Sidequest Book Club Episode 5: The Warring Triad
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- Опубліковано 21 жов 2024
- Our next stop on the tour of FFXIV sidestories: Cleretic brings us to our first non-job storyline, the Warring Triad! Today, we learn about all the FInal Fantasy games Unukalhai wishes he was in instead of this one, Amaranth tells us all her favorite NPC emote, and Cleretic reveals an elaborate theory about who Sephirot's ACTUALLY mad at.
Find me on / cleretic , bsky.app/profi..., or cohost.org/Cle...!
Find Amaranth at / jazzelves , or cohost.org/ama...!
I *love* longform videos/podcasts and I also love ff14s lore and storytelling so ive been obsessed with this series so far! I haven't gone through it since i was first doing the msq but id like to see you guys do the black mage quest line! Or at least the stormblood part. I love that it, machinist, and scholar let you talk to, if not the originator of the job, someone who was doing it at its height
This was a really fun one to revisit - thank you for picking it out! Without a push, I honestly don't know when I'd have revisited it, and the story would have stayed in the realm of "oh I remember I liked it, but was it just for the fights?"
My head cannon was our little guest gave the pink potato half a gil so she let him in.
Fair warning general story spoilers I have a lot of thoughts from a lot of places. Also minor ones for FFX
Oh yay, my favorite bit of "You should do this but 200% don't have to" That I cannot convince any of my friends to actually do. "I love this game's story!" "Well there's a bit of side content here that's a good story, involves the main cast, adds shades to basically all our main villains, and -" "But is it strictly necessary for msq" "No bu-" "Not doing it." "Ok but at least do Omega..."
Little addendum at the top, oops another book. If I have a paragraph of thoughts by the 3 minute mark of a 2 hour video, I'm blaming you, and that's even cutting quips on Kamen rider because they boil down to "Do it". Looking back around the two hour mark uh... yeah no this one is a book.
Lore is a funny thing, a tool unlike any other in a writer's book. I like to view it a lot like cable management, where it's only really impressive to a certain group of people if it's done really well, it happens as a byproduct of text, where the more you write the more lore you have, even if it's something as simple as one character existing in a room next to another. Finally it's only really a problem if your story is so big, and so messy, and in such a tight space that you feel the squeeze. Like I recently played FFX, and that game's lore is a mess, it's literally all over the place, and yet it doesn't matter because it's telling a story about a journey through a relatively open world (Not in a game play sense that game is a hall way). At the end of the day the lore just exists to say why Tidus is frustrated, Yuna is conflicted, Khimari is broken, Lulu is sad, Waka unsettled, Auron is gruff, and Riku is pissed. The game and story are about those people and how they handle those emotions, and all that grief, the things that kicked them there is far less meaningful. Does this mean we have a dozen planets of hats and a world that basically crumbles under any intense weight? Yes. Would I want to play a table top in that world without any changes? Hell no. Is FFX's lore a problem? Not for me, the game was great. FFXIV has better lore, but it's an MMO, that's supposed to be fertile ground for story telling. It's lore is open enough to breath, wide enough to tell lots of stories, and with enough hard points to give it a sense of place.
Hildibrand as a trial series makes me wonder how much juice there is in the tank for more follow ups in the vein of Tataru's Grand Endeavor for these kinds of stories. No trials, no combat, just something for the story team to chew on after the fact. I know Tataru's Grand Endeavor already hit the other trial series, and this one got the ShB follow up, and EW decided it's trail series would be msq(and a hand full of gold quests which really felt like what the first draft of that trial series was), but maybe for DT's post patch trials? Use them as an excuse to introduce us to a new cast we can follow for some simple drama after? Coincidentally Omega Beyond the Rift was my favorite bit of EW content.
For me FFXIV's community is one of those cases of "Nice not friendly" which is honestly ideal for someone like me who lives in an area of "Nice not friendly" with in laws in and area that is "Friendly not nice". Nice holds the door open, nice makes a bit of small talk and sends you on your way, nice understands we're trapped here together, and while we might not like it, no sense making it worse. Friendly expects a Christmas card, wants you to help them move, expects you to get involved in all the gossip and drama. Both have their place, but FFXIV is like an elevator. You get in, offer a nod and a smile, maybe crack a joke if you're social, and then you never see any of those people again. If you want to build life long ties, go for it, but you need to put in the work.
Unukalhai definitely strikes me as the type who would politely ask to be let in, and no one would be brave enough to tell him no regardless of vibes. As for his outfit I kind of feel silly that I never made that connection before, and yet here we are.
The fun thing about fascism is that it's always mythologizing the past. Hell even Rome was doing it to itself constantly while stealing iconography from Alexandrian Greece. Doesn't have to be perfect, doesn't have to be accurate, just has to scan enough for your base. I love that ffxiv gets that because it's not just Garlamald, it's also Alag itself, trying to reclaim the glory days of Xande, it's Ilberd trying to take back what was Ala Mhigo, Thorodan and the myth of the war, it's Emmet and his shining city of Amarot. Even Omega's desperate quest to return home, justifies his brutal violence against the player and eorzea if he's not stopped, based on a half remembered "glorious past" That Midgarsormer assures us was not as great as our forgetful robot thinks. It's a proper theme, and one they take the time to explore the dangers of. I wish it was just a touch more explicit for the people in the back, but still.
"Fiend" Is one of my favorite pieces of FF music. I have it playing in my engineer's work shop as her welding theme. It just goes so hard. The main problem with limiting yourself to "period music" or "the genera staples" is that a lot of it's anachronism anyway. To say nothing of how hard it is to pin down when the historical equivalent of eorzea would be, but even if you could pin it down to 1700(early American frontier, fire arms are present but not good, swords still used, and just on the cusp of industrialization.) most people aren't familiar enough with that time to say what is or isn't present. Speak to the audience you have, and if that's by doing some grungy metal, go for it.
As for the arm jumping, I like to see it as the proto type for the four lords DDR, and skydiving sequences.
I think it's important to remember that every calamity was started by Ascians, and most primal summonings were taught by ascians, that's why they temper. If the worshipers of Sephirot did not have a specific god, if the sahagin did not have a specific god, the Ascians would not be above giving them one, and one not too unlike their own. That's at least my reading on why shades of Zodiark keeps poping up. Oh hey right after I type it up you touch on it.
Krile is my favorite involuntary mind reader. She was raised in a place where her having the echo was so well known she probably got used to people assuming she already knew everything about them, so she will lean on that reputation. She does the same thing to Estinian, much to his terror. I'd love to see it subverted in DT, given we're getting more of her(hopefully a lot more I need my sassy popoto), and no one there should be able to recognize her gifts on sight.
On the topic of "Party sets the tone" once again, I point to 10, a very somber and introspective story, because every party member does not care about anything beyond their grief... well and blitz ball(Please Yoshi-P I beg of you). The story ends up being about the characters being confronted with cruel injustices, and demanding to know why the world has to be so messed up. Does it come off as whiny? A little, but it also has a lot of touching moments like the infamous laughing scene, or just about any time anyone cries.
Regula is in fact not the closest thing they have to a summoner, that would actually be Llofii Pyr Potitus, the Miqo'te with the unicorn in Bozja. She is 100% just a summoner of the IVth legion, and we get ABSOLUTELY 0 context as to what the hell that means. Her field notes mention voidsent and magical beasts as subjects of study, but this content would have come out around the time blue mage made reference to diabolists, and Bozja is full of beast masters, and yet she is EXPLICITLY a summoner. We never see her with a carbuncle or an egi, A lot of the things she fights with us against are voidsent, but I would love to know what the hell her deal is. She has lived rent free in my head ever since I did my big field note hunt, and I want watsonian answers. I know the doyalist answer is that she's just there because every job needs to be represented for the relics, but still.
Another "FFXIV knows the fascist play book" Regula being uplifted and so loyal is a common tactic for fascistic power structures. We see it also with Fordola's father, the Brutus family and Rhitahtyn sas Arvina, the idea of collaborators. You take people you're trying to oppress, lift up a few of them to family dog status, and then use them as examples to bludgeon anyone resisting. You gain loyal followers who make good puppet heads, incentivize turn coats in the population to root out dissidents for hopes they might be one of the chosen few, and let those dissidents kill each other over cries of "collaborator" making it much harder for any of the oppressed population to side with the group trying to uplift them. Next time you see a member of a marginalized group in a position of power for a group that's trying to exterminate them, you know why. Going back to put this with the rest of the Regula stuff, now that I've hit the point where you question mediocracy. It's just 100% this, Regula believes in meritocracy, because he is good enough to be a myth of meritocracy. He is told over and over that he is special and he is different, so that others can be told, "Be like Regula, and you might achieve his status" Of course the rest of his legion can't trust that because it's a myth, he's a low born, so the high born hardly tolerate him and the low born see him for what he is, a collaborator.
Real quick note on the Demiurges, I just really love their design. It harkens to a lot of outsider DnD monsters, like the half genies, or humans corrupted by the shadow fell. Charcoal skin with glowing accents is my jam, and I know how edgy that makes me sound.
One of the things I love about Unukalhai is just that he really is a kid who basically had no real mentorship. For the first time in his life he's surrounded by people willing to help him, who understand his troubles. People who don't see teamwork, and friendship as excuses to be soft, any more than they see working alone as an excuse to be cruel. The Scions get to show him that teamwork and friendship are just straight net positives, not the delusion of idealists. It's part of why I like our main cast in FFXIV, they are good people to their core, who believe in others and offer the benefit of the doubt, but are no less effective because of it. Friendship is not supposed to be a weakness.
I have to wonder if 14's conception of the waring triad is looking at "balance" as a wider theme, with "the balance of nature" of Sephirot, "All things must be equal, even if that is all of one thing, 50/50, or nothing" from Sophithia, and "All according to divine will" of Zurvin. Given how little it's actually present in the final story, it might just be a coincidence, but who knows.
So for the "redemption of Regula" I sit on the side that he is not "redeemed", so much as we see "this terrible person is still a person". He still murdered our friend, he is still a fascist, the world would be a much worse place if he were to achieve his goals, but he is not misanthropic. He's doing what he's doing because he is misguided, and even under some definitions evil, but he is not cruel. In order for there to be a redemption, there must be a change. Regula does not change, we just see that there are more shades to him. I view him in the same light as I view Dozle Zabi from gundam, a bad man, who did terrible things, but he is not a monster, like Gihren. That said I don't blame you Cleretic for thinking he's "redeemed" given how he's treated after his death.
You've been going through DS9? Honestly my favorite trek series.
Ok, so now that we get into the Dath Vader problem, let's talk about the most egregious example of it in 14 that I love, Yotsuyu, then we'll bring it back to our beetle boy Regula. It would be easy to look at Yotsuyu in a vacuum and say that she was redeemed, but 4.0 and 4.x aren't in a vacuum, they are the same story being told twice, so we can see the comparison. As far as storm blood is concerned Fordola is worth of redemption, and Yotsuyu is deserving of pity. We are shown the systems that drove both to the point that they were committing atrocities, we brought both low, and offered one a blank slate, and held the other accountable. When confronted with the horrors of what they did, Yotsuyu broke, and Fordola did not. We can look at Fordola as a redeemed woman, working her way to make right all the wrongs she has done, and as such she is allowed to live. Yotsuyu on the other hand had to die, and it is a mercy. We can be sad about what could have been, we can mourn Sue, but really the only thing we can offer Yotsuyu is an end, taking her out of the fight, and letting her melt away in the aetherial sea ready to start another life. There is a reason she was not a shade in the Atiascope, it's because she died at peace, with lo love for us, nor malice for us.
So how do we take all of that and apply it to Regula? I think the phrasing is wrong and I don't know if this was poor communication of the story, or an impossible translation, but I think we're supposed to take Regula's death not as "mourn the loss of a hero", but rather "an honorable soldier died today." If he were born into a different system he could have been a good man, there was honor in him and that should be respected. You don't have to like him, and you can be glad that he is dead, but he was still a man. This is particularly important for Unukalhai, because he comes from a world where you don't mourn or respect anyone. Life on his world was a zero sum game where the thought of co-operation was alien. In order for him to grow into a warrior of light he needs to be able to see that team work isn't just a good thing for those you agree with, but that all of man kind must be able to work together to protect the good of all.
Sorry this one was a lot, but I mean, hey I have a lot of thoughts whenever you two talk. Thanks to anyone who made it to the bottom of this rambling mess.
Is this being the second 4th episode intentional?
No, I'm just bad at counting!
@@EinDose I didn't catch it either, but that's because I am a musician, and we are very very good at counting to 4 and not very good at counting higher than 4, so it just seemed normal!