It is time for a jailbreak.
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0:00 – Introduction
3:04 – QUEST: “Flame General Affairs” (continued)
3:44 – QUEST: “In Search of Raubahn”
6:59 – QUEST: “Keeping the Flame Alive”
31:53 – QUEST: “To Siege or Not to Siege”
36:09 – QUEST: “Alphinaud’s Way”
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Edited by Daniel Floyd
♫ “Pray Return” by Chris Logsdon
https://lnkfi.re/pray-return
#PlayFrame #FFXIV #FinalFantasyXIV #Heavensward
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I have definitely been waiting for this; time for Durmin to get some Justice!
(and hopefully save his friends, because I miss Yshtola; and yes, I know I have a problem)
A rather sad fact about today's episode. Today we're introduced to Yugiri's new voice actor, Sian Blake, who does a fantastic job. She is, however, one of the few voice actors who will be replaced again later down the line, and the reasons for this are rather upsetting.
At the end of 2015, Sian Blake and her children went missing, and they were sadly found murdered by her partner a few weeks later, who is now serving a life sentence. While the third voice for Yugiri is still excellent (Eleanor Matsuura), I think it was worth bringing this up and taking a moment to reflect on it. No-one deserves what happened to her, and it saddens me every time.
I would love to see you tackle more recent content like raids or extreme trials , do you think you’ll ever do that ?
I remember doing the saving Rahbaun solo duty the first time and I was plagued hard by connection issues. They happen so seldom, but I had to redo the entire encounter because of them, sob.
I definitely agree on how you feel they resolve this plotline. It feels like a bit of a reset button approach, which is a little disappointing when the rest of the game is normally so good at not doing that. In a game where so much of the ongoing story is constantly moving forward, this feels like the conservative move backwards to an old status quo.
I'm actually feeling a bit the same with the sultana situation. Don't get me wrong, I love her to bits and was really upset to see her getting killed, but it does feel indeed a bit too good to be true for her to have survived. Tho from what Dan said in this episode I'm curious to see what they are going to do with her character in the future.
If you return to the 3 starter cities while the Scions are being framed for the banquet incident, I love how most of the people don't believe the accusations, and a few outright state that even if they did believe, there's no chance they could take on the one who's slain multiple Primals… repeatedly.
Boy, Illberd's speech hits different when you are as far in the story as I am.
You can really feel the shift in quality between this and ARR
The character, motivation, set up and payoff are all firing now and it's bloody brilliant
I hate Ilberd so much. Literally nothing you’re doing is helping Ala Mhigo. You feel like everyone’s abandoned them; fair enough but how exactly does joining the Syndicate, the self centered anti refugee jerks, and betraying the scions and WOL, the ones most likely to help, fix anything?
You’ve been fighting for years and what do your have to show for it? I dunno how about we made you captain of what was becoming a prestigious military force that had international jurisdiction until you framed us for murder 👀
36:05 Is that an actual point of divergence? Or do you get overruled if you try to say no?
I mean… you're not very subtle at telling that important characters survive by telling us they have "other voice actors", but I'm still unhappy at the removal on camera for a restoration off camera of an importan character.
I'll trust you that she will be great in the future, for now, I'm pouting in protest.
39:46 There's got to be some line of bullshit we can spin. A "desperate foray" to "distract the Dravanian Horde," perhaps? "Our apologies for not keeping you apprised, Sir Aymeric, but time was of the essence, and we could not afford to let poor optics stand in the way of Ishgard's defense."
Estinien has joined your party
Personally, I don't mind how the Sultana's fate is resolved until later. There are reasons why, but I can't explain right now. I do get why it feels disappointing when announced though.
38:12 Estinien joins the fray. Possibly to give reminder, Estinien is voiced by Robert Vernon, primarily an actor in quite a few shorts and video games (he also created the posters for Saudade and the newly-released Jack Rabbit, two projects he worked on and played roles in, and his art is interesting.) Prior to this, he was Qiu Ju in Assassin's Creed: Chronicles and Rhogar in Lords of the Fallen.
Edit: Few revisions later for grammar's sake. He's also Barok van Zieks in The Great Ace Attorney.
He's also a Final Fantasy fan, having confessed to playing all Final Fantasy games released in the UK prior to his involvement in XIV, so this must have been a dream for him.
For me, while the sultana situation is a little bit of a cop out, they were foreshadowing that there was something else going on, and I do enjoy the pile up of schemes and counter-schemes and ‘oh-that-didn’t-work-uh-oh-new-plan’s.
Plus, from a practical perspective? She features in several side quests that can be done at any time. Later on, they do a better job of keeping things separate so they can safely kill people off in one storyline while only slightly changing another, but here it would have been… an issue, to say the least.
Oh no, Raubahn's Northern now! It's not a bad voice, but it feels like a much bigger departure than most of the others. Kind of how Merlwyb's now got a slight London twang that wasn't there before. I just find it really noticeable!
The Sultana situation is no different from what usually happens in TV shows, where something exciting happens at the end of a season only for it to be resolved in the first episode of the next one. Though, I am glad for their choice to continue the conflict with the crystal braves instead of ending it here.
I've gotta say: the duties got more engaging compared to A Realm Reborn's
Urianger! Verbose Buddy is back!
Raubahn, please get those bandages looked at and changed, that's not exactly a paper cut you've got there.
Durmin's back, this time for a prison break! And your spoiler free lore comment is here to help document the raid!
The Doman Refugees have a notable impact on the story and Eorzea. While many viewed the Domans as a burden to the continent, at every turn they have worked to benefit their larger communities, applying their knowledge to the trades of Mor Dhona But don't forget, these Domans fled Imperial reprisals. Some of them know the ways of the shinobi, and they would repay every gil of kindness that has been shown to them with everything they have. If that means spilling the blood of these oathbreakers, they will use their skills as they once did against those who occupy their home.
Halatali was once a Lalafell holy site, and was later converted into a training site for the Pugilist's Guild. After the Calamity, Halatali fell into ruin, and monsters took up residence The dungeon is optional now (Level 20), and it sees you go through the site clearing it of monsters. The level 50 "Hard" version shows the dungeon return to its status as a training site, and players are tested by various challengers. The reuse of this environment is fantastic, because it is both efficient for the developers and lends itself to worldbuilding! Why wouldn't Ilberd use such a location for his trap for Durmin? it does have some issues though, since the dungeon is designed to "flow" in a certain manner, and Durmin's route sometimes run contrary to that, leading to people to get lost. The game will do better at this in future instances.
Fun detail, at 13:00, you can see Yugiri doing the "use item" animation. This is to indicate that she is applying healing items to Raubahn. Of course she doesn't have any healing magic, ninja is a DPS role!
We have our first step toward fighting back against the traitorous Crystal Braves! With Urianger's glamours, the Waking Sands is a decent safe house, and those who are still loyal to the Scions are using it as refuge again. Only time will tell to see how this change in the Syndicate's objectives will alter the power of Ul'dah.
We've got more voice actors! Also, this point in the story is where the voice direction provides a great little bit of localization. From this point on, Ala Mhigan characters share a common accent, Northern English. It makes sense that people hailing from the same region would have a common accent, and helps make the world feel "real", albeit at the same time making me wonder what character they're going to cast with Sean Bean.
Our new voice cast:
The late Sian Blake
, of EastEnders, as Yuguri
Nick Boulton, of Mass Effect 3 & Xenoblade Chronicles, as Raubahn
Antony Byrne, of The Witcher games & TV show and also voicing Biggs, as Ilberd
Adam Howden
, of Dragon Age & Xenoblade Chronicles, as Pipin
Timothy Watson, of The Archers & Xenoblade Chronicles, as Urianger
Robert Vernon, of the horror film The Village in the Woods, as Estinien
The fact that we never got to kill Lolorito is one of my biggest gripes with this game.
Dude could have just told someone what was going on and saved us all a lot of pain, the WoL should've had the option to ice his smug ass.
No one there could have stopped us.
The Sultana surviving never really bothered me. Even if I do understand the frustration, the character death fake-out is as old as character death. Besides I think they did it fairly well here. The consequences of the bloody banquet do NOT go away with her survival and the effects of it are felt in every expansion going forward. Many things changed for our characters on that day.
I actively loathe this bit if Heavensward. The end if ARR was such a wonderfully compelling bit of table setting and reshuffling of the deck. The Sultana was dead, your army turned against you, one of the three big cities now in the hands of a greedy sociopath with hints that the empire may be involved.
…all swept away in less than an hour of gameplay and then we’re back to the status quo.
Worst of all this sidesteps the central conflict set up in ARR which is the conflict between democracy and the Monetarists iron grip on the country’s wealth and power. Making Lolorito the new ruler of U’ldah was an excellent chance to resolve this by having the warrior of light directly confront the syndicate and explore how damaging they are to the people but instead the syndicate gets recast as Good Actually and the sultanate is restored without a word about it mentioned. Just awful.
39:46 The upper shelves are finally accessible!
The mess w/ Ul'dah has always kind of felt like whiplash in 3.0. I know why they had to do it, but it still feels like now wasn't the time.
I feel like part of the problem with the slightly unsatisfying Ul-Dah thread can be laid at the feet of the Heavensward trailer cinematic, which really oversells the idea of Lolorito scheming and Raubahn stewing in his cell being this huge thread that's going to underpin the expansion.
Over time I've come to appreciate that while it's narratively over-neat in some ways, it is at least allowing Lolorito to be morally cloudy. He has a line he wouldn't cross, and conveniently it aligns with him accumulating more power and wealth.
A nice detail about the new English voice acting I like is that most Doman characters who are voiced have an actor of Japanese descent portraying them.
Agreed on the Sultana plot. It positively reeks of retconning. Seems to me they made a dramatic move, then realised that they weren't actually ready and/or willing to follow its consequences down their logical paths, so they swept it under the rug. And in some parts, clumsily so. Prime example: while taunting Raubahn, Ilberd claims he was the one who killed the Sultana. In this episode, he says he did not. Sure, you may read that as him simply lying to taunt and provoke Raubahn, but I can't help but feel that it speaks to the details of this plot having gone through some pretty drastic changes between patch quests and expansion release.
Story spoilers in my further musings below
The more I think about the repercussions the Bloody Banquet could have had, the more dissatisfied I grow with how they handled it. Justice for the revolution Ul'dah could have had, dammit! Think about it. With the Sultana dead and Raubahn out of the picture, as well as the deceitful scumbag Teledji bisected, who despite his true motivations was still very much projecting a sympathetic front to the Ul'dahn underclass, well. That leaves the ruling class of Ul'dah without anyone with any strong sympathy for the refugees and the poor – a very large portion of the Ul'dahn populace, who was already disenfranchised and angry. Ul'dah, even at the point I am in the story (mid-EW) is still kind of a major classist hellhole. It needs change. Desperately. Nanamo wanted that. That's why she wanted to turn Ul'dah into a republic. With the power dynamics and class conflicts at place at the end of ARR, the Bloody Banquet could have been the first domino to fall in a cascade of events that would ultimately lead to Nanamo's people claiming for themselves what she wished for them. As much as I love Nanamo as a character, and as happy as I am that we got to keep her and see her grow into her own, I can't help but be sad that we didn't get to see that fallout. Maybe they just weren't ready to tell that kind of story quite yet. Maybe we'll get a different version of it still later on, with the empire gone and world-ending calamities no longer hanging overhead. I doubt she's given up her dreams of a republic Ul'Dah. I can dream…
If I ever end up with a house in Ul'dah, I'm filling the garden with guilloutines. To threaten the Syndicate, but Lolorito most of all. I'd call him a snake bastard, but that'd be an insult to both snakes and bastards everywhere
When I replayed the Crystal Braves section on my character, I felt guilty realizing I was recruiting a lot of good men and women into that force knowing what happens in the end. Men and women who's names I did not even remember. So during my replay I kept a booklet* where I wrote down the names of every named Crystal Brave, where they came from, and what their ultimate fate was. Whether they survived the conspiracy and stayed loyal to the Scions, sided with Ilberd, were silenced when they discovered too much, or simply appeared onscreen with a name one time and had no significant scenes afterward.
(*technically a .txt file a not an actual booklet)
There's now something amusing about an enemy lancer fighting The Azure Dragoon
Also, Ilberd's speech was adorable, after what he'd done.
Oh man, nice animation touch with Raubahn pointing with the stump as if his arm was still there.
-ok that Crystal Brave dialogue is great, he acknowledges you're a wanted Criminal, but also is smart enough to know not to throw hands with a Warrior of Light who fights Primals as a Job/Hobby… also it saves the Devs having to code PvE rules for Towns
– I love that the door can choose targets to aggro
– ok yeah im glad to see my boy Raubahn back… but boy that really feels like a Cop out answer
Re: the reveal of Nanamo's fate, I am glad she's alive, but I think my issues with stem from it being revealed this early. Granted, experiencing the story in this way is maybe not the intended way (I don't know how long people had to wait between the end of the ARR patches and Heavensward's release) but just pacing wise, I wish they had waited a bit longer to fire that particular Chekov's Gun. But then again, maybe there's other story reasons why they decided to tug at that thread early in the expansion rather than holding onto it until later?
I'm curious as to whether you could actually have chosen to leave Ishgard. This definitely feels like what the game intends you to do, but would it have stopped you from choosing otherwise?
So is Raubahn's son looking for his corner of the sky?
Completely agree about the twist that Nanamo lived, the assassination was such an amazing ending to ARR taking it back was disappointing.
Regarding the the whole 'the Sultana lives' situation… it might feel like a retcon to us playing, but it seems that at least from the writers' side of things it was planned from the start.
Remember the after credit cutscene from ARR? We saw Nanamo's lady in waiting reporting to Lolorito, despite the fact that the poisoning plot was Teledji Adeledji's scheme.
And personaly, I was so happy when everything started pointing towards her being still alive! I love Nanamo 😀