I frequently like to make predictions for the future of Final Fantasy XIV that seem reasonable and make logical sense. I’d say “that’s kind of my job,” but it’s really more of a matter of just being a thing I do and enjoy doing. As a general rule, those predictions are ones that I feel at least reasonably confident will come true or make a certain amount of logical sense, and that’s why I do it.
But every so often you have a complete crackpot theory that you just want to share anyway.
Since the next letter from the producer isn’t until the end of the week, I decided that this week it’d be fun to just share a couple of absolutely absurd theories I don’t actually think will be accurate. Not because I think they’re likely, but because if by complete chance they turn out to be accurate, it’ll be amazing… and if (far more likely) they’re totally wrong, well, no harm no foul. I don’t think these predictions are right. But if they are, hey, it’d be funny.
The entire Arcadion arc is a work
All right, while I feel like there is a non-trivial overlap between our readership and fans of professional wrestling, those two diagrams are not a perfect circle. So let’s talk a little bit about pro wrestling and kayfabe.
Kayfabe, as a concept, is basically the altered reality bubble that exists around professional wrestling. Everyone knows that professional wrestling is scripted and choreographed (which is not the same as fake; these people are taking part in live stunt shows, so it’s not fake just because the ending is predetermined by writers), but the whole point is that nobody treats it that way. The performers need to act as if it’s all real. And that means a blurry line exists and some things are meant to appear real even outside of the squared circle.
Thus, the terms “work” and “shoot.” A “shoot” is when things are happening completely off-script and unplanned. A “work” is when something looks off-script and unplanned, but it is in fact completely on-script and planned and part of the cultivated unreality of the whole project. Andy Kaufman’s entire wrestling persona and feud with Jerry Lawler, for example, was a work; he made it look like Lawler genuinely hated him and even assaulted him on TV, but in reality Kaufman and Lawler planned the whole thing. They were friends, and it was just a stunt.
At the end of the first leg of the Arcadion, we get told that the Arcadion is secretly killing its brightest stars. A huge revelation! A shocking heightening of the stakes! And it’s probably real… but it is also exactly the sort of reveal that could be used as a work when the Warrior of Light doesn’t actually know any better.
Think about it. All you need to do to make this work in terms of the text is just have the last arc reveal that no, nobody is actually dying; they just wanted to engineer the look so you gave your all for a real-feeling big confrontation. No one was ever in any real danger. It’d turn what is otherwise a pretty standard sidequest series into the least consequential arc we’ve ever had for a normal raid.
Now, I don’t think this is what we’re actually going to get because as much fun as it might be in the abstract, in practice it would mean that players are suddenly told there were never any stakes to anything we were doing. Kinda don’t feel like that would totally land. Equally important, it would make the NPCs we’re interacting with feel like liars. Oh, sure, you could try to soften the blow, but I think most people wouldn’t really be on board for this one.
So I don’t think it’s likely, but I do think it’s just this side of possible. And it’d be kind of a wild reveal to say, “No, there was never any real danger,” although the execution would make a big difference.
Evil Surprise Sphene is a Voidsent
So this one is going to have a serious prediction sort of baked in because in order to say that Evil Surprise Sphene isn’t X, you kinda need to suspect what she is. And the answer to that feels reasonably obvious to me: If she’s not something totally new, she’s probably a sundered Ascian trying for a new play. The reason for that is pretty obvious: It’s the biggest and most obvious group of antagonists who aren’t all accounted for, and Yoshida had mentioned remembering the whole lineup but the Ascians haven’t come up otherwise at this point. It’s the most obvious link.
However, this is a column for crackpot theory, and this is my crackpot theory. Justification? Sure. For one thing, the post-Endwalker quests have put the Void on everyone’s mind. That’s not something we are necessarily going to deal with in our next expansion, but it is clearly building up to a big thing coming in the future, and the game does not want us to forget Golbez/Durante or Zero any time soon.
Second, let’s take stock of what this Sphene appears to be doing. What she says is that she’s going to make her some Endless, but from a practical standpoint what she appears to be doing is getting devices in place to very specifically harvest souls and make sure that she’s getting particularly strong ones. Given what we know about how voidsent operate, I’d say this is pretty understandable.
Of course, the obvious follow-up question is why. There’s no obvious reason that a voidsent of any variety would be trying to gather souls on the source or what scheme that could possibly be fueling. But to that, I would point out that not only are we currently in the dark about what the scheme might be, we also only just learned about it at the tail end of 7.1’s story. That’s not a failure of explanation; that’s just a lack of current data.
What does make it feel odd is the idea that a voidsent would travel this far to implement a scheme in Alexandria so soon after it popped into existence, which means this would have to kind of be a seat-of-your-pants thing. But that’s the sort of plot point that can be written around. I don’t think it’s terribly likely, but it’s not impossible by any means.
Feedback, as always, can be sent along to eliot@massivelyop.com or left in the comments down below. Again, I want to stress that I don’t really think either of these theories is terribly likely; they’re crackpot ideas that I wanted to put out into the world. That being said, this week we have the next letter from the producer, and with that we’ll have more details about patch 7.2 to react to, so that is exactly what I will be doing next week.
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.
