Fan Fest Fun

 Okay, time for another blog entry. This one is a bit late and not cause I use internet explorer. I don't. I was just busy wrapping up my university studies. And also had to organize my thoughts regarding the Fan Fest Around the World. This proved to be a good idea as a lot has happened. So what have we learned about Endwalker?

Trailer

Well first of all we got ourselves the complete trailer. I will not go over the things I mentioned last time. Let us focus on the new stuff. And there is plenty of new stuff. Hell with the trailer being twice as long as the teaser, it was bound to happen. Untill Alisaie gets healed, things go on quite normally save for the now cleater lyrics. We still can't nail it 100%, but it is not mumbling anymore. Now after our Red Mage - Sage - Paladin trio strikes a pose, we get our first new scene. Eorzea  being overrun by uncomfortably attractive tentacle monsters.  But as Emet contoniues to describe the End Times in his voiceover We see a dragon, Vrtra fighting the monsters. Vrtra is one of Midgardsormr's children, and founder of a dragon horde we have yet to name. He isn't dravanian or meracydian. More importantly riding him is Estinien. Technically this is his second showing in a trailer, but the first time showing his face. He also shows dragoon skills in a far larger power level than possible ingame. I bet you it won't look like this with him as a trust companion. Power levels are weird. I wouldn't mind an official list of where eveyone stands as of Shadowbringers. I think the WoL caught up to the Archons. Also worth noting that this sequence takes palce in Thavnair. The statues and the rock formations show it. Now trailers are often symbolic. The scene with Y'shtola and Urianger never happened in Shadowbringers and unless Graha is stingy with his Gil, Lyna doesn't work as a dancer between guard duty. But it is worth noting that Thavnair is shown.
Anyroad after Vrtra blast all the tit monsters we transfer back to the original footage. This is interesting because here the trailer splits. If you just watch the trailer because you are curious or something, this part doesn't have much meaning. BUT if you played along with each content release, we have known Zenos would job change since 5.4. We have been waiting far too long for that weapon reveal. And SE knows and pulls our chain just a little more. After the transition we have Urianger and Thancred in Radz-at-han. Now others noted that they are a bit more skinny and young than in ShB. It does make sense, because they spent a lot of time in coma. Also in ShB their souls spent more time in the First than what you would guess from the time on the Source. Time works weirdly between the shards.
After this we pull the Stormblood trick of zooming out of the map and moving to the new area. In this case Old Sharlayan. Now Sharlayan looks a lot like the colony in Dravania, which makes sense. There are some criticism online about it being unoriginal, but I'd call it being consistent. This would be our chance to get a glimpse of Krile, but she is nowhere to be seen. Not even on the official art. Death flaaaaaag. Instead we see G'raha for the second time and Y'shtola tying with Thancred for the third appeareance in trailers. Speaking of tying. Y'shtola gives a speech in front of non other than Fourchenault Leveilleur, the father of the twins. He is a more conservative member of the forum. Now as hollow as shtola's promise to fight to the end sound, considering her thic plot armor, delivering a verbal smackdown before walking away did take a lot of guts. The Forum doesn't shy away from extreme measures to gatekeep knowledge. In the Astro storyline not only did they try to kidnap Leveva multiple times but even left decoys bound and gagged on the streets to make sure we waste time untying them while they abscond with the real girl. They are crazy. The scene cuts away but I'm sure the Forum members pulled out knives or at the very least bottles of chloroform as soon as Y'shtola turned her back to them.
And finally at the end we can finally see Zenos with his gigantic scythe. His seems to be a gun scythe, distinct from the main weapon of Reapers. We also solo the First Beast, or a lookalike, on the Moon. And with that the trailer ends.
A final thing to mention is that Soken truly outdoes himself with this trailer. Not only is the music amazing, but it incorporates themese from all previous expansion. It is a true work of art. As expected reaction vids are popular. Even Asmongold made one and he was actually impressed by many parts of it.

Ah yes "Reapers"

So the wait was over and we finally got the new job: Geth ship. Again Yoshi-P teased us as long as he could before revealing Reaper. And yes, it is not Necromancer. Doesn't even use death magic. Its powers seem to come from the Void. Not sure how it will be justified ingame, but it at least looks amazing. As a sort of melee warlock it can be viewed as a Hexblade from DnD, but if you want to look at it in WoW terms, gameplay seems to be an Unholy DK. We do get a pet, of sorts, but it does not function as Summoner egis or Scholar fairies. We can even absorb our pet and transform. This is something I have been wishing for Ninja for years. Not much to say, it is awesome.

Zones

DISCLAIMER: Personal bias and nitpicking.

Let's get the obvious out of the way. I love the new zones. Even Labyrinthos with the corny music. I like the idea of an underground zone. We also got more footage of Thavnair and Detroid. We also get a tease for a zone with floating islands. And finally Mare Lamentorium. One zone on the moon. It has caves, crashed Allagan ships, Amaurotian architecture and even a remix of Beneath Dark Waters. I am already in love with the zone. Makes you wonder what the final zone is, if this is what they were willing to show.
Also I think we should talk about the Garlean capital AKA Detroid here. Sure it might seem to be a copout to give us a run down city instead of an Ilsabard centric expansion, but I like the idea of this whole empire imploding without the charisma of Solus. The fact that this happened pretty much independent of the WoL makes the world seem more alive. Things occur without the hero. We are just one person.
Now for my problem. First, it looks like all of these zones are from different continents. Hell, we know that at least one will be in a completely different celestial body. Normally it is detrimental for an expansion if there is no new contient or area to explore. Disjointed zones break the sense of exploration. This was one of the criticisms for Cataclysm over at WoW. I'm worried. I trust Natsuko Ishikawa to write a story that connects these all, but still I am worried.

And here comes the Anal part. I love the sea. I love underwater zones. I eat that shit up. And I think swimming and diving was done poorly in FFXIV. There is just not much to do. It is poor man's flying while you are leveling. There are no underwater mounts as flying mounts swim and every mount flies. There is no underwater combat. And honestly how many zones let you dive at all? Five in total? Around that. So why am I saying this now? I'm not seeing any place to dive. We have a green pool in Thavnair where you can maybe swim. But dive? Nope. I think this is one of the reasons why Stormblood was not as well received as Heavensward. Flying was a game changer. Swiming is just hollow. It is super underutilized.  Ironically the only fully underwater zone, the Tempest has absolutely zero opportunities to swim, because it is in an air bubble.

Myths of the Realm

Picking up the pace now because I've talked about the parts most important for me. But one small thing about the new Alliance Raid. Myths of the Realm. The illustration shows the symbols of the Twelve. Now I'm not suggesting anything but many streamers noticed that a raid series has twelve boss fights in total. Makes you think.

Not lore

So I am a story nerd. Go figure. But I still want to talk about a few not story related stuff. First off we get Oceanic servers. This is again something to help the long term health of the game. I love these steps that show they are planning to stay for a long time and want to make that time smoother for players. What will be less smooth is the six months between 5.55 and 6.0. Now this is still better than WoW where currently TBC came out after the least wait with seven months, but this is still extreme for FFXIV. Personally I am happy about it, because I need to do a lot of leveling. There is also a lot of things I haven't tried. There is a mindblowing ammount of content. I only recently realized I missed the Monster Hunter trial in Stormblood. Also there are good reasons for a delay. Not only did the dev team needs to deal with Corona, but Soken spent more than half of 2020 battling cancer in a hospital room. This is something he only revealed now. Only the CEO and Yoshi-P knew untill the end of the Fan Fest. It shook his coworkers and the entire fanbase. The outpouring love for Soken was truly heartwarming. Back when we believed 6.0 would be titled Forspoken, people joked that it should be For Soken. Well it really should be. That man is a treasure and I'm very glad he is still with us. Welcome Back Soken.

Viera

The keynote had a final surprise. We are going to get Male Viera. Honestly I am surprised they happened this soon. I sort of knew they would do it because people want it and this wouldn't be the first time the devs to something just because. Rule of thumb: When Yoshi-P says there is no dev time for something, the team generally does it in their free time to please fans. Happened with mahjong and ARR flying. Outsiders might thing that this is just some fetish. But Viera have been a part of Final Fantasy since Tactics Advance and this is the first time we see males. This is making franchise history. Also it is worth noting that Viera males are smaller than females. This wasn't said officially but people made the smallest possible females and visited the areas showed in the male reveal and compared. They don't fuck around. This difference is great because sexual dimorphism usually favors males in these cases. I love variety and this is something very new. Plus Zepla's reaction was priceless.

The bad guy or girl

And here is where I go crazy. A common criticism to Endwalker is that Zenos and Fandaniel are not compelling enough villains after Emet-Selch and Elidibus. But let's be honest. Elidibus was a snooze till 5.3. Let us trust Natsuko Ishikawa.
Also I'm not even sure they are the villains. Look at the art with the main characters. There is a white robed blond female there, we have never seen before. The most popular theory is that she is Venat, the Amaurotian who became the heart of Hydaelin. I think she is going to be the villain in the end.
Why? Well let's look at the facts. Or at least how we understand them now. There is room for some Rashomon with the Final Days. So TL;DR: Things went tits up so the Convocation, sans Azem, Sacreficed half the population to summon Zodiark to retcon the rules of reality. to a more stable one. After that they sacreficed another half to repair the damage. Next on the agenda would have been to sacrefice more to bring back the friends of the convocation, but at that point the rebels lead by Venat summoned Hydaelin who split not only Zodiark but all of reality.
See the problem already? We are talking about people who can conjure up whole cities from their personal aether. Now the convocation in total needed half the population to summon Zodiark. So how did Venat and co summon Hydaelin? They couldn't sacrefice all those people. Nor should they, considering the sacrefice was what they were against. So is she stronger than the entire convocation? Unlikely. But if so why didn't she just help the convocation. Or did she discover a limitless wellspring of aether? Why didn't she share? Hydaelin being strong enough to beat Zodiark raises a lot of question. Also, what was the goal? What did they ask for and how much control Venat had? I'm asking because the split killed everyone beside Lahabrea and Emet-Selch. As brutal is sacrefice to Zodiark is, their race could survive. But if their soul splits, it is game over.
Venat's rebellion is very fishy. She is evil, mark my words.