Thematic issues. Why all the sci fi.

[MikkoAkure]

I don’t feel that was the game that was sold to me when I bought it.

ARR's raids had us going into Allagan spaceships and parts of a fallen satellite filled with robots and the 1.0 trailer featured dragons fighting giant airships that were shooting them down with full-on 20th century machine gun fire so the anachronistic levels of technology have been here since before the original iteration of the game even launched. The infamous ARR MSQ dungeons have control rooms with giant computer screens, wrist-mounted radios, electronic jamming, and a fight with a giant robot in a sleek elevator.

The original art director for 1.0 was the same that did FFXII which also has airship dogfights with machine guns alongside knights with bows and chocoback so it's not a surprise. Anachronism has been a key aesthetic of the Final Fantasy series for decades.


I'm also not sure what your OP is about in regards to the three starter cities because most of the whole world is just as medieval as they are. The only contemporary technological societies are the Garleans and the Alexandrians and one of them has only just teleported into our world. Our nations are still adapting to sudden influx of technology from defecting Garlean engineers but we still have airships. Ul'dah has ceruleum derricks and refineries, and Limsa has guns, cannons, and ceruleum-powered pirate ships.

Everyone who isn't the Garleans doesn't need super high-tech to fight them anyway. When the average peasant can augment their strength with aether, let alone adventurers running around flinging fireballs and augmenting arrows to pierce through Garlean chestplates, technological research is going to be slow. Especially in a realm full of city-states that did not even have strong diplomatic ties with each other until 5 years ago. Technological progress requires necessity and communication and the Garleans and the Alexandrians are the real outliers here.

[Ath192]

ARR's raids had us going into Allagan spaceships

Anything Allagan isn't what's being argued against mostly. It is well blended and it feels more like ancient magical tech than star trek. You could tell they thought about how the Allagan technology and derived magitek would fit into the world.

It's the recent introduction of pop culture scifi and minimalism that doesn't blend well into the games aesthetic. When you walked into Azys La it the theme was clearly lost ancient technology and both you as a person and your character were in awe and wonder of what was introduced, likewise it looked much more retro-futuristic.

Now a days you're literally walking into trashy cyberpunk with shien streetwear and if you listen close enough you can probably hear the NPCs hollering at you YO YO YO WASSA HOLMES, YA GOT SOME ECSTACY ON YOU? all while they breakdance and drink fourlokos. I wonder if some people literally can't tell the difference. Like maybe an Allagan orb really is the same aesthetic as a harley davidson chopper or a DJI style drone to them.




I bet were a few patches away from the /reuseneedle emote. Sold separately of course.

[Ath192]

...The hell did I just read.

You read the literal state of the game.



Let me know if you need any further clarification. But if you can't see the connection as to how trashy its becoming then I can't help you.

And likewise my reaction to the game ... The hell is game starting to look like now?

This is what they show you as the game though:
I wonder if you can spot the difference.

[Dorito_Burrito]

You read the literal state of the game.



Let me know if you need any further clarification. But if you can't see the connection as to how trashy its becoming then I can't help you.

And likewise my reaction to the game ... The hell is game starting to look like now?

This is what they show you as the game though:
I wonder if you can spot the difference.

You and that one guy that really hates Sharlayan should team up.

[Ath192]

You and that one guy that really hates Sharlayan should team up.

I don't have a problem with Sharlayan's aesthetics except for the development of a spaceship. It fits just fine.

[MikkoAkure]

Let me know if you need any further clarification. But if you can't see the connection as to how trashy its becoming then I can't help you.

How does this have anything to do with sci-fi?

I agree with a lot of what you say, yet still feel there is a difference.

Maybe it's just the fact that we didn't really "hang out" in Allagan spaceships like we can stand around in Solution Nine. Solution Nine is a city, with "normal people" just walking around living their lives. Allagan technology was "lost to time" but there doesn't seem to be any reason we couldn't import things like the Loporrits technology or Solution Nine tech into Gridania, so what's stopping that from happening storywise? It makes the older areas of the game some even more anachronistic than they already do, like they are frozen at a former point in the story, rather than being part of a living breathing world. However, I wouldn't want them to add lightening towers or bunny radios to Gridania, so that's why I feel apprehensive about the direction of the world setting.

Electrope was rare on the shard it originated from to the point that whole nations fought over it and now there's only one tiny piece of that shard mixed in on the Source and only 1 spot there where they can mine new electrope so it's not going to suddenly take over the world. Plus the technology requires lightning on a large scale. It works for them where lightning is striking all the time and can power it to do everything they need it to, but that won't work very long in say Limsa Lominsa.

Loporrit technology doesn't really provide anything that doesn't already exist on Etheirys. What are you referring to here? Ishgard and even Hingashi have multiple different kinds of robots. Garleans have radios but everyone else has linkshells. The only thing they could provide are carrot machines?


We have already seen Eorzea adopting technology. They're not static. Eorzean airships are still recent and incorporate Garlean technology. They fundamentally changed the whole region to the point where all of the nations have facilities specifically for receiving them and we've seen them steadily get more complex and we can design them and submersibles from a holographic display. Skysteel Manufactory and therefore Machinist have also combined Ishgardian and Garlean technology. Limsan pirates are putting ceruleum engines in their ships. Even in 1.0 Ul'dah had ceruleum derricks in Northern Thanalan.

Eorzea is in a transition period where they're slowly adopting technology engineered by defecting scientists specifically for Eorzean needs. It's going to be a long while and just because they have exposure to it doesn't mean there's going to be bumper-to-bumper car traffic next week just because the Ilsabard Contingent just got back from Garlemald.

[Wasselin]

How does this have anything to do with sci-fi?



Electrope was rare on the shard it originated from to the point that whole nations fought over it and now there's only one tiny piece of that shard mixed in on the Source and only 1 spot there where they can mine new electrope so it's not going to suddenly take over the world. Plus the technology requires lightning on a large scale. It works for them where lightning is striking all the time and can power it to do everything they need it to, but that won't work very long in say Limsa Lominsa.

Loporrit technology doesn't really provide anything that doesn't already exist on Etheirys. What are you referring to here? Ishgard and even Hingashi have multiple different kinds of robots. Garleans have radios but everyone else has linkshells. The only thing they could provide are carrot machines?

What about smiletron? They can mass fabricate machines, living spaces, and they turned the moon into a spaceship.

For the electrope, that is definitely what I assume will be the reason, but we also have a portal to a world filled with electrope. They also made an army and multiple warships out of the stuff so it seems like they have plenty. The raid series has electrope creating entire worlds and sentient beings.

Anyway, for me this is more a vibe based feeling I get when I look at the balance of sci-fi elements on our side. In many Final Fantasy games technology is something that defines the enemy.

[MikkoAkure]

What about smiletron? They can mass fabricate machines, living spaces, and they turned the moon into a spaceship.

For the electrope, that is definitely what I assume will be the reason, but we also have a portal to a world filled with electrope. They also made an army and multiple warships out of the stuff so it seems like they have plenty. The raid series has electrope creating entire worlds and sentient beings.

The whole reason we went to Smiletron was because the Loporrits couldn't control their own machine and we had to get sent in to disable it with violence so I don't think it's exactly ready for mass distribution if that was even a possibility. Besides, like anything with the Loporrits, outside talk radio they only have contact through Sharlayan, who probably isn't about to spread that kind of stuff around the world and would realistically attempt to dissuade them from attempting to do so independently. And unless you think they're only talking to Garlean refugees, the rest of the world already has some way to receive the signals from the loporrits. Whether that was from distributed radios or ones made copying Garlean radios. And that's just a step above desktop orchestrions which have already been a thing.

As for electrope, the only way to currently get it is from under the dome or at the bottom of a gigantic cenote and through a portal into another world. Either way, it's not exactly available for the rest of the world to immediately have access to it even if there were massive stores of it remaining somewhere and they could actually power it. And that guy in the raid already had magic to create copies of people, but he's using bits of electrope to augment his abilities. Not sure how since Sphene said it requires lightning input to make things but I guess we'll find out.

[VeyaAkemi]

Loporrit technology doesn't really provide anything that doesn't already exist on Etheirys. What are you referring to here? Ishgard and even Hingashi have multiple different kinds of robots. Garleans have radios but everyone else has linkshells. The only thing they could provide are carrot machines?

I will go as far as to say that this is exactly the issue that The Dreaming Ways formed to resolve, the Loporrits felt, quite justifiably, useless, made worse by the fact their uselessness was a good thing since it meant not evacuating the planet, and they needed to find new purpose, with Talkingway being the extreme end of the issue before they were able to reach them.