8.0 speculation

[Cassar]

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.

I don't know... The letter Krile received at the end of 6.4 post credits was a pretty clear indicator we'd be going to the New World. I remember I personally thought it would be both Meracydia and the New World, because there was also a scene where a dragon in the distance was responding to Azdaja's roar, and I thought it was somehow connected to Meracydia, but the New World part was always pretty evident

I do agree that Stormblood 4.4 was equally as mysterious, but since I wasn't really a part of the community back then I can't speak for the reaction.

This time around we truly have nothing. Based on 7.4 post credits alone, my best guess was that wherever we're going it won't be in the Ninth, and given that we have the key as a massive unexplored plot thread it would make sense that it would be in a different reflection(s). But nothing nearly as obvious as Krile's letter in 6.4.

[Mansion]

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!

Not to mention the infamous Fanfest slide "it's time to take down the Garlean Empire !" in between pictures of Ahm Araeng and il Mheg or RakTikka! Shadowbringers was a very difficult expansion to guess right until it came out.

I would not be surprised if they did that again for 8.0 given how long we most likely will have to wait until the expansion.

[Cilia]

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!

The Native South American styling of Krile's letter (6.4) was a solid hint, even if it wasn't cashed in until 6.55 telling us for sure after wrapping up the Void Arc. The "problem" (if you want to call it that) is that the plot cadence isn't lining up with what it used to; X.0 was the first two acts, X.1 - X.3 served as the denouement and "true ending" to an expack's story arc, and X.4 - X.5(.5) set up the next one. 6.X until 6.5.5 itself was a filler IV fanservice arc, while 7.4 provided no forward threads other than an ominous offscreen portent, giving Krile some character moments, and more IX fanservice (with an VIII GF as the Trial fight). Even 6.4 gave us a clearer hint!

Shadowbringers was a tough guess because 4.3 left no lingering plot threads to pick up other than continuing conflict with Garlemald. Even 4.4 and 4.5 did nothing to suggest what would be happening until the very end, while conflict with Garlemald dragged on and the Scions started dropping unconscious out of the blue. We didn't have a clear picture in-universe until 4.5.5 of how things were going to play out, even if we knew from announcements where they were going. And it turns out time travel was involved, just not on our part.

I do agree that Stormblood 4.4 was equally as mysterious, but since I wasn't really a part of the community back then I can't speak for the reaction.

People were just confused because like I mentioned 4.3 wrapped up the plot threads from Stormblood and didn't leave any dangling other than the looming conflict with Garlemald, so the inexplicable things going on (as of 4.4) threw people for a loop. Between that and the announcement details people were very skeptical of Shadowbringers before it released, believe it or not.

[Cleretic]

This time around we truly have nothing.

We truly don't have nothing. We've got several hooks even excluding the 7.5 previews; we have the key, we have Halmarut's ramblings, we have the knowledge of where Alphinaud and Alisaie have gone back to and why, and if you reach back and go 'they usually set up two expansions in advance' we have Void stuff from the Endwalker patches.

None of that is strictly locational, nor is it necessarily the thing that's coming up in the very next expansion, but it is enough to actually make predictions even before the Clyteum and Enuo start underlining a couple things. We do not have 'nothing', and in fact I'd argue we actually have more than we have historically, it's just more in terms of thematics and overarching concepts and threats more than concrete facts, places and people. We have a lot, but what we don't have is a huge sign saying 'MERACYDIA, NEXT LEFT'.

[Yuella]

When the Shadowbringers teaser was released, some people thought it was Amdapor related.

For 8.0, we know that Enuo is the 7.5 trial. He's from FF5, a game about merging a world that had been split into 2. We could be starting to merge the reflections back into the source safely without calamities.

[mallleable]

With Enuo being the trial, and there being a very obvious Void portal behind them in the screenshot, makes me think there will be an untangling of the facts from the fiction of enemies we fought in the Deltascape tier of the Omega raids. There definitely seems to be some Void/Rift stuff happening in the future.

[Iscah]

...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.

You say that like it was a mistake, but it was a perfectly correct assessment that the then "mystery voice" must be from a time beyond our own, which leaves only two options: we time-travel or he time-travels.

[Cleretic]

You say that like it was a mistake, but it was a perfectly correct assessment that the then "mystery voice" must be from a time beyond our own, which leaves only two options: we time-travel or he time-travels.

Yeah, to clarify the 'time travel' assumption wasn't an out-there moonshot of a prediction, that was the result of people taking what little info they had and trying to shape anything out of it. You had the narration, you had figures that we'd only otherwise seen in Amdapor, and you even had Thancred saying that a place that looked an awful lot like Ul'dah had 'changed'. And hell, given the Alexander raids, time travel certainly seemed more theoretically plausible than shard travel. If I were the predicting type and actively following new info at the time, I probably would've reached for 'time travel' too.

People were wrong, but they were making best-faith guesses given a teaser that was kind of deliberately confusing that didn't really fit anything we were expecting at the time. Bringing it up here largely as perspective; we are not uniquely in the dark and uncertain about the upcoming expansion at this point, we have been WAY more confused than this.

EDIT: Also, I think it's genuinely very helpful and extremely funny to bring up the pre-Shadowbringers leadup, which feels like it's from a totally different planet. Cilia's right, people were not picking up what Shadowbringers was putting down at first, they were rightly skeptical.

[Cilia]

When the Shadowbringers teaser was released, some people thought it was Amdapor related.

For 8.0, we know that Enuo is the 7.5 trial. He's from FF5, a game about merging a world that had been split into 2. We could be starting to merge the reflections back into the source safely without calamities.

The only method for merging the reflections back onto the Source we have right now is Interdimensional Fusion, which is hugely damaging to the Source (based on the fact even after Dawntrail concluded the lightning bubble around Yyasulani is still present, it may never recover or take so long it exceeds the lifetime of a Viera; I am honestly surprised, I assumed completing the arc would bring natural weather back). Assuming we did not do something like that and simply did a non-cataclysmic rejoining, it would wipe out the reflection and it's people in the process.

Barring some major thing out of left field, it's not happening because the worlds exist in the same space but different dimensions, and we currently have no way to bridge that (outside of small scale things like Halmarut's portals and the gate beneath the Skydeep Cenote, the latter of which currently only connects to Living Memory on the Ninth) that isn't damaging to one or both. They could introduce a way to do so and have it happen, but then we're just getting a repeat of Dawntrail's second act. We just got some Void action in 6.x; doing more so soon on such a big scale would be weird. I have a hunch it's more to do with the Rift (the interstitial dimension between the Source + reflections we traverse when traipsing from one to the other) but at that point it becomes even more of an unknown, since we have absolutely no clue how that place works. At least with the reflections we've settled on "elementally devastated variant of a legacy title's world, usually with some bizarro things for spice." (Well, aside from the First.)

And that's even assuming Enuo is actually the MSQ trial boss, which is more likely than not but we've gotten curveballs before (unadvertised Varis EX in Bozja, both the Magus Sisters and Anima advertised as trial bosses but being early game dungeon bosses). Given the Occult Crescent is already a V fanservice vehicle it could be tied to that instead. Unlikely, but not implausible.

Plus we've got oodles of V fanservice already; it's probably got the bronze medal overall, behind the Ivalice setting and III. Not impossible, just unlikely by my measure (and not something I'm all that interested in regardless).

Yeah, to clarify the 'time travel' assumption wasn't an out-there moonshot of a prediction, that was the result of people taking what little info they had and trying to shape anything out of it. You had the narration, you had figures that we'd only otherwise seen in Amdapor, and you even had Thancred saying that a place that looked an awful lot like Ul'dah had 'changed'. And hell, given the Alexander raids, time travel certainly seemed more theoretically plausible than shard travel. If I were the predicting type and actively following new info at the time, I probably would've reached for 'time travel' too.

People were wrong, but they were making best-faith guesses given a teaser that was kind of deliberately confusing that didn't really fit anything we were expecting at the time. Bringing it up here largely as perspective; we are not uniquely in the dark and uncertain about the upcoming expansion at this point, we have been WAY more confused than this.

EDIT: Also, I think it's genuinely very helpful and extremely funny to bring up the pre-Shadowbringers leadup, which feels like it's from a totally different planet. Cilia's right, people were not picking up what Shadowbringers was putting down at first, they were rightly skeptical.

A lot of the confusion came from the fact 3.x's "Warriors of Darkness" subplot established that travel across the reflections necessarily required physical death ("shedding of the flesh" or somesuch), so travelling across them seemed impossible. Indeed, Alexander established time travel (and time loops!) as a possible thing but Shadowbringers' plot broke that rule (for the WoL alone and out of Doylist necessity, but still). How were we to expect an adventure on a parallel world we had no way to get to and the metaphysics of the setting prevented travelling there?

All we have right now is Halmarut's dialogue with Mica Doll Calyx, which tells us nothing other than "badness is coming." 4.4 really did have more hints, what with the localized deployment of Black Rose, the deaspected crystals Y'shtola found mirroring others from before the Calamity, and the Scions' souls being spirited away by a mysterious voice that left their bodies comatose. We just didn't know how all that led forward until 4.5.5, and it didn't fit together until very early in Shadowbringers itself.

[Iscah]

I am honestly surprised, I assumed completing the arc would bring natural weather back.

If they brought natural weather back, it would be clear how much of Heritage Found is just "Shaaloani again with gloom".