The XIV Team give us a lot of riddles, do you think we're good at figuring them out?

[EirolOcarrol]

While at the end of post-Stormblood, it was the least obvious as ever before what was going to happen for the next expansion, there will still many clues. The difficulty of figuring out where we were going next had just been upped.

Final Fantasy XIV is great for players who like Eastern Eggs and like figuring out riddles and theorycrafting. They always drop hints as to where we're going in the future, for players smart enough to figure them out.

In this case, we're very close to knowing about the next expansion, February 5th. But we've been given a note on New Years Eve, a hint from an interview that there are clues to the future in Heavensward, and 5.4 is one of the preliminary two Patches that sets up the story for the next expansion.

Lots of gaming communities are really good at, and love puzzle and riddle solving of this variety. With a lot of people dedicating their time to piecing things together and solving things left by developers. Undertale fans are fixated on uncovering everything about WD Gaster and figuring out where Deltarune is going. There are entire channels like Shesez to looking beyond boundaries of games and finding things out. People are still theorizing about things about Giygas in the Mother series.

A lot of the time, when developers leave hints and riddles, the community are fast to decipher them. Fans even make vast theories and connections where there are none, just very strong coincidences that make things look that way. When a community of passionate and dedicated riddle solvers come together, they almost always solve the riddles game developers put forth. We have an official, albeit flawed, Legend of Zelda timeline, because of dedicated fans piecing the Zelda stories together.

The question is, are we that community? Do we have a good track record of deciphering the writing team's puzzles? Does the community have an amazing theory yet of where the story is headed, and what the next expansion will be?

What are some of the most supported and leading theories for the future? How many people predicted we were going to the First in Shadowbringers?

[Cilia]

This is rather a lot to parse out.

Like most things, I'd argue our track record here is mixed.

Personally, I'd like to think I've become quite adept at figuring out some key plot points as the game's gone on - I figured out G'raha would become a permanent member of the cast from his closing line in 5.0 alone ("Wake up, G'raha Tia. This is no time for napping!"), replete with memory transference. There are others, but that's probably the one I'm proudest of.

Personally, I don't know where we're headed yet. "Review Heavensward" is about all we've gotten, and other than tenuous links to Lunar Bahamut (the moon is stated by Hydaelyn to be Zodiark's prison, while dragons featured heavily in HW) there's not enough information for me to make a good guess other than "The moon, maybe?" Estinien is likely to take back center stage at least for dealing with Lunar Bahamut, but as things stand I can only throw out rough ideas (Going to the moon? Primal Varis? More Beasts of the Final Days, as per the Amaurot dungeon?)

Whether or not one had predicted we were going to the First depends heavily on when you ask. In 4.3, there was absolutely no indication we'd be doing anything other than going to war with the Empire and trying to root out the Ascians infesting it. Then 4.4 happened and Thancred fell comatose in a strategy meeting without foreshadowing of any kind, with Y'shtola and Urianger following suit in the patch's ending. That opened a huge door, and though it was not yet certain we'd be abandoning the warfront entirely, we'd definitely need to figure out what the kupo was going on. Shadowbringers was officially announced prior to 4.5, so...

The problem with trying to guess 6.0 as things are now is there was just so little forward movement in 5.4. We spent lots of time whipping up the treatment for tempering, working out its logistics, and implementing it to help get relations between the Limsans and kobolds on the mend there was little time for much else. Case and point the dungeons: Matoya's Relict was all about getting the Mother Porxie made here as part of the patch's (mostly) self-contained story, while aside from being a pretty huge lore bomb the Burn thematically fit in with Shadowbringers (as an aether-starved land, the Burn is more or less a microcosm of the Empty on the Source).

[Iscah]

I think 4.4 clearly set up for a time-travel plot since "the voice" seemed to have future knowledge. I'd like to claim credit for deducing G'raha's incoming involvement on that alone (having worked out the voice would suit him and time travel would get around the "no referencing sidequests in case people haven't done them" thing), but I honestly can't remember whether my first thought of him was influenced by the supposedly-debunked leak claiming that the Crystal Tower would be involved... though certainly I'd previously assumed that would just mean we go find whatever Nero's radar had detected, completely ignoring the state of the tower above.

As for the riddle of 5.4, I don't feel like there's anything to hook onto in the same way and work out what it could all mean. The New Year's poem might reference Sharlayan but it's all still cryptic.

[ItMe]

The big question is... how much are hints for things they planned and how much are they still working out as they go?
Because the more I play the more I understand they're setting things up for them to work with later. A lot of these things are just creative freedom they're giving themselves.

[Iscah]

The big question is... how much are hints for things they planned and how much are they still working out as they go?
Because the more I play the more I understand they're setting things up for them to work with later. A lot of these things are just creative freedom they're giving themselves.

I think it depends on how far apart the setup and payoff are. They leave plenty of hooks that they can go back to in future without necessarily having a plan for them at the time, but right now they are in a position where they know exactly what they're working on for 6.0 and can reference it while they simultaneously produce 5.X patches.

They're good at integrating old plots, but that doesn't mean they don't have any kind of plan in the meanwhile. They might even have been thinking of future ideas when they set up the first part, even if it wasn't officially the decided direction of the plot yet, and later pitched that follow-up idea when it was time to write the next part of the story.

[Vyrerus]

Case and point the dungeons: Matoya's Relict was all about getting the Mother Porxie made here as part of the patch's (mostly) self-contained story, while aside from being a pretty huge lore bomb the Burn thematically fit in with Shadowbringers (as an aether-starved land, the Burn is more or less a microcosm of the Empty on the Source).

If the dungeon is a hint, then Matoya's Relict is absolutely screaming FFIV references. Along with the New Year's poem, it would seem to me will go to the Underground/Underworld like in FFIV, and then also perhaps to the Moon, as in FFIV, and Sharlayan... its island home surrounded by malms of water will be our new staging point.

[FrightfulNight]

If the dungeon is a hint, then Matoya's Relict is absolutely screaming FFIV references. Along with the New Year's poem, it would seem to me will go to the Underground/Underworld like in FFIV, and then also perhaps to the Moon, as in FFIV, and Sharlayan... its island home surrounded by malms of water will be our new staging point.

I want Sharlyan and the final zone to be the moon, but I seriously hope we don't waste zones on the underground, i want to explore locations that have been set up for years, with cultures we have heard about like Islabard, we have had our shard hoping expansion, it is time to explore more of the source, that has been set up for years.

[Kesey]

The problem with trying to guess 6.0 as things are now is there was just so little forward movement in 5.4. We spent lots of time whipping up the treatment for tempering, working out its logistics, and implementing it to help get relations between the Limsans and kobolds on the mend there was little time for much else. Case and point the dungeons: Matoya's Relict was all about getting the Mother Porxie made here as part of the patch's (mostly) self-contained story, while aside from being a pretty huge lore bomb the Burn thematically fit in with Shadowbringers (as an aether-starved land, the Burn is more or less a microcosm of the Empty on the Source).

5.4 really felt like "let's tie up loose ends" patch. Really the only forward movement is Zenos proclaiming to need a new weapon, which is clearly baiting us into the trailer for the expansion so he can just be seen wielding that new weapon and maybe a new outfit.

[ItMe]

5.4 really felt like "let's tie up loose ends" patch. Really the only forward movement is Zenos proclaiming to need a new weapon, which is clearly baiting us into the trailer for the expansion so he can just be seen wielding that new weapon and maybe a new outfit.

New outfit?
Maybe we can finally see if there really is lots of ass under all that armor, or just lots of armor over his ass. His current outfit makes it look like this boy has hips for daaaaaays.

[Kesey]

New outfit?
Maybe we can finally see if there really is lots of ass under all that armor, or just lots of armor over his ass. His current outfit makes it look like this boy has hips for daaaaaays.

Well, his dress down look has shoulder pads that are way too big, so I'm going with the latter.