Thread: 8.0 and World

I can get behind a lot of these ideas.

While I don't think we should put ALL of the Scions in the backburner, the majority of them should be shelved. Take the twins: keep them in Garlemald for an expansion or two and when they come back, they have visibly grown out of their teenage years. Personally, I'm not a fan of either of them. I think they were made more important than they should be. But give them a chance to grow off screen and maybe some real character growth can occur.

We don't even need all completely new characters for the roster. Throw in some old characters than didn't come back after their expansions like Feo Ul or (I assume we won't see much of him after DT) Erenville.

Originally Posted by Thighland

The first saga had the Ascians, Hydaelyn and Zodirak as an overarching plot element, so I wonder what the overarching plot element for the new saga will be. I think 7.3-7.55 would be a good place to establish it.
All I can think of so far is that we check out the remaining shards to make sure that nothing is wrong.

My theory is that Recollection or whatever they are called are going to have a multi shard presence - Calyx is just one of their minor minions who's gone a bit off plan in the source. We won't kill him in the next patch, the solution 9 guys look tempered in the trailer and the description of the trial on the site leads me to believe Calyx uses them to summon a primal. Most likely it being Necron who appears to remove their fear of death by making them not exist to begin with. All fits in with the ff9 narrative that way too.

Then I think there will be a multi shard war, expansion could be set over multiple shards fighting recollection and Calyx will be the boss at the end of 8.0

Originally Posted by Chasingstars

The primary goal of visiting other shards, with Azem's Key, should primarily be to rejoin the warrior of light with the remaining fragments of themself, thereby fully rejoining Azem and in the process reach the power of an ancient.

...going around and absorbing sapient beings sort of sounds like an evil thing to do. Especially in the context of the game's narrative, which states time and time again, that all life is valuable.

Like, merging with Albert was an exception, because at that moment, we would have died and since Albert was somewhere between life and death as it was, he made a heroic sacrifice.

But jumping form shard to shard, absorbing our other selves? Yeah, no.

Now, you could reverse it; another fragment of us want's to take all the others, including ourselves.

Originally Posted by TheRealQuah

My theory is that Recollection or whatever they are called are going to have a multi shard presence

Preservation; Recollection is Robo-Beatrix's trial. And I don't think it really makes sense for them to be a multi-shard organization; not only is their ideal not really something that makes sense outside of the Ninth, they also haven't had access to multiversal travel of any kind for some amount of centuries (I don't believe we have a timeframe on their scale for when Robor and Alayla took the key).

But also, this just makes them exactly the Ascians with a different hat, and that's a lot less interesting. I don't think they're gonna be done next patch, but they're gonna be built differently than that. I suspect it's gonna be more along the lines of them already being revved up really well to do multi-shard shenanigans, and have just been kept at bay by their inability to do it themselves.

Originally Posted by DreadCrow

Like, merging with Albert was an exception, because at that moment, we would have died and since Albert was somewhere between life and death as it was, he made a heroic sacrifice.

Also, Shadowbringers was a story all about coming to terms with death, and Ardbert's journey was him coming to terms with his own; he died a meaningless death preventing an apocalypse that didn't actually stop, and only finally passed on once he'd finally figured out what he actually did die for: a chance for someone else to finish the job he started.

It's a great moment for a character I otherwise feel lukewarm on, and it wouldn't make any sense to enforce it on others who don't have the same journey. Especially if we're killing them ourselves for power; that isn't a heroic sacrifice or coming to terms with a death that's already happened, that's just cold-blooded selfish murder.

When ever we go i don't want an expansion like yawntrail. Especially if we end up going to mercydia. That location i consider hsw part two. It has to be treated with respect. The landmass will have dragons, the three races that worship the warring triad etc . I expect to be fighting redux versions of sophia, sephirot and Zurvian.

I'm really hoping for something in Ilsabard id love to see Corvos and Landis, I feel like Corvos would be Mediterranean themed from other lore we have learned of in the game.

Originally Posted by AlecIzaRogue

I'm really hoping for something in Ilsabard id love to see Corvos and Landis, I feel like Corvos would be Mediterranean themed from other lore we have learned of in the game.

Endwalker really should've been split into two expansions. Part 1 deals with Garlemald featuring Corvos and other Garlean provinces. Then part 2 deals with Endwalker proper.

Originally Posted by Yuella

Endwalker really should've been split into two expansions. Part 1 deals with Garlemald featuring Corvos and other Garlean provinces. Then part 2 deals with Endwalker proper.

As a number of you probably know (but I love as a fact but I'll always share it), this was the initial plan; we don't know much about that initial plan, except that the level 90 trial was Anima; I think Corvos/Locus Amoenus is a fair guess for another zone, but beyond that it gets really murky. (And also, Locus Amoenus is supposed to resemble Labyrinthos, which I wouldn't really call Mediterranean, but I don't know climates.) Anima even existing in that plan at least says that Garlemald still would've been in the state we found it, though.

I think it was the right move to combine them. I don't really think that the Ilsabard expansion would've had the potential to be more than a Stormblood retread of us walking through nations and reiterating a liberation story every time, and just speaking personally I don't see much excitement in trudging through more Imperial bases; frankly I was sick of the aesthetic after Stormblood, and even now I'm still not really hankering for more of it. Plus, presuming the story was essentially a longer version of what we got, there's not really a good expansion breakpoint; Anima might be the best one, but it'd really leave you hanging in a really difficult way, I've got no idea how you make those patches any good.

Endwalker might've been rushed by trying to fit two expansions into one, but it at least wields that rush. It's telling a story that makes sense being frantic and without much room to breathe; I would've liked more time in these places, but I don't feel like the story was incomplete by not telling it. ...except the story of the excaped slaves, that one was short-changed and deserves more space, but that's a problem with smaller solutions than 'whole expansion'.

So 8.0 is likely gonna be either Meracydia, Ilsabard, or Blindfrost. Blindfrost because we know so little about it, Meracydia to pick up the Void storyline, or Ilsabard to explore the various liberated provinces.

It's pretty much going to depend on which storyline gets left to cook in the background. Either the events of 7.3 are left to cook in 8.x, while we pick up the Zero storyline and try to fix the Void, or we give Zero and the Void more time to recover, and focus on pursuing the events of 7.3.