A game for 4 year olds

[Denishia]

I do kind of wonder how they're gonna handle the story of the New World once that comes around.

They was already some shades of colonialism in the BLU quests with the Monetarists trying to exploit the situation with the Whalaqee to their advantage, but I think I'd rather see more of an internal conflict between the existing cultures in that land.

I want to go to the New World so badly, and at the same time my mix of trepidation and excitement for how a Japanese game will fumble on a setting inspired by the Americas is potent… We’ve already had the conflicts and evils of colonialism addressed in the MSQ and general game worldbuilding, everything about Garlemald but also Limsa in particular and Ul’dah, so I know they aren’t going to hit only sour notes. The war bonnet still makes me a little uncomfortable and doesn’t give me a starting place of confidence, but how Rak’tika and Thavnair were handled soothed some of it. A part of me wonders how much the New World inhabitants, if/when we meet them fully, will be modeled on the Ainu instead, as a more familiar and immediate example. But my limited knowledge of the Aztec and Incan Empires is why I’m so curious for the New World, because I’m interested to see if when that setting is fleshed out if either empire is used as a starting point for the replacement antagonist for the Garleans and what would be done to differentiate them from the aggressively expansionist imperial magitek version we’ve known for a decade now (and what would also make them distinct from Eulmore and Golbez). I know I don’t want “defend Limsan colonial outposts funded by the East Aldenard Trading Company” to be the opening arc to an expansion even if I’ve resigned myself to being exactly the setup building in the background. But even if that’s the thread to have to WoL land on the shores of the New World, the open possibility of the hypothetical central plot excites me.

(The very local history precludes me to heavily side-eye claims of cannibalistic natives, so I’m hoping that particular pulp adventure trope doesn’t crop up again. The dangling plot thread of the ziggurat Qiqirn and their counterparts bug me, especially as between the Namazu and the Qitari they will never be touched again outside of lore books.)