All the Final Fantasy references, but there's no soul

[Theodric]

Where were the 'high stakes' in the MSQ's? The main cast walked away from the second coming of the apocalypse bragging about not having any lasting scars and the only people to endure any lasting consequences were the antagonists and throwaway NPC's created specifically to die in the moment. Even World of Warcraft, for all its questionable storytelling at times, usually has a major character or two perish to showcase a threat being an actual threat.

Anima was likely going to be a major part of an expansion focused on Garlemald until the development team decided to - by their own admission - end the major plot threads in 6.0 rather than 7.0.

[UkcsAlias]

I'd be fine with golbez being a side dungeon boss, this isn't FFIV, it's FFXIV.

For me it actualy doesnt realy matter as unlike ff10, im not realy attached to that character. But even for its displayed style, he is supposed to get a somewhat iconic fight. But I would prefer an instanced fight in that case. Instanced fights can still feature similar mechanics to trials, and be made a lot more cutscene-style. While it still actualy wont be as iconic as a trial, the cutscene part can make it a lot more dramatic in effect. But most important: it leaves space to have an actual normal (non disgracefull) boss fight, and enables an actual trial to exist.

But in most cases with enemies like that, they change form anyway, or at least trigger the actual fight its about. And if its a dungeon just before the trial, placing them at the end is generaly better.

I think the main reason why not all fights are made as a trial is because that also means they need to make an expert version, and because those have a lot of mechanics involved in them, might be a bit too much to remember. Dungeons are safe on that part.

Also Anima's origin in FFX was for it to be a twisted aeon based on the corpse of Seymour's mother. FFXIV used this as a parralel to how Zenos used his own father's corpse to fashion a powerful primal in leu of the aeon's origins in FFX, which I thought was clever.

That reference was indeed a good one. And to repeat, he had a good build up to go before the fight. They realy did pay attention to details there, but for the fight itself it is just thrown away. I mentioned livia (in a later post) for that reason as well. Livia had a lot of story going on (which as ARR might have been a while ago, you might not remember), but since its a dungeon boss, it will always feel weak. And that basicly never changes. Anima is going to suffer that same fate if it never gets that trial... its just a weak boss.

[SannaR]

Lets take the ff10 aeons, as they are supposed to all be iconic fighters.

Ifrit, Shiva, Bahamut: These all had iconic fights in their own events. They are surely weak for their fights these days, or savage level. But each fight is dedicated on its own to show true strength.
Ixion: Sadly a niche fight, but when when able to do it, its just as iconic as a trial.
Valefor: only seen the name as side enemy, to which i wasnt even able to realy see them overlap with ff10. But i think they chose the ff3 reference here (which is acceptable!)
Magus sisters: It was side content. Story wise they would never show up. And at least 1 aspect was clearly visible: individual fighting and group fighting. Could have been nice trial material though, but dungeon made equal sense)
Yojimbo: represented several times in several ways. has completely altered lore compared to ffx. But as all identifying aspects are there, and repeated a lot. Its well excecuted: and has his own trial!
Anima: Massive role in the story, massive build up for its fight, but a forgettable fight.

Note that anima in ffx is more represented than the other aeons in cutscenes, had a massive build up and iconic fight there. It was a major bossfight on its own even though in that fight was still actualy just a side character. This representation just demands more.
And in ffxiv, it had an even bigger build up, is at a level of similar fights (primal, which are usualy trials), is supposed to easily destroy nearly all of them... yet gets dumped in a completely forgettable fight.

That isnt fan service, its insulting. Just imagine now if golbez becomes a dungeon boss... Its not going to be satisfying. We can already predict that easily. Yet thats exactly what happened to anima. Even if anima is revived as a trial... it unlikely will feel equal to other trials. As some of the iconic moves were already used in a weak way. It would be fan service to do that though, but only as recovery. Thats how bad anima was handled. The entire lore of anima in ffxiv is meaningless because there was no trial.

Ifrit is optional except for at the end of the game. Same with Shiva. Bahamut is probably the only one out of the three that's a hard fight as you'll get a game over and probably need to use an earlier save file if you hadn't been leveling up your Aeons. Same with Ixion as you can ignore or at least used to be able to ignore Belgrmine. The Magus sisters are dungeon bosses more so due to them having first appeared in IV. In X they were an easter egg. To me I think players did more over hyping of Anima than the devs did. People thought and expected a 1:1 and sure having them as just be an end of dungeon Boss felt strange and a little off I'm not sure how you'd make it be a trial with how the story we got flowed/worked. It still worked fine for the oh man that is a very despicable and disgusting act to do to one's parent. We already know Golbez isn't a dungeon boss though.

[TowaIsBestGirl]

I wonder if perhaps people are expecting a little too much from the references, to be perfectly honest. But to be fair to them, a fair few times have the devs done their seeming utmost to set up expectations that they failed to live up to. The Anima trial being the most egregious example.

Where were the 'high stakes' in the MSQ's? The main cast walked away from the second coming of the apocalypse bragging about not having any lasting scars and the only people to endure any lasting consequences were the antagonists and throwaway NPC's created specifically to die in the moment. Even World of Warcraft, for all its questionable storytelling at times, usually has a major character or two perish to showcase a threat being an actual threat.

Anima was likely going to be a major part of an expansion focused on Garlemald until the development team decided to - by their own admission - end the major plot threads in 6.0 rather than 7.0.

I remember when the Highlord fell into the pot of Greed. Good times. Legion was fun.

[TaleraRistain]

Just imagine now if golbez becomes a dungeon boss

Irony here being this one would actually fit the original story if you know the deal with Golbez.

[Korbei]

The Final Fantasy references are literally part of the lore of XIV. It's the back story for the entire series. All these recurring characters, locations and themes all originate from The Source. Cid appears in so many Final Fantasy games because he exists in The Source. The summoned monsters exist in so many Final Fantasy games because they exist in The Source. The Final Fantasy Jobs or their analogs exist in previous games because they exist in The Source. Every Final Fantasy game before XIV exists in one of the reflections and they're all shards of the same origin. They all contain the same material.

So while all these references seem superficial on the surface of Final Fantasy XIV, the implications are deep and expand backwards through the rest of the series. Not all of these threads are fully fleshed out. Some of them give the player some space to fill in the blanks for themselves and I've found that to be quite compelling.

[Jkap_Goat]

I love FFX and it means a lot to me, my best friend who is no longer here, loved FFX and that game is one of the best FF games imo, I see FFXIV as an orgy of all FF games, notthing more


and Ystola doing the Sending from FFX was an insult to me, that bland garbage character ( who keeps dying) doesn't deserve that right to do the sending

[Jkap_Goat]

To be fair, I hate Ystola. I hate her character and I hate her attitude, and the way she thinks she the shit, and just always ALWAYS around the WoL, and her fake deaths. She's a really bad character who acts like she has no flaws like..


I hate everything about her, she's worst than Lightning

[SannaR]

I love FFX and it means a lot to me, my best friend who is no longer here, loved FFX and that game is one of the best FF games imo, I see FFXIV as an orgy of all FF games, notthing more


and Ystola doing the Sending from FFX was an insult to me, that bland garbage character ( who keeps dying) doesn't deserve that right to do the sending

When did Y'shtola do anything close to the sending? I think you're confusing her with Kan-E-Sena. Also Gridania pulls a lot from Spira. The Adders Salute is the same as the motion for the prayer everyone uses in X. There's a few other nods when the game isn't also reminding you that Gridania is Windrust from XI.

[Avoidy]

I wish ff10 references amounted to more than some dungeon bosses and a bunch of merch.
when they showed anima in a trailer, I got so hyped. Was sure he'd be a trial, maybe even a raidboss. If there'd been an anima savage with ff10 themed glams, it would've been the first time I felt compelled to join a static. But instead it was a dungeon boss that died in like 4 minutes.