Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn – #45 – The Crystal Braves



Our little Alphinaud has big plans.

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0:00 – Introduction

0:25 – QUEST: “Guardian of Eorzea”

19:11 – QUEST: “Recruiting the Realm”

48:03 – QUEST: “Heretical Harassment”

51:40 – QUEST: “When the Cold Sets In”

1:03:50 – QUEST: “Brave New Companions”

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Edited by Daniel Floyd

♫ “Pray Return” by Chris Logsdon
https://lnkfi.re/pray-return

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45 thoughts on “Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn – #45 – The Crystal Braves”

  1. Snack delivery is getting more dangerous, now that Durmin includes Coerthas in his route. But your spoiler free lore comment is still safe!

    This episode does briefly cover some of the Scions of the Seventh Dawn's organization. Minfiilia leads the organization as Antecedent, with Tataru and F'Lhaminn operating as support. We have the primary Scions who take to the field, Y'Shtola, Thancred, Yda, Papalymo, and Alphinaud, and some second line Scions like Arenvald (remember him, the young guy who who was in the Waking Sands?), now joined by Hoary & Coultenet. In addition to these, Urianger serves as a researcher, and Alisaie operates as an occasional ally. The Doman Refugees are also operating as support allies when they can. But then there is their champion, the slayer of primals, the Warrior of Light (and snack deliverer) Durmin Durami.

    But Alphinaud sees this as insufficient. While he acknowledges the Scions cannot unite the continent alone, he seeks to provide the example for others to follow. The Crystal Braves massively changes the state of the Scions, they're no longer an investigative & advisory group. While it could be said that Durmin alone is a one lalafell superweapon, an official military branch of the Scions makes them an NGO superpower. Or, maybe they would be on paper; some of the personnel are a bit odd. But change has to start somewhere. Let's hope it leads Eorzea to better days.

    These quests do paint lots of the complexities of politics going on in the game, and the coming quests. While a monarch, Nanamo is constrained by the "legislature" of the Syndicate, and she cannot act against her opponents without clear proof that they are acting against the good of the city state. Meanwhile, we uncover a new complexity in the Ishgardian War. While Durmin has heard of "heretics" before, this changes the context. They're no longer just those who turn against the Ishgardian Orthodox Church, but are considered adherents or allies of the Dragons. The War is no longer a case of mankind vs dragon. There are now two legged folk on both sides of the war, and the heretics have a leader: Lady Iceheart. But that ending cutscene shows that all is not as it appears in Ishgard…

    As a side note, Haurchefant is the first character whose voice actor will continue through the coming recasting. Jason LaShea will voice all of Haurchefant's lines through to the next expansion. Also, the localization did change some of Haurchefant's unvoiced dialogue. Translations of some of Japanese dialogue show that Haurchefant is incredibly flirty with the Warrior of Light.

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  2. The snaps are almost too good. They are literally stealing the show on the actual story lol
    How do you get the camera to, like, perfectly align anyway? Is there a way to store and retrieve an exact camera position? It's not like Durmin is always framed the exact same way. Sometimes the camera is a bit higher or lower or farther away or something. But the transition is pretty much pixel perfect pretty much every time.
    Also that Elden Ring snap LOL

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  3. I'm excited! This is roughly the point of FF14 where I felt the quality of the story (writing, presentation, etc.) really picked up. It's gonna keep getting better and I can't wait!

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  4. Hey Dan, I know my contributions to this let's play are usually pretty dry, but I just wanted to throw out now, as we hit the (roughly) midway point of the patch content that I'm so glad you're doing this! I am living for all of comments you're starting to get from people who haven't played the game themselves getting invested in the story and theorycrafting about upcoming events. This is just such a great playthrough and I'm so glad you're doing it and people are getting into it! I know we've got a huge amount of content left to go, but here's to four more expansions!

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  5. Dan, you must have a microphone hidden somewhere in my house! I swear to you, last episode, I mused to my wife why you hadn't done any match-cut goofs, as it was a potential deep well of hilarity, and seemed like a perfect Dan-style gag. Lo and behold, today you give us an absolute BUFFET of editing jokes all at once. I think the only one that I tried to come up with, that you DIDN'T do, was a snap where nothing at all happened. You checked off every other joke I could think of. Well done!

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  6. 29:49 FFXIV definitely does this in a very cool way. Certain characters will continuously show up, sometimes in side quests or job quests. There will be progression to their character and sometimes closure ( Dark Knight, for example, adds closure to characters that show up during HW storyline ). If they show up again in the main story there will usually be an extra line of dialogue referencing that closure. The only hitch is that some quests are meant to happen at certain points in time, for instance: certain Dragoon job quests are meant to happen during ARR since they shouldn't be possible during parts of the HW story.

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  7. OK, absolutely loved the snap gag. Utterly lost it at the final stage. Only thing that could have made it better would have been getting a single shot from pre-pull Coils 13. "How are YOU back?!?"

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  8. A fun note, with how Stafborn is talking about the community growing, during the 2.0 – 2.55 patch series, Revenant's Toll changed patch by patch from a few buildings and tents into eventually what we have today. It's one of those fun things that the FFXIV devs are willing to do, have events and changes and things like that which, folks that WERE THERE will notice, but afterward just become part of the communal lore of the game

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  9. While this Crystal Braves 2.x stuff is FAR from being among my favorite FFXIV stories, it did center/promote a lot of significant side-characters, and I do appreciate that.

    In fact… I think I'm gonna go check on Ephemie next time I start up the game.

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  10. And here I figured the snaps were a reference to a character we have yet to meet…
    I love how all these side characters you meet along the way join the Crystal Braves. My sister plans on playing FFXIV when she comes home from school, and I am absolutely going to tell her to talk to the NPCs she meets along the way.
    Haurchefaunt is such a good friend.
    It makes so much sense that the last Crystal Brave Durmin has to find in Revenant's Toll is Riol. Think about all the whistling he had to do to meet him at Camp Bronze Lake.

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  11. You can really see how ambitious Alphinaud is with the Crystal Braves by who he is trying to recruit in Limsa to his new and untested organization:

    -The head of the Armorer's Guild (she teaches you to be an Armorsmith!)
    -The head of the Yellow Jackets (Limsa's faction of their military that deals with local affairs)
    -Leaders of two of the three main pirate factions (Kraken's Arms and Sanguine Sirens)
    -Members of the Company of Heroes, the group that killed Titan last time he was summoned (and sent us on a loooooong fetch quest)

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  12. I'm loving all these near movie length episode lately, both here and for Elden Ring – but I really hope you give yourself, and your voice, enough breaks!! I mean, movie studios take years to produce the amount of content you put out in half a week! 😀

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  13. Y'know, I wasn't real into the match cuts, but didn't say anything because you were enjoying it.
    But that cut to Elden Ring with "How does that work?" was perfect.

    EDIT: "ultramarine uniform"… did Alphinaud make… gods, even the colours match the Ultrasmurfs, maybe a little more black.

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  14. I wonder if it would have been possible for Dan to recreate Durmin in Elden Ring with any degree of accuracy for that "snap-travel malfunctions" bit. How short do they let you make your character, anyway?

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  15. The editing in this episode got a good guffaw out of me! Really got me by surprise to see your Elden Ring character join the snap cuts haha

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  16. I loved that snap teleport gag. The editing has been getting excellent in these episodes. And the Crystal Braves….Alphinaud certainly is ambitious. I was rooting for him at the time. The kid's smug, but he's got a good point

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  17. Wow, there's some great lines in here for people who're paying attention, or the rest of us coming to this with hindsight. I can't believe the whole thing is just laid bare like that and we just sail on by.

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