6.4 patch speculation

[Cleretic]

The rest of the body doesn't match up with hers tho.

It matches up enough that I'd be more confident putting forward that something happened to Azdaja, rather than it being a different, possibly fake dragon.

[Eisi]

It matches up enough that I'd be more confident putting forward that something happened to Azdaja, rather than it being a different, possibly fake dragon.

Maybe it's the shadow dragon from the same game Golbez is from? Doesn't need to be the same dragon as Azdaja.

We will fight Golbez, he's gonna summon this shadow dragon, just as an enemy to beat without much story to it other than well he knows what dragons are through Azdaja, second phase is Golbez proper, we beat his ass and then we rescue Azdaja, maybe she has enough power left to live.

Sounds pretty straightforward to me. Don't put more thought into this than the writers.

[Cleretic]

Maybe it's the shadow dragon from the same game Golbez is from? Doesn't need to be the same dragon as Azdaja.

We will fight Golbez, he's gonna summon this shadow dragon, just as an enemy to beat without much story to it other than well he knows what dragons are through Azdaja, second phase is Golbez proper, we beat his ass and then we rescue Azdaja, maybe she has enough power left to live.

Sounds pretty straightforward to me. Don't put more thought into this than the writers.

I think you're grossly underestimating the writers. They don't just do 'here is the reference, now clap'; they recognize the value of said reference, but they do try to weave it into the world itself so that it matters a bit more than that--and crucially, so that it has any storytelling value at all to the people who haven't played the source game.

XIV Golbez absolutely, from a development and marketing perspective, has a shadow dragon because IV Golbez has a shadow dragon. But they very clearly intend it to be deeper than that; dragons are a relatively special thing in XIV, so he can't just have one with no explanation, so they wrote the plot around him having Azdaja to lead into his shadow dragon who, now that we've seen it in part, clearly resembles Azdaja. If the shadow dragon was just going to be a nothing-special second phase gimmick they wouldn't have put it in the art (Golbez is a cool enough design and enough of a hook by himself if all you want is IV nostalgia and 'here's the bad guy'), so the fact that it's in the art means that it's somehow worth teasing and foreshadowing.

But speaking of the art, I can't really get behind SannaR's mention that the body doesn't resemble Azdaja. We just don't see enough of it to be sure on that; the background outside of the dragon, Golbez and the throne is too blurry, so I can't really say 'there should be wings there and there aren't'. All we've really got are the head--which as said, resembles her in the horns and the most curious thing to me is having both eyes--and the hand and part of the body on the other side. The hand's the right shape, the body's the right size, so it's mainly the texture that's wrong there--and I could easily see that being maybe what she looks like without feathers, or in armor, or a void-corruption carapace or something.

[Kranel_San]

I think you're grossly underestimating the writers. They don't just do 'here is the reference, now clap'; they recognize the value of said reference, but they do try to weave it into the world itself so that it matters a bit more than that--and crucially, so that it has any storytelling value at all to the people who haven't played the source game.

Are Omega raid bosses a joke to you?

[Cleretic]

Are Omega raid bosses a joke to you?

No, the Omega raid storyline actually went to decent lengths to legitimize its angle; a lot of those bosses were described as in-universe fiction that Omega misunderstood, while later it blurred the lines into 'actually Omega legitimately might've met Kefka', to seed the idea that actually this might be The Omega. It's very easy to dismiss Omega as blind fanservice, but there's more going on.

No, the joke to me is Gilgamesh. But that's because it's Gilgamesh, he's always a joke.

[SannaR]

It matches up enough that I'd be more confident putting forward that something happened to Azdaja, rather than it being a different, possibly fake dragon.

I disagree. To me that dragon has zero wings and looks 100% like how dragons in IV look like. The whole chonky segmented scales. It also just looks way too skinny. It looks closer to Ran'jit's dragon then what little we have seen of Azdaja. Not saying that something can't happen to her or she can't be transformed in some way.

[Carin-Eri]

It matches up enough that I'd be more confident putting forward that something happened to Azdaja, rather than it being a different, possibly fake dragon.

Agreed.

I have a very hard time believing that it won't be Azdaja. Our whole reason for visiting the 13th was to rescue her. And, to be honest, it'd be pretty rubbish if it were just some random Dragon he had hidden away all this time - why should we care about that? Defeating a last-minute addition Dragon would be completely inconsequential.

The story has, however, highlighted Azdaja's plight. When you consider that

Golbez has been draining her aether over a long period of time (somewhat evidenced by him giving out small portions of it to the archfiends to gain their service). It isn't difficult to believe that she'd be corrupted if he were help himself to whatever aether she has left, which is probably what he'll do as part of whatever plan he has) and he already demonstrated that he has full control over her even without that.

Being forced to fight her, and the consequences of doing so (particularly for poor Vtra), provides a much more solid story point than Golbez producing some random dragon for us to defeat without any lasting consequence.