

Ramza, later joined by his Tactics companions, joins the fight against the final raid boss of the Orbonne Monastery. In a rather spectacular fashion, the Final Fantasy XIV Warrior of Light encounters the spirit of Ramza Beoulve trapped in white auracite. The point of the Return to Ivalice raids is to prove the Zodiac Brave tale true. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.


With Final Fantasy XIV and the Ivalice trilogy, it's a little bit different. 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. 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. The Final Fantasy series loves to use transportable characters, bosses, places, and items all the time. 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.īy 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 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.
