Thread: Revelations from Patch 6.1

Originally Posted by Lium

Correct me if I'm wrong but...

Wasn't M-017 actually Sir? It was the Omicron that we had to observe for exhibiting strange behavior, right? And it turned out it was actually Sir who had taken that body (or frame) to casually observe the other Omicrons as it pondered their purpose? I might be misremembering.

That's what I thought.

Originally Posted by Lium

Correct me if I'm wrong but...

Wasn't M-017 actually Sir? It was the Omicron that we had to observe for exhibiting strange behavior, right? And it turned out it was actually Sir who had taken that body (or frame) to casually observe the other Omicrons as it pondered their purpose? I might be misremembering.

I think what happened is

Sir took control of M-017's old chassis after they transferred into the Omega frame, and then used their designation for convenience.
Sir isn't actually M-017.

Not a big revelation, nor something that warrants a spoiler. But I happened to replay certain parts of ARR while leveling an alt, and I have to say both of Rhitatyn and Lahabrea's fights rework done them more than justice, and even connects to EW plot point. Rhitatyn survives more than one round because of Dynamis and nearly drags the WoL to hell, while Lahabrea manages to kill the WoL who get resurrected afterward due to the power of "fervent hopes" which are contributed to Hydaelyn and the blessing of light.
I can't wait to see what's next on the list of reworking.

Originally Posted by kaynide

Kranel_San touched on this, but this is very much a part of the genre; Spelljammer (from D&D) has been a thing since 1989, and that was late to the show. I think my first encounter with this was Krull.

My first encounter with it was Final Fantasy 1; the Floating Fortress was always intended to be 'sci-fi in a fantasy world'. It's been around the series ever since in various forms; FFIV had the Lunarians, V had the Ronkans. VI was the first one to go in the other direction, with the present society as the sci-fi and the 'neighbors' being magical fantasy.

Hell, sci-fi and fantasy being neighbors is debatably older than them being separate; back in the early 20th century there were plenty of tales of fantasy warriors meeting robots and aliens, or your scientist types studying magic as another form of knowledge; John Carter of Mars and Conan the Barbarian were both very much in that space. It was only later on that you started seeing more separation.

The Hippo Rider food delivery that the Arkasodara quests have us helping are, as has been noted in various places, the FFXIV version of dabbawala, ie fast delivery of hot lunches to people at work. I do find it amusingly appropriate that the item icon used for the food containers is the standard "milk metal jug", but it also looks like the RL "dabba" tiffin carrier (which I know as "mangkok rantang" in Indonesian).

Also, Trna and co are almost certainly based on the Japanese bosozoku, ie motorcycle gang. Trna is the Boss, and the way the other members of that group salute her and bow (stiff-backed, hands behind their back) are from the whole "extreme respect for one's superiors" rules of the stereotypical bosozoku gang. So this is a story about a group of delinquent scofflaws who are trying to use their skills in riding fast to help rebuild the community after a major disaster.

Originally Posted by Cleretic

It makes sense. German is an extremely gendered language, to the point where you just kinda can't structure most sentences about a subject without applying some kind of gender. French is the same, and hit the same thing with Mitron in the all-roles capstone quest, gendering them with female pronouns---which was actually a decision from on high and not considered a mistake, which we now know to be because Mitron was in some way female-identifying.

Incidentally, a fun way to see this is in the Tales from the Shadows story around Azem fighting a volcano; in English there's no gender applied to Azem, and in Japanese all gender is implied so there's no sweat. But if you swap the website language to French or German, they have the 'WoL's gender' option for that story because they actually can't write the same scene without gendered pronouns.

All of this is actually done with collaboration with the original Japanese writers, as a way to avoid the situation they hit with Nael back in 1.0, who in Japanese was completely ungendered, and the localization teams didn't learn her gender until well after they'd all started defaulting to male pronouns for ease of writing (this specific problem is actually why FFXIV's localization team works so closely with the writers now). So in this case, for whatever reason, Omega apparently identifies as female, at least in that story. Good for her! Although I have no idea if that's also true in the new quests, I know neither French nor German, so it might be a bit presumptuous to call Omega that in the present day, but if you struggle with 'it' then she/her pronouns are probably the better option!

I actually had heard 'Omega identifies as female in that story' before, but nobody had explained why they drew that conclusion until now, so thanks for that!

I mean, I've always considered Omega female based on the simple fact that the cutscene before she "dissipates" she's taking a female form and the himbo is nowhere to be seen. Seems natural enough to me to assume she prefers that identity, so that's how I'll refer to her. Though, tbf until they assign a canon gender (I doubt they will) I think individual players have the right to refer to Omega as whatever gender they're most comfortable with. Seeing as how they hurt nobody non-fictional by "misgendering" someone with no stated gender preference.

Originally Posted by SentioftheHoukai

I mean, I've always considered Omega female based on the simple fact that the cutscene before she "dissipates" she's taking a female form and the himbo is nowhere to be seen. Seems natural enough to me to assume she prefers that identity, so that's how I'll refer to her. Though, tbf until they assign a canon gender (I doubt they will) I think individual players have the right to refer to Omega as whatever gender they're most comfortable with. Seeing as how they hurt nobody non-fictional by "misgendering" someone with no stated gender preference.

Idk, I think most just call Omega, Omega

Originally Posted by SentioftheHoukai

I mean, I've always considered Omega female based on the simple fact that the cutscene before she "dissipates" she's taking a female form and the himbo is nowhere to be seen. Seems natural enough to me to assume she prefers that identity, so that's how I'll refer to her.

I think it just comes down to using both forms equally in different cutscenes.