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The Syrcus Trench
-It’s 6:30am on June 28. The expansion went live 2.5 hours ago, though I’m just getting up now. I love this anticipation. Like a kid on Christmas morning.
-The quest starts in Mor Dhona. We’ve been looking for a way into the Crystal Tower, where it’s hinted we can find a way to wherever my fellow Scions’ souls have been trapped.
That voice has been yelling at us to “throw wide the gates,” and that time is probably nigh.
-Ooh, the dialogue box has changed! Small thing, but I like it.
-AND THE NEW QUEST ACCEPT MUSIC IS SOLID!
-Into the trench below Crystal Tower, seeking magic fragments to let us back into the sealed structure. Biggs and Wedge are here to help, but apparently Jesse and Cid are working on something else. I wonder if that’s related to whatever new 8 player raid opens up in Shadowbringers. Cid’s usually involved with those.
-There’s a ton of voice acting! I’m mostly happy for this for all the Tataru voice.
-Ququshu ventures a bit farther in, finding a clockwork thing on the ground. Looks Time Lordish.
-It’s the symbol of the Ironworks (Cid’s company). What’s it doing here?
-Then that echo voice slams into me again. “Let expanse contract, eon become instant. Throw wide the gates that we may pass.”
My spirit departs this dimension. I find myself now in some starry void.
-…wait, those aren’t stars. They’re crystal shards.
-Voices come from each. Most are hard to make out, but I think I hear the Warrior of Darkness from Heavensward: “We did everything right and still it came to this!”
-I approach one crystal where a woman stands with her back to me in an ocean of bright light. The Oracle of Light. “Your time has not yet come.”
She seems vaguely villainish.
-Things swap to a world bleached of light. Someone walks engulfed by shadow, bright lights above. I can’t tell who it is. The axe makes me wonder if it’s the Warrior of Darkness.
-I wake, finding myself in a vast purple forest.
-A voice: “From endless dreams I awake. Something vague yet urgent calls me to action once more.” It’s the “throw wide the gates” guy’s voice. Who is it? Hopefully we find out soon.
-WAIT WHAT THE FUCK - I meet a traveling merchant down, and this is the alternate universe version of the very first NPC I met rolling down the road in Ul’dah just after creating Ququshu.
What a cool touch.
-It feels like midday, but the merchant confirms this is night.The world hasn’t had a dark night for over a hundred years. Eternal daylight.
[Later edit: This line, “The world hasn’t had a dark night for over a hundred bleedin’ years,” was from the trailer. I had assumed he meant “the world hasn’t had a dark knight for over a hundred bleedin’ years.” Oops lol.
Can’t blame me – the iconic Warrior of Light appears to be a Dark Knight in Shadowbringers.]
-He directs me to a nearby settlement. “They’ll take good care of you in the Crystarium.” Hee! Another reference, to the FFXIII skill system iirc.
-I walk down that path, and see the Crystal Tower. It’s here in this world too. The Crystarium seems to be a town at the base of the Crystal Tower.
The voice: “There, it will all begin anew. Between Dark and Light. The one true struggle.” Title screen.
And we’re off!
-Another quality of life improvement: the map tells me when a quest objective is at a higher or lower elevation.
-The Crystarium gate guard who greets me is viera. Look, I was skeptical when I saw the viera design, but now I know that’s only because pretty much every viera they showed off was in a bikini of some form.
This fully-armored viera looks fucking incredible.
-She suddenly attacks a white monster behind us, hurling chakrams at it.
“That one had eaten. It must have gulped down the whole hand, ring and all.”
OH SHIT IT ATE THE MERCHANT! RIP.
-The guard calls the monster a “stray sin eater.”
-A new person approaches, a “Crystal Exarch.” This must be the voice that hijacked our Scions.
Mr. Throw-Wide-The-Gates.
-The Exarch tells me that this is one of the thirteen shards. The First. I came from the Source.
-The fact that the game still won’t show me his full face makes me think he’s the First’s version of someone we know in the Source. My money’s on Alphinaud.
CRYSTAL EXARCH: “Here in the First, the world has been all but consumed by primordial Light. It began a century ago, by this realm’s reckoning. A luminous flood swallowing everything in its path. More than nine tenths of this star was lost.”
Jesus.
-The sin eaters are light monsters born in that flood.
-He also hints that by saving this world, I can save the Source.
-I love that the Crystal Tower somehow figures into this. It was central to Final Fantasy III, another game that focused on the dangers of overwhelming darkness OR overwhelming light.
-The Crystarium is one of the very few sanctuaries remaining in this world. It’s thriving, relatively.
-The region is Norvrandt.
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City of the First
-The Exarch urges me to explore the city. Since the citizens here are unaware of their astral place – all that “First/Source/Shards” business – he suggests I say I “share a homeland with the Crystal Exarch. There is an unspoken rule here about peering too deeply into that particular mystery.”
Interesting. Is the Exarch from the Source too?
-One of the new races here is the Hrothgar. Lion/Ronso-esque.
-OH MY GOD WHAT A GREAT REFERENCE! The new Shadowbringers hunt clan is Clan Nutsy instead of Clan Centurio. Clan Nutsy was the main dream world clan in Final Fantasy Tactics Advance (still my favorite Tactics game).
-Their rookery has regular chocobos, but also these four-winged creatures whose names I don’t know.
-The library is a gorgeous circular thing called the Cabinet of Curiosity.
-Librarian Moren gives me some recent history. ~100 years ago, “villains known as the Warriors of Light” *ducks head* “slew the Shadowkeeper, the steward of Darkness.”
As a result, light flooded the world in a calamity. It leeched the world of life.
-Then the Oracle of Light appeared and protected Norvrandt alone. We met her recently.
-The sin eaters came soon after. We saw them in the trailer too.
-Another person I meet wonders if I’m a dwarf. DWARFSSSS LALI! Are they their version of lalafels?
[Later edit: If dwarfs are the First’s lalafels, is there a play on the speech? Past FF dwarfs always said “Lali!” “Lali-ho!” Lali…fel? Yeah, I’m reaching.]
-The races in the first are hume, elf – lol FFXI – Galdjent (their Roegadyn), Drahn (their Au’ra), Zun (their Amal’jaa).
A Zun.
-The Crystal Exarch can apparently throw up a barrier if the sin eaters get too sassy.
KATLISS (a citizen): “They say his grand magicks summoned the Crystal Tower into existence – pulled the entire thing out of thin air.” Who the actual f is the Crystal Exarch?
-He basically made the Crystarium. Buildings randomly started showing up.
[Later edit: Someone who arrives just in time to be the savior makes me intensely skeptical of the Crystal Exarch. I’m thinking specifically of Worm (parahumans.wordpress.com) and [MAJOR SPOILERS] gur eryngvbafuvc orgjrra Rvqbyba naq gur Raqoevatref.
I don’t think he has malicious intent, but I do suspect him as tied to the origin of this calamity.]
-The Exarch himself confirms this. He even says he doesn’t know where he pulled the Crystal Tower from. Lolol, so is there just a random gaping hole in the Fourth or Fifth Shard’s version of Mor Dhona?
-Calling it for now. Excited to continue diving into this expansion.
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Random Stuff Around Eorzea
The chaos around a main questgiver just hours into the expansion’s launch:
-To get the harder versions of certain raids, you talk to a bard NPC who then reimagines the fight as the way harder version you can do. The quest to unlock hard mode Alexander references a different Alexander: “Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Retells Your Story.”
-I love this character’s dragon look:
A Snow cosplayer:
Some great player names:
Teddi Ursa
King Leonidas
Peggy Schuyler
Cosmo Politan
Sparticus Farticus
Kawaii Leonard
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Next time: meeting back up with the Crystal Exarch.
