Bismarck

[axemtitanium]

I thought the whale in Moby-Dick was called... Moby Dick...

[Enkidoh]

Urk,I think my memory just had a 90k error - you're right! I hadn't read Moby-Dick since high school so I got the character names mixed up. Thanks for the clarification. ^-^

Which probably also answers my own question about why Squaresoft didn't go with that name - no doubt the obvious double-entrende of the whale's name would have made Nintendo's censors come down on them hard, so I guess Ted Woosley must have just brainstormed nautical sounding names and settled on the German WWII battleship 'Bismarck' (and it's namesake, the 'Iron Chancellor'), despite it having zero connection to whales. But I'm just rambling here.

[Anonymoose]

Out of interest, where was Bismarck mentioned in Sea Wolf mythology?

This rarely seen giant cephalopod makes an appearance in ancient Sea Wolf mythology as the creature on which the legendary whale Bismarck fed.

There's a whale of a tale behind the name of this place. Well, it's the tale of a whale, actually. Bismarck devoured all that lay in his path, and the restaurant hopes its diners will follow suit.

/10characters

[Wadoka]

...but they have their own story of a great ship hunted, facing overwhelming odds...

Yamato hasshin!

[Alberel]

The new footage of Bismarck in the 3.0 benchmark shows him leaping and diving through the clouds like a whale or dolphin would the sea. It's entirely possible that he was originally an aquatic creature and gained his flying abilities as a result of his summoning.

We still don't know much about the origins of the new beast tribes. We know the Ixal and Moogles believe they came from a floating continent in the skies (possibly THE floating continent we're confirmed to be visiting in Heavensward) so it may be that some of the new races up there actually came from the ground at some point. There are plenty of ways to explain a cultural crossover of some kind between the races. I'm sure this will be explained in Vanu lore.

[lololink]

The new footage of Bismarck in the 3.0 benchmark shows him leaping and diving through the clouds like a whale or dolphin would the sea. It's entirely possible that he was originally an aquatic creature and gained his flying abilities as a result of his summoning.

We still don't know much about the origins of the new beast tribes. We know the Ixal and Moogles believe they came from a floating continent in the skies (possibly THE floating continent we're confirmed to be visiting in Heavensward) so it may be that some of the new races up there actually came from the ground at some point. There are plenty of ways to explain a cultural crossover of some kind between the races. I'm sure this will be explained in Vanu lore.

I don't think the floating continent is the land of the ixals, it seems Allagan ( I wonder if it's going to be a dungeon or something, they said that the new CT type raid is going to be original so it can't be that ). Also there are a lot of sea fish so it's highly possible that Bismark always was a Flying Whale.

[Belhi]

Bismarck is a very big primal. I'll be curious how we actually fight him considering how massive he is in the clip showed at PAX East. I wouldn't think it exactly like the Leviathan fight simply because he is far bigger than Leviathan.

[Nalien]

/10characters

Well that's interesting... The Giant Squid makes it sound like Bismarck was aquatic...

R'sushmo's comment is particularly interesting having watched that sneak peak of the Benchmark, where Bismarck seems to eat the group of adventurers... Wonder if that's actually what we'll have... Belly of the Beast II...

[Fenral]

I took one look at him and imagined it playing out like the Sin fight sequence in FFX. Our party on a mobile platform, taking out little pieces one at a time.

[LaurelinKementari]

Could be we just land on the primal himself, like the Deathwing fight in WoW. Or we battle him on our flying mounts! Aerial fight!