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Warning: This blog entry will contain spoilers to the Eden raid storyline!

I need to reorganize my screenshots further, finding a new screenshot can be rough lol

Wrathful And Resolute #11: Eden is Pretty Rad


Welcome back again to the WAR blog. Seems like this time we'll be waging WAR on some primals, ancient sin eaters, teenagers (?) and of course, Ascians. I am speaking of course, of the Eden raid series, new to Shb.

I've mentioned before, I never completed the 1.0 content (due to my PC barely being able to handle it at all) but I was pretty aware back in the day of many of those events and knew more or less about the stuff going on with Louisoix and Gaius. Of course, the classic End of an Era cinematic is burned into the memories of all longtime FFXIV players, or at least those who played back in 1.0 and 2.0. As a result of this, for me, I hold the storyline of the Binding Coil of Bahamut in high regard. Cool fights that add to the story, cool moments that add to the story continuing from 1.0 and wrapping up the events of 1.0. Even has the awesome conclusion to the End of an Era cinematic.

However, sadly I didn't see all of it as it was new. I saw most of it during HW when my static helped me clear it. Slightly less impact, but oh well.


This is me standing at Winegate in 2.0 attempting to PUG Coil (never really happened much, got to T4 eventually in pugs) admiring a fellow BRD in Myth gear

Alexander, now there's a story I was able to experience at my pace. I found the structure of Alexander which you see in the game world, the machinery, the robots and the music all so awesome! At the time, coming off of having missed out on raiding in Coil, I was kinda disappointed that I wasn't seeing the epic look and feel of Coil, with dragons, high-tech Allagan stuff, and so on. But in hindsight, Alex really did have an awesome look and feel as well. Awesome music too! I thought the story was kind of... meh? I really wasn't digging the romance thing between the two characters and didn't care about the story that much in the end.


We cleared A9S pretty quickly, actually

I didn't actually get to experience Omega till this year (2020), after returning to the game. I enjoyed seeing the classic FF bosses, hearing their theme songs. I also liked hearing a little more about Midgardsormr's backstory. But the story in the end was... a tournament to create a being to fight Omega. Not the greatest thing IMO, but something they used to be able to shoehorn in bosses. Yay.


Pictured: Dragon Ba---- I mean Midgardsormr and Omega in a hadouken-measuring contest

So in a nutshell, I thought the Coil storyline was great, Alex's and Omega's storylines were kinda meh, but the way the fights looked and sounded was cool.


Now for Eden.

I have to admit, I never got very far into FFVIII so I'm not super familiar with Eden. I did think that cutscene in the middle of E1 was kinda hilarious, with the Earth being hit by a meteor or something.

Essentially, after the 5.0 MSQ finishes, Ryne detects something in the Empty, the area basically destroyed by the Flood of Light which was halted in Norvrandt by Minfilia. We travel to the Empty together with these two and Urianger to investigate.

We find - a spaceship. The original sin eater. Turns out, Eden's been sucking out all the aether in the Empty, so if we reconfigure it, we can restore aether and life to the Empty. First, we fight Eden Prime in the process of letting Ryne take control of Eden.

Then, in E2, we face this fine fellow:



A flying suit of armor protecting someone inside. We defeat the fiend and turns out there's a girl inside. Who we can't see yet, Thancred takes care of her back at base camp.

In order to restore aether to the Empty, we need to remember our fights against the primals to stimulate the aether, or something like that. E3 is against Leviathan, probably the last ARR primal I remember beating back in the day, as somehow I didn't get around to Ramuh and Shiva till much later:



After we defeat Leviathan, we go on to fight and defeat Titan in E4. I was playing through these fights during the last part of 5.3 so I wasn't really thinking too carefully about this beginning arc of Eden. The story hadn't really gone places yet and I had the then-current raid tier on the brain, E5-E8.

Our party needs a break, so we take one, to come back in E5 to fight Ramuh:



I gotta say, at first I was kind of annoyed we had to fight the primals again. Like, it's already a constant criticism of FFXIV's raids that they're basically only boss fights, and that FFXIV already has primal fights that are great. But I ended liking the changes to the way the primals looked and especially the way they remixed their music themes. Ramuh is particularly cool looking, turning into a centaur.

We also meet the girl in the armor from earlier, the mysterious Gaia. The Oracle of Darkness.

Why didn't she show up in the MSQ? How did she end up in Eden? I never really got good answers to these questions, but the important point was that she is here now and Ryne wants to be her friend.

We then go on to face Garuda and Ifrit together in E6:



Well that's fortunate, thanks to Gaia we got to face two of them together. Though, they fused together like a Starcraft Archon pretty early in the fight. We just need to restore ice-aspected aether, when all goes awry and Gaia runs to the roof of the ship. We go to rescue her and are confronted with the Idol of Darkness in E7:



I've heard that once you figure out this fight, it's one of the easiest Savage fights, but even in Normal mode, I still don't really get it.

With that out of the way, we're ready to confront Shiva in E8. However, Ryne wants to become Shiva herself for... reasons, like Ysayle (like THAT turned out well!), and somehow we're persuaded to say yes. So, we take on Ryne as Shiva:



Of course, Ryne loses control 5 seconds in. We have to defeat her to save Ryne. So of course, like the primal-slaying beast we are, we set about it. Though it gets close at one point, till Gaia comes out of nowhere with a hammer and breaks the ice surrounding Ryne.

After the fight, Ryne and Gaia have this scene with some strong romantic undertones, and it's back to the Crystarium to plan for the future and to rest:



At which point, we take a break.

For most people, this is probably a LOOONG break, from 5.2 to 5.4 But fortunately, it's only like a week or two. Ryne and Gaia are becoming close friends we find, as we head back into the Empty. At this point, Thancred and Urianger have gone back to the Source, so it's up to us to restore the Empty.

The Empty sucks. It's still too Light-aspected. So Gaia suggests summoning the Cloud of Darkness, which we do in E9:



After we win, suddenly out of nowhere, the Ascian Mitron appears!



We get a massive lore dump. I've heard that if you complete all 4 role quests you hear about some of this (I still need to complete the healer one!). In a nutshell, Mitron was one of those assigned to causing the calamity on the Thirteenth, which he fucked up. He then was supposed to deal with Ardbert & co. and fucked up then as well, causing the Flood of Light and becoming a sin eater. As it turns out - surprise - Gaia is also an Ascian reincarnated, and Mitron flies off to Eden with her. He challenges us with the Shadowkeeper in E10, the monster who Ardbert faced a hundred years ago.

We rescue Gaia it seems, but Mitron still has more challenges for us. He sends us to fight the Fatebreaker in E11:



This monster is created of those three dudes Ryne is afraid of: Thancred, Ranjit and Vauthry. Though mostly Thancred.

Of course, GNB Thancred is no match for us, so we go on to face Mitron fused with Leogrif (Gaia), in E12, Eden's Promise:


Man, I liked them better as Ascian Prime...

We have to take out the hideous tree lady! She uses powers of the primals we defeated, but I have to admit, my first time, I couldn't figure it out. She starts wiping Gaia's memories and we have to protect them. We're on the brink, but somehow manage to defeat this boss (well okay, we knew we were going to, it's normal mode, after all). But Gaia's till in deep shit.

Gaia is kinda lost and can't remember anything. But Ryne is able to rescue her using Thancred's gunblade. As Ryne rescues Gaia (with some stronger romantic undertones), suddenly Eden is revealed as a beautiful utopia, where all our hopes, dreams come to life!



Mission accomplished, the Empty saved. Or at least, the beginning of it. It might take a hundred years or more for life to return to all of the Empty.

And a friend made. Ryne and Gaia are BFFs now, and Gaia resolves to live as a new free person:



While Ryne and Gaia are over there happily enjoying some damn coffee biscuits or something, we're over pondering the thought of progging a raid tier for the first time since HW... but it's a good challenge, one that I was looking forward to! At long last though, the story mode of Eden was complete! Kinda wished I'd had a chance to play it as it came out (especially for Savage progression!) but oh well.


We're getting pretty close to caught up to current with what's going on in the life of Lisotte. Next time on the WAR blog, we'll be talking about Cid's weird memories, the Resistance weapon, the Bozjan Southern Front, and if we have time, the Ishgardian Restoration!



{See you again!}