This is a post about my wild Dawntrail Speculations

Beware: Spoilers all over the damn place.

If you are not caught up on the FFXIV main story, and haven't watched the first couple hours of the Tokyo Fanfest, you need to not be here unless you just don't care about spoilers. I'll try to tag all the specific content blocks discussed, but I may miss something in this kind of sprawling analysis.

If you are caught up on all of that stuff... beware anyway. I've had far more hits than misses with this kind of guessing. I suspect it's because I approach this kind of thing from a standpoint of what kind of story I'd try to compose from the available elements as a writer/game designer, rather than from a standpoint of what kind of story I'd like to experience as a player.

Also, some of the spoilers will be for other games entirely, since FFXIV has a habit of drawing inspiration from other FF titles. There are two games in particular that I'm looking at, so if you've got any main series FF games you still plan to finish, maybe keep your distance.

(And I may of course be 10000% full of crap, and completely miss my mark. But if I don't, I don't want anyone feeling aggrieved that I called it before the opening credits were finished rolling.)

Still here? Ok.

First, the part where we lay out the individual elements that seem to be in play.

A location in Dawntrail has been identified as "Solution Nine", which sounds like it will be the new city where Tomestone gear is for sale.

Solution Nine is a high tech location in stark contrast to the vibe of the rest of Tural. It could be Allagan tech, but it's hard to say, since there's so much variance in designs over the lifespan of the empire. If it is Allagan, it's very late Allagan. It reminds me a little of Esthar in FFVIII, but it also reminds me of parts of Cocoon in FFXIII.

Solution Nine is also the name of one of Zidane's special abilities in FFIX that he can only use under Trance, that game's equivalent of a Limit Break.

The Viper job also strongly resembles Zidane's combat style, and I think it's safe to say that Dawntrail will be drawing on FFIX as a primary source of inspiration in the same way that Shadowbringers gave us both the FFVIII-inspired Gunbreaker job and the Eden raids, or Endwalker used FFX references as bosses for the Telophoroi tower dungeons and cribbed all its MSQ patch content straight from FFIV, or too many other callbacks in prior expansions to list. Every prior expansion has had one or two other FF games serve as a major source, although the degree and nature of integration has varied heavily.

The late-game plot of FFIX was about a dying world, Terra, that existed in a parallel dimension in the same physical space with the living world Gaia. Agents of Terra were trying to invade, conquer, and physically/spiritually absorb Gaia in order to revitalize Terra. It was confusing at the time but it had elements that I think were refined later into the concept of Rejoining in FFXIV. Terra had a more organic look to it than Solution 9 though...

... but one place related to Terra may seem very familiar to FFXIV players. This spooky wall of mechanical masks in Oeilivert was stranded on Gaia after a failed earlier attempt by Garland to merge Terra and Gaia, and told the history of the dying world.

Compare to Emet-Selch fully revealed as Hades in the trial The Dying Gasp.

The Allagan Empire was founded personally by Emet-Selch as a tool for facilitating Rejoinings, and was easily the most fruitful such tool so far, given Allag's direct role in two successful Rejoinings, and indirect role in a third via their legacy of demon summoning experiments giving rise to Mhach. It's entirely possible that some Allagan inner circle was privy to their master's goals, much like how in Garlemald, Emperor Varis and a handful of especially trusted aides knew that Emperor Solus was also Emet-Selch.

One of the enemies we've seen concept art for gives me fal'Cie vibes from FFXIII. The fal'Cie were techno-organic god monsters who wanted to also merge two worlds into each other... in this case by literally having their servants pull the hovering-too-close-to-the-planet-to-call-it-a-moon realm of Cocoon out of the sky and crash it into the surface of the planet Pulse. For reasons. The full story is complicated (and not particularly well-told in game).

Of the Thirteen Reflections that were sundered from the Source, the First (Norvrandt), the Thirteenth (the Void), the Fourth, the Eighth, the Ninth, and the Eleventh all survived. At least, if the order suggested was accurate in the helpful illusion the Crystal Exarch used to explain the whole deal.

The other seven shards were of course lost when the seven Umbral Calamities on the source were matched with a worldwide crisis bearing the appropriate aetheric qualities on the respective shard, which provided the right circumstances for that shard's aether to be merged with that of the Source, annihilating the shard and erasing any evidence that its inhabitants ever existed. Which makes Emet-Selch's admonition to "remember us, remember that we lived" particularly stomach-churning, but this isn't about that. Apologies for the digression. I mention it because all of the attempted Rejoinings that have occurred have granted primacy to the Source, but we've never really had it explained what made that one piece out of fourteen pieces more "real" than the thirteen shards to begin with, or what would happen if some enterprising Calamity Engineer tried to reverse the direction of the Rejoining.

The Allagans were known to have meddled with dimensional travel, mainly in the form of pioneering the summoning of Demons a.k.a. Voidsent from the Thirteenth Shard.

The first time the WoL has a chance to visit another shard, we use an Allagan portal at the top of the Crystal Tower to travel to the Void, a.k.a. the Thirteenth Shard.

Y'shtola's ongoing research into traveling to other shards is drawing primarily on Allagan sources. Notably, she has mentioned Allagan sources by name, rather than pointing to the just as accomplished demon summoners of Mhach when trying to punch a hole through to the Void. (To be fair though, Mhach is mainly elaborated on in optional side content, while Allag has its fingerprints all over the MSQ.)

And here's where I pin all the pieces up on my conspiracy board and try to string together all the links with colored yarn.

What if the cyberpunk city of Solution Nine somehow refers to the Ninth Shard? Possibly even originates there, whether as a part of that shard we visit, or an outpost of that Shard's agents built on the Source, or even some kind of extrusion into the Source from a partial rejoining?

What if the Allagans successfully invaded and conquered the Ninth Shard back at the peak of their power, and those colonies present there survived the downfall of the Empire at large? Although the gates may have been sealed behind them when the Crystal Tower was buried and Allagan magical infrastructure at large collapsed.

What if the these Ninth Allagans have figured out a way to punch back through to the Source and are here to "reclaim" the old Empire? This would allow the game's writers to comment on themes of colonial violence that are difficult to separate from the Americas and a setting inspired by them, but without casting any nation of the Eastern continents as the villain, since pretty much everybody on that side of the ocean is having some kind of positive political reform arc right now.

What if the Ninth Allagans are even trying to merge their shard back into the Source, but in a way that grants primacy to the Ninth rather than sublimating it, which would mirror the attempt by Terra to replace/consume Gaia in FFIX?

If my suspicions about the enemy who looks inspired by FFXIII are right, the tools of the Ninth Allagans may draw more inspiration from FFXIII than from FFIX. The tools of the Terran invasion in FFIX were straight up bioweapons for the most part, including the doll-like Black Mages and a lot of lab-grown monsters. But a type of fal'Cie-like servant that blurs the division between God and Machine would seem very appropriate for an Allagan Empire that was allowed to continue advancing.

In general, Y'shtola's been pouring so much effort into researching travel to the other shards that I think we're due for some kind of startling discovery that's less obvious than linking us back up permanently to the First or the Thirteenth (but opens them both up for future content as well).

I know I'm pretty far out in the weeds here, but a link between Solution 9 and The Ninth Shard is a guess I would bet money on. And the the specific details of that link is more... how I would fill in the gaps on that concept, with the elements that are available.

I would say that the big weakness in this theory is that the Allagans are a little played out as a plot device. But there really aren't any other civilizations we know of that could have discovered and visited another Shard. Not even the Ancients, since there were no Shards during the reign of Amaurot, and the later Ascian innovation of traversing the rift by being dead-but-not-really doesn't seem advisable even if it were replicable.

Anyway. I digress again. I think the Allagans are a marginally better fit for this concept than a totally new civilization, but just barely. Another strong possibility is that the residents of the Ninth Shard developed advanced technology all on their own, figured out that a bunch of Genocide Wraiths from the Source were trying to destroy their whole realm (and had done so successfully to a number of other realms), and decided to strike first. But when they got here, we'd already handled it, so now they've got this whole invasion army and nothing to do with it but threaten Tural.

Because I was too funny to die, here's the first of three posts archiving my "live" tweets for watching playthroughs of the FFXIII trilogy with Orion. Includes original timestamps, typos, and 2021 memes. I'll approximate GIFs if I have to.

4:23 PM · Feb 6, 2021 Watching a playthrough of FFXIII, so here's my not-really-live tweet thread for my own amusement; not spoiler-free.

5:23 PM · Feb 6, 2021 Me, seeing a pretty standardized "boy big and strong, girl small and nice" couple like Snow and Serah: T4T…

5:30 PM · Feb 6, 2021

7:19 PM · Feb 6, 2021 Love that every time Snow says something heroic and ends up digging his grave deeper, Hope is just like

7:19 PM · Feb 6, 2021 Admittedly, even if I had FINALLY resolved myself to abandoning revenge, if Snow Villiers turned around and burped at me, I would suddenly no longer possess the presence of mind to open a survival knife and would instead body him over the balcony of a Palumpolum rest area.

8:10 PM · Feb 6, 2021 Snow: I need everyone to stop trying to blow me up, these tits were expensive.

8:22 PM · Feb 6, 2021 okay this chapter is too long, WHERE'S SAZH

2:11 PM · Feb 7, 2021

2:16 PM · Feb 7, 2021 lmao when the Pompa Sancta parade started, I blurted out "oh, it's opera," and Orion immediately jumped into a baritone "MAAARIA!"

1:55 PM · Feb 9, 2021 YOOO SHE WENT FOR IT

2:04 PM · Feb 9, 2021 Serah 🤝 Vanille Head in tiddies

2:06 PM · Feb 9, 2021 Snow: [talks for too long] Fang: Man, I'm outta here. Lightning: We have to stick together. Fang: Oh. Okay :)

2:07 PM · Feb 11, 2021 WUH HUH SERAH AND VANILLE HAD A MEET-CUTE???

2:32 PM · Feb 11, 2021 One small thing that endeared me towards Hope is that we just watched a playthrough of The Sinking City, and both he and Reed do a similar pensive idle hand animation. Two good, complicated lads.

3:19 PM · Feb 12, 2021 Rygdea to Raines

3:22 PM · Feb 12, 2021 (As the old adage goes, all humor is derived from excruciating pain because, if they don't come back around to the gravity of what happened with Raines, I don't know if I'll be able to take whatever "face the future with hope" thing they're gonna throw at me next.)

3:27 PM · Feb 12, 2021 anyways, cannot BELIEVE the pope took the opportunity to put his face in Snow's chest. it served literally NOTHING to pretend to be Serah for 0.5 seconds, and yet, he went for it.

5:24 PM · Feb 14, 2021 Orphan: and I hit them with the goo goo gaga. *turns all your friends into Cie'th*

5:38 PM · Feb 14, 2021 The leading problem I have with XIII's story is that they'll present A Rule, and, if the rule gets broken, there isn't an explanation. It just worked out in a specific instance For Some Reason.

5:38 PM · Feb 14, 2021 Like, "we hoped really hard against all odds and it worked out" only works for the main characters. Lots of lofty ideas about faith and conviction that hold exactly zero water inside the narrative.

5:38 PM · Feb 14, 2021 It's a shame because characters will have an impactful moment that the story then minimizes in some way (again: Raines?!) or vice versa. Idk, some of the storytelling decisions are just too goofy to overlook when they abut emotional scenes.

5:44 PM · Feb 14, 2021 ANYWAYS THAT WAS PRETTY GAY OF THEM TO CRYSTAL FUSE INTO UHH HECAMUT. BAHATON. THE WAY THEY BAJA BLASTED TO SAVE COCOON. WHO HOLD THE WORLD? GORLS.

5:48 PM · Feb 14, 2021 Fang: I'm lesbian. Hope: I thought you were Pulsian.

End thread.

Death is in the Air.

>>FINAL FANTASY: PARTY MEMBER DEATH SCENES COMPILATION<<

Video of each scene ↑ & more including FF2 and FF4 (well, FF13 had copyright issues so maybe not that)

Forever mad that people hate characters like hope ff13 out of pocket, forever fucking seething. I've never not been able to see myself in characters like that, little kids who make bad choices and lash out in anger. But then all people will say is that he's a "little shit". Like fuck offffffffff with that actually.

Of course he reacts badly to vanille initially, she encourages him to go into a deathtrap, (shes done nothing wrong tho, perfect lesbian as she is) of course he's mad at snow, theyres no way a fucking 14 year old wouldnt just blame the nearest adult in a situation like that. (not snows fault tho, hes doin his best poor guy)

Of course he's upset because his mom just fucking died and then he was told he was gonna die essentially not long after. I think i can excuse him being a little fucking snappy with the other characters after his god damn life is ruined forever.

It's so pretentious dude god, like of course it was the right thing for him not to blame Snow, i loved it when he was finally getting along with him, but come on, he had so much grief and anger and nowhere to put it.

Really wish people had more sympathy for characters like him, people dont have to just think what i want, but god dude it makes me so mad.

Anyway Hope estheim is a good lad who deserves love, even when he's being a "little shit", bye.

Siblings

You live in the moon?

On Cocoon.

Joshua watches Hope every time Clive and Lightning get sucked into Dissidia Land. He's his Mage Mentor™

I've noticed something kind of funny... so, in Final Fantasy XIII, we have Snow and Serah engaged to be married, right? Really, for all three games of the trilogy...

But, sadly, we never get to see their wedding at the end of the series (that most of us are still pissed about. Seriously, Square Enix, the next time you-release this game--like on PS5 or something, you should seriously add that in as an epilogue or whatnot, for even more incentive for old fans to buy the game again.)

But in the next mainline game, that's not an MMO, Final Fantasy XV, we do see Noctis and Luna's wedding, even though it unfortunately has to take place in the afterlife, since they both die in the main story. Some have actually theorized that part of the reason we got the Noctluna wedding, is because people were so mad we didn't get the long-awaited Snow and Serah wedding. And there may be some truth to that.

But in the aforementioned Final Fantasy XV, apparently Noctis and Luna made flower crowns when they were children:

But we never get to actually see said flower crown scene in a flashback or anything like that. And they never get the chance to do so again as adults.

Then Final Fantasy XVI comes around, and Jill makes Clive a flower crown, but we actually get to see it:

It's like in the past Final Fantasy games, they're setting things up... but not seeing them through, for whatever reason, only for the next game to do that thing with their couple. XD

THAT was it? THAT WAS the gay final fantasy 16 character??? You can't just put 2 twinks in a game, dust your hands and call that gay rep

ok so that post made me want to pull out recoded, and for nostalgia's sake i went into the avatar menu to read all the avatar sector levels i collected back in the day because i remembered them being really funny (spoiler alert they're still hilarious)

but then i started wondering if...those are even common knowledge? the game is more than a decade old now and it was never very popular to begin with so it wouldn't exactly surprise me if people weren't aware of this one obscure mechanic hidden in the optional game mode

so i guess if you're not aware, recoded had a (hugely fun vastly underrated) mode called the avatar menu, whose intended purpose was to let you collect parts for your avatar by connecting with other players via tag mode (essentially streetpass). when you made a connection, you'd receive an avatar sector floor (combat level) that would be added to a library of levels you could play for fun. every level would have the avatar of the person you tagged displayed alongside it, as well as their DS profile

but what if you live literally anywhere that's not japan and finding another human being who owns the game had similar odds to winning the lottery?? what then squeenix???

well not to worry, o friendless teenager, they've got you covered! the wonderful devs in charge of the avatar menu created a whole host of predesigned avatars that could be used collect levels, complete with their own profiles full of delightful flavor text. most of these preset avatars were based on kh and ff characters (even ones that didn't appear in the series like the ff13 cast!) and they're absolutely adorable

the catch is that, in order to collect these guys, you had to use tag mode in conjunction with another Nintendo system. in my case, i connected through one of the channels on the wii, but according to the wiki, you apparently could also use picto chat on a second DS, which i did not know!

the devs probably did not intend for players to abuse this feature and spend hours downloading dozens of avatar sector levels with which to expand their avatar's closet, but by golly that's what 15 year old me did. what can i say, i like dressup games 🤷‍♀️

anyway, that's a brief overview of the secret preset avatars. i'm not sure how many of them there are total but i have about 60 of them in my collection. but i only learned about them from reading forums circa 2011 so, as previously stated, it's probably not super well known info in this day and age lol

anyway here are some of my favorite avatar profiles in my library:

"forced laugher" still kills me

you might want to talk to someone about that my dude

the tina shoutout LOL

NOOOOOOO 😭😭😭 but also nice touch with the 14 trophies

and last but not least, we stan a gnc fashion disaster!!!!

I've been thinking about picking up FF13, the way people talk about combat system intrigues me (I've never really liked standard final fantasy combat) and I love for a story to have a female lead... if the writing does a good enough job? I've heard a couple vague compelling things about Lightning as a protagonist but I've never known how much credence to give any of it. My hope, spun up from what I've heard, is that she's kind of a bitch (laudatory) without the writing being too... aggressively gendery about her being a woman, if that makes sense. Any information/perspective you care to share would be helpful 🙏

(and I don't care very much about spoilers-- sometimes spoilers end up being crucial for making me interested enough in a piece of media to actually try it!)

ohhh interesting yeah so re: ff13:

Lightning's arc didn't feel particularly gendered to me, surprisingly! overall i'd say her arc gave me vibes of Stressed-Out High-Performing Twentysomething Who Opts To Work Really Hard Instead Of Dealing With Feelings. which is, like, how i spent some chunk of my 20s, so, perfectly relatable on that front, and also a thing i've seen high-performing twentysomethings of p much every gender do at some point haha

for me her most compelling arc was the one she has with Hope, which is a kind of mentor-y arc—you sort of see her transition from "i'm barking orders and bossing this kid around because I Know Best," into, uhhh "oh fucking shit this kid is listening to me, they think i have Authority, how did that happen fuck fuck fuck i'm freakin out a little." you can read a decent amount of gender into that if you want to, right, mentor-liness is somewhat femme-coded—but not exclusively so; this arc also felt compelling to me in that i could kinda see that dynamic happening between a lot of different types of 20something-teenagerish pairs.

the writing has other weaknesses—ones you've probably heard already. the game seems to expect you to either Read A Bunch Of Tiny Print In Menus, or else Just Be Kind Of Confused For The First Few Hours, and i'm impatient so i opted to Just Be Kind Of Confused. weirdly, once you hit the 10-hour mark, the story tightens up hugely and everything's very coherent. and it's not like you're totally clueless before then. but it's just... yeah, it starts out a little wobby for non-Gender reasons

my big rec re: gameplay: would be, maybe watch a video of some speedrunners playing this video game first? just 15min-1hr should be plenty—watching speedrunners which got me interested in giving this game a second chance. the combat system is SO cool, but it's possible to do everything slowly/tediously/boringly, which will NOT feel satisfying, and unfortunately the difficulty isn't high enough to FORCE you to try interesting stuff early on. whereas, if you're trying to do Speedrunner Bullshit (try and finish combat AS FAST AS POSSIBLE, a few tricks you'll see them do), you will have an amazing time out of the gate. like i literally think those speedrunners TAUGHT me how to play the game "properly," and sure i wasn't LITERALLY speedrunning but i was focusing on gogogo in a way that felt really visceral and satisfying when i played.

i typed up some other scattered thoughts over here, ages ago

hope that all helps! & lemme know if you give it a shot, for good or for ill~

Master post for my favorite content I find about FFXIII

what would you find? discussions about the main game FF13, story arcs, the history of its development, why it is a troubled game, and what was it bad or a good game? basically, the tea, enjoy.

Right from the get-go let's address that FFXIII is a game with good ideas, but also almost completely fails at realizing any of them, Quoting Resonant arc on YT about the FFXIII experience "If you are more of an ideas person, and usually give some leeway to dialogue and cheesy performances, then you might still enjoy it. if execution is a big deal to you though, then you'll likely struggle to settle in and feel invested, especially through the first few chapters"

What u don’t know about the FFXIII cast

have to start with my favorite payoff in the whole game: Hope & Snow arc “A Long Rant About Why Hope and Snow’s Arc is Brilliant” by @spoiler-alert-andabunchofnumbers, its brilliant, they managed to put into narrative precisely what their conflict was, I just love how these two naturally conflict

Why the writing of Snow&Hope&Lightning arc was good writing “Hope is a Good Character, Actually” by Games As Literature on YT, again pointing out how the three dynamics set up is great, characters that add to each other's flaws and not just cancel them are just as interesting, and it's why I genuinely love the part where they were so dysfunctional more lol

Understanding the story and character dynamic between Sazh and Vanille, again by @spoiler-alert-andabunchofnumbers, easily second best payoff if not as good as Hope&Snow, the difference is while Snow and Hope were so opposite their negative behavior grew and spiraled out of it, Sazh and Vanille actually add into each other harmful behavior, they encourage each other to run away from their problems, they run away from facing their fate, until it catches up with them, its the so opposite to snow and hope and I just love it

Final Fantasy XIII Retrospective Review, 10/10 everything you need to know about 13, from its troubled development cycle to the response to its most heard criticisms

if you also have the time same channel Resonant Arc has a Final Fantasy XIII Discussion series where he talks about each aspect of FFXIII in length, a deep analysis of what made what fail, fail and why what could have worked didn't, its honestly amazing and incredible and oh, it's about 6 hours total :) just so you can see how much potential this game had lol

And only as a bounce, because these are just too funny:

Remember? When Hope Estheim, a genius at 14 had a great idea-

Shit Hope do

i stayed up to finish ff7 remake... i thought i'd be done with it by like 10 but . it's almost 2AM LOL........

its a remake of an old game of a story i already know bc i'm such a huge ff fan so i dont really care about spoilers but seeing certain discussions about remake make more sense now

it makes me wonder how they'll be handling this in rebirth and eventually the final act. haven't seen too much in regards to rebirth aside from gameplay and some story stuff out of context but nothing too spoilery.

thinking about how a lot of people that worked on ff13 worked on this remake and it makes me wish they would remaster 13. not a full on remake but at least bringing it to modern consoles like the ps4 and ps5. it felt like i was playing ff13 in a way but more refined. sowwy just had to say it i'll get back on topic now

i completed all sidequests before moving on because i wanted to at least accomplish that. the combat of this game... fun once you get the hand of it but also really frustrating because i feel like these enemies hit really hard too and i wish after you scanned you could still see the enemies actual HP and not just a bar.... unless there was a way to do that and i'm just stupid and too focused on the battle LOL

i don't mind it being real time i think it's hard to stagger sometimes and i hate how hectic it can be. like there's a part in the shinra building where you fight like 5 hound dogs and you're playing as tifa and aerith only and you basically end up dead if you don't kill at least two of them asap like what the fuck

idk if i just had a hard time because i cleared this game at like level 30 or whatever so maybe i should have leveled up before? unless thats normal or whatever (i'm used to being over leveled in ff games so i can one shot things sowwy)

anyways this was kinda fun. i would go on about the 3d art stuff (specifically modeling, textures, etc.) but this is getting long. it feels refreshing to complete a game and i feel a bit inspired for my art right now. makes me want to make something but its like 2AM

I am appreciating the critical re-evaluation of final fantasy 13 (and occasionally the whole trilogy) in recent years.

It's never been like, the best game ever, but I think the audience just didn't get what it was going for in 2010. It was also released right in the middle of the big craze over open world games. It's no surprise to me that the critical re-evaluation lined up roughly with a re-evaluation of open world games as a whole.

To me the ff13 trilogy is a meditation on the jrpg trope of killing god to save the world. Spoilers below the readmore.

There are kinda multiple tiers of gods in the ff13 universe. In the first game the lowest tier of god (who aren't really gods at all, but may as well be. They're eternal machines created by the actual gods to do specific tasks) gives the party the task of essentially destroying the world. The gods want this because a large amount of simultaneous death opens up a gate to an alternate dimension where the absent creator god/demiurge is believed to be and they essentially miss their parent. The party, naturally, rebels against this task, and resolves to kill their malevolent god-machines. The thing is, killing the god-machines also essentially destroys their world. The later part of the game is the party grappling with this catch 22. They resolve to kill the head god-machine *and* save the world. And they actually fail at doing this, until *something* that isn't specified in the first game intervenes. And the first game ends.

The second game begins with a retcon. Which is appropriate because the entire game is built around solving time travel paradoxes. It is revealed that the goddess of death is who intervened at the end of the first game. Her intervention so fundamentally fucked with the timeline that a girl who sees the future who also constantly reincarnates receives so much information in her future visions when the timeline changes that it destroys her mind. In every single one of her reincarnations. Her immortal guardian is so broken by seeing her die over and over and over again that he resolves to kill the goddess of death to prevent her intervention at the end of the first game. The catch? The goddess's heart resides within his body, and is in fact the thing that makes him immortal. He's unable to kill himself.

It's worth noting that throughout the game one of our protagonists has also been having visions of the future.

So what does he do? He fucks with the timeline in ways that antagonize our plucky protagonists so that they gain the resolve to kill him. All to save the one he is sworn to protect. There is an epic final confrontation with him and he eventually does die, bringing the goddess of death with him. His charge is safe. But wouldn't you know, killing the goddess of death has unintended consequences. For one it un-fucks the timeline in some ways. This causes our protagonist who has had visions of the future to do the same thing that happens to the girl and die.

Second, killing the goddess of death causes everyone in the world to become immortal. And time to functionally stop. End of ff13-2.

And then lightning returns happens. It is 2 weeks before the end of the world. The protagonist of the first game is awoken from a centuries long slumber by the god of light to help him build a new world. The god of light tasks her with saving as many souls as possible to be ferried into a new world before this one ends. Saving souls takes the form of resolving people's various traumas and regrets. This game is extremely sidequest heavy and has some excellent writing in the side quests. The main quests involve resolving the specific traumas of the previous 2 games' party members. The secondary protagonist of the second game wants to kill our protagonist because a prophecy says he will, and it will bring back the girl who the guardian bad guy was protecting (who was his friend). He blames himself for the end of the world because it was by his hand that the goddess of death was killed. Lightning basically tells him that it wasn't his fault, it was actually her fault because she basically drafted him into the fight to begin with. A party member of the first game throws himself full force into trying to help people enjoy themselves at the end of the world instead of panicking, and wants to be the hero who absorbs chaos (basically antimatter which is what is causing the world to end) to protect others, because he feels guilty that he couldn't protect his fiance (lightning's sister). Lightning finally acknowledges him as family and tells him that sacrificing himself will not bring his fiance back, that he must live to the end of the world to have a chance of seeing her again. Several of the first game's other protagonists also have quests that basically come down to guilt over things they did in the previous games, and lightning telling them that they can always fight for a better future. It is eventually revealed that the god that lightning is working for wants to destroy the souls of the dead, which would cause the living to forget them, and in the god's view, leading to a blissful existence. And you can kind of see his point. So much suffering in this game is produced from the memory of the dead. But god forgets about the love that people have for their dead, and our cast decides they will not serve such a god. And they kill yet another god, and step freely into the new world they have created that has no gods and no masters.

So, here is my full review of FF16 (spoilers ahead)

So here is my review of FF16 after finishing the game one time (haven't tried the New Game+)

SPOILERS AHEAD FOR NOT ONLY FF16, BUT FF13, FF15, TACTICS AND BRAVELY DEFAULT, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED

Overall, FF16 is a good game and a good Final Fantasy, I LOVED the characters! One thing that I think Final Fantasy has been getting better and better each new title is creating characters. FF15 (despite it's numerous flaws) already did a great job putting personality on the main characters. FF16 pushed it further adding more personality to secondary characters and even NPCS that barely appear for more than a few minutes (also praise to the voice acting, it was amazing!). I wish crafting system was more complex, it felt a bit too simple sometimes, to the point I was like "well, I dunno why we have a crafting system, they should have just given me the weapon as quest prize or just leave it for me to buy from some merchant at this point"

If I could say one word to represent FF16, I would say the word is EPIC. Not because the game is perfect. But during our journey with Clive you FEEL how grand is the scale of each eikonic battle. And I personally believe the change to full action played an important role on giving us that scale. Yes, in turn-based FFs we already had big bosses that were clearly bigger than us, but it feels different (mind you, I've played a lot of turn-based RPGs), maybe because turn-based battles usually have the boss keeping its distance from our party most of the time. The cinematic parts with the Active Time Events also helped creating that feel (though I think in some parts I wish there were more actual gameplay and less ATE press button screen moments). That being said, here are my thoughts on several elements of the game (I will not comment on battle mechanics cuz I haven't played many action rpgs to have a solid opinion on whether battle is good or not, I just know I had fun). Music

Music is EPIC, the battle songs were AMAZING. However, while I think the references to FF14's OST were on purpose I do think it did disappoint me a bit that it referenced too much. Several tracks obviously have parts of FF14's Eureka's theme (which is a good theme).

Art / Design

Overall I like the art in this game, they took their time to even give some minor NPCs one detail or another that sets them as unique. My favorite part is the Eikons' design, all of them are gorgeous. I wish some maps had a bit of visual variation (Waloed was my least favorite, while Sambreque is probably my favorite on that aspect). Also, bless Clive's character design.

Edit: May I also add it's a bit of a let down that some maps become rather dull colored after Ultima casts their weird spell that causes aetherical floods everywhere. It reminded me of how The First in FF14 was constantly bathed in light, except in FF16 all open world maps are flooded by a weird purple dim light.

Protagonist

Clive is probably the best FF protagonist I've seen so far because everyone thought he was going to be an edgy character after revenge for whatever happened in his past. He kinda starts that way but we instead got... well, a big puppy (ok, two big puppies cuz we have Torgal). Clive faces his traumas through game and remains a man with a golden heart that just can't say no to helping people. Antagonist

Here is where I think FF16 may have failed, compared to other FF titles like FF7 and FF15. The actual villain is Ultima, and I think they did a great job setting Ultima as an alien that does not understand humans. But I think we were meant to see Barnabas as the antagonist that we would grow to love/hate, with him being introduced right from the start with Cid's and Benedikta's introductions. When Barnabas actually appears in front of Clive and we start the chapters that will lead to our fight with him I just felt... meh. Even his eikonic fight was rather disappointing for me after Bahamut's fight. I believe Barnabas was meant to be something like Sephiroth, or Ardyn, while Ultima is more like Jenova and FF15's Bahamut, but I don't think they managed to do that with Barnabas.

Other characters

As I said, I think they did a great job giving personalities to every character we meet in this game. However I think they missed the opportunity to give more lore development to some key characters such as Benedikta and, again, Barnabas. It's not terrible like FF15, where the base game had actual gaps that didn't make much sense, like Ignis' loss of eyeysight and Gladio going poof! suddenly, but some characters would really benefit if they get a DLC to expand their lore. I have to praise FF16 team for how they dealt with Dion and Joshua though, I think they are my favorite in terms of characterization.

Story

The story overall is really good. Harsh and raw, but good. Unfortunately if you don't do the sidequest as they appear you miss A LOT OF lore. One criticism that I've read a lot is that after the second half of the game the story stops dealing with the theme of slavery and prejudice against minorities. And thinking about it, if I haven't done the sidequest as they appear the main quests alone really don't deal with that theme anymore after a while. The sidequests though, they do. A lot and in certain quests it is brutal and a bit too close to real world, leaving you with some bitter taste.

That being said, because the game relies on many side quests to expand the lore I think the game has an issue with pacing and setting emotional rollercoasters. Again, after Bahamut's fight I think Barnaba's story was a collection of rushed events and Waloed is so empty that before you blink you are already at Barnaba's eikonic fight. You do get to actually explore Waloed via sidequests after that fight but the pacing is already broken by then.

Also, if you take the sidequests off, the game itself is rather linear (as it was meant to be, I believe) and doesn't give you much incentive to explore the world. Once you finish sidequests and hunts there aren't many achievements that makes you want to run around the maps over and over again. Plot and theme similarities with other games The game draws some parallels to FF15's story (both protagonists lose their home, both are sort of princes that have a love interest that are nobility from another country and both sacrifice themselves to save humanity in the end), but I think FF16 managed to at least deal with the romance better than FF15, since Jill fights with us since early game and while yes she is rescued by Clive several times Jill is no damsel in distress and she also saves Clive at least twice on critical moments (and Clive is saved by Joshua several times too). Jill is Clive's love interest but also his partner in his journey. Something I think Lunafreya was meant to be if she had her DLC. Yet, Luna and Noctis' story barely stand with what we actually got from Square Enix.

I can also point out some similarities between FF16 and FF13 with the theme of prejudice. Bearers suffer prejudice much like the l'Cie from Fabula Nova Crystallis, though while l'Cie are probably viewed as cursed individuals to be avoided, Bearers are viewed as slaves in FF16. The destruction of Crystals, while new to a main Final Fantasy, I believe, is not a new concept for Square Enix. Bravely Default already played with the subversion of the usually canonical belief of crystals being a blessing and in both games the protagonists learn that Crystals may not be a blessing at all. FF16, more than FF15 though, has a more direct influence of Final Fantasy Tactics' plot (and not only because both are set in a medieval setting and have an Ultima trying to destroy the world and claim it to themselves). Both Ramza and Clive are outcasts (Ramza as heretic, Clive as outlaw) that fight according to their beliefs, even if that sets them against those in power and subvert the state of things. Both have people that can turn into monsters (Lucavi and Eikon) and such ability has connections with a bigger plan set in place years before the protagonist was even born by some entity that manipulates humans to reach their goal. Both games are also not afraid to deal with politics in a more direct way.

Hope most be protected! Hi! There! I recently started FF13 and wanted your opinion on Hope?

Hello! Ooo you’re starting ff13 ?? Have fun!! I love the ff13 trilogy so much, u won’t regret it! As for Hope, I love him! Without getting into any spoilers, he’s my precious son who’s gone through so much but his character growth is so good. People give him a lot of shit for what he does/says and call him whiney but they have to realize Hope is literally a kid who’s gone through so much, cut him some slack 😭

But yeah, I absolutely love and adore Hope!! I hope u have fun playing ff13!

Ok it was a slow month for me but NEW VIDEO TOMORROW.

It's about the relationship between Hype & video games and a brief breakdown will be: 1) Briefly talking about how FF13 disappointed me as a kid bc of my attachment to FF as a franchise and how that coloured my impressions of the game (this is the shortest section) 2) Hype Trains & Harassment: A look back at No Man's Sky and the reasonableness of the response to the game flopping at launch (spoiler: i don't argue in favour of the harassment!) 3) Attention To Detail is fucking stupid (criticising how elaborate details are leveraged to market a game but they end up costing more than they are worth) 4) The Live-Service Bubble & Specifically, How Battle Passes Eat Up All Your Time and what it takes to retain "hype"

the overall theme is criticising how hype has been poisoning video games for a while now, and while games wont magically stop being made, it's worth looking at how it has shaped modern critical discussions of gaming as a medium