What exactely happens in the Alliance Raids of Stormblood?

[Monsalvato]

Anybody can point me to a place where I can read a tl;dr so I can make some sense out of it?

I got there's this family of nobles from the Garlean Empire, who are good people, and own a flying airship and a theatre company where they play acts that are not actually made up from zero but based on the tales of their Ancestors.
The company owner's son and daughter look exactely like Ramza and his Sister, they are their descendants and get "possessed" by the original Ramza/Sister souls during the raids at some point.

Then there's Fran and other character from FFXII, which is... possible I guess since FFXII If I recall takes place many years after FFTactics (and, just like all Matsuno games, they all take place on the same world: Ivalice)

So I'm confused, does this mean Ivalice is not a planet on its own but it's actually a realm/zone on Eorzea? But we can't freely explore it, just through raids.



I dunno, I'm having a hard time trying to believe FFXII/Tactics took place on Eorzea/Hydaelyn/TheSource.
Thanks for your time regardless!

[MrThinker]

Okay, first things first. Ivalice in FFXIV, and the Return to Ivalice raid series in general, is an homage to Matsuno's Ivalice universe. They are not the same, though many of the ideas and elements from that universe were adapted into the game.
Though it may not make sense at first glance, in the Ivalice universe, FFXII takes place before Tactics, seperated by a few centuries and a great calamity that reset civillization and killed/greatly endangered most of the non-hume races, which is why they are not seen in Tactics. I.e. Rabanastre existed before Lesalia
In FFXIV's Ivalice, this is the other way around, i.e. Lesalia existed before Rabanastre.

[Monsalvato]

Oooh ok, thanks for fixing that.
So it's "just" an homage?
I mean FFXIV has always been full of cames homage to other episodes in the series, like Garlean empire inspired by FF6, the Magitek mounts as well. We could start a list now and by tomorrow we still wouldn't be done filling it up.
There's also a lot of side-quests cameos with Reference to FFXIII, FFXV, Dragon Quest, but they all feel like Side content so you don't really ask too many questions and simply enjoy it.

Here things are so deep... and so copy-pasted, it hardly feels like a "homage" at all. How does all those "deities" from the Zodiac fit in in the FFXIV universe, where we have Primals, Zodiark, Hydaelyn and everything else?
It all feels a bit, I dunno, out of place?
Seriously contrived?
Or maybe I'm just missing something, clearly...


I mean the Alliance Raids of ARR and HW fit bloody perfectly in the Main Story Quest of FFXIV. In the FFXIV lore in general.
This Ivalice series of raids feel... so out of place really.
Is it just me? Am I unawaringly biased? I swear I love Matsuno's work so it's not that.


Edit:
I mean it's beautiful in itself, a bit confusing maybe but beautiful.
It just feels, I dunno, like it's in the wrong place, it's hard to explain.

[MrThinker]

Oooh ok, thanks for fixing that.
So it's "just" an homage?
I mean FFXIV has always been full of cames homage to other episodes in the series, like Garlean empire inspired by FF6, the Magitek mounts as well. We could start a list now and by tomorrow we still wouldn't be done filling it up.
There's also a lot of side-quests cameos with Reference to FFXIII, FFXV, Dragon Quest, but they all feel like Side content so you don't really ask too many questions and simply enjoy it.

Here things are so deep... and so copy-pasted, it hardly feels like a "homage" at all. How does all those "deities" from the Zodiac fit in in the FFXIV universe, where we have Primals, Zodiark, Hydaelyn and everything else?
It all feels a bit, I dunno, out of place?
Seriously contrived?
Or maybe I'm just missing something, clearly...


I mean the Alliance Raids of ARR and HW fit bloody perfectly in the Main Story Quest of FFXIV. In the FFXIV lore in general.
This Ivalice series of raids feel... so out of place really.
Is it just me? Am I unawaringly biased? I swear I love Matsuno's work so it's not that.


Edit:
I mean it's beautiful in itself, a bit confusing maybe but beautiful.
It just feels, I dunno, like it's in the wrong place, it's hard to explain.

In the grand scheme of things, yes an homage is exactly what it is. Don't feel so worried about the fact you are concerned about how the Ivalice elements mesh into the world. It is actually a known point of contention that prevents some people from enjoying the raid story. For my part, I think they did as good a job as they could have to integrate the story, but it would have been better served if the info itself was seeded in more naturally through prior sidequests. Then again, by the time they decided to make the raid series about Ivalice and bring Matsuno in to write the story, there wasn't much space to seed the lore, so we got a lot of info dump instead.

[Veloran]

The "deities" are people who used the auracite to mantle figures present in the ancient legends. Think of them like demi- primals, sort of like what happened with Shiva.

[JeanneOrnitier]

It's not the exact same Ivalice, it's an alternate universe version of Ivalice where Tactics happened hundreds (or thousands?) of years ago and XII's characters are alive now. Like how Crystal Tower and its bosses are taken from Final Fantasy III, or Shadowbringers' Weapons trials are from FF7. We see a map in the leadup to Orbonne Monastery that shows this Ivalice is in the southern part of Othard, south of Doma.

The Lucavi in this are people whose desires are twisted by Ultima's auracite and transforms them into monsters.

[Stepjam]

The monsters you fight (like hashmal and all them) aren't really deities, they are closer to primals that are being summoned by Ultima (considering Ultima resummons them briefly for the final battle). And Ultima is implied to be like Midgardsomr, that is to say an alien from another planet. Time will tell if the game draws connections between ultima and the ultima weapon at all.

[Yuella]

The alliance raid in Shadowbringers feels even more out of place

[Gula]

The alliance raid in Shadowbringers feels even more out of place

Ironworks says hi from the entire Omega raid.

[Hazama999]

Ironworks says hi from the entire Omega raid.

Well, at least the Omega raid tiers took place in the Interdimensional Rift. The story was contrived such that Omega could lay it thiccccc with the fanservice in a place where anything could happen... This is as opposed to "if you walk around this rock here you might just find 2B and 9S fighting Adam and Eve." Which is the feeling I get from the YoRha raid.