8.0 speculation

[Mansion]

Were they loose threads from the void story in 6.1 to 6.5 ? I don't remember anything unresolved, but I have a bad memory.

A thing to note in the french version of the special site :

"Returned from the levin-wracked lands of the Ninth, the Warrior of Light and their companions resume investigations into the key. Yet as they begin to unravel its mysteries, an ally's unsettling message threatens to draw their attention elsewhere..."

"Après avoir vécu moult péripéties dans le neuvième reflet, nos héros sont rentrés de Tréno le cœur satisfait. Mais la "clef qui relie les mondes" n'a pas encore dévoilé tous ses mystères, et alors que l'enquête progresse enfin, une alliée bien connue vient apporter une nouvelle inquiétante..."

"an ally" is feminine in French. and there is a mention of "well known" that does not appear in English.

[Zero-ELEC]

Were they loose threads from the void story in 6.1 to 6.5 ? I don't remember anything unresolved, but I have a bad memory.

A thing to note in the french version of the special site :


"an ally" is feminine in French. and there is a mention of "well known" that does not appear in English.

Given they go to the moon, I'm guessing Livingway? The German version also uses the feminine form of friend.

[Mixawaves]

Yeah, that's WHY they wouldn't do it for Eden. Crystal Tower being made mandatory was ridiculously unpopular, and Crystal Tower is maybe the single easiest side-content ask you can make; it's just three instances and they're all such cakewalks that you're more likely to die to someone getting bored and deciding to wipe the team for fun than actual difficulty.

Meanwhile, with twelve instances and fights that really don't hold back, Eden is plausibly the hardest ask you could make. (The Arcadion might be harder, but I think that's got one or two really hard fights while Eden's just reliably heavy hitters.) And all for what? Fanservice for a character those people only might have heard of if they play an entirely unrelated game?

The developers of this game are not that stupid. That would genuinely damage the game.

Going to play Devil's Advocate for a second. To my knowledge, 7.5 is going to complete the team's work on going back and adding Duty Support to all of the old dungeons. They could very easily expand this system out to some older 8-man content as the next goal, now that the dungeons are all caught up. We already have some modern 8-man story trials that allow for Duty Support within the last two expansions. It would not be impossible for them to make an older storyline like Eden a required part of the story while mitigating the group anxiety or difficulty issues with Duty Support. Eden being a raid and a step up from the existing support trials might require some more balancing work, but it's easily something they could do. And some level of this integration for old content does seem like a logical next step in their stated goal of making as much of the story of the game accessible to solo players. Actually, now that I've typed this all out, I expect it to happen on some level, perhaps targeting older, existing story trials first.

In spite of all that, I don't see them ever actually making a side story a required stop for MSQ progression again. But if they did want to, the above would mitigate the main issues CT had.

(And FWIW, I'd personally rather they choose the Weapons line and integrate Gaius with the main cast over Eden/Gaia)

[Cilia]

Were they loose threads from the void story in 6.1 to 6.5 ? I don't remember anything unresolved, but I have a bad memory.

To my memory no, other than the fact we didn't really do anything short-term to actually improve the state of the Void (Thirteenth). We defeated Zeromus and turned it into a Memoria Crystal, then planted it out in the Empty on the First under the supposition that doing so would hasten the aetheric rebalancing out there (beyond the immediate area around Eden) and restore life to the land. Golbez (Durante) started on the path to atonement and promised along with Zero to find another way to restore the Thirteenth to life, which may just happen on it's own over time if the First's Light imbalance corrects itself thanks to our actions. Zero bade us farewell until next time and that was that.

So yeah, we resolved the IV adaptation but not much else in the short term.

A thing to note in the french version of the special site :


"an ally" is feminine in French. and there is a mention of "well known" that does not appear in English.

Given they go to the moon, I'm guessing Livingway? The German version also uses the feminine form of friend.

English is an unusually gender-neutral language, so that slipping through the cracks is only to be expected.

Zero doesn't have a way to contact us, and the Moon is featuring so I figured it was Livingway. Either that or a distress call from Alisae out in Garlemald, which fits the "well known" qualifier even better.

[Cleretic]

English is an unusually gender-neutral language, so that slipping through the cracks is only to be expected.

Zero doesn't have a way to contact us, and the Moon is featuring so I figured it was Livingway. Either that or a distress call from Alisae out in Garlemald, which fits the "well known" qualifier even better.

And incidentally the only other relevant language that's even more gender neutral is Japanese, where all gendered pronouns are implied. Which might be relevant here, but might not. It's just a neat fact that's useful to know with Japanese media!

I wouldn't consider this all too worth digging into, though. It's not like the game has a dearth of relevant female characters, even if they're only given about 30% of the game's lines; this ally being a woman effectively tells us nothing, because there's not really any group or region where the person giving us the call would HAVE to be a man. In fact, there's a few where the opposite is true; if the call is indeed from the moon, then it would only be Livingway.

Going to play Devil's Advocate for a second. To my knowledge, 7.5 is going to complete the team's work on going back and adding Duty Support to all of the old dungeons. They could very easily expand this system out to some older 8-man content as the next goal, now that the dungeons are all caught up.

I don't actually think duty support would help with the pain points of a mandatory raid series. Sure, it means shorter queue times and a guaranteed crowd if that part of the game is dead, but I don't think either of those are the real, present-day issue. Raids just immediately seem like they're hard, and Eden's certainly got the mechanics to confirm that assumption. (I still see Eden Titan wipe teams.)

Duty support doesn't make content any easier. In fact, anecdotally I think it's actually harder, because the fight resets if you die. If you happen to be the one that sucks at a fight, duty support's gonna make it worse, not better. (And that's leaving aside the possibility that the AI sucks at that fight, which is entirely plausible and has ruined at least one dungeon for me.)

[StriderShinryu]

As I said, if they are not going to make Eden manditory but still make Gaia important for main storyline later as a Main Character, they can stick to the system they have now and adjust dialogue based on if players finish Eden Raid or not OR they add a Recap system that allows players to get a simple summary of all important parts of Eden Raid story without needing to do it so that the Main storyline will always assume Eden raid was done by the Player and players can choose to play Eden Raid or not just to get the direct experience with what happened beyond the short recap.

They do not need to make Eden Raid required if they decide to make Gaia a main character for this new Main Story arc since they won't need to reference Eden Raid often during and after the base X.0 expansion Main Story unless it is for important lore topics involving the Main story. Just fill in the gaps with dialogue referencing what happened IF WoL never got involved in the side content as they always do.

That's largely been my take on this problem as well. They don't actually NEED to make the content involving Gaia (or Unukalhai including all of the ShB role quests) required at all. They actually don't even need to create alternate dialogue trees based on what content the player has done. They just need to use the Unending Codex that we already have. Have one version of the relevant character page give a basic overview of who the character or what the context is (and maybe where to "find" more info if desired) and then have a "full" version of the relevant page appear once you've completed the relevant content. Sure it's not as good as actually requiring a play of the content in question but it frees them from the handcuffs of "We can't include that because it's from optional content!"

[Mansion]

I'm guessing Livingway?.

Thanks! I forgot the loporites were gendered lol. But then, the whole part on the moon post Zodiark is when I started to dissociate with the MSQ in Endwalker.

To my memory no, other than the fact we didn't really do anything short-term to actually improve the state of the Void (Thirteenth). We defeated Zeromus and turned it into a Memoria Crystal, then planted it out in the Empty on the First under the supposition that doing so would hasten the aetheric rebalancing out there (beyond the immediate area around Eden) and restore life to the land. Golbez (Durante) started on the path to atonement and promised along with Zero to find another way to restore the Thirteenth to life, which may just happen on it's own over time if the First's Light imbalance corrects itself thanks to our actions. Zero bade us farewell until next time and that was that.

Thank you! I had completely forgotten the part where we go back to the First. I had imagined it would be Zero as it is the only female character that isn't with us right now (and Alisaie is with Alphinaud so I imagine the wording would have been different if it was them).
But now I know Livingway is the likely candidate, it sure ties neatly with the photos on the moon.

[Cilia]

Thanks! I forgot the loporites were gendered lol. But then, the whole part on the moon post Zodiark is when I started to dissociate with the MSQ in Endwalker.

Technically they're asexual, but "adopted the traits of one or more gender[s]" because they find the concept interesting.

Thank you! I had completely forgotten the part where we go back to the First. I had imagined it would be Zero as it is the only female character that isn't with us right now (and Alisaie is with Alphinaud so I imagine the wording would have been different if it was them).

I enjoyed Endwalker's base story well enough, but the IV adaptation was... predictable and uninteresting. Still, it was a highlight moment in that plot because it's where Gaia actually shows up in the MSQ (voiced lines and all!) if you've completed the Eden raids.

We don't actually have a way to contact Zero, so it couldn't be her, and more IV fanservice so soon after Endwalker went as hard as it did on that would be even weirder than whatever it is we've got going on with V in Dawntrail.

[VulpinusRex]

"an ally" is feminine in French. and there is a mention of "well known" that does not appear in English.

Honestly, I would be shocked if this 'ally' is anyone but Alisae. We know that the twins went to Garlemald to offer assistance and I can't really think of a better candidate to call us there with the dungeon being located there, especially since there's apparently a Void incursion.

My curiosity atm lies at the fact that the portal we see behind Enuo is, very notably, not the portals we've seen related to the Thirteenth at all. Instead, it looks like the portal we see in the Omega raids behind Exdeath and I think on the Halicarnassus fight as well. So, that makes me think of the FFV Void instead of the Thirteenth (which has largely been referred to as 'The Thirteenth' ever since the Zero arc instead of 'Void').
Combined with Enuo making an entrance, a superboss from FFV notable for being the original 'Master of the Void/Nothingness' before Exdeath, I wonder if we're gonna be seeing the introduction of a 'True Void', as in the dimension of nothingness. Maybe make it an Eldritch Horror themed thing and tie a potential Jenova appearance to it (and hopefully Ivalice Ultima, as she is an Alien as well).

As a hopeless FFX fanboy, I'd also love to see potentially Sin as part of such a hypothetical faction. Especially with how Sin could very easily be thematically inserted into a Shard-hopping related narrative...

As for the location of 8.0, I honestly can't speculate with confidence given how little crumbs we've been given to work with. I don't think we'll be using the Key right away to directly travel to other Shards yet. It's a very fresh plot thread and XIV doesn't tend to resolve plot threads immediately.
I desperately want to see Ilsabard be the main location, honestly. I feel like it's the perfect time to remove the clouds from the chuck-middle of the map after a decade... Given the current plot crumbs we have though, I could see more Shard 'bubbles' appearing on the Source. I'd probably prefer it over having more expansions fully dedicated to different Shards, especially ones we know next to nothing about.

I suppose ultimately, this is the first time we're truly in the dark when it comes to the next expansion. It offers me excitement and worry both, to be honest...

[Cleretic]

I suppose ultimately, this is the first time we're truly in the dark when it comes to the next expansion. It offers me excitement and worry both, to be honest...

Nah, we had literally no idea where 8.0 was going before Dawntrail got revealed. We had a few suspects, but we had no actual information. Similarly, we've got some relatively solid guesses at this stage, I think everyone's correctly identified that there are a few threads they're setting up, it's just that nothing's concrete and we won't know who guessed right until later this month.

Also, I'd be remiss not to mention that during Stormblood, we thought next up was a Garlean expansion. ...and when Shadowbringers first got announced some people thought it was a time travel expansion because the information we got was so confusing and we didn't even know the shards were an option. I don't think we'll ever get that confused again, but we have absolutely been more confused than this before!