Dragoon Question (spoilers)

[Blindheart]

Just beat the story, my only question...

If you don't start the dragoon quest until after you beat Heavensward, what happens? I don't think I saw anywhere where it was required to do the dragoon quests before you can start Heavensward, and the way it ends up... Would be really weird for him to just show up and be having story if he's already dragonized.

[Anonymoose]

I haven't confirmed for myself, so take this with a grain of salt, but I assume that it's just awkward and the continuity is broken and it is what it is, lol.

SE does their best to manage consistency in the lore, but continuity goes right out the window sometimes if you do the content out of order. There were some hints that PATCH = CONTINUITY in the Coil / Crystal Tower story arcs, but it became undeniable after the Nanamo / Culinarian overlap.

Some discussions and past interviews have more or less spelled out that there was an internal discussion at SE that amounted to: "Do we spend this time and these resources to go back and ensure that all old content can be made to mesh if you do it after new content, or do we just ask people to understand that the patch order is the story order and use all those resources on new content?" and new content took priority.

Before 2.55, I didn't expect at all that the team would willingly allow things that would drag you out of the game world that blatantly, but their reasoning can hardly be denied. If a not-insubstantial amount of new content would need to be sacrificed to retrofit old quests to new developments, it's not absurd to ask that we just understand that - in the instance of your question here - that Estinien was "dragonized" during Patch 3.00, but DRG30 takes place in Patch 2.00's sector of the time arc.

[Kaiser-Ace]

Actually the script is just slightly altered.

Eistenian just doesn't act as familier as if you've compleated Dragoon.

An FC mate if mine never did DRG and rge script was almoat the same just with out the "Double Dragoon" familiarity.

The script acts more like you just met and hit it off well instead of the familiarity of old comrads.

[Belhi]

I think this type of thing is inevitable in a multithreaded narrative like this without placing great restrictions on how the plot threads can interact or on what the writers can do with the story. I think its better to allow a degree of narrative order than having those restrictions. I really liked that Estinien was in the MSQ.

As for consistency, If it bothers people one option is simply to imagine it is your character having a flashback to when you first meet Estinien.

[Bloody]

The Echo is the answer to all continuity problems. See 1.0 Echoception MSQ plot for proof.

[Fenral]

I have a friend who fell madly in love with Estinien over the course of Heavensward, and she went back to do the DRG quests afterwards just so she could see him again. The entire thing still plays out like it's your first encounter with him, even though that's very clearly not the (actual) case. On the one hand "wahh my immersion," but on the other, it means you can't actually miss out on "old" storylines that become really important just because the MSQ did something to them.

What could they possibly have done to the DRG 30-50 quest considering both Estinien and the Eye play crucial roles in the story of the Dragonsong War? They couldn't have replaced Estinien in with a new Azure Dragoon in Heavensward, because Estinien would still be the Azure Dragoon for the DRG quests. The Eye itself is an even bigger problem, because there can't conveniently be a third Eye of Nidhogg lying around. Yet another option would be to replace the entire DRG questline with an unrelated Dragoon and a vaguely dragon-related something or other that isn't the Eye, but then you wouldn't get chosen by the Eye to be an Azure Dragoon.

The last choice would be to not involve the canonical Azure Dragoon of Ishgard or the Eye of Nidhogg in an expansion story about Nidhogg's war on Ishgard at all, leaving both of those as "you said those were important," with the inevitable response: "but they're optional."

It's weird to get used to, especially for new players, but it was absolutely the right call to make.