Revelations from Patch 6.5: "Growing Light", Part 1

[Fenral]

MSQ

So endeth "Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker: The Movie". No real twists, just a few internal reveals of information that was already presented to the player. No real consequences, either, but who are we kidding? This was never going to be more a stand-alone adventure meant to fill the gap between expansions. Mission accomplished.

Baron level crosses "obligatory Memoria reference" off the list, and also felt more than a little like an FF16 collab dungeon. Wonder if they snuck in some Rosaria assets...

I was actually on the fence about whether or not this incarnation of Golbez would be allowed a shot at redemption, and double surprised that he actually lived!

Zero job-changing (back) to Paladin was on the table from the beginning, but it's funny how the story waited until basically the last relevant second. No "Zero to hero" pun? We got to be Orthodox twinsies, though.

Localization was a little... weird this time around? Some rewrites deliver the same information in slightly different order, as necessitated by Japanese syntax, but a lot of this patch just felt like rewrites for the sake of rewrites. Zero has this big character moment in JP where she actually lists off the names of _all_ the NPCs you took her to meet over the last few patches, but in EN she just names a couple places like it's some great effort or something. Considering who she started off this arc as, I think being able to actually remember names is the bigger character moment. Poor Jullus.

Hell of a soundtrack, though. FF4 Pixel Remaster left holding the collective beers of Soken and the sound team, for sure. Everyone else will be farming weapons, I'll be farming the orchestrion roll.

Good to see (and hear!) Gaia again, after everything. Hopefully now she can just sort of Estinien her way into future Crystarium developments, now that she has one fabulously overdesigned boot in the door already.



Actually pretty rare that we're left without any kind of dour cliffhanger before the expansion hand-off patch. Forget rare, this is basically the first time, isn't it?

And now Krile's lack of urgency sorting through the mail is brought into context: it's old mail. The Students won't be headed to Tural on a request, necessarily, but to figure out what Galuf got up to there, and why it's not on the books. That's already a more interesting hook than we got from fanfest. Given we know she's adopted, could this tie into Krile's past somehow?

Lastly, the smaller one is better. Fite me.

I'll get to Myths when work calms down a bit. I even surprised myself not doing it first...