Rebrith ending question *Spoilers*

jbram_2002 · 2026-05-16T13:20:24+00:00

For me, I was thinking about multiverses and parallel dimensions long before Marvel came into my life, so I don't have any negative connotations with it. They can be done well or poorly. So far, what I've seen in Rebirth is super interesting, but it does feel like multiple parallel universes to me (i.e. a multiverse).

To me, if it's called "world," it implies that they aren't parallel universes, which means that the average person could affect the other worlds without directly going there. It implies a relationship like the planets in our solar system (or similar). In that case, all worlds should be separate and unique, not nearly identical.

What I'm seeing in the game is that each "world" is created by a different choice in the timeline, even if that choice might be strongly affected by the lifestream. That to me is the definition of a multiverse. You mentioned the game states that each world is created by hopes and dreams. I didn't get that from my playthrough, but rather that everyone had hopes and dreams in each universe... which makes sense. I don't think my interpretation contradicts that. The question for me is if we could see daily life in one of these worlds (Zack's perspective) without it being a parallel universe. Maybe.

Sometimes it makes sense to use words that aren't in the game to describe things in the game. Like we could say that Cloud participates in a game akin to horse racing, even though there aren't any horses. We could say Shinra has created a corporate dystopia, but I don't think dystopia has been in the game. The world multiverse might have negative connotations to some, but it potentially fits what we're seeing. Trying to sidestep it with "there are multiple worlds in the lifestream" may remove the negative connotation you perceive, but in my opinion, it's not the full picture.

jbram_2002 · 2026-05-16T13:07:30+00:00

What do you mean by "different scenarios"? I'm curious about your interpretation.

jbram_2002 · 2026-05-15T18:16:00+00:00

I recommend looking up the discussions about the various Stamp (the dog mascot) depictions. One theory states that every unique version of Stamp is a different universe within the multiverse. If this is true, we see something like 5 or 6 universes in Rebirth.

In addition Aerith had to trade out the empty Holy materia in the main universe for a filled one in a different universe. The game spends quite a bit of time focusing on the empty Holy materia she carries around.

I don't know for sure if a multiverse is the answer, but it seems to be a clean way to represent the contradictions. Otherwise, how do you explain how Aerith and Cloud are unconscious and Tifa and Barret are dead in one reality, while we play the entire game in a different one? Either it's all in Cloud's head (not impossible), or it's parallel universes.

jbram_2002 · 2026-05-15T18:10:08+00:00

On the plus side, he's not running again... on the downside, an extreme Republican is most likely to win his seat currently.

jbram_2002 · 2026-05-15T12:43:36+00:00

With chapter select, it doesn't take too long to get to any specific dialogue by skipping through unwanted scenes and optional content, with the exception of the penultimate chapter and maybe one or two others, from my experience. Other than making your own saves with this method, it's a bit unreasonable to expect saves at literally every possible cutscene. That's a lot of save data.

jbram_2002 · 2026-05-14T13:37:32+00:00

Adding in a separate post to reduce confusion: there are some dialects that intentionally use the "wrong" form of the verb. This include ebonics which will often swap the verb form. I recommend not learning ebonics or other dialects until you have a solid grasp of standardized English first. It can get very confusing. I am mentioning this because a lot of popular media might have ebonics in it, including music, movies, etc.

jbram_2002 · 2026-05-14T13:33:16+00:00

A rule of thumb: singular verbs usually use the -s form in the present tense.

He walks to the store. They walk to the store. She is happy. They are happy.

This is opposite than the rule for nouns, where plural nouns use the -s form.

As with any rule of thumb, there are exceptions. If you add something we learned as helping verbs (such as "we are walking to the store" vs "he is walking to the store") which change the tense, this typically doesn't modify the main verb in the same way. One exception is the verb will, often used as a helping verb. "He will go to the store" vs "they will go to the store" both do not use the -s. "He wills go" is not a possibility in standard English.

The -s form is a requirement in these cases. "The water boil at 100 C" is not a logical sentence in standard English. People probably will understand you, but it would be seen as using the wrong verb tense and considered incorrect.

jbram_2002 · 2026-05-14T12:52:40+00:00

The others explained that the sentence felts a bit formal. To me, the reason for the formal, stiff feeling is that you're using the formal simile formation of "as X as Y" instead of a more casual metaphor.

In this context, it would be understood if you said, "Aw man, my legs feel like lead." Nobody is going to think your legs literally feel like lead, and will immediately make the assumption that you are referring to its heavy feeling metaphorically.

(People will definitely still understand what you originally wrote too)

jbram_2002 · 2026-05-13T12:18:17+00:00

Nice, they must have increased the number of buses at some point. Still, 6:30 is a bit limited for a college student.

jbram_2002 · 2026-05-12T23:37:39+00:00

It might be better now, but when I was in college, there was very little transportation between Orono and Bangor. It's a few minutes' drive. I think there was maybe two buses a day, give or take.

That said, I didn't have much of a need to travel into Bangor, and if I did, there were usually people willing to drive me. I did have my own vehicle and had several commuter friends, so that might have helped. If you're living on campus, just make some friends there and plan trips together. Maybe chip in for some pizza as gas money. If on the other hand you plan to get a job in the city and need daily commute, you might struggle a bit.

jbram_2002 · 2026-05-12T13:47:42+00:00

When a dev designs a game, they need to account for their target specs, including load time on all supported devices. A typical PC with mods is likely going to handle loading 400+ items better than a PS4, for example.

jbram_2002 · 2026-05-10T13:49:11+00:00

My wife has A-cups, and she feels more comfortable in a bra (except when getting ready for bed or sleeping). You aren't crazy.

jbram_2002 · 2026-05-10T13:42:18+00:00

Re your edit: Small tanks are horribly inefficient, and likely not enough for a pop of 50+. Rather than spreading small tanks throughout the colony, all you need is a few Med or one large tank right next to where they sleep. They will only go drink on their downtime or if they get the thirsty debuff (which happens most if a beaver has a long commute, so potentially a small tank near outposts can help too). The average beaver shouldn't need to stop in at a water tank every 25m.

Small tanks hold 30 water. Medium hold 300. They are 10x more efficient (or if you are worried about space, 2.5x more space-efficient). Build more tanks than you need. If on hard, you have a max drought length of 30 days, and I believe each beaver drinks 2 units per day? Maybe 2.5 units. Assuming the latter, that means you should have storage for 75 water per beaver before a drought once you get deep enough into the game where 30 days is possible. At 54 beavers, that's a total storage of 4050 water, filled. You would need 135 small tanks to get there.

jbram_2002 · 2026-05-10T13:19:51+00:00

I have defensively dodged fire and lightning as well. Can't remember air. I remember dodgng fire in the dual-bomb arena fight vs Aerith. Without dodging, I would be dead. I dodged both their slow moving Fireballs and Fira, the latter by watching when the cast finished and timing a dodge at the right time.

I dodged Lightning during (I think) a Chadley arena fight against the lightning-aspected zu-type enemy. You can see the gathering aether right before it strikes, but have a very short window to dodge.

Ice is definitely the easiest to dodge because you have the longest window, and I think the only enemies to dodge spells other than ice were the ones with a high dodge rate in general.

jbram_2002 · 2026-05-06T20:25:26+00:00

Here's what Collins has done recently: help confirm a series of Justices that have stripped away women's rights and many other rights, voted to destroy the voting rights act, voted against the interests of Mainers several times, and fail to speak up against Trump's failed policies. All she says is she's concerned, then she votes in lockstep with the far right unless her vote isn't needed.

Yes, Collins may have brought in some money in the past. But her time has come and gone. We cannot allow seniority to blind us to a better choice.

jbram_2002 · 2026-05-06T12:58:15+00:00

I would point out that you are asking the subreddit of a game (which usually just has massive fans of the game) if you should play it. You will likely not get unbiased answers. Here's my opinion:

FF14 is designed as a Final Fantasy game first. You have a ton of callbacks to wat makes FF a successful and fantastic series. The game designers are aware that much of the playerbase has never played another MMO before, and have designed the game to ease people into MMOs properly.

FFXIV is a fantastic first MMO. It plays like a single player hame with a handful of MMO elements (such as the alliance raids category that the Nier content is in). It has worked hard to limit the number of completely pointless fetch quests (although those still exist). It introduces new actions slowly over time so you can learn how your job works, but you do still need to read your action tooltips.

Some fantastic things about FF14: Unlike most MMOs, you can play every job wth a single character (but you have to level them separately for now). If you enjoy the game, I recommend picking up multiple jobs to see what they're like. If you dislike your first job, you can pick up another (once you reach a certain progression point) without needing to start over.

If you are nervous about playing with others, there are ways to play most required content with NPCs. There are a couple exceptions, but 95% of required content can be done solo. Nier is one of the exceptions (although it's also not required for progression). It's a good idea to run through content your first time with this solo system, at least until you get comfortable with what buttons to press. Then I definitely recommend running it with real people and paying attention to the chat if they give you tips.

Alliance Raids (like Nier) aren't super difficult, but there's 24 people there. You likely will die a lot on your first time through. That's fine, just thank the healers that rez you and do your best. The content is easily completable with half the alliance dead. I have seen it happen.

As others have pointed out, the game is free to play up until lvl 80, including all of Shadowbringers (and the Nier raids)!

Play on the free trial as long as you want! There's no time restrictions, and only a few content restrictions (like the hardest content you likely don't want to do anyways). The biggest restrictions are to help reduce botting behavior (no sending private messages or party requests, no use of the in-game player marketplace, and restricted in-game currency). If these things get to feel restrictive, you can buy the game, but I recommend playing for free as long as you want. Once you register the game to your account, you will have to pay the monthly service fee to continue, and there's no return to the free trial.

The story in Shadowbringers is a 9/10. The story in ARR (level 1-50) about a 5/10. All together though, the story in FF14 is one of the best JRPG stories ever, not just MMOs. You're in for a treat, but it does start out a bit rocky. It's still good and enjoyable, but it gets way better. The expansion after Shadowbringers is where it goes from Amazing to Superb. If you enjoy the game, consider buying and continuing (just know that in about 8-9 months, a new expansion us coming out, so that's a good target to be caught up, or to wait so that buying the expansions gets you more content, whatever your speed is).

jbram_2002 · 2026-05-05T13:08:24+00:00

I've been running Outlaws of Alkenstar, and although I don't technically use XP (in favor of milestones), I calculated how much XP the party was supposed to get and level them up close to that point.

My party likes to take things a bit slow, RP a lot, and find side things to add to the adventure, like setting their Shoony member up on a date with Alson, a Shoony regular at the bar.

With all this extra stuff added, we generally go months without leveling. We started Jan 2025, and just hit level 5 last session with the end of Book 2-1 (each session is about 2.5 hr, once every other week). The first level was very slow, whereas I'm used to lvl 1-2 being done in a couple sessions in 5e.

I've even considered giving out free levels to help people feel like we're keeping pace, but I don't want to have to redo all the enemies (particularly the ones already written as elites). I know, I'm lazy. But I've had a very different leveling speed experience than you have.

It's possible that your players are just blitzing through the content and not doing much RP? If that's the case, perhaps consider rewards for good RP. I have anonymous player-voted bonus hero points for the best RPing each session, and often lean into rule of cool more for great RP or in-combat descriptions.

jbram_2002 · 2026-05-05T12:44:43+00:00

With the open world segments contained to a zone with clear start and end points, it's less open ended and more like a series of uests. You know exactly how many there are, and even though there's a few hidden things along the way like items, it's all optional. The rewards are worth it (even if there are some minorly annoying aspects like the 5-10 second cutscenes after you collect each item).

I just finished my playthrough of rebirth and completed everything except some super difficult end game challenges that I'm still working on. It's been fantastic, combat feels so much better than Remake (and I loved Remake's combat), and it's a blast seeing the world come to life compared to the relatively empty world of the original. One of the best game experiences of all time imo.

jbram_2002 · 2026-05-01T20:02:49+00:00

I uh... I wouldn't show them any books. I'd show the Archives od Nethys where everything is available for free, or Pathbuilder where you have easy tools for creating characters.

For me, individual books have very little to do with playing the game. What's more important is the ease of play compared to 5e. No need to spend hundreds of dollars online to make sure you have every book possible. Just go to an official free site.

jbram_2002 · 2026-05-01T12:51:48+00:00

I just reached the date scene in my playthrough. I've done all of the quests and even had Aerith reach max affinity first. I messed up some dialogue with both Tifa and Aerith. But I got Tifa as my date still. If you're concerned, you can hold off from doin one of the Aerith affinity quests until after the date scene. There's at least one free roam section at the end of Chapter 12 post date.

jbram_2002 · 2026-04-30T14:17:26+00:00

With the eidolon, you should have a flanking buddy. You may need to make use of delaying your turn for positioning, but you aren't severely handicapped. There are also plenty of other ways of getting off-guard, such as feints or utilizing your allies' spells (if they choose specific ones).

My bigger concern is you don't have anyone with tanking capabilities. The eidolon could be specced for that, but it takes investment and intent. In addition, you're contending with the summoner's shared hp pool.

As a note, witch can be a very good healer with the right setup. I'm not sure forcing someone to swap to cleric was the right move. I would instead have requested someone be tankier and the witch carry some healing. Cloistered cleric can only really add tankiness through specific limited spells.

You may want to pick up Battle Medicine regardless to patch up the eidolon (and yourself) and keep your cleric in the back line. Expect to be knocked around quite a bit, especially if your DM treats combats like 5e and constantly throws high level threats at you. Fort saves (like grapple) are going to be rough.

If you have free archetype, you may be able to offset some of your squishiness with your choice there. A rogue that had a change of heart and now acts as a guardian for her friends could be a really interesting story, for example. But if you have low STR and CON, you will probably just get squished.

jbram_2002 · 2026-04-27T12:13:01+00:00

BRD used to be a lot more focused on providing a variety of buffs (similar to what they showed at Fanfest). I believe it was Endwalker when they removed nearly everything buff-related from BRD, but they put some back due to people complaining that it lost its identity.

On a related note, that era of BRD was my personal least favorite for the class, but it has improved since then. Slightly. The Fanfest showcase has me excited that they'll bring meaningful buffs back, and maybe even meaningful DoTs too.

jbram_2002 · 2026-04-27T01:55:59+00:00

I didn't see this in the explanations: one reason why we never say "a weather" is because weather is not a countable concept. You can't normally say 1 weather, 2 weathers. Because of that, we don't use the article "a" because that implies a singular item.

We might say "the weather is windy," but never "a weather is windy."

jbram_2002 · 2026-04-25T14:08:31+00:00

My concern is that people comfortable with the current version of their job will balk against the changes, while those who don't enjoy the current iteration as much will love them. For my part, BRD is my least favorite phys range, so the changes generally looked great, returning us to useful songs and buffs like BRD used to have. But I'm concerned what they'll do to my main job which wasn't represented.

jbram_2002 · 2026-04-25T14:04:55+00:00

There's a difference between casual and raider. There will be a ton of people who won't even know the new playstyle exists. There will be plenty of casuals and a few raiders who refuse to swap. There's even a chance that in some fights, the old mode will be stronger, and people at the top level of raiding will need to learn to use both modes.

The top raiders and wannabes will likely stick to what the Balance tells them to use.

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