Do we really need a new hyper advanced civilization in every expansion now?

[NekoNova]

Dear OP, Is this your first final fantasy?

[Volgia]

Like what's cool about FF is how they combine advanced civilizations with medieval stuff, it's supposed to be some kind of weird remix. If you don't like it there are plenty of games that focuses on medieval style scenarios only.

I personally liked DT's tron/cyberpunk civiilization as opposed to Allagan.

[tsuchii]

Yes. Almost all core FF games I can think of has such. It's a trope that makes FF, FF.

[KisaiTenshi]

Yes, yes we do.
Sticking to medieval stuff only is boring.

I think this is again something people miss the forest from the trees. Final Fantasy's staples:
1. Airships, specifically ones that look like boat/ark's. (Cid retconned into I)
2. Chocobo's (retconned into I, but first appeared in II)
3. Some kind of Evil Empire (literately every EE has been inspired by Star Wars)
4. Some kind of Rebel storyline (to go with 3)
5. Crystals are involved as a key mcguffin
6. Weapons are involved as a key mcguffin
7. Key jobs (Fighter, Thief, White Mage, Black Mage, Red Mage) introduced in 1, but expanded upon in 3 and 5.

Prior to 6, it was really easy to look at Final Fantasy as just "Japanese flavored Ultima" because the first two Ultima games had the "Medieval world with sprinklings of Scifi tech borrowed from Star Wars and Star Trek", and the first 5 FF games look like Medieval Fantasy RPG's, but then you realize that 1, 2 and 5 have some time travel in them, 5 some very scifi aspects to how the two worlds are merged. 4 has space travel (to the moon, ONE of the moons.) FF1 actually had more "futuretech" stuff in the original versions but retconned back into being less scifi in later ports/remakes.

Final Fantasy stopped looking like that with 6, where the Magitek armor is right there in the box art and opening scene. Every game after that point has pushed this mixture of magic and technology and has been unafraid of showing it. You know what also inspired Final Fantasy? Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. If you read the manga, you'd realize how much more influence it had on the first 6 FF games steampunk-ish type technology.

Not a single FF game has been a "pure medieval" high fantasy game. Most CRPG's are based on RPG elements that originate in Dungeons and Dragons, but even that in turn was based on Lord of the Rings. The point of the high fantasy setting is that "magic exists, and it doesn't need to be explained", thus the expectation that technology will stagnate at a level where everything that can be done with magic, will instead be done with magic.

Many modern stories feel a need to explain how magic works and thus handcuff the story into playing by rules it can no longer change rather than just being consistent. I see this a lot in Japanese Isekai webnovels that later get manga and anime adaptations, where they initially have some brilliant idea, but they use CRPG terminology to explain magic or fantasy races, and it just starts looking like "this is just SAO or .Hack//Sign again but without the pretense of actually being a game." Like not even Final Fantasy MMO's do this. Sure the players may tell each other about non-diegetic elements of the game, but the NPC's do not talk about anything you see on your character stat screen. Not your stats or gear. Sure sometimes they acknowledge that you're a Lalafell or a Miqo'te, or that you have a certain job unlocked, but those are barely more than a side comment.

[R1V3N]

It's nice to see. Looks super cool and I love it.

[Granyala]

Yes, but so – at this point – is ending every expansion with "surprise sci-fi out of nowhere". Come up with a different trick for once please.

Uuh, sorry but I do not consider Amaurot or Elpis "Sci-Fi" at all.
These are magical civilizations, not technological ones.

Off the top of my head, only the Allagans, Omicrons and now the Alexandrians could be classified as "Sci-Fi".
Garlemald doesn't really apply, since they are still behind in tech compared to what we have in real life.
Garlemald is more steampunk area just with crude oil that their Magitek runs on.

[Iscah]

Uuh, sorry but I do not consider Amaurot or Elpis "Sci-Fi" at all.
These are magical civilizations, not technological ones.

Okay, was over-generalising for brevity there. But it still feel like almost every expansion goes on the pattern of starting out with "historical" settings and then going either modern or futuristic at the end with minimal foreshadowing. Amaurot might not be sci-fi but it's still drawing on an architecture that is closer to the modern day than anything we saw in the preceding zones.

[Granyala]

Okay, was over-generalising for brevity there. But it still feel like almost every expansion goes on the pattern of starting out with "historical" settings and then going either modern or futuristic at the end with minimal foreshadowing. Amaurot might not be sci-fi but it's still drawing on an architecture that is closer to the modern day than anything we saw in the preceding zones.

Which kinda makes sense, considering: if you are already in a primitive society, odds are high that you will encounter more advanced ones, especially when you are surrounded by shard dimensions/worlds that did not have to suffer through several world-shaking calamities that throws off any development.

Still, I wish SE would have done more with Paleo Alexandria. The map looks really cool, I was bummed that I wasn't really used in the MSQ. oO

[Astronema]

the problem with dawntrail is this not a believable progression.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_PxoN-8qwQ

[Galvuu]

Uuh, sorry but I do not consider Amaurot or Elpis "Sci-Fi" at all.
These are magical civilizations, not technological ones.

Off the top of my head, only the Allagans, Omicrons and now the Alexandrians could be classified as "Sci-Fi".
Garlemald doesn't really apply, since they are still behind in tech compared to what we have in real life.
Garlemald is more steampunk area just with crude oil that their Magitek runs on.

What? Garlemald is definitely scifi. They have a fleet of huge airships (look at the size of the Agrius), autonomous battle machines (colossus, scorpion mechs with lasers, vanguards, etc), an enormous high-tech city with these cool-ass giant trains, the Weapon project (unless you think Ruby/Emerald/Sapphire/Diamond Weapons aren't scifi), and a bunch of weird advanced technology, like artificial Echo, or the ability to upload a backup of someone's mind/memories into a living person and override their mind while weaponizing it (also part of the weapon plot line)... not only are they advanced compared to most civilizations in the game, they're advanced compared to us irl in some aspects (we can't do mind-upload nonsense like they do).
Sharlayan is also scifi, fwiw, with spaceships and Labyrinthos.

Like, I understand the argument that FF often has some ancient advanced civilization, but XIV has four (if we're throwing the Omicrons in that bucket, we might as well throw in the Ea too). At the very, I'd like to see them return to a different aesthetic. 1.X Garlemald had a very "clockwork" aesthetic (reminiscent of what you see in FF XII's Arcadia)- just look at the Magitek Dreadnoughts, that's such an unique look.
I wish DT leaned into IX's aesthetic rather than the cyberpunk look we got. The Terran vessels and tech has such an alien, unique look- the Invincible, while being basically a spaceship superweapon, has this... ornate, palatial look, all sculpted and a striking blue and gold, with its ominous eye. In XIV's defense, Omicrons, Garleans and Allagans all have a very distinct aesthetic.
Either way, I do find that XIV is falling prey to predictability, more now than at the start of its lifespan. The "ancient civilization out of nowhere" is just a symptom- the twist villain that the game tries to make us sympathize with, the ancient civilization, the final dungeon showing the past with narration... you get the point.

An advanced civilization like Alexandria does make more sense on one of the reflections, as on the Source there were the Umbral Calamaties, which kinda destroyed every empire around when they occured, except for the Seventh which was kind of made not as bad by Louisoix. Those Calamities never happened on the Reflections, so they've had the chance to build mostly uninterrupted since the Sundering when not being messed up by the Ascians.

I kinda somewhat agree on principle, but then again, compared to the Source, the people of the shards are supposed to be much less physically powerful, intelligent and magically apt, due to them being 1/14 of an ancient. This ShB retcon is gonna haunt XIV, because it's always going to be hard to justify anything in a shard being threat/as advanced as the Source because they're simply less powerful/adept due to the nature of the Sundering. It kinda works with the Void because not only do they plunder aether from the Source, they coalesce into a singular, more powerful entity (a voidsent made of 100 sundered, void souls is definitely powerful enough to give trouble to any warrior in the Source), but this explanation doesn't really work for the shards (unless the Alexandrian soldiers were juicing up on souls like Zoral Ja showed, but that has other problems, since your own sense of self is crushed in the process and I'm not sure the scientists would keep working as before or even have the motivation to).