There is an odd relationship between Final Fantasy XIV and crossovers.
There are, broadly, three categories of crossover that the game has engaged in. The first are the explicit crossover events where characters from another game just show up dropped into the world of Etheirys to faff about for a bit before gifting you cosmetic outfits and the like, then traipsing back off again. Second, we have integrated crossovers wherein the elements of a game are just revealed as a part of the world, with pieces arranged so that it turns out this is just a bigger picture of the Etheirys we’ve been exploring.
Third, however, we have the large-scale crossover where you just have to deal with the idea that large portions of this other thing are present within the world but are not inherently a part of it. That third one is what’s going to give a lot of people pause because we have experience with that… and gosh, it did not go well in terms of story, which is kind of a big deal.
A lot of players were opposed to the idea of the NieR crossover raids right from the beginning because FFXIV and NieR are pretty different from a storyline standpoint. However, that in and of itself didn’t really bother me simply because there’s space where you can make this work. My expectation was that the goal would be to carve out parts of the world to make this crossover work because… well, that’s what has happened previously.
The second category of integrated crossovers works well because all of them functionally do this. The Crystal Tower and Ivalice raids are both technically crossovers in this regard, but both of them treat the broad story beats and pieces of their source material as elements to be reconfigured and reworked as necessary. But YoRHa: Dark Apocalypse is just… a crossover. This is just 2B and 9S from the original game, except devoid of context or purpose or anything else.
But the story isn’t really about them; it’s about the two Dwarves who are initially comic relief. Except that said story also doesn’t say anything. I get what had been intended, but it just does not really work and largely feels superfluous, with a whole lot of narrative dead ends and failures to explain things.
To be clear, I love Yoko Taro as a writer and a creator; I was honored and humbled to meet him after an interview in Square-Enix’s press area and got to briefly talk with him without his usual mask. It was wonderful, and he’s awesome. His style just does not line up well with an MMORPG, it seems. Not a shock, but it still means that those raids were narratively bad.
Players have sort of been stuck on this for a while, and I don’t blame anyone for it. As someone happy to have the game go in new places, I know sometimes those places are going to not work – and when they’re permanent parts of the game, that can be a problem. But it’s one thing if, say, your raid series is an attempt to make Lahabrea sympathetic and relatable and it just didn’t work at all. It’s quite another when an alliance raid is predicated on a crossover and it’s mechanically good and fun but narratively pointless.
So now we know that the game is going to cross over with Final Fantasy XI. And that raises some questions because it’s indisputable that the game has obvious influences from the older MMO, but it’s also clear that the game has properly crossed over with the story on a couple of different occasions. Which route is this going to go? Are we going to have another explicit crossover with a different game’s story?
Rather than saying that I hope it doesn’t happen, I’m going to be clear and say that if it does happen, I hope it errs on the other direction. Instead of having our characters find slices of Vana’diel on Etheirys, I’d rather find our adventures bringing us to Vana’diel and exploring a new story there. We know that the story of that game has wrapped up (and even got a little coda), and there’s ample space for resolution there. Let us be the guest stars for a bit instead of greeting story characters.
The biggest struggle with any kind of crossover like this, though, is the stakes. What is the danger to Etheirys and what is the danger to Vana’diel? If it’s not clear or important, the whole thing starts to break down. It’s a delicate balancing act, which is part of the reason that more often than not you get the second version where the elements are lifted and rearranged to be a part of the existing world.
And to be equally clear, there’s tons in Vana’diel that would still feel unique and fun within the context of FFXIV‘s world. I was honestly kind of hoping that the lunar monsters would lead into something related to Promyvion within this expansion, for example. The benefit of having so much ground to cover is that you could make an entertaining raid series just focused on stuff from the base game. Heck, I’d be happy if Vana’diel were our exploration content and we were running around Jugner or Qufim.
So can we guess at where this is actually going to take place? One of the things I’ve noted in the past is that in each expansion, older expansions are relevant for at least one major slice of content, but it’s hard to generally predict where or when that will happen. In Stormblood, both the alliance raid and raid series took place in current expansion areas, but in Endwalker the alliance raid was located off in Mor Dhona. It’s possible for more Vana’diel content to be located in Tural (we are getting Moblins, after all), but it could also be in the largely unexplored regions of Ilsabard or north of Sharlayan or wherever.
While people have speculated that this might be tied in with the Iroha crossover event (and we have had that re-run a couple times), I’m honestly hoping it isn’t. Not because I dislike the character, but simply because that runs smack into the problem we’ve already discussed before: Making this an explicit crossover instead of taking a page from the successful ones introduces problems of stakes and narrative.
I don’t think there’s a risk of things turning out like NieR simply because that was the product of a creator who very much just enjoys screwing with his audience. But it did highlight a problem of making these events and very prominently shouting about what you’re doing as a mission statement in the first place. So I think it’s worth thinking about, even though we’re not going to be dealing with the raid itself for several more months.
Feedback, as always, is welcome in the comments down below or via mail to eliot@massivelyop.com. Next week, we’re coming up close on the game’s PAX East panel, so let’s talk about the major things that people have speculated about for the panel’s reveals and how likely they are in advance.
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.
