FFXIV Spoiler thread

[Ghost of Cow]

Which I don't agree with it given that the temperance only lasted 5 minutes out of your otherwise healthy 30 years of life.

I don't know why you keep saying that when the story is very clear that tempering is permanent.

[neik]

Sure it's a craze, but temporal one.. You are only scared of a leftover footprints. I'd rather go on a quest finding potent magic source that could cure and save those people instead of being them put down like a dogs.

[Arlette]

Sure it's a craze, but temporal one.. You are only scared of a leftover footprints. I'd rather go on a quest finding potent magic source that could cure and save those people instead of being them put down like a dogs.

And what do you do with all the hyper violent tempered in the meanwhile as you chase this impossible cure? People aren't like cheering on killing these people but there's quite literally nothing you can do to help them, they are also brainwashed and not themselves, so you're prolonging even their own personal hell.

You can't house them all together because if you get a bunch of tempered in one place, you just need a single operative to bring a bunch of crystals and bam you've gotten another resummoned Primal enthralling even MORE people. You can't even house different Primal-tempered together because as we see with Garuda, they can still be forced to summon their own Primal even if its being forced by a differently-tempered thrall.

[neik]

You vanquished the primal and thus the magic is no longer prevalent. All you have to do is recover from from PTSD, and you can invoke powerful and actual existing magic that has powerful healing capabilities. Imagine the success story and how uplifting is that.

[Ghost of Cow]

You vanquished the primal and thus the magic is no longer prevalent. All you have to do is recover from from PTSD, and you can invoke powerful and actual existing magic that has powerful healing capabilities. Imagine the success story and how uplifting is that.

At this point you're literally just working off of your headcanon, and there's no point in any of us arguing it with you.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Just got to the part (EW 6.2 spoilers) where we bring Zero to Etheirys to recover after the events at Storm's Crown. I predict that something horrible is going to happen to Zero's little village while we're away; she's gonna wake up and bloody freak out how we left the weak voidsent defenseless and we go back and it's all in shambles. FFS we just let a deserter voidsent of Barbariccia's army into the village IMMEDIATELY after we killed her. That just screams red herring to me.

It is odd that she didn't delegate leadership of the village to a lieutenant. If she has several dozen voidsent there then there should be at least one or two she can trust.

There's not really another option because you become a violent zealot that literally cannot be reasoned down.

They could have been thrown into a pit or a prison, though that brings up the issue of feeding them indefinitely. The kidnapping seen in ARR 2.0 is the only time we see or hear of beastmen kidnapping humans, and we saw only a dozen or two dozen guys that they kidnapped. So if these incidents are rare (as in 20 people being kidnapped maybe once or twice a year), then perhaps it would be feasible to feed a prison of them.

You vanquished the primal and thus the magic is no longer prevalent. All you have to do is recover from from PTSD, and you can invoke powerful and actual existing magic that has powerful healing capabilities. Imagine the success story and how uplifting is that.

Killing a primal does not nullify tempering. We see three different tempered characters who remain tempered after the primal that tempered them was killed.

[neik]

At this point you're literally just working off of your headcanon, and there's no point in any of us arguing it with you.

Sure other people have power to express their views in favor of dying. I'm just stating my own favorite outcome. Which is recovery over death sentence.

It doesn't even need to deviate from story that much. Ifrit's manifestation is zealot's doing. When Ifrit was vanquished, the adventurer who was rendered immune to mind control, found a way to cleanse to what appears to be a just residual magic. And since lack of Ifrit's presence renders the magic already ineffective. You take your time cure those people instead of killing them.

[Arlette]

They could have been thrown into a pit or a prison, though that brings up the issue of feeding them indefinitely. The kidnapping seen in ARR 2.0 is the only time we see or hear of beastmen kidnapping humans, and we saw only a dozen or two dozen guys that they kidnapped. So if these incidents are rare (as in 20 people being kidnapped maybe once or twice a year), then perhaps it would be feasible to feed a prison of them

That brings up the problem of housing multiple tempered together, they already then have fulfilled one of the two requirements for summoning: faith. Yes sometimes 1 person alone can do it, but that's a rare case, and just gathering more and more of them together is just asking an Ascian or some other tempered who hasn't been captured to just bring some crystals in and them ta da another primal has been summoned.

- - - Updated - - -

Sure other people have power to express their views in favor of dying. I'm just stating my own favorite outcome. Which is recovery over death sentence.

It doesn't even need to deviate from story that much. Ifrit's manifestation is zealot's doing. When Ifrit was vanquished, the adventurer who was rendered immune to mind control, found a way to cleanse to what appears to be a just residual magic. And since lack of Ifrit's presence renders the magic already ineffective. You take your time cure those people instead of killing them.

The story quite literally tells you that you cannot cure tempering. Do you really think that the group that is trying to save as many people as possible and save the world from every imaginable threat just goes, 'Whoops well we don't want to put in the effort.'

You are also factually wrong about killing the Primal somehow saving its victim. All of us in this thread are obviously trying not to spoil the story for you but you're making it difficult.

You cannot cure Tempering. Killing the Primal doesn't cure you and it doesn't suddenly make it so you can therapy your way out of it. Trust us, we know what we're talking about lol

[Auxis]

I just thought of something. Did they ever explain in Endwalker (Shadowbringers/Endwalker spoilers, DO NOT CLICK THIS SPROUTS!!!) why Emet Selch post-death (when he appeared in the Elidibus fight) didnt try mention anything to us about Fan'daniel/Hermes/Meteion? I feel like it is kinda an important thing to try and tell us about this threat that we currently do dont kinda about and cant reach.

I feel like someone mentioned that it took a while to remember the events of Elpis (I think it was Hermes in the Aitsascope, said something along the lines of "so it WAS you in Elpis") after death. But Emet was dead probably longer than Fan'dan was before meeting us post death.

The dev's are usually pretty good about hand waving things like this via good writing, so is there something I'm not remembering? For context that Sharlayan scholar explains pre-Elpis that memory is inscribed naturally on the mind like words on paper, and when brainwashed via aether it's like dumping an ink well on the parchment. And that returning to the Lifestream cleanses the brainwashing to leave only the memories. This is the explanation for how Hytholodeus, Hades, and Hermes remember the events of the dungeon finale even after the Kaidos or w/e that device was wiped their memories.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I just thought of something. Did they ever explain in Endwalker (Shadowbringers/Endwalker spoilers, DO NOT CLICK THIS SPROUTS!!!) why Emet Selch post-death (when he appeared in the Elidibus fight) didnt try mention anything to us about Fan'daniel/Hermes/Meteion?

The specifics for the final Hermes/Meteion story we got might not have been fleshed out and locked in while 5.3 was being written (bear in mind that a lot of stuff set up in the ShB patches amounted to nothing, seems like the story was in flux up until the last minute), and having a dead character drop a lot of exposition would have the audience asking why the WoL doesn't just use the Azem soulgem to pull up people's souls out of the Lifestream and interview them to solve every mystery.

[Ludek]

And that returning to the Lifestream cleanses the brainwashing to leave only the memories. This is the explanation for how Hytholodeus, Hades, and Hermes remember the events of the dungeon finale even after the Kaidos or w/e that device was wiped their memories.

That would I guess is the answer to your question.

Emet we meet in during the Elidibus fight had not yet fully went into the Lifestream - it was a lingering spirit, kinda similar to Elidibus in Endwalker in the Crystal Tower.

Because of that he did not yet regain all of his memories

There could be also a bit timey-wimey theory-solution to that

There is a mini-plothole in regards to time being closed loop during our adventures in Elpis. That's because our time-travel to Elpis cannot happen without G'raha time-traveling to The First, which itself is not a closed loop and creates a separate timeline.

So in the original future G'raha's timeline Elpis stuff still happened, but without WoL intervention (since we die during Eight Umbral Calamity shortly after Ghimlyt)

There is a possibility then, that between Shadowbringers and Endwalker, the Elpis events were still happening without us, just like in G'raha's original timeline. That would mean Emet we met in Shadowbringers simply did not know about Metion and so on - from their perspective the Final Days just started, we never know if Hermes casted the memory wipe back then or not.

[Grinning Serpent]

I just thought of something. Did they ever explain in Endwalker (Shadowbringers/Endwalker spoilers, DO NOT CLICK THIS SPROUTS!!!) why Emet Selch post-death (when he appeared in the Elidibus fight) didnt try mention anything to us about Fan'daniel/Hermes/Meteion? I feel like it is kinda an important thing to try and tell us about this threat that we currently do dont kinda about and cant reach.

I feel like someone mentioned that it took a while to remember the events of Elpis (I think it was Hermes in the Aitsascope, said something along the lines of "so it WAS you in Elpis") after death. But Emet was dead probably longer than Fan'dan was before meeting us post death.

The dev's are usually pretty good about hand waving things like this via good writing, so is there something I'm not remembering? For context that Sharlayan scholar explains pre-Elpis that memory is inscribed naturally on the mind like words on paper, and when brainwashed via aether it's like dumping an ink well on the parchment. And that returning to the Lifestream cleanses the brainwashing to leave only the memories. This is the explanation for how Hytholodeus, Hades, and Hermes remember the events of the dungeon finale even after the Kaidos or w/e that device was wiped their memories.

It didn't happen because the entire Elpis arc in Endwalker was a shitty ass-pull area created primarily to fanservice the Emet-Selch fujoshi legions, and to introduce It's Totally Not Necron! to the players. So that instead of fighting the god of entropy we had literally no idea existed, we instead get about 15 minutes' worth of introduction before going off to fight depressed tween god.

Timey wimey stuff almost never works well, narratively. It creates too many plot holes and tangles. They already had this problem to a much lesser extent with Alexander raids, I'm kind of surprised (not really) they did it on a larger scale.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Timey wimey stuff almost never works well, narratively.

Going back in time can be done well if it is properly setup and the rules are consistently abided by (the Dragonriders of Pern novels, for example), but in FFXIV the timetravel keeps being pulled out of thin air and the rules behind it change every time. First you have closed timeloops, then you have people actually being able to change the timeline, then its back to closed timeloops again. There is no consistency. It's whatever the current writer feels at the moment.

[Yarathir]

More like if you change the past, you actually split the timeline. If the main events of the past remain constant and fundamentally unaltered, the timeline doesn't split up.

[Grinning Serpent]

More like if you change the past, you actually split the timeline. If the main events of the past remain constant and fundamentally unaltered, the timeline doesn't split up.

That's nonsense, though. It is absolutely impossible to know, for sure, what will and won't affect the future. Did you have oatmeal but then later decided you wanted cereal on a revisit? Maybe that results in dramatic changes down the line, maybe it results in none at all.

This is why timey wimey shit is the recourse of incompetent writers who either feel they need to make something DRAMATIC happen, or who have written themselves into a corner and have to bullshit their way back to stuff making sense again. Or who feel the need to continue gay-baiting the playerbase because they know it makes them a shitload of money.

Endwalker was just garbage writing, for the most part. Very in line with typical Final Fantasy narrative structure and tone - but Final Fantasy has never been a series you go to for gripping narratives and deep, intricate stories. I can't really blame them for having issues sticking the landing after ten damn years of writing a narrative, though.

[Yarathir]

tl;dr: you didn't like it

[Arlette]

Or who feel the need to continue gay-baiting the playerbase because they know it makes them a shitload of money.

This is an incredibly bizarre aside to bring up while you're ranting that you subjectively just didn't like something and using broad, sweeping, generalizations to defend the rant outside of specific arguments to do so.

Even the weird ass implicit thing you're trying to pretend is happening with that aside is a gigantic stretch.

I wish people could just say that they didn't think an idea was well executed without always instantly resorting to incredible hyperbole just dripping with toxicity and a weird almost-bigotry to it as well.

Also I fucking wish Necron had any level amount of build up in the story that Meteion did. The idea that they are the same in any way is just ridiculous. Either you never played FF9 or you did 20 years ago and don't remember anything about it. OR you were just skipping Endwalker cutscenes.

Or, in what I think is actually going on, you're just being way too intentionally hyperbolic for some weird personal reason. The contrarianism of FF14 on this website is so crazily off the charts. Its so much energy for something everybody can blatantly see you're doing instead of just...not doing it.

[Grinning Serpent]

tl;dr: you didn't like it

I thought it was a very good Final Fantasy story, but it's not exactly going to measure up to masterpieces in cinema, literature, or even other games. You could probably argue apples to oranges, but I'd say that fruit tends to be fruit. Even accounting for the story being very "anime," which is part and parcel of JRPGs, I just didn't think it was able to match the highs and lows of Shadowbringers, and while its pacing was better overall than Stormblood's, I felt like it lacked some of the punches that Stormblood was able to deliver. And even the best parts of XIV tend to look a little weak compared to the strongest examples of storytelling and narrative in other games - Disco Elysium being a contemporary example one might use.

It felt like Endwalker hinged way too much on fanservice and "soyjak pointing meme" virality. So many scenes felt like they were just purposely baiting out "omg u guys! it's that one dude from that quest! look!!!" reactions or just plain throwing fanservice at the playerbase, sometimes at the cost of good narrative sense.

I generally had a lot of fun Endwalker (annoyance of being unable to cross a fucking ravine in Thavnair aside) up to Into the Cold. Then after that narrative hook went over like a flaccid balloon, it kind of set expectations for everything else afterwards being... not what I was hoping for out of "wrapping up 10 years of story!" It had high points and low points, but between the obvious fucking rush job that was Garlemald, timey wimey horseshit in Elpis (which I fully admit is absolutely just a personal grudge I have with ANY story involving that shit... if you want to tell a timey wimey story that doesn't shatter immersion, just do the fucking amnesiac in medias res thing instead), and then them basically going "lol, dynamis!" in regards to the story hooks set in ShB about "the sound" that caused the Ascian civilization to shit the bed was kind of the cherry on top.

Ironically, while I didn't find her remotely compelling as a villain, Endsinger was a fantastic FF final boss. It's a depressed tween goddess that's essentially become the manifestation of entropy - hard to get more Final Fantasy than that!

[Auxis]

More like if you change the past, you actually split the timeline. If the main events of the past remain constant and fundamentally unaltered, the timeline doesn't split up.

And that's what happened thanks to the mind wipe and Venat. She was pondering how to go about it; straight up call out Hermes to the Convocation, get the Ancients ready for whats to come, but that might change our future drastically; let history run its course and set up strategies in private that wouldn't affect our present (and if we consider that it's a perfect loop somehow, if our future is exactly the same as it was when we left that means that in our past, we - the WoL - went to Elpis as our present remained the same).

I think the time travelwasn't overly convoluted. There's a little bit of "What if" and pondering paradoxes but when you do a bit of time travel that's to be expected.

I guess my initial question was a bit rough. I don't expect devs to straight up plot-drop a future expansion, but the FFXIV writers are usually pretty good about explaining things after the fact. I guess what Ludek said might be the best explanation - it's a matter of time the person has spent in the Lifestream.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

The ending of this 400+ hour long JRPG/visual novel revolves around a bird introduced during the final 20 hours, the final 5% of the story. FF9 was a 40 hour long game and Necron came during the last hour, which was the last 2.5% of the story. The comparison is apt. No other Final Fantasy games besides 9 and 14 introduce the main threat that late.