Right, then... [Nier: Automata/Copied Factory] [Spoilers]

[swiss_Momo]

Lightning Returns: FFX13 ends with Lightning being transported to current day France were she then becomes a fashion model, and there is a FF10 novel that ends with the protags travelling to outer space were they discover Gaia (the planet from FF7) or something

it's probably the best not to think too hard about it for now, least we end up like this

[ObsidianFire]

That is an excellent picture of how NieR canon works though...

[Iscah]

Also an excellent picture of me trying to explain my timeline theories for the main game.

[MoofiaBossVal]

I wouldn't rack my brain trying to think about how it fits into FFXIV lore. The Copied Factory looks hundreds of years old, and yet apparently that valley had never been found by Amaro riders or airships flying overhead. I'd just say that the events of the raid are a continuation of Nier Automata's story, taking place in the FFXIV game, but not really canon to the story of FFXIV.

[Nalien]

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that our dear friend, the Crystal Exarch is to blame; He magicked a whole Crystal Tower from one world to another, through time too, no less. How absurd is it really to imagine that a chunk of another world (a splinter timeline from Nier: Automata) somehow got mixed up in the whole process as well? The whole process of just summoning us to the First was very trial and error, with the Scions getting mixed in precisely because this was uncharted magics, so an unexpected side effect of transporting Crystal Tower through time and space? Easy enough for me to believe, and handily explains away things like the Copied Factory somehow being hidden for so long. It wasn't hidden, it merely got plopped into the First the same as Crystal Tower, at an unspecified date. It lay undiscovered because post-Flood people probably weren't in the adventurous mood, and it could have materialized in an area that had previously been mapped out as wilderness, so people just assumed it was still wilderness and had no reason to go looking there.

Now, it would require XIV to exist in some kind of gaming multiverse, rather than its own little bubble. Previous cross-over events have already established that, though. If Shantotto can magic-mishap her way from Vana'diel to Eorzea, then yeah... G'raha can accidentally pull elements from a failed Nier: Automata timeline with him as he Dr. Whos' Crystal Tower from his own failed timeline. If all previous cross-over events exist in their own little Hildibrand-bubbles for you, well then the Nier cross-over is no different? Just because it's a 24m raid doesn't really change that IMO, not until they pull it into the MSQ somehow, but I'll cross that bridge if and when we get to it.

Of course, Yoko can just make up his own reasoning as to why Nier popped into XIV. Or he can give no explanation whatsoever. Crystal TaRDiS is just my theory on it, I kind of expect we'll not be given a clear reason as to the how or why of it.

[RopeDrink]

but not really canon to the story of FFXIV.

There's no reason to believe that it is not canonical for FFXIV. Every encounter with bosses from previous FF titles, the Ivalice raid, and even the MHW cross-over are all have reasoning for being in our universe. I'm also semi-sure that this Nier raid was regarded by Yoko to be canonical to Nier, in which case it would be absurd to think that this cross-over would be canonical to Nier but NOT to the game it is taking part in. People have already provided one rather logical possibility (due to 9S heading off on some space-adventures after a certain ending).

It wouldn't be a tall ask to suspend belief that their/our worlds could be discovered by another. Hell, we have Ascians that can casually reach their cosy little moonbase by strolling through thin-air, not to mention the existence of mind-melting stories thanks to the likes of Alexander and the Crystal Tower.

Sure, they could utilize wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey, but doing so wouldn't make it non-canon. Again, there's just no reason to believe why what is happening isn't part of the FFXIV story just because it predominantly involves a different game.

[Berethos]

I wouldn't rack my brain trying to think about how it fits into FFXIV lore. The Copied Factory looks hundreds of years old, and yet apparently that valley had never been found by Amaro riders or airships flying overhead.

That we know of, at least in the past 100 years. Remember that the loss of most of their world also led to a great deal of loss of records and information from before the Flood.

During the last 100 years, it's feasible that exploration into what is essentially uninhabitable mountains while most days for years and years are basically a fight for survival wouldn't be a priority. Fighting Sin Eaters, even for the Eulmoran army for most of those 100 years, was mission number one.

Also consider how far into the mountains we are. Were we anywhere nearby, we'd be able to see the massive Talos and Mt. Gulg floating in the sky, and neither are anywhere in sight. So wherever we are, it's far enough into the mountain range to be out of sight of those, which makes it far enough that it's unlikely to have been visited by airships or those flying on an amaro in the last 100 years when society has bigger issues than exploring deep into random mountain ranges just to see what's there.

We're also talking about a completely different world with a mostly unknown past compared to the Source. It's a trifling matter to fit into the FFXIV lore when it's on a world where most of the world's history is a long lost mystery, and with crossovers of this nature they tend to be "This character is this universe's version of this character in some form or fashion, not the character from the original work visiting."

It only becomes tricky when trying to connect two disparate franchises in a canonical fashion...which outside of the unsourced claim that Yoko Taro has said it's canon to NieR's world, there seems to be no indication the creators of this crossover are trying to do that, and instead are handling it like they did with the Ivalice crossover, injecting a version of it that exists entirely within the universe of FFXIV and is simply inspired by the original work, not a continuation of the original work.

[ObsidianFire]

To add to that... both the FFXIV world and the NieR world have a history of other beings from other dimensions/planets/planes of existence somehow finding their way to Hydaelyn (or NieR Earth). Midgardsormr and Omega come from two other planets. Migdardsormr managed to cut a deal with Hydaelyn to let his kids live on her; Omega managed to get itself fixed until it could figure out how to get stronger to get home. Ultima, The High Seraph came from another plane of existence. She then introduced Auracite that corrupted the people it came in contact with and turned them into monsters. And Ultima also wanted to take over the world.

The Red Dragon and the White Giant from Drakengard similarly crashed into the NieR universe and caused a lot of havoc. The Red Dragon was killed and released magic into the NieR Earth which wasn't equipped to handle magic and caused a lot of problems. A similar thing happened with the White Giant, only worse. Exposure to it corrupted people and more or less made them make a contract with it's god back in it's home dimension or turned them into salt. If people did make a contract with the gods of the White Gaint, they were brainwashed and ended up turning into monsters more or less... The gods the White Gaint makes a connection to are also... really hate humanity because it's took chaotic for them...

Actually... Ultima, the High Seraph and the White Giant have a lot in common with both how they got to the worlds they are in and what ended up happening once they got there... I did not need that mental image...

Point being, both FFXIV and NieR have enough inter-dimension stuff going on with key characters and at key plot points for "universe hopping" to not be a deal-breaker to me. If it was other Final Fantasy games or other game cross-overs, I'd be a lot more skeptical about it...

[RopeDrink]

I repeat. Moonbase teleportation. Alexander in general. People from the future travelling back in time to save someone from a particular fate. I'm not sure how this Nier stuff could be hard to swallow for anyone when the previous list doesn't even include the above-mentioned shenanigans from dragons and imma-rule-you wannabe-gods, or how we've had multiple tiers of content from other FF's entirely (all thanks to Omega, who arrived thanks to his own shenanigans, using more shenanigans to program those threats from completely different timelines re. Kefka, Ex-Death and so on, followed by Eden on the first, including a certain prince from XV getting teleported here for a spell), not to mention a visit from a creature that isn't even under the SE banner... And all of it is canon! The fact that some might be done in a more fun manner (such as the FF-in-FF stuff and MHW) doesn't detract from that.

However, we can point that out all day but the real pudding will be seeing how it ties in down the road. It will no doubt be more centric to Nier and its endings, whereas for us it's just another of those weird and wonderful encounters that the WoL always seems to just bump into during downtime from their own actual storyline plights.

[Iscah]

I repeat. Moonbase teleportation. Alexander in general. People from the future travelling back in time to save someone from a particular fate. I'm not sure how this Nier stuff could be hard to swallow for anyone....

My issue isn't with the level of technology, or the details of what's happening. As you say, we already have highly-advanced robots/AI and crossing dimensions and timelines (though in a way that adding more makes it messy).

My issue with it is that these specific highly-advanced robots and this specific story already have their own game and universe to exist in, and that universe should not be integrated into this one.

If they want to tell further parts of the NieR story, make another NieR game instead of forcing it into another game entirely.

I dislike the prospect that if the two games are canonically merged, suddenly all of NieR/Drakengard is part of the same series as FFXIV and becomes "required reading" to fully understand what's going on. It already seems to be the case for understanding this raid. It's why I really hope that this crossover will not have further reach beyond this specific storyline.

Ivalice had a lot of the same issues - heavy reliance on another game's plot, and a seeming expectation that you'd like the characters because they were from that game, without trying to make them interesting in their own right. But at least that was another Final Fantasy game.

(If their aim is to encourage FFXIV fans to go play the other games, it's not working for me. Maybe I'm just being stubborn and digging my heels in, but I'm not going to go and play a game I wasn't interested in just so I can understand this one.)



This major crossover with an unrelated game also sets a precedent that I don't want to see followed. Previously, with the exception of minor events, the story was either original or based on Final Fantasy series titles. Now it crosses over with an unrelated game in a way that gives it a huge level of billing - higher even than several actual FF crossovers that were treated as temporary, inconsequential events. (The FFXV event could have dropped some lore bombs about crossing dimensions and shards, and the nature of primals via not-Garuda, but we all glanced at it and said "yeah whatever, it's just a crossover, they're not canon".)

Either this opens the floodgates of more major crossovers with other games until FFXIV becomes a weird mess of other stories making it harder to tell its own, or NieR forever sits alone as the one non-FF game that was somehow special enough to get an entire permanent raid series dedicated to it.



It also, as I said earlier, makes alternate dimensions messier.

The FFXIV structure as established in the main game has one universe with a possibly-localised splitting into shards. To that we add an apparent split-or-overwritten timeline for the universe.

If we now have to add "alternate universes" that's another layer of complication.