Thread: Revelations from Patch 4.1

Originally Posted by RukiaFae

Don't leave just for a house because it is crowded everywhere thanks to the new transfer incentives. Goblin was small and had plenty houses when I came. Now it is full & all three wards were full before 4.1 and I'm pretty sure all the houses are probably gone in the new zone too.

Sorry for getting off subject.

Nah, I never planned on leaving Coeurl, particularly since I run my own FC here, with a ton of resources I couldn't take with me if I left. One day I'll get the place I want.

MSQ

I feel kind of guilty that Arenvald's secondhand retelling of how his mother treated him, actually horrified and affected me far more than Fordola and Yotsuya's sob stories. But maybe that's because of the character himself and the way it's presented. I mean, he just tells us that his mother mutilated and abandoned him, and then we snap right back to treasure hunting? Eurgh, well, if that's how you're going to tell it...

Fordola's arc also felt finished to me, in the sense that I don't actually want her story to continue anymore. Personally, I was done with her character the moment she was introduced, I didn't mind the way she developed throughout this patch, but I think we're done with her. Just let her go primal-hunting for the rest of her days and whatever.

Seeing how the Resonance works, vs the Echo, was interesting. I took a guess just before Alphinaud explained it, and guessed that they were studying Krile's aetheric patterns to mold other peoples' aether to match hers. Half-right, at least!

I still want to see how Zenos' Resonance was created, though. Does the Resonance give the same "trandscending the flesh" ability as the Echo?

Otherwise, I agree with pretty much everything Moose said about the MSQ and the way it was told. Except... Tsuya.

That part actually made me laugh, because it's a bit unfortunate that I associate the amnesia trope with soap operas, and mostly K-dramas. Especially since the entire world also has mass amnesia concerning the 1.0 WoLs. But I will see how this plays out.

Amnesia is a... difficult plot device to work on, because you're essentially erasing the character you wrote before. And I actually found Yotsuya a more entertaining (which doesn't necesaarily mean good, sympathetic, or well-written) character than Fordola.

EDIT: I'm also glad that the primal summoning didn't completely disrupt the summit, so we didn't end up dragging out the Ala Mhigan new leadership subplot for too long, which was one weakness of the 3.1-3.3 story, for me. At least it seems the writers won't drag their heels and cause the lead-up to 5.0 to be rushed.

Ivalice

Ramza is... distractingly pretty. Maybe it's because he just has a unique face to me. I mean, his personality is awful, but I like that face.

Do pureblood Garleans not gain their third eye until adulthood? I may have skipped this Garlean lore bit.

The Prima Vista crew pretty much confirmed what I thought: non-expansionist Garleans simply don't make it to a high rank in their society. Once again, Garlean!Larsa may be a little too difficult to justify.

More on Ivalice tomorrow, when I can actually get into a run.

Originally Posted by Mysterysword

snip

I talked to most of the NPCs on board before and after the run and one of the ones who wasn't very receptive of you at first mentions how many of his countrymen were killed for following orders they weren't able to refuse and that while he understands the plight of the Ala mhigan and Doman people he believes that the garlemald he was raised to believe in was about unity and acceptance not conquering and that while even if the ends don't justify the means he believes the empires goal to be a noble one. He was however a pureblood so his worldview is likely bias and there are actually several purebloods on board with third eyes in tow so ramza and almas 'missing' third eye must be intentional. Needless to say it can be assumed many purebloods feel the same way. A 'larsa' character wouldn't be someone who defends the current empires actions but rather the idea that they represent to themselves and they'd have some degree of claim, the problem is that claim means nothing in garlemald if you don't have strength if the war of succession is anything to go by so as the WoL we champion said individual to help them make a better garlemald.

MSQ and such

I have come to the conclusion there are two entirely different men both named Godbert Manderville, the one on the Syndicate and Hildy's dad.

Evidence includes that completely different personality, but more importantly, he was wearing pants.

Shirogane (Extreme)

Sometimes the only way to win is not to play. I wouldn't give up a Mist house with a terraced garden and market board just to get my weeb on.

MSQ

I'm glad the Echo shield is becoming a recurring thing, and that we have two other people already who can do it, too. I always felt that tempering was a needlessly edgy justification for why we can't fight Primals alongside story NPCs, so it's good that they're addressing that now that the instanced battle scripting has gotten to the point that it has.

Tsuyu is... cute? I always have mixed feelings about amnesia plots, not just because of... that story. I have mixed feelings about it all across the board, as both the loss of the "original" personality by way of amnesia and the loss of the "new" personality by way of recovery are on the same level as death as far as narratives go, but almost never treated as such. It's about as tacky/cruel as killing someone off and bringing in their replacement in the next episode. Bonus points for long lost twins.

But we don't know it's amnesia yet. I just saw it as another side of her we haven't seen before. We'll know more next patch.

And who is this mysterious gloved man? The plot thickens!

Meta aside:
Arenvald's (Japanese) voice is still way too cute for a male Highlander. It's great that he's getting more screen time, but him sharing a VA with Hancock is weird. Double-casting in general is weird, but it worked for Nanamo and Tataru because they're both female Lalas, and it worked for Urianger and Isse because the latter let KENN speak without mangling his vocal cords like he does for Uri.

Ivalice

Having a previous game's story in its entirety exist in some small way in the lore of another FF game... isn't totally unheard of, so I'll wait and see how it unfolds from here. Since they actually have the original creator on board for this one, I hope that the clever references eventually give way to an entirely new story, and not... the other way around...

I never got a chance to play FF Tactics myself, but... I know a little about how it ends. Yes, I'm still me. Yes, I still see a story with ancient bloodlines and lost secrets and go, "oh, no, not this again." FFXIV's writing all across the board has been a lot more carefully thought out lately, so I'll try to believe for now.

I wonder if the '???' area grouping will have some significance later. I mean, they already told us we were going to Dalmasca, so...

I only got to the MSQ, and it took all night for me to finish.

MSQ

I hate it when I can accurately predict every major plot point. Well, almost.

The Mad King's treasure trove, having never been mentioned before, was a slight curveball. I noticed Skalla's treasure room in the trailer, though, so I figured it would end up being down there.

Besides that... yeah. Fordola has a tragic backstory! Resonance literally makes someone's aetherial wavelength resonate with someone who has the Echo! Nanamo wants to help Ala Mhigo and turns to Lolorito for ideas! Lakshmi summoned at the peace conference! Lyse breaks Fordola out of jail to fight her off! Raubahn stays (or is more or less forced to stay) behind in Ala Mhigo and Pipin assumes his station!

All kind of predictable. Well-done, but predictable nonetheless. Nanamo and Raubahn hit me right in the feels. Very glad Fordola is working toward the path of atonement (and doubly glad glimpsing all the shit the Warrior of Light has been through pretty much shut her up right then and there). Also glad Nanamo and Lyse are taking steps toward being proper leaders, and that Arenvald is retaining significance. Need someone to fill the place of all the people we've lost...

I chose "Because I choose to." when Fordola asked how I still carry on. I was tempted to pick #2, but went with that one to make my own point instead of relying on Aymeric's words.

After-credits scene though! No words to hint at future developments unlike last time. The soldiers discuss Zenos not actually being dead, and state that if we want to prove it we need to produce the corpse. Funny thing is that early on in the patch story someone mentions Zenos' corpse being dug up by some Ala Mhigans for... some reason... so it might actually not be there anymore... are we going to have to fight Zombie Zenos? I mean, if Resonance is the exact same thing as the Echo... he could always have left his body and possessed someone else... but Zenos seemed at peace when he killed himself, you know? I don't know what to make of it proper...

"Tsuyu" is... interesting. The most recent Magic storyline is also dealing with someone who has amnesia, and I'm interested to see how the Domans react to her. I can only hope the Domans are as forgiving towards "Tsuyu" as the wronged is towards the amnesiac in that story...

I did the Ivalice intro stuff while waiting for Skalla's queue. I'll get to it tomorrow (it's an early work day anyroad, though that's a major double-edged sword).

Apropos of nothing, I think I ran over an opossum on my way to work this morning. Feel pretty bad about it.

Lots of quotes from others, all collapsed into a single spoiler block for convenience. Entirely about the MSQ, for context.

Originally Posted by Anonymoose

I don't think many expected Fordola to keep on being evil for its own sake, either, but I appreciate the balance of "You'll never have my forgiveness, but you have my thanks", and being tortured by the forced empathy of the Echo is a playful twist even if it's not what everyone might find to be "redemptive". It's a nice way to represent her choices in how to fight for Ala Mhigo and how it played out. In that vein, the solo battlefield was excellent.

I'm surprisingly neutral on Fordola's story arc, despite having been interested to see how it would go earlier on. I don't dislike it as such, but it feels a bit like I've seen it before in other works. In fact, I probably have seen it before, considering the sheer amount of SF&F media I consume.

It feels like I could predict the general flow of the plotline after only a few key phrases and sentences, and all that's left is to see how it applies specifically to FFXIV's setting. And yet, it does it in an inoffensive way, so I don't feel uncomfortable watching a train-wreck in progress. Just a feeling of "oh, they're going to say something like- yeah, there's another checkbox ticked."

I did appreciate how the Echo/Resonance meant we could compress a lot of moralizing and justifications between the back-and-forth of "You don't know me" and "I know you better than you think", all into a few flashbacks. The one about Fordola's past was a little too obvious and drawn-out for me, but the summary flash-slides of the WoL's journey thus far that Fordola saw nicely got to the point.

It does make the Echo even more of a narrative device, since it apparently only activates if it makes for a good story; as in, not because it makes the story more interesting, but because it makes the story more efficient. Presumably the Echo of Fordola's past we see is exactly the same one Arenvald saw back in 4.0, and repeated just for our sakes.

(And how far we've come, when the Echo visions used to completely knock us out early in ARR, and now we just kind of wince for a moment.)

Arenvald continues to grow into a great character; I'm hoping he survives until the end ... just because he was there at the beginning.

I'm going into major unsupported speculation, but I keep getting the feeling that if Arenvald does survive, he's going to be a great companion (narratively, at least) for Fordola. Mainly because he also has the Echo (and thus can understand some of Fordola's Resonance problems), and he's one of the first to not see Fordola as a complete monster deserving of only death. His impassioned pleas early in this patch in Fordola's cell was critical to setting the scene for the audience to see Fordola in a different light.

That stinger, though. Tsuyu is off to a ...strange... start; retrograde amnesia (if that's indeed what this is) is usually a cheap and easy plot device (and one overplayed for how rarely it actually occurs), but between all she's been through psychologically and the physical trauma of the building collapse let's give it the benefit of doubt and see where it goes. Psychogenic fugue is not the worst direction to take her in, and they haven't played that trope card to death in this game, yet.

I've seen this several times in various SF&F stories, although I concede that it's been around a lot longer than that, as a key point in philosophy. The core question is whether Tsuyu is responsible for Yotsuyu's actions, which goes deeper into whether Tsuyu is the same person, philosophically speaking, as Yotsuyu.

Which probably would not be a hair many Domans would bother splitting. So we get Yotsuyu/Tsuyu stuck with Gosetsu, who just happens to be of the right temperament not to hold a grudge.

It's a marked difference from how Fordola was treated by the story, certainly.

Apparently you can breathe and communicate via linkpearl underwater.

We can communicate via linkpearl without saying a word, based on some flavour text in the occasional sidequest. The other party just assumes we're the quiet type and effectively reads our minds to guess what we mean to say.

That, or just assume we'll agree to whatever they say, which is usually the case.

In this situation, though, I do wonder if our words get the distortion effect sounds do underwater (due to the different medium).

Originally Posted by Fenral

Arenvald's (Japanese) voice is still way too cute for a male Highlander.

It had been some time since the 4.0 story, so I didn't remember what Arenvald sounded like. So when he spoke up in a voiced cutscene at the beginning, it just felt a bit weird how this big Highlander with a tragic past sounded like an eager teenage boy.

Especially when I imagined him talking (in the non-voiced cutscene) about how his mother basically abused and abandoned him.

Originally Posted by Clawtooth

Also, anyone any idea who the painting in the Trove was of? I'm assuming the Mad King, but I'm not sure.

The painting, if anyone missed it (spoilered for size):

That is some amazing hair.

Originally Posted by Cilia

The Mad King's treasure trove, having never been mentioned before, was a slight curveball. I noticed Skalla's treasure room in the trailer, though, so I figured it would end up being down there.

I admit I expected Skalla to be in some distant corner of Gyr Abania (relative to the places we go to in the MSQ), rather than directly below Ala Mhigo.

I didn't take note during the earlier trash pulls, but the trash later in the dungeon definitely had the "Transfiguration" buff, the same as what we had when we used the magic circles to cross the chasms. Except theirs is permanent, at least until we killed them.

Adds just that bit more horror into the whole thing.

Game-mechanics-wise, does anyone know if the Hydro Push/Pull casts are a genuine mislabelled bug, or are the encounter designers deliberately trolling us?

Funny thing is that early on in the patch story someone mentions Zenos' corpse being dug up by some Ala Mhigans for... some reason... so it might actually not be there anymore... are we going to have to fight Zombie Zenos?

Image spoilered for size:

M'naago's vague words imply that some people did try to dig up Zenos's corpse to do horrible things to it, but they were stopped in time. And the significant pause before "grim" suggests there was violence involved in the stopping.

MSQ Spoilers

I was generally happy with Fordola's story, and particularly pleased to see myself included in quick flashbacks. As an aside, I've been recently replaying through ARR/HW/SB on an alt, and I'm currently up to the Ruby Sea and, each time the credits rolled, I felt a pang to see me in the screenshots they used for the backdrop. Maybe that will be forthcoming at the end of 4.x? A little bit like the end of FF15.... Oh, and there's a line early in Stormblood from M'Naago, who called Raubahn "the legend" to his face, so that nicely strengthens the patch title.

Back on track, I stay on the English dub, and I think it was pretty excellent. Arenvald, Lyse, Fordola, Raubahn, and Nanamo all stood out for me. I agree with Moose - it was a much more accomplished x.1 patch than others we've had. Again, going back to my replay, As Goes Light, So Goes Darkness is a particularly weak arc by comparison. I think having a dungeon in the MSQ helped a lot, and the end battle with Lakshmi was a very nice retread of the mechanics of the normal and extreme encounters.

Yotsuyu...

Well, I see a few possibilities. It is either faked (with or without Gosetsu's knowledge - which could open up a whole new can of wyrms) or it is entirely legitimate. By going back to Doma so soon, the situation will come to the boil pretty quickly, I suspect.

And on the subject of looking forward, we're almost certainly heading for our version of Nuremburg (trials, not rallies). Laurientis and Yuyuhase are due their comeuppance, and Fordola elected to go straight back to her cell. Can Ala Mhigo and the Alliance be seen to mete out even handed justice? I was also pleased to see some hints of an answer to the question I posed in the anthem lyrics topic about the state of information/misinformation within the Empire. I groaned a bit at the thought that Elidibus is masquerading as Zenos (putting the clues of his body being dug up and the conversation between the two imperials) but for the mask-removal gag to work, he needs to be wearing a face that we know. I hope these are just red herrings; I liked where Zenos ended in 4.0, and I'm not sure he needs revisiting.