How Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker Was Uniquely Inspired by the Pandemic ign video

[MaxWinter]

not sure if allowed post links so wont but just watched this video and i recommend it to all here.
I am a legacy player so have seen the game change although aware i not at fanfest like other fans i want shout out how amazing this community is and i know it in a quiet phase right now.
I know game been bit more quiet in recent months with focus going to FF16 and other games but excited for a fresh start in the next expansion and something different.
have a great new year for all fans and development team and looking forward to next year.
Also the starlight celebration and fallguys event been my focus when been online.
I also gone back to ff11 for a bit as was there before ff14.
so i guess with new expansion i am getting some treasures of aht urhgan vibes from it so will be interesting see if other feel it may be similar or different from that ff11 expansion story wise?

[Mosha]

not sure if allowed post links so wont but just watched this video and i recommend it to all here.
I am a legacy player so have seen the game change although aware i not at fanfest like other fans i want shout out how amazing this community is and i know it in a quiet phase right now.
I know game been bit more quiet in recent months with focus going to FF16 and other games but excited for a fresh start in the next expansion and something different.
have a great new year for all fans and development team and looking forward to next year.
Also the starlight celebration and fallguys event been my focus when been online.
I also gone back to ff11 for a bit as was there before ff14.
so i guess with new expansion i am getting some treasures of aht urhgan vibes from it so will be interesting see if other feel it may be similar or different from that ff11 expansion story wise?

you can post links, just don't link to malware or some shit.

[Mosha]

okay if this not okay at any point please remove this but is such a great video- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8Fjh2KLvuA

100% ok lad.

[LianaThorne]

okay if this not okay at any point please remove this but is such a great video- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8Fjh2KLvuA

A good alternative if you're worried is to put the link and then next to it in ( ) the title of the video and the creator. That way if anyone is paranoid about random links can just search it naturally on their own.

[Enkidoh]

Uh, isn't that just stating the obvious? Of course EW was coloured five shades of black by the pandemic, specifically the feeling of doom and the need to keep hope alive.

It was made clear by the use of PLD as the 'poster Job' for the WoL in the expansion (as a literal 'knight in shining armour' to inspire hope), the constant arc words "forge ahead", and if it wasn't already obvious enough,

the Dead Ends all but screamed "this is inspired by COVID" with the fate of the grebuloffs succumbing to a literal plague that also came out of nowhere and completely destroyed their civilization - Meteion's reconstruction showing them turning on one another and utterly powerless to stop it (while also throwing in a not-too-subtle reference to the danger of climate change as well - how the plague was caused by excessive industrialization, pollution and overpopulation - notice the smoky sky, the rubbish everywhere and.. that oily ichor that coated everything) - and possibly gave Meteion storywise the idea to use mutation as her song of oblivion, given the grebuloff plague turned them into piles of oily, animated, fully-conscious, black sludge, who ultimately begged to be put out of their misery.

Either way, it was clear that COVID did inspire the development team when penning EW's story, and, it was only natural. The pandemic was affecting everyone, and greatly affected development of the expansion and FFXIV in general in a literal sense, so of course that is going to be reflected in the storyline. No IGN video necessary to understand that really.

[Jeeqbit]

I didn't see anything in the video that really provided much evidence that it was uniquely inspired by the pandemic. They said they looked at the story and thought "this is a bit too positive and not realistic for what our players are feeling right now", but the reality is most of the story was already decided before the pandemic.

If you play through Shadowbringers and note all the times you see the word "despair", you will notice it is far too common to be a coincidence. They knew that Endwalker would be about despair and filled Shadowbringers with foreshadowing.

They knew we would be going to Elpis while developing Shadowbringers because they said it was always planned that we would see Emet again. That was probably part of what "remember" was meant to mean because in that moment his soul's aether was becoming unshackled, thus making him remember you.

Maybe what they didn't have worked out paricularly was the idea that people would turn into blasphemies, but it was an obvious thing to come to as a plot point because Ascians had enough aetherial density to summon things without aether crystals, whereas sundered individuals do not, so if sundered individuals summoned anything it would consume their very own aether entirely. Since the Final Days forced summoning upon the Ascians, it was therefore logical that sundered individuals facing the final days would be forced to as well - at the expense of their lives.

I know game been bit more quiet in recent months with focus going to FF16

It's not really been quiet from my perspective, but it does get more quiet before an expansion release, typically, because there of the much larger gap between the final patch and the expansion. However, SE has learned over time to try to spread out the seasonal events and crossover events during that time and create other filler events such as the moogle tomestones, which create an abundance of activity among newer players.

with new expansion i am getting some treasures of aht urhgan vibes from it

The trailer is meant to fool us completely by only showing the beginning stuff. The very, very beginning of the expansion is, of course, about having a nice holiday, casually dethroning the leader like we always do and trying to reach the city of gold, but that's just the beginning... because we are going to be traveling through mountains and finding places of technology and crossing barren lands that have been trying to get hold of ceruleum (which seems to be better known as earth-aspected aether).

If levels will go beyond 99 once this expansion ends, unless we only going up to 95 this time.

It will take us to 100. That has been confirmed.