Welcome to the end (but not really)!
Support us on Patreon! ► http://patreon.com/playframe
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Playlist! ► https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvFQJa1XAXzzXrfl_cbsGvEl4AbTt5SMG
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0:00 – Introduction
0:32 – QUEST: “The Ultimate Weapon”
2:42 – DUNGEON: The Praetorium
52:52 – Ending
1:05:35 – Credits
1:16:41 – Post-credits scenes
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Dan’s Twitter (@DanFloydPlus) ► https://twitter.com/DanFloydPlus
Carrie’s Twitter (@CarrieFloyd) ► https://twitter.com/CarrieFloyd
PlayFrame Twitter (@PlayFramePlus) ► https://twitter.com/PlayFramePlus
To hear Dan talk MUCH more about game animation, check out New Frame Plus! ► http://www.youtube.com/c/newframeplus
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Edited by Daniel Floyd
♫ “Pray Return” by Chris Logsdon
https://lnkfi.re/pray-return
#PlayFrame #FFXIV #FinalFantasyXIV
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About A Realm reborn: in one hand, it was an interesting experience as a lens of how MMORPG tell stories, given I've never played a MMO before – instead, I only had some glimpses of my older siblings playing them, particularly World of Warcraft and Ragnarok online. In the other hand, there were moments that were quite rage-indulcing – especially on the second act with so many distrutful quest givers, so much so that I started wondering why they're sending a quest in the first place
1:08:46 Who is that?
Fogt to say this, but I'm very excited for the next new frame plus video 😀
The memes have infected me. Gaius said “my turn” and I heard it in Thancred’s voice.
I can sureadly assume I've done this dungeon at least 1000 times, it was part of my daily roulettes for over 7 years… wish there was a way to track how many runs we've done of any instance ^^"
58:45 so, like, did the warrior of light just leave all of their fellow party members behind to perish in the explosions?
more seriously, one of my ongoing nitpicks with this game is the unclear narrative presence of party members. you wrap up a number of duties and afterwards the other characters talk as if you single-handedly slayed the primals and defeated gaius, and it always seems weird when a good number of duties wrap up while i'm laying dead.
but now we can look forward to the 2.x patches, where the main arc starts in earnest before we enter heavensward and i spend an entire expansion sighing irritably!
im so glad that durmin is continuing his little man journeys….he deserves the best
Thank you for all the work that goes into bringing us along on Durmin's journey! Looking forward to its resumption with great anticipation. (Also looking forward to Outer Wilds DLC!)
27:15 I…actually kinda like Gaius's big speech here? It's not _good_, but that's largely a result of it being an exposition dump forced by how the designers structured the game, never giving him (or the rest of the villains in these final two dungeons) any screentime. However, the man has a coherent and thought-out ethos, and that's extremely rare for a villain in an MMO. His ethos wrong, but you can see how he got from "Primals drain the magic from the land and enslave their worshippers" through the lens of "cynical imperialist man from cynical imperialist culture" to "We must conquer to save them from themselves." He is deeply principled and wants to help, it's just his idea of help is built from an entirely imperialist worldview. The designers just didn't pace the game to tease that out and explore it over the course of 50 levels and however many hours of gameplay, so Gaius has to corner you in an elevator for fifteen minutes while the rest of the dungeon loads to tell you about it.
And the sad thing is, he's one of the nicer Garleans.
Also, the voice actor is absolutely chewing the scenery and it's delightful
As scenery chewing as it was, I think Gaius might've unironically had the best VA performance in ARR.
I shall look forward to FFXIV Story Mode returning until it is here and then I will simply look at it.
As Gaius is monolgueing I distinctly remember thinking "y'all dropped a MOON on us. why would I listen to this?" over and over lol
Thank you so much for this. I love this game but don't have the time to play it right now. I can't wait for you to continue this playthrough.
Looking forward to more Durmin adventures!
1:20:18 Excuse me, WHO?! Okay… now that this name dropped, I'm definitely sticking around for more episodes. I'm planning on playing Lost Ark more seriously (unless Amazon screws it up somehow) so in FFXIV I'm mostly just going to vibe in the Gold Saucer, but when it comes to the story I'll keep watching it here. Your narration made the entire experience much better. Well, I'm curious to see what else FFXIV has in store.
Re: player effects; they're not so bad for the most part when you're in 8 man content, but turning them off/down is VITAL when you get to 24 man content. I forgot to turn mine off when I switches consoles once and I could not see a thing.
I only just realized the magitek armor is supposed to look like a chocobo.
im so glad this series has survived to the Good Stuff, i've been slowly getting into this. as a newcomer with a dislike for "light = good, dark = bad" stories and knowing one of the expansions is called "shadowbringers", i'm very 👀at what they do with all the plot seeds gaius was dropping in his big speeches. i was ready to be understanding but sad about the hiatus, because it's very necessary but also no 14 for awhile, and then you said outer wilds dlc and i am FERAL to see that. what a fantastic hype train, finally getting to see the outer wilds dlc because i didn't wanna watch anyone else but you do it, and then getting back into the Better Stuff for 14.
Such a great ride! And I like that they did have your party members appearing in cutscenes, gives the game a deeper feeling to me; that there's lots of adventurers doing things along with you.
I actually liked the story quite a bit, granted we got a very abridged and edited version, but what we got I think was very enjoyable on its own merits.
Are we going to have a FFXIV Lore Retrospective video like with Dark Souls before we resume the series? 🙂 🙂 🙂
During the ending scene, the three city-states leader announce that the realm went through the 6th Astral Era, the 7th Umbral Era, and enters now into the 7th Astral Era. I don't think Dan mentioned this system of Umbral and Astral eras in the primer he made prior to the series, so I figured a couple people who are following this story for the first time might be either confused or at least curious about this, so I thought I would give an explanation and a very short summary. This is not really spoiler material, they don't exactly address it in the 2.0 main scenario quest line but it is part of the world building lore from the beginning, and info about it may be gleaned in some side quests or job quests.
So Eorzea has gone through a rather troubled and actually fairly long history. This history is indeed subdivided into eras, conveniently numbered. It alternates between eras of prosperity and progress, where civilization strives and human races greatly develop, which are called "Astral Eras", and eras of great depression and strife, where the people of Eorzea face hardships and trials, sometimes even regress, which are called "Umbral Eras". What triggers this shift from an Astral Era to an Umbral Era is what we call "Umbral Calamities", which are dreadful, nigh-cataclysmic events, usually in the form of a natural disaster (Umbral Calamities are element-aspected), sometimes triggered by humans. Once the realm stabilizes from the aftermath of an Umbral Calamity, the Umbral Era becomes an Astral Era. So essentially, it goes : Previous Astral Era > Calamity > Umbral Era > Astral Era, until the next Calamity. The summon of Bahamut was the Seventh Umbral Calamity, which put an end to the previous Sixth Astral Era and gave place to the Seventh Umbral Era (that is, the storyline of the 2.0 Scenario. It begins in the fifth year of the Seventh Umbral Era). Now that the realm is relatively reunited, the Seventh Umbral Era is behind us, and we have now ushered the Seventh Astral Era.
Now, I am not going to give you a full rundown of each eras, and each calamities that triggered these changes, as not only would that be very long, but also some might be considered story relevant, some of which you might learn about in 2.0 sidequests but I don't remember which precisely, so I'm not taking any risks hahah. I will give you one example though, that I know for sure is explained in the 2.0 story, as it is exposed in the job quest storyline of the Scholar Job :
Dates are a little fuzzy, but around at least more than 1500 years ago, the human races of Eorzea discover Magic. As they tame and begin to control this new wellspring of power and knowledge, the human civilization flourishes. This is the Fifth Astral Era. In The Black Shroud (where modern-day Gridania sits), the kingdom of Amdapor masters the secrets of White Magic. In Yafaem (located somewhat near Mor Dhona), the kingdom of Mhach wrests control of Black Magic. And on Vylbrand (the island where you find Limsa Lominsa), the city-state of Nym develops Arcanist magic, which is essentially non-elemental and deals with magical constructs to some extent, allowing them among other feats to lift their city in the air (referred to as the Floating City of Nym, some ruins of which you can still see nowadays in Outer La Noscea !).
As they all prosper and gain more and more power over their respective schools of magic, tension rises and a war eventually breaks loose between the three factions. As the conflict escalates, the mages of all three nations keep drawing more and more aether to channel stronger magics. However, as you may recall, the Black Shroud is also home to the powerful Elementals, and so as the White Mages of Amdapor continuously channel their White Magic, they eventually perturb these Elementals, which triggers a flood of cataclysmic proportions across the entire realm, putting an abrupt end to the conflict. This is referred to as the Great Flood, or the Sixth Umbral Calamity of Water, which put an end to the Fifth Astral Era, and ushered the Sixth Umbral Era.
Hopefully that clarified that element there, and did not confuse you even more~
"Ever since I came into this land I've been watching you. Every move you've made, every step you've taken" I THOUGHT NERO LOOKED LIKE STING AND TURNS OUT SO DID WHATEVER LOC WHO WROTE THAT LINE
It was all on purpose
46:23 Holy crap! Watching this again made me realize how far have they been dragging THIS point for… o_0
Ah. So you're doing Bahamuth and CT. Nice.
I really hope you do some of the Chronicles quest lines. Especially the ones that are relevant to the story. Maybe not Eureka and the other extremely grindy ones but some of the raid and trial quests would be nice.
That whole dark hydaelyn thing at the end of this episode? Yeah that was retconned immediately and never brought up again.
I did enjoy this series alot and am really looking forward to its return!
27:20 I don't know why that made me giggle, but it did.
Gaius, in an epic voice: "Tell me, for whom do you fight?"
Durmin: confused DreamWorks face
I have greatly enjoyed this series and can’t wait for the resumption of Durmin’s journey towards shin-thwacking mastery!
Fun fact: The NPCs in the Waking Sands at the end weren't actually applauding for Durmin; they were mocking Dan's inability to clap.
This tip is probably a little late, but very useful for keyboard/mouse-players going through Praetorium for the first time/on a daily basis:
The 0-key on the numpad is by default bound to "interact", which is used by controllers to interact with UI-elements. If you press that near the teleport terminals during the enemy skipping (while not targeting anything else), you'll automatically target the teleporter. By just spamming it after that, the "pointer" will show up, and automatically start on "yes" on the teleport prompt (and, due to aforementioned spamming, will pick that one as soon as it's able). By doing this, you're much more likely to successfully make the final teleport!
…can also be useful in other instances!
Me looking at Dan and Durmin
"I want every expansion we have to fire at those men"
fires Heavensward
"More."
fires Stormblood
"More!"
fires shadowbringers
"MORE!"
fires Endwalker
"MOOORRREEE!!!"
Great work!
Congrats on finishing 2.0! I haven't gone through it in several years, not since before the devs removed a whole bunch of quests to streamline it, so it was cool to follow Durmin through it. It felt much more trim and direct compared to how I remember it, but I recall what really bothered me about the story progression experience was hitting credits, excited to join all my friends going through the Heavensward content…and then spending dozens more hours in 2.X content before we even got a whiff of Ishgard. Hopefully that won't be as much of a drag as I remember, either.
I'm so so glad this series has been doing well enough to continue, because it really is a great story and I'm happy more people get to experience it, either by watching along or by being enticed into trying out the game for themselves!
I'm glad you're taking a break to be honest. I'm REALLY EXCITED for it to pick back up again, but my brain needs a bit of a rest. And maybe going back through and catch the start of the story, now that i know better who everyone is and what's going on. I know a lot has been lost on me. Actually, if you have the time and energy for this, i would appreciate a "the story so far" recap video. Or if someone in comments would be so kind as to summarise.
This series has been amazing and got me to try out the game that I am LOVING! Just, thank you for doing this Dan, glad it's working out!
I'm not even into Heaven's Ward content yet. I'm kind of stuck at the Crystal Towers. A 24 person raid is just a little intimidating and I've been kind procrastinating doing it and leveling up different jobs and making money doing crafting and stuff.
This was awesome! I've been eagerly awaiting every episode, so if it only gets better from here… I can't wait!
This has been an immensely enjoyable journey. Wanted to hop in belatedly and say that this series is a joy, and I can't wait to see you continue to share this story with all the people who might otherwise miss out. I've joined your patreon to show my support. Thanks Dan!
I'd forgotten how we took down Lahabrea. So silly in retrospect.
Gaius: gives his big villain monologue
Dan: "How long have you been rehearsing this?"
Me: "You know it must have been a while: he avoided misusing the expression 'begs the question' earlier."
Also, I'm very glad this series has worked out for you, Dan–well enough, even, to hit another Patreon milestone! Really excited for the return of Outer Wilds!
You NEED to do the Hildibrand sidequests!!
His fight might be outdated, but Nero is still the only power ranger to show up in every expansion.
I keep getting excited because I'm expecting more FF14 videos to come out and then I remember this was the last video for now. I'd love more content from this game! You did a great job and I'd watch any sort of faffing about you can provide!
These ARR videos were really fun to watch along, thanks for the work! I'll be waiting for more, looking Heavensward.