Revelations from Dawntrail (7.0)

[SannaR]

What exactly is happening with the actual Soul portion that they're using to raise themselves. are they destroying the souls or what?!?

Then there was what looked like the ass pull of them just so happening to create a treaty between Radz at Han and Tural? All because of Alphinaud and Estinien...

I'm not going to even get started on that "azem" Key Mcguffin... no... just no...

I just really don't know what the writers where thinking when they wrote this....

I've been playing this game since 1.0 Closed Beta... and having to repeatedly start in Limsa in beta didn't even make me hate this game this much. I get that a story can start out slow. Even then a story can be slow but still have hooks in it. This one had absolutely none and quite frankly I'm really starting to wonder if i should even keep my sub.


One more Edit:

I forgot to mention... Krile got shafted HARD in this expansion especially after they said that she would be more of a focus on it. Like i said in another thread... Damn near ever time she dared to asked about her grandfather she was rebuffed with a "we can't talk about it" .... like seriously i'd rather be drip fed and had little parts of the story told as we went along... no we get an echo scene that was narrated and not even a true echo with what happened. The show don't tell is completely lacking in this story.

I enjoyed Wuk Lamat and could see her progression, but the other two people we were meant to care about got so little screen time.

Even tho seeing Vrtra being a badass was my favorite part the how it came to be did feel a wait when the fudge did that happen? As I said in my own post I'm not even sure why Estinien was even in the story the rare times we even saw him. And so far it doesn't feel as tho that one interview that said Krile and Thancred were going to have screen time was correct. Or maybe it's our faults of hyping it up somehow. Though I don't remember there being a whole lot of enthusiasm after that interview came out. I'm glad that I'm not the only one who is going what in the name of the Twelve is going on with the regulators. As even after reading how the 1st two steps are supposed to work while on explorer mode going through the lv99 dungeon I'm going but why tho. I also feel the we don't use souls begotten from beasts rule they state was being followed. Not if the lady Erenville's mother bade us to visit so we could understand the regulators better made it come off as going beast mode was sort of normal for her and others in her line of work. The story to me was fine and I get this is meant to be a restart point. Yet it felt like it was a rough draft. I wanted to feel more than I did when the story got to the emotional beats, but they felt more akin to when a toddler falls down and scrapes their knees. Vs what the story wanted to convey.

[Fenral]

Regarding the character customisations

I haven't done a direct comparison on heights, but the hairstyle Shepetto uses is the same style (and same face) I use for my character Zi'aba and it is very fluffed up around the back of the head, and I've thought before that it makes his head look bigger than it actually is. It works well for shorter characters since they just end up smaller overall, so making the head look bigger balances them out a bit.

I need to play around with it, but I suspect the actual customisation they've done is just removing the thick eyeliner that has been added to face 3 during the character redesigns, which on the standard faces (and G'raha) is covering up that they've moved changed the shape of the eyelid a lot. At one point while discussing the character changes at the benchmark stage I had experimentally photoshopped a version of Zi'aba with the eyeliner erased back to skin colour, and it ended up looking not unlike Shepetto's face.

I'm generally not happy with the alterations to male Miqo'te faces – not just my own two characters but a lot of NPCs just have an off look about them.

And this is the part where I have to settle for sending my condolences, because W'fharl looks absolutely gorgeous post update, even in standard environmental lighting. I guess in my particular case, the obvious differences result in something closer to what I wanted than I could pull off with the original spec (especially with the eyes), and in some cases fixed things I considered to be outright errors in the original meshes. The most I changed was adding a little color to the lips since it blends more naturally now, and using a flesh-tone eyeshadow to adjust the permanent guyliner. I have faith that you can find something that works.

But back to the less off-topic topic:

Face 1 Eye 6 is the largest mancat eyes can go (over Face 3, surprisingly, as compared in the benchmark 2 editor) and even a side-by-side comparison shows Shepetto has some ginormous peepers. I think he might actually be using a female Miqo'te face (they're noticeably wider) but with the texture of male face 3 (including eyelashes), since the update standardized the UVs. Not the most important Lore topic, to be sure, but I think it narrowly slides in under sekai settei (世界設定).

[EdwinLi]

7.0 talk about Sphene and her kingdom......

This is a rather interesting things they decided for this expansion. Choosing to have these aspect for 7.0 about being a What if Zidane never existed to save the world in FF9.

Sphene being a reflection of what Garnet could have become because she never met Zidane and the fate of her home being what could have happened because Zidane never existed in FF9. Resulting in the final boss for this expansion basically being a Evil version of Garnet that had long since lost her hope and consumed by desperation. A desperation that Garnet never gave into because Zidane was there for her in FF9.

The only thing left because Zidane never existed are just memories and the Warrior of light must finally turned off the lights for this dream about what could have been.

think about this, I wonder if the expansions from now may focus on showing What If scenario about specific Final Fantasy games being mostly showing us the result of a What If Bad ending just because a certain character never existed to perform the feats they did in their FF game that lead to their world being saved.

[Cleretic]

7.0 talk about Sphene and her kingdom......

This is a rather interesting things they decided for this expansion. Choosing to have these aspect for 7.0 about being a What if Zidane never existed to save the world in FF9.

Sphene being a reflection of what Garnet could have become because she never met Zidane and the fate of her home being what could have happened because Zidane never existed in FF9. Resulting in the final boss for this expansion basically being a Evil version of Garnet that had long since lost her hope and consumed by desperation. A desperation that Garnet never gave into because Zidane was there for her in FF9.

The only thing left because Zidane never existed are just memories and the Warrior of light must finally turned off the lights for this dream about what could have been.

think about this, I wonder if the expansions from now may focus on showing What If scenario about specific Final Fantasy games being mostly showing us the result of a What If Bad ending just because a certain character never existed to perform the feats they did in their FF game that lead to their world being saved.

While I broadly agree that this could be a neat angle (if potentially one that oculd get very stale), I actually disagree with what you think the angle for 7.0 is.

I don't think Alexandria is 'what if Zidane never existed in FFIX', because I think there is a Zidane. It's just that they have a few Kuja traits.

Let's boil down what Zidane was supposed to be in FFIX's story outside of character: he's a non-human fighter from another world, that was sent to Gaia with the intention of world domination and eventual consumption. Who, depending on the weapon equipped, either dual-wields shortswords/daggers or one double-bladed sword.

We have that character; it's just that he arrived himself rather than getting sent there, and arrived as an adult rather than a child. We have a Zidane: he's just a lizard-person rather than a cat-person.

[Lyth]

Expys in FFXIV generally get to keep their names. Even Ramza did, despite having a significantly different personality.

Sphene is so off-base from Garnet that they made a deliberate point of assigning her a different gemstone and even changed her retainer's name. I think you're in for a massive stretch if you want to find a parallel for Zidane.

I think the Alexandria reference is just about as meaningful as Daichi Hiroi's frivolous namedrops of other beloved Final Fantasy entries.

[Chasingstars]

Expys in FFXIV generally get to keep their names. Even Ramza did, despite having a significantly different personality.

Sphene is so off-base from Garnet that they made a deliberate point of assigning her a different gemstone and even changed her retainer's name. I think you're in for a massive stretch if you want to find a parallel for Zidane.

I think the Alexandria reference is just about as meaningful as Daichi Hiroi's frivolous namedrops of other beloved Final Fantasy entries.

Zidane = WoL but he is a blonde catboy viper. After all we already got his clothes from years ago as an outfit to glamour with.

Its also just part of the nature of this mmo. Not everything is together at the same time.

[Chasingstars]

Just an observation for two of the zones

Living Memory and Solution 9. There is a staggering amount of Duskwight npcs you can see. It may not seem that important, but considering this is a group that barely features much at all in content aside from ARR, it certainly feels relevant.

[Denishia]

Just an observation for two of the zones

Living Memory and Solution 9. There is a staggering amount of Duskwight npcs you can see. It may not seem that important, but considering this is a group that barely features much at all in content aside from ARR, it certainly feels relevant.

I noticed that as well! It was a nice touch.

[Cilia]

There are a lot of parallels in IX to stuff from Dawntrail, though it's often recontextualized to make it feel fresher and less predictable.

Wuk Lamat is the best of both Zidane and Garnet - Zidane's ever-optimistic attitude and willingness to help anyone for its own sake mixed with Garnet's sheltered royal upbringing and devotion to her people.

Zoraal Ja mixes Kuja's methods, Brahne's goals, and Amarant's personality. Post-Rite of Succession he empowers himself by gorging on souls and transforming with their power a la Trance Kuja, and hides feelings of inferiority (believing Gulool Ja Ja favored Koana and Wuk Lamat over him) behind a gigantic ego; his lust for war and conquest brings to mind Brahne's own ambitions of conquest; and his taciturn attitude and trust only in his own power are evocative of pre-character development Amarant. His weapon(s) of choice are ironically the same as Zidane's.

Ser Otis Velona is transparently inspired by Adalbert Steiner, Captain of the Pluto Knights from IX. Gulool Ja takes some cues from Vivi, being unusually erudite for his age and being a good friend with Otis (mirroring Vivi being the only person Steiner gets along with early in the game, and Steiner's protectiveness towards Vivi).

Sphene is Garnet recast into IX Garland's role. Both are artificial people created to preserve and restore long-dead civilizations, parasitizing other worlds in a futile attempt to stop the inevitable. Archeo Alexandria (found in the southwestern area of Heritage Found) looks strikingly like a ruined version of the same city from IX; when you run through it recreated during the Storm Surge in the final MSQ dungeon it looks even more like it did back in that game. It's important to remember that the Sphene we (quote unquote) interact with in Dawntrail isn't actually the original article, but a modified, memory-based construct created solely to love and protect the citizens of Alexandria. IX Garland serves much the same purpose for Terra.

Solution Nine is named after one of Zidane's Trance-only Dyne attacks. The fortunetelling building you warp in front of at the Neon Stein aetheryte features neon images of Yans (both the hostile ones and the friendly one) on its facade; these were the most powerful non-boss enemies in IX, with the friendly one being the final step to making Ozma more manageable.

The popcorn buckets in Living Memory are styled after the Gimme Cat, a fake friendly monster from IX. A Milalla (Lalafell / Dwarf) in Living Memory mentions his greeting of "Lally-ho!," his home of Conde Petie being destroyed in the Storm Surge, and Conde Petie being near the Iifa Tree (which the Aero Terminal is styled after); all of this is taken from IX, though the dwarves' greeting in IX was mistranslated as "Rally-ho!" and Conde Petie was destroyed when the Iifa Tree began to run wild after Disc 3. The Cleyra Museum of Nature references Cleyra, Burmecia's sister city built in a giant tree and protected by a sandstorm (until Beatrix stops the sandstorm and it gets nuked by a Brahne-summoned Odin). Asyle Volcane and the arena inside of it likely references Mount Gulug, which has something similar (where Kuja tries to extract Eiko's eidolons and you fight Meltigemini).

The final boss of Ihuykatumu, Apollyon, is a dead ringer for the Abaddon enemies from IX's rendition of Castle Pandemonium.

Tuliyollal being attacked almost immediately after Wuk Lamat (and Koana, I guess) are made the new Dawnservants references Kuja's attack on Alexandria the night after Garnet's coronation.

Lindblum, Alexandria's neighbor that set off the Storm Surge, has a counterpart in IX. The airship the real Sphene was riding when it was struck by lightning that implicitly killed her is patterned after Lindblum's air taxis in IX, albeit somewhat more high-tech.

That's just off the top of my head.

[Alleluia]

I was just rewatching the credits scenes and realized

There is a sunrise in Living Memory when we're done, and I've just realized this implies that there is NOT constant lightning on the 9th (or w/e) shard. So... that again makes me question the dome's purpose when they were on the home shard and reinforces my theory they were keeping the lightning *in*, at least at this point in history. The shard as a whole doesn't even seem to be experiencing a Flood of Light(ning), anymore.

Which has interesting implications. Perhaps other societies besides Alexandria survived. Do the Alexandrians know this? The talk of "You come from beyond the barrier" implies they thought passing it couldn't be done, but its never really specified if they mean "done in the last 3 decades" or "done ever". Did Sphene keep them in the barrier by making it impenetrable and telling them there was nothing beyond? If so, was this an intentional lie to "protect" them, or did she just not know either?

Can we just mosey outside the city limits of the 12th floor of Everkeep and see this new landscape for ourselves? Maybe that is the upcoming exploration zone?(!) So many questions, now.