Final Fantasy XIV’s Sage
So finally we arrive at Final Fantasy XIV’s concept of a Sage. In Final Fantasy XIV, the Sage will be a healer and will wield a never-before-seen weapon known as Nouliths.
Nouliths are robot-like arms that will float around the Sage and its targets to channel Aether into heals and protective barriers. It can also channel Aether into attacks that have a laser-like appearance.
At the moment, not too much else is really known about the Sage other than that it’s going to be a barrier-focused healer, like the Scholar is in Final Fantasy XIV.
Needless to say, the Sage in Final Fantasy XIV is a major departure, to the point of being almost unrecognizable.
In no major iteration of it has the Sage ever been a dedicated healer, it always had an eye equally towards offense Black Magic, and it certainly never wielded robotic arms that shoot magic at things.
It’s currently a mystery why producer and director Naoki Yoshida chose Sage to be the name of this concept, considering how little it has in common with the Sages in the franchise’s history. Yoshida has demonstrated that he is very aware of Final Fantasy’s job system and how jobs have been used in the past, so it’s extremely unlikely that this is some kind of oversight.
The only thing I can come up with is that the face of the job at the moment is the main character Alphinaud, who is a very learned person, having been trained in many things magic in Sharlayan, an independent city-state wholly focused on studying academics.
All that said, it’s still too early to judge, and perhaps as we learn more about Final Fantasy XIV’s take on the Sage as the year progresses and when Endwalker releases this fall, the reasoning for why Sage was chosen will become more clear.
For more Final Fantasy XIV’s upcoming Endwalker expansion, check out our recent run-through of the recently revealed new Thavnair & Radz-at-Han locations.
