I've honestly confused the heck out of myself trying to figure out what's what. I thought I could play this trial so long as I registered a new account, but I...guess I can't, because the game is registered to account I used to previously trial the game? Is that what you're talking about? Because I'm pretty at sea with it.
EDIT: Actually, I just found this. Might try it later.
EDITEDIT: This seems to "clarify" things. Shame I don't remember what circumstances I obtained/trialled the game under
I don't think I've felt so... satisfied... at the end of an FF game (or story arc for FFXIV) in... years. Good job Oda and Ishikawa (FFXIV MSQ writers). Time to go back and look up a bunch of old cutscenes...
Don't want to put spoilers here just yet, except to say that... Shadowbringers will probably be a lot of peoples' standard for what a FF story should feel like.
...Is there a way to like, literally fast forward all the way to Shadowbringers and have a legit enough character to participate in Dark Apocalypse and The Puppet Bunker?
I have to say this is one of the most gangbuster collaborations I have ever seen and if there's one thing XIV has exemplified with their events, it's care. They put some real effort in crafting these crossover stories and Yoko Taro really fucking delivered here. I love how he's been allowed to collaborate and write this. I'm legit enraptured to see how this story unfolds because... It's good.
Anyone else follow Nier and do this raid? I find it criminal no one's talking about this event.
Yeah, all the crossover events feels organically tied-in within XIV (some less than others, but there's always a lore reason), this team doesn't joke around when it comes to story coherency and properly honoring other games.
This raid was everything I wanted it to be. Which is to say it turned everything we thought we knew about the story so far on its head. This is what I wrote about my reaction to the NieR Raid somewhere else...
This felt like the "Route B" of NieR. We're figuring out things aren't what we thought they were and realizing the situation is worse than we thought it was. Which is what it needed to be. Best of all, my reaction to the dungeon was one long constant stream of "oh no, not this!" due to knowing what certain things in NieR are, which was exactly how I was hoping it would go.
Some fun highlights...
Angelic script being a timing-style mechanic that was reminiscent of a specific Drakenguard boss.
Operator 210's combat data being used in a fight with so many pods. Also... I was very much wondering why "End of the Unknown" was playing in her fight when... that song only plays for Adam and Eve... the two human-like machines created by the machine network.
This was promptly followed up by my head screaming "no, no, no... alien ship architecture is here!!!" when that part of the ship opened up. By which point the ball of android bodies giving birth to something that used the Adam and Eve hair-like attack indicators wasn't even a surprise. Given how much trouble 2B gave the machines in NieR: Automana, it makes total sense that it was a machine-body version of her. That the music is a mash-up of Torn From the Heavens/Dark Colossus only made it better.
Seeing the machines use the idea/appearance of YoRHa was... honestly really cool. It felt like something that could have logically come out of the end of NieR: A. 2B being the cavalry to stop the machine YoRHa was a really awesome moment. It's really cute to see 2B being... not overly concerned with people thinking she cares about 9S.
All in all, it was a fun romp. Which means that 5.5 is probably going to throw a massive 3rd Act curve-ball at us in typical Yoko Taro fashion...
Well, taken my first steps back into Eorzea. Bit of a tricky start, what with having left off as an Arcanist about two years ago, now finding half my abilities don't work. Turns out I had to delete them and re-assign them. Hardly intuitive!
So, probably performed a little below-par in my first Duty, but getting into the swing of things now. Luckily, I'm teamed up with my brother, so I have someone at my back to figure things out with. We're not even out of our classes and into long trousers yet, so not much to say, but it's great to return to that world for a while.
Well, I'm all caught up on 5.3 thanks to the Tube of You. Man, there was a fucking freight train of feels. I got pulverized again and again.
I was moved by so many of the obvious things (e.g. most any scene featuring the Exarch; the farewells to Norvrandt's denizens; etc.), but a couple of honorable mentions should go to:
- The moment just before the final battle when WoL's Echo allows them to fully empathise with Elidibus's pain over his dead fellow Ascians
- Springboarding off the first matter, the last flash of that Echo reading features Emet-Selch and kind of pushes him to the forefront in a way that really drives understanding home for the WoL; I really appreciate this and the subtle exchanges of dialogue in which 5.3 tells us that for the WoL, even if not necessarily all the Scions, Emet-Selch is -- despite how it all turned out -- yet another friend who was lost along the way
---
Changing gears, perhaps this is blasphemy to those who actually play the game, but was it kind of a disappointment to anyone else for the setting to now be back on Eorzea? Obviously it had to get back there, and this is what the narrative had been building towards, but Norvrandt just feels like home now. And so cozy.
It's gratifying to see the Rejoining story now at its apparent close, but this does leave us with what basically amounts to a duo of Sephiroth and Kefka as the villains for the final leg of the story. Not likely going to be much understanding or empathy to be found with these two. =/
But then I suppose that's not always necessary. Maybe it wouldn't seem like a step back if Zenos hadn't already kind of been played out as an antagonist (in spectacular fashion) already? I suppose, though, there's yet some thematic significance to be mined in this (decidedly fucked up and unrelatable) mortal with a manufactured Echo being the intended nemesis of the WoL, who we know definitively is basically an Ascian.
Well presumably Zenos’ plan to have him and the WoLD “engorge” themselves on Zodiark and Hydaelyn will likely entail
Zenos likely taking the former place Elidibus had of being Zodiark’s core/heart, and perhaps Zenos will find a way to remove Venat from Hydaelyn in an attempt to make the WoLD take their place. IIRC the development said while 6.0 won’t necessarily be the finale expansion, it’s supposed to be the finale for the Zodiark/Hydaelyn saga (also supported by the stinger G’raha monologue describing what comes next as being the “final chapter in the tale of this star”), so my guess is that scale of threat is going to be ramped up for it. The Sephiroth and Kefka comparison for Zenos and Fandaniel could be very apt, since both of the former villains had objectives of becoming/became the supreme god/power of their world, so perhaps Zenos will be following suit? Especially since the finale monologue for 5.3 from G’raha Tia described Zenos as “the beast shall kindle the flames of the apocalypse”.
I liked a lot of 5.3's story in theory, but in execution a lot it felt rushed - like they tried to give Elidibus an Emet-arc, only in a single patch rather than a whole expansion. A ton of stuff regarding his motivations, background, and relationship with Emet-selch are barely more than subtext and probably didn't need to be. And that is a shame, because the concepts at play are really cool, I just wish they'd be given more room to breathe. Maybe it flows better when played back-to-back with 5.1 and 5.2? I know Ishikawa can do this, too, because 3.4 (Soul Surrender) did all of it and then some.
I also don't care for the Exarch Fake-out, and thought they should have revived Past G'Raha (because of the blood) but failed to transfer the memories. That would have been a nice bittersweet compromise with heaps of dramatic potential going forward. Fandaniel is super lame too, but then again I thought that about Emet-selch when he was first introduced, so who knows.
Still, a pretty decent end to Shadowbringers - far better than Stormblood's 4.3 ball of blech, but not quite up to the conclusion of Heavensward, imo.
Personally I don't think Zenos or Fandural (however you write his name) are going to survive long past 5.5... If they indeed survive 5.5 at all. This is for a few reasons. The first is that Yoshida has said the 6.0 expansion is the end of the Zodiark/Hydalyn conflict. I really don't see him or Oda and Ishikawa changing that to being the Zenos/WoL conflict out of nowhere... especially not after they spent an entire expansion building up what Zodiark's purpose is. That has to matter in the long run.
The second reason is that the x.4-x.5 villains never survive their arcs to be the next expansion's main villain. What they do is setzup or instigate the WoL's next conflict. Teledhi Adaledgi makes it so the WoL has to go to Ishgard, but he dies in the process. Ilbred deliberately gets the Eorzean Alliance on track to take Gyr Abania back from the Garleans and kills himself to bring that situation about. Varis is the one who decides to use Black Rose in the doomed timeline, but before the WoL can do anything about him, Zenos kills him. So... thinking Zenos and Fandural are going to be around for just the next two patches is pretty reasonable. As for what they could be getting up to in those patches...
Zodiark... honestly presents a bit of a problem for the writers. Sure, we know why he's an enemy of Hydalyn now and why bringing him back is a really bad idea. But, all of that is really just hearsay. Either from Zodiark's great enemy or his brainwashed followers. None of that info comes from Zodiark himself as we've never had the chen e to talk with him. And with good reason! Zodiark is currently locked up in the moon where he can't mess with the world and random people can't stumble over him. Or run the risk of getting Tempered by him. But this also makes Zodiark very unknowable and he's kinda supposed to be the larger scope villain of the current arc. And those two realities don't work well together from a narrative pov.
What I think Zenos and Fandural are going to do is serve as a bridge to Zodiark for the WoL, but especially for the player. We know Zenos wants to get to Zodiark to absorb Zodiark's power, and Fandural as a Elevated Ascian cancer to where Zodiark is. It's also pretty obvious that Zenos' and Fandural's goals are very much not the same and I'm fully expecting them to turn on each other as soon as one of them doesn't need the other. That said, between the two of them, they have enough knowledge to at least get to where Zodiark is. And that is when things could get interesting...
For all that Zenos wants to absorb Zodiark's power for himself, I have a really hard time seeing Zenos pull that off given what we now know about Zodiark. Like that one of the first things Zodiark did once he was summoned was Temper the entire Convocation of Thirteen We're talking Ancients with a fully developed Echo, not the bits and pieces one we have that we have no conscious control over. Then there's the fact that Zodiark's hear is gone. While we don't quite know what function Elidibus played as a part of Zodiark, he was the one encouraging the belief in the idea behind Zodiark. So I can see Zodiark wanting/needing a replacement. Long story short, I think Zenos is going to meet his match against Zodiark and wind up Tempered by him.
When it comes to the WoL and Zodiark meeting up, I have two broad theories about that. One is that Zenos gets the WoL to go to the moon with him somehow. The other is that Zodiark is brought out of the moon and the WoL has to go deal with that. Cue end of patch 5.5, see you in 6.0!
But in all seriousness, neither Zenos or Fandural feel like expansion villains
... and I think that is for the simplest reason that they aren't going to be expansion villains.
Personally I don't think Zenos or Fandural (however you write his name) are going to survive long past 5.5... If they indeed survive 5.5 at all. This is for a few reasons. The first is that Yoshida has said the 6.0 expansion is the end of the Zodiark/Hydalyn conflict. I really don't see him or Oda and Ishikawa changing that to being the Zenos/WoL conflict out of nowhere... especially not after they spent an entire expansion building up what Zodiark's purpose is. That has to matter in the long run.
The second reason is that the x.4-x.5 villains never survive their arcs to be the next expansion's main villain. What they do is setzup or instigate the WoL's next conflict. Teledhi Adaledgi makes it so the WoL has to go to Ishgard, but he dies in the process. Ilbred deliberately gets the Eorzean Alliance on track to take Gyr Abania back from the Garleans and kills himself to bring that situation about. Varis is the one who decides to use Black Rose in the doomed timeline, but before the WoL can do anything about him, Zenos kills him. So... thinking Zenos and Fandural are going to be around for just the next two patches is pretty reasonable. As for what they could be getting up to in those patches...
Zodiark... honestly presents a bit of a problem for the writers. Sure, we know why he's an enemy of Hydalyn now and why bringing him back is a really bad idea. But, all of that is really just hearsay. Either from Zodiark's great enemy or his brainwashed followers. None of that info comes from Zodiark himself as we've never had the chen e to talk with him. And with good reason! Zodiark is currently locked up in the moon where he can't mess with the world and random people can't stumble over him. Or run the risk of getting Tempered by him. But this also makes Zodiark very unknowable and he's kinda supposed to be the larger scope villain of the current arc. And those two realities don't work well together from a narrative pov.
What I think Zenos and Fandural are going to do is serve as a bridge to Zodiark for the WoL, but especially for the player. We know Zenos wants to get to Zodiark to absorb Zodiark's power, and Fandural as a Elevated Ascian cancer to where Zodiark is. It's also pretty obvious that Zenos' and Fandural's goals are very much not the same and I'm fully expecting them to turn on each other as soon as one of them doesn't need the other. That said, between the two of them, they have enough knowledge to at least get to where Zodiark is. And that is when things could get interesting...
For all that Zenos wants to absorb Zodiark's power for himself, I have a really hard time seeing Zenos pull that off given what we now know about Zodiark. Like that one of the first things Zodiark did once he was summoned was Temper the entire Convocation of Thirteen We're talking Ancients with a fully developed Echo, not the bits and pieces one we have that we have no conscious control over. Then there's the fact that Zodiark's hear is gone. While we don't quite know what function Elidibus played as a part of Zodiark, he was the one encouraging the belief in the idea behind Zodiark. So I can see Zodiark wanting/needing a replacement. Long story short, I think Zenos is going to meet his match against Zodiark and wind up Tempered by him.
When it comes to the WoL and Zodiark meeting up, I have two broad theories about that. One is that Zenos gets the WoL to go to the moon with him somehow. The other is that Zodiark is brought out of the moon and the WoL has to go deal with that. Cue end of patch 5.5, see you in 6.0!
But in all seriousness, neither Zenos or Fandural feel like expansion villains
... and I think that is for the simplest reason that they aren't going to be expansion villains.
Wasn't Zenos more or less already the main villain of an expansion with "Stormblood," though? And it can't be for nothing that a scene of Zenos and Fandaniel has the following commentary from G'raha Tia: "The beast shall kindle the flames of the apocalypse. Into its domain shall the hero set forth, for the final chapter in the tale of this star." And we know the next expansion is supposed to be the last, so ...
We may see that Valens van Varro fuck in 5.4/5.5 -- or Fandaniel and/or another Convocation member if there are any others left. I think we're lacking confirmation on the deaths of Pashtarot, Altima, Halmarut, and Deudalaphon, though two of them must be dead (permanently) since Gaius is carrying around a couple of red masks and those masks were highlighted as part of Elidibus's sorrow along with Lahabrea and Emet-Selch when the WoL used the Echo before the final battle with Elidibus.
As for Zenos and Fandaniel's goals not being aligned, they're not exactly in conflict either, though? Zenos just wants to fight the WoL and Fandaniel just wants to "set the stage" for that; i.e. wreak a lot of havoc/burn down a lot of shit.
So... 6.x is not the last expansion of FFXIV. It's the last expansion in "Season 1" which has been called the Hydaelyn/Zoidark arc for a while now. While the Zodiark/Hydaelyn conflict will end in... probably 6.3, the actual story isn't.
About Zenos... the part of the fandom that cares about the story... largely doesn't like that he came back. He's by far the least complicated villain to be a "main expansion villain" and a lot of people feel like his arc was at least satisfactorily ended when he committed suicide after being satisfied with the last fight he had with the WoL. On top of that, he's painfully aware of what he wants, which is just to fight the WoL more and to have larger and larger conflicts with them. Out of all the villains FFXIV has had, Zenos is the most "anime" out of them all. You can peg him as just about any rival who wants to fight the MC while the MC has way better things to do than fight the rival and you basicly have Zenos' character as he is now. He just... really wants to fight the WoL for the rest of his existence.
It only gets worse when the story just gave Emet-Selch the kind of send-off he got and Emet-Selch is... so much better of a character than Zenos is it's not even funny. The fandom really doesn't want more shallow villains who have "I just want a good fight" as their motivation after they got off a really good "I have complex motivations you can understand even if you know you will be in conflict with me" kind of villain. Most people see Zenos coming back as a step backward in villain characterization.
The thing with Zenos is that he wants to be the only one who fights the WoL. Anyone else who wants to take the WoL out of the picture themselves, he's ready to do them in himself. As soon as Fandaniel shows signs of needing to get the WoL out of the way, Zenos is going to be... really annoyed with him. There's quite a few jokes about Zenos predominantly having an obsessive crush on the WoL (in the worst possible use of the term) and... they aren't too far off. It's also really hard for a lot of people to see how Zenos as we now know him being the villain of a second expansion when he was barely able to carry Stormblood. And that was before we found out what his motivations really were at the end of Stormblood.
TLDR: Zenos is the weakest (written) main villain the game has and people were disapointed when he was brought back and are disapoited that he is staying around for so long after he already died once and they will be very disapointed if he really does end up as the main villian of the last expansion. He's kinda the hate sink for a lot of people and he was... actually designed with being a hate sink in mind by the game devs.
I feel you in that I don't particularly care for him either. Lex and I had a conversation in July of last year that echoes most of your sentiments about Zenos pretty much word for word:
Me:
I really like the Garlemald emperors and their soap opera for some reason, so anything that touches on them is interesting to me.
Lex:
I do too but I can't stand Zenos and idk why they bothered "bringing him back"
Me:
I'm a touch confused by that as well ...
Lex:
that is one major complaint I have. It was one thing having his dead body possessed by an Ascian, that I was fine with. Convince the empire he's alive when he isn't
Me:
Yeah. That plotline was rather abruptly abandoned
Lex:
but at the end of this expansion they were like "Zenos is so crazy he ejected an ascian from his body, THE POWER" and I was like "no"
Me:
Must have been a change made in reaction to Zenos's popularity or something
Guess he's more popular than Elidibus lol
Lex:
but WHY IS HE POPULAR lol
Me:
XD
Lex:
I found Zenos so boring
like in stormblood as a villain, cool
the second they were on about bringing him back I started eye-rolling
Me:
I liked the various effects to which he was used previously A LOT actually. But his role was served for me
Lex:
yeah that's it, I think bringing him back was a mistake but ACTUALLY bringing him back and not just having his dead body be possessed is a bigger one
Me:
Yes, exactly
Like, it said more for me that his own dad was like "Yeah, the empire's better off now without him" than "He ejected an Ascian he so cray cray"
But that still didn't stop me from concluding "Well, unless they throw a serious curveball to the series's tropes (which isn't out of the realm of possibility), Zenos will obviously be the final, final opponent. Just because chaosbringers always are" -- and I still fully expect that to be the case. Especially with G'raha Tia's comment that "The beast shall kindle the flames of the apocalypse. Into its domain shall the hero set forth, for the final chapter in the tale of this star."
So, yeah, I don't like him any more than you do, I promise. He's especially disappointing as a follow-up to Emet-Selch and Elidibus. But the dude is unfortunately popular, no doubt precisely because he is, as you aptly put it, the "most anime" villain FFXIV has.
I guess to me... the person who ushers in the next conflict is different than the conflict itself... In part because that is a formula for how FFXIV has ushered in all the expansions to date. I do think Zenos is going to be the one instigating the next conflict... but I don't think he'll survive much past that.
If FFXIV followed the logic that the person who brings up a conflict is the "main character" of that conflict, than Teledji Adaledji should have been the main villain of HW, Ilbred should have been the main villian of StB and Varis should have been the main villain on ShB. And none of them were... I probably would feel a lot different if this was 6.5 instead of 6.3 though.
From my standpoint... we have six months and two major story patches to go to figure out what the next expansion was going to be. If you had told me at the end of 5.3 where we were going to go for 6.0 I would have thought you were joking. We got a lot of new information in the two patches in between the end of StB and the start of ShB that made 6.0 work.
Right, I understand the formula they've gone by thus far potentially precludes what I'm suggesting. I kind of expect, though, that we won't hear much out of him until the end of 5.5, as part of the set-up for [whatever the new expansion is called].
Perhaps I'm completely wrong, but I'll be super surprised if it's not him.
@Obsidian Fire I don't think you can really compare Zenos to Teledji Adaledji, Ilberd, and/or Varis though, as a key very big difference is that none of those characters were already a main expansion villain previously, like Zenos was (not to mention that Zenos also got chosen as the Dissidia villain rep for FFXIV). And like Tres said, I think the G'raha Tia narration definitely implies that Zenos' presence is going to extend beyond set-up to 6.0.
Like the fact that Zenos declared at the end of 5.0 that he wants he and the WoLD to "gorge" themselves on Zodiark and Hydaelyn as part of their next confrontation and then 5.2 introduces the fact that Zodiark and Hydaelyn both have "hearts" made from individual people, and then come the end of 5.3, Zodiark's heart now has an open vacancy, that just screams to me that Zenos is likely going to become the new heart of Zodiark or at least something similar.
Anyways if 6.0's main locale ends up being the Ilsabard continent (and/or other near subcontinents), I wonder if that means the New World (the FFXIV analogue to the Americas) and/or Meracydia will be saved for 7.0?
Y'know, all this talk of future expansions reminds me of the mind-blowing fact that FFXIV is already roughly as old as XI was when XIV released. It's a bit crazy to think that Square could, in theory, have released another FF MMO by now. I still think of XIV as being the new kid...
