Thread: Revelations from Patch 4.2

Originally Posted by Ametrine

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^Diseased.

And I agree....I smell a major civil war coming in.

In order to sell Garlemald's (eventual) turn around, SE needs to sell them as villains first. Just saying they are villains and having all their villainy happen off-screen doesn't work as well as showing on a consistent basis that there is something seriously messed up with how their government functions. Garlemald would feel cheap otherwise.

And we really didn't get to see first-hand how bad it could get under Garlemald until SB. For all that Giaus and Regulus were our enemies, they both ended up respecting us (or at least our power) and agreed with us that destroying Ultima Wpeaon/the Warring Triad was the right thing to do. Neither of them were monsters in and of themselves so much as they worked for a society that was really messed up.

Zenos though... we haven't had someone that monstrous since Nael in 1.0 (who arguably doesn't count since she was tempered by Bahamut the entire time). SB is where instead of just hearing about all the stuff Garlemald gets up to, we see it for ourselves. And if anything, it's worse then what we were told about. Finding out all the stuff going on in the Garlean homeland from the people on the Prima Vista isn't even shocking at that point.

Varis seems to be a more extreme solus, we don't know much about him other than the fact he kickstarted the expansionist movement and changed garlemalds societal structure but i would say he would be like varis in beliefs but not as harsh based on the fact he held the arts in high respect whereas varis likely sees them as a decadent waste of time and censors them heavily to prevent anything other than imperial propaganda reaching the populous.

Well, Solus was all but asked to become emperor, while Varis inherited the title. I would not be surprised if Solus was far more aware then Varis is of how things could have gone differently if he didn't have the support of Garlemald's people and made sure he kept that level of support. Varis seems to be taking that support for granted and it sounds like people know that.

Originally Posted by ObsidianFire

Well, Solus was all but asked to become emperor, while Varis inherited the title. I would not be surprised if Solus was far more aware then Varis is of how things could have gone differently if he didn't have the support of Garlemald's people and made sure he kept that level of support. Varis seems to be taking that support for granted and it sounds like people know that.

Varis actually fought very hard for the throne and deposed his uncle the expected heir because he wasn't a figure in the military, so it does paint a picture but rather that Varis is the uncompromising and militaristic type to rule with an iron fist since he clawed his way onto the throne.

Originally Posted by Claymore65

However, I don't think the character we'll end up allying with is Varis. Varis' visual design basically screams "I'm a Villain", with pale skin, sunken in eyes, long white hair, and huge, black, spiky armor. Even his crown resembles demonic horns. We know from the lorebook that his opponent in the civil war opposed their policies of aggressive expansion. From the Ivalice storyline, we learned citizens of Garlemald fear to speak out against their government's policies, and he's even destroying Arts programs. Varis is a picture perfect villain to be defeated. What we lack currently is a heroic character or group of characters that we'll put into power after he's taken care of.

I agree with that. The raid has shown us that unlike Solus, Varis does not allow free art. Solus who still started all the wars with different countries was still quite fine with art that was against the empire but with Varis everything has to be accepted by him thus no form of critisism is allowed. (How will someone like that truly want an allicance with other countries.) Also he did just call beast tribes creatures (thus seeing them bellow him) and he is the leader of the empire so he could change some rules but people that are not purebloods are still seen as less than them. We also know that nobody is born truly evil so something in his upbringing made Zenos that way he is and seeing how he did not even care that his only heir is death..yeah no I dont think that Varis is a good guy at all. You might live a fine life if you are on his good side..but he probably does not have any problems with taking out anyone that openly goes against his words.

Anyway on the patch itself to not derail the thread to much about Garlemald again:

Omega:

I am honestly a bit sad that Omega has no real connection to the MSQ. Since we did learn quite some stuff about Middy. The triad was the same. We have important informations there and an character that stays with the scions but has no meaning to them outside of the triad story even though his informations could be important for them..also killing of someone like Regula in a side story is imo just bad, especially when he was part of the MSQ before that. So theoretically they cant really kill of any of the characters in the last omega raid (other than maybe Alpha...please dont SE T_T) because they would be suddenly missing from the MSQ and if someone does not do the raid they will not even know why.

With Middy now sleeping we also lost our chance to learn more from his origin. I am just not sure that Omega suddenly will tell us much more so I am a bit sad.

MSQ:

I really hope that future expansion wont have two other big conflicts happening at the same time again..at least not with two different countries. I already felt that the wars went over quite fast and we somehow liberated two countries that were under Garlemald for years way too fast. With Ishgard it was also quite fast but at least it felt more like we had much more to work towards peace and it took a whole expansion with all patches to have Isghard truly be at peace.

Ala Mhigo and Doma went way too fast and since we will still deal with Doma in the next patch I am honestly not really sure if we see much more conflict in Ala Mhigo. I mean 4.3 will be Doma and 4.5 is normally there to send us on the way to 5.0. So either they make a sudden conflict in Ala Mhigo in 4.4 which needs to be kinda solved in that patch too because otherwise this will just be brought over to the next expansion and we know with Uldah that this can also end badly..Also if we switch back to Ala Mhigo in 4.4 (which is just pure speculation on my part) then they kinda have to "solve" Doma in the next one or they will just carry over two conflicts into 5.0 because imo it would be bad to cover both of them in .x patches since they already feel quite short for one country.

So I am kinda curious how they will deal with both countries. We still have the exchange in Doma, Asashis plan, Zenos being alive again, Varis and Elidibus, Yotsuyu and her memories...all of that should at least take two patches or more imo and with Ala Mhigo we still have to see at least some kind of government and we have the situation with Fordola. At the same time we need something for the next expansion but that is hopefully something new too otherwise we would drag these two city states over to the next one and I am not sure if that would be great for the story conclusions.