Speculations and ideas on Alternate Dimensions

[Enkidoh]

The use of alternate/parallel universes in FFXI was ironically born from technical reasons and not a narrative one - it's far easier to simply re-texture an existing zone and populate it with different enemies/npcs than it is to make a whole new area - hence two expansions featured exactly this (Wings of the Goddess and the Abyssea add-ons). So it was definitely a case of 'form follows function', rather than an actual desire to emulate past FF games and their use of parallel worlds.

As for FFXIV, about the only possibility of a 'alternate' Eorzea I can think of at this time is actually for how the storyline for version 1.0 was originally planned to plan out (the original story kind of ended after encountering Gaius for the first time and the cool scene involving him fighting the Archons), and it was virtually abandoned when the 7th Umbral Era story was added.

From what I'm led to believe the original team under Tanaka had planned Dalamud to play a different role in FFXIV's story, but when it was decided to replace version 1.0 completely with ARR, they decided to 'bring it down' as a convenient and interesting way of ending the original game (and explaining the changes to the environment as well).

So hence, a possible alternate Eorzea is one where the 7th Umbral Era and the Calamity never happened (where the story continued along the lines of what Tanaka had planned for 1.0), and the adventurer continued working for the Path of the Twelve. I admit it's an idea that I've been thinking about a lot lately.