Interquel patches in Final Fantasy XIV are always an odd cocktail. On the one hand, they consist of content that was intentionally held back from the original patch date, either because it wasn’t totally ready or to extend the length of the major patches (or most likely, both; this team isn’t in the middle of amateur hour here). On the other hand, they’re a lot lighter than the main patch by design. They’re meant to bridge the gap a little, give you more to do rather than really offer the same scope of changes that you got a couple of months prior.
This particular patch has a pretty meaty setup, with a totally new form of content along with a new set of tribal quests to pursue and more Hildibrand content, including our first taste of Hildibrand-based relic weapons. So how did it all go? Fortunately, these patches are light enough that I feel far more comfortable covering them altogether in one column, so let’s start unpacking this set.
Fewer variables
A lot of people are really digging on Variant/Criterion dungeons, which is why I hate being a bit of a contrarian by saying that I’m not really feeling them. Not because they’re awful or anything of the sort; the first set is just kind of… there. And some of that is no doubt because of the chosen focus, which seems as if it’s answering a bunch of questions no one particularly had.
There’s a lot to unpack about the history between Ul’dah and Sil’dih, to be sure, but the fact of the matter is that neither the main focus of this story nor the history unpacked here are relevant to anything going on. It’s just… there, offering a justification for what we’re doing without providing any particular reason why. There are no real stakes here, just “Nanamo wants to find out a bit of her own history” and then… she does that. Super. That’s fine, but it doesn’t really have a whole lot of weight beyond that.
Of course, a weak story isn’t necessarily doom for content, but unfortunately I feel the dungeons themselves are… not bad, but they’re sort of light on reasons to run them beyond currency for a very fixed set of cosmetic rewards, and that’s somewhat less enticing.
At least to my mind, once you have the rewards you want from these dungeons, you have no particular reason at the moment to go back inside. They’re not all that fast for tomestones; there’s no particularly special rewards awaiting within that can’t be purchased with currency earned by doing the runs. The boss mechanics are decent enough, and the scaling to party sizes is nice, but there’s not much rationale to keep doing them past the challenge and earning those rewards.
I’m reluctant to call this a major failing, obviously; this is a new style of content, and I’m currently judging them based on one example, where I’m sure there are more places to go in the future. But at least so far I’m a little cool on this particular offering. Maybe that will change when the next one rolls out and/or they start getting some other functionality added beyond just the limited cosmetic rewards.
Hildibranded
You know what makes me happiest about the whole Manderville Weapons thing? Sure, the content is pretty slim right now, but it lets you know right away that this quest line is going to still be ridiculous. Your weapons might be serious, but Godbert Manderville is going to ensure that the process of getting your relic weapons is going to be filled with absurdity all along the way.
Materially, this isn’t too different from how the first step of Bozja worked, albeit without the unnecessary and pretty terrible path necessary just to get artifact gear you could dye (that Varis fight was not a good use of resources); getting your first relic stage is pretty easy, just requiring a pretty abundant infusion of currency. But it’s silly and weird and the sort of thing that sets the stage for everything to come after, and I approve.
As for the actual Hildibrand story at this point… it feels a little unfocused at this point, probably in no small part because it’s kind of jumping all over the place. However, this really works out to its credit, as it’s led to much less of the all-too-common comedy wherein you have one sane bystander trying to figure out Hidlibrand and more unhinged nonsense all around. Here, no one is making sense, and when your “straight man” is an unhinged conspiracy theorist who is also an idiot…
It’s funny, in other words. And that’s what Hildibrand content is supposed to be, so… mission accomplished!
Although I do wonder if we’re going to wind up having a role for Gilgamesh in this particular story. We are getting a fair chunk of Final Fantasy VIII references here, so it’s not out of the question…
After the ending
I’m not totally sure where I expected the Omicron quests to go, but it wasn’t here. And it definitely wasn’t something I expected to be so intimately tied into the main themes of the expansion in ways that our more combat-focused first tribal quests were not, yet here we are and that’s what we’ve got happening.
The ending of Endwalker was very much about finding hope despite understanding despair, but the Omicron quests are instead focused on rebuilding hope for those who have lost it. It’s about exploring the same groups we saw in snippets across the Dead Ends and in Ultima Thule itself, piecing together bits of hope once more and changing the narrative that all of these beings had ultimately reached their nadir. There’s still something more out there, and this is where we’re exploring all of that.
It’s all a little bit silly, but it also kind of needs to be because unlike the vast majority of tribal quests, this one is dealing with some really heavy subject matter. You need comedy breaks like giving an Omicron rabbit ears because otherwise the whole thing starts to break down and you start analyzing what these various races have lost and the despair that consumed them.
The one shame is that the actual quest mechanics themselves are largely unchanged from the Qitari quests, and those were… pretty boring as quests, I’m sorry to say. So the story and lore are fascinating, but the quests themselves are a bit boring and it doesn’t help that Ultima Thule is a bit of a pain to navigate. I can live with that particular trade-off, especially since I expected the mechanical issues but not some actual meat to the story.
Feedback, as always, is welcome in the comments down below or via mail to eliot@massivelyop.com. Although I should note that “how dare you raise criticisms about Variant Dungeons, I’m liking them” is not actually feedback; it’s just being contrary. In fact, next week I’m actually going to talk about some other places to take the system that could use more explanation and dive into system changes that could improve my ultimate evaluation. So there.
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.
