Requiring a permit to cross the bridge was bad writing, change my mind.

[PorxiesRCute]

There was just a giant-ass storm. They couldn't at least say that the bridge was being repaired? No, instead you need a permit to travel between two halves of the nation and it's apparently been this way for a while, judging by this line:

Crossing the bridge to Xak Tural requires a special travel pass. Unfortunately, they won't issue any new permits until the rite of succession is over.

How does that mesh with the worldbuilding of Tural in any way?

[Exmo]

You've said you didn't like it but you haven't really said why. Personally I didn't mind it since it's a common enough thing in these types of games. Tural isn't a single country, it's a continent, so it makes sense that there would be some light border control in some places.

[Anonymoose]

I thought you always have to get special passes to do stuff like crossing bridges and buying bikes in stories where you wander around a continent collecting badges.

[PorxiesRCute]

You've said you didn't like it but you haven't really said why. Personally I didn't mind it since it's a common enough thing in these types of games. Tural isn't a single country, it's a continent, so it makes sense that there would be some light border control in some places.

Tural is a single country, though. That's the whole point of Gulool Ja Ja being Dawnservant.

[Connor]

I mean, realistically isn’t the answer probably ‘to (artificially) gate player’s progress relative to their position in the MSQ’? Most likely they just didn’t think of any lore reason to contextualise the need for a pass. It’s a common enough trope as mentioned above that they probably assumed most players would throw it in the ‘don’t think about it too hard’ pile lol.

[Exmo]

Tural is a single country, though. That's the whole point of Gulool Ja Ja being Dawnservant.

Hardly a definitive authority on the topic but...

Tural (...) known to the people of Eorzea as the New World (新大陸, Shintairiku?), is a continent in Final Fantasy XIV located far to the west of the Three Great Continents, across the ocean of the Indigo Deep.

https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Tural

GJJ's legendary feat is about uniting the peoples of Tural, but it's comparable to something like the EU more than the USA.

It's a little off topic but I'd say the whole thing with Heritage Found is more like the USA, where a monoculture develops which subsumes local cultures, tribes and traditions, effectively merging and eroding them over time through various social and material pressures (in DT, the time jump of 30 years serves as a device to convey that much).

[PorxiesRCute]

I mean, realistically isn’t the answer probably ‘to (artificially) gate player’s progress relative to their position in the MSQ’? Most likely they just didn’t think of any lore reason to contextualise the need for a pass. It’s a common enough trope as mentioned above that they probably assumed most players would throw it in the ‘don’t think about it too hard’ pile lol.

Yeah, obviously, but this is the Lore forum, not the Doylist Explanations forum.

(I'm actually pretty tired having where I can go be gated by story progression tbh. The expansion that was supposed to be about a new adventure in a new land could have broken that tradition and let us wander around and explore. But that's a different complaint.)

[Supersnow845]

Hardly a definitive authority on the topic but...

https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Tural

GJJ's legendary feat is about uniting the peoples of Tural, but it's comparable to something like the EU more than the USA.

It's a little off topic but I'd say the whole thing with Heritage Found is more like the USA, where a monoculture develops which subsumes local cultures, tribes and traditions, effectively merging and eroding them over time through various social and material pressures (in DT, the time jump of 30 years serves as a device to convey that much).

The new world and tural aren’t exactly the same thing

Tural effectively encompasses the new world but its grip on outer territories is not rock solid. But shaaloni and yaasoulani definitely are integral pieces of tural

So the whole “bridge permit” is basically like “no you can’t go see the other half of your country until we deal with the succession contest. Even if you take it more like an EU it’s not like Italy blocks itself off from the common area when the new pope has to be picked

[Cleretic]

Dawntrail already had one convenient big storm that shaped progression through the MSQ, and I spent half the expansion convinced it was setup for an antagonist, rather than just 'a conceit for why they split Kozuma'uka'. If there was an entirely unrelated second storm that also blocked access to Xak Tural, I'd be actively speculating even now about the existence of a malevolent storm god that we're gonna have to fight in a climactic finale. Also, just looking at the structure and length of the bridge between Turals, if that thing gets broken by a storm, it is out for years at least, and that would call for an extremely different story.

It's absolutely fine for us to get walled by bureaucracy instead. Hell, it's already happened to us; the gap between Shadowbringers and Endwalker was justified as 'the Scions need to line up the paperwork for transport to Sharlayan'. It's honestly one of the perfect ways to temporarily wall us off from a place; you can flex your Big Important Hero Muscles all you want, it doesn't make government paperwork process any faster, especially in a new place that you aren't really recognized in.


...Also, it's kinda important to say, the main reason we didn't go to Xak Tural wasn't needing a permit. That's why we couldn't, but we had a pretty big, important reason why we wouldn't: the big event with all the people asking us for help is on the south side of the bridge. Even if the bridge was totally open and free to check out, we wouldn't have gone over it, because there wasn't any pressing reason to. The bridge being closed to us just stops us as players from ignoring the MSQ to walk into a higher-level zone full of setpieces that aren't relevant to us yet.

EDIT: Also also, it'd actually feel considerably more convoluted if we couldn't cross for a reason like a storm, because we would've been cleared to cross at the same time anyway. The situation the game puts forward is way better: 'you can't get a permit to cross until Situation X is resolved' leads naturally into 'Situation X is resolved, you're clear to go'. It'd feel so much more contrived and artificial for them to go 'Situation X is going on, but you can't cross because of Unrelated Situation Y', and then both Situations X and Y by sheer coincidence are resolved approximately ten minutes apart.

[PorxiesRCute]

Cleretic, I feel like you pulled "a second unrelated storm" out of nowhere. Why would you assume that's what I meant by "There was just a giant-ass storm. They couldn't at least say that the bridge was being repaired?" and not, say, "Make it another consequence of the same storm"?

It's absolutely fine for us to get walled by bureaucracy instead.

Yes, sure. As long as the bureaucracy has a good reason to exist!

Even if the bridge was totally open and free to check out, we wouldn't have gone over it, because there wasn't any pressing reason to. The bridge being closed to us just stops us as players from ignoring the MSQ to walk into a higher-level zone full of setpieces that aren't relevant to us yet.

It's called "exploring an open world". You remember A Realm Reborn, when you could go anywhere? I have fond memories of darting through the higher-level mobs in the North Shroud to get to the Fallgourd aetheryte, of trekking through Coerthas to get to Mor Dhona at level 20 so I could cash in bathing suit vouchers, of wandering into places I absolutely shouldn't have been and getting one-shotted -- and it was fun.