Quote Originally Posted by Atelier-Bagur View Post
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.
That example isn't a very good one considering they had to backpedal that and retcon the lore in order to fit it in since "Dalmasca" was in the wrong place and invaded at the wrong time according to the lore book, so they had to invent a new city-state of "Nhalmasque" that got confused as being Dalmasca.

Otherwise Ivalice more or less worked because we already had a bad guy empire narrative just like FFXII. FFXI's story is heavily dependent on their own gods and their own ancients. It's one thing to replace the Archadian Empire with the Garlean Empire, but replacing Altana and Promathia with Hydaelyn and Zodiark, and the Zilart with the Ascians feels like a giant disservice to both games.

I don't think they can feasibly fit Vana'diel into Etheirys anyway since there's not exactly a place to shove in three more continents and the aesthetic doesn't exactly fit with the New World. I suppose they could randomly chuck them under the cloud cover over Ilsabard, but I'd rather Ilsabard be more creative than that and there's no evil expanding empire in Vana'diel either. The story just doesn't fit exactly into FFXIV unless you want to overwrite the important parts to justify shoving it in where it doesn't have to belong.