Let’s start at the very beginning, as The Sound of Music informed me that is a very good place to start: This column will have spoilers in it. If you have not finished the MSQ or the Arcadion story in Final Fantasy XIV’s most recent patch, this column is going to contain spoilers for both of these story arcs. That’s why it’s the column we do second, after you’ve had a couple of weeks to take on the content if you would like to avoid spoilers. Fairly warned be ye.
The 7.1 story wasn’t bad, but I also felt it took a remarkably long time to get going; the main story stinger that made a big impact was buried after a couple pieces of story that answered lingering questions that were not, at least to me, incredibly engaging. But now we’re here and this story immediately warped into high gear, let’s talk for a little bit about the patch, shall we?
Spheneposting
So a couple weeks ago I posted that our Evil Surprise Sphene was probably a sundered Ascian making a play for something. And now we know more about that story, so the question is whether or not I will own up to being wrong. And the answer, of course, is that yes. I was wrong that the simulant herself was some kind of Ascian.
But I was right about the whole thing being an Ascian operation because Calyx just comes out and says it.
You might not think that he does, but that’s because it is subtle. When he is talking to the WoL, he confirms it by calling his home shard the Ninth. This is pretty important. You may not think it is, and on one level it isn’t because when Yoshida himself called the shard the Ninth, I specifically pointed out that it wasn’t a big deal. The Unlost World is also the Ninth. Shards can have multiple names; it’s not unusual.
But Calyx’s saying that is a big deal. Not because of the information itself, but because he has that information. There are only two groups that might conceivably have access to that information: The Scions, and the Ascians. And we know for a fact that he didn’t learn that from the Scions, which means that the only remaining explanation is Ascians.
Obviously it’s impossible to know how long ago he learned this; for all we know, he learned it around the same time that original Sphene went on ice. It doesn’t tell us what is currently going on beyond his current plans that seem to involve more death, more destruction, and above all else more fear. But we can be at least reasonably sure that Calyx himself is in some way locked to the Ninth itself, given that he hasn’t directly appeared before us outside of it. What that means in a larger sense… remains to be seen, but it is probably important.
Beyond that particular bit of easy-to-overlook information, I was particularly pleased with this installment of the story. Things moved at a good enough clip, and I enjoyed seeing both how Wuk Lamat interacted with the actual Sphene and the overall situation as well as the hints at what Calyx appears to be planning. It would have been easy for the bits with original Sphene to get a touch tedious, but we were spared that; my one slight criticism would be that Zelenia’s presence was very hastily slotted in to justify the trial fight and no one had mentioned her prior, including Otis when he would logically have had reason to do so.
As a villain himself, Calyx is on the boring side, although I’m hoping he doesn’t stick around much past the next MSQ installment since his whole motivation feels a little played out. The “force the next stage of evolution” thing is a tired trope by now, and he doesn’t seem to have much more meat on his bones beyond that; my instinct is that we’re either going to see something big change with the next patch or we’re going to get a real villain reveal after his chest gets a deep-tissue massage in the form of a sword.
We’re definitely at a pretty normal-ish point for the x.2 MSQ where it seems we’ve got another patch worth of story and maybe more on deck, so it would still track if the story gets wrapped up in 7.3 or if it continues out until 7.5. I’m hoping for the former just because I think that structure generally works a little bit better, but we’ll have to wait and see with the next installment. At least this one didn’t bury the lede!
Doghouse
My biggest criticism of the Arcadion this time around is that unlike in the first tier, none of the people we’re fighting are all that memorable. Dancing Green is basically a less interesting Honey B. Lovely. Sugar Riot is like you had a time limit describing someone whose big style is just graffiti and art. And Howling Blade? While I appreciate that he was specifically called out as a face, he is unfortunately of the worst kind of face; he’s a natural face but has nothing interesting to him, making him kinda boring.
This does make some sense insofar as most of the actual character work goes into the Brute Bomber, whom we get to learn more about and who winds up serving as the real emotional core here alongside Eutrope. And yeah, Eutrope’s real motivation and how it ties to Retsarra should be the emotional center, but we don’t know about him until now, so it doesn’t really land.
A lot of second tiers of raids have a similar problem, but it’s especially egregious here because the writers knew Retsarra was going to be important. Why not introduce him earlier so the reveal has some emotional teeth? It didn’t have to be delayed like this, and delaying it doesn’t help matters!
That doesn’t mean I think this tier is bad or anything. The Brute Bomber stuff is genuinely good and tragic, and I like what is ultimately being set up for the conclusion of the arc, although it’s still ambiguous if this could turn out to be an elaborate work or not. (I still doubt it, but the possibility remains.) It’s more that this does just show some of the flaws of the usual raid story structure and this one falls afoul of them in a rather expected fashion. Still, I can’t say no to armies of cats.
Feedback, as always, is welcome down in the comments below or via mail to eliot@massivelyop.com. Next week, as we’ve still got a couple of weeks to go until we get to take part in Cosmic Exploration but I’m still in a crafting mode, I want to talk a little bit about Expert crafting, why I dislike it, how it ties into the history of the game’s various crafting eras, and what can actually be done moving forward.
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.
