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

[Iscah]

MSQ

Well now.

The recommendations to do Eden certainly paid off by the end, but in the first half it felt like they'd forgotten to put in some quest flags. There just needed to be something in there early on to the effect of "Gaia is doing well", like we as her friend would presumably ask, or indeed Ryne would be likely to let us know whether we asked or not. (Gaia does get one passing mention if you talk to Ryne while you're exploring Eulmore, but it still feels off.)

Also, even if Cyella and Unukalhai do have updated dialogue now post-quest, they needed to get it sooner. At very least they needed an extra dialogue update (or the same one sooner) at the point where you go back to the Crystarium to deliver the memoria crystal to Ryne - doubly so if we picked the dialogue option to mention them to Zero, so she's asked us to send word to them - but it's also thoroughly frustrating that earlier you can talk to Cyella and have her remarking she'd like to meet Zero sometime, while Zero is standing just outside in the Exhedra.

Overall though, it definitely feels like we're angling towards a big restoring-the-void sidequest with them in future.

On the rest of the MSQ...

Little visual things, but it bugs me that Nahbdeen is still in full armour when he's clearly off-duty at a banquet.

The dungeon was interesting, but that constant white memory effect over the screen was quite unpleasant to have lasting for two thirds of the dungeon.

I still really want to get Durante's ever-so-pretty hairstyle available for player characters.

I feel like the battle with Durante needed more dramatic music than reusing the one from the past few final dungeon bosses. I don't mind it being reused, it just wasn't the right thing for the moment.

Neat little FFIV callback: Estinien being the one who takes on Barbariccia in the four fiends battle, given that Kain is the one who can break through her defences in the original.

Has the internet datamined the entire appearance of Erenville's mystery visitor yet? I wouldn't be surprised. On the other hand, if I was a game designer and knew full well that people would be digging up the rest of the character's model, I'd be tempted to make something really fake and ridiculous for their not-shown parts.

Edit: Apparently the top half of the model is missing entirely.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...at_the_end_of/

Replies to other comments re. MSQ

Oh yeah, and of course: GAIA! See, we didn't have to make Eden compulsory to have her around and a fun scene contributor!

While I would have to compare notes with other people to be sure, or test it with a character who hasn't finished Eden, I'm fairly sure that scene would end just before Gaia's grand entrance if you haven't done Eden. I checked the quest script on Garland - there's an alternate post-scene comment from Ryne that I assume she says if Gaia isn't there, and Gaia doesn't seem to exist in the main quest script at all, even though she should be listed due to having stand-and-chat dialogue afterwards.

...also, wow, Igeyorhm is pronounced like that?

Hah, I had that pronounced right, more or less, but for me it was "wait, it's Crystahrium not Crystairium?"

Makes sense that it's pronounced like "crystal", I guess, but... hmm.

Was I the only one who thought that the roar we heard in the distance was a tease to Meracydia?

It just seems to me to be an "I'm home" call between all of the First Brood siblings. A nice touch.

I heard there might be some additional bits for the Warring Triad and Eden... though I didn't see anything for the former I'm glad there was something for the latter given what we were dealing with.

I'm not sure that we got any dialogue that would have changed if you only did Warring Triad itself and not the following quests that bring Unukalhai to the Crystarium, but if you've done those then there are a few connections across.

There were at least two dialogue mentions of him by name, one of them voiced, and an extra dialogue choice in the last scene with Zero, plus obliquely with Beq Lugg being indignant about us asking them to extract "another" soul from a spirit vessel - the first having been Unukalhai if you already brought him across.

This story relies too much on homage to make it work, which was an issue with the Omega raid series as well. A good homage doesn't need to be a direct re-enactment. It's more interesting when you introduce a concept and take it in a different direction.

Zero's decision to absorb the light on the first was a good example of that. There's no point keeping it as a last minute 'surprise', as people can instantly identify the Cecil reference from the patch trailer itself.

Not having played any of the things it is referencing, I've never felt like Omega had a problem with its reliance on homages in the fights, because the fights are so disconnected from the plot. The rest of the time, aside of it being clearly an excuse plot to stage a whole lot of disconnected simulation battles of foes they can't easily incorporate into the plot elsewise, the actual plot feels extremely original to FFXIV and does a lot to drive various characters forward.

Meanwhile, although I get that the specific "transforming to paladin" moment for Zero is a Cecil reference, the "reaching out to absorb the Light" thing feels like her own.

On the other hand, Ivalice is far far more dense in its homaging, and particularly the amount of what seems (as a non-player) to be "let us stop and spend a lengthy amount of time explaining the thing you will only appreciate because you know what we are referencing, but is otherwise dry and uninteresting history about characters who have no impact on the plot".

[Golbez's] soul is inside that crystal, so I suppose we could rejoin with it in the future?
Also makes for an interesting parallel between Ardbert and Golbez, both got tricked by Ascians and almost destroyed their respective worlds.

Also, will Azdaja ever recover her original form? Or will she permanently be baby dragon?

I don't want a "collect all our soul shards" plot, but yes, having the memoria crystal stored leaves the door open for it to happen.

I'm not sure that the actual Golbez ever dealt with Igeyorhm or if it was only Durante-as-Golbez later. I may need to rewatch the explanation.


As for Azdaja, I think it's quite possible that she will "eventually" recover her true form in the same way that Midgardsormr will "eventually" wake up from his nap - it will happen, but there's no guarantee that it will happen within the game's lifespan.

On the other hand, chibi-minion-Midgardsormr upgraded to ridable-mount-Midgardsormr within the space of a single expansion, so she might do the same.

The EE provides a slightly different description of events

The question is, where - in universe - does EE get that information? If anywhere solid then it may be coming via Unukalhai's understanding of events, which would not account for the actual, final cause of the Flood being something he was unaware of.

I am a bit surprised that the Doman Shaman uses cnj skills and not geomancy aka ast skills.

Actually the AST questline and Swallow's Compass dungeon both pretty strongly ties geomancers to conjury skills - earth, wind and water being the three key elements for both disciplines. Going from memory, but I'm pretty sure Kyokuho acts as a conjurer in quest battles as well.

Myths of the Realm - I'm only up to waiting to get into the raid, but it's too late at night to get a party together.

To the surprise of nobody, Deryk is Oschon. I know people were commenting previously about Thaliak getting such an odd redesign from other depictions of him, but I wonder if they were trying to make him not look like Oschon? Though really it would make more sense to just switch the designs in that case, have Thaliak look like the statues and Oschon look more like what Deryk was wearing. (Edit to add: and that would also add up better with their corresponding PVP themed outfits – Thaliak's being more revealing and Oschon's almost entirely covered up if you wear the entire outfit. Although his appearance here is at least using the shorts and bow, which I think is more than Thaliak got.)

If you talk to the gods when given the chance, it seems your patron deity will acknowledge you specially. Or Menphina does, at least.

Side note: Island Sanctuary - just hit rank 18

I swear they must be trying to make the nasty little furball as unlikeable as possible. "I don't care what you do, but I suppose I can feign interest," it says. Really? And then it acts like I ought to be grateful to it for... whatever it actually does on the island besides stand there and insult me.

Then again, I'm only (barely) feigning interest in the whole tedious island enterprise, so I suppose the feeling is mutual.

And the cabin "upgrade" is a downgrade. Why is my bed back to being shoved in the corner of the ground floor after finally getting the upstairs to myself (more or less) last time?

Also, I don't understand why their go-to option for making workers "endearing" is to make them lazy and disinterested in their job.

[Lyth]

...

MSQ:

I took the 'reaching out to the crystal' scene to be a direct reference to Mount Ordeals, down to Zero's reflection in the crystal.

These are not bad moments, when taken in isolation, especially if you go in a new direction with them. Namedropping places like Baron and Troia is one thing, because they're just names at the end of the day. But if you have a lot of these transplanted scenes it just feels like the writer is trying to build a story off of a bunch of pre-existing checkpoints.

And it's possible that the EE is just a text by an Eorzean author, and thus fallible (especially if that's the same book that the Loporrits were relying on). I just don't have enough to go on to draw a firm conclusion about Azem's shard on the Thirteenth at this time.

/tenrabbits

[Iscah]

MSQ:

I took the 'reaching out to the crystal' scene to be a direct reference to Mount Ordeals, down to Zero's reflection in the crystal.

It's been a while since I've played FFIV...

All I remember of him transforming was that he pulled a sword from a stone or something? Anyway, it worked fine for Zero in the moment.

[DamianFatale]

Best to spoiler-tag, Damian, we're not even two days out from the patch and four pages into the thread; don't want people to get spoiled before they do all the stuff, and a lot of us are dropping in as we go.

For example: I've hit the alliance raid. And I like most of that story, but unfortunately, the one part that fails is the most important part of it.

So, Euphrosyne's biggest failing was that it was too easy, which makes it hard to buy that we're fighting Big-Deal Ass-Kicking Gods.

But at least I saw Euphrosyne wipe a raid once. This one's even easier. So even though I continued to like everything around the central hook of the story, the raid itself was just massively disappointing.

Outside of the difficulty complaints, I've always thought that the big problem with this Twelve story is that it kinda messes up how the game's treated storytelling about gods, religion and faith. A general view of 'diversity of religion and faith is good and should be encouraged' kinda falls flat when the majority religion is objectively correct. So I liked that, in this final leg, the story actually agreed with me from some direction: that the gods themselves should part, for both their good and ours, but that doing so shouldn't invalidate the faiths that cropped up around them. Not exactly the route I would've taken, but it got to where I needed it to get to.

I do think it's a little weird and disappointing that the only conditional text in the entire story from what I could tell was who your patron deity was, if you're a crafter, and maybe also if you've done the Temple of the Fist (that one I wasn't confident on). This is the Twelve, they're the most connected figures in the world and should be the most rewarding of long-term investment. It would've been cool if Menphina recognized if you were married, if Thaliak and/or Llymlaen acknowledged if you were a fisher, or if Nymeia noticed you've leveled Astrologian.

From a Lore Nerd perspective, the main things of interest come from that roll call of who the Twelve were back in the days of Amaurot:

• Byregot was the reason anything got done in the Bureau of the Architect (thanks for nothing, Hyth).
• Menphina was the one that figured out how to seal Zodiark.
• Of course, we all already knew Althyk and Nymeia.
• It's plausible that at least one of the notes we found in Akadaemia was from Thaliak.
• Turns out Pashtarot was basically the Minister for Justice.
• And really interesting is Rhalgr: by dramatic logic of 'it'd be weird if the two curiously adjacent mentions of the same thing were unrelated', I'm feeling like Rhalgr probably smashed the auracite meteor that Athena found a fragment of.

I think if you read this thread, you're probably already willing to risk being spoiled.

[Cassar]

The EE provides a slightly different description of events:

'In the Thirteenth, Igeyorhm's power proved too much for the inexperienced Bringer of Light and their one-sided battles eventually resulted in a Flood of Darkness consuming the entire world and rendering it a nigh-empty void.' - Encyclopedia Eorzea Vol. 1, p.213

If the description still holds, then it sounds like Igeyorhm simply found a level 1 Azem on the Thirteenth and killed them before they had the chance to gain strength, and then went on to trick their future allies. It could be a slight retcon, though, and perhaps Golbez is that very shard. Hard to tell without them actually commenting further.

That's very interesting, I had no idea the EE ever even mentioned any of this.

I have to imagine this must have been a case of "The encyclopedia was written by in-game scholars and the information wasn't accurate", because according to Durante/Golbez, it was because of him that the void was formed. It would make sense that the scholars wouldn't know this, considering we, the Scions, are probably the first people to ever hear about how the void actually came to be.
But again, the fact that in 6.4 we saw through the eyes of Golbez, and with the captions written in that specific way where there's no text box + the fact that here in 6.5 Durante looked at us and saw Golbez during the memory leaves no room for doubt in my opinion.

I'm not sure that the actual Golbez ever dealt with Igeyorhm or if it was only Durante-as-Golbez later. I may need to rewatch the explanation.

You're right actually, that was my mistake. The Golbez that fucked up was actually Durante, and not the original Golbez/Azem, so nevermind what I said about Azem always messing up.

Now the only thing left that's really bugging me is what I said earlier about how we never went back to Zero's abode in the 13th after the game telling us that "we wouldn't be able to return for a long time" back in 6.2. I was certain that would be the conclusion, and we would get more information about the statue that the game made such a big deal about.

[Iscah]

I think if you read this thread, you're probably already willing to risk being spoiled.

The convention here, for many many patch cycles, is that you blank out your spoilers and label them by storyline, so someone who has completed, say, only MSQ can come and read those parts of the discussion without getting spoiled for Myths of the Realm.

[Palladiamors]

For nostalgia purposes the MSQ was about a 7/10. I would have preferred more lunar subterrane specific encounters and to not have that particular last boss but it was still a nice, warn feeling to see those sights and hear that music updated.

For story purposes though, probably a 5/10. The dialogue here was painful and we just ran down shonen territory again. Everything here was pretty predictable which isn't necessarily a bad thing but it still left me wanting. And personally speaking, I was hoping we'd see something of the legacy heroes. But eh, if they ever do a 13th expansion maybe then.

A mixed bag over all. It was better than anything we got in Endwalker proper but still not as competently written as anything before.

[Austratus]

An interesting thing I saw pointed out about the MSQ:

While someone mentioned earlier about Kain fighting Barbariccia, when the fiends get resummoned, the whole scene is very reminiscient of a similar scene that plays in the opening movie of the FFIV 3DS remake.

EDIT: Mobile issues posted too early.

[Cilia]

Myths of the Realm

Man, they really went all in making Endwalker this setting's Gotterdammerung, huh? Zodiark, the last few Ancients, Hydaelyn, Meteion, and even the Twelve now... all gone... there might still be a few sundered Ascians floating around the reflections, but who knows.

Well, I suppose it was kind of coming, given that theme of the expansion and all the implications the Twelve were pseudo-primals made by Hydaelyn. I'm... not totally sure why Eorzean religion turned out to be the "correct" religion among all others, but here we are.

Anyway, it was nice to learn more about the Twelve both as gods and as people. It was almost like they knew we'd already figured out who the Twelve really were, who the thirteenth "God" was, and that we'd deduced Deryk's true identity.

MSQ Rambling

I'm not totally convinced Dawntrail is going to be the start of the next big arc. As I recall they also said it might just be a filler, and the next expansion will really start it off... which I'm inclined to believe, given all the rift-hopping shenanigans we got up to in 6.x and they said Dawntrail was going to be the "summer vacation" expack.

Well, here's hoping. I'm not expecting it to have any world-shaking matters, for what it's worth.

[Elkanah]

Endwalker (just the main MSQ for the start of the expansion): 7/10 (due to the timing and something I posted on another post awhile back-- I gave this one a high note).
Anything remotely after 6.x started ~ now: 3/10. Disappointment.
Overall: 5.5/10
Definitely would not recommend.