Echoes of Vana'diel FFXI Alliance Raid

[Atelier-Bagur]

The problem I have with this approach is the fact that Iroha being sent here by Altana across dimensions and Shantotto coming on her own have already been established. It would be so weird having a version of Vana’diel like we have a version of Ivalice since we already had characters cross over from the original.

I also don’t see how our version of Ivalice isn’t jarring considering the timeline is backwards and they made a husband and wife as twins. FFXI revolves around Altana, Promathia, and their own version of Ancients and either having Vana’diel be a shard or pieces of it just randomly placed on empty sections of the map will mean entire parts of its story just aren’t possible anymore since they can’t exist in a world with Hydaelyn.

If they feel the need to do a Vana’diel raid, I’d rather it be the proper one than a knock-off since that’s the only way to do it justice. IIRC, one of the ideas behind Tanaka’s vision of 1.0 was for the two worlds to be loosely connected to each other anyway.

The reason its not jarring is because Dalmasca and the Zodiac Braves story was already established in ARR. The Imperial officer that greeted Nero in his first appearance claimed to be from Dalmasca in non-English versions (he says he's from Othard in our version) and the Zodiac Braves were used as the basis for the ARR relic weapons. Also they managed to establish the locations into Etheirys properly unlike Nier where theres no rhyme nor explanation for all the locales that we explore in those raids in Norvrandt. It doesnt matter if they altered parts of FFXII's Ivalice's history. What matters is if the lore is integrated into FFXIV world, just like how they've been doing it with 90% of this game's plot and world. It "feels" right.

Also the event quests have been all non-canon anyway, so we dont know if Iroha wandering in our world, or Shantotto warping to Etheirys is supposed to be in canon. Also there's already have been established connections of FFXI's lore into FFXIV that goes with the alt.Vana'diel take, such as the minions of Elvaan and Mithra explaining that they're potential ancestor races of the Elezen and Miqo'te and the Mhachi Black Mage Shatotto from the BLM questline (which is heavily implied to be FFXIV's version of Shantotto), or Raubahn and the Immortal Flames,Tenzen and Alzadaal's Legacy, etc etc etc They've been doing this so far with it.

Honestly, Im not gonna care too much if they connect the actual Vana'diel with Etheirys somehow (I kinda hope its not some lazy shard nonsense), as long as they do a better job at integrating it than how they tried with Nier, I'll be satisfied. I hope some of the FFXI writers are brought in for the raid story.