A poor excuse for a Mander-Mander-Manderville man.
Final Fantasy 14’s new seasonal Make it Rain Campaign event has dropped. The event lets players earn 50% more Manderville Gold Saucer Points (MGP) from the Gold Saucer for its duration, which can be used to buy a bunch of cool rewards including emotes, hairstyles, and a 4-seater airship. However, its quest reward has people scratching their heads on the game’s subreddit.
Some context: the Hildebrand Adventures questline is a slapstick saga pulling double-duty as a way for the animators to experiment with the game’s ageing engine. It’s less concerned with petty things like the laws of physics and common sense and more with mile-high piledriver suplexes, alien abductions, and most recently a cursed low-poly clone of its titular protagonist and superstar detective, Hildebrand Manderville.
Completing this questline will net you with a wind-up minion version of Hildebrand’s father, Godbert Manderville: goldsmith extraordinaire, owner of the Gold Saucer itself and also one of the most powerful characters in Final Fantasy 14’s story.
Godbert shows up mostly to motivate his son by piledriving him from orbit. He’s also ludicrously strong, capable of breaking the sound barrier on foot and leaping higher than a Dragoon, all while in his underwear. He can also perform a solo limit break, something we—god slayers and saviours of the realm—can only manage in a party of four people. He does all of this as a crafting job, by the way. Don’t ask how, I’ve been playing this game for thousands of hours and I have no clue.
So imagine the scandal when his minion winds up being pretty weak, overall. In Lord of Vermillion, Final Fantasy 14’s minion-battling minigame, Godbert is beaten by his son in attack, defence, and even speed stats. It’s a poor imitation of the original Mandervillian Man, who has reached meme status within the community for his terrifying prowess.
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“We all know Godbert is both faster and stronger than Hildibrand, this is a travesty,” comments UnluckyScarecrow, though user ACertainBeardedMan does point out that the minion is “still clothed”. Godbert does always disrobe before his herculean feats, so maybe his dapper outfits serve as Rock Lee-style training weights, holding him back until he needs to unleash his power.
A slightly more heartwarming reason for this clear breach of canon comes from user StylizedPenguin, who wrote: “We know that Godbert crafted [the minion]. If we set aside the idea that the stats are simply game mechanics, perhaps Godbert felt like his son’s automaton should be stronger than [him],” which is a sweet sentiment, and pretty in-character for Godbert. He does genuinely love his son—even if the Manderville way involves a lot of roughhousing.
Still, it’s a pale imitation of the real thing. You can snag this minion by completing the quest chain “A Golden Opportunity”, which can be picked up until July 18 from Kipih Jakkya in Ul’dah’s Steps of Nald.
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