On Her Existence [6.4 Raid Story Spoilers]

[Kaliesto]

If I had to hazard a guess they're probably gonna take a cue from FFIV - The After Years at some point in the future since all other Threat-Level Villains has proven not capable of matching the WoL at this point.

So its likely maybe the Ivalice Raids are going to be required like how they turned Crystal Tower into a requirement.

I suspect its going to be a cosmic-threat villain this time involving the auracite, so maybe a mix of FFVII, FFIV- After Years & Tactics rolled into one.

[Zero-ELEC]

If Ultima was present in the World Unsundered, then shards of her might still exist in other reflections of the Source.

[Brinne]

Alternate theory which may need fine-tuning... what if Athena is Ultima?

Her stated aim is to become a god and ascend to a higher plane of existence. IIRC Ultima was also described as coming from another plane.

What if the memory of Athena in the Heart of Sabik is just a copy of the original, who succeeded and slipped away from the world entirely?

[beats fists enthusiastically upon a table] More Athena content! More Athena content! More Athena content! Give her five more vocal tracks!

[Cleretic]

So its likely maybe the Ivalice Raids are going to be required like how they turned Crystal Tower into a requirement.

I actually suspect these days that they only pretended to make the Crystal Tower raids a requirement because of G'raha. That was a very visible reason to make it required, so we could all look at it and go 'oh yeah that makes sense', but the secret real reason was that it lets them use everything else the Crystal Tower raids introduced: Xande, Amon, the Fourth Calamity, and both the lore and events around the World of Darkness.

Basically, Endwalker needed the Crystal Tower raids for every single reason except G'raha Tia, so they used G'raha Tia to throw us off the scent.

I don't think they'll make the Ivalice raids required, because the only thing that'd give us here is Ultima, and they don't even need Ultima to tell a story about auracite coming from space; we know they don't, they just did it.


(Also, while we're generally immune to it by way of having already done these stories a lot of years before, making the Crystal Tower mandatory was actually a broadly hated choice to most of the playerbase, especially the new players that suddenly had even more stuff asked of them before reaching Heavensward. Ivalice would make the same barrier for Shadowbringers, and god knows how bad things will get when the most popular expansion is gated behind fairly disliked alliance raids.)

[Lunaxia]

I actually suspect these days that they only pretended...

Ye gods, don't give me another reason to resent Endwalker!

...but it is a fairly logical conclusion, admittedly. As many admirers as he's managed to find, I always found G'raha a very strange choice for the role of the Exarch. He doesn't really match the type of character I've come to associate with Ishikawa, and that theory actually provides a decent explanation for his sudden inclusion.

But they've developed such a habit recently of grabbing whatever loose ends they can and haphazardly tying them together to make a contentious fit into previous parts of the story that I could also see them casting an eye over past content and going, "well, we've already locked in the CT as mandatory content for ShB, so why don't we make further use of it?"

It's a bit frustrating regardless, and I don't find these retcons as charming or satisfying as other parts of the fanbase seem to. It just makes me want to hit them over the head with a newspaper and go "would it kill you to hire some writers to oversee the story in the long-term?!"

[Denishia]

Far more likely if the reason is needed to make the Ivalice Raids mandatory would solely be because full expansion zones are being placed in Southern Ilsabard and where we can handwave the Schrodinger's Cat of liberated or not and familiar with the WoL (and the player expected to already recognize the introduced regions/groups) for one country that dominates the politics and geography of the region but not two. Dialogue flags could be toggled for having completed Bojza or not. It would come down to if they needed to use Dalmasca if they want to use Southern Ilsabard as a setting or if they can handwave a large enough landmass that only Hien needs to interact with them. Then again, Estinien entered the MSQ with the ARR time bubble handwave, as awkward as it was, so the same could be done for Ashe and Fran. Gabranth, however, would never become main MSQ because Bojza won't be mandatory, which removes him and his legion as potential villains. Ivalice as a raid isn't needed to explain auracite of probable extraterrestrial origin that instead of white auracite using Moenbryda's recipe.

[Lunaxia]

Far more likely if the reason is needed to make the Ivalice Raids mandatory would solely be because full expansion zones are being placed in Southern Ilsabard and where we can handwave the Schrodinger's Cat of liberated or not and familiar with the WoL.

And possibly because expecting players to run ST and WoD more than they already have on a daily basis is starting to come dangerously close to violating the Geneva Convention's stipulations on mental torture.

[Iscah]

...but it is a fairly logical conclusion, admittedly. As many admirers as he's managed to find, I always found G'raha a very strange choice for the role of the Exarch. He doesn't really match the type of character I've come to associate with Ishikawa, and that theory actually provides a decent explanation for his sudden inclusion.

Ishikawa wrote the Crystal Tower series. FFIII references aside, he's her character.

Plus, he's the only character who is in the position to end up where he was.

It's possible that the decision to make CT mandatory was undertaken for more factors than just letting G'raha into the Scions, but that doesn't mean the decision was made far back enough to influence him being brought back into the story as the Exarch in the first place.

Maybe plans to reference Amon and the World of Darkness led to bringing back young G'raha as a side effect. Maybe it was the other way around. Or maybe they just had this generally growing pile of cool ideas that couldn't be implemented because it hinged on familiarity with CT, so they decided to cut the knot and just make the story required.

However, I think it relatively unlikely that they did it just because Amon is relevant to Endwalker. Relevance is not enough, or Omega should have been mandatory as well. The criterion is whether the events of the prerequisite story must happen first to make the other story's situation possible, and our encounter with a cloned Amon in Syrcus Tower has no direct bearing on our dealings with the real Amon in Endwalker.

Compare the placement they chose for the "road block" forcing completion of CT. New players have to do it before Heavensward, of course, but if you were past that point already when completion became mandatory, you hit that requirement not at the end of Stormblood (where it would familiarise you with G'raha Tia before you meet the Exarch) but between 5.2 and 5.3, just in time to ensure that G'raha is locked inside the tower before it's time to get him out again.

[Lunaxia]

Ishikawa wrote the Crystal Tower series. FFIII references aside, he's her character.

Ah, really? ...so he is (thanks, Google.) I remembered reading her writing credits and being surprised at how often she was behind the stories I enjoyed the most, so I suppose I scarcely bothered to notice the one I didn't, lol. Pretty ironic, though! But apparently she was also responsible for rejigging a large chunk of the EW story right towards the end, so... perhaps not, in hindsight.

I don't know if he necessarily was the only character to end up in that position; I mean, if you're talking the mechanics of using the Crystal Tower and whatnot, sure, but going off what Ishikawa said in an interview he wasn't automatically chosen because they were using the CT in the first place, but that they decided to use that entire part of the story with him in it to play the role of steward in the First (which was vaguely floating around in my memory, and after double checking I didn't dream it I now realise also answers the query of Amon/ Xande coming first, oops.)

[Yuella]

You are not required to run alliance roulette on a daily basis. If you're burned out then just don't run it for several days.