(08-23-2013, 12:12 AM)Merri Wrote: The city-states were relatively safe. Ul'dah didn't get hit at all, and if Limsa did it was very minimal. Seems like only a small portion of Northern Gridania got hit (mainly the old amphitheater).I'm not sure if you're going off of what in-game damage remains, but I took a really close look at the End of an Era trailer tonight for story writing purposes.
All three got hit pretty fantastically.
To be fair, it seemed like most of the flaming balls of doom aimed at Ul'dah actually hit outside the city, with only a small portion of one side being hit; granted, none of the large buildings or even the wall seemed to fall to it, but there was likely some flaming debris in the outer ring on that side.
It looked like the majority of the bay and lower part of Limsa Lominsa went up in flames, which likely was how the majority of the Lominsan navy was lost. The upper part looked like it probably got some flaming debris, but the majority of it would have likely been in lower to mid-city. Having seen some ships burning before, the bay itself was likely on fire for several hours as all the wood, powder, and cloth burned away. I've never heard reference of sea ships having fuel on them, so it wouldn't be nearly as long as some modern ship explosions have burned.
Lastly, while Gridania itself may not have been trashed all that badly, the Shroud around it clearly was; beyond the fiery doom from the primal directly...it's a forest. Fires spread rapidly in woodlands, it was one of the problems with the area I initially lived in when we moved to Utah - the whole side of the "Point of the Mountain" we were on went up in flames a couple of times when I was a kid, even when there wasn't a drought going.
What I wonder is, what kind of emergency and military forces did each city have left behind. With how many people were in the battle shots of End of an Era, it seems like the majority of anyone who could fight or heal went. I assume they wouldn't leave them completely defenceless, but I didn't get the impression from the video or form various in game dialogue that there were enough to deal with what happened, and thus a lot of people were seriously injured or died.
Part of my writing is hinging on the idea that there just weren't enough first responders in the city-states (particularly Limsa and Gridania), and that's what sort of caused the majority of deaths. Please correct me if I'm wrong about that.