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Wisdom of Nym: Speculating on the future of Echoes of Vana’diel in Final Fantasy XIV

massivelyop.com 1 day ago
Always looking back.

The main problem with doing a Final Fantasy XI crossover in Final Fantasy XIV is that we’ve already had several, more or less since the game’s relaunch.

I don’t just mean the explicit two crossover events that we’ve had, although those are relevant; I mean that Eureka already heavily relies upon FFXI enemies and concepts, and even beyond that FFXIV has never been shy about pulling ideas from its predecessor. Tenzen from the Four Lords quest is an homage to the character of the same name (and presumably similar ability) from FFXI. Qiqirn, gigas, and goblins are all straight imports from that game. Alzadaal’s Legacy is a big reference to Treasures of Aht Urhgan. The list goes on.

The result is that there are a lot of bosses that are just not available for fighting in the Vana’diel series simply because we’ve already fought them. This doesn’t mean that I’m not delighted by the crossover – quite the opposite! It just means that when you have eight more bosses to fill out, you can’t just import all of them easily from the earlier game when several of them either already exist in the game or wouldn’t really fit. But I do have speculation about whom else we’ll see here.

Let’s start by placing some ground rules. As a general rule, it seems to be the case that if a boss already exists in FFXIV, they are probably not going to be brought back for the FFXI crossover. Obviously this is not a hard-and-fast rule, since Fafnir exists in both Eureka and Jeuno, but Fafnir also appears to be more of a type than anything by being an homage to the dragon fights of that style. (In other word, it’s Fafnir because he’s located in the Dragon’s Aery, and it’s the Dragon’s Aery because it was more visually distinct than other locales.) So that means some expansion-ending bosses, like Alexander, Odin, the Cloud of Darkness, and Hades are unlikely.

Also, it seems very clear that we are not strictly limited to fights that existed in a single expansion or even characters we traditionally fought in FFXI. Prishe is never fought in FFXI, but she obviously is here.

So do we have enough people to fill out a full list that aren’t covered elsewhere in the game and would make sense while covering major parts of FFXI history? Obviously we will, but I think I can pinpoint some pretty likely fights along the way. So let’s get to it.

AITA?

Lady Lilith

Look, I don’t think “turbo-succubus” is going to be unappealing to the artists as a potential fight subject, and while Wings of the Goddess is not a favorably remembered expansion (including by me) it does actually serve as the source of at least one antagonist we otherwise don’t have hanging around. Technically we already got teased some of that with the Shadowlord’s upgrade midway through his fight in the existing raid.

On a related note, isn’t it kind of ironic that the Shadowlord, despite theoretically being a big bad, is never actually the main enemy you’re fighting against except for one portion of Dynamis? That feels like an odd exclusion.

Kam’lanaut, Eald’narche, or both

So spoiler warning for content that’s now decades old, but it turns out that the strange prettyboy with ambiguous motivation and his younger brother who run Jeuno in FFXI are actually villains. This was theoretically a twist but wasn’t actually shocking even when it was new; the more shocking part was honestly that Eald’narche was by far the more dangerous of the two. It’s a given that we’ll fight at least one of them, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we wound up fighting both of them in some sort of multi-stage fight; again, when an expansion’s final boss is actually unique, that seems like a layup.

Oh yeah.

Gulool Ja Ja

So here’s the problem: As mentioned before, the story of Treasures of Aht Urhgan does not conclude with a fight that is easy to port over to FFXIV. However, there is a workaround that both serves within the context of the story and as a nod to that expansion because Gulool Ja Ja is a major threat in that game and the shade of him is following Sareel Ja around right now. We’ve had two fights against him so far, one against him as an old man with half his capabilities and one against his shade as a full group, but this would be an elegant solution especially as a second-raid ending fight. Or possibly the penultimate one, depending.

Balamor

If you remember the actual story of Seekers of Adoulin, you might say that Teodor is a more obvious threat, and in the abstract I agree. But I also think Teodor is a much more “generic” fight on some level unless he’s a major story figure, and we’re not going to have time to really make him a major character when the cast is already fairly full. Balamor, meanwhile, provides a very different visual flair and potential mechanics, so I suspect he’s probably a more likely emissary for the expansion.

There’s also just the weirdness factor that’s easier to accept. Like, you don’t need to know the backstory of the Ark Angels to intuit at least some of their deal. You know there is more story, but you don’t necessarily need it. Balamor can exist just as a weird monster to fight without needing to have the rest of his story exist, but if you really want to know it, there is a game covering it! In part.

Earrings go here.

Ma’at

The old man who has mastered every single job is a whole thing for FFXI players, and it’s very clear that this raid series is built with a sense of love, hence having an obvious group of people farming Aquarius midway through the raid. Finding a place for a fight against Ma’at would feel like a tonal shift, so I don’t think he’ll show up in the final raid, but he’d make perfect sense as an opponent in the second.

Promathia

I mean… come on. This is obvious. This is such an easy layup. There are loads of criticisms to be leveled at Chains of Promathia as an expansion, but Promathia himself remains an iconic enemy and so defining that FFXI just recreated him to serve as a final boss in two other pieces of content. He also tends to show up a lot in crossovers because of course he does, and as much as I love the other expansions, I can’t deny that Promathia serves as the capstone to all of the mysteries that the base game set up. I’d place decent odds on Promathia as the final boss of the third raid, or if not there than the penultimate one. Sooner than that? I’d be surprised.

You may notice that this isn’t a full list of all the bosses we will presumably have in the raids… and that’s true! I do not know what all of them are going to be! But I do feel fairly confident in most of these entries being obvious inclusions.

Feedback, as always, is welcome in the comments down below or via mail to eliot@massivelyop.com. Next week, let’s talk about FATEs and sidequests, two boring pieces of content that have been sidelined but aren’t beyond propping up in the future.

The Nymian civilization hosted an immense amount of knowledge and learning, but so much of it has been lost to the people of Eorzea. That doesn’t stop from scrutinizing Final Fantasy XIV each week in Wisdom of Nym , hosting guides, discussion, and opinions without so much as a trace of rancor.
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