The City-States: Baroque, Venetian, Art Nouveau, Ancient Eastern and High Gothic themes?

I took a course last semester called History of Architecture... (the topic has such a massively broad scope that I actually still have to take the second part next Fall)... and recently found myself observing certain elements of 12th to 18th century style of architecture in the Eorzean city-states.

Ul'Dah is undenaibly very high-end Neo-Baroque, and not only is Baroque one of my favourite styles but it's also been one of the core themes of several of Square Enix games.   What is breathtaking about the image is how there is an undeniable touch of ancient Eastern architecture blended into the baroque stylizations... perhaps its that massive azure dome?  The image looks as if perhaps Bernini went into super, crack-induced overdrive and just created the quintesscial urban baroque city gilded with some Turkish-Ottoman minarets.

Next is Limsa Lominsa, which I already like to call "The Venice of Eorzea".   The fact that it's a place that sits atop several tiny islands show how carefully Square Enix developers researched their landsacapes:  and it definitely brings to mind the distinct elements of high Venetian and Palladian architecture (more of a high renaissance style but the elongated spiral rooftops also denote some Gothic themes).  

Lastly, Gridania... (image that I currently use at the top of my blog page xD)... do I also see some undeniably high-end "Art Nouveau" (with slightly High-Gothic elements) in there?  The extensive use of vegetation definitely adds to it's secluded glamour... most importantly, the undulating exteriors, sweeping curvatures, and arching roof-lines make me guess that SE were possibly bringing a few light elements of Gaudi's Sagrada Familai architecture.  Intresting thoughts all round, yes?  xD

****Note: Credit to Eorzeapedia for the original images prior to being edited to adhere to the above post***

More screenies...

...Still images of the Gladiator character used at Gamescon.

****Note: Credit to Eorzeapedia for the images below***

Banners from FFXIVCore

Got a message from my friend and his wife today and we started discussing FFXIV related banners to use in sigs... and lo and behold, FFXIVCore (one of the four Final Fantasy XIV related websites I frequent) happened to have a great selection of new banners they created (using the three starting city-states as backgrounds).   Thanks  to the Core crew for putting them up and letting users make great use of them in spreading the word about Eorzea.

...An original concept video of Limsa Lominsa?

...Here's the all famous "Rapture" concept demo video that's been on youtube since the E3 of 2005. While the video denotes a gorgeous sea-side city (which we ffxi players at the time initially thought was a super-pimped out Jeuno), the city does however bear a pretty striking resemblance to the concept sketches of Limsa Lominsa... perhaps we shall be able to finally confirm during TGS 2009





Oh wait, wait, wait... haven't I posted this video up before?  Like, sometime last month?  Yeah... I seriously need to get it together... heh.

Old images of "Rapture"...

...Apparently, these images at first began circulating around the internet as supposedly the old images of FFXIV when Square Enix still had it in conceptual developement stage (famously named Rapture).  

However, in actual fact, they are the conceptual screenies of "Fortress" (the MMORPG that a Swedish company named GRIN were developing on behalf of SquareEnix).  Unfortunately, the whole project was scrapped and the company eventually declared bankrupcy... although, information cited on a few sites stated that SE may have possibly handed the project off to a different developer.

Nonetheless, the images that were taken looked awesome enough for people to easily think they were concept images of Eorzea.   Readers can read all about it here (approximately 60+ wicked-looking images included).

Great FFXIV blog site I found...

...rrrrrrrrrright here:
I like the fact that they used a similar layout to the official ffxiv site and apparently they have a number of authors.  Great info and I'll recommend them especially because they seem to be affiliated to FFXIVCore

And here's a little interesting piece of technological info I found on the net... I present to you the future of not only virtual games but also virtual reality.  Right here...

My Dual-Wielding Elezen...

This is possibly how I hope to create and progress my Elezen:  The physical facial apprearance of Prince Luzaf (however, with  dark-silvery hair), and the ultimately superb warrior abilities of Prince Nuada (from Hellboy 2). Great job, Luke Goss... truly great job.




Matter of fact, for emphasis, lemme post up an image of Edge from Final Fantasy IV.  This is the guy who was practically a perfect template for the concept of the word "Ninja" in not only games but also in anime-related media.

If only he had much longer hair (and ze pointy-pointy ears), I'd say that's a pretty close image of how I'd like my Elezen to look on the battlefield.   Now that we have that established; here's the recap:  A Dual-Wielding Dark Knight with heavy melee and decimation abilities.   Weapons I definitely hope to master in addition to one-handed swords are Great Sword (check), Great Katana (check) and Dual-wield (check).    Yes indeed you bastid Garleans...I promise to bring the noise. 

And here's my "civvies" attire... the kinda armour I'd like to wear around town when I'm not grinding through Guildleves missions. It's the concept art of Prince Rasler from Final Fantasy XII, done by the legendary Akihiko Yoshida (for some wield reason, I seriously admired this charcater since I played the game in 2006 --even though he wasn't one of the integral main characters of the story) .   However, looking at it from a practical stand point, it might not be exceptionally suited for "ninja-like" movements but it sure looks sweet to wear around town or while afk-ing beside Aetherytes  inbetween guildleve missions.

Nice ehhh?

Now we must all remember... it's his team that's doing the art direction for FFXIV, so I won't be surprised to see a similar looking piece of armour... matter of fact, I guarantee it cuz his style is already showing up from the four armour images that turned up during Gamescon. And don't for one sec think cuz it's creamy white that I'm going paladin again... nope... ironically, I'm going full Dark Knight.

The creamy-white gear looks extremely great and all that, but I particularly like it cuz it not only looks sharp while wearing it in town; but a light-coloured armour makes me stand out on the battlefield... I want the mobs and enemies of Eorzea to see me VERY clearly when I come for them.

Yup.

in addition, I'm still hoping that I will be able to create a character based off Lord Rainier from Michael Turner's brilliant Soulfire series:

FFXIV Videos...

Nothing of importance to post today and I just thought that I would add a few videos regarding the FFXIV Guildleves system shown at Gamescon

What if the Sixth City-State...

...is actually an aerial city?   SE have been mysteriously cagey about the name, inhabitants and general information regarding the identity of the sixth city-state and it leads me to believe that maybe, just MAYBE, it's location is airborne.  No, seriously.  

We have to remember, Square Enix typically loves airborne cities and my instinct tells me that somehow, Eorzea won't be complete without some sort of spectacular "aerial" city. For example, we had Ru'Ann "sky" in ffxi, Bhujerba and Lemurés (images below) in the ffxii games...and don't forget that it's that same team that's doing the art work for ffxiv... so could ffxiv have one?

 Here's Bhurjerba

And here's Lemurés

More maps...

...From Eorzeapedia again.  The images just keep getting better and better and here are the lastest two (below).   Heavy, seriopus salutations once more for the awesome imaginative speculations.

New video interviews from GameTrailers

Awesome new stuff... (well, not too new but a couple unseen videos that just basically recap everything that Hiromichi Tanaka and Sage Sundi have been saying for the last couple weeks.  FFXIVCore and a few other ffxiv related websites have them up.

More Avatars...

Just an avatar I found and kinda liked... (it's the Bushido-Samurai wannabe thing)

Plus of course, I wanted to add an avatar made from my sketch of my FFXI character... (yeah, he's wearing the Goldsmithing sunshades)...

 

Here's one of Osiris done by "EveofIsis" on photobucket... I plan to use it later on for a bunch of stuff

And here is another avatar I might use later on... it's my Aion charcater from beta-testing Aion.  The Character customization is quite vast and I enjoyed playing around with it.  Hopefully FFXIV will afford us a similar (if not wider) range of customization... and I might create a toon with a slightly similar face (much longer hair tho)

BTW... here's an old Rurutia song that I found (Lost Butterfly).  Haven't listened to it in ages... might come in as a handy tune to use an a background sound in my FFXIV travels... we'll see. 

Map Speculations... and laughs...

And for laughs, here are number of images I just found on Order of the Blue Gartr and also from Eorzeapedia. The threads on both sites made me grin, but at the same time, the posters do have a highly commendable imagination of how the world of Eorzea could look like. Respectful salutations all round and I'll post up some of the images so that readers can see them in one condensed place.

Note: All credit for the images goes to all their respective authors and also to the Eorzeapedia and Order of the Blue Gartr websites.

Whoa... a minor peek...

...Very minor peek at interior of the cities! A friend just sent me a swift message today, urging me to run over to Eorzeapedia and have a look. They look absolutely stunning!

Note: All credit goes to Saner, Nocci and the Eorzeapedia site for this awesome linky and pics.

My avatar

Nothing major... just a couple quick sketches that I made to use as an avatar on various ffxiv related websites.  Hoping there will be at least some shoulder length hair styles in the character creation menus so i can look something like this...

I'd also seriously like to be able to see a feature that will gradually age my character into something like this...

Also found this (image below) on neko-sentai.com...btw, it's an excellent site for FFXI and FFXIV fan art, so please be sure to visit there and compliment the hundreds of artists on there!

And now for a collection of my latest screenshots of my Aion character... I add them here because I might doctor them later for avatar use and yada yada. 

BTW, graphically, Aion ultimately looks like a very well "polished" Lineage II with aerial flight. Yes, it's quite beautiful to look at... and yes, under full resolutions, it is stunning. However, compared to the few graphics that FFXIV has promised to deliver, Eorzea looks and feels very much more realistic. I mean... freaking hell, if I look at the charcaters on FFXIV, I can actually see the detail of the threading inside the fabric.

Server and gameplay assesment: It's bad enough that the 'weekend betas' that NCSoft held were exactly that: a beta duration spanning between Friday to Monday morning. It was amusingly irritating when you had school ssignments/projects or work and therefore couldn't make it.   Yeah... that was quite annoying.

Secondly, there were the players who would purposely sit and afk right at the teleport gates in Sanctum (the Elyos capital) with their bazaars up, and literally lag the hell outta your game unless you turned down your resolutions etc.

Then of course, you had the annoying loot system; which was not only a drain on your time and efforts but also on your farming... don't even get me started with how it works. Yes indeed, the battle system can be fun... it IS fun... but something about the whole 'timing of keys to unleash yada-yada-skill" just wore me out.

That said, I give them some measure of kudos for trying to create an interactive system of combat but because they geared the game a little too rigidly to the Korean market, it ends up being tiresome; hence a ridiculous amounts of keys to hit. I too played the Assassin class during closed beta and although it was fun, I ultimately found it boringly annoying because of the excessive focus I had to place on timing my skillchains.

I tried sooooo much not to be too disappointed in the game and even tried out the Spiritmaster and eventually tested out the Gladiator class (speaking of which, below is the latest screenie of my newest charcater). But I just couldn't capture the same sense of engagement that FFXI gave me. And depending on how much I get myself to get involved in playing Gladiator, I might soon try out Templar as a last ditch effort to try and "reconcile" myself with the dynamics of the game.

BTW, yes, there are a ton of quests, but they all have the same principle: Go fetch me ten tails from xyz animal... go kill the abc creatures eating the crops on my masters farm... go protect that lake and bring me back five skins as proof... and yada yada yada.

Anywayz, if you want something to pass the time pending the release of FFXIV beta, it's not a bad game by a long shot... and I do like the billing system: pay monthly or up to three or six months.  And now, some screenies... (yes, we like piccys around these parts xD)

Omigah... what are they doing to those Lalas...???

Found these on Eorzeapedia and although they are initially highly hilliarious, they also got me wanting to call the "Eorzean Lalafell Protection Agencies" lol.

New screenies from Gamescom...

***(Found these at Dengeki Online so all credit goes to that site)***









Ryuushin from Order of the Blue Gartr also has a short interview with the great Tanaka (also included are more images). Simply awesome... huge thanks to Ryushin and the whole crew at the BG forums for the translations etc

Limsa Lominsa...?

This video has been floating around the internet since like 2005 and it was the original concept video for Square Enix's "Rapture" (which of course we all know is now FFXIV & Hydaeryn). Perhaps this is what Limsa Lominsa will look like?



And this just in... I just found this on the Eorzeapedia or BG forums (darn it, cant find the link now)...  but question is, could it be concept art for Limsa Lominsa?