Future leader of Apa Mhigo

[Hinoto-no-Ryuji]

As an aside Zephirin was the one to slay Haurchefant and many people brushed him off as an outright villain - which is understandable - and yet later lore (unfortunately revealed outside of the game itself) painted him as rather chivalrous and honourable. He was even highlighted as not being particularly fond of Grinnaux or Charibert for their...overzealous and aggressive natures. What we really need is stuff like that to be displayed in-game rather than tucked away in obscure locations. Ideally this would mean less of Hildibrand's nonsense and more time spent on fleshing our both the minor and major antagonists.

Agreed - one of my biggest issues with Heavensward was how much important world-, lore-, and character-building was left to either side quests or outside sources. Mind you, I'm not sure we can blame Hildy for it, considering he's gotten a grand total of 2 small quests since 2.5; really, it's probably more the dev desire to streamline the MSQ bloat of 2.x, and while that's commendable, it does end up leaving more on the cutting room floor. Hopefully they can find a nice balance as time goes on.

[Belhi]

Id argue that FF14's antagonists have reasonable depth to them. Nidhogg has been consumed by his rage but the source of his rage is perfectly justifiable and frankly somewhat righteous. What was done was a horrible betrayal. Likewise, as flawed as it was, Thordin's motivation for doing what he and the Heaven's Ward did made sense and you could argue that their goals were a greater good in at least how they saw it. Hell, potentially even Ascians aren't all wrong in what they are doing.

Again, I think the current problem is that the scale of the threat needed to have Garlemald as a whole become our allies just like that would be kind of overkill. It would need to be more than just one big bad. That big bad would need an army or at least a way of generating a situation where we have lesser enemies to deal with. Garlemald just doesn't have much in the way of real threats to it's power that overlooking their aggressive policies would make sense. Likewise, I'm not sure if they want to go to that scale yet. After all 4.0 isn't going to be the last expansion.

My suspicion is the next expansion will deal with the Eorzean Alliance attacking Ala Mhigo to try and counter Garlemald's invasion threats by removing their foothold in Eorzea. Liberating Ala Mhigo would be a side effect of that. However I think once we get into it things are going to get very complicated. I think your going to have a lot of factions on both sides with their own ideas of what they want and in the end the WoL is going to have to try and find middle ground between factions to try and create some type of peaceful solution while countering the more extreme factions on both sides. For that reason I don't think all Garleans will necessarily be our enemies.

I think in going into Ala Mhigo we will learn more about the inner political workings of Garlemald and the forces involved. I also think from that it will be our way into traveling to Garlemald and getting tied up in the political intrigue of the empire. Hell 5.0 could have us saving Garlemald from civil war and helping Garlemald settle on a less expansionist and perhaps somewhat more benevolent policy.

[Fenral]

Much as I want Garlemald to end up as FFXIV's answer to Archades, if I never see another Pinewood Chop in my life it will be too soon.

[Theodric]

Well, I think the biggest issue is that the developers are going to struggle to show Garlemald as an actual threat. Technically Garlemald should be able to throw it's full might behind a campaign to take over and occupy Eorzea..but with a lot of losses on both sides. For obvious reasons that isn't going to happen - so there needs to be a plausible reason for them to hold back. Thus having a conflict of interests within Garlemald itself would work brilliantly. In the same vein we don't really need a situation where every prominent Garlean that seeks to be reasonable throws away all their loyalty and love for their homeland away in a drive to help Eorzea because that is rather boring.


I favour the approach of there being a bunch of influential Garleans who are fiercely loyal to their homeland and seek to protect it at all costs and they would prefer not to waste resources or spread their forces thin by attempting to aggressively expand. I feel like something like that would be the best compromise. If Varys gets the FF6 treatment in Azyz Lla and ends up dead then there's another opportunity to build up someone new to lead Garlemald into a brighter, more reasonable age. Given that Varys has had very little in the way of focus so far, however, I feel like he is going to be a sacrificial lamb to move the plot forward. Unless he surprises us by being in it for the long term.

As an aside, does anyone else believe that 3.3 might end on a cliffhanger that somehow involves Garlemald?

[Belhi]

Well, I think the biggest issue is that the developers are going to struggle to show Garlemald as an actual threat. Technically Garlemald should be able to throw it's full might behind a campaign to take over and occupy Eorzea..but with a lot of losses on both sides. For obvious reasons that isn't going to happen - so there needs to be a plausible reason for them to hold back. Thus having a conflict of interests within Garlemald itself would work brilliantly. In the same vein we don't really need a situation where every prominent Garlean that seeks to be reasonable throws away all their loyalty and love for their homeland away in a drive to help Eorzea because that is rather boring.

I favour the approach of there being a bunch of influential Garleans who are fiercely loyal to their homeland and seek to protect it at all costs and they would prefer not to waste resources or spread their forces thin by attempting to aggressively expand. I feel like something like that would be the best compromise. If Varys gets the FF6 treatment in Azyz Lla and ends up dead then there's another opportunity to build up someone new to lead Garlemald into a brighter, more reasonable age. Given that Varys has had very little in the way of focus so far, however, I feel like he is going to be a sacrificial lamb to move the plot forward. Unless he surprises us by being in it for the long term.

As an aside, does anyone else believe that 3.3 might end on a cliffhanger that somehow involves Garlemald?

I'd say it's almost certain that we will see Garlemald crash the party somehow at the end of 3.3. If not them then the Ascians. We have two more patches to go and we know the Heart of Sabik will make an appearance and that we will learn what Midgarsormr was guarding at Silvertear lake all this time. Something is going to have to happen that leads to that.

Honestly I cause part of me really expects 5.0 to lead us into Garlemald I expect something to come to the surface in 4.0 that leads to political turmoil in Garlemald in 5.0. Its in Ala Mhigo I think we will be get our introduction to characters and players in a future conflict there. I also think that being loyal to Garlemald doesn't automatically mean they are bad people either. Patriotism and loyalty doesn't mean blind commitment to the direction your country is going.

That said I don't expect Varis will end up in a protagonist role. I expect him either to remain a antagonist or at best be the trigger that sets of unrest in Garlemald. While Iceheart ended up as an ally, even when we first met her we got a sense she might not really be a true enemy. I never got anything like that from Varis.

[Frederick22]

Either way. Varis will die, one way or another. Ok, yes he can end of on jail forever.
But not that he will be "our friend" or "partners with same goals".

I can think that you all can agreed with that?

It cant end the dictatorship of the empire, withouth taking of its leaders. That may be by force.

A dictatorship is a dictatorship, there has being no case where the solution turn up to by violence. Unless that the goverment colapsses from within.
But given what I see so far, its unlikely something like that will happen.

[Morningstar1337]

I think part of the reason is becuase there might actually be MORE Garleans working aganst their conquest than we realize, but they are not in a postion where being well known or reaching out to their targets would be viable without a trip to Room 101 resulting from that, so they operate in complete enough secrecy to hinder and misdirect Garlemald's movements, ranging from double agents leading them to waste time occuping nations that aren't actualy threat to more active "filibusters" and cockblocking of legilature to legalize anything more than what we had sen so far...

Or it could be just because they are too busy working on their methods of tempering to make sure its foolproof and/or trying to keep their own people under control to focus on their crusade

[Rocl]

As an aside to an aside, where did we get information Zephirin was chivalrous? It isn't from the Dengeki/Lore Lowdown which features the same internal lore documents transcribed, because I can't think of Zephirin painted this way at all with this, so I feel like I've missed something.
http://gamerescape.com/2016/04/08/th...-lore-lowdown/

[Hinoto-no-Ryuji]

As an aside to an aside, where did we get information Zephirin was chivalrous? It isn't from the Dengeki/Lore Lowdown which features the same internal lore documents transcribed, because I can't think of Zephirin painted this way at all with this, so I feel like I've missed something.
http://gamerescape.com/2016/04/08/th...-lore-lowdown/

Yeah, reading that again, it's definitely Haumeric who's the chivalrous one with contempt for his more brutish brothers.

[Morningstar1337]

Yeah, reading that again, it's definitely Haumeric who's the chivalrous one with contempt for his more brutish brothers.

An I just asked the Live letter team about adding more quests to counteract that...

Oh well, Story is my favorite part anyway. :P