The alliance raid series for Final Fantasy XIV‘s Stormblood cycle was titled “Return to Ivalice” and took us to some iconic locations from previous Final Fantasy games. While Ivalice is a fictional country (or set of countries) in the Final Fantasy series, it is the location of only a handful of games: Final Fantasy Tactics, Final Fantasy XII, and Final Fantasy Vagrant Story.By the nature of Final Fantasy games, the mere inclusion of the Royal City of Rabanastre, the Ridorana Lighthouse, and Orbonne Monastery doesn’t mean the stories are linked at all. The Final Fantasy series loves to use transportable characters, bosses, places, and items all the time. Pretty much every Final Fantasy game has Ultima as an end-game boss, and most also include Omega and Shinryuu, crystals are a repeating trope in every one of the games, and players are almost always fighting against an evil empire.While it isn’t unheard of for games in the series to be set in the same world, it is unusual for them to be connected after-the-fact. With Final Fantasy XIV and the Ivalice trilogy, it’s a little bit different. After all, prior to the Alliance Raid quest series in Final Fantasy XIV‘s second expansion, Ivalice was not a known location on the gameworld map.We’re about to delve deep into some Final Fantasy lore that includes spoilers for FFXIV Patch 4.5, so, consider this your spoiler warning.However, running through the Garamysthe Waterway and the Clockwork City of Goug, it becomes obvious that Final Fantasy XIV‘s Ivalice is THE Ivalice. You encounter familiar bosses like Yiazmat and Argath Thadalfus.

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It also helps that the questline for the raid series is based on the story of Ramza Beoulve, the protagonist of Final Fantasy Tactics.You could continue to think the Final Fantasy XIV version of Ivalice was simply an homage to some beloved older Final Fantasy titles (which is absolutely a thing the FFXIV team has done before), except for its “Zodiac Brave” story. The Trials of the Braves story, in Final Fantasy XIV, is a supposedly fictional chronicle of a set of heroes called the Zodiac Braves from Thavnairan legend. As part of the end-game relic quest set for Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn (the edition of the game to rise from the ashes of dismal MMO failure, aka game version 2.0), the Warrior of Light is tasked with re-creating events from those tales. In Stormblood (version 4.0 for those counting), we learn that the Zodiac Brave Story is a completely separate, supposedly fictional, account of a set of heroes from Ivalice.The point of the Return to Ivalice raids is to prove the Zodiac Brave tale true. And, well, we do.

In a rather spectacular fashion, the Final Fantasy XIV Warrior of Light encounters the spirit of Ramza Beoulve trapped in white auracite. Ramza, later joined by his Tactics companions, joins the fight against the final raid boss of the Orbonne Monastery. And saves the entire raid party’s butts from annihilation.

He and the Tactics cast later appear as spectral images to congratulate the WoL for finishing the fight against Ultima the High Seraph.Which pretty much proves that FFXIV takes place in the future of the same world as Tactics, which also means its the same universe as Vagrant Story since those two are pretty much a package deal.However, before players make it to the Orbonne Monastery, they meet with a very familiar Viera. Final Fantasy XII‘s Fran makes an appearance and sends the Warrior of Light on a ton of random fetch quests, all to prove a point to the naieve Princess that she serves.

To make it more obvious that it is the exact same Fran, she’s got the same costume design and looks like she stepped straight out of the Zodiac Age remaster.Which means that Final Fantasy XII and Final Fantasy XIV are taking place at the same time. Given the context of several incredibly long cutscenes in the final raid quest series, it appears Fran and the Princess (almost definitely Ashe) are still working to kick the empire out of Dalmasca. Which would indicate that, somewhere out in the desert, Vaan is running around screaming “I’m the Hero of Dalmasca!” at random passersby. Or, at least, he was doing so in the recent past.Sure, the idea that FFXIV and FFXII are taking place at the same time doesn’t really hold up. The evil empire in FFXII is Archadia, and Vayne Carudas Solidor is the third son of the Emperor, Lord Gramis.

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And because all of the bosses and spirits shown in the FFXIV raids are connected to white auracite, which recreates the owner’s fondest wish, it is entirely possible that all of the Tactics and Final Fantasy XII bosses are simply magical constructs created out of the minds of people who believed the Zodiac Brave story was the absolute truth. And the appearance of Fran, her hidden Princess, and the Dalmascan Resistance is all just coincidence.However, in the last cutscene at the end of the Return to Ivalice series, we also witness the Empire conducting research in the Clockwork City amidst a sea of familiar Constructs, and the waters become muddied again. Because just who is it running the Imperial investigation in the Clockwork City?

Noah van Gabranth. Final Fantasy XII‘s Judge Gabranth was born Noah fon Ronsenburg. So, having him appear in FFXIV as Noah van Gabranth wouldn’t be all that unusual per Imperial naming conventions.Hell, FFXIV‘s Gabranth even led the assault on Dalmasca years prior to the raid storyline, in armor that looks exactly like FFXII‘s Judge Gabranth.

HD LoaderHD Loader is a program for the PlayStation 2 video game console which allow users to play games installed to the optional hard drive peripheral available for the PS2. The games can be copied to the hard drive from an original game CD or DVD from within HD Loader, or installed using a PC and software such as HDL Dump or WinHIIP (the PS2 hard drive uses a standard IDE interface and the HDD can be connected to almost any PC). The HD Loader software does not require an originalSony hard drive to function properly; Maxtor IDE drives and others using the same spacing between the IDE cable and power cable can be attached to the PS2 using a Sony Ethernet adapter and formatted for use by the software (other drives such as Western Digital IDE drives require you to slightly mod the Ethernet adapter to increase the spacing on the adapter as the drives IDE and power spacing is a bit too wide). By using the Ethernet adapter and a non Sony hard drive with the PS2, games such as ' Final Fantasy XI', which require the HDD peripheral cannot be played even through the loader as it requires a physical Sony hard drive to install to.ReactionSony's public stance on HD Loader is that it is not supported and is illegal (besides playing backups and homebrew games, it can also enable ). In October, 2006, a federal court in California ordered defendants to pay in excess of $9 million in damages for Digital Millennium Copyright Act violations for selling HD Loader. Original HD Loader discs are still being produced and sold on their main HD Loader website and alternative websites , but rumor is that it's of the unofficial patched version.

A clone of the patched version of the official version is being sold as called HD Advance is still being manufactured and can be purchased from many online retailers.CompatibilityHD Loader is not 100% compatible with all PS2 games. Some incompatibilities exist because game software depends on certain peculiarities of the PS2 drive hardware. Additional incompatibilities arise from the use of dual-layer DVDs in some PS2 games, which are sometimes not parsed properly by HD Loader (incidentally, dual-layer games can only be installed from a PC but as of 0.8c you can install them from HD Loader, this is because HD Loader 0.8b and earlier versions are only capable of ripping the first layer of a game directly on the PS2). Finally, there are intentional impediments introduced in versions of HD Loader before 0.8c to some recent high-profile PS2 titles, such as ' and ' Gran Turismo 4', to prevent them from being executed off the hard drive.In response to the limitations of HD Loader, a number of independent programmers have developed patches which extend the functionality of HD Loader to improve game compatibility.