I've decided to put a little get to know my guy thing here as well as update this with my progress in the game.
Progress: Post Stormblood, pre Shadowbringers!
Character Info:
Name: Liatris Majalis
Origin: Au Ra Xaela, from a tribe of lorekeepers, storytellers and diplomats behind the mountain range in the Azeem Steppe (i made up this tribe before getting there in the game, as i didn't vibe with the canon tribes)
Age: early to mid twenties
Kind of a jock, genuinely believes that the power of love and friendship should be able to solve everything, gets vaguely offended if it doesn't. Very gay, kind of a slut. Very strong moral code
Character Lore under the cut
Lore!
His older sister went out to fight in the Eorzean Alliance against the Garleans, she died in the 7th catastrophe
Five years later he reconnected with his childhood penpal and best friend @weiss-hewley and decided to come join him in Gridania to become adventuerers together. He starts out as a lancer and events unfold from there.
Some fun facts!
While he has probably slept with half of Eorzea at this point he has not slept with Thancred because Thancred keeps saying weird stuff (the sexism etc)
Lactose intolerant
Didn't know what chocolate was until he came to Eorzea
Has been in a long standing secret affair with Raubahn since the celebration of the alliance in ARR (this started out as a joke about him being a slut and then got weirdly serious as the story developed to the point where this is now an integral part of his character)
Scared of ghosts
Sees a lot of his sister in Alisaie and is constantly slightly worried about Alphinaud
Regularly hangs around Anyx Trine to babysit the young dragons
Well @weiss-hewley and I finished Stormblood yesterday and my computer only overheated twice! Yay heatwave in europe (cries in global warming). We won't be starting Shadowbringers immediately as i'll be a on a week long conference trip and we didn't want to start Shadowbringers only to immediately interrupt it for a week.
And so, following the near death experience of fighting fake Zenos and with everyone but them in a coma, Weiss and Liatris have been sent on a mandatory rest and recharge vacation, while waiting for more information on what is going on the with the crystal tower.
Plans for this time include:
Visiting the Namazuo and the Moogles to do the remaining sidequests there
Finding out what happened to Hildibrand and maybe solve some crime in Kugane
Checking out the Garlean theatre troupe in Kugane
Finishing Void Ark
Doing the last sidequest in Ishgard
Doing the one new sidequest that appeared in Revenant's Toll
Playing the Crystal Tower Arc again with New Game plus for some extra emotional damage <3 and to refresh the lore around that
Starting the Job Quest for Reaper
Hopefully we'll be able to start Shadowbringers in about two weeks once i'm back from the UK because i have many!! Questions!!
Finished The Ridorana Lighthouse from the Return to Ivalice series
Started Contradicting Convictions in Ishgard
A favorite so far simply because Briardien shows up again and i have MISSED HIM, he's so weird!
Also due to the 40°C heat over the weekend, i ended up having to remove the top and side of my PC shell to be able to actually run the game, so that was fun
Finished the Return to Ivalice Series! Realized that perhaps the lvl 70 alliance raids were pretty difficult for me cause i forgot to do the full void ark story, oh well...
Anyway curious to see where the follow up side quest will go
The Blessing of Light is something that is intentionally left pretty vague by the story, probably as another way to let the player fill in the gaps with whatever they want, and while sometimes this manifests in the story treating the blessing like a bodysuit of kevlar, I think the much more interesting interpretation is to go full whump with it and establish that the only rule is that the warrior of light cannot die. Aside from the subplot in post-ARR/HW being more interesting with the real threat of death now upon them, it just adds so much sauce. We can magick away the possibility of their head getting chopped off with the superhuman reflexes Hydaelyn hath granted, and so it is very delicious to imagine someone who, rather than being unable to be meaningfully injured, is instead able to just keep going despite catastrophic bodily harm. The warrior of light just keeps fucking going, no matter how much they may wish they were dead. More blood than humanly possible spilling out onto the ground, face pale, hands shaking, still moving with eerie grace and agility, screaming with pain every time they bring another desperate strike down? Thats the good shit.
I recall the devs saying that party wipes in a dungeon are just the WoL having Echo visions on what Not to fucking do, implying that they hallucinate their death repeatedly before triumphing.
(Since i am apparently incapable of shutting the fuck up about this game)
This is my first playthrough of the game and personally I really enjoy the more grounded, political storylines a lot, so Stormblood really worked for me in that regard. I like how it kind of centers Lyse as a main character and her arc was pretty well done imo. The pacing felt a bit off at times but not in a way that it bothered me too much.
I'm putting my more specific thoughts under the cut for lenght but in general, I really liked Stormblood.
In no particular order:
I'm genuinely suprised by how well executed the whole imperialism plot was, i was expecting to get annoyed with it but instead found it to pretty good and especially the exploration of what living under and joining forces with empire does to a person
I looooooved the part in the Azim steppe (granted i also play an Au Ra Xaela so it was extra tasty), the side quests there really were some of my favorites, they made the place so lived in and i loved getting to know all the characters there. Especially the quests with Mauki the Dotharl and Esugen the Oronir were so so good. The Azim Steppe felt like such self contained adventure and I hope we get to return there again soon!
Also in general, this was the first expansion where we very diligently did all the sidequests as soon as they appeared and before leaving an area and it really enhanced the experience, it made me so much more inested in the msq and really helped to ground the story
I adore Hien so much, his character design is great and the (German) voice actor also did a wonderful job. I love that he is so incredibly earnest and I wish we would have gotten more interactions between him and Lyse
Lyse being made commander of the Liberation army felt a bit out of place since she had no real experience with that kind of thing, however since she is kind of the protagonist of the story, it made sense as a plot beat and I loved getting to see her grow more into her own and take charge more and more instead of letting other people talk over her
Lyse's and Alisaie's relationship was wonderful, i like how Alphinaud kind of got an older brother in Estinien in Stormblood and now Alisaie getting a similar arc with Lyse. But i will never forgive the story writer's for not including the cake in Limsa Scene!!!
In general all of the female characters in Stormblood really shine, i keep being suprised by how well the women of ffxiv are written
Fordola!!!!! Very cool character!!!! She and Lyse are truly two sides of the same coin and i think they should kiss about it
The tragedy of Yotsuyu really hit, i wish she would have gotten a chance to heal and grow but i get why she didn't. That's what patriarchy does to a bitch! I also think I would have disliked her arc way more if she had been one of the only women in the story but thankfully she wasn't
Getting to learn more about Raubahn and the Sultana was also really cool, i hope we'll see similar things for Merlwyb and Kan-E-Senna
In general I thought the exploration of the Mhigan Diaspora was pretty well done too, i lowkey found Ilbert to also be a really interesting character, I'm almost sad he won't get to see a free Ala Mhigo
I also enjoyed how the WoL in the cutscenes is shown to be valued for their emotional intelligence and as like a good listener, companion and friend, it really makes it feel like you are growing with the characters.
I like how the final battle against the Garlean army was very reminiscent of Cartenau but now with a strenghthened Eorzean Alliance
I'm very curious about the new Garlean lore too
While i loved Yotsuyu, Asahi? Truly such a piece of shit and all of it for a blond man. If these characters existed irl he would run a Zenos stan account
Speaking of: If Zeno has million haters, then I'm one of them. If Zenos has one hater, then I'm THAT ONE. If Zenos has no haters, that means I'm dead.
i take my tomestone to ishgard and show it to a sickly brume child and i say theres this band called imagine dragons do u wanna listen and he stares shellshocked off into the distance and says i dont have to imagine them
i take my tomestone to ishgard and show it to a sickly brume child and i say theres this band called imagine dragons do u wanna listen and he stares shellshocked off into the distance and says i dont have to imagine them
I love how one of the Ishgard job quests is about really intense self reflection and accepting your inner darkness and then the other two are just pet projects of some noble's weird fail son
Well @weiss-hewley and I finished Stormblood yesterday and my computer only overheated twice! Yay heatwave in europe (cries in global warming). We won't be starting Shadowbringers immediately as i'll be a on a week long conference trip and we didn't want to start Shadowbringers only to immediately interrupt it for a week.
And so, following the near death experience of fighting fake Zenos and with everyone but them in a coma, Weiss and Liatris have been sent on a mandatory rest and recharge vacation, while waiting for more information on what is going on the with the crystal tower.
Plans for this time include:
Visiting the Namazuo and the Moogles to do the remaining sidequests there
Finding out what happened to Hildibrand and maybe solve some crime in Kugane
Checking out the Garlean theatre troupe in Kugane
Finishing Void Ark
Doing the last sidequest in Ishgard
Doing the one new sidequest that appeared in Revenant's Toll
Playing the Crystal Tower Arc again with New Game plus for some extra emotional damage <3 and to refresh the lore around that
Starting the Job Quest for Reaper
Hopefully we'll be able to start Shadowbringers in about two weeks once i'm back from the UK because i have many!! Questions!!
Finished The Ridorana Lighthouse from the Return to Ivalice series
Started Contradicting Convictions in Ishgard
A favorite so far simply because Briardien shows up again and i have MISSED HIM, he's so weird!
Also due to the 40°C heat over the weekend, i ended up having to remove the top and side of my PC shell to be able to actually run the game, so that was fun
In honor of starting Shadowbringers in 1 1/2 weeks, here's post Stormblood @weiss-hewley being sad about G'raha Tia
Some character lore: Weiss fell for G'raha Tia really hard during the Crystal Tower raid series in ARR, so while Nero and Cid were experiencing all kinds of Yaoi tropes, things got real sad for Weiss real quick (OOC Weiss is playing in New Game+ until i catch up to where they are in the game rn so they KNEW what would happen and still made that character choice)
