Stormblood's Darkest Chapter | FFXIV 4.3

[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] it's insane to think that somehow all this started with a rather dull conversation about economics with god godberton loloredo don't exclude hancock he contributed greatly to the exuberance of political discussion he was actually rather timid compared to his 4.0 pontification yeah i do kind of wonder if they received some reviews and tone down the hancock a bit because he was a little quiet in comparison he still had a lot to say yeah i honestly i had no issues with hancock this time around in 4.1 and onward because he uh barely said anything which is my favorite version of hancock the one where he doesn't talk much but oh my god dude sitting here at the end of stormblood thinking about 4.1 through 4.3 i barely remember my thoughts about 4.1 it's like this it wasn't even that far back that we played it but it's this distant memory of me feeling a little bored if i'm being honest like in the moment there there was a lot of hype for stormblood patch content and 4.1 opens pretty slow and it's got some like really serio for me really serious shades of a realm are born probably just because i'm like listening to nanimo talk to another plot of fell who i don't trust it's a false peace right we needed this slowness to enjoy zenos's death zenith's death right without that lull with are involved and going around the salterly we wouldn't have had that feeling of peace upon us that this was a world that we had defended that things are gonna be okay for a little bit and with the passage of time you know this is three months between each patch so there would have been a call back to the game after your big thrilling conclusion perhaps a chance for you to resub and start experiencing that story again ease into it a little bit they were asides throughout all of this that i think worked really well they were slower but they're purposeful to just maybe give your brain a break from the drama and trauma that you might be experiencing with this story as it goes such as the yabby jaw i guess they came up with a cute little mini game but locating the weak point on the yabby was insane and the hardest thing i've done in this game it was another moment where i was like why are people so stoked for us to get to storm blood patches like i was fine with it it's just it was a really funny dichotomy with the hype going in of me just being like i'm playing the right stuff right is this what you love i'm concerned well there's not there's not even any thirstiness here in in retrospect it all really worked and i love where 4.1 goes like by the end of it i really enjoyed the character pieces along the way and uh thanks to you i really enjoyed uh some of the other beats that had i not been experiencing this with you and you keeping tabs on things that you find interesting it may have washed over me not to get too ahead of ourselves with sitting there and talking about job prospects for refugees with lola rito we gotta talk about the drowned city this was such a great aside our involved is such a heartfelt character i love when final fantasy xiv goes back to its adventurer roots to a simpler time when we weren't a warrior of light or the chosen one and all those sorts of things we just did adventures because they were fun or for riches and our involved our b-plot you know the the character that would be us if we didn't exist it's just fun to hang out with and he suggested a rather fantastic indiana jones adventure he did yeah we we get there's a little bit of a you know if you're one of those folks that don't like the the mmoe like talk to this person type quests this you know may have rubbed you the wrong way but we have a few of those that kind of talk up this drowned city where horrible fates befell people that got on the bad side of the mad king and i think we were both really excited to go to it and you know we'll get we'll get into this in the wall dungeons but the dungeon itself i think looks amazing i really like the whole look of the place the monsters didn't quite do it for me i i thought the lead up was more exciting than actually seeing the drowned city the drowned city in storyline had a chance to be really messed up and the monsters were just kind of maybe they were saving all the messed up for 4.3 and down the road maybe this would have been different though so they could have really like really pushed for like you know haunted house resurrected dead vibe and it was a little straightforward in the monsters but uh i digress i like this a little bit it's a fun little aside it's an interesting way to you know add a little bit of action add a little bit of adventuring to this plot of 4.1 of of the plight of the refugees final fantasy 14 just gets its hands in the dirt and stares the outcome of a successful war right in the face and it's like all right what do you have to do now well you've got all these people you got to worry about them well you've got all these interested political parties you also have to worry about them and you need to scratch certain people's backs so that they actually want to help the refugees and it's super nuanced and an oddly realistic while still i would say optimistic depiction of what the aftermath of a war like this could be like it's a balancing act right because the world could very easily go full fantasy crystal tech and just for dola's in a super magic prison where she doesn't age or something and she's in suspension and we can forget about her for three expansions and over here the garlians are building super lasers that they harvested from the moon or everything is very grounded and has this process to it in fact outside of the warrior lights echo explorations and growth we haven't had extreme power escalation it's still just primals and asians and we explore their existing powers and maybe what they choose to unleash on us but at this current point when someone goes to jail they go to normal people jail they go down in a dungeon and they sit there and you don't give them weapons and they can't get out and that allows this process of talking through war and the punishments and the people being mad at ferdil enough to want to go in there and kill her and rob on speech to calm them down a realistic proposition meanwhile while there's you know floating fairies outside and someone shooting rocks with laser beams around you to heal you it it all kind of works and that really comes back to this balance like there are extremely messed up moments in this patch content and there's extremely wacky moments but that's the balance they strike yeah balance is a really good way to put it and i think we're going to keep coming back to that as we talk through this but i stand by what i said in the opening like it is slow but slow doesn't always mean bad like i i want i want to be clear about that when i say something slow i don't mean it's bad it's it just like in this case it was interesting because this is the foot you start off on with the storm blood patch content and the patch content was really hyped for us i really enjoyed 4.1 and i really liked everything like the these nuanced challenges of what we do like how do you build el amigo back after liberation and i really like when it all comes to a head with the meeting in the throne room like the and i really like the moment right before i guess i would say the primals hit the fan where lisa invites all of the various leaders of like different tribes and sex to meet as equals in the throne room and also damn final fantasy 14 does a really good job at giving you your victory you get to the end like the the first set of credits for any expansion or even you know the original realm were born and you feel like yeah you closed the book on a chapter and it feels satisfying it doesn't just feel like a vessel to simply just set up the next thing that's coming down the pipeline it feels like the end of a chapter even though there is plenty more to explore afterwards but this felt like an extension of the victory at the end of 4.0 because we just get to see the alamegan banner hanging in its own damn throne room which i really liked i thought that was a nice touch on top of the fact that we get to see lis really taking the lead on leadership of course then it kind of all blows up but that moment these quiet moments make the bombastic you know the rug being ripped out from under us more impactful it's such a fun game to pay attention to because you got the kalyana snake tribe who immediately here unleashes their god again like me appears they hid crystals in the water they i guess they enthralled some of the guards which they enthralled guards which then hid crystals in the water which is how they got the water like the crystals into the throne room it suggests maybe there's like mini enthrallments you can do like one-on-one enthrallments but that's that's kind of a side point here i just love that we deal with this now it was an opportunity to bring that story back and and they did with ease and style very early on plus it was a great opportunity to bring back in for dola using her echo powers and having our involved there and have this kind of echo buddy moment this was the moment i was teasing like it's cool that i get to experience this with you but also like comments and just a community cause i wasn't all that into the kalyan it felt like a massive fart off in our lead up to fighting xenos and i was just like oh okay okay and whatever if i was gonna sit here and be a little grumpier about it i'm like you could still shorten it we didn't need to be that detail doesn't matter doesn't matter all that's important is that it was important and that there was a payoff here and what a payoff it was because this whole moment this throw down in the throne room this from a gameplay perspective if i'm you know i'm just gonna say it a duty that is infinitely better than the trial that precedes it with the same damn primal to fight it's a vessel for a really strong character beat with what happens with fordola coming in midway through the fight picking up a sword to defend the people of alamigo as opposed to oppress them i'm not gonna lie to you i didn't see it coming i was very surprised by that and i really liked it no i i had no idea where elise was flipping off to and i didn't expect them to give her that redemption arc and make us really feel the plight of fordola and her discount echo powers it's it's faulty it's it it can be helpful but it can also be a massive hindrance right i mean i guess it's been a hindrance for us as well we don't always get smacked with an echo flashback at the most opportune time yeah i would have hung up on an echo in 4.3 if i could have but you know yeah somebody's trapped in there you're experiencing their memories and that's what fordola's going with every day like everybody who passes by she is connecting with and what a punishment for being experimented on being a part of the evil empire being in zeno's service i mean it's just who knows what's gonna happen with her in the future obviously she's not functional like she can't no even if she was like hey i'm i'm good now let's all be friends let's join the science she can't she's burdened with echo and it's a mix too she's also just burdened with her own reckoning of coming to terms with her world view crashing down around her and and and coming in terms of the fact that like she seems to be very aware of her wrongdoings at this point you know which doesn't happen with every single villain in this game so it's like that plus this just empathy bomb of echoing all the damn time when when you're around people that you oppressed like it's a lot man it's a lot like it's a really interesting way to use the powers of the echo to use these things that could be like really silly magical powers within the world but they take these powers and these rules that we understand even if you're like me and you like half remember some of this stuff and they twist it and they use it really well and that's what i've i think for dola is a really good example of that and yeah i'm with you i want to see more of fordola i hope that she comes back in the future because i think she'd just be really cool to adventure with i'm a fan in all media of of the villain turned ally and i think fordola would be a a really self-aware vegeta which i would enjoy well the other character moment that uh what 4.1 essentially ends on and i thought was moving and kind of adorable was everything with rauban and nanamo yeah wandering around with her in disguise was probably the low point of the expansion it's very slow right yeah it's very slow we have a lot of we have a lot of meetings uh at least we were a little more involved than say like the realm reborn table meetings where we're just getting essentially the wolves pulled over our eyes by uh was a telege at a ledgie you know you have a moment where you're sitting there with lola rita with this with this mask off by the way with he has the coolest eyes he sounds like mark hamill joker but then he just wants to sit there and talk about the economic impact of giving jobs to refugees and i'm like all right listen i appreciate the detail but i'm not exactly riveted in this exact moment well and that like he was explaining how a realm reborn politics played into the taking of the salterly so he can like he's out there he is galaxy braining the entire plot real lex luthor energy and they hid those things back then like they're not retconning i give him props for that but they're just showing off at that point i'm just sitting back and watching them do flips and go this is this is vulgar this is a vulgar display of lore well done well done but again it paid off we we get to know a different we get to see a different side of nanimo and it also it is a display of her ability to rule without rauban at her side granted we're there but it's i think it's more so that we the actual player can bear witness to nanamo's capability more than it is that she really needed us as as protection it makes sense from a story standpoint i don't want to i don't want to downplay that but it's another thing that because of where 4.1 ends you have this this slow burn moment with donomo that that has payoff and i like that it gives pippin a place to go we have rob on moving on the son of alamigo returns pippin has a nice place as protector now it gives him a role pippin and rob on are so grounded in reality you know they're part of this dungeon brick and mortar kind of world that final fantasy has where shadowbringers looks like it's building up to cosmic levels of something where they can't follow so it's really nice to have those characters we love in nice little homes settled yeah yeah it's it's it's just it's just nice i don't know this with brow bonded like it hit me with themes of like emptyness parents like he's been this protector for so long but he still has his own desires and things that he wants to do with his life and in this case it's looking back towards his homeland and with nanamo ready to just take the reins of ulda by herself with this protection that rauban would clearly trust in pippin it's really cool it's it's it's it's a cool thing that in this big operatic epic fantasy there's themes that remind me of real life it's constantly rhyming with itself and in non-cheesy ways you got rob on being a father figure but not really the father next to gotsetsu being a father figure but not really the father and then you have the foster parents of the brutuses who aren't really the parent like there is a overtone and the music's even called a father's pride and throughout all this there's this overtone of parenting of protection that the game hits really well so when you move between these three very distinct stories i mean we can even work in for dole into that with her dad getting stoned in the streets like oh [ __ ] that was actually her dad in that case like we see this array of what upbringing and experience does to you in a world where pure emotions transform into monsters yeah yeah we also have like a like mirror opposite parent examples right with fordola and her parents but also yatsuyu and hers like like fordola had wonderful parents they you know were guardian sympathizers which in a lesser game would just be like and they're bad guys no they're good parents that died protecting their children or their child well i guess the dad right the mom was still alive yeah the mom lived to be disappointed that she tattooed her face and yeah yeah but then like we left 4.0 being like man yatsuyu's mom what a piece of work but we find out later on that yeah it wasn't just the mom there's also some serious sins of the father going on i i think so much about how it took a village to raise a lease in 4.0 like all of the leaders that she got to hang out with helped shape her into the leader that she became but her ability her willingness to give fordola the benefit of the doubt and see if she can rehabilitate her and actually successfully get fordola to put her life on the line for the people of amigo it then is echoed later on with hien taking a chance on yatsuyu and it's like well they shared a cell together like that is one of the leaders she quested alongside and so it makes a lot of sense that her and would make similar decisions with what to do with literal war criminals oh and and fridola is so weighed because of the room we panned around that in a cut scene where zenos was up there with the mad scientist and they were chatting and whatnot about the power and the act of the artificial echo and all that sort of thing i did not gather at that time that all the little tents around and even the little little tents being the lollaphal tents were all body bags like fridola has a huge burden upon her like she has to redeem but also redeem everyone that possibly went in that machine if she's even going to try to be good in any way what a wade holy [ __ ] that that realization as we walked around that room was dark this to kind of mean 4.1 of extremely grim realities with really optimistic and hopeful potential futures is it's really to me that that's 4.1 through 4.3 happens every single time and 4 foot 1 and 4.2 both end with teasers and with that let's talk about the characters that survived 4.0 that i was very excited to see again so my favorite part of the opening of 4.2 was tataru being livid at how much alphanose spent on gosetsu's sword i mean it's not only politics it's the economic concerns the scions that the writers are aware of i bet you they have an actual checkbook like they are tracking to the gill how much money the scions have one of those big ones that's in a binder where you have like six checks to a page it's like a sheet of chess you gotta yeah every time hori boulder's in the back drinking watching those funds they're draining that account and tatar's got to be the one take care of it there's no day business it's tataru tataru is back they're just like looking at the bartender like yo cut him off he's done well even like saurobon comes back for uh just you know for fun we like zarbon it's nice to see it but no he's worked backed in because he's building like a fairy enterprise that tatar is going to invest in and hey more opportunity to rip on alpha now it's great yeah also you know sadly more opportunity to have pirates tell us we need to pay a tithe but you know those pirates man they're so cheese ball they read in a book what it's like to be a pirate they have them in the mind the those two the the pirates of the ruby c in hancock could you could just they could be the star of a final fantasy spin-off called a game garrett will never play but all the services to get us moving towards gotsetsu and yatsuyu who are moving across the land we previously know it's kind of an opportunity to revisit our locations at this point after about six months since players would have finished up the original game yeah yeah they're out there having you know we were teas of their adventures them out in kugani gosetsu broke yatsuyu clearly not herself but obsessed with dongo which i've never had and now i need to have after how many times it showed up in the stamp game gosetsu is at the moment i don't know where he falls exactly but he's a top three favorite character for me i think my favorite character is thinny and still but kosetsu is right there i love this character so much i did think that if how we thought he went out in 4.0 was how ghossetsu went out that it would essentially be perfect you know a sacrificial death to save his friends to save he and to save his old master but oh i'm so glad he's not dead because what they did with him in the patch content of stormblood it's one of my favorite arcs of final fantasy 14 so far they made me like something i cannot stand freaking amnesia plots i can't stand amnesia plots dude they they infuriate me i think they're one of the most overplayed things on this earth can't stand it get them out of here the second i hear oh i can't remember who i am suddenly i'm a good guy i'm just like but again really well executed here it's a vessel it's a it's a vessel for this theme of the fallout of war of forgiving your enemies like what do you do when you're the good guy with the upper hand now what do you do once you have the power and you're staring down pure freaking evil in yatsuyu they really spun gold out of this i think and maybe that's the redeeming quality of the amnesia is it poses that interesting question of what to do with her is she a product of her upbringing zenos's influence the garlian empire and this was an interesting exploration because it was alongside gotsetsu who was that lost father figure having now had he and leave the nest like he in is his own realized person and ian is amazing to follow there are missteps throughout his political maneuvers that aren't bad he plans for everything he prepares properly he plays the game to a t when things go wrong it wasn't because he just messed up whoops and contrivance for the plot it's because something unique happened that was interesting and the meeting between gotsetsu and hyen when basically just forgives him for disappearing or for almost being dead was so heart touching i loved it there was yeah no drama right there there were so many points where i was watching this going i think they're going to milk what i am witnessing for cheap conflict and they kept taking the high road and avoiding it that's one really good example but another one with he and him with gosetsu is he ends decision you know this is jumping a little bit ahead but he puts the sword to now suyu's throat and then comes to his own realization that he buys it that he thinks she has truly forgotten who she is and and he decides yeah she you know what if her memories don't come back she can stay with us that was a big moment where i'm like ah no he ends he ends good they're gonna drive a wedge between gosetsu and he end nope they didn't like i was just watching this like yo a lesser narrative would have just made hen make the worst decision possible and gone down the drama road oh it would have been a hammed up it would have been a romantic comedy of misunderstandings and how nobody ever met the right point and someone like saw someone kissing someone else like it just it was so nice to dodge all that granted the game still did throw a red herring out there with he and tourney be like see godzetsu he was acting kind of weird in there and i'm like oh is he enthralled oh my god what's going on with and it just ended up like he was shot three times and doesn't feel great just gonna say that was on you but i i was like i was like he's tired yeah i wasn't buying that buying that at all but he's showing his age like and to he and that's a very tender moment of like recognizing the years in gotsatsu and seeing him in a different light we gotta talk about who i think might be the single best villain we've encountered in final fantasy 14 up until this point in asahi i have not hated a character in this game as much as i cannot stand asahi simultaneously i think he is a perfectly written villain i thought he was a vessel for shadowbringers which he still may be he comes in talking about the popularity and basically giving us a big lesson on politics and structure in garlean society and i'm like oh damn like okay so we have a little in here he's a little off yeah and he's yatsuyu's brother and we know that the brother from past visions was treated a little better than the sister so he's had maybe not a privileged life being a domain in the garlian empire but he's seen some advancement he is a sauce which means he's pretty far up there he's privileged in love from his parents which is something that yatsuyu did not have in fact she had the polar opposite of it which was horrendous abuse and being sold off and all sorts of things like that and but asahi plays the part of the diplomat so well he becomes almost a counter alpha no in that way and even in the final moments after he's met with yotsuyu and agrees that she's gone in a sense after you get attacked by the red cogen and he helps defend the locals waiting on that boat you're like okay all right so the okay are things gonna be okay he just does that lean in that lean in of villainy and just spells it all out again a relief to not be strung along here to have your suspicions of anger at this creepy dude verified and and then we immediately tell our friends yeah don't keep it secret for some stupid reason right no one's like you're a liar we're like we're gonna split factions we're gonna have cyan one and scion two and now we're gonna have this whole breakdown and i'm going to the sands and i'm going to the stones and like just everyone's like yeah that sounds okay warrior light said it let's do it particularly as a silent protagonist it's really nice that people believe you because you can't you can't like choose different dialogue options for the most part you can't convince them i'm really glad this game doesn't just take the easy road for drama sake it's it's something that really impressed me in 4.2 i think a lot of games build lore adjacent to content and here the lore is the content and there's enough of it to go through so we can actually advance it that's a freaking profound thought i think the trial we do in 4.3 is a true example of lore combining with content before him get too far ahead i will say i really thought that there was going to be more to uh asahi saving issei from the red cogen i was we i think we were both convinced that like oh i think also he like paid the red coach in to ambush ise so that asahi could look like a good guy but there's none of that especially since very shortly after that assahed like completely gave up the goose and and like threatened us yeah it's an interesting moment it brings back that the red cogen are still running amok still committed to evil or primals or you know kind of whatever happened in the ruby still going on there yeah and and obviously the the red cogen at least their artifacts come back in a really big way at the end of all of this and so now in my head i'm wondering i'm like did it never like is there side dialogue i didn't see where they talk about oh the red cogen are super pissed cause some of their artifacts went missing that was like some big like like lead into the mirror regardless of it being a red cogen relic i still think it's an interesting note because it's that mirror and she spent that time as a courtesan and where she would be doing her makeup and looking in her own face i mean what a great way to jog your memory than staring at your own visage which you saw having those experiences but if it was a primal laced artifact maybe even inhabiting a primal like we had with susano then we just did something really interesting where we combined multiple kind of primal ideas the iceheart phoenix riding of a primal with the susano artifact based commie kind of inhabitation but the big part in the beginning of 4.3 it really landed for me was somewhat comical for a hot second which is sue you cleaning gosetsu which is played for last but it hits hard when you realize that the people that make this game bothered adding bullet scars to gosetsu's in-game model i mean they'll note when you get dirty like you literally get wet in your clothes in the rain so what are a couple bullet scars adding in there more impressively is you don't get wet when you have your parasol out that's that's even more impressive i agree it's ridiculous we're again coming back after three months new patch we want to see how things have advanced you're concerned about kotsetsu yatsuyu still in her child-like state taking care of goodsetsu now and kind of a switcheroo he was taking care of her it really gives her a place in your mind and you feel like everything's gonna be okay the game even goes as far as to have her run off and end up in a village near my looking for persimmons and everything's gonna be okay why we brought her to the meeting i understand because at that point he and he ends a good guy he saw you'd yotsuyu in the face of the people she had oppressed continued to be childlike and he said you know what nothing can possibly go wrong but he didn't expect just how crazy asahi is i think he'd also make an argument too that like in order for him to reach the point he was at in 4.2 like emotionally saying that yeah so you can stay with us if her memory doesn't come back and this is what she wants she can stay he had to put some trust in suyu to even get to that point internally so this didn't bother me this didn't that just didn't seem like uh have him make a bad decision for the sake of the plot no and you have the mirror and you have her facing not only asahi in the past but the people she's straight up has oppressed and accusing her and she still doesn't know what she did wrong it seems pretty safe like what are the chances that asahi is gonna dig up villainous mom and dad like i i mean at this point i'm thinking like i just kind of assumed they were dead we get a tease of the dad with that guard could have seemed like a a side point that was more about setting up yet suyu it was also foreshadowing the fact that the parents could freaking show up again like asahi bringing out his and yatsuyu's parents i think it's the single most evil thing i've seen in this game so far and i have lived through the story of gabu without a doubt yes yes like talking to the guard who sold her pretty messed up thank you for being voice acted game i didn't want to read that that's more of a streamer problem listen man it might be but guess what we're both streaming this and dude i am i am with you that was dark i was happy that could speed by at the speed that the game was programmed to do i don't want to have to think about what voice do i do for the man that helps sell someone into prostitution i no i don't i don't want to do that and your brain doesn't go any further because it's dark to think well where did he get her well foster dad sold her off of course and for asahi to do the mirror thing and to be prepared like we know that those boxes are all sitting around right now ready to go primal and he's like leaning on him practically being like hey what's up by the way special surprise absolutely insane he's a bastard such a great villain kyle i don't know what it says about me but all of this led up to me thoroughly enjoying watching yatsuyu gut her parents just carve them down in cold blood there is an exact formula here she escapes she's gonna end it all but she becomes interrupted by her parents complaints accusation dad's lean-in line and her anger is fully justified like this isn't just mustache twirling this is revenge for her childhood and again we have a brief moment we're on that precipice where things could still go back parents are down she could still make the choice to pursue good maybe even go back home to gotsetsu but asahi walks around the corner it's such a perfect assault on her being to lead us to that final point the the train had left the station after this moment like i i felt like the game moved it enough of a clip that i didn't really have a moment to stop and ask myself wait where is yatsuyu now like this scene ends and we're off it's like we gotta get we gotta get to the prisoner transfer like let's go we gotta get the boats and we gotta prepare the boats because the confederates don't take care of their damn boats get your boats ready yeah yeah that part i hate those pirates the end like floating in the water enjoying a swim like these are all it's all part of that lulu they gotta they gotta work you up you need those ups and downs you need a pallet cleanse because otherwise it's just comical how bad things are i forgot that the pirates were after this never mind the train started to leave the station the emergency brake was firmly applied it's all about pacing they got to tease you a little bit they got to work you up for it we've experienced so much tragedy in final fantasy xiv it is a game it is through the game part of it eff it doesn't matter irrelevant it is a story it is a narrative that revels in misery at times and tragedy and the climax here the end of 4.3 the final boot dropping on exactly what asahi's plan was seeing yatsuyu march out at the top of those stairs and her full regular get up she's got her she's she's smoking again it's good writing because i was just sitting there like i don't want this to be true i was i i i was with hen i looked at suyu and i was like maybe there's a chance no but you still got to give hen credit like he was prepared he made us do the big boat thing because he wanted the big boat so he could get everyone away quickly because his little skips would take forever if things went bad and it's not that asahi was just being absolutely crazy he went crazy yes but he had a plan he wanted to do the whole oh no they're summoning primals look everybody look doma's still crazy we can't possibly be political partners with them everyone to the ships like it was an excellent display of manipulation and politics and a good on him for it yeah yeah and i like that the failure of it all really just comes down to him like if he didn't let his emotions get the best of him basically would he'd still be standing all he had to do was not walk over to his sister that's true although i mean she didn't kill him with magic swords who know i don't know what the range on those magic swords are i need to read a tool tip the fight was beautiful the transformation just this primal in general i'm unfamiliar with it it doesn't look like tsukiomi shows up in other final fantasies a character of tsukiomi or the figure of tsukiomi is a religious figure of japanese and i believe shinto origin so it is this is a concept that exists outside of final fantasy xiv which is seemingly more and more common the more i learn about the historical background of a lot of things that final fantasy draws on i uh i'd love this look of this primal but also what's really interesting to me about this is that it is more of a reflection of yatsuyu than any other primal has been a reflection of the person that became the primal i want to know more about this like how you were like super into everything going on with the kalyana and the lady of bliss and i was like not my favorite this i'm so interested in the fact that tsukiomi looks like yatsuyu and and even has characteristics of yatsuyu there's a sh there's a smoke attack she's got a super gigapipe and she blows smoke at us in the boss fight absolutely she's got the divide down her the black and the white the tsuyu and the yatsuyu standing next to each other the moon seems to be the influence of the object or whatever the god previously was that they're now merged with but her anger is what's fueling him i mean my brain goes a number of places a lot of them being of course where i came from world of warcraft the shaw super lame compared to this they were supposed to embody emotions and here's yatsuyu actually embodying the emotions that we've experienced alongside of her and her experience thanks to the echo and that story device we know many of those things but still interesting but really what i love about this trial is it's free of what i'm going to call bronzebeardisms we straight up see illusions of her past her parents attacking her xenos appears gotsetsu defends her that's an ad phase that is story in mechanics at no point does the whole battle pause while bronzebeard runs over and i have to work the machine everybody and they just like explain it to us and every time you do that fight in the future you're gonna have to sit through those lines you can experience this fight again and just have it be a phase just have it be the mechanics the fun of it i mean xenos if he hits her it fills her bar like the way they integrated this into gameplay and the way the story built so that the gameplay could be gameplay when we got there i'm gonna say it's genius like this is just really good game design yes the apps abso freaking lutely it's it's meta at the same time i've never had a mechanic in a video game make me feel something emotionally i was wasn't doing heightened dance crying because the lava represented some horrible tragedy in heigen's past it's great there were a lot of mechanics here there's a lot of moon business and the breath attacks and everything was really busy like i immediately wanted to do this again there's so much more to talk about but like this this is everything here with yatsuyu and and just yatsuyu's arc again i like i don't i don't know where this ranks but the same way like osetsu's in my top three somewhere of my favorite characters in this game so far yatsuyu's just entire arc in particular the ending here is just so sad and it really affected me this is this has got to be like a top 10 moment so far in in final fantasy for me i thoroughly enjoyed everything about this and asahi was such a big part of it like i keep saying like i can't stand him i hate him he's a great character he's a wonderful villain he's like everything zenos isn't well i guess it's not entirely true they're both hyper personal and selfish in their own unique ways there's a reason why asahi admires xenos and zenos embodies the calm and collect that asahi doesn't have and we realize that in this moment when he just shoots the [ __ ] out of yatsuyu well and then just goes manic yeah full like joker speech absolutely insane and back to balancing act the writers here have to take in all the warriors of light that could possibly exist all of our personal head canons maybe you and i really wanted to be the ones to kill him he was he was going nuts he was off the deep end there's a moment where our character is the warrior of light starts to walk towards him with what i like to call the anakin stare which is where you tilt your head down and you look you look at them past your eyebrows yeah and it doesn't help that i have emo hair on my character uh i imagine this landed more for me than you because i wasn't wearing shorts and a t-shirt but i like it i was it's an adventures where how did it look in this exact be honest to be honest i'm not trying to like drag it through the coals or anything but like was there a moment where it cut that exact shot we were like maybe i shouldn't have worn the ll bean collection today no no i wasn't dressed up as a barista that day or wearing like the miss beard helm or something like that i dress casual for adventure it's tough out there you gotta wear clothes that breathe but you're right like that's part of that balancing act is they give you the moment where our head cannon we're gonna kill him someone else's head cannon you may have wanted to stop him or arrest him or something along those lines like he's declaring diplomatic immunity after summoning a monster that's going to cause doma and guard lamal to fall apart in this whole like political ramification of him being crazy but yatsuyu is the one to do it it's the perfect end because she deserves that kill yeah it it absolutely works i wasn't bummed at all uh if anything it's better it's better than if if i were to uh to a sasahi you know if this is a bioware game i would happily happily take take advantage of that button oh 100 i'd kill asahi every time i would do another playthrough and be like this time i'm gonna make all the good guy choices nope i would just do the same thing again and then he and walks in the room and he's like well everything's good here this looks great meanwhile gosetsu is about to break down yeah into an emotional puddle uh yeah there was the one time where i was like read the room he in uh but you know i we're we're a monster slayer and he and saw a monster you know and this motivates gutsetsu back to health basically he's the one being taken care of and he realizes that he's completed everything he needs here he's done and he can go on his pilgrimage his quest which i love that it puts him out in the world like it's one thing for him to be retired and he ends home that is very plot specific if we ever saw gosetsu again with him out in the world who knows you know he might do a stition things he might be running adjacent to our plot sometime i'm just excited for him to exist i could see him moving to a mega city and opening a tea house well i wrote there yeah i feel it yeah you got that reference the other bit that comes up which we already knew as players because we're watching the video game and there's scenes that warrior of light is not present for xenos xenos xenos is alive and we have that echo connection with asahi where we make that confirmation and i love it i think there is no better way to knock zenos down a peg than take his voice like his voice was his beauty he's still beautiful but his voice was so rich to have it scarred dude his voice they took his thickness let's get into that a little bit because when he's standing with dad emperor he's equally tall elitabus was shorter but took off his mask and we i i thought we thought maybe that he was wearing zenos's face but you're absolutely right the butt and the hair the size wasn't present it's fine it's fine it's just it's a little it's a it's a me thing that just keeps jumping into my head every time we see zombie xenos i'm just like where's your where's your ass man what happened to your butt you had some serious junk in the trunk i like his little coat like i like that he's so big that he doesn't even fit in this tiny little officer's coat they gave me out yeah just put it over the shoulders it's a good look actually i rather like that that costume design yeah of like mending zombie xenos and just a stylish jacket over the shoulders again another great example of where they could have milked [ __ ] for needless drama and conflict because they people don't need to believe us as a warrior of light i'm so glad that everyone just trusts the warrior of light's echo they're just like oh you saw zenith yeah okay well we believe you moving on let's go commit uh double that grave robbery let's just do some uh casual exumery and see if there's a body in here which leads to my favorite line thankful has ever said oh dear we seem to be missing a corpse i didn't know i wanted to go do this but i'm so happy we did it's such an obvious thing to investigate is the body still in the grave no no big mysteries no like we have to go like we have to get the key to the crypt but the crypt is locked by the something around like we can just go to the grave open up see there's no zenos inside and then there's a whole nother layer the katana wielding soldier which you noted before the actual hotline came up was xenos well done i believe i shouted that girazinos yeah the eastern sword the katana looks so out of place and then you know you notice it and then it cuts down a fellow soldier and it's a blast with the blast did it have a blast yeah yeah he did a sort of blue blast with it which is interesting might not be worth reading into xenophobia why he was raiding magitek the armor there because it was a big pile of magitek oh that's an interesting thought yeah because he shouldn't be able to blast without his golf bag but if he was getting something off the magitek to empower his sword so he could blast again maybe that's the answer for it he was shoving batteries in the scabbard yeah just either crystals or whatever ether batteries i i can i can head canon my way around that one just fine yeah that sounds good we could go like really off the beaten path like him being reborn it's not a garlam or something like this i'm not ready for that theory yet not entirely sure right now though i'm thinking it would be extremely interesting if he caught up with his body like because to him he was so in love with himself right he's got to be furious that someone else is running around marion netting his corpse is that really what he wants to do even does he even care because his line is shall i use this chance to repent for my sins embrace goodness and mediocrity nay i think not while the one i yearn to face yet lives the hunt must go on it sounds like he still wants to kick our ass like his whole hunt his bff is still out there and he wants to get on another good battle he's got another chance how is he i mean i guess he used he tried to kill us with a primal before so he's not above using other abilities to try and ace us right so i guess we'll come up with some other ridiculous batman villain plot to kill us if elitibus is riding zeno's prime who's injured so that suggests that that's the dead body reanimated which then crit is like reanimated me alive yeah sure a dead body like he just completely hand waves and was like yeah that that can work no crystals needed we don't have any current lore mechanics to understand why zenos is outside his own body with his voice intact yeah we saw we we've seen like consciousness move between living beings all the way back with the lead into leviathan yeah the fish people priest you cut him down and then his little like he floated over to another one of the fish people and became himself inside that fish man he didn't like take on that body he was now full regalia hatted yeah but we didn't see whoever was that fish man before then get have pushed out into another body so how did the big mystery for me is how did zeno's consciousness end up in the body of someone else was is is it was that a dead soldier and the game hasn't even come out and said that that's xenos but that's your nose i'm calling it this one that is it's so clearly xenos but did he possess someone living was there a dead soldier nearby and he just leapfrogged i don't i don't know i'm really i'm really curious about this one right and shinru kind of broke off him so i don't think he still has the powers of shinryu and that he's like primal floating about so obvious i mean obviously they'll explain it this was the big tease well yeah there's a whole other big tease the whole other big tease is is alphano out on his adventure it gets attacked shot down we get to actually play as alphano and we meet this character that only refers to himself as the shadowhunter clearly a garlean has the third eye hanging out with a bunch of other garlands using a gun blade same gun blade that guy has had but i believe that's just a standard issue gunblade i don't know that that is gaius because the x attack he repeatedly does the same blast that he does throughout reworked praetorium big waves on the ground line up the axes then being like i've had run-ins with scions off every clip you know like he's he doesn't do any of the words but he's all burn he's got all the raps around him like dude who would hate aseans more right dias because such devastation was not his intention no no they tricked him and now if he's hunting them across the multiverse star business like that sounds badass either way the shadowhunter hunts assians which has its own pile of questions with it is he using the white aura site did he find another way to kill him how did he kill all these aseans and where did he find them i think we've only seen red mask assians we've got iggy orm lahabrea which are both taken out in heaven's words and we've had nabra knobber sideburns who was part of the chrysalis and moonbreast death and then there's a cutscene at the end of a realm reborn with pashtarot which we don't know anything about he's got like cloud hair those are the named assians that i'm aware of going back to my room in the book and looking for black-assian masks and you know what i'm not going to do is google assiants because i do not want to get spoiled but in that room there's like 12 of them i could count are those all on our star the source does each star have multiple aseans hunter kill only local asians or is he like is he out there traveling well we know litibis has been traveling because we did the warring triad right and he brought over the kid from another star uh galaxy brain playing 4d chess so i i don't know i don't know the significance of the three types of masks that guy is well shadowhunter here is sport you've all you're really convinced dude i i want it to be true that's the thing i just really really want this to be true we made it to the end of storm blood it's the end of the 0.3 patch i'm assuming that just like heaven's word point 4 and 0.5 are going to essentially be the prologue into shadowbringers there are a lot of preconceived notions there's a cornucopia of opinions about stormblood going in how do you feel about it now that we're we're at the end it's a tough question to answer right now but i feel like we have closed the chapter on ayorzia and it can exist without our defense so as we enter shadowbringers maybe pale up with the shadowhunter maybe that's just like an alphano subplot and we play as alphano from time to time we are now excused from the planet we can now go back to hunting asians without worrying about the political spheres or if the world's doing okay and while stormblood may have been slower to get all that set up there's not really any holes that i can think of no me neither yeah to me it comes down to like i get the concerns around the beginning it is slow but it's a really good story and it has some of my favorite character beats of the entire game that i've experienced up until this point and i'm glad we're not done with xenos yet well we're going to move on to point four and point five and we still have omega to finish up we still have evil elise to finish up we still have a series of dungeons that i don't remember the name of to finish up oh the four lords yeah we celebrated the fourth awards yeah there's a lot to do so thanks for watching everybody and until next time gg [Music]

Channel: Grinding Gear

Views: 44,412

Keywords: garrett weinzierl, kyle fergusson, amovetv, grinding gear, gg, ffxiv, ff14, ffxiv stormblood, stormblood, final fantasy stormblood

Id: FDPQYxgQNH0

Length: 55min 43sec (3343 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 20 2022