8.0 speculation

[Cleretic]

I have no real expectations or demands from a raid series (other than 'please don't all unite together to create another postgame full of Ancient glurge, Endwalker was torturous'), but I do hope that the next alliance raid series doesn't go for an 'excuse for cool boss fights' approach.

I'm not against that being the core structure of a story--this game is very capable of cool boss fights and some of my favorite stories are the ones that do that--but I think that only normal raids are actually well-situated for it. Omega and the Arcadion work because every boss has individual leadup and spectacle, letting all of them stand up on their own, including in difficulty; if Dancing Green is your guy, the one that makes the whole thing worthwhile for you, then he gets all the spotlight he needs and is very capable of being The Fight. An alliance raid series being three instances means that everyone is crammed together without much room for stunting on their own unless they're the final boss, and typically tend to lowball their difficulty to the point where the fights don't feel like good spectacles unless they're the final boss and get a couple cutscenes and a custom fight theme; Myths of the Realm showed that as a serious problem, because god damn, I hope your favorite member of the Twelve wasn't Rhalgr or Althyk, who get relegated to the pushover warmup rounds.

I think Vana'diel is nailing it as well as a 'reference-centric' alliance raid can (which it ultimately is, even if I think its story is an actual story outside of them); difficulty-wise everything's got hands enough that every fight gets to show its stuff, and while most fights don't have much leadup... well, it's all stuff from a pre-WoW MMO, if anything that's sort of in keeping with the themes, a lot of the big famous enemies in FFXI are just sorta there. But at the same time, that also shows the constraints of the medium; if the structure can't give every boss fight the attention it deserves, maybe don't sell an alliance raid on all the cool fights it'll have in it.

Other than that: I mean we should all just recognize that our predictions are all based in references to other games because we don't have any meaningful information that lets us guess anything else. If we're getting a Pandaemonium, Arcadion, or even a Shadows of Mhach, we have no capacity to guess that without even knowing for sure which continent the expansion's on. But hey, Chrono Trigger is just as likely now as it ever has been, that's an evergreen guess, if you're the type to find guessing fun, why not shoot that shot today?