05:07:15 for State of the Realm

14 final zone spoilers just for anyone not here for state of the realm lol I want to just mention that graha Tia actually has a line about why time seems to line up to each reflection in a dialog option, basically he theorizes that the aether of the source is so overwhelming that it forces the other reflection into a time cycle simular to the source whenever a connection is open to it

The two parts are very different in tone but it connects better vs SB for me because the themes of the 1st half about war, peace, legacy, mortality is further explored in the 2nd half while simultaneously opening threads for the next saga. Sadly, some people just dont like the lighter 1st half of the msq, and your enjoyment on the 2nd half hinges on you liking what they setup.

Spoilers for the later half of DT for those not here for State of the Realm. With the time stuff, they did mention it. Krile in fact was the one to say it. In Alexandria’s Case, while the bubble was sealed, time flowed differently to them because they were sealed away from the source. But as soon as Zoraal Ja had Vanguard build, the connection to the source was made and thus they were forced into the time stream of the source.

About Krile and her parents, they were all originally from the source as well as any Milalla members because they had the key to escape to different shards in order to avoid the effects of ther respective calamities. Krile was just coming back home while her parents passed on, so more or less, Krile's parents also had the same Aetheric density, but were kept in Alexandria to feed the other Endless until they themselves became such.

I miss ethysis for these

Personally, I think I would have enjoyed the story more if in the 2nd half Koana was the focus, and WL stayed in the city. Not because I hate her as a character or anything, but I feel like his character would have been better suited for, and more interested in, the technology and problems in the last 2 zones. All in all, the story was adequate and had plenty of nice moments. But it's also not going to carry my enthusiasm through the expansion like it did in the last two. Thankfully, it seems like there's plenty on the docket in future patches, so hopefully this expansion the content carries instead.

for a minute i thought the sOTR had lasted over 7 and a half hours.

I get the feeling that aetheric density is more about your surroundings than where you're from. Ambient aether causing you to eventually hit an equilibrium seems to make more sense to me than it being set it stone right away.

Battle train! Battle Train! Battle Train! BATTLE TRAIN!!!

There's a crafter quest that brings up movalpolos being a sunken city in Tural. That could be the first AR.

Even when I was expecting it, I was not expecting sudden Star Ocean.

Here i thought we were gonna have a multi day listen at work.

5:34:15 wuk lamat had the same self reflective scene right before that.

What if that lalafell is that shard's Teledji Adeledji

My favorite part of the expansion was the grapes callback, complete with a small crowd of people waiting to react to you looking at the grapes

I wanted to wait for the cut of just State of the Realm to comment, but I wanted to jump in on the turning off of the city of gold and being okay with letting go. Is this not a metaphor for how one day they will most definitely shut down the servers to 14 and all we will have is our memories, but eventually even those will fade and we will need to be okay with others having a chance to have what we got to have with 14 in another mmo or game. I think alot of this expac was about passing on the torch and letting others step onto roles that we once had. Which in alot of ways probably the devs and YoshiP are contending with, they will need to build up the next gen of devs and the mmo experience they want to bring to the FF audience. It will not be perfect and many old players will be nostalgic for the past, even though we are remembering with our rose colored glasses.

Looks like a mistaken upload

Also noticed how you dodged the voice acting debacle.

Careful guys. Even so much as liking DT's story gets you the "toxic positivity" brand now, apparently.

Sly needs to make a cocktail called The Blue Banana!

what if the blue mages are one of the beast tribes