actions when they benefit from them. It'd be nice to see the moral paragon Scions knocked down a peg or two and be forced to reflect upon their own cherished values.

[Lauront]

Nice work. I think I would've enjoyed an expansion like this far more, especially as it deals with the matter of Garlemald's future, and as you probably know from other threads, I tend to share your views on the matter of what I'd prefer its successor regime to be and the approach to its provinces, with some staying, others leaving, and so on. I also liked the way Corvos becomes their version of a Costa del Sol, and the comparison to Insomnia for the Inner Capitol. This has far less pointless fluff and is more focused on the story elements I'd be interested in seeing.

I also enjoyed how you handled the Elpis parts, and shifted around the role Venat played by swapping this and through involving more of the ancients who were more or less relegated to side characters by EW, if that. Historia Crux also sounds like it'd be a fun time and I like your resolution for explaining the three unsundered far better. The Lunar Subterrain, with Zodiark projecting images of their forlorn civilisation is exactly what I'd hoped for in the past. I am also glad you included the souls inside Zodiark rebelling against Zenos as this is something I had wanted to see out of the Zodiark fight we actually got.

If there is one thing I'd like to have seen it would be Venat involving herself with some being like Lavos or Jenova (or in XIV terms, related to the High Seraph) - something eager to devour or end their star, capable of approaching her, whispering to her and perhaps acting as the catalyst for her behavioural changes and inducing her ideological predisposition. Maybe something like IV: The After Years's Creator, which instilled in her notions as to how things in the world must evolve in order to avoid the fates of other worlds, so working a bit with the theme of the Dead Ends but without trying to cast it as inevitable. You could tie into this the Echo powers of a seeress, where she has visions of possible futures, which this entity is capable of tapping into and manipulating, and layer on acting as the primal's heart as further warping her and committing her to her path, which is where I thought they were headed with the whole 'heart' thing. This sort of entity I mentioned could then set up a future antagonist/storyline, later on exploring the cosmic destruction it unleashed on multiple worlds but on a slower, more organic scale, and later in the story arc.

I'd echo Skyborne's point on the sundered Ascians, and I'd also liked to have seen both divinities preserved in some fashion in the being into which Meteion will form, and not just Hydaelyn, as a being incorporating both light and darkness, which could perhaps have been a lesson drawn from these thousands of years of experience and modified into the concept with the sanction and blessing of what remained of the Convocation and those ancients liberated from Zodiark.

All in all, well done.

“Killing magic,” in my view, is when the major magical forces or entities of a game are eliminated by the story’s end. Depending on the game, the protagonist may or may not lose their powers and abilities as a result, but more often that not it comes along with not only that but also the disappearance of creatures like Espers/Aeons too. I feel that this quite literally saps the magic out of a game world, especially if it’s an MMORPG that is meant to continue onward.

Yes, I agree heartily on this front and on the logic you provided for not doing that.

[aveyond-dreams]

With the death of Hydaelyn and Zodiark we literally lose nothing. We still have the travelers ward, people will still summon primals in desperate times, nothing really changes with their death other than the remaining ascians can do whatever they want to do but thats more from the death of the unsundered. The void wasn't really pushed on us rapidly since we've been dealing with it and it's denizens for years on the back burner in every expansion. We've only had 1 patch and we dont know if we're going to go into the void or somewhere else, could be we deal with the void by 6.5 (as side content or msq) or could be we completely go in 7.0 but one patch is not enough to even make such a guess. You can still use religion as a plot point since you don't have to narrow it down to just hydaelyn or zodiark. I wouldn't even consider hydaelyn central to any religion since she's not really worshiped, the twelve are but not her.

We don't need to have two new entities that are on the scale of H&Z to take their place to just go adventuring and its better not to since if you need a new overarching villain you can just make them fit anywhere in the world and be in the background and can stop using them at anytime without going to the same scale as endwalker. Shadowbringers isn't that spread out in scope compared to HW and ARR since its basically the arr map anyways, SB and EW are the most spread out expansions we have unless they're saying SHB is spread out because its on the first instead of the source which in that case still doesn't make it spread out. And unlike WoW the ff14 writing team is actually good at what they do.

I think we’ll just have to agree to disagree on this one, I fundamentally do not like the idea of a fantasy world left bereft of the forces that once dominated it. I do not think using religion as a plot point moving forward is worth the player’s time because at this point the player is aware of most in-game mysteries – except for whatever is going on with the Twelve.

All I know is that despite a large number of logically sound voices calling for a grounded, fresh new start to Season 2, this was not accomplished in patch 6.1. I have very little confidence in an arc that begins in the Void or worse yet with the scions – whose status as untouchable comfort characters is actively hindering how emotionally involved they can make this story.

The hard pivot away from the more mature style of writing this game enjoyed prior to Endwalker is something that I significantly struggle with. To repeat what I have expressed in other threads, it wasn’t slice of life and fluff that’s sold me this game and got me to fall in love with it long term, it was a combination of gameplay factors and more effective and cohesive storytelling. Endwalker at times felt more like a Persona game than a Final Fantasy game, and not even FFVIII with its Garden schools felt as bad as some of what I endured in Endwalker’s story.

I will address other comments in my next post to mark the start of a new page.