FFXIV: A Mind-Bending Masterpiece 

My mind is blown....

So alex is helping us fighting alex, itself, that's some mind fuckery stuffs. "I'm completely aware that I need to be stopped but i aint making it easy for you either"

@@ADKV95 isnt it like one of those villains who are secretly good guys who just want ot make sure you are strong enough to face whatever is coming afterwards

@@ADKV95 the normal mode is that alex is trying to kill him self.

YO MY MIND! 🤯

This is the thing so few people don't fully grasp. When I ran the dungeon on release I lost my shit.

Let's be honest, the only reason the coffee machines are now sentient is because Cid finally gave up on trying to remember to fill it, so he made it fill itself.

@@midnighmiqo “I’ll make it fill itself… eh, while I’m at it it may as well pour it for me… eh too slow, let’s just have it fire it straight into the cup……… hey their aim is good, I wonder if…”

Idk man Aurum Vale.... xD jk

tbf it was not actually him, I don't know if he died in the calamity but at the very least he didn't live 200 years :P

enjoy it while you can. it will never come again. your children and your children's children never will

@@insertcognomen i dunno about that. Elden Ring is destroying the competition without the need to conform to the forgettable sludge that is most video game plots. Yes it's a different animal than FF, but between the two is really does suggest there is a market for deep immersive storytelling in videogames. 'gamers' aren't all brain dead teenagers that just wanna kill something in a virtual world. I think there's publishers out there who will see this success and decide to give other ambitious games a chance. The market exists, and is badly under-served at the moment.

@@petriew2018 there it is, never ever will artists stop making masterpieces.

cringy comment jesus christ this game seems like an actual cult.

@@nicolaj8387 ok

​@@Aaron.Arcanum Thanks for the remainder, now I am sad all over again T T

@@Aaron.Arcanum well after knowing what happens at the end of Endwalker. Emit helping Elidibus in his release makes sense as the mind wipe is nullified once he rejoins the aetherial sea. He remembers everything and was able more or less predict what needed to be done. As what's his face said, you can wipe the mind but it's hard to wipe what's etched on the soul.

So basically a self-destruct mechanism by WoL.

That meme video is exactly the reason i installed ffxiv and now hundreds of hours later im a savage raider and a lore addict lol

@@xpl0d1n Wild, same for me, was a wow refugee, eyeing ffxiv for a while, but the Twinning meme was the tipping point, like a week before the horrible revelations of the lawsuits.

I had a similar moment but with the game in general. For years it drove me mad that people evangelized the game and I chalked it up to weebs being weebs. Then at some point a couple months ago I came across a video that explained the Shadowbringers setup with the First and all (big sucker but protagonists discovering new worlds and being a fish out of water in them) so I said "fine fuck it" and finally got the game trail etc. Now I'm well into Endwalker and the game is already one of my favorite games of all time. And I still don't even fully know why lol.

Speaking of Tales from The Shadows - it's interesting that Labirynthos is built inside of a mysteriously dead volcano, isn't it?

@@korrul With some really good grapes, too!

@@korrul @Sean Heath - It's more likely said Volcano is O'ghomoro, and the grapes were Bacchus grapes.

Oh shit now the shb opening video makes waaaay more sense!

That's always what I thought too. G'raha unintentionally making us lose that fight was probably the biggest point of divergence for the timeline, causing a cascade of so many events before the WoL even set foot on the First.

Most of the other Scions could have been there as well to help deal with elidibus, while we also do not know what alphi would have done in garlemald if he would not have been knocked out.

@@Aseruxx why the new god emperor of garlemald of course. Alphy can probably bullshit his way into that spot.

You did the thing! *snicker*

Well played mate!

Lol

You should try the alchemist questline then, iirc it's 60-70. XD

the Goldsmith 50-60 will give you diabetes coz of how sweet the questline is.

@@earvindinoso7689 This ^ so much is there an orchestrion of that specific music ?

@@dawnway6291 I just replayed the cutscene now and I think it's just a rearrangement of The Maker's Ruin for a music box. It drops from Ultima's Bane.

Even the custom deliveries quest lines alone made me more emotional than 99% of video games I've played in my life.

Fuck yeah yes please!!

Gaius character development.

I want to see his thoughts too

I think what also helps is that we do know that internally the FFXIV team has a lore/Setting/Info Bible that they will consult with to try and avoid most plotholes and retcon. It's not like the public Encyclopedia Eorzeas, though so many FFXIV lore enthusiasts would LOVE to get their hands on it; This internal source apparently has future content or ideas also added so writers can pick something and then write a prompt to see if, once reviewed, it would work within the whole 14 universe.

Don't forget creative freedom also plays a part and it's nice that yoshida both helps and supports the team in their creative pursuits

Wondrous Tails wants me to do a level 80 dungeon? To the Twinning we go!

Not really a rebuttal. There are always some but there are not that many. Definitely not half of the planet.

Id finished 5.3 before I found that data terminal. I was just chillin and thought I was done with the heart wrenching content. I was not.

Didn't they work together during the Crystal Tower raids? I'm sure that's true to some extent though

@@MicahBoy Graha was their key into the crystal tower, yes, but that was when they first met & then our Ironworks team never saw him again until ShB. They definitely worked together before, but Graha's timeline was 3 generations worth of collaboration as opposed to only a couple days as an excavation team in our timeline.

@@MrKnaives without spoilers, a game of hide and seek

I have definitely said this to a few people. xD

@@Shannara360 Same here!

that was not really hard to setup for a thing better than WoD lmao even tho gameplay wise WoD was the last time i had fun in WoW.

Thats not really a good example WoD is worse than ARR (which is actually good). It's even one of the worst WoW expansions

I find it funny that Pyromancer didn't like the Time Travel storyline in Shadowbringers... until he did The Twinning, and saw how everything was tied together and grounded in established information.

@@ericbright1742 Guess he was like, 'Eureka! Now, this all made sense.' The Twinning MAKES everything tied in. It's a GREAT Dungeon and rocking music.

@@semiramisubw4864 I absolutely *despised* my time in WoD, I tried to advertently skip it... Until Legion was announced and the only thing I felt accomplished, I guess was getting the Pathfinder Achievement to unlock flying. Only played for a FULL month in Legion and left soon afterward. Because I didn't want to *frequently* grind again for similar bullshit. That was in WoD. It took me from that month of Legion's First month of launch all the way to June 26, 2020, to even get a wonderful feeling, called I don't have to play World of Warcraft EVER AGAIN. Because I absolutely hated it, but the small experiences like the Wrathgate Cinematic, Battle of Undercity were great. Aka the reason why was because I was forced to play WoW by my father. I learned I had to restart from scratch four years *after* I stopped playing WoW in Legion's first month. So I skipped all the unnecessary bullshit that has been piling up and up after Legion. The Mythic+ Grind, the Raiding Grind, the Legiondary grind, etc. Shadowlands *was* the expansion to get me back into the game, but it was the expansion that made me leave the game permanently too. All before it was released. Because I saw the price of the expansion when it first launched via pre-order bonuses was around 82 BLEEDING Dollars, that wasn't Worth it at all. Not to mention I was hearing that no one in the WoW community enjoyed the Covenant system, but enjoyed Alpha Torghast before it was turned into Choreghast. Aka, they learned the wrong lessons from the failure of Warlords of Draenor and decided to micromanage everyone's time even harder than it had to even be the case. I am glad I dropped World of Warcraft, entirely for a game I started playing on Feb. 8th, 2018. And that was FFXIV. The two of the cutest minions got me into the game but I stayed for the ENTIRE STORY afterwards. Because it was SOO much better than the garbage that was in World of Warcraft... Sorry for the Rant, but it still grinds my gears I had to restart from scratch. And I don't feel like Blizzard's Customer Support would help me because I had *two* of my Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty CD-Key's Banned and had to buy a third copy. To even play it.

Hint at larger threat? Zovaal maybe?

FFXIV is like the Terminator franchise (or at least the first 3 films) in that it utilizes both Multiverse Theory time travel and Fixed timeline/Casual Loop time travel within the same narrative. Also they avoid Dynamic/Fluid timeline time travel storytelling where paradoxes just have to be ignored/accepted/logic hand-waved away (which isn’t necessarily bad sci-fi writing to be clear, like The Back to the Future films operate under those time time travel “rules” and they’re great stories).

See, this is a plot point that I think about. In G'raha time line, the WoL doesn't travel to Elpis, presumably, and yet the events still played out thr same in the past. That means it might not have been essential that the WoL traveled to the past at all.

@@SuperRamos619 not essential for the first Final Days and Sundering to have occurred in the original timeline, yeah most likely. As Hermes sent the Meteia off on their mission well before the WoL arrived in Elpis. And the Meteion in Elpis would have received the despair message from the Meteia regardless of whether or not the WoL was present or not. And I can definitely see Venat still becoming Hydaelyn even without the knowledge of the future she received from the WoL. In the original post-8th Umbral Calamity timeline the threat of the second Final Days is still safeguarded by Zodiark still being in existence and thus still passively protecting Etheirys from the Song of Despair.

@@TheoVorster makes you wonder if there are also alternate timeline ascians as well or if in their pan-dimensional nature they somehow avoid copies of themselves. I guess Zodiark can help for now until that timeline discovers the Final Days.

@@BlumenCT Most likely they are. In the Exarch!G’raha’s original timeline Emet-Selch, Elidibus, and Fandaniel are all most assuredly still alive in that timeline (as Elidibus himself in 5.3 said, when he peaked into the Exarch’s memories, he was able to witness a future where his brethren’s plans were still proceeding apace).

IF it is possible lorewise, an expansion centered around the 13th would be fire imo. Like trying to revive it's aetherflow or countering a massive invasion

@@Xyrenos I don't want to spoil anything if you haven't, but I'll just say those seeds were planted in a way in ShB if you did all the role quests and the unified quest chain after

@@Xyrenos probably not enough for a full xpac to the 13th but maybe a bozja style exploration zone

@@Fulldre thats a good point. We only saw so little of it during the Syrcus-tower questline that it seems to me like it isn't properly connected in itself anymore to make 6 zones work scalewise.

it's a great little hook they dropped in there at the end of the current MSQ. Where does the story go from here? well, they had one character drop a bunch of locations on the current game world and another mention the possibility of entire new ones to explore. Vague? yes. interesting? oh hells yes.

First one too, no? I started ff13 after I beat up all the story in ShB, before Endwalker came out and was like "wait a minute, that's Twining mobs".

@@Hatfright yea I think that was the generic behemoth model from ff13 as well. The second boss meanwhile was the Vercingetorix super boss from the first FF13 game which was a Ceith.

@@YUXKE Ah, good to know. I never finished ff13, got bored around the festival bit and never looked back. =\

Actually Alexander is not quite as clear cut. While stopping Alexander is indeed a closed time loop, there is reference to Alexander looking into multiple potential futures and in the end choosing the closed loop in which it is defeated as being the best possible outcome out of all the possible futures it could bring to bear (99% of the time because it's continued existence would have doomed the world). This implies that creating the closed time loop was an active choice on Alexander's part, but not the only outcome it could have facilitated. I do believe the quest also mentions that Alexander could not see the WoL's future past a certain point, but knew the WoL would be important to those events, something which in hindsight could be Alexander only being able to perceive our future up until the timeline split. I do agree that some clarification on the rules of time travel would still be nice.

@@TheTriforceDragon You're not wrong here. Another interesting through, is if alexander knew all of history, it would know of Meteion. So, the Aether it absorbed had a tangible cost to reality, which might explain why it brought that future to bear where it shuts itself down.

There can be both, I think. There's no reason why single continuum time travel can't exist alongside multiple timeline time travel. Venat's concerns about time travel and the fact you went back in time to solve elpis and meteion aren't incompatible with multiple timeline travel, there's every possibility that our travel back in time did split time off again, although I see no evidence of an alternate timeline so perhaps every timeline that reached this point had the same result. But the single continuum travel isn't mutually exclusive with split timeline travel. However, there is a form of time travel that doesn't require any of those - the "there is no time" travel. Wherein time exists in all moments simultaneously and you're basically just moving blocks around in a sandbox that is being perceived as time travelling forward. This aligns with the aether reincarnation too, as perhaps aether and dynamis is the sandbox itself and that's why it keeps "reusing blocks" (reincarnation).