MSQ
So, I feel like I speak for everyone I have played with and talked to about this that the Griffin reveal was no surprise at all, we all 100% expected it to be Ilberd. What I did not expect was how far he'd go, and I think it was brilliantly done. First ofc the false flag operation, but moreso the sacrifice of his own countrymen through a false flag operation WITHIN the false flag operation xD
It also served to subtly make the power balance between Garleans, WoL and regular people obvious: the spider robot that we as the WoL could kill with relative ease just completely DESTROYED entire squadrons of regular people, showing once more why the WoL is OP. That said, one spider robot was an entire miniboss fight, so beating it took quite some effort for us too, and Garlemald can just mass produce them without problem, so that shows how much our power scales in comparison.
I really quite liked that, because in the 3.55 scenario I constantly just felt like screaming at the screen "omg WHY are you letting this happen, you are stronger than all of them together, throw a Flare at them and escape together, goddammit!" and telling myself it was their "choice" to not do so was a weak excuse. Here it's made obvious that even if we had wanted to interfere, we couldn't. We could neither stop the army of spider robots singlehandedly nor would it have made a difference to try and stop Ilberd, since the sacrifices had already been made and if he had died from the fall or our attack would not have changed a thing. That made the whole scene really ominous and exciting to me ♡

As for Papalymo's presumed death: mh..I honestly expected that too? ^^"
Like, knowing Yda would play a major role in Stormblood, I was pretty sure they do something that would serve as a wake-up call to her character, and seeing as Gridania had TWO Scions (aka one to spare), I fully expected something to happen to him, even if it wasn't full-on death. That only became obvious in the first cutscenes of this patch with Papalymo's narration about how Lousoix taught him about how you can't have nice things without the sacrifices that come with it and how he resolved himself to sacrifice himself should the need arise.
When it did happen, I like how we got an actual choice how the scene would play out, and as I chose to stay, I DID get surprised by how he actually did ATTACK you to throw you off the wall and onto the ship! O.o).
I don't know if it's the fact that I expected it that I'm more shocked than sad or if it is because really, I didn't care about him all that much..?
Y'shtola and Thancred both got a lot of story focus at some point, so anything happening to them really had an impact, but the Gridania duo never really mattered all that much, and even in the city opening, Papalymo was far outshined by Yda's bubbly active personality. If feel he could have used some more set-up to actually make it emotional that he sacrificed himself.
Well, assuming he is dead at all. Never trust SE when there is no body..


Zurvan
Hah..idk, I feel like this came out of nowhere, honestly.
I know, I know, the thought behind it is that Mr. Stagbeetle realized the technology he wanted to bring to Varis was faulty and therefore not worth bringing and we teamed up because we had the same goal, but none of his interactions before this patch ever even remotely set this up. And the technology wasn't even flawed - it was his own men that broke it! It's really just that Garlemald should maybe use guards to actually protect the technology, something that Allag couldn't do since, you know, they died thousands of years ago?!
And that heel-face-turn on morals felt really forced too, because again, he never showed even a hint of this before. Pay-off without setup feels never really satisfying, sorry :/
That said, I'm now digging Varis more than before. He might be a decent dude, even if we are at war with him x) I'd hand over Eorzea on a silver platter if it wasn't for the whole "kill all who can summon/turn into a primal" thing, which kind of sucks when your entire populace can do that (thanks Shiva, Thordan )..so yeah.

Too bad we never got to see Sephi's believers. Sophia's were very human, but seeing how unique Zurvan's followers look, it's a shame we didn't get to see beautiful "tree-like" beings :x


Dun Scaith
will update once I've done that