Heavensward and beyond!
May. 14th, 2022 09:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alias_sqbrI have now finished the Final Fantasy 14 expansion Heavensward, as well as the content after that leading up to the next expansion, Stormblood. Heavensward is the point everyone agrees is when the FFXIV story gets really good, and they were right! It's still fundamentally the same basic story and game, but tighter, better written, better acted, and more fun to play.
Also, it has ELVES and DRAGONS and FLOATING ISLANDS :D
Content note: mention of fictional past incest.
I was SO PROUD OF MYSELF for getting to Heavensward, and am proud of myself for finishing it!
Here's the trailer for Heavensward, which includes some of the events at the end of A Realm Reborn. The grizzled one-armed black guy is Raubaun, one of your allies, and while this game has some unfortunate tendencies with how it writes it's few dark-skinned(*) characters, one thing I really like is that after losing his arm in ARR he remains a competent, powerful, sympathetic figure who is badass in a fight. (*)I was going to say "and disabled" but can't think of any others :/
Some of the dungeons were fiddly, long, and/or intense, especially the 24(!) player ones, but nothing was unbearably difficult. There was literally only one dungeon where the whole party died, partway between ARR and Heavensward, and that was pretty clearly the result of the party being made up of confused noobs. And even that party got it in the end without things getting too frustrating. Which bodes well for the future :)
The voice acting significantly improves, they replaced a bunch of Americans doing bland Generic English Accents with Actual English Actors with carefully chosen accents: the rich/educated people have Received Pronounciation accents, the commoners of Ishgard have West Country accents, the colonised refugees of Ala Mhigo have Northern English accents etc. American accents would also have been fine, imo, it worked in Dragon Age, but if they must use English accents then I'd much rather they do it properly.
In a reversal of my usual dynamic, I started writing a reaction post then just ended up talking to a friend about it instead. But here's what I wrote:
We did indeed end up in Ishgard!
Because we were framed for murder and had to flee to the one country so cut off from all others that we wouldn't be extradited and executed! And by "we" I mean my character, the receptionist, and a depressed teenager, because everyone else sacrificed themselves to give us a chance to escape from the Evil Conspiracy (who are plausibly themselves just puppets of the real villains) It was all very emotionally intense! And involved like an hour of straight cutscenes, luckily a friend warned me to grab a drink before I sat down to watch.
And then there was a great moment where my character is standing in the snow staring up at the huge gates of Ishgard and Midgardsormr pops up to say something like "Do you think this a refuge? You will find naught but deceit and despair." Thanks lil buddy!
Once I actually started Heavensward things chilled out. Thus far it's mostly been exploring the area and doing small quests to get a feel for the local situation. Afaict my character and the receptionist are the only Lalafell in the whole country, everyone else is Elezen/elves and humans twice our height. (At first I thought this might be due to xenophobia but apparently lalafells just avoid anywhere cold, lol)
I popped back to our old headquarters to see what would happen: most people didn't react, but there was a guard at the door who said he wouldn't dob me in but it wasn't safe, and another who was too scared to do anything but bluster.
I know the others aren't actually all dead, but also that some of them do die eventually, so it's possible some did actually die this time. I suspect not, just because we didn't see any of it on screen. (EDIT: None of them are dead at this point. They all come back...and then two of them die)
The game definitely hasn't forgotten about Midgardsormr, he showed up to have a confusing but intense conversation with a dragon worshipper. She wants "man and dragon to be as one" possibly in a like...making dragon-elf babies kinda way?? I haven't seen any sign that even, like, elves and humans can have children so not sure where THAT'S going. Maybe I'm just a dirty-minded xeno fan and the saint she worships who "lay with dragons" was just...napping with them or something.
The DEEPLY UNCOMFORTABLE colonialism metaphors continue, now with "indigenous beast-men" who speak like cliched stilted Native Americans :/
(end of live reactions)
And then I started to get really into it! It felt like an especially entertaining shonen fantasy anime, nothing SUPER original and with a certain heteronormative, Japanese-flavour-liberal tone, but with enough depth, fun, and sincerity to be quite enjoyable.
The plot is all about the ancient war between Ishgard and the dragons. We start out friends with various Ishgardians who would mostly just like the dragons to stop trying to kill them, but end up getting to know the dragons and their allies too, and it becomes clear that the Ishardians absolutely started the conflict, based on pure jealousy of the dragons' power and immortality, and then did their best to cover it up.
The game has an unfortunate repeated theme of oppressed people who have a point but Go Too Far, but also criticises people in power who do immoral things in the name of stability.
The two villains of Heavensward are The Angry Dragon Who Just Needs To Let His Sister's Murder Go, and the Elf Pope who wants to 'protect' his people by murdering anyone who uncovers the ugly truths of their society, and setting himself up as an immortal god-king. There's sympathy and patience for angry, hurt people on both sides who take a long while to be convinced that peace is possible and worthwhile. The dragons being immortal and thus literally the SAME PEOPLE who got screwed over 1000 years ago, and also the size of buildings, makes it feel less like a direct metaphor for anything irl, but mostly I just tried not to think too hard about the subtext.
Also it wasn't my dirty mind. Saint Shiva inspired dragons and elves to be be friends when her dragon boyfriend ate her in an act of consensual romantic interspecies vore 1500ish years ago.
The pro-dragon terrorist Lady Iceheart/Ysale who wants to emulate Shiva is basically Shiva-kin, who personifies Shiva by sheer force of will...which the dragon boyfriend says is 100% the product of her own imagination since his girlfriend's soul is still inside him. She does not feel great after learning this but gets over it and continues to fight for peace and I love her. She sacrifices herself to help the protagonist defeat the elf pope, why must my war criminal faves all die :(
I went in knowing the character Haurchefant died, at the beginning I was like "Oh he's that friendly elf dude in the big castle, he seems nice I guess?" but eventually went "Oh no I care about him now :(" and was very sad by the time it actually happened. He was such a sweetie :(
There's some Elf Noble Drama, they have this whole Renaissance France But Elves vibe which I was very into, especially when we got to meet and work with commoners. In the end, the evil elf pope is taken down with the help of his illegitimate son, Aymeric, who is incredibly pretty and charming.
At which point Heavensward ends and the Dragonsong War plot starts!
A bunch of Ishgardians are all "WTF this guy KILLED HIS FATHER, THE POPE, took charge 'temporarily', and now he says the dragons who've spent 1000 trying to MURDER US are the real victims and we should be their FRIENDS??" and there's riots, which is absolutely how people would react. But then it all gets settled with Kindness and Violence because it's that sort of story lol.
Still I did like that Aymeric persuades the dragons to fight their own kin by pointing out that he did MURDER HIS OWN FATHER, in part to save the dragons, so he does understand what he's asking. Too often in these sorts of stories the heroes never have to do anything that painful.
And then Aymeric steps down...so he can set up a democratic republic with separation of Church and State and an emphasis on rights for commoners! And then he gets voted in as Prime Minister! :D :D
Then Aymeric absolutely asks the protagonist on a date, which gave me VERY CONFUSED FEELINGS, because on the one hand he is very cute but on the other hand my character looked like a doll. Apparently you can't reciprocate his interest but there are other characters later where you can, and in general I was finding her goofy face off-putting so I rolled up my sleeves and experimented in the character creator until I had crafted an appearance I like more. I only had one free chance to significantly edit her appearance, anything further (beyond minor things like hairstyle) will cost $10AU, so while I have some doubts about my final choices I've decided it just gives her character.
Old:
New:
I still overall really like being a tiny cute chubby androgynous badass.
I like that the first major character to show any interest in the PC is a dude, given how MMO player bases usually skew. Thus far you COULD read it as very intense platonic interest but it's a stretch. Apparently PC gender has no effect on anyone's interest, which is great, even if I could do with other examples of queerness around.
There's also Estinian, whose name I recognised as The Hot Angsty Elf Everyone Seems To Be Into, he spends most of the game with his face covered but I did like his arc. He's been trained to be the top dragon fighter, powered by an eye stolen from The Angry Dragon Who Just Needs To Let His Sister's Murder Go as well as his own desire for revenge on the dragons for killing his family. He is initially very defensive and angry at the suggestion that the dragons have any justification, but is eventually won over to fight for peace...only for the eye to overcome him and turn him into the dragon reborn, attacking the city he has dedicated himself to protecting. He is eventually freed and takes off his helmet to reveal a pretty face with long flowing silver hair then goes off into the sunset to reconsider what his life means now. I am curious to see where his story goes next!
Also, I ship Aymeric with both Haurchefant and Estinian, he's very shippy with both.
The quests between Heavensward and Stormblood divide into 6 sections. The first three cover the end of the Dragonsong war, and I was very curious to find out what the plot would be next.
And then we meet...the WARRIORS OF DARKNESS. Who in a delightful piece of character design look EXACTLY like the characters used as stand ins for the protagonist, the Warrior of Light, and their party in trailers and promotional images. And it turns out they are in fact an alternate universe version of you. Except in their universe, they "won", defeating all the forces of darkness at behest of the forces of light.
...and so the light became so powerful it drowned out everything else and their world now teeters on the edge of becoming a lifeless void! Their plan is to join their world with this one, which would kill everyone, but at least have a chance for reincarnation into a new world afterwards for the people of their own world.
Just when I thought dealing with them would be the plot of Stormblood, they are defeated, and a member of your team who was merged with the Crystal of Light gores with them to create balance and save their world, the end.
Next, it turns out a bunch of human refugees displaced by the Garlean Empire look like they're going to summon their god as a primal to destroy the empire. So I thought THAT was going to be the plot of Stormblood, but then another member of your team sacrifices himself to entrap the primal and it ends up destroyed.
Now I am in Stormblood and we're entering the lands the primal laid waste to to try and connect with the local resistance before the Garlean Empire comes back and I'm still not sure what the actual plot/conflict will be. Bring down the whole Empire??? There's signs we may be going to the world's equivalent of Asia, which was also taken over by the Garlean Empire, but not what will happen there. Guess I'll see! I've heard this is the weakest expansion but hopefully I'll still have fun.
*watches the trailer*
Ok that was 90% an ad for the new combat classes, plus some vague "fighting the Empire in Cool Asian Locales".
Now some more rambling about Heavensward:
Turns out I did misremember, dragons don't mind control anyone (except Estinian that one time). Afaict the dragon worshippers in ARR act like crazed cultists because...the writing in ARR was just not very nuanced. And since the Ishgardians the PC is working with quickly decide to aim for peace, there's no conflict of interest with Midgardsormr invisibly watching. I'm not sure if this is a retcon or I missed something but while he resents Ishgard for their betrayal 1000 years ago when they murdered and ATE his daughter (in a non-consensual non-romantic way), he's not committed to them all dying. He just doesn't have high hopes for them ever not being terrible.
Over the plot of Heavensward we meet more of Midgardsormr's remaining family, and he sometimes pops up to talk to them, still in chibi form. It turns out that Midgardsormr is a LITERAL ALIEN who FLEW ACROSS SPACE TO THIS PLANET several thousand years ago with a clutch of eggs, which then hatched and went on to produce all the other dragons. It's not clear if Midgardsormr was literally pregnant with these eggs or someone else laid them, nor whether dragons even need two biological parents to make children or can just do parthogenesis or something. But it is clear that at least some of his kids were in (m/f) incestuous relationships, which all the dragons seem to find a lot less shocking than dating a mortal.
Some backstory (which I am not sure I'm 100% right about): the continent the story is set in has lots of crystals full of "aether", which can be used to manifest any being enough people believe in. That's how Ysale created what she thought was the real Shiva. But these created 'primals' are never the actual god/saint etc, just a product of belief, which then mindcontrol anyone nearby into fervent worship and suck aether from the world to become stronger, causing a feedback loop of increasing strength and destruction. The Warrior of Light is part of an organisation dedicated to destroying these primals as quickly as possible. The main people who create primals are the oppressed and desperate, which can go to some bad places. But in every case the ones ultimately behind every primal's creation are the Real Bad Guys, the Ascians, a group of immortal wraiths who want to suck all aether from the world to allow for the resurrection of the god they worship. They do this by finding those desperate enough to summon a primal, and helping them do so.
The whole plot of Final Fantasy XIV is set off by a huge dragon primal, Bahamut, that attempted to destroy the entire world. Here's the trailer for A Realm Reborn with lots of SCARY DRAGON FIRE etc as well as some shots of the Warriors of Light/Darkness.
Over ARR, all the primals we see are summoned by "Beast Tribes", animalistic 'tribal' species who complain about being oppressed and colonised but are mostly mindlessly violent and cruel. They seem like thoughtless pawns of the Ascians with no understanding of the consequences of their actions, and it all felt a bit unfortunate.
The main villain of ARR is Gaius, the leader of the local outpost of the atheistic Garlean Empire who see primals as so dangerous that they're willing to murder the entire continent to remove the threat. They decided to use the ancient trapped primal Bahamut as a bomb...but then he mind-controlled the project leads towards his own ends. After Gaius gives a self righteous speech about how the heroes' belief in their own gods makes them as deluded and harmful as any primal-summoner it turns out he is a pawn of the Ascians himself, who wanted to take advantage of his technology.
In Heavensward the elf pope summons a primal version of the ancient king who started the war with the dragons into himself, intending to become a god king.
The final confrontation with him happens in an ancient abandoned research facility created by the long-gone, highly advanced Allagan Empire. It's filled with dragons who were stolen and experimented upon, including Midgardsormr's daughter, who has been chained for thousands of years. She says she deserves it: when the Allagan empire started oppressing dragons, they killed her brother/lover, and she let an Ascian persuade her to bring him back. Except all she summoned was a primal in the shape of her beloved Bahamut, who the Ascians then helped the Allagans entrap to turn into an energy source that they used to become even more powerful.
And so Bahamut goes from seeming like this terrifying mindless monster to a tragic figure with loved ones, without retconning anything.
Midgardsormr tells her she has repented long enough, but she says to just leave her be, and you do. So I guess she's still there.
When the path is blocked, Midgardsormr appears in a much larger form and tells you to get on his back and then you fly together to take down the anti-dragon-bigot elf pope, which was very cool. And then you can fly on him whenever you like! I only do so when I'm exploring somewhere we can do lots of cool soaring, otherwise it feels a bit disrespectful to make him carry me, especially since there's a saddle and stuff. But flying on a dragon between floating islands is AMAZING.
The writing around the beast tribes has also gotten more sympathetic, though it's mostly just gone from negative cliches about tribal peoples to positive ones. Ah well.
I had "clones" written in my notes and I am really not sure why. And on that mysterious note I will end the post!
Also, it has ELVES and DRAGONS and FLOATING ISLANDS :D
Content note: mention of fictional past incest.
I was SO PROUD OF MYSELF for getting to Heavensward, and am proud of myself for finishing it!
Here's the trailer for Heavensward, which includes some of the events at the end of A Realm Reborn. The grizzled one-armed black guy is Raubaun, one of your allies, and while this game has some unfortunate tendencies with how it writes it's few dark-skinned(*) characters, one thing I really like is that after losing his arm in ARR he remains a competent, powerful, sympathetic figure who is badass in a fight. (*)I was going to say "and disabled" but can't think of any others :/
Some of the dungeons were fiddly, long, and/or intense, especially the 24(!) player ones, but nothing was unbearably difficult. There was literally only one dungeon where the whole party died, partway between ARR and Heavensward, and that was pretty clearly the result of the party being made up of confused noobs. And even that party got it in the end without things getting too frustrating. Which bodes well for the future :)
The voice acting significantly improves, they replaced a bunch of Americans doing bland Generic English Accents with Actual English Actors with carefully chosen accents: the rich/educated people have Received Pronounciation accents, the commoners of Ishgard have West Country accents, the colonised refugees of Ala Mhigo have Northern English accents etc. American accents would also have been fine, imo, it worked in Dragon Age, but if they must use English accents then I'd much rather they do it properly.
In a reversal of my usual dynamic, I started writing a reaction post then just ended up talking to a friend about it instead. But here's what I wrote:
We did indeed end up in Ishgard!
Because we were framed for murder and had to flee to the one country so cut off from all others that we wouldn't be extradited and executed! And by "we" I mean my character, the receptionist, and a depressed teenager, because everyone else sacrificed themselves to give us a chance to escape from the Evil Conspiracy (who are plausibly themselves just puppets of the real villains) It was all very emotionally intense! And involved like an hour of straight cutscenes, luckily a friend warned me to grab a drink before I sat down to watch.
And then there was a great moment where my character is standing in the snow staring up at the huge gates of Ishgard and Midgardsormr pops up to say something like "Do you think this a refuge? You will find naught but deceit and despair." Thanks lil buddy!
Once I actually started Heavensward things chilled out. Thus far it's mostly been exploring the area and doing small quests to get a feel for the local situation. Afaict my character and the receptionist are the only Lalafell in the whole country, everyone else is Elezen/elves and humans twice our height. (At first I thought this might be due to xenophobia but apparently lalafells just avoid anywhere cold, lol)
I popped back to our old headquarters to see what would happen: most people didn't react, but there was a guard at the door who said he wouldn't dob me in but it wasn't safe, and another who was too scared to do anything but bluster.
I know the others aren't actually all dead, but also that some of them do die eventually, so it's possible some did actually die this time. I suspect not, just because we didn't see any of it on screen. (EDIT: None of them are dead at this point. They all come back...and then two of them die)
The game definitely hasn't forgotten about Midgardsormr, he showed up to have a confusing but intense conversation with a dragon worshipper. She wants "man and dragon to be as one" possibly in a like...making dragon-elf babies kinda way?? I haven't seen any sign that even, like, elves and humans can have children so not sure where THAT'S going. Maybe I'm just a dirty-minded xeno fan and the saint she worships who "lay with dragons" was just...napping with them or something.
The DEEPLY UNCOMFORTABLE colonialism metaphors continue, now with "indigenous beast-men" who speak like cliched stilted Native Americans :/
(end of live reactions)
And then I started to get really into it! It felt like an especially entertaining shonen fantasy anime, nothing SUPER original and with a certain heteronormative, Japanese-flavour-liberal tone, but with enough depth, fun, and sincerity to be quite enjoyable.
The plot is all about the ancient war between Ishgard and the dragons. We start out friends with various Ishgardians who would mostly just like the dragons to stop trying to kill them, but end up getting to know the dragons and their allies too, and it becomes clear that the Ishardians absolutely started the conflict, based on pure jealousy of the dragons' power and immortality, and then did their best to cover it up.
The game has an unfortunate repeated theme of oppressed people who have a point but Go Too Far, but also criticises people in power who do immoral things in the name of stability.
The two villains of Heavensward are The Angry Dragon Who Just Needs To Let His Sister's Murder Go, and the Elf Pope who wants to 'protect' his people by murdering anyone who uncovers the ugly truths of their society, and setting himself up as an immortal god-king. There's sympathy and patience for angry, hurt people on both sides who take a long while to be convinced that peace is possible and worthwhile. The dragons being immortal and thus literally the SAME PEOPLE who got screwed over 1000 years ago, and also the size of buildings, makes it feel less like a direct metaphor for anything irl, but mostly I just tried not to think too hard about the subtext.
Also it wasn't my dirty mind. Saint Shiva inspired dragons and elves to be be friends when her dragon boyfriend ate her in an act of consensual romantic interspecies vore 1500ish years ago.
The pro-dragon terrorist Lady Iceheart/Ysale who wants to emulate Shiva is basically Shiva-kin, who personifies Shiva by sheer force of will...which the dragon boyfriend says is 100% the product of her own imagination since his girlfriend's soul is still inside him. She does not feel great after learning this but gets over it and continues to fight for peace and I love her. She sacrifices herself to help the protagonist defeat the elf pope, why must my war criminal faves all die :(
I went in knowing the character Haurchefant died, at the beginning I was like "Oh he's that friendly elf dude in the big castle, he seems nice I guess?" but eventually went "Oh no I care about him now :(" and was very sad by the time it actually happened. He was such a sweetie :(
There's some Elf Noble Drama, they have this whole Renaissance France But Elves vibe which I was very into, especially when we got to meet and work with commoners. In the end, the evil elf pope is taken down with the help of his illegitimate son, Aymeric, who is incredibly pretty and charming.
At which point Heavensward ends and the Dragonsong War plot starts!
A bunch of Ishgardians are all "WTF this guy KILLED HIS FATHER, THE POPE, took charge 'temporarily', and now he says the dragons who've spent 1000 trying to MURDER US are the real victims and we should be their FRIENDS??" and there's riots, which is absolutely how people would react. But then it all gets settled with Kindness and Violence because it's that sort of story lol.
Still I did like that Aymeric persuades the dragons to fight their own kin by pointing out that he did MURDER HIS OWN FATHER, in part to save the dragons, so he does understand what he's asking. Too often in these sorts of stories the heroes never have to do anything that painful.
And then Aymeric steps down...so he can set up a democratic republic with separation of Church and State and an emphasis on rights for commoners! And then he gets voted in as Prime Minister! :D :D
Then Aymeric absolutely asks the protagonist on a date, which gave me VERY CONFUSED FEELINGS, because on the one hand he is very cute but on the other hand my character looked like a doll. Apparently you can't reciprocate his interest but there are other characters later where you can, and in general I was finding her goofy face off-putting so I rolled up my sleeves and experimented in the character creator until I had crafted an appearance I like more. I only had one free chance to significantly edit her appearance, anything further (beyond minor things like hairstyle) will cost $10AU, so while I have some doubts about my final choices I've decided it just gives her character.
Old:
New:
I still overall really like being a tiny cute chubby androgynous badass.
I like that the first major character to show any interest in the PC is a dude, given how MMO player bases usually skew. Thus far you COULD read it as very intense platonic interest but it's a stretch. Apparently PC gender has no effect on anyone's interest, which is great, even if I could do with other examples of queerness around.
There's also Estinian, whose name I recognised as The Hot Angsty Elf Everyone Seems To Be Into, he spends most of the game with his face covered but I did like his arc. He's been trained to be the top dragon fighter, powered by an eye stolen from The Angry Dragon Who Just Needs To Let His Sister's Murder Go as well as his own desire for revenge on the dragons for killing his family. He is initially very defensive and angry at the suggestion that the dragons have any justification, but is eventually won over to fight for peace...only for the eye to overcome him and turn him into the dragon reborn, attacking the city he has dedicated himself to protecting. He is eventually freed and takes off his helmet to reveal a pretty face with long flowing silver hair then goes off into the sunset to reconsider what his life means now. I am curious to see where his story goes next!
Also, I ship Aymeric with both Haurchefant and Estinian, he's very shippy with both.
The quests between Heavensward and Stormblood divide into 6 sections. The first three cover the end of the Dragonsong war, and I was very curious to find out what the plot would be next.
And then we meet...the WARRIORS OF DARKNESS. Who in a delightful piece of character design look EXACTLY like the characters used as stand ins for the protagonist, the Warrior of Light, and their party in trailers and promotional images. And it turns out they are in fact an alternate universe version of you. Except in their universe, they "won", defeating all the forces of darkness at behest of the forces of light.
...and so the light became so powerful it drowned out everything else and their world now teeters on the edge of becoming a lifeless void! Their plan is to join their world with this one, which would kill everyone, but at least have a chance for reincarnation into a new world afterwards for the people of their own world.
Just when I thought dealing with them would be the plot of Stormblood, they are defeated, and a member of your team who was merged with the Crystal of Light gores with them to create balance and save their world, the end.
Next, it turns out a bunch of human refugees displaced by the Garlean Empire look like they're going to summon their god as a primal to destroy the empire. So I thought THAT was going to be the plot of Stormblood, but then another member of your team sacrifices himself to entrap the primal and it ends up destroyed.
Now I am in Stormblood and we're entering the lands the primal laid waste to to try and connect with the local resistance before the Garlean Empire comes back and I'm still not sure what the actual plot/conflict will be. Bring down the whole Empire??? There's signs we may be going to the world's equivalent of Asia, which was also taken over by the Garlean Empire, but not what will happen there. Guess I'll see! I've heard this is the weakest expansion but hopefully I'll still have fun.
*watches the trailer*
Ok that was 90% an ad for the new combat classes, plus some vague "fighting the Empire in Cool Asian Locales".
Now some more rambling about Heavensward:
Turns out I did misremember, dragons don't mind control anyone (except Estinian that one time). Afaict the dragon worshippers in ARR act like crazed cultists because...the writing in ARR was just not very nuanced. And since the Ishgardians the PC is working with quickly decide to aim for peace, there's no conflict of interest with Midgardsormr invisibly watching. I'm not sure if this is a retcon or I missed something but while he resents Ishgard for their betrayal 1000 years ago when they murdered and ATE his daughter (in a non-consensual non-romantic way), he's not committed to them all dying. He just doesn't have high hopes for them ever not being terrible.
Over the plot of Heavensward we meet more of Midgardsormr's remaining family, and he sometimes pops up to talk to them, still in chibi form. It turns out that Midgardsormr is a LITERAL ALIEN who FLEW ACROSS SPACE TO THIS PLANET several thousand years ago with a clutch of eggs, which then hatched and went on to produce all the other dragons. It's not clear if Midgardsormr was literally pregnant with these eggs or someone else laid them, nor whether dragons even need two biological parents to make children or can just do parthogenesis or something. But it is clear that at least some of his kids were in (m/f) incestuous relationships, which all the dragons seem to find a lot less shocking than dating a mortal.
Some backstory (which I am not sure I'm 100% right about): the continent the story is set in has lots of crystals full of "aether", which can be used to manifest any being enough people believe in. That's how Ysale created what she thought was the real Shiva. But these created 'primals' are never the actual god/saint etc, just a product of belief, which then mindcontrol anyone nearby into fervent worship and suck aether from the world to become stronger, causing a feedback loop of increasing strength and destruction. The Warrior of Light is part of an organisation dedicated to destroying these primals as quickly as possible. The main people who create primals are the oppressed and desperate, which can go to some bad places. But in every case the ones ultimately behind every primal's creation are the Real Bad Guys, the Ascians, a group of immortal wraiths who want to suck all aether from the world to allow for the resurrection of the god they worship. They do this by finding those desperate enough to summon a primal, and helping them do so.
The whole plot of Final Fantasy XIV is set off by a huge dragon primal, Bahamut, that attempted to destroy the entire world. Here's the trailer for A Realm Reborn with lots of SCARY DRAGON FIRE etc as well as some shots of the Warriors of Light/Darkness.
Over ARR, all the primals we see are summoned by "Beast Tribes", animalistic 'tribal' species who complain about being oppressed and colonised but are mostly mindlessly violent and cruel. They seem like thoughtless pawns of the Ascians with no understanding of the consequences of their actions, and it all felt a bit unfortunate.
The main villain of ARR is Gaius, the leader of the local outpost of the atheistic Garlean Empire who see primals as so dangerous that they're willing to murder the entire continent to remove the threat. They decided to use the ancient trapped primal Bahamut as a bomb...but then he mind-controlled the project leads towards his own ends. After Gaius gives a self righteous speech about how the heroes' belief in their own gods makes them as deluded and harmful as any primal-summoner it turns out he is a pawn of the Ascians himself, who wanted to take advantage of his technology.
In Heavensward the elf pope summons a primal version of the ancient king who started the war with the dragons into himself, intending to become a god king.
The final confrontation with him happens in an ancient abandoned research facility created by the long-gone, highly advanced Allagan Empire. It's filled with dragons who were stolen and experimented upon, including Midgardsormr's daughter, who has been chained for thousands of years. She says she deserves it: when the Allagan empire started oppressing dragons, they killed her brother/lover, and she let an Ascian persuade her to bring him back. Except all she summoned was a primal in the shape of her beloved Bahamut, who the Ascians then helped the Allagans entrap to turn into an energy source that they used to become even more powerful.
And so Bahamut goes from seeming like this terrifying mindless monster to a tragic figure with loved ones, without retconning anything.
Midgardsormr tells her she has repented long enough, but she says to just leave her be, and you do. So I guess she's still there.
When the path is blocked, Midgardsormr appears in a much larger form and tells you to get on his back and then you fly together to take down the anti-dragon-bigot elf pope, which was very cool. And then you can fly on him whenever you like! I only do so when I'm exploring somewhere we can do lots of cool soaring, otherwise it feels a bit disrespectful to make him carry me, especially since there's a saddle and stuff. But flying on a dragon between floating islands is AMAZING.
The writing around the beast tribes has also gotten more sympathetic, though it's mostly just gone from negative cliches about tribal peoples to positive ones. Ah well.
I had "clones" written in my notes and I am really not sure why. And on that mysterious note I will end the post!
no subject
Date: 2022-05-14 06:05 pm (UTC)Saint Shiva inspired dragons and elves to be be friends when her dragon boyfriend ate her in an act of consensual romantic interspecies vore 1500ish years ago.
This was certainly SOMETHING to read.
I finally recognized some of the names! Vaguely remember someone telling me about silver haired elf boy and the names Haurchefant and Aymeric! Aymeric seems like a great character. :D
no subject
Date: 2022-05-18 01:44 am (UTC)This was certainly SOMETHING to read.
Yeah it was something to read in-game, too, especially framed as this touching piece of history.
no subject
Date: 2023-03-27 07:39 pm (UTC)Also, after a year, this post is still the core of what I know about FFXIV, and I keep going "oh yeah, I know things about FFXIV, it's the dragon incest game" and then people who play go "what?" at me. ;D
no subject
Date: 2023-04-13 03:30 am (UTC)Ahahaha, well, I hope you're enjoying all the non dragon incest parts :)