Revelations from Patch 6.4: The Dark Throne

[Kesey]

I think if Ryne, and by extension Gaia, reenter the story, then they will just alter the text. If you completed Eden then Ryne will be like remember my friend Gaia. And if you haven't finished Eden, Ryne will be like I need to introduce you to my friend Gaia.

Any other changes will just be text based on completion of Eden. And whatever they plan for Ryne and Gaia to do in the future will just happen how they want regardless.

[Lyth]

There was mention in an Endwalker interview that Gaia still had a role to play in the story in the future. I'll be interested in seeing how they work around her (re)introduction, though.

One issue is that Ryne first meets Gaia as the Voidwalker on board Eden. So if you haven't fought Voidwalker yet, then the two can't have met. So if you haven't completed Eden yet, the place that you would likely need to meet Gaia is her home city of Eulmore prior to departing for Eden, as per what you learn of her origins in 'Away with the Faerie'. In which case, she could be introduced as a Eulmore citizen who happens to have a penchant for Void Magic for some mysterious reason. If you've completed Eden, then perhaps she's just visiting her home, and Ryne could simply guide you there instead. There's lots of potential room for references to completed quests, both from Eden and from the Shadowbringers Role Quests.

It's always possible that they could just make Eden mandatory, but I think it's better that they do that gradually with a bit of advance notice.

[Raikai]

I think if Ryne, and by extension Gaia, reenter the story, then they will just alter the text. If you completed Eden then Ryne will be like remember my friend Gaia. And if you haven't finished Eden, Ryne will be like I need to introduce you to my friend Gaia.

Any other changes will just be text based on completion of Eden. And whatever they plan for Ryne and Gaia to do in the future will just happen how they want regardless.

That could be... but how it would impact continuity if someone decides to do Eden after they get to this MSQ point?

Just saying because this kind of detail, based on other examples, is not something that they tend to just handwave.

Honestly, I don't mind making Eden mandatory given its significante to the plot. They could make a way to create Duty Support for it - Ryne, Gaia, Thancred, Urianger and maybe mercenaries from Amh Araeng to fill the other slots, since this is also a device they use for other Duties.

[Rosenstrauch]

That could be... but how it would impact continuity if someone decides to do Eden after they get to this MSQ point?

Well, let's check to see how they handled Urianger and Thancred returning to the Source at the end of 5.3, then remaining on the Source from 5.4 all the way to 6.4, aside from those two moments where they were on the Moon or at the edge of the universe respectively.

They didn't rewrite Eden's Gate and Eden's Verse to accommodate their complete and total removal from the First? Outrage! Plot hole! How could the developers expect anyone to understand a collection of dozens of stories where events don't happen in the order I personally experience them?

But seriously: the answer is "It wouldn't". Meeting Gaia for the second time "before" you meet her for the first time will, at worst, cause a thread or two to pop up where someone innocently asks what's the deal with that. They'll get their answer: Eden happens during Shadowbringers, not Endwalker or the next expansion or the one after that, and so on.

[Yuella]

It's the same way they handled level 50 CUL quest with Nanamo being "dead" after 2.55. They'll just have Gate and Verse to happen before 5.3 even if you do it after 5.3

[Cleretic]

I feel like the most obvious thing here will be that Ryne turns up to help out solo regardless of what we're doing, but with copious amounts of bonus dialog if you've already done Eden. Maybe a bonus epilogue sidequest for Gaia to come say hi, too. Maybe they get to join Cylva, Unukalhai and the rest.

They're not going to make Eden mandatory, because making the Crystal Tower mandatory was grossly unpopular; remember that we're all speculating from the perspective of the people who did them voluntarily, but a change to make them mandatory doesn't affect us, it affects the people who suddenly have a whole new storyline getting in the way of their MSQ progress. The Crystal Tower was only done because the story beyond that point literally couldn't function without its additions, most prominently G'raha. (And probably Amon, Xande and the World of Darkness; it's hard to tell which of those was the 'real' motivator since they all became pretty important.) Eden would probably be even more unpopular, because at least the Crystal Tower raids were only three instances of sleepwalk-level difficulty: Eden would be twelve raids (and their associated queue times), several of which I genuinely think might be the hardest non-Coils normal raids.

'What if they just add Gaia by breaking canon and just having her there for the MSQ' hits basically the same problem from a different direction. Again, we want her to come say hi because we already like her and think she could contribute, but she is nobody to those people who didn't do Eden. To force her in like that would be bending the game's storytelling rules to near-breaking for the sake of providing fanservice to people who literally cannot be fans of the character.

By the way: the proper comparison for using Gaia like this isn't Thancred and Urianger in Eden, where they were MSQ-important before and after and just happened to be around for that one questline: it's Alisaie, who predominantly existed as a Coils character before becoming a prominent main-cast character in 3.x. So if they were to bring Gaia in, we'd be looking at a situation similar to that, since again, we're not taking the G'raha route. But the reason Alisaie could do that is the exact reason that Gaia can't: because Alisaie was already a known active figure in the world whose general status wasn't greatly altered by the sidestory she was in. Alisaie before Coils is largely the same person as Alisaie after Coils, so you don't need Coils to understand why we care about her. Meanwhile, Gaia before the events of Eden is none of the things that actually make anyone care about Gaia; in fact, she's not even on a base level available, because she's off in that suit of armor as the Voidwalker before Eden.

So, yeah. Sorry to burst everyone's bubbles, but no, Gaia's not becoming MSQ-essential by any route. That doesn't mean she's completely gone from all stories; in fact they can theoretically have her be conditionally present in 6.5 cutscenes if they wanted to, using the same tech they used for when all those sidequest people turned up to help with the Ragnarok (I think that was the first time we'd seen characters be conditionally physically present, rather than just conditionalized lines of dialog). But they're not going to have Gaia be a required element of the MSQ; that would either require them to make an extremely unpopular decision regarding compulsory content, or break their own baseline rules of continuity.

[Iscah]

There's also no reason to assume that just because Gaia still has a role to play, she has to play that role in the MSQ.

I've been saying for some time now, my bet is on a continuing side story that rolls in the Virtue Hunters/Warring Triad merger with Eden (and perhaps even Zero once her MSQ role is over). Most significantly, Cylva and Unukalhai are already making mention of Ryne and Gaia's project restoring the Empty and suggesting that they might make contact, and the so-called "Void Quests" barely did enough to warrant their own title.

Multi-threaded sidequests are becoming a thing, and they seem to be angling for one here.

[Iscah]

Also, the general thing with Thancred and Urianger being able to show up in Eden post-5.3 but Gaia not being able to show up in MSQ pre-Eden-completion, all comes back to what quests and characters you are familiar with.

If you have reached post-5.3 MSQ, you understand that there was a previous point in time where Thancred was exploring the Empty with Ryne, and can say "okay, this story is set during that previous chapter".

If Gaia just shows up without you having played Eden, you can't do the reverse. You don't have insight into the content of a questline you haven't played and which greatly alters Gaia's relationships, personality and circumstances.

[Heroman3003]

I honestly wish they'd just make all 'major side story' content like raids and trial series mandatory to proceed into next expansion, on par with crystal tower. That would open a lot more room for bringing in plot threads fromt that content without these worries, while also making the content itself more alive.

[Cleretic]

I honestly wish they'd just make all 'major side story' content like raids and trial series mandatory to proceed into next expansion, on par with crystal tower. That would open a lot more room for bringing in plot threads fromt that content without these worries, while also making the content itself more alive.

Again: you think that because you already did all of those things voluntarily, so to you this is not a big ask. This would be poison to the greater community and long-term growth of the game, because a whole lot of people don't do those things for actual reasons, they don't want to be forced to.

Think about what your response would be to the game gating the next expansion behind Feast of Famine. Think about that as the barrier, rather than content you already did so you don't think it's a barrier.

...Actually probably a bad example, I can tell Heroman's already done that quest, but looking at his achievements there's very little he hasn't done except for a weird smattering of jobs I can't find pattern to. But my point is 'you think this isn't a barrier because it wasn't to you personally, so substitute it with something you actually don't want to do'.