Ivalice in FFXIV

[Nalien]

Not trying to spoil anything but recent events make it hard for me to believe we will be doing anything with Othard. Not to mention the lack of backup involved from a tactical point of view. We are more likely to launch from Gyr Abania via the land bridge.

Well, my hope is that we get something like Besieged on the Ala Mhigo front, meanwhile we push in from behind via Doma. Then again I've been hoping for something like Besieged from every expansion ("Dragonsong War? Sounds perfect for Besieged style content!"). With Squadrons being woefully underutilised and Yoshida even saying he wants to add something more for Grand Company content... I can dream... I can dream...

Right now it just seems like there is more to flesh out in the east than the west. There's a lot of empty map over there to explore, and the region seems to have far more hints than whatever is beyond Gyr Abania. Do we actually have any idea what's beyond Gyr Abania? Thancred presumably waltzed around those regions but I don't think he dropped a single name that had me thinking "bet that'll be in the next expansion". Meanwhile we've got Dalmasca (unless I'm bad at geography) and Thavnaria in the east, and even if we don't directly revisit Rabanastre I could see them wanting to reuse various assets from the Ivalice raids (namely the races added via it). Plus we already have Alphinaud trailblazing that route... We know that there's a route in that way as a result, meanwhile I'm somewhat doubtful Garlemald is just going to let us walk that land bridge into their territory...

Not to mention the lack of backup involved from a tactical point of view.

That assumes we're pushing in as a liberation force, and given that's what Stormblood was about, I can't seem them repeating that with the next expansion. It's already been established that we're going for more of a war of subterfuge... If we go into Garlemald with the Eorzean Alliance at our back, rather than going in there and working with various Garlean factions to actually flesh them out, I'd be very disappointed... I'd rather see an expansion where we work on regime change than liberation again... If we go to Dalmasca I don't want a literal copy of Gyr Abania where we have the Resistance camp and we liberate them by the end... The story is going to be pretty flat if it's just us reclaiming cities from Garlemald every expansion...

[Remedi]

There's the possibility of having a way behind the enclave though

[Iscah]

I think there's potential for us to visit Dalmasca outside of Rabanastre itself. It got name-dropped in the last part of the MSQ of course, and there's still the long-hanging thread of Drest in Raincatcher Gully who really really needs to get his chance to return home. We're now friends with world leaders who casually drop in to Ala Mhigo from Doma for a meeting, and we're spending a whole plotline visiting the place. Can we please finally put two and two together and take him along? Or actually seek out his advice (and company) to show us the best route from there into Garlemald, or something.