Lifestyle Yesterday

"We trained a pigeon to recognise cancerous cell clusters and somehow they're really good at it" okay great, that's something that could plausibly be a thing.

@magitekconveyor is correct! There are no Ixali archers :)

I needed one for reference for reasons, so I checked wikis, and all the pictures has swords/shields, axes, spears, or were magic-users. So I went in game and went to the hot spots, too, and nope, no one's got a bow.

If you want to be a silly billy, you can ask yourself: so who actually shot us in the opening cutscene? :p

alright so

homaging both the ending of FFVIII (with Gaia and Ryne directly paralleling Squall and Rinoa respectively), homaging Utena when Ryne bursts into the dark void Gaia's mind is trapped in. Gaia's memories coming back because of the ice crystal Ryne made into a necklace for her that she's been carrying with her (despite telling Ryne she'd left it at home), paired with a world healing wave coming from a giant crystal that shines in all the colours of the rainbow, and Gaia directly referencing the words her previous incarnation said to Mitron (as the pair are reincarnating lovers, though Mitron in the present has long since turned toxic and obsessive) to Ryne

The Occult Crescent makes it really clear that Great Boss Arenas are a deep cultural part of all people across time and space. I mean, sure, lately in EW and DT we've been having some real wonky strange or impromptu boss arenas that we've had to cobble together spur of the moment or make do with, but this is taking us right back to our roots, to remember our forebears all really prioritised public areas with clear flat surfaces, perhaps with ominously evenly spaced lines, shapes or markers that neatly line up with potential bursts of spell effects. I think the era of of the War of the Magi in a way epitomises societies that had to shape their whole civic engineering around the potential that a sick wizard battle might take place and provided ample facilities for such activities, perhaps to help spare the civilian areas of a town or city by containing such fights in designated areas. The Occult Crescent preserves Awesome Battle Arenas of multiple types and purposes in their original cultural context (e.g. bottom of a weird cave, inside an ominous pyramid) but also exemplifies shaping your society to have appropriate areas for fights to spill over harmlessly (big courtyard, nice clearing in the forest).