The Aracadion Raid Series

[TheRealQuah]

They aren't going to reveal the whole plotline before the expac is even out. We might fight in a tournament in every floor of the tier. Or we might just turn up as the final fight of the tournament is taking place, and then the story goes from there. There is no point speculating yet

[GTK0HLK]

TBH, unless the Ascian Angle is something of big, BIG WORTH(Read: BEEG WERTH)

Then sure, though maybe it's just me hoping that Red Hologram is nothing at all to do with the Ancients, or Ascians.

[We don't need them for this. Let them rest for at least a bit]

Though Arenas, HighTech, Holograms. <Just feeds my Neptunian themed Copium>

it feels like there may even be Duties/Raid/Fight with Multiple Boss in at least one tier.
[Kinda like Halatali(Hard), except actually amped with raid mechanics.]
<More Copium for actual multiple bosses, rather than just adds in one fight>

But we will see, doesn't feel like it'll be anything heavy story wise so far. (More so an adventure some of us would of liked to Tell their Crystal about.)

<Almost curious if we'll get a S9 PVP Map sometime after the Tiers finished. Or Multifloor Duties Ala "T:Legacy">
(Mind running away with stuff. But I know it ain't gonna happen 1-1)

[Jeeqbit]

Less. Omega was also a tournament arc, but it at least had some Asimov-lite philosophy and Midgardsormr/dragonstar lore. The blurb doesn't make it sound like Arcadion is anything more than the tournament arc.

That's why I said or less. We don't yet know if they will somehow have extra lore beyond it just being a show for an audience. For all we know, they could have some lore like we got for Omega and the Dragonstar. But so far it obviously doesn't look like it.

For example, OP mentioned about an Ascian mask reference and that could be the "Omega Dragonstar-like lore". But it could just be that it's resembling Japanese kanji a bit and there's nothing to it.

[Infindox]

Feel like they have to be extremely vague with what the raid is because it's heavily tied to what Solution Nine is, and this is the best way. Iirc they were very vague about both Eden and Pandemonium.

[MikkoAkure]

For example, OP mentioned about an Ascian mask reference and that could be the "Omega Dragonstar-like lore". But it could just be that it's resembling Japanese kanji a bit and there's nothing to it.

Could still be a bit of a reach but in another thread I mentioned it looks like a stylized segment of the FFXII esper Ultima’s glyph upside-down (Ascian names come from the Scions of Light from FFXII who are counterparts to the espers in the lore and their sigils are segments of the full esper glyph upside-down, Ultima had no corresponding Scion of Light IIRC so her Ascian counterpart would be Altima).


The three lines on each side, the “horns” and the spiky “crown” on top are there in both even if it’s not an exact replica like the other Ascian sigils.

The same symbol is also mostly cutoff but present in a second spot in the concept art, on a billboard on the bottom center-left.

So it’s there in two places which could mean something, or it could not and it’s just a tease.

[Jeeqbit]

they were very vague about both Eden and Pandemonium.

The truth is, despite how extremely vague Eden was (literally showed us a picture of a plant), it told us everything. We knew what Eden looked like from FF8. We knew the plant represented "regrowing" everything after the Flood of Light on the First. And given it's a raid, we knew we'd somehow fight bosses to regrow it.

Pandaemonium was harder to figure out but we knew it was underground/hell themed and related to Lahabrea and thus represented the only significant line Lahabrea ever said that referred to the underground: "from the deepest pit of the seven hells". But if you played previous FF games then you may know it flat out is where the Ultima spell was made which gives it away even more. The only thing I couldn't figure out with Pandaemonium was how we would interact with Lahabrea when we killed him. I thought, maybe we didn't kill him. But well, you know how we ended up interacting with him. To a degree my thought that we didn't kill him was right in that part of his own being, Athena, survived the fight.

For as vague as they were before, this feels like the vaguest one. Or maybe it's not and maybe it just literally will be a boring gauntlet.

[sindriiisgaming]

The Arcadion raid series seems to be another tournament arc similar to the one from Stormblood. I'm unsure how I feel about having another raid series designed around the "best of the best" fighting each other. In some ways, it almost feels like an insult to Omega's raids, which involved battling every known strong creature in the universe, even the fictional ones. I hope at the very least, there's a crowd involved this time watching.

PS: You can see an Ascian Mask-like symbol on the left side of the image. I wonder if they are involved again.



Source: https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/dawntrail/

this actually has me hyped. having grown up on dragonball and YUGIOH i really enjoy these sorts of things, but the story needs to be good. also i hope we get some ff characters in here. like terra and Kuja. could do a really cool virtual colosseum like what kaiba did in battle city/ dark side of dimensions

[DrForester]

WHAT IS THAT?!?!

THE WARRIOR OF LIGHT IS SUMMONING 7 ADDITIONAL FIGHTERS!

THEY ALL HAVE STEEL CHAIRS!

IT'S ABSOLUTE CHAOS IN THE RING, FOLKS!

PS: You can see an Ascian Mask-like symbol on the left side of the image. I wonder if they are involved again.

It seems a little too blatant not to be related to the Ascians, and there are still 5 members of the convocation unaccounted for. I look forward to them showing up eventually. What do they think now that we solved The Final Days? Are they still antagonistic towards us now? Are they still tempered?

Lots of interesting things to do with them I think.

[Lyth]

...

One interesting point that came up in Lore was the three-headed figure that shows up on the bottom right of the original image.

When you compare the two, that 'glyph' looks like a stylized form of the same three-headed figure, who might be the first Autarch.

[MikkoAkure]

One interesting point that came up in Lore was the three-headed figure that shows up on the bottom right of the original image.

When you compare the two, that 'glyph' looks like a stylized form of the same three-headed figure, who might be the first Autarch.

Solution Nine has nothing to do with Tuliyollal according to the lore blurb on the website so that makes less sense to me.

My best guess about the 3 heads is that they may be other Arcadion gladiators we meet who work in a trio, or they're the announcers.

I've been wrong before, but I still think the red glyph that's both on the building and on a billboard is a stylized/corrupted Ascian sigil. It looks too much like it could be derived from the Ultima glyph to be anything else imo. Either Altima could be central to Arcadion or even Solution Nine and still alive, or she could have died long ago on a different shard due to the time wobbliness between shards and her glyph changed over time for the people who were under her. They are using the Ancient alphabet after all.

Or the artists and writers have led us on a wild goose chase in order to keep us talking about the game during the content lull and the nature of the red symbol and the people's use of the Ancient alphabet will never be revealed at all.

WHAT IS THAT?!?!

THE WARRIOR OF LIGHT IS SUMMONING 7 ADDITIONAL FIGHTERS!

THEY ALL HAVE STEEL CHAIRS!

IT'S ABSOLUTE CHAOS IN THE RING, FOLKS!

We beat the last boss in the last raid and the announcer tells us we've won the championship belt but then says we can only keep it if we beat that guy and Altima just shows up out of nowhere, beats the crap out of us, and then disappears for the rest of the game.