FFXVI and XIV connection theory

[Cilia]

Personally I think it'd be a really bad idea for them to do a XVI event soon, because XVI really needs the time to define and declare its own voice separate from XIV; it's got a shadow to move out of in a way no other crossovers have had, so it needs some time for people to stop treating it as being so linked to XIV that people genuinely think Clive is some version of the XIV WoL. And personally I hope the rewards are skippable because I don't like XVI, but that's me.

That sort of space would also give room o figure out rewards, too. Right now nothing about XVI looks like it'd make for very interesting cosmetics, especially across genders; I like Benedikta's outfit, but let's be honest, guys ain't getting that. But if fans suddenly rally around a character's appearance, there we go!

To be fair, I don't think XVI is going to have a lot of trouble distinguishing itself from XIV once it actually comes out. Just in the Demo content alone there's more blood and swearing than any game in the franchise previously (Benedikta alone easily beats out Jack Garland's foul mouth when she starts losing), though distinguishing itself from the Ivalice games and Game of Thrones (and vis a vis the Wars of the Roses) it's transparently inspired by might be a harder sell.

Whether those mean people will take a shine to it... that I don't know. I want to like it, but for stylish action I already have DMC5 (or SoP if I want something explicitly Final Fantasy derived), and the political aspects of it don't interest me because I've seen so much of that kind of thing I easily figured out who the traitor was in the prologue long before they revealed it.

Though XVI being the inspiration for an expansion isn't out of the realm of possibility. Before XV came out we got a lot of Thordan, and Knights of the Round related stuff which was tied to XV in a big way. Especially with the movie Kingsglaive. Its clear that Square Enix was priming our familiarity around these classic summons. I noticed that before XVI, we gradually got a lot more phoenix content. A fire bird inspired glamour on the mog station, TWO extra phoenix mounts, etc. Much more than just the stuff we got from Suzaku. It feels intentional.

I also noticed around the time of the FFVII: Rebirth release we gradually got new FFVII stuff in the form of the weapons. Square Enix may be influencing the devs of XIV in ways than we normally realize. It wouldn't surprise me if board members approached Yoshi P, and were like "This game brings a lot of money and attention. Can you think of a way to incorporate things that have to do with ____?" It doesn't sound unlike Square Enix at all.

Except Heavensward was a bit of a mish-mash between classical elements from IV and VII (Dragoons feature heavily into Ishgard's culture, of which IV's Kain Highwind is the most famous from the franchise and is fittingly a minion included in the Special Edition of that expansion, while the final boss is a recontextualized Knights of the Round from VII), political intrigue from the Ivalice series, and the concept of Original Sin in Christian traditions.

The Weapons are references to VII, though again recontextualized, and the story surrounding them has nothing to do with anything from VII (other than the arenas they're fought in - Diamond Weapon excluded - bearing physical similarities to where they were fought in VII, the story is a big shout-out to mecha anime, especially the Mobile Suit Gundam series), characters from that game don't appear here, and other than statuettes of them there's nothing special about the raid series. It's on the level of Heavensward's Warring Triad referencing VI, not XIII or XV's dumping their protagonist onto Etheirys for a short bit of time. To say nothing of recontexualized cities, landmarks, and characters being imported from Ivalice whole cloth.

I'm not saying there aren't references or cosmetics from VII in this game - there transparently are, though those are mostly limited to the Weapons, Cloud's hairstyle (a rare FanFest exclusive), the SDS Fenrir, Cloud's Advent Children outfit as a Veteran Reward, and the trio of minions. Given VII's popularity you'd think they would include more weapons and outfits (even X has more useable PC outfits for goodness' sake!), but such classics as Cloud and Tifa's outfits and the Buster Sword remain unavailable.

(They don't want to disappoint MCHs who want Barret's gun-arm(s) as weapons, I guess.)

... which to circle back around leaves me questioning what exactly they'd offer as rewards for a XVI crossover event, given other than Torgal being adorable as a pup and Benedikta's outfit, nothing in it really stands out to me. Clive's Brand tattoo could work, I guess?