Article: It's the End of the World as we know it

It's finally happened. The moon of Dalamud has come crashing down, signalling the end of Final Fantasy XIV 1.x. If you weren't there to witness the of the game yourself, then you're not quite out of luck - I have a video showing the epic climax to 1.x right here. Almost as good as being there, right?

The video takes us to the scene of a fierce final battle between the heroes - that's you, the player! - and Garleans forces. Both sides are taking heavy casualties. Cid watches on from a cliffside, but his focus remains on Dalamud. As it should be: as the moon descends, it opens to reveal (SPOILER)Bahamut! In true Bahamut form, he proceeds to absolutely decimate everything as fragments of meteors impact the planet.

It really is something you need to see; words can't quite convey the sheer awesome of the images! The music backing the video, Answers, is sung by Susan Calloway, one of the guest performers at the Distant Worlds concerts too.

See for yourself:

After a night of reminding everyone why they're moving to new servers in the first place (the current servers could not handle the load of everyone logging on to make one last stand against the Empire as they marched from Clastrum Novum), Square Enix released the End of an Era video on YouTube tonight which featured the fall of Dalamud.

Watch it here.

One of the best cutscenes I have ever seen in a game. Just epic. Totally epic. Watched it a few times already.

Holy smurfing Jesus bloody Christ. Well done, SE.

That was amazing.

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Originally Posted by Loony BoB

One of the best cutscenes I have ever seen in a game. Just epic. Totally epic. Watched it a few times already.

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You mean the best ending. :D

I really wish I could have been playing when this happened. But... Wow. That was absolutely amazing. One of the best looking game endings ever right there.

The little smile on Louisoix's face at the end was one of the most epic and depressing things I've ever seen in my life. Not gonna lie, even I had to hold back a few man tears.

Dammit, I got home late last night and went to bed completely forgetting about this (although if the servers were as bad as Ouch! said, maybe I didn't miss much). But that was an incredible ending scene.

Also completely forgot. :/ But definitely epic. Needs moar MNK though. >____>

For the record, playing when this happened is irrelevant. At 3:00 AM the servers shut off. The log-in page then directed you to this video. It was never in-game, and most everyone who tried to participate in fighting the waves of Imperials (which were trash mobs just like the imperials appearing randomly in certain areas for the past month and a half) were faced with constant disconnections.

Yeah, the event was fairly underwhelming if only due to the congestion lag. But we did down an absolute buttload of high level mobs with many members. Mor Dhona was terrible but it was alright in Ul'dah, despite the mobs being a higher level. Defeated four Bixie mobs, stormed Castrum Novum, crashed a couple of times, fought a few more enemies, enjoyed chatting with a few LS friends and then it crashed right at the end and we watched the video.

That video was incredible! And having heard Answers live twice now, it still gets better with every listen! Especially when coupled with that video.. Looks like it's certain that I'll be upgrading my computer in time for A Realm Reborn! And I'll need to sit and research the backstory to all of the original FFXIV (just so I don't feel like a complete noob when playing. I'm sure you won't need it, but completionalism OCD is a bitch)

You can bash SE all you want but they really know how to make epic cinematics! LIKE HOLY MOLY that was so freaking awesome.

It usually takes way less awesome than this to bring out tears for me, so you can imagine how I was doing while watching this.

The only real thing SE has left is awesome cutscenes. But it's not enough to redeem them.

The internet is blowing up about this cinematic. I keep seeing it talked about/linked

Building hype for version 2.0. Square Enix is doing it right.

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Originally Posted by Ouch!

Building hype for version 2.0. Square Enix is doing it right.

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They ended a world literally and had most probably the saddest and most epic death ever, and yet I still encounter people who go meh to the trailer somehow.

Since it seems like Bahamut breaks free of the last ditch effort to trap him back in Dalamud, and since it was the Empire that summoned him, do you think that means they have their own primal now? :o

Well it was more Nael van Darnus who summoned him more than anything, since the empire seems to be pretty anti-primal, so I'm assuming they had no idea what Dalamud really was.

What I want to know is, are they going to keep what happened in here in the story and we get our chance to avenge Louisoix?

I was actually putting my money on Odin being the empire's primal, and the empire just calling other primals "eikons" as a way of differensiating their "true" god from all the "false" gods of their opponents.

So much for that!

I thought it became pretty clear that the Empire did not fully comprehend what Dalamud truly was. Gaius van Baelsar suggests as much when you encounter him before storming Castrum Novum to destroy the lunar transmitter; he says he suspects that Dalamud is more than the Emperor realizes and wants you to stop Nael van Darnus, who he believes has ulterior motives.

That said, I was also expecting Odin rather than Bahamut.

Bahamut doesn't surprise me, as when your talking a destructive summon, it's generally Bahamut.

Also I wouldn't could Odin out yet Mirage, though I doubt he's empire affiliated directly, but from the armor, it could be that he was a past Legatus or something reborn? Or I dunno, I'm merely postulating off the fact that they all have fancy armor.

That was a really amazing cinematic, and if you had been following the storyline for awhile then it was really something! I love how they built the story to cover the need for the new engine and redesign of the environments, I think that was a really cool idea so kudos to Yoshi-P for that one.

I'm so excited for ARR now. :)

Yoshi-P has been answering questions regarding the details behind Dalamud/Bahamut/the Empire/etc.

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Originally Posted by Yoshi-P, on the FFXIV forums

In Version 1.0, we dropped many tidbits of information that hinted at Dalamud's true nature:

- Dalamud was created by the Allagan Empire and cast into the heavens several millennia ago.
- Eorzea is home to many deities. The beast tribes worship the primals, and the five races (Hyur, Elezen, Miqo'te, Lalafell, Roegadyn) revere the Twelve.
- The van Darnus family is of the blood of ancient Allag, and are the keepers of its secrets.
- An Ishgardian theologian who studied the dragons and their gods was kidnapped by the Empire and taken to the Aurum Vale.
- In the battle with Garuda, the primal says: "This is the price of your folly. The price of using the crystals' power─MY POWER!─to waken the other from slumber.
- The power of the crystals was absorbed by Dalamud.

I don't want to spoil the ARR story, but I can say this:

The dragons of Dravania are classified as a beast tribe. Nidhogg is not a primal, but a king among the dragons. Likewise, Midgardsormr--known as the Keeper of the Lake--while not a primal, is a revered existence among dragonkind. Just as men have worshipped kings throughout history, so too have the dragons.

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I'm absolutely stoked for them to start engaging the story behind Ishgard more, even if we'll have to wait for an expansion.

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Originally Posted by Ouch!

I'm absolutely stoked for them to start engaging the story behind Ishgard more, even if we'll have to wait for an expansion.

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Ishgard is just a city though, so I wouldn't be surprised if it were added after release of 2.0 as a stand alone content patch. I'd be more surprised if they waited for an expansion to add it in game, after all it's part of the 5 city-states of Eorzea.

They already announced that we will have to wait for the first expansion for Ishgard.

Edit: Thought I'd back that up with evidence, so here's the question regarding Ishgard and Ala Mhigo from the third live Letter from the Producer. Emphasis mine.

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Q: Will it be possible to visit Sharlayan, Ala Mhigo, Ishgard and the Garlean Empire from launch? Will new areas be added later?
A: Ala Mhigo and Ishgard won’t be available at launch. I know that people have been asking to see other new areas, since we’ve only shown Gridania so far, but we’ve completely remade all the maps. In that sense, all areas are completely new.

There are new settlements, monsters, and dungeons—some which are three times the size of current ones. Frankly, when you consider that it’s only been fifteen months since we started writing code and creating assets...if we wanted to include Ishgard and Ala Mhigo at release, it would take another year of work. The development teams wouldn’t like that very much.

Again, allow me to reiterate that all areas have been fundamentally rebuilt and should be considered new. We’d like players to enjoy this content first. We’re thinking of adding Ishgard, Ala Mhigo and other areas with our first expansions, so please look forward to it! In the meantime, I’m certain there will be enough content for players to enjoy."

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See I remember reading that, but I guess the areas local to Eorzea didn't stick in my head.

Well that's a shame, I was hoping for the rest of Eorzea to be added up without the need for an expansion.

I would hope that Ishgard, Ala Mhigo, and Sharlayan are added together when they do go up. That would at least give us access to all of the major locations in Aldenard. If they're going to give us an expansion that doesn't add new areas beyond the continent of Aldenard, they better at least give us the rest of the continent we're already on.

I guess in retrospect they did something similar in FFXI. The first 2 expansions only gave us expanded areas on the first 2 continents, then the next expansion finally gave us a new continent.