Thread: 8.0 and World

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. As that is also a dangling plot thread that was introduced to us as far back as shadowbringers. The previous reason we couldn't just go do it is because of the lack of personal means to travel elsewhere with the exception of what G'raha did with the crystal tower.

That sounds terrifying if I have to be honest. That would rob any character who has an Azem soul shard of their autonomy, and turn us in a soul devouring, dimension hopping monster. However, it would be interesting if one of our shards is a villain, and has plans to do just that.

Originally Posted by Chasingstars

And that is the point, explore the subject matter, where maybe there is a person who doesn't want to be rejoined to have their autonomy taken. That is a goldmine for storytelling. Not engaging with that content, by contrast, is just leaving a plot thread dangling for no other reason and could be considered wasted potential in writing. After all, if goes unexplored, then why was it even brought up in the storyline? Sure it tells us we are an incomplete version of Azem, but if we do nothing with that storyline, then I could snip it out of the story and no harm comes to the story. See what I mean?

So your answer is that, because this is the only thing you could possibly imagine them doing with the Azem storyline, this must be what happens, even though nobody can put forward why it would be anything but a terrible idea on both a moral and narrative level.

I'm sorry, no. It would literally be more interesting to abandon the Azem story entirely than to do this.

Originally Posted by ShadowyZero

i hear you about the people excited about Mercydia but i think we know too much about it as is, which is why it confused me when Hades brought it up because like what more is there for us to possibly know that hasn't already been revealed or is common knowledge at this point? how would they translate it all into a compelling narrative thats supposed to span across an entire expansion?

Your entire storyline summary of Meracydia focuses on the dragons, but forgets that it's not a country of dragons. Allow me to summarize it:

-Five thousand years ago, it was host to three unique civilizations outside of the dragons: a centaur-like race that worshipped Zurvan, a rationalist society of multiple races that worshipped Sophia, and a race of tree people that didn't actually seem to worship anything until pushed to the grindstone by the Allagans and forced to summon Sephirot in self-defense.
-Allag failed to conquer it the first time, and had to come back centuries later with supertech to even have a chance
-In the present day, it's reported to be a wasteland... by sailors that can't even make landfall because of hostile locals, so what do they know?
-Thanks to Fandaniel, we did learn there was still a clan of dragons out there, and Tiamat's gone out to meet them. We can reasonably assume that the Warring Triad society's successors likely still exist too, five thousand years removed.
-Other scattered little pieces of info suggest Australian fauna, i.e. kangaroos. There's also some hints of Africa with stuff like the sphinxes in Azys Lla.

Just because you look at this and only think of the dragons, doesn't mean that the dragons are all we've got. Meracydia's actually roughly comparable to what we had of Tural pre-Dawntrail; with Tural we had the Mamool Ja, the Whalaqee, and that's about it, and they went off and made my favorite expansion out of that mystery zone. With Meracydia, we have one dragon, the vague specter of the Warring Triad's societies, and the overall vibe of 'Australia'; that's a hell of a lot of blank space to fill in.

I look at Meracydia and see a hell of a lot of potential for a story: not only do we have Tiamat as an exceptionally odd contact there, but the fact that the locals are so hostile raises interesting questions about how we handle in an adventure there; are the locals so desperate to handle a problem that they ask for outside help despite their own sensibilities, or are they so hostile that we have to prove ourselves to be cool to an entire goddamn Australia? Are they hostile out of general distrust of outsiders, or are they actually trying to protect something? Did Allag get knocked back the first time because Allag just sucked at naval warfare, or did they have a great secret that still lies there? And what about all the cool Australia stuff that's there? We saw Dawntrail make great stuff out of the Yucatan cenotes, the painted hills, and even a Texan desert, let's see what they can do with stuff like Uluru, or the Great Barrier Reef!

Also, forgive me, but I wanna see one of my favorite games do their version of my home country. I wanna see Meracydia in the same way I wanna see Pokemon do an Australian region, and I'm a lot more interested in that than 'let's go to the Fourth to commit cannibalism'.

Originally Posted by Chasingstars

And that is the point, explore the subject matter, where maybe there is a person who doesn't want to be rejoined to have their autonomy taken. That is a goldmine for storytelling. Not engaging with that content, by contrast, is just leaving a plot thread dangling for no other reason and could be considered wasted potential in writing. After all, if goes unexplored, then why was it even brought up in the storyline? Sure it tells us we are an incomplete version of Azem, but if we do nothing with that storyline, then I could snip it out of the story and no harm comes to the story. See what I mean?

I'm sure that other Azem shards will appear in the future and that there is a reason why they were introduced to the story. But there's a lot that can happen with these characters apart from rejoining with us. They aren't objects to be picked up and used, like the crystals of light we collected in ARR.
As long as the story hasn't established that we need to absorb other Azem shards, there is no need to do it, not to mention that the WoL would never agree to it without good reason.

Just because something would be interesting in a story doesn't mean it should happen, especially if it doesn't make sense for it to happen.
I could see a villainous Azem-shard trying it though.

Originally Posted by Thighland

I'm sure that other Azem shards will appear in the future and that there is a reason why they were introduced to the story. But there's a lot that can happen with these characters apart from rejoining with us. They aren't objects to be picked up and used, like the crystals of light we collected in ARR.

There's also a lot that can be done with shards when not actually touching the subject of 'BUT WHAT ABOUT AZEM'. After all, we've hit both the Thirteenth and the Ninth without hearing a peep about it, and I wouldn't say either story was in any way begging for their presence.

And before anyone tries to say that it was Golbez, Zero, or Also Golbez: we actually know who the Thirteenth shard of Azem is most likely to be, and it's also the clearest evidence why we won't be going off and eating Azem shards as a long-term goal.

It's the Reaper's Avatar, as per the EE3. Can't exactly go eating them for power (because for some reason that's desirable to people) without ruining Reaper's whole deal.

EDIT:

Originally Posted by ShadowyZero

if there is still a civilization left in Meracydia then its likely not having a good time with the hostile environment an likely under constant threat of the remnants of Allag i.e. war machines and soulless clones. though with Tiamat making her return there maybe that will somehow better things in some way but even if the triad returns it wont matter cause we have cured tempering an even found a repellent towards it.

I would actually say that any theorizing about Meracydia should completely put aside 'they fought Allag' as a significant detail to their current presence, because people seem to reflexively over-focus on it, probably because it's the biggest thing we know. But Allag was five thousand years ago; acting like Meracydia's still defined by fighting Allag is like assuming that modern-day Egypt must have a primarily pyramid-centric society; reasonably, Allag's not that big a deal for them.

I think that, if Allag must be some kind of bedrock component for a Meracydian story, that we might see something like Home from FFX: that a society off in a vast desert (because it is Fantasy Australia; we're not just desert, but we do have a lot of it) has taken up those weapons, appropriated it, and made it their own.

Originally Posted by Cleretic

There's also a lot that can be done with shards when not actually touching the subject of 'BUT WHAT ABOUT AZEM'. After all, we've hit both the Thirteenth and the Ninth without hearing a peep about it, and I wouldn't say either story was in any way begging for their presence.

And before anyone tries to say that it was Golbez, Zero, or Also Golbez: we actually know who the Thirteenth shard of Azem is most likely to be, and it's also the clearest evidence why we won't be going off and eating Azem shards as a long-term goal.

It's the Reaper's Avatar, as per the EE3. Can't exactly go eating them for power (because for some reason that's desirable to people) without ruining Reaper's whole deal.

It's true that the story isn't begging for the presence of the Azem shards right now, but it is begging for new stories to emerge after we have completed our business in Alexandria.
That doesn't mean that Azem shards should start popping out of the sky soon, but it would be an easy pool of ideas to pull from, and I think many people are excited to know more about their soul-"brothers and sisters".
With that said, the story of the Ninth isn't over yet (7.3 at the earliest, 7.55 at the latest), and the 13th will probably still be relevant in the future, so who knows what might happen? I too have my own theories about who is an Azem-shard or not, but what is certain is that there is no definitive proof yet, only foreshadowing at best.