Eorzean Evening Post: 2.55, A Realm Ripped Apart .

This week’s Eorzean Evening Post will be filled with spoilers for the 2.55 patch!

I guess I can’t be any clearer than that. I’ll be spoiling the whole darn thing, no holding back. Don’t keep reading unless you’ve finished it (or simply don’t care).

 

Late Thursday night last week I finally got into a DF-group capable of handling the Meteor-phase of the Chrysalis (I had been so unlucky up to that point), so I decided to soldier through the rest of the storyline. I simply had to, since staying unspoiled for much longer would probably be impossible. And wow, I’m glad that I did. What a ride. What a ride.

Did I mention spoilers for 2.55?

 

The darkest timeline (here comes the spoilers!)

While I was ready for at least one character to die, I was not ready for how things would go down in Ul’dah. That things would come to a head was to be expected, it’s been building up over the last couple of patches, but the sheer amount of drama that Square had packed into the hour-long cut scenes at the end of 2.55 caught me a bit by surprise.

First of all, Nanamo. I did expect her to die, I really did (see last week’s column), and when they started talking about having a banquet in her city I knew she didn’t have long. I knew that handmaiden wasn’t up to anything good the moment I laid eyes on her! What I wasn’t prepared for was how gruesome it actually looked when a cute Lalafell went all King Joffrey on us. That was pure horror. No, I won’t post a screenshot, I don’t really want to think about it.

Raubahn’s reaction to the news was really cool though. I internally went “oh f…” when I saw the camera zoom in on his face and the colours change. The animators did a really good job with the fight between him and Ilberd. Wow, I can’t wait to get my hands on that bastard. The final shots of them fighting, Ilberd suspended in mid-air with his sword above his head had me hanging until after the end credits. To be fair, we don’t actually know what happened to him – Raubahn might have finished him off. Doubtful, since I’m sure hunting him down will be a whole big thing in Heavensward. I’m guessing we’ll do some jail-breaking first, though. How about a combination, having Ilberd as a Trial set in Ul’dah?

Scions no more

While Nanamo’s death was expected, I never thought that Square would decimate the Scions in the way they did. Early on in the patch I was convinced that they were going to let Tataru die, the way she talked about going on adventures and being Minfilia’s bodyguard – I was yelling at her to just get back to the Rising Stones and stop being stupid. Killing her would have been cruel, but I truly expected her to take her new-found job as bodyguard seriously and courageously sacrificing herself in some moment of misguided glory.

Of course, I don’t believe all of the Scions are dead. So let’s speculate! I think Minfilia will be back as some form of avatar of Hydaelyn, considering the way she was called back into the tunnels beneath Ul’dah. Thancred won’t die because he’s Thancred, the dashing and lovable rogue that I tired of ages ago and Y’shtola because she’s kind of a mascot for Final Fantasy XIV. To be honest, I don’t understand why she is as popular as she is – I haven’t seen anything really exciting about her character. But I’m sure her magic saved the day for both her and Thancred, so that he can return to annoy me another day. Great.

I am much more worried about Papalymo and Yda, two characters I actually like and feel like I’ve kind of bonded with since those early levels meeting them in the Black Shroud. They are charming, fun and have such a great team going. They were also the first two to sacrifice themselves so the rest of the Scions could get away (much good that did in the end), so it makes sense that those two will actually stay dead. I mean, if all the Scions come back unharmed, the whole ordeal and all the drama at the banquet would feel a bit pointless.

Or maybe they are actually all dead? Nah.

 

Aftermath

The greatest thing with the aftermath of the whole thing in Ul’dah was seeing Alphinaud finally facing up to the fact that he has been an arrogant prick for ages now. The Crystal Braves was such a pointless move from the beginning, the whole idea born from his hybris. I lost all sense of sympathy for the guy at the banquet when he called us “his” Warrior of Light. Screw you, Alph. Minfilia didn’t even bother to point it out to him, so I guess she’s guilty as well – sure, we do everything they tell us to, but that still annoyed me. So seeing him broken afterwards felt good, even if it feels a bit petty to write.

Having Bremondt turn up to give us a ride was a nice touch as well, linking together the start of the 2.0 series with the end. I can’t wait to see more of Pipin, and now I’m really itching to use on my saved Fantasia to finally become a Lala. Much more so than an Au Ra – even if I’m glad that we finally got to see Yugiri’s true face! I still wonder how Au Ra will be introduced into current events and how the sudden influx of low-level half-dragons running around Eorzea will be explained.

So where does this all leave us? Well, itching for Heavensward, I guess. I never really considered what it would actually do to Eorzea itself, having only focused on the new lands coming in the expansion. We still can’t be sure what’s going to happen to Ul’dah once the Monetarists finally consolidate power, for example. Who helped them out behind the scenes? Obviously someone did. How will the other city states react? Will the Eorzean Alliance still be around without the Sultana and Raubahn? Will the war in the Carteneau Flats intensify, as you kind of would expect? Ample new room for PvP content, there.

The Warrior of Light is still free to roam as she will, since it wouldn’t make for two fun months of gameplay if all we could do was mope around Camp Dragonhead waiting for the Ishgardians to let us into their country (more about that in a later column) – what if all we could do was to be stuck in that room and play Triple Triad against Tataru until they let us out?