YoRHa: Dark Apocalypse (Pre-5.1 Speculation)

[Anonymoose]

To prevent knee-jerk reactions, knee-jerk counterpoints, and new information from either clogging up or getting lost in other threads, now may be the right time to give it its own thread.

First things first, my knee-jerk reaction, and a new interview snip.

I'm just trusting in the system this time around. We had all these same doubts and debates with Ivalice and (yeah, Matsuno-san broke a few vases they're still sweeping up, but) everyone worked hard to fit it into the world and make it something new and it was totally worth it and I'm sure they can do that again.

What's Yoko Taro's mantra? "Tell Square Enix to give me money, and I will do it for you."

He seems perfectly capable of manifesting his insanity within the confines of, "Hydaelyn is isolated; your ideas will be manifested anew within this world to fit this world. Other than that, do whatever you want and don't bruise the world lore too badly." Hell, what if he just turns following those rules into part of the craziness?

I'm usually the strictest one in the room but...

Worst case scenario, one isolated raid questline is a mess and we still got to play an MMO raid randomly custom-designed by Yoko Taro and Yosuke Saito.

Strap me in.

Will the developer of the Nier series, Platinum Games, participate in developing the new alliance raid?
They'll be sharing assets with us, so in that sense, yes. But just like with Return to Ivalice, the FFXIV team will create the boss battles. Platinum Games won't be involved in actual development.

As a fellow creator, what do you think of Yoko Taro?

My first impression is that he's incredibly smart. His speech feels calculated, in a different way from myself. I never compared us, but if I had to say, it's like he tries to leave some kind of "scars" on you. He wants his creations to leave some kind of mark on the player or reader, any mark at all. I don't know if I can go as far to say as that's the purpose of his work, but at any rate, I strongly sense that power from him. Anyway, he's interesting. He's one of the few people that I can eat with and get excited over game talk with.

There are many different reactions to YoRHa, ranging from welcoming to rejecting. Did you foresee this response?

I think that as we reveal more information about Shadowbringers, YoRHa will begin to make more sense. At any rate, both Saito-san and Yoko-san are being careful to make sure it blends in with FFXIV. They don't want the FFXIV community to reject it, and of course they want to leave something with you. The FFXIV team feels the same way--we don't want to impose too much on the Nier community. Both sides of the collaboration want to make something that both communities will enjoy. We'll integrate that into the gameplay experience and create something unpredictable, so please look forward to it.

When did you start working with Saito-san?

Game development-wise, after Dragon Quest X.

Saito-san is a producer. What kind of involvement does he have with this project?

He's probably the top producer in Square Enix. Neither of us really think of each other as producers, and Saito-san probably doesn't think of himself as a producer either. He just wants to do fun things, and "producer" is simply his job classification. Saito-san can do game design too, so he has a lot to offer, and he excels at thinking about things. He's open-minded, and if the director (not limited to Yoko-san) wants to do something, he lets them do it. It was the same with Dragon Quest X. The producer should have 100% faith in the director and gather people to create what the director wants, while convincing the people who are against it. If both sides aren't happy, then they should separate. That's how much he puts stock in people. For this project too, we didn't talk about duties at all, and simply agreed that it'd be interesting to do something like this.

Would you say there's a special connection between you?

I don't know if it's "special", but we're both so busy that we only get 1-2 chances a year to drink together, and now we'll have to see each other for work, so I'm glad we'll have more opportunities to drink together.

During the video message, Yoko-san said that the story wasn't done at all, but what is the real development status?

At the very least, I hear that Yoko-san has a clear idea in his head of what he wants to do. Next is how we're going to introduce it into FFXIV's lore. It'll be a back and forth between us until we reach a conclusion.

What did you think when they brought up the idea?

"Oh, that makes sense." We could certainly make something really interesting. I don't want to say any more for now, since I want to tell the story when the three of us are together.

Matsuno-san tweeted that he was passing the baton to Yoko-san, but when I completed the Return to Ivalice series, it really didn't feel like it was over. Are you considering a continuation?

*laughs* The great thing about Matsuno-san's works is that they don't feel complete on their own. His game design is all about creating the presence of the history and characters. The story that he wrote for us encroaches on Eorzea's history and lore in a good way, and it's possible that it'll get involved again and something new will come out of it. I didn't request anything from him; he wrote the new text himself and it was implemented upon approval. I think it'd be interesting to collaborate again in a different way if we get the opportunity. After all, I'm a Matsuno believer *laughs* But Return to Ivalice really was great. I think there are people who didn't like it, but I'm glad that the people who played FFT were happy with the ending.

[Chewy2nd]

I'd imagine YoRHa fitting in with perhaps early Allagan tech

[Anonymoose]

I'd imagine YoRHa fitting in with perhaps early Allagan tech

To be fair, even in the hypothetical situation YoRHA couldn't be made to fit with anything in the entire game, they'd probably still be linked to Allagans.

[Cilia]

I'd imagine YoRHa fitting in with perhaps early Allagan tech

I imagine they'd have to be very late Allagan tech, if they're related to Allag at all. We've seen pretty much everything Allag has to offer, from chimeric monstrosities to clockwork constructs, but no sapient machina like the YoRHa units...

If we assume Azys Lla is the "glorious museum from the end of Allag," at any rate. They're still pretty early in the planning stages, though, and it won't hit until 5.1, so there's plenty of time to work the kinks out.

[EdwinLi]

I honestly will like to see the story focus on a time long forgotten when Magic was not something possible for civilizations yet.

It would be interesting to explore a forgotten civilization from a era when the only thing people can depend on is Technology due to no abilities to use Magic yet.

[Guiballad]

The fact Yoshi said that YoRHa will start to make sense as we go foward with Shadowbringers info just kinda makes me not really put much faith in it being an Allag thing.
If it was just Allagan shenanigans it would make as much sense as it could right now y'know.

or maybe i'm just really freackin tired of Allag...

[Iscah]

I imagine they'd have to be very late Allagan tech, if they're related to Allag at all. We've seen pretty much everything Allag has to offer, from chimeric monstrosities to clockwork constructs, but no sapient machina like the YoRHa units...

The closest might be the "evocation matrix" we see in the Lv70 summoner quest - an Allagan node supercomputer that can create egi of human form. Suppose they could build a smaller version, able to create a single egi around rather than outside itself...?

I don't know if egi are supposed to be solid or not, but if not then it could be augmented with a human-shaped frame around the "summoner node". Or skip the whole egi thing and implant something of similar intelligence into one of the manikins that people were talking about elsewhere.



The other AI-or-something-like-it device we've seen is "Gillie", the guidance mode from Azys Lla. Overall I got the impression that she might just be the Allagan equivalent of Siri, and not a true intelligence, but on my second playthrough I found something curious that seems to contradict it.

Y'shtola remarks at one point: "That node is not what it seems. From amidst the metal, I sense the gaze of a living being. Have care around it."

It never becomes relevant in the end. Gillie guides us to the Flagship, shuts down without anything remarkable happening, and gets revived as a minion if you do the Fractal Continuum.

So... why point it out in the first place?

[SannaR]

How do you think we'll be introduced to the Neir side of things? I read that Q&A that came after the keynote and they said they'd make sure to mesh it into our world as good as you can with Neir. Normally a reporter from one of the three city states tends to flag us down but with Neir we could end up getting a Pod or one of the Operators or run into a 9S.

[ObsidianFire]

Personally I think it will have less to do with Allag and much more to do with Garlemald. Reading up on what things like the Hypertuned are (lab babies grown for the purposes of acting as "energy containers") and some of the other stuff going on in Castrum Abania and the Resonance research... yikes. Get a few amoral scientists together and the idea of them trying to figure out crazy things like sentient robots in some corner of Ilsabard while being funded by the Garlean Government sounds pretty plausible all things considered. We know they're messing with cloning already...

[Alexandre_Noireau]

How could YoRHa/Nier sci-fi Tech fit in Hydaelyn's lore? The Allagan and the non-allagan alternatives.

First we gotta answer:
When did the fragmentation of the source happend?

I have no idea, but if it was before "life" existed in Hydaelyn as a planet, which is kinda a dark soulish idea of hydaelyn being all "perfectly balanced" in the aetherial sea where "nothing could possibly change" due to all being in it's perfect "rest position" so to speak. (A no, no aether/quatum tunneling).
If this is the case, then maybe there are versions of Hydaelyn where the Allagans never even or developed in the way we know they did in our Hydaelyn. Maybe they were replaced by other nations, groups... Maybe the developed for another 4 thousand years and never faced calamity or non strong enough to topple them.

We also know in our version of Hydaelyn or the universe we are in, there are other planets with other life forms (dragons and a bunch smart enough to create a near perfect self sufficient cybernetic AI super weapon... That for some reason DIDN'T DESTROYED US, like, evaporate us from existence... ANYWAY) i think we are starting to have problems with what Hydaelyn actually is. The Planet, The Crystal (metaverse?), The Shard (parallel realities?) and the universe itself. Like. We know of the Void and the shard of the derplander, and for one we have absolutely no reason to assume they followed our own developings, while the other seems pretty pretty prettyyyy close to our, these reflections are not perfect...

With this, i think YoRHa can either:

-A replacement of Allags in another Reflection: Pretty bad and lazy if you ask me.
-Allagans of another reflection that didn't fell to calamities but are now in the brink of being tipped towards darkness.
-Non allagan super civ ruins of a world that succumbed or is about to, to either dark or light. Maybe we will explore a Hydaelyn way in the past or the future, at a more realistic Cosmological Evolutionary scale.
-Non allagan super civ ruins, this time arround, is not from a reflection but in ours, the core.

Honestly at this point im not sure if we are traveling in time or dimensions. Like are we visiting other reflections (Aka: we are going to save minfilia in the shard of the derplander) or we are traveling in time? Or both? Honestly this is a hella mess... Hopefully it will be properly explained...

Maybe YoRHa is in the planet Omega was created. Using Omega as a mid point transition between the levels of high tech from Nier and the base blueprint that upstarted the Allagans.