Can everything just stop HAPPENING for two seconds
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STORMBLOOD series playlist! ► https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvFQJa1XAXzyHrbeyXrPMd3_Qg3TC4PF_
FULL SERIES playlist! ► https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvFQJa1XAXzzXrfl_cbsGvEl4AbTt5SMG
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0:00 – Introduction
0:32 – QUEST: “Soul Searching”
13:54 – QUEST: “A Defector’s Tidings”
26:56 – QUEST: “Seiryu’s Wall”
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Edited by Daniel Floyd
♫ “Pray Return” by Chris Logsdon
https://lnkfi.re/pray-return
#PlayFrame #FFXIV #FinalFantasyXIV #Stormblood
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Welcome one and all to the final Final Fantasy Friday of 2023🎉
Instead of talking about something Square Enix related, I wanted to ask you a personal question: what are your hopes and dreams for 2024?
When it spelled out who Shadowhunter was when I played, I fucking yelled his name in disbelief. Didn't see it coming. Not in a million years.
A funny quirk of the way this game was localized into English and the divide between A Realm Reborn's voice cast and Heavensward and onward's voice cast is that characters from A Realm Reborn will be introduced by voice at a later time sometimes and you just… won't know who they are for a bit because they're voiced now by a completely different actor.
They did this with Urianger "betraying" us in the Heavensward patches and joining the Warriors of Darkness. We heard his voice and only saw parts of his face that were always covered by goggles and a hood, but his voice was different than ARR so that didn't clue us in to who he was.
It also popped up with Ilberd in the Heavensward patches, though that was a double fake out because of The Griffin body double… Still, you get a cutscene or two where you hear his voice before you know who he is.
This time we not only heard his voice, but saw his face, but still I didn't guess it was him because we only ever heard his old voice actor and saw him with a mask.
Patch 4.5: A Requiem of Heroes.
In addition to Part 1 of the last batch of main scenario quests, this patch added the final legs of the Return to Ivalice and The Four Lords questlines, the Limited Job Blue Mage and all the content it entails. Additionally, Doman Mah-jongg was added to the Gold Saucer, Hidden Gorge was added to Rival Wings, and Adkiragh was added to Custom Deliveries.
Other content that we could look forward to in the run-up to Shadowbringers:
4.55:
— Eureka Hydatos and Baldesion Arsenal
4.56:
— Part 2 of the main scenario quests
— The last leg of the Even Further Hildibrand Adventures questline
— Allied Tribal quests for the Ananta, Kojin, and Namazu
4.57:
— World Visit System (yes, now you can visit other worlds on the same server-cluster)
2:16 It has been too long since we've had "Embarrassing Alphinaud" Krile in this playthrough.
Would that he was here for his reaction…
8:06 We don't see it a lot in this playthrough, but if you dig into the side content in this area, Master Matoya really does love Y'Shtola like a daughter. She's a cantankerous old witch, but she has a softer side she rarely shows (and would very much not want you to know about).
This one line read is really all that we get out of her in this visit of just how devastated she is to hear that Y'Shtola has been stricken by this… whatever it is. Just a slight drop of the façade that is her gruff exterior for a quiet, subtle shock…. then right back into her old crone persona.
Like she says in the next line: Y'shtola might be an ungrateful stray, but she is her ungrateful stray.
Since I at that point in the story hadn't even heard of nagxia and didn't know what it was supposed to be. It's the country between Dalmasca (which we already saw in the alliance raids) and Yanxia, It's not really brought up in the story much but it is visible on the map
This is what I love about XIV. People grow and change over the course of things to the point that we now have an actually believable face turn for Gaius van freaking Baelsar.
So that scene with Varis and Solus is one of the best scenes in the game and is fascinating on a replay. It plays an interesting juggling act, slowly but surely making you feel how trapped Varis must feel between his responsibility to rule Garlemald as a fascist nation of conquest that cares about its core of citizens and Garlemald as a tool of Ascian plans. The first thing we see Varis do in the game is spit on Solus's dead body and if their relationship was always like this you can clearly see why. It almost tricks me into forgetting that Varis is planning to use toxic gas as a weapon of conquest and that he is not responsible for all the suffering shown throughout most of Stormblood. It also shows the type of scheming that Solus has been engaging in, specifically the reveal that he wanted a struggle for the throne and that to him the Empire is just a tool, a particularly strong one, but still just a tool. Now as for the nature of that plan, that is still unclear.
51:56 He's just having fun…
must be so infuriating being ruled by a chesire cat like creature bent on making chaos
I wish Matoya was in the MsQ more. An elder who actually helps is a novel thing.
Maxima, you're one of maybe three 'pure blooded' Garleans I can stand. please don't disappoint me.
…Damn it Alph. You're right but you should have come and gotten us.
Getting real tired of this crap mysterious voice!
You look good for a dead man, 'Shadowhunter'. By the way, the rest of your forces are arse holes.
Well now I'm wondering what the big event that kicks of Shadowbringers will be. Things are certainly getting interesting.
1:14 Yea, this entity makes no sense. Pressed for time, super enigmatic… and downs the people capable of solving the vagueness.
6:24 You say that now…
13:00 "Something"… while I like the rest of this blurb, "something's gone wrong" after everything so far in this scene just feels like a "really, you don't say? Something's gone wrong, has it? Sorry, was too busy worrying about my friends whose souls have gone AFK to notice" moment. Just amazing obvious stating.
20:16 Brevity you dolt, brevity!
20:30 What a waste of energy. "Let me repeat a new iteration of the same vague message!" What "gates", man!?
22:53 Holy shit, I forget how tall Hakuro is.
30:48 Yea, it worked, but it's not the same without an explosion.
31:45 Well, good thing it didn't go boom.
31:54 Oh, ffs, not him, too.
32:56 What a career change.
37:45 Yea, pretty much. Even in WW1 it wasn't really what I'd call a "tool of conquest".
38:41 He got better. (Sort of)
42:27 Maybe for you, I literally had no clue who he was until they mentioned Ultima. It's one thing that, for me, works against this trend 14 has of bringing back characters from dozens or hundreds of hours ago. I have no clue who these people even are.
43:12 Especially given last episode's "we do it for chaos!" bit…
44:02 Probably a waste of time. His soul 404'd.
44:35 All we got is "open the gates"… which is beyond unhelpful.
50:18 Someone get Tzeentch on the line. He'll show this dolt what scheming is.
Solus deserves a new frame plus episode for how well he is animated. If Dan doesn't gush about it, I'm sure I will latter in the LP when I can speak more freely. Until then just look at him.
THROW WIDE THE GATES
Eh, I'm a One Piece fan, character not being dead unless very explicitly shown otherwise is pretty much a default assumption for me by this point.
Today on PlayFrame: Without knowing which gates the mysterious mind-caller wishes to open, we must try our best to continue preparing for war.
Krile returns! And we've gotten some confirmation of what happened to our friends – their souls have been taken from their bodies, with the trail they left behind simply vanishing before it reached its end. Is this mysterious trend a malicious plot to deprive the realm of its champions, or is there truly a threat so great that it demands the abduction of most of the Scions? We shall see.
Anyways, as it turns out, Gaius van Baelsar (sans the "van", he's no longer a Garlean) takes the surprising honor of being, as far as I know from having only gotten midway through Shadowbringers, the last ARR cast member whose voice actor needed replacing. You might have guessed that he was the Shadowhunter if you recognized his old mask hanging alongside those Ascian masks he had on his hip when we first met him, OR if you were paying attention during the Black Rose sidequest and the cutscene where he turns up at a camp with Alphi only to find everyone dead – and if you did, good job!
This is admittedly a case of "we never saw the body, so he wasn't confirmed dead", as we were too busy trying to escape the Praetorium with Thancred's unconscious body in tow after beating the Lahabrea out of him to check that, but I do like it nonetheless – while I miss the hammy cartoon villain voice from ARR, it makes sense that he's now more softspoken after being thoroughly humbled by the Ascians – as it does to be his motive for fighting them off.
on a tangentially related note, if that's what Seiryu's Wall does to all ships that try to fly into it, the inevitable Garlean invasion attempt is probably going to end in the mother of all awkward staredowns.
anyways, next time… do I need to say what's going on next time? More MSQ, that's what! And maybe the continued adventures of Inspector Hildibrand, but considering what's happened recently with JoCat I'm not completely sure that diversion will be quite the same as it was.
Any character that dies in a medium like this is a character wasted. We’ve had so many pointless deaths, it’s really nice to reverse as many as possible.
I actually had to google Gaius to find out which character he was again, but it's so cool to give him more depth and complexity. Actually the whole Empire in general is more complex now than I was initially to be believed, which I really love! I'm really curious to find out how this story is going to go!
More throwing wide the gates… it’s been mentioned in the comments, but you’d think this mysterious voice would be more specific as to why it’s doing this. Especially with how stressed it’s making poor Alisae… I haven’t said it much before but some of these voice actors are SO good; whoever did Ali really sells her fear and desperation this episode. Thank goodness Krile and Matoya care enough to give her a needed boost.
Also, Shadowhunter-now that we don’t have to pretend not to know who he is anymore, I cried out too. Not his name, but “You had an effing castrum drop on you, not to mention a super weapon blowing up!” Should have remembered one of the Deep Magic rules of melodrama -if there’s no body or blood stain or tearful farewell/montage, there’s no death, and frankly even then things are immutable. Do I believe his face turn? Ask me later…
Something I just noticed is that Solus seems really contemplative when he is talking about Black Rose. "Now that I think on it, Black Rose may well possess the perfect aspect."
I had believed that Solus had a hand in Black Rose's development. This moment of contemplation makes it seem like it was developed outside of his influence, and he is just now realizing that he could make use of it for his goals.
Dan: "Yes, a few of us are currently down for the count here at the Scions…and that's not been great for morale, I'll be honest. To her credit, though, Alisaie's been a real trooper about it!"
Dan clicks on Alisaie
Dan (reading quest caption): "Alisaie is at her wits' end."
I think this is one of my favorite low-key tropes of this series: Dan makes a statement (usually an optimistic one) which is then directly contradicted by the introductory caption of the next quest.
After Durmin and Alisaie heard the voice that last time, how was their first reaction not to check if Krile was ok? 😨
I couldn't figure out who he could be til I got to this point in the game and I just. Put down my mouse and keyboard and went and got a drink lol.
I feel like the problem with not letting dead characters stay dead is twofold. One is that it risks making the world feel like it lacks consequences. While this is often the main problem, I feel that FFXIV does this rarely enough, and shows off plenty of consequences everywhere else, that it mostly mitigates this. The second one is that it can feel like they're stealing a victory from you. Lahabrea had a bit of this, and the fact that it's not even us that does him in makes it worse, but Gaius is different because when he returns he isn't a bad guy. If he was still being played as a villain it would feel bad because we've been there, this isn't new, but seeing him go all-in on ending the Ascians is interesting!
14:34 – For the record, Alisaie is also a genius child prodigy. She's the second youngest person to ever enroll in the Studium, beaten only by Alphinaud. She's less interested in politics and isn't an expert in aetherology like Y'shotla and Urianger, but she's still incredibly intelligent
Playfriends, it's time to pick up the slack. We've got folks out on sick leave! This is your spoiler free lore comment.
Patch 4.5, A Requiem for Heroes, was released in January 2019. This patch brought us Blue Mage!
2:30 – The ultimate "taking Alphinaud down a peg" team: Alisaie and Krile. I love the dynamic between these two.
10:30 – This compounds our questions. The stricken Scions are bereft of their souls, but they still breath. Their souls are lifted from their bodies, but beyond the sight of Matoya's Crystal Eye. The same eye that tracked Thancred down in Dravania. What magic could have done this? Where have they been taken? And for what?
12:55 – "The Thaliak" is the river located in the Dravanian Hinterlands, named after the Eorzean God of Rivers and Wisdom (he's particularly revered in Sharlyan). From the context clues, Matoya is referring to Alexander.
17:00 – Well there goes one of our key methods of internal reform in Garlemald. The Populares are now persona non grata in the Empire. Maxima's group is lucky to have escaped with their lives.
22:45 – Nagxia is a land that isn't well visited by the story, but it lies southwest of Doma. Nagxia fell to the Garlean Empire shortly after their neighbor Dalmasca, and both nations have fledgling resistance groups working to liberate their homes. The Eastern Alliance has more resistance groups than nations, but coordinating efforts in the Far East will still yield dividends.
26:50 – Even if you have completed the Custom Deliveries for Kurenai, Sui no Sato is not prepared for military intervention. The undersea kingdom can barely hold its own economically with your help, their guards are not ready to face Garleans.
30:00 – I honestly forgot that this barrier was called Seiryu's Wall. Feeding off of the aether coming from The Steppe, the Ironworks has made a remarkable achievement.
31:10 – Good thing the airship didn't explode!
32:50 – And that's where Shadowhunter's grey mask is from. His own helmet. Gaius van Baelsar. Or just Gaius Baelsar now, since he no longer holds a rank in the Garlean Army. The man who plagued us throughout ARR. And his survival at Castrum Meridianum means that the confirmed casualties during that battle are dozens of unnamed Garlean soldiers and Livia sas Junius. This revamp of Gaius can feel a little cheap, as we're bringing back an old baddie as a reformed ally, but Gaius can provide a new viewpoint to the story: a patriot of Garlemald who has a vendetta against the Ascians.
36:00 – Ah, some intel on the Ascians! Their highest ranking members are Lahabrea and Emet-Selch. One we know of and one we do not. We know little of the other red masked Ascians, but we have vanquished some of their numbers. Nabriales, Igeyorhm, and Emmerololth are those known to have been slain permanently.
38:15 – Black Rose is still the doomsday weapon we fear, but Gaius has pushed back the clock on the horrors. We've got to figure out how to use the time we've bought.
39:10 – Cloned bodies of Solus zos Galvus! I wonder what they're doing with them?
42:25 – Maybe he was a Kingdom Hearts grade villain because he was voiced by Ansem, Seeker of Darkness (I love Richard Epcar's work).
46:43 – Gaius! You told me Black Rose was destroyed! Why are the Garleans trying to use it during an offensive!?
49:47 – And the guys at Grinding Gear go wild, they love this phrase!
50:50 – Welp, there's our answers on what is going on with the cloned bodies. Varis has been testing cloning tech recovered from Allagan ruins, and used his grandfather, the founding Emperor, as the template. And now an Ascian has numerous perfect bodies to inhabit.
Next time: War.
New Cast Member:
Michael McElhatton, Roose Bolton from Game of Thrones, as Shadowhunter. Or rather, as Gaius Baelsar
The "people in FF XIV tend to not die" thing made me realize that most people who are dead and not coming back are women. Ysyale, Moenbryda, Minfilia (yet), Yotsuyu…
I hope Fordola isn't on this particular chopping block. With Van Baelsar's return, I actually wonder how the two would interact.
im looking at all the garleans standing around while the founding emperor snarks at the current emperor and they openly talk about him being an ascian corpse puppet and that the empire was literally founded to cause chaos
do…do none of these dozens of random ppl standing around within earshot hear any of this? do none of them care? why are these two bickering about such incendiary matters in public? <.<
i know the ppl in this base are the deepest into the empires dark bullshit, but theyre openly talking about how his goals are to cause the apocalypse, and the empire is a disposable tool for that end. nobody even in this den of evil has a problem with that?
"Emet Selch I believe is new to us"
my smartass: idk man, I think I've seen that dude all over my twitter timeline. BD (true story lmao)
Anyway, AND WE FINALLY CONFIRM GAIUS' RETURN, aka, the next of Gen's many boyfriends, believe it or not. Yes, I did end up with some Enemies to Lovers flavor among my wol's harem lmao oopsie. some tropes are truly forever etched into my brain. The actual courtship happens Later tho. Or perhaps I should say "courtship" uh. lol. (no this will not be explained until better relevant. one of the best parts of ETL is the absolute mess that is frequently part of the couple getting together so BD).
I think after this among Gen's many boyfriends it's just one more left that we'll meet on the channel? Unless Dan intends to do the RDM job quests at some point, but I don't think that will happen imo. :Va
💙