After saving the universe from a time-ending catastrophe, the question remains about the world Final Fantasy XIV after the events of 2021 The Final Wanderer extension is: How do I proceed? This question sets the tasks immediately after The Final Wandererclimax became an arc that worked perfectly as an epilogue to everything that came before, highlighted by an excellent character in the form of newcomer Zero. With a decade-long overarching narrative that also came to an end in The Final WandererThe “patch quests” that are done after an expansion is released are a great template for the future of the game.
Just to get this over with, I know I’m overdue to the party. As I’ve documented, I’ve been pushing through lately FF14he has many expansions and he didn’t manage to finish them Dawn Trail yet. Patch quests after an expansion are nothing novel. Since expansions typically take two to three years to complete, the team at Square Enix spreads out smaller story and content updates to keep players going. In previous expansions, these patch quests often came in two parts. The first wraps up the previous expansion’s story, while the second sets up the game for the next one. The Final Wanderer‘S patch tasks, the team had a unique opportunity to defy that formula, as the expansion’s release served as its own finale and the conclusion to the overarching Hydaelyn-Zodiark saga of the last ten years of MMOs. This meant that The Final Wanderer Patch quests could be a separate, self-contained story.
New freedom changes the post-The Final Wanderer quests into a mini-expansion. They introduce novel characters, locations, dungeons, and a massive bad for the Warriors of Light to face. However, rather than starting completely from scratch, the story concerns the Fade, a world consumed by darkness that has occasionally appeared in the past. It’s a setting that always seemed perfect for an expansion, and while this isn’t entirely so, the smaller approach works in its favor.
The Void is a lost world. Now consumed by darkness and ravaged by beasts corrupted by that power, it is virtually beyond salvation. It is a stark contrast to many things we have encountered in the past. FF14. Shadow Bringers introduced us to a world called the First, which was engulfed in lithe and on the brink of death, but could be undone with our aid. Here, however, we are faced with a world for which our endless heroism can do little. It is there that we meet one of its inhabitants, Zero. Like the other inhabitants of the void, she is cursed to an immortal existence. In the years since the loss of her world, she has shed many of her memories, and with them, her humanity. When we first meet Zero, she is a frosty, uncaring person who has something in common with The Final Wandererantagonist; both see existence as an endless cycle of suffering that has no justification. However, because he cannot die, Zero cannot obtain the rest he longs for.
Most of the post-The Final Wanderer patch tasks let us drag Zero around trying to rescue an ally from the Void, while also managing recovery efforts from a near-avoided apocalypse on our own world. Unlike any MMO story up to that point, The Final Wanderer patches relegate your hero, the Warrior of Light, to a supporting role. This is Zero’s story, and it’s a good one. After spending an entire expansion filled with existential dread and defeatism, helping someone who has lost hope for a better life is incredibly cathartic. It’s basically a story about learning the power of friendship, a cliché idea if ever there was one, but it does it with acute writing and great character moments for its lead character, and let’s be realistic, Final Fantasy He was never subtle about his themes.
The story also parallels Zero’s journey to that of the people of your world. In life, Zero was a loner who felt she couldn’t trust anyone and had to work alone to save the world. This is the same problem that the main villain of the patch quests has, but it’s also the problem that everyone goes through trying to return to a normal life. This is most evident when you visit the people of Garlemald, a fallen nation that has long served as an evil MMO empire. They are now under occupation by you and your allies, and while you have the best intentions, they are not so keen to accept your aid. Both sides must put their pride aside to move forward together, as it is the only way they can rebuild themselves. This situation has a profound effect on Zero, who ponders her own choice to reject the aid of a pair of heroes who hope to stop the end of her world from becoming the Void.
Ultimately, it’s revealed that the surviving member of the duo she met so long ago is the arc’s massive villain, Golbez. It’s a touching moment for Zero, where she realizes how much her closed-off lifestyle has affected those around her. She’s not entirely responsible for the Void, but she feels a novel sense of guilt and wasted opportunity. If only she could have reached out then. The quests in the patch don’t land on a predictable end of the conflict, but as a character study of Zero, they’re excellent. When Zero is finally able to bring a spark of lithe to the Void, it’s a reflection of how we’ve brought a spark of hope to her life as well.
Even though there are only half as many quests, they still give a sense of narrative and adventure worthy of the full version. Ultimate Fantasy 14 extension. The following The Final Wanderer, I had hoped that smaller, more focused stories would become the novel norm for MMOs. Of course, that didn’t happen, and right now, thousands of players are exploring a novel, wonderful expansion, Dawn Trail. But given what I’ve heard about its structure, it can sometimes feel like you’re playing a series of episodic mini-expansions, and to me that sounds like a good thing.
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