Gaius transforms like a magical girl and then we get exactly the uninteresting boss fight this dumbass deserves.
Most dungeon bosses have more engaging gameplay. I don't even know what his mechanics are because every time I've done this he just gets stomped into soup in a wave of particle effects by my gigantic party.
After the fight he casually walks away.
Okay bye
No seriously, he fucking walks out. He doesn't even run. The lights don't even go out. Brash, you preposterous halfwit.
And, again, remember that usually there are eight people here. And ALL of them just stand there while Gaius moseys away towards his giant doom mech.
okay there's the ultima weapon
what now
I've heard enough. Shoot him! Stick an arrow in his gob!
The back of Ultima Weapon's neck opens up and Gaius climbs inside. Does it need a pilot now? Gaius wasn't piloting it the first two times we saw it. I guess someone else was? Maybe it was Nero, and just no one ever gave him credit for it.
So Gaius switches the thing on and goes all bear witness to the demon weapon that will drag the world into the twenty-first century, and then we fight it. Or rather we stand around waiting for God to give us permission to fight it. The Ultima Weapon can't be damaged until about thirty seconds in when Crystal Mommy phones us up and tells us we must "look to the Light."
Yay. I feel so involved.
During the fight it barfs up Ifrit, Garuda, and Titan, and their ragdolls flop hilariously out of nowhere and onto whoever is tanking.
"No, how are you doing this!?" cries Gaius. Don't ask me, man. God's doing all the work.
Labradoodle appears and says some shit about the secret power within Ultima Weapon. Some ancient evil artifact I guess. Whatever, it doesn't matter, this never comes up again as far as I've heard.
Apparently Gaius didn't know. Gaius you complete tool, why did you listen to this guy? THIS GUY?
I'm reminded of Kingdom Hearts when MALEFICENT shows up out of nowhere and tells Riku that his best friend for life Sora totally forgot about him and he should go be a villain with her now, and he's just like yes sounds legit. Then again that was basically true, Sora pretty much HAD just found new friends and forgotten all about Riku, but that's a rant about a different Square Enix game with a completely shit story that somehow became massively popular. Maybe I'll do a long hate analysis about that one too someday after I'm finished with FF14.
Ultima Weapon does a giant glowy explody spell, but luckily Brash is protected by the power of boobs.
Not sure how this wasn't your intention, you're a dumb strong man. Blowing stuff up for no reason is all you're here for. Oh I guess this was your base huh I guess it probably wasn't your intent to blow up your own garage like a Floridian on the Fourth of July.
ohyeah also An Ascian Pisses Off Without Trying To Kill Brash With Lasers: 8
Anyway none of that shit about Ultima Weapon's true form matters because we smash the fuckin thing by punching it. Or rather my buddy smashes it by casting his doom spells at it doing like triple my damage.
Ultima Weapon starts exploding and Gaius forgets to buckle his seatbelt. He babbles a bit more of his vapid philosophical crap and then falls unconscious.
Should we like hide behind something or
Huh. Missed.
And so ends the threat of Ultima Weapon. All it took was God.
AH HA, FOOL, YOU THOUGHT YOU WERE DONE WITH THE BORING ASSHOLE, NOW IT IS TIME FOR THIS OTHER BORING ASSHOLE
We take a big elevator down and lose contact with Cid cuz of interference. On the way down, Gaius drops in from above somehow. Not sure what he was doing up there. I kinda thought he was down below doing the whole activating Ultima Weapon thing, but expecting anything to make sense at this point just makes me the idiot, doesn't it.
This encounter used to have a dialogue choice thing in it. Now it doesn't, so Brash just kinda glares at him and he acts like she responded, it's pretty scuffed.
(EDIT: I’ve been provided with a screenshot from the before times when the dialogue choice was still there.
I think it defaults us to fighting for Eorzea, so we have no choice but to be a puppet of the state.)
Here we get the big villain's big villain speech. It's a load of rubbish.
What are you TALKING ABOUT dude??
Whot?? But, we don't DO that! We do not in fact summon our gods, because doing so bleeds the land dry!
Wh- how does that even follow!? If they're false gods who never do anything and we never summon them to get them to do anything, how are they tools for our leaders who never get anything from them?? How does it follow that our leaders are weak for relying on false gods, especially when they aren't even actually doing that, and the gods aren't doing anything either?? This is such a non sequitur; he might as well have accused the Alliance leadership of being weak because they're light green!
I have no idea if the Twelve are real or not; they seem like pretty Fakey Fake Not Real gods like the ones we have in real life. Religion in real life is bad because it infects policy and creates discrimination on a large scale, but the spirituality in Eorzea is nothing even close to that because none of it is centralized and none of it has political authority. There is no Vatican for the Twelve spreading misinformation about contraception, or KKK for the Twelve getting people lynched or suppressing voters, or ISIL for the Twelve trying to abolish secularism in favor of religious scripture as law, there's not even the character archetype of The Local Priest Who Everyone Listens To. There's a church of Thal in Ul'dah where the thaumaturges hang out and I did all their quests and none of it had anything to do with Thal! There is absolutely no parallel between the culture of the Twelve and the summoning of primals!
I don’t even know what all of their names are! Nobody talks about them! People say shit like "Thank the Twelve!" or "Thal watch over you," and that's about it! There aren't any big oppressive political church organizations, the leaders don't use the gods as tools to maintain power, people barely even PRAY to the Twelve as far as I know, let alone sacrifice stuff in offering or pay tithes or whatever, WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU ON ABOUT, GAIUS? Is this what the writers think atheists are like?? That we just cannot stand other people having any amount of spirituality whatsoever regardless of its involvement or lack thereof in the state government?? Why is he like this?? Why is this his big villainous speech??
He's Wrong, but that's good, because the villain is supposed to be in the wrong somehow. But Gaius is the lamest kind of wrong. He isn't even morally wrong, or too extreme, or conflicted but going on sunk cost. He is just Flatly Incorrect. The rebuttal to Gaius's villain speech doesn't get to be an impassioned plea for the soul of humanity or the preciousness of life, it's not a refutation of his politics or a determined display of heroism, No. The rebuttal is "Um, no it’s not."
I suspect that his false gods schtick is another attempt by FF14 to sound dark and edgy. I think either the writers want Gaius to have some kind of point about Eorzea's ailing leadership, so they plastered this anti-spiritual crap that almost sounds like a logical argument onto him, OR, they wanted him to sound more like a colonizing superpower bulldozing native culture and tradition, so they made him talk about getting rid of Eorzea's worshipping practices. I'm not sure which.
Either way they failed at both. None of his accusations are true, so his assertions about Eorzea don't make any sense, so his evil motivation speech does not have a point about anything. And, the traditions surrounding the Twelve have been nebulous and extremely unimportant, so there's no attachment to them, so he's basically threatening to destroy something nobody cared about, which just makes him look ill-informed at best and completely gibbering off his meds at worst.
The only other two explanations I can think of are even less flattering; one, maybe this game was supposed to take place in Ishgard when this speech was written and nobody ever bothered to change it, or two, it's nonsense because the writers really do just have no fucking idea what the hell they're talking about, and Gaius is doing the politics version of Princess Unikitty going "Business business business, numbers…"
But who cares. Cuz none of that bollocks even matters. None of it meant anything even in context.
This is where all his pretend-philosophical 'false faith' gobbldygook is actually going. The only important quality for a leader to have is strength. The strong take what they want and the weak can get fucked. Might Makes Right. All he wants is to conquer things, because conquering things proves he's strong enough to conquer things. Underneath all that window dressing, Gaius van Baelsar is just a stupid fascist.
Final Fantasy 14 Part 27: Oh Hey I’m Still Here I Guess
This took a while to write down because it's really long and really stupid and I didn't know where to break it up into multiple posts. Plus I took a lovely little vacation back into trying to make a mod for Dawn of War: Soulstorm, but that's somehow an even bigger waste of time than this so let's get back into it.
PRAETORIUM!
It's been a strange and difficult thing to examine Praetorium in detail after having been very effectively trained to ignore it.
Anyway, what the hell is happening. Fly in, land with Cid, hey look my party member is actually in the cutscene, wow.
Place is getting shelled or something, not sure by who though.
Gotta say again, I do like the look of the place.
We kill some guys, grab some keycards, making our way deeper into the fortress.
Whoa, it's Gaius! Just, like, alone, in this room. If we take him out that's like the whole invasion over. Awesome, let's get him!
Or let's wait patiently for him and Cid to talk about their history and about Cid's dad. He offers to let Cid join him because it's destiny and all that stuff.
Yo Cid, can I just like kill him? I mean, he's like basically the entire problem; literally the leader of the whole enemy force. Might be more important than your unresolved dad issues? Nah? Okay. I'll just wait over here.
Huh? Oh! Hey thanks for remembering that I exist, FF14.
In a rare instance of actually making a decision, Brash responds with a glare to indicate to Gaius man fuck you.
Maybe you should have thought of that earlier before I broke all your shit and killed half your legion of doom.
While the big robot comes in, Gaius leaves on a very slow descending elevator. Probably should have attacked him sooner. Standing around like an idiot looks dumb when it's just Brash and one buddy; imagine how stupid it looks when there're an entire eight players in here.
After pulping the giant robot we split up, with Cid staying here to do control room type stuff and maybe give us an idea of where the hell we're going, since we didn't know before. This is the worst plan.
Hey look a button that every player has to press, just after a whole bunch of buttons that only one player has to press, I SURE HOPE SOMEONE DOESN'T GET ON THE LIFT WITHOUT PUSHING THIS BUTTON BECAUSE THEY DIDN'T KNOW EVERY PLAYER HAS TO PUSH THIS BUTTON BECAUSE IT'S THEIR FIRST TIME PLAYING THIS DUNGEON AND THEY'RE LAGGING BEHIND AND THEN THEY RIDE THE LIFT ALL THE WAY UP ONLY TO FIND THEY MUST THEN RIDE IT ALL THE WAY DOWN AGAIN SO THEY CAN PUSH THE BUTTON AND THEN RIDE THE LIFT ALL THE WAY BACK UP A THIRD TIME
THAT WOULD REALLY FUCKING SUCK FOR THAT PERSON, WOULDN'T IT, FF14
LOOK ME IN THE FUCKING EYE, FF14
Oh hey Maggie's here.
Cid tells Brash we'll need Maggie's firepower to break open a bulkhead we passed earlier, so Brash straps into wait where did my buddy go
FF14 could you get your fucking story straight about whether I have a team or not for FIVE FUCKING MINUTES
We get an odd change of pace here, as now we ride around in our mecha Big Bird and get to blow shit up. Though, we only have two abilities, one of which is greatly superior to the other, so really we only have one button to push for this whole section. Maggie is ridiculously overpowered though, so it could have been potentially cathartic to rampage through all these guys a little bit, but it's usually undercut by there being seven other people in seven other Maggies in here with you, generally forming a big silly murder train that blows through all these huge groups of enemies without even slowing down. I would often just use the auto-follow command on someone else and then sing Colonel Hathi's Dawn Patrol into chat for this part.
We overload Maggie's cannon to blow a hole in the big door and Maggie shuts down, so back on foot.
Next up we run into Nero, and it looks like Brash is just as immediately done with this asshole as I am.
She looks ready to renegade interrupt his stupid face. She doesn't of course. Instead she, again, waits patiently for him to talk to Cid over my phone.
Nero dyou want me to just put you on? You can have it out with Cid and I'll just get out of your way.
Nero blathers for over three entire minutes about how he always hated living in Cid's shadow while the eight person adventurer party just stands there looking as dumb as Brash. I will remind you that these cutscenes are unskippable.
Wait "in the midst of activating" Ultima Weapon? It wasn't activated before? It seemed pretty fucking activated when it mulched the three primals and then shot lasers at the Enterprise. Why isn't it activated anymore? Did the batteries run out?
I make jokes but seriously, what is actually the combat readiness of this thing? This is that thing I warned about in like the very first post; this is a hole in my understanding of how this world works that is actively interfering with my ability to comprehend the events of the story. Are we supposed to be scared that Gaius is ABOUT to use the Ultima Weapon? We've already seen him use it TWICE! It is DEFINITELY up and running, at least enough to mulch three primals and shoot lasers at the Enterprise! How and why is it back in the garage in the midst of being activated? How does that make sense?
I'm not saying this CAN'T make sense. Like for real maybe it actually IS out of batteries. That is a thing that can plausibly happen to giant robots. Nobody says that anything like that is happening though. I think there's something about unlocking Ultima Weapon's super ultimate true form or something once we reach it. Okay, fine, but why doesn't anybody mention that so that the audience can fucking follow along with the bad guy's actions? If I have no idea how the bad guy's plan is supposed to work, he just looks really stupid for keeping his giant super weapon locked up in his basement instead of using it to destroy the protagonist, or one of the cities, or the army we have surrounding this place.
And amid all that shit we still have to sit through TWO DIFFERENT characters talking to Cid about his past for entire minutes of uninterrupted screen time while the player characters literally stand around waiting.
Oh look, Nero mentions the Echo protecting Brash from tempering, and he makes it sound like fighting primals wouldn't be possible if she didn't have it. Man Nero's just pulling out all the stops, huh. We're going on a grand tour of all the greatest hits of how stupid and nonsensical this game's plot is.
So we beat up Nero and then the lights go out and he disappears. Not sure how he did that but whatever, who cares. Cid says there's been a giant power surge below us, so we'd better get cracking. Guess the power out wasn't Nero's doing at all, so he just got ULTRA lucky.
An awful lot of stuff happens in this next section all at once, and most of it is dumb, so there is a lot to unpack here. I’ll start with Cid’s damage.
While in flight, Cid gets all introspective. He takes off his goggles to reveal the little grey forehead eye thing that pureblood Garlemald people have, and then he has… Okay how do I explain this.
Cid has a crazy ass fever dream memory thing about like his entire backstory. It's presented a lot like the visions that Brash gets, with him holding his head and wincing and then everything goes fuzzy and gets covered in TV static. I don't think he has the Echo? The stuff we get shown is all symbolic and stuff anyway, not explicit events as they happened like the Echo shows Brash. Maybe it's just Ubik showing him the truth of who he is.
Cid exposits for quite some time about his history in the Garlean Empire as a prodigy. Apparently his dad was like the main guy who worked on the Meteor Project, which was that thing that happened five years ago where the Garlean Empire tried to drop the false moon and caused (Rucks voice) The Calamity.
Cid started to see Gaius as his father figure instead, but Gaius is also a weirdo obsessed with crazy world domination shit, so Cid fled to Eorzea, taking Biggs and Wedge with him.
Then he,
I'm honestly not sure.
During this flashback, he gets his goggles from… Brash? In the past? I guess Brash time travels back and gives him the goggles at some point? In midair no less. Um, okay? What? No seriously what? What the hell just happened?
And then he just keeps going with his flashback. Apparently this has something to do with 1.0 WHICH AGAIN I HAVE NO ACCESS TO, THANKS FOR MAKING IT VITAL TO UNDERSTANDING WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING HERE. Something about the Echo letting you time travel or some shit? I dunno. Anyway it doesn't matter. This sequence has nothing to do with anything.
uh, i guess?
Anyway Cid gets his memories back and says some inspiring shit about having remembered his past and also his purpose. Wow he sure is important, I'll just be over here.
I mentioned earlier the idea of building up to Cid's triumphant return, well here it is, yay. Now he has regained his memories, great, good for him I guess, does this matter at all? We're already on the airship heading for Garuda's place, so he didn't need to recover his memories to do the stuff that we needed him for. There's not really much of a contrast between his character now and his character from earlier, except that he's more confident I guess? I didn't know what Cid was like with all his memories intact before, so I couldn't be excited for him to get them back, and now that he has them he doesn't do anything with them, so I can't be glad that he's better than before. He says to Alphinaud "sorry for being a burden," but he wasn't a burden at all. There was nothing we wanted him to do that he wasn't able to do.
I can see what they were trying to go for with this character arc, but it had no stakes and has no impact, and it doesn't have anything to do with the player's actions so it also isn't rewarding. At no point was I engaged with Cid as a character.
Alf is talking. I wish he would stop talking. He will never stop talking.
He dramatically reveals that Marques is actually CID GARLOND OH MY GOD
who the fuck is cid garlond
Oh right, the genius engineer guy who founded Garlond Ironworks and all that. Biggs and Wedge's old boss.
Hey incidentally, yo Alf how did you know that? I said how did you know that. ANSWER ME THING IN THE MOUTH FACE
Cid sure seems important for a guy I don't know. Heard the name a few times before but the game is acting like I'm being reunited with a good friend and this changes everything.
Seems he was from the previous version of the game before it became A Realm Reborn. Yknow that part that can't be accessed anymore. Yeah you're assuming pretty hard that I care about this guy, FF14. I don't. I don't know who he is.
If you're going for a dramatic exciting reveal that we get to hang out with this awesome dude, you need to establish that he's an awesome dude first, but you also have to hide the fact that you're telegraphing his return. If you talk about him a lot then the audience will assume it's because he's going to show up so your dramatic reveal will still fall flat. To avoid this you need to establish how cool he is in a way that looks like it's going to pay off in a different way or like it's not something that needs to be paid off, like maybe having somebody exposit about the ways that Garlond Ironworks has already changed the world, focusing mostly on things that are currently relevant and mentioning Cid as the badass inventor who created and normalized the technology or something, and man if only he were still around we'd have this problem sorted. That way the player would be introduced to Cid from a historical point of view and have the impression he was super cool, but it would feel like just some background for some other thing that's going on. Maybe you could have the player utilize or at least witness some Ironworks technology in action to overcome some otherwise insurmountable obstacle. Not airships though because I never use them so who cares.
Though if they had found a way to make airships more important and useful, that would work. That would have been great in fact, because we need Cid's airship.
The author has decided that Alf runs the show now, and Alf wants to kill Garuda, the primal summoned by the Ixal bird men. Ostensibly she's the toughest and cruelest of all the primals. The world thinks the Scions are dead because news of that apparently got around really quickly off screen. Alf wants Garuda dead to show the world that the Scions aren't beaten yet. I mean I would have suggested we just go and like tell people. Maybe we could go talk to Merlwyb, Brash is a Storm Captain, maybe they could like
Nah let's go do a really long Garuda chapter now because Alf says so.
Does she? Could've fooled me, everybody in Coerthas seems more concerned with other things. In fact this is literally the only time that I can find that Garuda is mentioned as actually doing anything at all, and we don't even see it, we just do all this shit on Alf's word alone.
Would it? I didn’t know all the beast tribes were in such close contact with one another. Seemed to me they were all really far apart and quite isolated from each other. Whatever, Alf says it, and he is the main character. Garuda's surrounded by a tornado or something so we need some help getting to her, but don't worry because Alf has a plan and also all the agency in the story. That’s what Cid and his super airship are for.
Alf tells Brash to head north and ask people about it, starting with some people in northern Gridania. The trail leads to a new location, a snowy place called Coerthas with a few settlements inhabited by people of another country called Ishgard. I'll have a lot more to say about Ishgard stuff later since that's what Heavensward is about.
Summary for now, they're very Templar-y, highly conservative and religious, with holy knights and priests and inquisitors and heretics and all that, and they're locked in some ancient war with a bunch of dragons. And of course, like many conservatives, they're generally xenophobic isolationists who support a despotic authoritarian theocracy.
Brash embarks yet again on a long and almost completely unconnected journey to acquire a thing which will let her fight a Primal and I'm really starting to forget why fighting Primals is so important since they don't seem to ever do anything. If it hadn't been explained that their existence by itself is disastrous for the environment, I'd say just let the beastmen have their primals. Except Ifrit, those lizard guys are real go-getters.
I wouldn't mind this long journey to acquire a thing, but it does start to get really nested and really far from the main objective. It would be nice if these smaller objectives had ANYTHING to do with stopping Garuda. Like sprinkle in some stuff about the Ixal causing problems, emboldened by Garuda's presence. Then again, if Garuda were a more urgent problem maybe it'd just make all of this other unconnected stuff seem like an even stupider waste of time.
Surely there's some middle ground though, where Garuda is vaguely present for this Ishgardian politics stuff so that she does seem like an actual problem that needs solving and not just a boss we're supposed to fight because that's how video games work, but isn't so great a threat that all the Ishgardians deserve to be punched in the stomach for getting in Brash's way. Or, maybe it could just be written so they aren't getting in Brash's way for stupid reasons. This is two primals in a row where a large section of the storyline in between learning of the primal and defeating the primal consists of "Then some fucking idiots get in your way for stupid reasons."
I would have much rather just gone into the Kobold mines and done Kobold related stuff for three hours instead of putting up with the Company of Assfuckers. Certainly the Ishgard stuff is vastly superior to those losers, and lots of this comes up later which is good, but right now it all has nothing to do with Garuda. Either it should have, or it should have been elsewhere in the story. It wouldn't have been that difficult to tie the two topics together, I mean the Ixal are like right over there, they're literally within walking distance of this place, and one of these quests even does have Brash rescuing a dude from some of them. And yet the rest of it is all dragons dragons heresy dragons heresy heresy.
Not only is Garuda not a problem, but her Ixal aren't much of a problem either, apparently. Maybe we should look into rescuing Minfilia instead for a while. But no, gotta listen to Alf, and he says we gotta kill Garuda so the world will know the Scions of the Seventh Dawn aren't really dead. They will be soon if we don't rescue them from the Garleans you stupid twerp.
So instead of killing Brash the villains of the story decide to kill everyone else. Minfiila mentioned that there's some more primal trouble on the horizon and asked Brash to head back so they can discuss that. But then, surprise, Brash comes home and finds the Waking Sands is a bloodbath. Metaphorically anyway. Looks more to me like everyone got drunk.
I guess the topics of colonization, torture, kidnapping, rape, forced prostitution, and satanic human sacrifice resurrection rituals are okay to tackle but showing more than a sauce packet's worth of blood is too grown up.
family friendly.
Brash finds the sylph, Noraxia, on the floor dying in Minfilia's room, and then has a vision while talking to her showing what happened.
The Garleans showed up out of nowhere and killed everybody with zero resistance. This attack force is led by the Grand Imperial Murder Clown herself, Livia. I think Livia is the primary reason some people think Gaius is smart. He stands next to Livia sometimes. She says she's looking for Brash but finds Minfilia instead. Minfilia surrenders and offers herself in exchange for Livia not killing any of the civilians. Livia takes Minfilia and then kills them all anyway, including kicking Noraxia into the wall, and then she also kills one of her own men because he was killing the civilians a bit too hard or something and it was annoying her. You guys I think Livia might be a baddie, not totally sure though.
Livia then fucks off instead of waiting around for Brash to come back. Apparently she's only after Brash because she wants to study the Echo so Minfilia will do just fine. After the vision, Noraxia delivers a message that Minfilia told her to get Brash to a safe house at the church, and then Noraxia dies. Brash is sad. At least I think she is, I think she's so tall that it fucks up the camera placement.
So couple things.
First, minor note, the nature of the surprise attack. How they came out of nowhere is addressed later, so I won't take points off for that. They actually do have someone be like 'wow they came out of nowhere, didn't seem to disturb the rest of the town, how'd they do that?' So that's not a problem, the problem is that I already had no trust in the authors because of how stupid a lot of this other shit has been. I was wondering how Livia and a strike force of Garlean soldiers showed up at the Scions headquarters so suddenly without anybody outside noticing and then disappeared without anyone seeing them, but lots of baddies are doing shit like that all the time in this story. When someone within the story pointed out that it was indeed strange, I was like 'oh you MEANT to do that?' This is why trust in the author is important. If you trust the author then things that don't make sense become intriguing or scary mysteries. The audience assumes the author isn't just making a dumb mistake or being lazy.
Second, these visions are getting really irritating on a narrative storytelling level. The purpose of this vision here is to show Brash and the audience what happened at the Waking Sands. But, Noraxia is also here, and could just tell Brash what happened with a flashback. The vision might be useful if there was no one left alive but they still wanted to show the massacre to the audience, but a flashback is perfectly serviceable provided there's someone we can assume to be relating the events to the character. Same goes for some of the previous ones, like Frixio could have just TOLD Brash that he'd seen Nero and the other Garleans in the forest. As it is, a vision of what happened interrupts Noraxia while she is explaining what happened, and I guess she was just kind of helpfully waiting for the vision to be over before giving Brash a very important message and then dying. Thanks for your patience, Noraxia.
(weed whacking lol)
Third, dissonance in threat expectations. The Garleans are met with almost literally no resistance, (there are two dead Garleans, I think one was the guy Livia shot, and it looks like the other one fell down the stairs).
Man, the Scions of the Seventh Dawn must suck pretty bad, since my only experience with the Imperials so far is wiping them off my shoes. If this is an attempt to raise the stakes and show how dangerous the Garleans can be, it's a bit late. Lots of people have TOLD me that the Garlean Empire is a thing to be feared, but it's never been shown. This wouldn't in itself be bad since this massacre scene could be the first time the threat is properly demonstrated, but the problem is that what HAS been shown is the opposite.
Garlean guys suck. They're dumb stuck up losers, and Brash easily beats the shit out of them every time they meet. This just makes the Scions look awful because I already have the impression that the Garleans are awful and I have no impression of the Scions. Speaking of which,
Fourth, why do I have no impression of the Scions? Like Minfilia says something about the others being "innocent civilians" and my first thought was "wait civilians? The Scions of the Seventh Dawn are some kind of fighting force or something, right?" But then I thought "Wait, are they? Actually come to think of it, what did all these people back here do all day? What were they here for? WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE?"
In my first playthrough I barely talked to them and then when they all died I thought oh maybe I should have talked to them. But this time around I talked to them as much as I could, but the best I could gleam was that they had all "joined the Scions." Okay? To do what? It doesn't seem like anybody else here is fighting Primals with their fists. What the hell was this outfit doing before I got here?
Well guess it doesn't matter much anymore.
I quite like this next bit. Brash heads to the church out by Camp Drybone again. Besides getting to hang out with that Marques guy a bit more, the next few quests are about cleaning up after the massacre, including going back and gathering up some of the bodies so they can be delivered to the cemetery.
Oh no, it's whatshisname, I'm so sad. Again no blood or anything, but I'm less bothered by that than I am about being able to get a really up close panty shot of this corpse in the back of a wagon. That's pretty messed up.
Damn it FF14 I even complimented you before on your armor design generally not being like this. Out of all the good costumes in the game you gave this lady the panties one?
Brash also gets to deliver Noraxia's remains to the sylphs. We spend rather a long time dealing with all this, though I'm not quite sure what the intention was. I suppose I ought to feel sad of course, though that's a bit hard since I didn't really know any of these guys. Didn't even know they were back there. I mentioned the Edda Goes Crazy level 50 dungeon before. Part of the introductory quest for that dungeon includes the lalafell of that party asking about the other girl who'd been with them, Liavinne, and Brash tells him she died in the attack on the Scions at the Waking Sands. I was like what she did?
But oh yeah there she is. Never noticed her back here before. She never did anything. None of them did anything, except that guy we talked to once about the Ala Mhigo Resistance. They don't even have sidequests to do. If not for that one guy you could go the entire game without ever going to the back room.
Maybe I'm supposed to feel alone and helpless? Well Brash seems to be the only remaining Scion at the moment, but she still has the sylph allies, and I assume all our allies in the three armies are still there. I'm not really sure why we didn't go to one of them for help, especially seeing as Brash is a Storm Captain of the Maelstrom with her own squad, but of course that can't matter because it's all optional. Like I was complaining about with the Kobolds and beast tribe befriending thing; being optional side content means it cannot ever impact the main story in any meaningful way no matter how much it should matter that Brash is a Storm Captain of the Maelstrom with her own squad. But even so, this hush hush secret message getting Brash to a safe house way out in the desert like she's in immediate danger feels kind of weird, especially since the guy running the church doesn't really help in any major way beyond being friendly and letting Brash stay there. Nobody ever comes after Brash. In fact we saw Livia specifically stop looking for Brash because she captured Minfilia.
Still, this segment is good down time, and overall I like that it's here. I just wish I'd cared more about all these dead characters before they died. Reminds me of Aerith.
The player then spends the next Extremely Long Time doing a bunch of stupid bullshit that I won't recount in full because NONE OF IT FUCKING MATTERS EVEN A LITTLE BIT.
The gist of this chapter is Y'shtola says we should go gather information on Titan and we should start with the guys who defeated him the last time. Okay, with you so far. But then the first guy we talk to is a liar who wastes our time, and then when we DO go talk to one of these "Company of Heroes" former mercenaries, this fuckwit sends us on a preposterously long Prove Your Worth questline before he'll tell us anything useful.
This quest involves talking to and doing multiple quests for each of four other former Company of Heroes dickheads, visiting all these new locations, and even an entire dungeon, and as I said, NONE OF IT MATTERS.
Oh my god! I don't CARE, DUDE, I HAVE TO GO KILL TITAN!!
Then at the end this asshole is all like 'psyche turns out that wasn't all stupid busywork at all, we were each testing you because we swore an oath or something to make sure anyone who would fight Titan was a true hero. And we decided to test you by making you do a fuckton of stupid busywork.'
Why yes I DID in fact believe you truly were that fucking stupid.
You put me through all this garbage because YOU wanted to be sure I wouldn't fuck it up because YOU just COULDN'T TAKE IT if someone ELSE died trying to save the city state of Limsa Lominsa from TITAN? I should just let him kill all of you. In fact, I should murder all five of you right here and now.
Only now does this guy tell us anything useful. Or rather he has his lackey tell us something useful. This other guy, who is the only member of the Company of Heroes I don't want Brash to murder because he's the only one who doesn't waste our fucking time, tells Brash and Y'shtola how to reach Titan's lair.
Getting there is a bit of a pisser because he's the god of Kobolds and they live in a giant underground labyrinth that's basically impossible to navigate, but luckily the Kobolds have their own aetherite network, and if we find one of those big crystals on the surface, a Sharlayan scholar should be able to get Brash into Titan's place even if she hasn't attuned to the destination. Y'shtola is one such scholar, she pulls it off, which makes her infinitely more useful than Yda and Papalymo and Thancred put together, and Brash goes in and punches Titan to death.
So there is a lot to talk about in the Titan Chapter about why this whole section is awful.
STUPID POINTLESS WASTE OF TIME
None of these quests have the slightest thing to do with Titan. No one mentions him, no one is afraid of his return, nothing. The stuff we do isn't useful in any way. It's mostly collecting ingredients for a banquet and doing dumb pointless tasks to please some assholes. We could have at least been like acquiring or crafting special weapons or armor or items, things to use against Titan or things that will allow us to reach him through the labyrinth. They don't even pretend to be teaching Brash some kind of lesson that will in some way be important, or training her to make her stronger.
These unrelated tasks aren't even daring and amazing unrelated tasks. Were they supposed to be? The old fuck in the desert is the only one who remotely does that with hunting some big sand worm and fighting a veteran lizardman warrior, but the rest of them have you basically punching larger than average wildlife or picking flowers. I guess the goblin has you kill that dragon for whatever reason, but it's in a dungeon so it might as well be a nitrous oxide induced hallucination for all the relevance it has outside of gameplay.
I HATE THESE ASSHOLES
All this time wasting wouldn't be such a bad thing if we got to interact with some cool interesting characters or parts of the world. I mean I'll play any amount of Tales of Vesperia sidequest nonsense if it means I can hang out with Estelle and Rita some more.
Waiting tables minigame? Fucking sold.
But here in FF14, aside from the desert oasis town full of sexy catgirls, there's basically none of that either. There's this rich asshole's beach villa, a town that makes wine, some nowhere outpost in a swamp, and some hole out in the jungle where we can have a dungeon and fight a dragon for some reason.
We don't even get to talk to the sexy catgirls as part of the main quest, just their shitty creepy patriarch or whatever he is. He sucks and is rude, and the others aren't any more fun to talk to. I hate all of these NPCs very much. Were they supposed to be fun? Was I supposed to think they were cool and interesting? HOW? HOW CAN WE NOT HATE THEM? What the hell kind of writing is this? None of the shit they demand of you is necessary, it's entirely because these jerks are deliberately being obstinate.
The loser who was only pretending to be from the Company of Heroes says some vague horseshit about you doing his farm chores because he's testing you, and he's a dick about it. Then we expose and humiliate that guy and go talk to a REAL former member of the Company of Heroes and HE DOES EXACTLY THE SAME THING, AND IS ALSO A DICK ABOUT IT.
Even Y'shtola is pissed at them, and does a cute animation where her tail stiffens up.
But we don't even get to hang out with Y'shtola; she goes and does other stuff.
If we WERE supposed to hate them, then I guess well done for making a bunch of annoying dipshits that I hate, good job, but I still hate them and I hate talking to them and I hate doing their stupid laundry and this isn't fun. Also, why don't we get to settle up with them in some way? Like I can understand why they wouldn't let me just kill all of them no matter how much I want to, but can I push that psychopath into the water at least? Maybe throw a pie in one of these fuckers’s face? Something? Anything?
Nope, I guess Brash is just totally fine with all this. This is why I can only characterize her in my head as a gigantic idiot and a gigantic doormat. That is the only personality that makes sense with the in game actions I have witnessed of the Warrior of Light.
HOW DID THESE LOSERS BEAT TITAN EXACTLY
Now this isn't a complaint about power levels, or even a complaint about the age old RPG problem of what exactly are the physics involved in defeating a giant monster god made of stone and lava with your sword and arrows. Some people in Eorzea are serious badasses who can fight giant monsters, whatever, I can accept that. No, I'm talking about tempering again.
The game seems to have forgotten about it. Remember tempering? That horrifying power of gods to instantly and permanently mind control anybody nearby, and Brash is immune to it and this is one of the reasons why she's special? This plotline about other non-immune people being able to beat Titan apparently completely forgot. Except, it didn't. They mention it right there.
Yes, Brash is immune to tempering, which will help her against Titan. They bring it up. Y'shtola explicitly says Brash is well equipped to face Titan because she is immune to tempering. And then, they just CONTINUE TO NOT EXPLAIN how people who are NOT immune to tempering are able to fight Titan AT ALL.
This is getting weird and uncomfortable! Does nobody else have a problem with this!? What the fuck is up with tempering!? HOW CAN OTHER PEOPLE FIGHT PRIMALS??? TELL ME!!
MORE HAPHAZARD GAMEPLAY AND STORY INTEGRATION
Here's that part I was talking about before, where aetherite networks become an important element of the plot. As mentioned, Brash is able to get to Titan's lair deep underground by using a Kobold fast travel station. So fast travel is definitely a part of the world and not just a gameplay abstraction.
Right away though Y'shtola says something about needing to keep it open as a means of egress, except we can teleport to a fast travel station from anywhere with the Teleport or Return spells, so I'm not sure why. Again, is this a gameplay only thing or not? So, what, the aetherite network is a real thing in the game world but the Teleport and Return spells aren't?
THE "LIMSA STARTED IT" QUESTION
Near the start of the quest when Brash and Y'shtola are being briefed by Maelstrom Commander Cute and Admiral Merlwyb, Y'shtola points out that the Kobolds and Limsa Lominsa had a non-aggression pact, and it was the people of Limsa who violated it and encroached on Kobold territory to get more land. The Kobolds summoned Titan as both defense against further encroachment and as retaliation for breaking the treaty.
Hey that's interesting! That's probably the most interesting angle to the whole city state vs beastmen conflict we've had since tempering. But, after Merlwyb pushes through Y'shtola's comments with 'yeah we fucked up but what do you want me to do about it right now, just let Titan destroy the city and kill everybody? Pretty sure we still need Titan dead' this basically never comes up again. Come to think of it, did this even come up when I did all the friendly Kobold quests? I can't remember.
This kind of shit should have perhaps been the main focus of the whole Titan Chapter. More should have been done with this here. In fact, more should have been done with this in like the whole rest of the game. Befriending beast tribes is like this whole Thing you can do; they each have their own friendly faction and you do jobs for them and earn standing and can buy unique stuff from them, but that all only gets unlocked like way later, and all of it is optional side content.
Befriending each beast tribe is its own separate little side story divorced from everything else, even though fighting off the primals and the beastmen who summon them is kind of one of the largest problems facing all of these city states, and manipulating beastmen into summoning primals is like THE thing the Ascians are doing For Some Fucking Reason.
I feel like exploring diplomatic resolutions to conflict with each beastman faction should have been like a major part of the story, but it's all optional, and since it's optional and any given player may or may not have done some or all or none of it at any given time after it's been unlocked, all of it has no bearing on the main story or the rest of the world, ever. According to the main story, no attempt at peace with the beast tribes is ever made. What the fuck?
Anyway screw the Kobolds and their god I guess. Though, Brash barely gets to fight any of them in this whole chapter. Seriously, there are like three or four of them near the aetherite thing and that's it. We could have had a fight with that weird high priest lookin dude back there but instead we just fucked around with those asshole mercenaries for hours and hours.
Oh and then Nero and that other guy are here talking about how their secret weapon is cooler than Titan WAIT HOW DID YOU IDIOTS GET DOWN HERE
I wouldn't normally care about that point that much, but I just did a REALLY long and REALLY stupid quest chain for the sole purpose of acquiring the means to get down here. Last time Nero showed up out of nowhere it explained that the Garlean guys were able to slip past patrols and sentries and stuff because they had an informant. So, what, did they bribe a Kobold?
Then Labradoodle plops in, apparently he's working with the Empire guys, oh no or whatever. Maybe he teleported them in here? Except they were already here when he appeared, and when they leave they just kind of walk away, so, I dunno. Labradoodle then teleports back out after doing nothing and having no reason to be here except to leer at Brash's amazing midriff for a bit I guess.
what is she doing over there…?
An Ascian Pisses Off Without Trying To Kill Brash With Lasers: 3
Oh but believe it or not, the Titan Fightin’ chapter of FF14 is somehow still not The Worst Part.
While we're at the Waking Sands, our sylph buddy says some grisly murders have been happening in Gridania, so looking into that is our next job. The corpses of young women have been turning up with mutilated faces.
After wasting a bunch of time with some idiots in a bar doing quests that go nowhere and yield no information, Brash tracks down this motherfucker here.
He's some rich asshole nobleman servant and a total fuckass. Look at this asshole, he has the balls to demand shit of me. He wants me to fix his problem, to end his mistress’s torment. Yeah, because she’s the victim here, clearly.
He tells Brash his oh so tragic story of how his precious mistress, Lady Amandine, got disfigured by (Rucks voice) The Calamity, went nuts, somehow got into talks with Ascians about rejuvenating her face, and started murdering people for some kind of ritual. Kinda sounds to me like she was kind of a shallow shithead rather than having “a heart befitting her radiance" like he says, but then he's also a shithead, so what does he know. If her face matters that much, it's probably also safe to say that Gridania's nobility sucks and Gridania's culture sucks, but we knew that already, fuck Gridania.
So this fucker was ordered to dispose of the first young woman's body, which he did, but then he just fuckin left and then did not tell anyone, and he resolved to never tell anyone until Brash confronted him about it directly. WOW THANKS, YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE, I SHOULD KILL YOU RIGHT HERE. DID YOU WHISTLE A JAUNTY LITTLE TUNE AS YOU SAUNTERED AWAY FROM THE CORPSE YOU DISPOSED OF YOU PIECE OF SHIT?
So instead of killing this guy on the spot like I keep telling her to, Brash goes and does a dungeon, kills the boss, she's a succubus now, the end. I wonder if there are any notes or whatever in the side rooms I've never bothered to look in, oh well who cares.
After Lady Amandine is dead, another pair of Ascian interns appear and say some meaningless shit about darkness that they think sounds cool, and they explicitly tell Brash the purpose of turning Lady Amandine into a psycho demon cultist was to "test Brash's strength," somehow.
Like that was the only reason. Seems like a lot of effort for a really unclear goal. Also seems really unnecessary.
Also, An Ascian Pisses Off Without Trying To Kill Brash With Lasers: 2
Oh he goes and turns himself in to the authorities, well that's alright then, your complicity only caused the torture and deaths of like a dozen or more women. I hope you get the chair.
Back at the Scion hangout, Minfilia still doesn't know what the Ascians are up to, and neither do we, especially since this whole last chapter was apparently not even part of their big plan, but just to fuck with Brash specifically, because they somehow knew she'd be the one to uncover all this murder stuff and decide to go put a stop to it. Wow, lucky eh?
Minfilia decides we should probably tell some people the Ascians are sneaking about doing vague bad guy stuff, even though I have no idea how anybody would be able to do anything about them, since we don't know what they want or what they're doing, and they can teleport anywhere at any time. But whatever, should still probably let the world governments they should keep an eye out I guess.
Minfilia gets on that, but the Kobolds are gearing up to summon Titan so we have to go deal with that now. Or rather we have to go and WASTE MY FUCKING TIME INSTEAD OF DEALING WITH THAT now.
