I'm apprehensive at best.
I found the finale to be headache-inducingly saccharine. There's no real weight or tension to Ishgard as a setting anymore, at least not any weight or tension that hasn't been done in the same setting before.
The part that interested me the most about Ishgard were, well, the things that made it Ishgard. Specifically its status as a despotic militant theocracy waging a genocidal holy war against a superior force amidst a tumultuous climate of political ambition, religious zealotry, and class warfare. There was something fascinating about the dichotomous nature of Ishgard's politics and culture, being ostensibly built around order and a single-minded goal yet also being unstable without the unifying threat of the dragons and built on the foundations of a lie (or at least, a historical misrepresentation). The terrifyingly absolute power of the Church and the Inquisition lead to a pervading sense of tension as well.
It was a unique location with a unique context, as far as the FFXIV setting goes. I'm afraid that post-3.3 Ishgard will be mundane and watered-down.
The despotic theocracy bit has been effectively neutered by the reformation of the government into a secular bicameral republic that, according to the ending, faced little to no resistance in its implementation.
In the context of the narrative and the circumstances, the peace with Dravania was achieved practically effortlessly--basically, the Warrior of Light went around and talked to people and did all of the actually significant fighting--and said peace has made it so that any mention of Ishgard's militancy--another interesting cultural aspect that only Garlemald really shares--would be made on a small scale at best. I mean, Nidhogg's brood is still out there, sure, but the narrative is in a corner as far as they're concerned. If Nidhogg's brood is still a legitimate threat, then it cheapens Nidhogg's death, and if the brood is viewed as little more than an annoying remnant than it still drastically reduces the militant aspect of Ishgard's culture.
Now that's not to say that something has to be grimdark doom-and-gloom in order to be interesting, and that's not necessarily to say that post-3.3 Ishgard will be sunshine and flowers (although it probably will be), but conflict is the soul of drama and basically, I found that the larger-scale conflicts that were possible by pre-3.3 Ishgard were more interesting than any conflicts that will be possible in post-3.3 Ishgard.
Class warfare? True, with a bicameral republic the conflict between highborn and commoners is not only still present but particularly more pronounced with the House of Lords and House of Commons, but the class warfare concept is represented--or was represented, depending on your opinion of 2.55--much more effectively by Ul'dah. Replace "plutocrats" with "aristocrats" and replace "wealth" with "bloodlines" and you have the exact same conflict in a context that is nearly identical with a little bit of racism for spice.
You don't really have any large-scale conflicts with dragons anymore unless they got the Nidhogg's brood thing as mentioned above, which carries with it its own problems narratively speaking. I mean, what's the point of killing the leader so dramatically if you have to end up hunting down every member of his horde anyway?
About the only thing Ishgard retains that remains unique of it Church attempting to retain political relevance after what seemed to be a unanimous movement towards secularism, for some reason.
I'm disappointed.
I found the finale to be headache-inducingly saccharine. There's no real weight or tension to Ishgard as a setting anymore, at least not any weight or tension that hasn't been done in the same setting before.
The part that interested me the most about Ishgard were, well, the things that made it Ishgard. Specifically its status as a despotic militant theocracy waging a genocidal holy war against a superior force amidst a tumultuous climate of political ambition, religious zealotry, and class warfare. There was something fascinating about the dichotomous nature of Ishgard's politics and culture, being ostensibly built around order and a single-minded goal yet also being unstable without the unifying threat of the dragons and built on the foundations of a lie (or at least, a historical misrepresentation). The terrifyingly absolute power of the Church and the Inquisition lead to a pervading sense of tension as well.
It was a unique location with a unique context, as far as the FFXIV setting goes. I'm afraid that post-3.3 Ishgard will be mundane and watered-down.
The despotic theocracy bit has been effectively neutered by the reformation of the government into a secular bicameral republic that, according to the ending, faced little to no resistance in its implementation.
In the context of the narrative and the circumstances, the peace with Dravania was achieved practically effortlessly--basically, the Warrior of Light went around and talked to people and did all of the actually significant fighting--and said peace has made it so that any mention of Ishgard's militancy--another interesting cultural aspect that only Garlemald really shares--would be made on a small scale at best. I mean, Nidhogg's brood is still out there, sure, but the narrative is in a corner as far as they're concerned. If Nidhogg's brood is still a legitimate threat, then it cheapens Nidhogg's death, and if the brood is viewed as little more than an annoying remnant than it still drastically reduces the militant aspect of Ishgard's culture.
Now that's not to say that something has to be grimdark doom-and-gloom in order to be interesting, and that's not necessarily to say that post-3.3 Ishgard will be sunshine and flowers (although it probably will be), but conflict is the soul of drama and basically, I found that the larger-scale conflicts that were possible by pre-3.3 Ishgard were more interesting than any conflicts that will be possible in post-3.3 Ishgard.
Class warfare? True, with a bicameral republic the conflict between highborn and commoners is not only still present but particularly more pronounced with the House of Lords and House of Commons, but the class warfare concept is represented--or was represented, depending on your opinion of 2.55--much more effectively by Ul'dah. Replace "plutocrats" with "aristocrats" and replace "wealth" with "bloodlines" and you have the exact same conflict in a context that is nearly identical with a little bit of racism for spice.
You don't really have any large-scale conflicts with dragons anymore unless they got the Nidhogg's brood thing as mentioned above, which carries with it its own problems narratively speaking. I mean, what's the point of killing the leader so dramatically if you have to end up hunting down every member of his horde anyway?
About the only thing Ishgard retains that remains unique of it Church attempting to retain political relevance after what seemed to be a unanimous movement towards secularism, for some reason.
I'm disappointed.
