God but I do love FFT. I think one of the big reasons for it comes down to how it handles the introduction of the supernatural - I haven't exactly hidden my distaste for this particular trope in the past, it's one of my least favorite parts of FF as a series, but the way FFT handles it I'm able to appreciate it much more.
I think the core reason is that, most of the time, when the big supernatural villain starts showing up, the games often seem to lose interest in the more mundane stakes set in the opening hours. Like in FF8, the questions of child soldiers and the geopolitics of incredibly powerful mercenary organizations, GF junctioning that risks a users' memories, an expansionist empire trying to topple the balance of power? When Ultimecia appears, all of those kind of... fall by the wayside. In FF7, Shinra and corporate power, the environmental themes? Well now Jenova appears and there's a meteor in the sky, who cares about that. It tends to feel like the writers just weren't interested in the very questions they were asking, and it can make it hard to get invested in the plots they propose.
In FFT though? We start with class struggles and a civil war, but when the Lucavi appear we don't forget about them. Ramza focuses his attention on the threat of the demons, but between weaving in and out of events of the war, as well as Delita himself continuing to drive political events in the background, it becomes clear that the writers were very much interested in how those events ended, with Delita's end being a very intentional foil to Ramza's own fate.
It makes the story feel much more intentional, and while I personally might have been more interested in the events of the civil war having a greater focus, I can't accuse them of forgetting about it at all.
I really do love the story, and I'm glad you were able to cover it in this LP.
Indeed, the revisionism when FF14 revisits Orbonne makes sense as a tool for justifying Raids that act as a sequel to Tactics… but there is a reason most fans treat it as the author's fanfiction. It distorts Tactics plot in strange ways to justify a revisit of characters that would otherwise long be dust.
See, the thing is you really could use Tactics as a jumping off point for XIV raids, you just need to focus on the part of the presentation that Tactics doesn't: what happens in the current day when the truth of past events are brought to light.
We get to see the true events behind the tale of Delita the Hero over the course of Tactics, but we never see what happens in Arazlam's time when he presents his findings. Is Delita's tale a well known story, and this is a shock to the public consciousness? Is it mostly of interest to historians, and this sparks vigorous academic debate but has little reach in the public sphere? Is it a foundational part of an extant nation's national mythology and it threatens its very foundations?
Now none of that is terribly relevant to Tactics itself, but I can see a XIV raid story being able to do something with that idea, especially since it's presented as a piece of Garlean history we're unearthing, and that's the kind of nation where a threat to the national mythology could very well dovetail into some interesting events. Also knowing that a bunch of the battle dialogue in FFT is very stage play-like makes the decision to make the XIV version an actual play is a very cute detail.
Of course this is just me spitballing, but I do think there's something there you could work with,
and also get Matsuno an editor, I love his writing but he desperately needs someone willing to tell him he's exceeded his wordcount.
