Black Iron Bridge and the 'road' to Dusk Vigil - Coerthas Western Highlands

[SivaRep]

Hi all,

I've been trying to figure out the lay of the land in Coerthas Western Highlands and one thing that I was wondering about for a while are the 'roads' or 'paths' in that zone.

When you leave Falcon's Nest it seems like the 'road' you can follow to Black Iron Bridge is actually a frozen river, which then also continues beyond the bridge. At first I thought that the river might have been there first, since Falcon's Nest is known as a hamlet that could once be reached by riverboat, for example the North Star. I tried to look up images and maps from 1.0 to see how the area might have changed by the Calamity but couldn't find out whether that big chasm and the Black Iron Bridge already existed in that time.

So I concluded that maybe the bridge was built after everything froze over, probably after a decision that the now deeply frozen river provides an easy-to-use natural supply line to Gorgagne Mills as well as the Convictory. It also wouldn't be too unrealistic that the bridge was built within 5 years since the garrison that is now Falcon's Nest took the same amount of time.

However, after completing the sightseeing log for the Bridge I noted that the text describes it as a road from the capital to Dusk Vigil. But as you arrive from the northeast when you leave Ishgard by chocobo, wouldn't it have been easier to build a more direct route? Also it doesn't make sense to me to build a connection to Dusk Vigil AFTER the Calamity when the vigil as well as Falcon's Nest had to be abandoned at first.

Does anyone have any ideas what the meaning behind all this is or maybe has knowledge of the Western Highlands before the Calamity? Were the chasm and the bridge already there? And why is a frozen river described as the road between the capital and Dusk Vigil?

[MistakeNot]

I am pretty sure that the road from Falcon's Nest to the Black Iron Bridge is a road, not a frozen river.
I am also pretty sure that, apart from Falcon's Nest and the Convictory, all buildings and constructions in the Western Coerthan Highlands are from before the Calamity.

[Rongway]

I don't have any personal memories of 1.x Coerthas to draw from, but here is a map of 1.x Coerthas (found on Final Fantasy Wiki) so you can compare it to the current in game map to see the geographical revisions between 1.x and 3.x:

[Enkidoh]

My memories of 1.0 Coerthas were somewhat vague as I didn't actually spend a lot of time there, but what I do remember is just how... empty most of the Western Highlands really was (like every outside zone in 1.0), and can honestly say most of the things you see there now were not there in 1.0 gameplay wise , or at least were depicted completely differently, if at all.

For instance Dusk Vigil was a basic watchtower, the Dreaming Dragon was an island off in the distance in the middle of a lake you couldn't access (no swimming in 1.0), Camp Riversmeet was just like every other nondescript aetheryte camp in the game (it didn't have all those cannons around it in 1.0) , and, most importantly, Black Iron Bridge did not exist (at least, not anything so elaborate as it is in HW, I think it was just a simple wooden bridge over a meandering stream as I recall).

I don't think in the later's particular case it was built after the Calamity (because, the access to the Western Highlands itself has only just been recently restored), but just simply a case of retconning, which since ARR has been definetely the case with the redesign of outside areas not completely lining up with their 1.0 versions (the ARR Black Shroud map is a good example, for instance Lifemend Stump is now on the completely opposite side of Gridania to where it was before the Calamity in 1.0!).

Given few players would actually notice this, SE probably considers such contradictions acceptable in the grand scheme of things, and even in universe, could easily just be dismissed as "I guess my memory of how things were was wrong."

[AnimaAnimus]

and, most importantly, Black Iron Bridge did not exist (at least, not anything so elaborate as it is in HW, I think it was just a simple wooden bridge over a meandering stream as I recall).

I used to do some aoe leveling for friends and alts around there, there was an actual bridge there but they were called "crossings". There were also quite a few large spanning bridges in Coerthas connecting areas, usually just before or after load corridors. They were no way near the scale of what we have now, but they did exist. Along with names, they also fudged where they are located, but they did that with landmarks across Coerthas, mainly the 2 dungeons and the 4 vigils were in completely different areas for the most part as they condensed the maps and made them more eleaborate.

Man do I miss 1.0 Coerthas though, they took one of the most beautiful zones of the original game and destroyed it because they wanted an ice zone...

You can see pics of the bridges and the vigils here
https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki..._(version_1.0)

[SivaRep]

Thanks for the responses; I had a bit of information on 1.x Coerthas from YouTube etc. (e.g. Remnants of a Realm by Speaker's Network) but from that I wasn't fully sure about things like Black Iron Bridge or the Dreaming Dragon.

I'm still not sure about the 'road' though, especially because it looks similar to other frozen rivers in the area and actually joins with the clearly labelled Coerthas River up north, so I think I'm going with my initial theory there that it is now simply used as a road due to convenience.

[Annana]

Roads tend to get iced over. It's also worth noting that roads on the maps in game are incredibly inconsistent and change color/shade/outline from zone to zone.