Technically, Final Fantasy XIV’s patch 7.15 contains one piece of ongoing content… insofar as you’re going to keep turning in custom deliveries to Nitowikwe for several more weeks, and then weeks beyond that as well. But that’s honestly not how most of it presents. The bulk of it feels much more like it’s a story patch. Two of the big things that it adds are single quests, albeit single quests that pull in a lot of material.
That means that while I usually like to do more of the non-spoiler stuff in the week after a patch, this time it’s not really an option. We are talking all spoilers, all the time. If there is a quest here you have not done and are afraid of spoilers, I will do my best to not discuss details, but some are inevitable. So let’s talk about a whole lot of stories that don’t go anywhere significant, which isn’t actually a problem.
Brand boiled
We’ve had a Hildibrand story in every expansion other than Shadowbringers, but I think as a rule the stories work best when they feel like a part of the world just being itself rather than having to come up with new things to ram into Hildibrand’s orbit. That’s why I think Endwalker and the original Hildibrand line are the best of breed, while Stormblood’s outing was more mixed and Heavensward didn’t totally land for me.
It’s hard to tell how the arc starting now is going to go in the long run, but thus far it definitely feels more like the better side of things because instead of creating a new world of stuff for Hildibrand to bounce off, it’s taking advantage of the fact that Solution Nine is already kind of silly. Yes, it makes sense as a part of the world and how it is integrated with the story, but it is also weird and out of sync – and that’s where the line clearly takes a lot of its humor.
Amusingly, this particular arc is setting up jokes to be less based on the usual Hildibrand format of Fantasy Inspector Clouseau and more akin to something like classic Warner Bros. cartoons, whereby a character is doing an otherwise serious attempt at a genre piece (noire mystery here) and everyone else is basically having a laugh at the fundamental ridiculousness of the genre. And it also works because the writers are poking fun in both directions; there are a couple of great gags that are clearly built around characters assuming they can break the spoof.
Obviously, a single quest in what will be an expansion-long arc is too early to say if it works, but I think this is a strong start for this particular Hildibrand line. We’ll see what the next few quests hold. Aside from eggs.
On track
The unifying theme of these post-MSQ additions is clearly about picking up a thread the MSQ brought up along the way – namely, the connection between Alexandria and Tuliyollal. The two countries aren’t really at war, they don’t have a reason to be in conflict, and it’s even arguable whether or not Alexandria is a part of Tuliyollal at this point. But that’s also going to be really weird for everyone in Alexandria, even the people who used to be residents. And Nitowikwe’s deliveries are all about the logistics of exactly that in a way that underscores one of my favorite elements of FFXIV’s storytelling being about unusual problems from a human level.
For example, figuring out the logistics of connecting a railroad between a briefly time-accelerated kingdom that popped into existence is a completely fantastical problem, but it is also the sort of logistical nonsense that usually wouldn’t even be discussed because it’s not an epic adventure. But it ties into the idea of re-establishing old connections and just establishing new ones. And at its heart it’s the story of a pair of spouses trying to take on way, way more than either of them planned when they established a railway.
Thus far, of course, it’s still early days and most of Nitowikwe’s personality comes down to “lion mom takes her job seriously,” which makes a certain amount of sense. Still, since this character existed primarily as backstory tragedy back when we first encountered this closely parallel set of people out in Amh Araeng, it’s nice to have her take center stage here. I’m curious to see where this particular story goes, in other words, even if I do feel like there’s a little more space to explore things out in Shaaloani than I think we’ll take on a whole.
Seriously, between the ceruleum mine dust-up, the railroad station, the Hhetsaro, and the local traditions this zone has an entire game’s worth of dynamics that have mostly been background setting for other things. But that’s a more abstract grumble.
Crafting up a storm
So here endeth the gush because while I think we really have hit a good stride with role quests over the past few expansions, the crafting deliveries… are less a home run. Or more accurately, they’re a set of perfectly fine base hits that don’t add up into an interesting run of the bases because they’re a perfectly fine set of base hits that just take place in the same locale.
The role quests have all been themed around a central thing each time, but the crafting deliveries are all just focused around “here’s a place where the crafters go while they level for story reasons.” And that’s fine. That’s all right and it tracks. But when you then try to pull all of them together, there’s just no connective tissue. These people just live together, basically. I have people I see repeatedly in my apartment building whom I like, but we do not have overlapping narratives.
Now, I do like how this quest also ties into the idea of reconnecting with Alexandria, but it doesn’t really go anywhere with it beyond acknowledging that exists, partly because it doesn’t have anywhere to go with that concept. These stories are not overlapping or intersecting in a meaningful fashion. They just exist in the same spot. And that’s fine; most of the stories themselves are fine-to-good (the bunny boys fell pretty flat, but if that’s the price we pay for Oops All Fish Magic as a story arc, I’ll take it). But it means that I didn’t really buy the whole collective payoff.
I also feel that if we were supposed to be pleased with the big reward, that could have been seeded before now? Hey, what if the big decoration had been a string of beads? Wouldn’t that have more thematic import? Even feel like it was tying some symbolism? All right, I’ll stop.
Feedback, as always, is welcome in the comments down below or via mail to eliot@massivelyop.com. Next week, I’m not actually sure if the holiday schedule is going to give me the time to fuss about with the new Cloud of Darkness fight in the first place, so any sort of evaluation is going to have to wait until later. Instead, I want to talk about a sadly underused and underappreciated job that still needs some serious love despite receiving multiple extensive redesigns – Summoner. And no, it’s not just balance issues.
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.
