Let me start this particular column with an observation that should really accompany any and all discussion of future raid series for Final Fantasy XIV: We are, at this point, far into the weeds and at a point where there is nothing constraining the developers to prior franchise references. Neither Pandæmonium nor Myths of the Realm have any connection to prior franchises at all, and we’ve already run through most of the obvious big places to go for raids. Are we all square with that? Great.
My point here is not to look at places that seem definite or even necessarily likely but to pick at the various spaces within existing franchise lore that could lead in to a raid series. Probably a normal raid rather than an alliance raid, since the latter has most often tied in explicitly with other franchises, but I’m not going to ignore other possibilities. And there are still a few options, even if the overall list has been winnowed as more and more obvious candidates have been brought into the game in some capacity. But there’s some space left, just the same.
Gilgamesh
This one sounds silly, doesn’t it? And it is. Inherently. But where is it written that every single raid must be incredibly serious? Regardless of the stakes, it would be entirely acceptable if perhaps we had a situation with Gilgamesh that required our attention, especially since we already know that he seems to be… more capable of traversing the space between worlds than would seem reasonable. Heck, he might still be down there now.
So what makes this one particularly silly? Well, one of the recurring things about raid series named after a particular figure is that eventually you expect to fight that figure. Binding Coil of Bahamut? We fight Bahamut. Eden? We fight Eden. Omega? We fight Omega twice. You get the idea. But because of all the various multiversal versions of Gilgamesh, we don’t have to fight him once. Or twice. Or three times.
If the developers went this route, we could easily have a dozen raid fights where every single one of them is against Gilgamesh. Some of them might be different Gilgameshes, but they’re still all Gilgamesh. Just alternate versions of the same dude, every time.
It’s even funnier when you consider that we’ve already had three separate trial fights against Gilgamesh, and for someone who keeps collecting weapons, it would even track well enough. A repeating cycle of fighting three other Gilgamesh versions, then a Gilgamesh who’s scavenged all the weapons, then back to chasing him again. I’m smiling just thinking about it.
Sure, you can still have big stakes if you want to. But the idea of just chasing after Gilgamesh and going on a tour of his various versions would both be fun and be lore-appropriate. Poor Greg.
Midgardsormr/Kaiser Dragon
FFXIV has mined out most of the material that it can from Final Fantasy VI at this point, but you can still suck out some more of the marrow, and this is a potential path to doing so. In the original version of the game, the Kaiser Dragon (or CzarDragon) was a never-implemented superboss that seems to have been intended to unlock when you beat all eight of the legendary dragons, but it was never finished. Later versions did implement it, although the lore around it has remained a touch vague.
Now, at a glance, Kaiser Dragon looks similar to Shinryu. But it’s worth considering that Shinryu is pretty close in design to Midgardsormr, and there’s a lot we still don’t really know about the erstwhile father of the First Brood. There’s material to be mined here, in other words… especially if we’d just reconnected with the dragons who didn’t fly away like with Midgardsormr.
I mean, let’s face it, it wouldn’t be a huge stretch to imagine that Midgardsormr was not the only one of his race to set off with his brood. And it would offer an interesting twist to see Midgardsormr confronting a threat from his past, something he had long considered irrelevant. While we’ve been delving into a lot of draconic lore recently and I kind of suspect the next expansion will do so again, there’s room for the cosmic side here to rear its head once again – or, heck, to be a lingering presence in Meracydia that we have to deal with if that’s our next destination.
The biggest problem here – aside from referencing an obscure side quest in FFVI – is that the dragons in question aren’t terribly memorable as named. But that’s the sort of thing that can be easily fixed with a bit of lore and expansion in a raid series, to be quite honest.
Penance
As the optional superboss added to Final Fantasy X when it got re-released in Japan, Penance is an interesting concept because it basically has no lore. It shows up to fight the heck out of the players after they succeed in beating up all the Dark Aeons, and it offers the usual “If you’re able to beat me, you don’t actually need any rewards I can drop” motif. The vague implication is that it is some form of final judgment on Yuna and her party for assaulting Yevon.
Now, I’m not going to lie, originally I suspected that we were going to get something tied to Penance when the various Lunar Primals started showing up in the run-up to Endwalker. Alas, it was no such thing; indeed, the Lunar Primals seem to have just been a conceit to let us fight these Primals again without having to explain why, for example, suddenly Ifrit is an actual threat again when we bodied him like thirty levels ago and even beat up his stronger version.
But there are a lot of primals. Sure, it’d be silly to have another raid series consisting of new variants on the big six we’ve already fought, since that was… well, literally the Eden series. But there are some we didn’t see in Lunar form, either, and space to add to Penance’s aura of menace and danger along the way.
I personally think this one has some neat potential, especially as an implication of what we saw coming out of the end of the story explaining how summoning doesn’t have to include tempering as part of its process. I’d be curious to see a different take on otherwise forgotten enemies, and the potential of an indiscriminate force that seeks to lay down its own form of judgment for the WoL. Whether or not the WoL agrees with that judgment.
Of course, we could also dive into some content that was previously in Final Fantasy XI, but I think we’re going to end it here and potentially come back to ideas like Promyvion in the future. For now, you can feel free to leave comments down below or mail them along to eliot@massivelyop.com. Next week, I want to talk about a character we haven’t seen and hopefully never will, despite the long shadow cast by this character over the entire story. You know who I’m talking about; you play this character. Except you don’t, as I’ll talk about then.
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 Eliot Lefebvre from scrutinizing Final Fantasy XIV each week in Wisdom of Nym, hosting guides, discussion, and opinions without so much as a trace of rancor.
