With regard to Orbonne Monastery (spoilers; don't click if you haven't been).

[TeraRamis]

This has always bothered me since I first played through the raid: have the souls of Mustadio, Agrias and Count Orlandu been stuck there... this entire time? Like... they've been there guarding Altima/Ultima for hundreds (thousands) of years since they, presumably, perished after natural causes (because I don't remember any of the three of them dying in FFT) following the events of Final Fantasy Tactics?

If so... isn't that kind of a fate worse than death? A sort of personal, lonely hell? You're just condemned to haunt these desiccated halls on the off chance some adventurers/loot hobos come along to plumb the depths of your particular set of ruins? And why them? Why not, like, Ramza? Or, of all people, perhaps Delita (who probably needed to do a good bit of atoning after all he did in FFT)? Like, I can kind of understand Agrias and Cid, since they were extremely noble beings who might have volunteered for the job like that poor knight in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. But Mustadio? He was just some mook with a gun.

[Ravor]

Well, its the power of love and...... friendship i quess
Well they might as well in a sleeping state and only awaken on certain circumstances like when the seal are almost being undone

[TeraRamis]

I dunno. I just always sat wrong with me that we had to fight them as bosses. I get that we were being tested, but it still felt wrong to be stabbing, say, Agrias - she was such an interesting and cool character in FFT, and I want no part in whacking her with a halberd.

As an aside, I wish we had gotten to fight Altima's original form, at least for a portion of the final fight. She's so pretty:



Also, I ship this alternate ending to FFT that resolves everything much more cleanly and anime-style:

[SannaR]

FF Tactics and FF XII only borrow things from those games in the Ivalice raids and the Bozjan resistance storyline. So those we fight in the Monastery are not the same as those found in Tactics. They were in stasis though as they were helping XIV's original Ramza to keep XIV's Ultimecia at bay. Only to reawaken and challenge our resolve when we come there in the storyline. It's not the first time someone has gone into stasis only to be woken up when needed. I'm sure it also won't be the last time.

[Seraphor]

1. This isn't true to the plot of Tactics. Them not dying in Tactics has nothing to do with them dying in Hydaelyn. It's a facsimile, not a sequel.
2. They were not 'condemned' to guard Ultima, they chose to guard Ultima. They made that pledge, they made that sacrifice.

[Vyrerus]

Ramza was there too. Classic TeraRamis. Not paying attention. He just didn't have an auracite form.

[Herebedragons]

FFXIV loves to listen to itself talk. I don't.

I don't believe you.

[TeraRamis]

Tactics was all text dude. If you can make it through Tactics and comprehend the plot, then you can do the same here. You've just got lazy and reliant on voice acting.

Oh my God. Yes, that must be it: I hate words. I'm not employed in the writing field at all. Nope. I definitely detest the language and consuming it.

More to the point, the vast majority of scenes in FFT were a few paragraphs in length at most. The text boxes were small, and the sentences short - the dialogue was pretty much locked in and purposeful in nearly every interaction. I cannot recall a single sequence that lasted more than 5 minutes.

And I happily digested all of it because it was a relatively strong story. The same absolutely cannot be said for the Ivalice vignette here.

[TaleraRistain]

Mustadio, Agrias, Orlandu, and Ramza weren't condemned. They chose to stay there and assure that Ultima would remain contained, because they understood a threat like that couldn't be allowed to get free.