Launch Trailer Hype Thread

[Balipu]

A story where the antagonists aren't a threat just isn't interesting. One of the best things that could be done at this point in time for the sake of a compelling story is not allowing the Warrior of Light to simply waltz in and solve every problem because 'he's teh best fiter ever lolz xD'. In fact, to mitigate that I believe we're going to see a lot more intrigue where the story is concerned. 3.0 certainly had a lot of twists that made things much more difficult to solve through brute force alone.

Problem with intrigue is that this is an MMO, not a telltale series adventure game. Like in Diablo 3 where you take on the Lord of Lies by beating up every enemy you come across. All the intrigue needs to come in the form of fetch quests and kill quests. Instead we will fight against "teh best fiter ever lolz" on the Garlean side, who was some very high item level weapons.

[SuperFlorinjin]

I've really got to wonder where the idea that the WoL couldn't possibly lose a fight is coming from. After all, if the WoL can become an incredibly skilled murder machine then so can other people!

[Odstarva]

I don't really think there is an argument to be made here. More often than not, we are asked to gather allies to face difficult trials. These same allies appear in the opening and closing cut-scenes for said battles.

If that wasn't enough, we -are- playing an MMO. Why would other adventurers (players) not be a part of our story?

[Hinoto-no-Ryuji]

No canoncially we did everything on Azys Lla alone. So we took down Regula, two ascians plus their combined form and Thordan and his knights alone. (We were only traveling to the flying isle with our scion buddies and they split away from us before the dungeon. We simply cant have other people with us at that time since we are the first to arrive there thus nobody could even just teleport to us. And the lore book confirms it too.) Regula is later than also killed by Zurvan while we kill Zurvan too.

I'll concede the point, but whether we fought him as one or four, it doesn't really matter - the point is that we fought him, and didn't instantly strike him down. This means that Regula was a very skilled combatant - not skilled enough to end our opposition to his empire, sure, but skilled enough to go toe-to-toe with us and NOT perish. And that's the point: there obviously exist Garlean warriors who can do that, and whether Zenos is more skilled than Regula, more cunning, or both, it's not so unbelievable that he would engineer a scenario where we're in enough peril to retreat or even have our lives threatened.

(Also, Zurvan canonically required a party to take on, as per the Journal entry, so it's not like we singlehandedly bested him. That Regula managed to fight him at all was very impressive - seriously, when 4.0 goes live this week, try to solo Zurvan normal, and let me know how that goes).

[Cilia]

Clarification: I am not against losing a fight with Zenos. I understand why it needs to happen: as a villain he needs to establish that he is a credible threat and an obstacle we need to overcome. The story would be very boring, not to mention short, if we just showed up and all the enemies rolled over and died. I hate that. It's what made the Knights of the Round, arguably one of the most (in)famous summons from the franchise, such a letdown as the final boss of 3.0 - it was waaaaaay too easy of a fight. Even the Ascian Prime was more difficult! In terms of story the Knights were probably tougher, but... ehh.

I am only questioning how he is seemingly able to defeat us so handily. We gave gone up against a massive array of powerful and skilled opponents, Blessing or no Blessing, alone or not alone. That we could be trounced in turn despite our strength and skill is just a bit far-fetched for my taste.

I am fine with losing a fight. In fact I've been hoping for a Beatrix-style fight where we are allowed to fight until our opponent beats us down. I'm only questioning how we lose given our strength and skill. I acknowledge that it could just be because Zenos is naturally that much stronger and/or skilled, but personally I find that too easy an explanation - it comes up way too often in shonen manga and I'd like to believe this game (story) has more class than that. While it is often the case that protagonists have to work their way up to defeating the villain, they are usually very green - we've gone up against, again, a massive array of extremely powerful and highly skilled foes already. That has to count for something.

I hate the "they just dat much more powerful duh xD (wy don'tchu get dis?)" explanation... because it makes our long battle history feel like it's worthless in the face of a new villain for the sake of making said villain threatening. I only question how, not why, though.

Also, make sure to get your Stormblood cup from Carl's Jr.™ Hardee's™ while it's still available. Conquer that thirst, boyee!

[Theodric]

Alas, since I live in the UK I can't easily get my hands on one of those nifty cups. On the plus side, I'm heading to the Distant Worlds concert in London this November!

As far as the situation with Zenos goes? Well, there's less than four days to go until we get the answers we seek!

[EdwinLi]

You know the real hype should be?

We see NPC user Gunblade Weapons again in cutscenes again!

Why?

Because there is "hope" that one day there maybe a Gunblade Job as a future Expansion content.

*cough* Garlemald Expansion *cough*

Jokes aside:

I notice the Gunblades in the cutscenes the Garlean use back in Revolution are much shorter and smaller in size with a musket gun part design instead of a revolver design that we see used by Garlean forces in Eorzea.

With launch closing in I am curious if SE is starting to develop other Gunblade design since now we see two type of Gunblade designs used by the Garlean Soldiers in the cutscenes being a Revolver with a long blade design and then this new Musket with short blade design used by Garlean Soldiers in 4.0

[Balipu]

Well obviously grunts wont use the same weapon types as Nero or Gaius.

[Daralii]

Well obviously grunts wont use the same weapon types as Nero or Gaius.

Do you mean Nael? He had a revolver built into his spear, but Nero used one of those powered hammers. Anyway, if I'm looking at the right scene, it looks like they're just using shorter versions of the model Gaius used.

[Enkidoh]

Gaius also had wrist-mounted magitek blasters that fired bluish aetheric bullets, although he was only really shown using them in 1.0 (specifically, his big introduction cutscene in Mor Dhona during the 1.0 Path of the Twelve quest 'Future's Perfect', where he actually shoots the player's Path Companion, and goes to shoot the player, only for the shot to be deflected at the last second by Yda. Only then did he actually draw his gunblade, using it along with his blasters which he used to try shooting the Archons but without success (Papalymo used some kind of weird vortex spell that simply sucked the bullets into his staff), resulting in Gaius cheating by calling in a cannon blast from a nearby Garlean airship to cover his getaway.

Either way, what's important is that gunblade was not Gaius's sole weapon, his main weapon was his magitek blasters attached to his gauntlets.