Season 2 Storyline (another 10 years) [discussion]

[Veloran]

Wow, if Full Rejoining really does happen like how you described it, instead of a world-destroying event but still a geographic-changing event, it would be really interesting see how much the dynamics of the countries/states of the planet/star would change. Like will a state from a foreign world like for example the Crystarium appearing close to Mor Dhona be something be accepted immediately or be watched with caution? How will the Ishgardians react if the Fae becomes present to....

Wait, this all sounds cool in theory but we would have to add the other shards into equation, which we don't even know if the dev team already have lore for these worlds/shards prepared.

If something like that were to happen, I could only guess that the landmasses would be rejoined across a new reconstructed planet, rather than all being layered over each other in the same physical locations.

However I think the much more likely version of that would simply be the dimensional barrier between the Source and shards being destroyed, leading to free aetherial travel between all the different reflections.

[Alleluia]

Could see the "Go THAT far" also referring to permanent damage to the existing Eorzean citystates. Could be doable with phasing tech. I dunno how you'd handle some existing questlines with that, but there are already things outside the time bubble, I suppose. My mind immediately thought Omega's homeworld/creators. Course, I have a feeling the Sound is ultimately extraterrestrial in origin. And we were told by Ishkawa to complete Omega before Endwalker. So my brain is just naturally leaning towards that.

Regarding WoL dying, if the WoL does pull a Tidus, then dies, they could just be temporarily dead and then come back as themselves (pulling another Tidus, really). So, if you combine both of those things, then you could have the character death for story purposes without losing any of the character progression. And maybe add an overlay/levelsync system that knocks us down to level 1 in the next expac? Cus I've had a thoughts lately about 7.0 and how that can work.

I've loved the journey from ARR till now, but once Endwalker is over, I honestly think the devs may have to come up with a soft reset option of some kind that allows new players going forward to jump in in 7.0. The longer this game goes on (especially 10 years more (woohoo!)), the MSQ requirement for entry becomes more and more untenable. Are we really going to see "Here's super cool expansion 9.0! Now play through 8 other storylines to get here!" ??? Even if they remastered ARR somehow (I don't know how without ruining it), it'd still be a LOT. At some point, I think an upcoming expac needs to start again at level 1 and not require the MSQ. Or maybe start at lvl 50 and only require ARR. Somehow. Like, have the divergence point be 5.0, then you can either pursue 5.1's storyline or x.0. Something.

And yeah, if there was ever an opportunity to soft reset something, its the end of a story arc.

[aveyond-dreams]

I really, really do not want to go straight to another planet after 6.0. The reason why it feels so good that we're going to the moon/aetherial sea now is because we've built up to it over the past 8 years. Throwing us into another world so quickly would remove that buildup and logical story progression, leaving us with an expansion devoid of any real depth, regardless if it was the Dragonstar or Omega's homeworld.

We need to go back to basics for a bit, especially with how long we've been away from the Source. If Shadowbringers proved one thing at least is that people want and resonate with the high fantasy locations/themes it introduced and as cool as Endwalker is, its theme is more cosmic dealing with the literal end of a world and a battle between gods as opposed to saving and exploring fantasy locations. There is no new "kingdom" for lack of a better word on the scale of what we received when Ishgard was opened up to us and there hasn't been for quite some time.



(Ishgard city and its vigils are the only traditional European castles in the entire game besides the elven ruins in Lakeland. How??)

Meracydia and the New World could definitely open the door to these themes though, with their own kingdoms and empires to explore. We solve the problems there, then build back up again towards the Dragonstar or taking down the "Sound." I do not want to go around in a space ship jumping to a different world every expansion like what WoW does with its story. How many planets have they been to by now? 3 or 4? And somehow, none of them memorable. We should only be taking to the stars at the climax of a story arc, not in the first episode of Season 2.



(This is exactly what I do not want to see)

In terms of characters, reading the mood on social media seems to point towards characters like Estinien and Aymeric being fan favorites (despite Aymeric not doing much since the Heavensward days) while characters like Lyse, Thancred, and a variety of ARR/Stormblood characters not really grabbing people's attention much anymore since there really is nowhere left to go with these characters. Thancred had a literal death scene in Shadowbringers. Only for him to survive. For some reason. G'raha I can only barely tolerate-he needs to get serious real fast if they don't want to exhaust people's patience with him by the end of Endwalker.

A strong 7.0 in my opinion would focus on a setting with similar vibes to Ishgard and with cast members that come from that high-fantasy era of Heavensward. Estinien should stay without question, and I know for a fact social media would largely celebrate Aymeric joining our main party if he were to leave his position in the house of lords. As for the rest of our cast? Thancred needs to retire. Full stop. His character arc is already over. Urianger or Y'shtola can stay to be the party's mage and as a vehicle to deliver lore. As for the twins, that situation speaks for itself. Any missing slots should be replaced by new characters that fit a fantasy theme, like knights, archers/bards, etc. Not machinists or god forbid another gunbreaker.

[MikkoAkure]

Meracydia and the New World could definitely open the door to these themes though, with their own kingdoms and empires to explore.

A strong 7.0 in my opinion would focus on a setting with similar vibes to Ishgard and with cast members that come from that high-fantasy era of Heavensward. Estinien should stay without question, and I know for a fact social media would largely celebrate Aymeric joining our main party if he were to leave his position in the house of lords. As for the rest of our cast? Thancred needs to retire. Full stop. His character arc is already over. Urianger or Y'shtola can stay to be the party's mage and as a vehicle to deliver lore. As for the twins, that situation speaks for itself. Any missing slots should be replaced by new characters that fit a fantasy theme, like knights, archers/bards, etc. Not machinists or god forbid another gunbreaker.

Meracydia is supposed to be a jungle wasteland filled with tribal people and heavy Africa themes so I don't think you'll find what you're looking for there. Any story there will definitely have dragons, but there will likely be a lot of Allagan tech and chimeras. Ilsabard has some high fantasy kingdoms that were mentioned in the Bozja storyline, with spellblades and wizards and such, but a lot of that ended with the Garlean invasions and any place we could go in Ilsabard would be heavily Garlified and covered in tech and guns so there's not really any place left in the world left that fits the "high fantasy" theme.

As far as the characters go, I thought I heard Yoshi-P or someone else on the dev team mention that the current MSQ characters are being retired after Endwalker.


The biggest hope that I have is that the next storyline is completely disconnected to everything we've done up until now so that new people coming in won't have to slog through or pay to skip even more content before catching up. FFXI was nice in that you could still at least visit most expansion zones without having done the story, depending on the expansion. The content itself could also be started before finishing the original story and the barrier to entry was often quite low.

As far as what Yoshi-P could mean by "going that far" I can totally see Hydaelyn being killed at the end of 6.0 to partially depower us and we start a new storyline fresh without having to keep escalating the stakes past what we've already done.

[GoldStarz]

I really, really do not want to go straight to another planet after 6.0. The reason why it feels so good that we're going to the moon/aetherial sea now is because we've built up to it over the past 8 years. Throwing us into another world so quickly would remove that buildup and logical story progression, leaving us with an expansion devoid of any real depth, regardless if it was the Dragonstar or Omega's homeworld.

We need to go back to basics for a bit, especially with how long we've been away from the Source. If Shadowbringers proved one thing at least is that people want and resonate with the high fantasy locations/themes it introduced and as cool as Endwalker is, its theme is more cosmic dealing with the literal end of a world and a battle between gods as opposed to saving and exploring fantasy locations. There is no new "kingdom" for lack of a better word on the scale of what we received when Ishgard was opened up to us and there hasn't been for quite some time.

While I also don't want to immediately be whisked off to another planet while there's a gaping hole in the world map where Ilsabard is, there's nothing in Shadowbringers that proves high fantasy locations resonate any more or less than others. The Source only has slightly more of the European fantasy you describe with the remnants of the Elves' kingdom in Lakeland and of the pixie's coopting of Voerburt's castles and town, all other locations really don't have that same vibe and the final area is the recreation of urban environment which takes stylistic inspiration from art deco. I also snipped it off, but your loathing of gunbreaker also runs pretty counter to what you're saying considering it was introduced in Shadowbringers as well. Final Fantasy has never been a purely sword and sorcery affair, its diversity in stylistic inspirations has always been its strength and shouldn't be cast as a weakness.

[aveyond-dreams]

While I also don't want to immediately be whisked off to another planet while there's a gaping hole in the world map where Ilsabard is, there's nothing in Shadowbringers that proves high fantasy locations resonate any more or less than others. The Source only has slightly more of the European fantasy you describe with the remnants of the Elves' kingdom in Lakeland and of the pixie's coopting of Voerburt's castles and town, all other locations really don't have that same vibe and the final area is the recreation of urban environment which takes stylistic inspiration from art deco. I also snipped it off, but your loathing of gunbreaker also runs pretty counter to what you're saying considering it was introduced in Shadowbringers as well. Final Fantasy has never been a purely sword and sorcery affair, its diversity in stylistic inspirations has always been its strength and shouldn't be cast as a weakness.

The First:

Lakeland - Elven castle ruins
Il Mheg - Faerieland castle ruins
Amh Araeng - desert castle ruins (which a significant amount of people originally thought was Dalmasca)
Eulmore - Limsa with more fantasy elements
Amaurot - fantasy urban - it is not at all equivalent to Garlemald in terms of its take on urbanism.

The Source -
Originally so devoid of fantasy elements during 1.0 when it was just the 3 city states that Yoship made it the focus to build up to Ishgard so we would finally have some of that in the game.

Population explosion in Heavensward followed afterwards, etc.

Stormblood - each area is forgettable except Kugane. By far the most criticized zone design besides 1.0/ARR's original lack of fantasy settings besides Gridania, at best.

As for Thancred his role as a gunbreaker is hardly significant. He could have remained a rogue or taken up literally any other tank weapon and it would not have impacted the story much. I'm not saying it's a bad class, I'm saying it wouldn't fit in a high fantasy setting if its going to be used by one of your main cast members. I would much rather have Aymeric or G'raha the Paladins over Thancred at this point.

(Also, they started realizing how tired people were getting of modernism and switched back to fantasy themes for our crafted glamour sets after an entire expansion of nothing but leather jackets. Thank goodness.)

[GoldStarz]

The First:

Lakeland - Elven castle ruins
Il Mheg - Faerieland castle ruins
Amh Araeng - desert castle ruins (which a significant amount of people originally thought was Dalmasca)
Eulmore - Limsa with more fantasy elements
Amaurot - fantasy urban - it is not at all equivalent to Garlemald in terms of its take on urbanism.

The Source -
Originally so devoid of fantasy elements during 1.0 when it was just the 3 city states that Yoship made it the focus to build up to Ishgard so we would finally have some of that in the game.

Population explosion in Heavensward followed afterwards, etc.

Stormblood - each area is forgettable except Kugane. By far the most criticized zone design besides 1.0/ARR's original lack of fantasy settings besides Gridania, at best.

As for Thancred his role as a gunbreaker is hardly significant. He could have remained a rogue or taken up literally any other tank weapon and it would not have impacted the story much. I'm not saying it's a bad class, I'm saying it wouldn't fit in a high fantasy setting if its going to be used by one of your main cast members. I would much rather have Aymeric or G'raha the Paladins over Thancred at this point.

Lakeland is hardly the "Elven castle ruins" area, they're certainly a landmark but the defining points of Lakeland are the purple vegetation, Crystal Tower, and (obviously) the lake. Similarly, calling Amh Araeng "desert castle ruins" is doubly ingenuous because firstly they're not the European inspired that would be in most high fantasy stories and secondly it's ignoring that it makes up barely a third of the region which is mostly split between a sand desert and a series of out-of-operation mining facilities. Eulmore, you'll have to point to how exactly that area is more fantastical because I really don't see how adding some carpeting and a literal night club makes an area more fantastic.

As for Amaurot, its design directly pulls from the art deco movement as I said before, a movement that started around World War 1. Call it "fantasy urban" if it makes you feel more comfortable, but it's still a modern style for a modern area and is a pretty shining example of how the FF series (and FF14 specifically) benefits from using influences outside of just high fantasy.

My main point here, though, is that if you're expecting FF14 to suddenly pivot into a high fantasy story and only involve castles and kingdom, you're setting yourself up for big disappointment. We'll definitely go to places like that in the future without a doubt, but we'll also go to places like Azys La that are almost ripped out of a sci-fi novel. Remember that even Heavensward was not something pull exclusively from high fantasy, that is the expac that introduced Machinist and that ended in a scientific facility full of weird chemicals and glowing circuitry.

[YianKutku]

The Source -
Originally so devoid of fantasy elements during 1.0 when it was just the 3 city states that Yoship made it the focus to build up to Ishgard so we would finally have some of that in the game.

I've always been of the impression that Gridania and the Shroud are very Tolkien-esque, ie the progenitor for a vast majority of what we consider the "fantasy" genre.

[KageTokage]

A large part of why Endwalker is exciting because most of the zones we're visiting are places that have been repeatedly mentioned in the MSQ and side content

Having 7.x follow suit by exploring places that we know to exist already would be a better move then sending us off into the unknown, IMO. I'd like if it's just the reasons that we go to those places that ends up being surprising.

[aveyond-dreams]

Later on in that post I mentioned Gridania as the one area that has some fantasy elements, even then though there really isn't anything too special about the area besides the fact that it's a forest zone. Its few examples of architecture are so widely spread apart that it feels more like you're walking through a nature tunnel than a city. Perhaps if the people there dressed better I could sort of see the Tolkien vibes, but not while they're still wearing the same hideous robes designed sometime before 2010.

At least the other original 3 city states have an actual silhouette I can picture when thinking about them. For Gridania there's only a forgettable mass of greeness.