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I forgot how good these opening sections of Stormblood were.
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Jun 19, 2022 00:27
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The Skulls having such a weird uniform is super interesting. The survivor villages all wear really low quality stuff a level 10 weaver would make out of hemp, and the rebels all wear a sort of military fatigue. Maybe they're the only guys that get to wear a more traditional ala mhigan getup, both to show off and isolate them from the Proper Garleans.
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Jun 19, 2022 00:32
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I didn’t find FATEs in Stormblood to be that bad to solo with the Chocobo out - but it does seem like it’s a LOT easier if you’re one or two levels higher rather than the exact minimum (or especially not below the listed level).
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Jun 19, 2022 00:52
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Wrestlepig posted:The Skulls having such a weird uniform is super interesting. The survivor villages all wear really low quality stuff a level 10 weaver would make out of hemp, and the rebels all wear a sort of military fatigue. Probably a difference in command style between Gaius and his replacement. Gaius had all his forces in the same uniforms regardless of origin.
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Jun 19, 2022 01:02
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Whilst we cannot know the timing on the change of Viceroy. The best we get is knowing Gaius’ timeline in terms of getting stopped at Silvertear by Midgardsormr and helping to stop Nael before taking 5 years to try again with Ultima Weapon. It is likely this Skull indeed joined the military under Gaius command. Which would kinda check out, standard practice is to take conscripts elsewhere (as seen from Couerl’s talk of his father) keeping the locals around to police themselves could well be something Gaius tried to make it easier for Ala Mighans to integrate. In which case perhaps the uniforms are meant to help that, you get to be an Ala Mighan and a Garlean Citizen without shame if you act right. This is all speculation based on stuff seen so far. Also yeah, I don’t think Gaius was unaware of the racism in the system, but I do think he maybe was unaware of how rotten it all was. His lieutenants did canonically give him false reports on the actions of other Legions (like say, what was happening in Ala Mihgo under a new viceroy after Gaius left).
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Jun 19, 2022 02:26
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Cythereal posted:I disagree, on the basis that we never did see Gaius interact with anyone who hasn't already fully bought into Garlean ideology besides the Warrior of Light and Cid to my recollection. I would be very surprised if Gaius ever saw anything like this village, because he seems to me like the kind of guy who would ask 'Okay, but what are we GETTING out of this, meaningfully? Relocate these people somewhere were they can labor for something useful.' I do agree with you about Gaius, but I think the textual evidence for it at this point in the narrative is pretty weak. This might be the sort of thing to bring back up when it becomes slightly more relevant.
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Jun 19, 2022 02:31
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I did get annoyed with Lyse eventually, but everything in this update seemed reasonable to me while playing through.
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Jun 19, 2022 02:38
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I remembered the Peaks section of the Stormblood intro being pretty real, but I'd forgotten just how real it got. Cripes. And Lyse almost immediately getting a harsh reality check on her idealized conception of starting a rebellion. It turns out that people who have been living under the yoke of a brutal conquering empire for a few decades may not always be very enthusiastic about throwing off that yoke (because nearly everybody capable of fighting is long since dead, fled, or conscripted).
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Jun 19, 2022 02:44
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I kind of get the feeling that the Garlean Empire is the sort of place where even if a legatus like Gaius who believed in the Fantasy Good Guy Rome version of Garlemald got a report that the soldiers did Something Nasty, the soldiers would probably get a slap on the wrist and whoever reported that would get some pretty nasty retaliation on account of snitches get stitches. Anyway Lyse is good. I like her, and I like the hard-hitting criticism of colonialism! I also like Fordola, she's a really interesting antagonist! Stormblood is good, actually. (Mostly.)
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Jun 19, 2022 02:50
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Thundarr posted:And Lyse almost immediately getting a harsh reality check on her idealized conception of starting a rebellion. Keep in mind back in the HW epilogue we had a couple of scenes where Papalymo wanted to get back to the Scions but Yda was caught up in playing revolutionary and getting closer to the Griffin. There's talk in this update about the people on the outside finding it easier to fight but she's been on the periphery of even that for most of her life, fighting Garleans with the Scions and believing that it helped somewhere down the line. I think idealism is exactly right, now that she's actively involved she's caught up in the euphoria of finally doing something.
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Jun 19, 2022 02:54
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Wrestlepig posted:The Skulls having such a weird uniform is super interesting. The survivor villages all wear really low quality stuff a level 10 weaver would make out of hemp, and the rebels all wear a sort of military fatigue. This is my take on it too, especially considering they share the same tan, red, and teal colour scheme as the Ala Mhigan sets of X gear you can get for centurio seals later on edit: SA is not discord. Fixed spoiler tags.
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Jun 19, 2022 03:09
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Meffrid was introduced at the same time as the Fake Griffin in ARR. I did not remember him at all despite remembering the Fake Griffin. Every now and then, I think of Meffrid and laugh a little because of that. Regarding the Qiqirn, the evil faction is creepy, but even some of the Thanalan FATEs have cannibal Qiqirn who talk about eating people or selling them into slavery. Also, Fordola! It might not be readily apparent, but she's 19-years-old. I thought she was, like, late 20s or something for the longest time.
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Jun 19, 2022 03:28
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As mentioned before, a number of people dislike Lyse and a large part of that dislike comes from this introduction. I think it comes from the fact that Lyse has very odd baggage coming from her conception; she reads as the naive idealist, but often, those naive idealists are introduced with fresh slates to help sell the fact that they aren't world-weary yet. Depending on how you look at it, Lyse could or could not fall into that camp, given she just shed her old identity AND is visiting a hometown she's barely known. But, some people have difficulty viewing it that way considering she's been a Scion and also been known for two expansions already. It really ends up mattering how much you buy into the idea that Lyse is a "new character".
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Jun 19, 2022 03:37
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Oh yeah, I think fate scaling can be pretty wonky especially in the early SB zones. Sometimes you just miss a group of people doing them for XP and whatnot and the fate gets scaled to be impossible solo even if that group has moved on. FWIW at the minimum scaling it is possible to solo them with your chocobo, but I would always pretty quickly pick up a group and woops now it's a group of 6 farming fates.
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Jun 19, 2022 03:40
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Count me as another person who was just floored at how perfectly this introduction captured the feeling of sheer hopelessness of the occupied territories, by showing how they truly had nothing but bad options available to them. Try to start a new life to make the best of a terrible situation, and integrate and ingratiate yourself to your conquerors? They have no problem with ripping you out of your homeland and sending you off to help inflict the same fate on other territories, or making you become the oppressor of your own people yourself (while still making it clear that they don’t give a rat’s rear end about your efforts). Try to rebel? You live a life of constantly being hunted, knowing full well that the people you love (who realistically can’t meaningfully defend themselves) will face brutal reprisals if you ever slip up or get outed. Just keep your head down and try to go unnoticed? They’ll stomp down on you until you reach your breaking point, and take everything you don’t strictly need to survive from you, as you slave away to further solidify their grasp on you with every passing day. Try to call for outside help? Turns out that everyone who feasibly could make a difference is dealing with major problems of their own, lacks the public wherewithal to launch a war in foreign soil against the mightiest military power in the world, or otherwise isn’t in any position to help your homeland beyond offering some token refuge to escapees. Decide “to hell with the consequences”, and join up with the most radical of the rebel factions in a desperate attempt to force things to change? You find out all too late that your leader is an ideologue who cares more about wreaking bloody vengeance than anything else, and sees you all as sacrificial pawns for his final gambit.
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Jun 19, 2022 05:10
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Lord_Magmar posted:Whilst we cannot know the timing on the change of Viceroy. The best we get is knowing Gaius’ timeline in terms of getting stopped at Silvertear by Midgardsormr and helping to stop Nael before taking 5 years to try again with Ultima Weapon. It is likely this Skull indeed joined the military under Gaius command. The title of the quest that introduces the Skulls is The Black Wolf’s Pups. Which I think is rather telling.
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Jun 19, 2022 06:08
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The story is extremely good and Real As gently caress but every time someone says you can't go in and single-handedly wipe out an army by yourself I'm like watch me bitch
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Jun 19, 2022 06:54
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I also did not like Lyse here but it is supposed to be a mistake she makes and learns from so oh well. Anyway, yes, the Skulls are probably the part of Stormblood I am most interested in. RE: Gaius, I very much think he did intend to let the Skulls be a legitimate fighting force to help Ala Mhigans integrate, but his own biases and lofty position meant that it didn't actually help anybody. He does seem to know, intellectually, that Garlemald has a racism problem, he just thinks it's something he (or another Strong Ruler) will fix singlehandedly when they achieve the power needed. Hellioning fucked around with this message at 07:21 on Jun 19, 2022 |
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Jun 19, 2022 07:19
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GiantRockFromSpace posted:Man, thanks Sanguinia for doing this LP and reminding me that a)FFXIV is really good at portraying this kind of stuff and b)that people who played Stormblood and still think the empire is cool or better either never read a single line of this or... worse things I could say. Your comments are as insightful as always too. Honestly, I think XIV is a bit TOO good at portraying the Empire's evil at times. They're not supposed to be as 100% evil Vector from Final Fantasy VI, but damned if they aren't trying. ParliamentOfDogs posted:One of the complaints about Stormblood that always annoyed me was the claim that it made the Garleans into ‘unbelievable mustache twirling villains’ in sections like this, and it’s like, man, this is toned down if anything. I can kinda get where those comments are coming in some regards (more on that later), but this here is definitely consistent with what we've seen of Garlemald so far. Heck, we had a section in ARR where a lady in Little Ala Mhigo was taken advantage of by some Garleans. Blueberry Pancakes fucked around with this message at 07:48 on Jun 19, 2022 |
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Jun 19, 2022 07:43
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I really enjoy the nuanced look into imperialism we get here, I've never seen anything quite like it in popular media. These people are not cowards afraid to rise up against their oppressors, neither are they broken people comfortable in servitude. These are survivors who've endured almost 2 decades of terror. You are far from the first would be liberator who's come to ask for their aid, and if they were naive enough to leap at your offer of revolution they'd have died on the wall with the Griffon, or any of the other revolutionary groups before that.
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Jun 19, 2022 07:48
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Many Garleans are pretty blunt about their fantasy-racism, but Ala Mhigo was also not in a good place before imperial rule and doesn't always align with the stories we used to hear (or at least I got the impression they're less welcome in the military than the peoples of other colonies). It's clear that fixing the place is not gonna mean just going to exactly how things were before.GiantRockFromSpace posted:people who played Stormblood and still think the empire is cool "Cool" just means it has entertainment value, not that it's good. FF7's Shinra is 'cool 'as all hell, mostly because it's the in-universe symbolization of FF's embracing cyberpunk aesthetic for the first time. That doesn't mean people want to Make Mako Real or live in a true corporate dystopia. Craptacular! fucked around with this message at 07:59 on Jun 19, 2022 |
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Jun 19, 2022 07:57
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Not everything that is cool is also good.
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Jun 19, 2022 08:00
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Blueberry Pancakes posted:
Thought that was the Corpse Brigade who were rear end in a top hat Ala Mhigans who used to serve the Mad King, and pretty much just torment the people of Little Ala Mhigo now.
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Jun 19, 2022 08:24
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MonsterEnvy posted:Thought that was the Corpse Brigade who were rear end in a top hat Ala Mhigans who used to serve the Mad King, and pretty much just torment the people of Little Ala Mhigo now. That's correct, although we did hear about that kind of thing on at least two other occasions I can think of, one from a Minor Scion and one from the guy who helped us infiltrate the Castrum in Revenant's Toll.
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Jun 19, 2022 08:38
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Pwnstar posted:The story is extremely good and Real As gently caress but every time someone says you can't go in and single-handedly wipe out an army by yourself I'm like watch me bitch Every time somebody starts talking poo poo to the WoL, I wish there was a "I kill gods professionally" dialogue option. 1stGear fucked around with this message at 08:45 on Jun 19, 2022 |
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Jun 19, 2022 08:42
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I think it's more of a vocation than a profession.
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Jun 19, 2022 08:45
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I feel like Ala Mhigo probably got the boot to the neck a bit harder than another conquered nation, due to the fact that the Highlanders are your fantasy standard proud, traditional, angry, stubborn people and they needed to be made example of. If the Skulls are indeed a homegrown unit allowed some freedom of tradition, which it sounds like they are, I can really see where angry lad is coming from because it's very much a one step forward, two steps back situation for someone who should be well on his way to Service Guarantees Citizenship.
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Jun 19, 2022 08:47
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There's a reason why their patron among the Twelve is The Destroyer, and also a reason why those temples have been broken to shards. Their proud tradition of honed and applied strength has been very pointedly and visibly torn down.
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Jun 19, 2022 11:01
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I love Lyse in this section because she has massive "diaspora kid raised on tales of a motherland she never really knew finally coming into contact with it" energy. It's very relatable stuff, honestly, the entire introduction to Ala Mhigo is just a bunch of stuff that's like "oh yeah this is exactly what gramps went through (unfortunately)".
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Jun 19, 2022 12:20
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Regarding anyone that still thinks the Garlean Empire has the right of it (especially after Endwalker), I'll just refer to my favorite quote from the FATAL & Friends, regarding some of RIFTS' later supplements: "There comes a point where it stops mattering whether this is a dog whistle or you're just that stupid."
SirPhoebos fucked around with this message at 13:15 on Jun 19, 2022 |
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Jun 19, 2022 13:11
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Sadly there are always gonna be those who stan Imperialism no matter the medium, because either they live in a fantasy bubble that only sees the 'Good Side' of it, or who look at the nasty, wart covered underbelly of Imperialism and come to the conclusion that it's Not A Bug, But A Feature.
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Jun 19, 2022 13:47
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a common issue in 2000s JRPGs was the Vaan-Balthier Problem: the player avatar is kind of just there while the story happens to the ACTUAL protagonist, eventually leading to the question of why, exactly, the PC is even still hanging out with these people. the story beat here is introducing the player to some of the grimmer horrors of empire, and why overthrowing them is really, really hard. people have some very naive understandings of this kind of thing, and the writers want to dispel them. but to dispel them, someone has to give voice to them. and making the player character a naive dipshit demanding a bunch of peasants risk their lives for them would have pissed people off SO much more. and so, instead, the PC just kind of hangs out on the sidelines while Lyse takes the role of protagonist for this bit, so the protagonist can say some extremely dumb things, and the story can correct them. given the choice between the two ways to do it, i think the way they decided to do it was the smart one, but the consequence is that the warrior of light spends much of the first level or two of stormblood picking at their nails in the background of the Lyse Learns The Hard Way show. i can see why that annoys players.
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Jun 19, 2022 16:16
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I don't think this is where people start to dislike Lyse. At the very least, it was certainly not where I started to dislike her, since this was some pretty amazing writing right here.
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Jun 19, 2022 16:22
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Yeowch!!! My Balls!!! posted:a common issue in 2000s JRPGs was the Vaan-Balthier Problem: the player avatar is kind of just there while the story happens to the ACTUAL protagonist, eventually leading to the question of why, exactly, the PC is even still hanging out with these people. and they hang out with the WoL because they need a godkiller
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Jun 19, 2022 16:25
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On the other hand, some folks adore Lyse specifically because she resonates a lot with some peoples' experiences. There's a notable WoW/FF14 streamer who says Lyse is one of his favorite characters in the game because he grew up in Northern Ireland during the Troubles and Stormblood, including Lyse as a well-meaning but naive outsider, felt very real to him.
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Jun 19, 2022 16:37
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Blueberry Pancakes posted:Honestly, I think XIV is a bit TOO good at portraying the Empire's evil at times. They're not supposed to be as 100% evil Vector from Final Fantasy VI, but damned if they aren't trying. Everything we’ve seen to this point in the LP is basically cribbed from the history of actual empires. I think one of the real strengths of how FFXIV portrays empire is that if you realize that, it really shines the light on how extensively we tend to gloss over just how awful the enterprise of empire is. I think the weakest parts are the ones where they couch it in enough fantasy stuff that it’s not as obvious that’s what’s going on, so I think this bit is particularly effective because there’s none of that at all - it’s all poverty-level stuff so it’s much more raw and obvious that this is just talking about a universal function if of empire.
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Jun 19, 2022 17:10
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Yeah, showing realistic systems of oppression is much better than if the Empire was maintaining its rule via the power of MAGIC ROCKS
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Jun 19, 2022 17:12
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Rorahusky posted:Sadly there are always gonna be those who stan Imperialism no matter the medium, because either they live in a fantasy bubble that only sees the 'Good Side' of it, or who look at the nasty, wart covered underbelly of Imperialism and come to the conclusion that it's Not A Bug, But A Feature. Or because the person doing the imperialism is a cute anime waifu who loves you, the blank slate player self-insert, and just look how cute and well meaning she is! No, no fandom related bitterness here. Nope.
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Jun 19, 2022 17:14
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I'm trying to guess who the cute anime waifu is. Nero?
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Jun 19, 2022 17:25
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Leraika posted:I'm trying to guess who the cute anime waifu is. Nero? Edelgard from Fire Emblem: Three Houses, if I'm not mistaken.
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Jun 19, 2022 17:26
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