Ishgard the most messed up area?

[Enla]

and for other kingdom i create, i TRY to creat my own word to give them a role and title.
That is the start of work about a fantasy world you want to create, and tolkien did this too.

He didn't though. With the exception of the Elven languages pretty much everything he made pulled from existing cultures and languages. Hell Rohirric is basically the Mercian dialect of Old English. Because Tolkien was a famed linguist with a love and appreciation for language, including and perhaps ESPECIALLY existing ones. His works are peppered with homages to existing terms not because he wasn't trying to innovate, but because there's no reason to call a King the 'GRAND CROWN WEARER' or something odd when a simple existing word will work just as well. It's the same thing for archbishop. /Why/ call it something else when archbishop instantly provides clarity to his station? (Also see FF13 as an example of how giving unique terms just for the sake of being unique can lead to problems. That game required you to constantly have your nose in the codex to figure out what was going on.)

For the most part Tolkien still uses very basic terms, and those that are in other languages basically amount to the same thing. Most of his mythology was based in classical European myths with a slight spin. It was revolutionary for his time but he hardly went to the lengths you're claiming. Especially in this day and age where many authors have gone by far and away, including in FF to branch out. If you're looking to use any comparison, Tolkien isn't the one to use - Father of Modern Fantasy though he is. Which is why I used LoTR as an /analogy/. One, again, Star Wars or any other series could have supplanted.

At this point I feel this is going around in circles. Either willful ignorance, a clear language barrier, and or outright trolling is making it seemingly impossible for this discussion to be productive. Especially since without writing a plot synopsis and spoiling the bulk of the expansion we can't point out precisely why you're entirely off base with your assumptions. So with that in mind, just play the game. Ishgard and Dravania beyond it is your introduction to some of the prettiest areas in the entire game.

[NessaWyvern]

in some of his later writings he wrote that Middle Earth was just Europe in the deep past.

And here was I thinking that Middle Earth is New Zealand! D:

/jk I know it was just the movies that were from there. :P


Anyway OP, a lot of great stories have things based on current and past events. Doesn't make them any less great.

You said something along the lines of that you didn't like the french stuff because you are french and found it unoriginal, well, I can say that as a Kiwi I didn't think it was unoriginal when they put New Zealand themes into FFXIV. They put their own spin on it, and it made me feel happy that something from my country was being recognized, and I wanted to play the area more and do the beast tribe quests (since NZ themes was to do with one of the HW beast tribes) to see if I could spot anymore things relating to it.

(In fact from what I have seen, I am wondering if one of the writers is from NZ, or has a secret love of NZ. In ARR they named a staff "Tane Mahuta" after the maori god of the forest/largest kauri tree in NZ.)

[Ceridwenae]

Hell no, Lord of the ring, is really better, and built his myth and background on very very large period, also i never saw Gondor or Rohan as a remake of middle age in europe, but a merge of many inspiration and cultur with a very strong identity. Tell me is there archi bishop in gondor? Do you see any crusade or inquisitor stuff in lord of the ring? Is gandalf look like Merlin?
No no no and no.
So dont compare two tales who has definitely not the same level of writting and deep.

Else we have the right to phrase criticisme, i gave some argument no? SO accept it or let this topic away, we can not be agree always, but still i have right to spell what is wrong for me.

Huh. Being rather British I can tell you I read Tolkien and comprehend a very stylised near stereotypical English people in Hobbits, a class system which I do not care to be reminded of or wish existed yet still does, and either a failure of imagination or terrible inability to write female characters beyond a small pedastal Tolkien put them upon ("yes, you can go and fight stuff, but afterwards stop that and be a proper lady at home doing stuff for a man.")

Does that mean I hate it? Because it reminds me of actual real world stuff that happened or even still is?

Well... no. Although I do wish he'd had an editor that could whip the verbose story into submission, Tolkien's genius is in his worldbuilding skills, and he achieves those by using the real world as touchstones, as inspiration. This worldbuilding makes fantasy believable, because it has rules, motivations, intent we can clearly comprehend, or if we cannot, because of Eldritch abominations from outer space (Lovecraft), then those rules must be either explained or shown in some way.

In a game, it's more like a film in some ways, I think. Show, don't tell (as opposed to a book - although this game has a FF tradition of a lot of reading to do in the game and I think it's beautifully done balancing act - this game is all about balance, after all). You're clearly picking up on the references to real world things, which give our in-game universe some reality that we, as players, can understand and quickly drawn meaning from. This does not mean it's lazy by using codes or tropes to impart information. If you're picking up on things the game is doing its job. If you don't like those things you're picking up on, that's fine too. You don't have to like it. But what we're saying to you is to hold that thought, because right now, you're drawing conclusions based on incomplete information. You're judging the story when you've not even experienced it in full. You can do this. But we are going to tell you, with the greatest of respect and well wishes, that you're being maybe a little bit silly by doing so.

[Barraind]

How many cults have formed Empires in history? I can't think of any.

From a historical context, Christianity is what caused Rome to not collapse in the 1st century. The predominant religion of Rome in the 2nd and 1st century BCE wasnt "religion" per se. They kept their interpretations of the Greek gods because Greek literature was still prominent, but even those gods were transient (Mars was a god of fertility until the Romans adopted the Greek pantheon and made him Ares), and nationalism is what bound the people together more than religion. As Rome expanded and subjugated conquered nations, the nationalism idea started to get thrown by the wayside, as a majority of the population had no idea where or what Rome even was.

A number of Roman cults sprang up, including one founded around emperor-worship (failed because Roman emperors weren't considered the same as the Egyptian god-pharoah or dynast-kings of the farther east), Cybeleism (failed because it promoted excess and wasnt seen as worthy in Rome proper), the cult of Isis (promoted the individual above the state), Mythraism (had almost no foothold in the aristocracy in 6 centuries), but none had widespread appeal.

Until Christianity! It was taken from a number of works regarding Dionysus, with Roman patriotism and Greek philosophy, but in a way the masses could understand it.

Its core appeal was to the heart, instilled a sense of fellowship (love thy neighbor[ing former oppodition nation]), had tolerance built in, was easily approachable (christ loves you), wasnt preaching from a position of strength (the meek shall inherit), and it vindicated personhood (it was a slave religion, afterall) while encouraging community.

Christianity is probably what kept the Byzantine empire around until the 1450s. Built, no, but it ran the show for a long time.

[Spiralgaia]

I might have felt inclined to express my reasons for not thinking that Ishgard is 'the worst', as it is evidently not, but seeing as OP didn't even go into Heavensward and claims to know everything about the Holy See, I will just see myself out.

Cannot judge a story or a place without having been there and I honestly don't understand the need to either.

[Penthea]

Knowledge of what ?

Sorry i just ended basic game, and when i m guessing the end of plot befor the half of the story, that mean the story is very bad wrote.

Are you seriously trying to blame your inaccurate prediction of a story, that you admitted to having not experienced yet, on bad writing?

Also at Isghard when i saw the inquisitor first time i knew that was the bad guy, so why read bunch of text for something i know already? waste of time really;

Lol you meet one npc who is obviously a bad guy and you assume that the rest of the entire of the Ishgard storyline is just as predictable? You are judging an entire expansion based on one npc whose role is very brief? What? xD

Good god I hope you're trolling because your arguments are just silly.

[MistakeNot]

Knowledge of what ?

Knowledge of Ishgard. By your own admission you haven't even been into the city of Ishgard yet.
This means that you haven't seen much of Ishgard yet, and that you know very little about Ishgard at this point in time.

[SannaR]

I feel like the OP is going to also hate Stormblood's regions for taking heavy inspiration from real world locales.

I doubt they'll think much about the Garleans when or if they ever catch up to where many are in the story. Or how they don't already since they're still all about genocide of the beastmen.

[SannaR]

We're doing our best not to spoil the plot of an entire expansion. So, yes most of us don't have a lot of points to back up the why your first impressions of the place only due your dislike of it having too many real world counterparts is wrong. It's also a thousand years of the chruch being in charge where even the slightest hint that some one might be a "heretic" is a big thing. The war is why they had to pull out of the Eorzean Alliance in the first place when Ala Mihgo attack Gridania and started the Autum War. Right now you are seriously judging a book by it's cover without knowing anything more than what that cover shows.

[Seraph522]

From a historical context, Christianity is what caused Rome to not collapse in the 1st century. The predominant religion of Rome in the 2nd and 1st century BCE wasnt "religion" per se. They kept their interpretations of the Greek gods because Greek literature was still prominent, but even those gods were transient (Mars was a god of fertility until the Romans adopted the Greek pantheon and made him Ares), and nationalism is what bound the people together more than religion. As Rome expanded and subjugated conquered nations, the nationalism idea started to get thrown by the wayside, as a majority of the population had no idea where or what Rome even was.

It is important to note that the modern division between nationalism (devotion to the state/government) and religion (devotion to divinity) was not really a thing in the ancient world; in fact, it wasn't really a thing until the Enlightenment happened. And nationalism would have been hard to impose upon conquered peoples for obvious reasons; it's why the general Imperial policy was to allow worship of local gods/goddesses as long as proper devotion to the state was occasionally observed.

A number of Roman cults sprang up, including one founded around emperor-worship (failed because Roman emperors weren't considered the same as the Egyptian god-pharoah or dynast-kings of the farther east)

Emperor-worship was as much a nationalistic act as it was religious; even if you didn't fully worship the Emperor as divine, it was nonetheless something like US people being expected to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Refusal to partake in this rite was one of the reasons early Christians tended to be persecuted by the state, although mass persecutions were actually relatively rare.

Until Christianity! It was taken from a number of works regarding Dionysus, with Roman patriotism and Greek philosophy, but in a way the masses could understand it.

I mean... those definitely had influence upon Christian faith, especially in the post-Constantinian era, but Christianity originates from Judaism, starting effectively as yet another sect of Judaism in the Second Temple era that survived due to its focus on converting non-Jews and its general acceptance among those populations. It adopted more of those practices as it transitioned away from Judaism, but its roots have always been in that faith.