/r/ffxivdiscussion: Has FFXIV had any major retcons or plot holes in the story?

[TheMightyMollusk]

It was always a little unclear what the distinction was between the Echo and the Blessing. They used the two interchangeably for a long time, and we never really met anyone who only had one or the other. Eventually they just sorta quietly decided that they were two names for the same thing and hoped nobody would question it.

[Heroman3003]

Everything related to Ascians, Zodiark, Hydaelyn and general backstory of the world only started gain remotest sense of concrete shape as they were writing Shadowbringers. Until then, they had no idea where they'll be going with that plot arc. So you can safely assume most things that 'dont line up' between what we see from Ascians' meetings and actions prior to 4.x are safely retconned, rather than some dangling plot threads.

Echo and Blessing of Light being interchangable or being not interchangable and separate things flip-flopped practically every expansion.

They also forgot that Black Mask Ascians exist after HW, not quite a retcon but generally a plot point that youd think would get more attention in light of revelations from ShB, but nope.

Gaius surviving was definitely a retcon and not something planned though. They needed a better 'in' for the Garlemald than the tall glasses guy, and with knowledge that Garlemald is ascian puppet out, that paved road to bring him back and give him redemption arc.

[Embran]

There's not really been any major retcons...

I think the scene with the Ascians in question I think there was that one where you had a whole bunch of them standing in some hall... Way more than there should really be...

There have been a LOT of retcons.

That being said, retcons are apart of every story, good and terrible. The best retcons just hide them. I think FFXIV does this well.

I'd say what FFXIV doesn't have a lot of is plot holes and inconsistencies. They do a good job at covering those up. Sometimes the cover-ups are a bit too convenient, but they've at least not forgotten about many things.

Urianger and Y'sthola are the two "ah, you thought this was a retcon, but I will exposit as to why it's not (even though it actually is)" NPCs lol. Which is fine.

[Boblawblah]

I feel like people are confusing "weird plot points that aren't explained" with retconning.

[DiaDeem]

"The biggest one is that in ARR there's this one scene with a bunch of ascians plotting or whatever, and I don't remember the details but that scene makes absolutely no sense considering what we know today of them. It's an issue of the devs having no plans for them at the time beyond "evil bad guys doing spooky stuff".

They had a weird made up gibberish language that never came back.

Also, if you overthink it enough, you can argue Athena casts the second Ultima during the second half of the Porta Decumana fight. Lahabrea makes no mention of re-casting Ultima before or after "leaving the rest" to Gaius, and doesn't even make mention of the potential second cast at all after the fact. Why would he call Gaius "Pathetic" right after failing himself to cast Ultima a second time? Well, because he didn't actually do it, and it certainly wasn't Gaius either. During the first cast, Lahabrea claims that "this is but a test of my god's power" but Zodiark never casts Ultima. The only two characters to ever cast the spell are Lahabrea and Athena. One could argue that "his god" in the context of the Ultima spell was retcon from Zodiark to Athena, as a god is what she wanted to become. Of course there's no way they were planning Athena back then, but it's fun to me to think he was talking about her back then, even if it seems silly at a glance. The whole Heart of Zabik storyline in Pandae has that weird retcon vibe.

I enjoyed it, lol

[Sove92]

They had a weird made up gibberish language that never came back.

It's the same language as the Ancient's, just without the distortion filter. But it's gibberish for both either way.

[TaleraRistain]

There was an interview at one point I think around the one patch where Gaius comes back and someone asked about retcons and Koji responded that they did do them and then did like "hi Gaius" since Gaius was originally dead in Praetorium.

[TheMightyMollusk]

They also forgot that Black Mask Ascians exist after HW, not quite a retcon but generally a plot point that youd think would get more attention in light of revelations from ShB, but nope.

I don't think they were forgotten so much as no longer relevant. They were Lahabrea's pawns for stirring up chaos, and since he was dead, and the other unsundered had their own pawns (the Warriors of Darkness, Garlemald), the Black Masks simply served no purpose. Elidibus reused them in ShB to try to drum up more faith to use for his Warrior of Light form, but by that point even he admitted his plans were shot and he was just throwing everything at the wall to see what would stick. And by that point they're irrelevant enough that the Scions don't even bother making a point to go after them.

Basically they were low-level starter mooks for us to get our feet wet on and that's about it.

[Casti_EL]

Not sure if this one is ever explained (it's been years since I did the ARR/HW storylines) - in the opening cutscene for Gridania (and the first encounter with Yda/Papalymo) we learn that not everyone can see Moogles and you have to be "special" to be able to see them. Yet they are effectively the Eorzean Post-Service so how do other people see them? Is it an ability the Moogles can turn on/off (thus allowing ordinary folk to see them) or do people think the letters arrive by magic? Also, there's a lot of characters that can interact with them later on.

[Enkidoh]

Not sure if this one is ever explained (it's been years since I did the ARR/HW storylines) - in the opening cutscene for Gridania (and the first encounter with Yda/Papalymo) we learn that not everyone can see Moogles and you have to be "special" to be able to see them. Yet they are effectively the Eorzean Post-Service so how do other people see them? Is it an ability the Moogles can turn on/off (thus allowing ordinary folk to see them) or do people think the letters arrive by magic? Also, there's a lot of characters that can interact with them later on.

That was basically rehashing a bit of old 1.0 lore where moogles had semi-legendary status and tended to keep out of sight (and thus most people until after the Calamity might go through their entire lives without ever seeing one.). Apparently this was because in earlier times hunters tended to capture them and sell them to Ul'dahn merchants as pets, thinking they were just another fluffy animal, to mooglekind's chagrin. And yes it's clear moogles simply hide themselves with magic or glamour, similar to the sylphs.

Related to that was the area in the Central Shroud called 'Lifemend Stump'. In 1.0, this was an area where according to Gridanian legend was meant to be associated specifically with the moogles - the story went if you left a broken item there along with 'pearl clover fruit' which apparently moogles liked to eat (presumedly this is a poorly translated kupo nut) at night, and then returned there the next morning, the item would be repaired, and the pearl clover fruit would be gone, hence the name 'Lifemend Stump'. 1.0's Gridanian story proved it was correct with the player's character lying in wait after setting an item there accordingly and eventually spying a moogle appearing there and magically repairing the item for them.

Either way, the Calamity changed things where Kan-E-Senna and the Seedseers directly appealed to the moogles to assist Eorzea with the recovery after the Calamity by establishing and then running the Moogle Delivery Service for communications between the citystates due to the destruction of the original aetheryte and linkshell networks, and hence they started to drop their glamours and become more commonly seen in the world.

Another bit of old 1.0 lore associated with moogles was mooglespeak was apparently unintelligble to the average person - except those with the Echo of course (the fact that the player's character in 1.0 could understand a moogle clearly, especially when one insulted Papalymo in 1.0 Gridania's opening storyline cutscene, was the first sign something very strange was going on). ARR basically ignored mooglespeak's unintelligibility however.