Thread: Revelations from Patch 5.5 (Part 1)

Those ol' Ten Character blues


MSQ

5000 years in more-or-less self-inflicted captivity has clearly taken its toll. Much as I enjoyed the Tiamat sections... she did speak very slowly, even for a Dravanian. But she wasn't really why I enjoyed that part... I now have a 100% fixed trust group. Alphinaud, Alisaie, and Estinien. It will be a glorious trainwreck to watch and I am here for it!

As for being able to scale up the tempering cure to beings the size of Tiamat, that is a good win, but again that seemed to rest on a variation of why it was easy to cure Ga Bu as opposed to the Patriarch. It seems a pretty clear dividing line is being drawn - that some will be cured quite easily, but we (perhaps?) will never be able to cure everyone.

I'm glad the multiple, repeated death flags for Arenvald were not insta-kill, though he seems to not be out of the woods. It wasn't the finality of Moenbryda or Papalymo that other x.5 patch cliffhangers have given us. Also, Fordola's development was good, and I'm glad to hear the VA got right back into the swing of things after such a long break from voicing her (4.1, if memory serves). Speaking of voices, Urianger improved (I think he has been geuninely ill? That's certainly the impression I got from his opening line). Also, nice to hear something other than bored indifference from Zenos for a change. Very irritating to be fobbed off with "are you ready for you-know-what?" line, but I suppose it will link to his line from the trailer (which must be from part 2) about drinking the sea of souls and bathing in the darkened moon. Very nice tease with the weapon - that was a heavy metal sound, a little like drawing a great sword. So, it's a serious piece of kit, whatever it turns out to be...

It seems a fair chunk of this patch was the continuation of earlier setups, and it's nice to see the (completely expected) appearance of Sharlayan. We have our way in and our point of contact. Incidentally, it struck me that Alphinaud was talking about Sharlayan when he said he wanted to return home and do some thinking. Ambiguity of English could have meant either the Rising Stones or Sharlayan, but I think it would be the latter because of the surprised reaction from Alisaie and the WOL. It felt like the Meracydia stuff was misdirection, in light of Fandaniel saying he was unlikely to be able to use them since Tiamat's reawakening, so I'm downgrading my expectations of a Meracydian connnection in 6.0.

Now... onto the real meat, which is almost the last thing that happened, the subject of Hydaelyn and Her silence.
Off the top of my head, when I was looking at the three dialog choices I had, I thought the Crystarium occasion would have been the starshower from patch 5.2? In which case, that was just Her "Hear, Feel, Think" answerphone message. So I went with the Dragonsong War choice, which seems to have been the correct choice, at least as far as the following line from Y'shtola indicated. It seemed the text was going some way to removing Minfilia as being in any way connected to Venat, but it does leave us with acres of space to speculate in as to what the Heart of Hydaelyn has been doing ever since the end of patch 3.0...