FFXIV Spoiler thread

[Sorrior]

One point as well is that the Amaurotians were obviously very emotionally stunted.

By that i mean there society was ALL about conformity logic etc. Individuals and emotional expression seemingly frowned upon(bar the "wierdos" in elypsis). So of course they couldn't figure it out. As otgers have said they were all happy vibes like kids who have never known anything but happy times. They also overall lacked empathy(this of course goes along with the whole aether blocks dynamis thing)

So given all of that is it any wonder Meteion was so underdeveloped and not able to handle what she found given i doubt anyone on Etherion at the time could have understood or prepared her for it given there clear emotional immaturity.

[Lane]

Meteion's primary exposure was to Hermes. All of Elpis is her walking on eggshells to not upset him and trying to find ways to make him happy, which if you've ever known anyone with depression is usually futile. My theory is that she was essentially tainted by his negativity and carried that with her to the worlds she visited. It wouldn't surprise if her dynamis upset the balance of wherever she went because of it.

Emet also calls Hermes out on his method, basically saying it was flawed to produce unfavorable results. Plus, at the end, when Meteion learns there was never one answer to the question, I don't know that would have satisfied him. I mean, if I ask someone what gives their life meaning, what do they live for, and they say music but I have no talent or interest in music, how does that help me? It doesn't. Whatever Hermes was looking for I don't believe he was going to find. It just hastened his descent into madness because they went with the Fermi Paradox and the few people Meteion did interact with were problematic with her in some cases being the direct cause of their civilization's collapse.

I'd also disagree the Ancients lacked empathy. They simply believed death wasn't a tragedy and, frankly, I don't think that's a bad thing the way Hermes did.

[Tojara]

I mean the Ancients welcomed death and it was seen as beautiful to them. They were sort of annoyed by Venat simply because upon relinquishing her seat she chose to keep living, or adventuring as she put it.

While logical beings, they weren't completely devoid of empathy, and they clearly felt empathy towards their kin. While Hermes is focused on, there's probably plenty of other ancients who feels bad for familiars they create, or beings without souls being snuffed out.

Stunted is probably the correct term though. They themselves as a society weren't able to deal with turmoil and it ultimately is what did them in.

I can't remember the exact conversation now and I'd have to go back and read it, but I think Emet told hermes that he made a mistake with Meteion at some point in regards to answering that question to begin with. She wasn't created 'properly' and the question posed to her was so binary that it was 'all or nothing' according to her and her kin. The answer about why live really had no answer beyond it's different for everybody. Zenos as much as I dislike the character basically embodies that as well lol.

[Drindorai]

My theory is that she was essentially tainted by his negativity and carried that with her to the worlds she visited. It wouldn't surprise if her dynamis upset the balance of wherever she went because of it.

While not confirmed, this is also the thing I felt as if the story was strongly hinting toward as well. Along with Emet calling out Hermes' method and essentially saying he created a situation that would inevitably lead to the negative outcome he received, the fact that she DID find several worlds of people still alive and due to her interacting with them for some undisclosed amount of time, they all collapsed in a similar way related to dynamis? Yeah she 100% contributed to it, whether intentionally or not.

[Vakir]

I'd also disagree the Ancients lacked empathy. They simply believed death wasn't a tragedy and, frankly, I don't think that's a bad thing the way Hermes did.

The Ancients looked at everything from the perspective of what benefitted them rather than allowing things to live their lives outside of their narrow bubble. They, very explicitly, "played God." That was the whole point. Meteion didn't fall off the deep end simply because of Hermes, Hermes was an extremely empathetic person who looked at creation very differently from the Ancients that were more aloof and pragmatic. That empathy was fundamentally at odds with the arrogant reality the Ancients lived in as an emotionally sustainable idea.

So while Meteion was impacted in that way, it was largely a function of her never having exposure outside of the narrow concept of the world's rules that she was introduced to. She didn't understand the differing meanings of life or accepting sadness and struggle until she was exposed to THE traveler, which were not so narrowly defined by a homogenized society. The Ancients are explicitly the logic extreme to Hermes' eventual emotional extreme.

As far as her contributing, they say as much. Urianger points out a feedback loop stemming from her.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Pretty interesting to look back at my list of outstanding questions.

Outstanding questions as of 5.3:

1. What is the Presence of Silvertear Lake? (Probably going to be retconned into being The Sound).

Unanswered.

2. In 2.0, Ifrit tried to temper the WoL, but failed, and said that the WoL's soul "already belonged to another". What does that mean? As far as we know, Hydaelyn does not temper people. IIRC it was later made out that the Echo protected against tempering, but the Ascians also had the echo and it didn't stop Zodiark from tempering them.

Retconned. The Scions sought out Echo users because they could resist Tempering and thus combat the Primal threat (Minfillia, Krile, Arenvald). Yslaye, Zenos, and the Bozjan Queen were able to resist being tempered when they piloted Primals because they had the Echo (or a variant of it). The WoL, Arenvald, and Fordola are the only ones able to fight against Lakshimi in Ala Mhigo because they had the Echo (or some variant of it). In the ShB patches, Tempering is explained to be the corruption of one's Aether. Then in Elpis, Venat says that the WoL was protected from the corruption of their aether (tempering) by a traveller's ward she cast upon him (the Blessing of Light?). But those other characters did not have the Blessing of Light...

Before EW, people resist tempering by having the echo, but now it seems to be the blessing of light/travelers ward, which then raises the question of how Minfillia/Arenval/Krile/Yslaye/Zenos/Fordola/Mikoto could resist tempering if they did not have the Blessing/Traveler's Ward cast upon them...

Also, this retcons Ifrit's insinuation that the WoL had already been tempered, or at least their aether was aspected enough to Hydaelyn's to be comparable to tempering by a primal.

3. Why do Garleans not have access to magic?

Unanswered.

4. How did the Lahabrea, Elidibus, and Emet-Selch escape the Sundering?

Unanswered. The obvious answer is that they were on the Moon when the sundering happened and the sundering didn't have far enough range to hit the moon, but that does not explain why the Unsundered were on the moon when it happened, and contradicts the Watcher's statement that the Ascians did not come to the moon until after several rejoinings.

5. The nature of the sound/corruption at the heart of the world.

Retconned. In ShB, the shade of Hyth said the source of the creation magicks going wonky came from a Sound/sickness coming from deep within the planet itself. EW retcons this by saying that nothing was wrong the heart of the planet and that the Sound came from without.

6. In 5.2, it is revealed that the WoL/Azem initially rejected Venat's group's invitation to help summon Hydaelyn, but after the Sundering the reincarnations of the WoL/Azem have been serving Hydaelyn ever since. What caused the WoL/Azem to change his view?

Unanswered. EW 6.0 lore contradicts this by saying that Venat was Azem's mentor and they were close knit, so there would have been no reason for Azem to reject his mentor's summons.

7. The WoL/Azem resigned from the Convocation, and then rejected Venat's invitiation to join them to summon Hydaelyn. No one knows what Azem was doing after that. Did he try going down to the center of the earth, trying to cure the sickness/fix the source of the Sound? Why did he fail?

Unanswered.

8. Why does Hydaelyn specifically care about the WoL/Azem? The WoL/Azem gets SIX crystals of Light and Hydaelyn sacrifices her power to save him from Ultima. Every other Warrior of Light only got one crystal of light and we don't hear Hydaelyn doing something drastic to save them too. Perhaps Venat loved Azem? There is the legend in the Azim Steppe that Azim and Nhaama were lovers.

Answered: Venat was the WoL's/Azem's mentor, and due to meeting the WoL in the time loop, Venat was already inclined to help reincarnations of the WoL/Azem and make them into her champion.

9. Why was Zenos having visions of Amaurot and the Final Days for as long as he could remember?

Unanswered.

10. If the Convocation was tempered by Zodiark, then why is Fandaniel able to just waltz off and do his own thing and not give a crap about resurrecting Zodiark? Perhaps, when one is sundered, the effects of tempering aren't retained?

Unanswered.

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EW 6.0 also raises a bunch of new questions, like the reveal that Limit Breaks are a manifestation of Dynamis. How was Elidibus in 5.3 able to cast multiple LB3s and even a LB4, if Unsundered weren't able to interact with Dynamis as well as the Sundered? Sundered can barely cast a single LB3 once per fight.

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I suppose for Zenos, he is a Garlean, and Garleans can't manipulate aether. Since aether muffles one's ability to interact with Dynamis, Zenos may have been able to somehow "sense" the Song of the End long before the other races of Etheirys could. But why only him? Why didn't Cid or Nero or Gaius or Lucia also have these visions?

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Also, if Midgardsomr removed the Blessing of Light/Traveler's Ward from the WoL at the end of ARR... then how did the WoL not get Tempered by Ravana/Bismarck/Thordan during the events of HW? And if the Blessing/Ward is similar to tempering as Ifrit insinuated by significantly altering the aether of someone, then couldn't Midgardsomr have just untempered people then?

ShB and Endwalker really made my brain hurt.

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And what was this supposed to be? In ARR, it's insinuated that this is Zodiark, but in Endwalker we find out that the blue Mothercrystal on Etheirys was not Hydaelyn, but instead aether coalescing in the Lifestream. There is no lifestream on the moon, otherwise Hermes/Fandaniel's soul wouldn't have gone back to the lifestream on Etheirys, so this crystal could not coalesce on the moon. So what is it then?




And if Hydaelyn's form wasn't the mothercrystal, then why couldn't she have left the Heart of the Star/the Lifestream and act out in the world in her Primal form? Okay, maybe she might have lost too much power by the time of the 7th Rejoining that she would need to hide inside the planet and act as mission control for her warrior of light, but why didn't we hear about her being active in the astral eras long ago?

And if Hydaelyn's form wasn't the mothercrystal, why then did she talk to us in ARR as if she was the mothercrystal?

[Vakir]

I think the implication was that Zenos was a significant enough prior soul for him to have that strong of a connection to the despair felt and that it was partly responsible for his sociopathy and inability to connect with others. Hence him being basically a force of nature and completely alien in terms of his sense of morality or connection. Not necessarily that it had to be something heavily plot related. Hell, there's still a lot of validity to the fact that being a descendant of an Ascian did something to him, but it's not important enough to take up screen time, IMO. It's trivia at best.

Garlean lack of ability to manipulate aether could've been a mutation of some kind. I do think it's a missed opportunity for them to have had a connection established with dynamis here, though.

I took Fandaniel being less significantly affected by the tempering because of the sheer weight of how miserable Hermes was, how he more retained his sense of individuality of his life independent of it as Amon, and how he was connected to the past despair. The emotional connection to just how significant Meteion was, the scope of her power, and the influence of dynamis all playing a part.

Again, I think them hearing the sound coming from the world doesn't mean that the intention all along was that it was the source of the issue. We hear it as well around the same time. It's really easy for someone to make the correlation that it's related to the planet itself when it isn't. It may have also been a function of creation magicks doing their thing to the planet internally in response to the external, edge-of-the-universe song.

You got me on the rest, though. lol ARR's generic-ass evil black-cloak losers do not mesh with this stuff in particular.

[Selah]

Pretty interesting to look back at my list of outstanding questions.

Hey there, there are some good questions here. I actually starting FFXIV this last summer and wrapped up ShB a month before EW. I have some thoughts about all this and it's all really fresh in my mind. However, I have to leave work in a minute and then life stuff. I'll totally reply tonight when I get a chance. But, re:BoL vs Echo. I found this post and thought it might help a bit.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...sing_of_light/

[Lane]

I'm with Val on this. I'm loathe to use "retcon" in the FFXIV community because the response is usually "YoU dIdN't UnDeRsTaNd ThE sToRy" even though I've gone through all content except SB at least twice and within the last 6 months so it's all fresh in my mind. Sorry, but there were a lot of lore inconsistencies in EW and I lost count of how many times I was like, WTF?

It felt like they had a plan they were setting up in ShB and then decided to scrap it and do something else in EW with the something else requiring substantial rewriting of ShB story elements while ignoring others hence the myriad of unanswered questions.

Edit: Going to add to Val's list that the Azem crystal didn't exist until Emet created it. Hythlodaeus says this in 5.3: "Defectors having been deemed unworthy of commemoration, no crystal exists for the individual in question." While it isn't necessarily a huge change, the crystals of the Convocation were created by the unsundered to imbue the memories of the offices, but in EW the crystals always existed and are passed down to successors as Venat claims to have been the previous owner of the one the WoL has.

[Asrialol]

The writing in this game is horrendous for the first what, 3-4 expansions. Then it kickstarts into full-on dumpsterfire. Maybe I had too high expectations when people say the story is "amazing". I usually dont find myself not caring for a single character in a game, even if its a MMORPG. Hell I even remember some NPCs from Rift better than FFXIV. Shrug.

[Cthulhu 2020]

Pretty interesting to look back at my list of outstanding questions.

A LOT of what you call retconning isn't actual retconning. Retconning is where something is established as an immutable fact of the story. Either told to you explicitly by official game lore sources, or narration of previous works. When a character inside of the world explains a phenomenon, they are doing so to the best of their own knowledge. If that person's knowledge on the subject matter is insufficient and not considered complete, when another character has more knowledge, swapping from one person's view to another's is not retconning. Again, the whole "establishing an immutable fact" and then retracting that.

Ifrit saying you "belonged to another" did leave this whole fan revelation of "omg tempered by Hydaelyn" but does Ifrit, which is a culmination of the knowledge of those who worshipped him (the amal'ja), going to understand the difference between not being able to temper someone because they're tempered by another, and not being able to temper someone because you just can't? It's safe to say that Ifrit himself would simply see not being able to corrupt someone's aether towards fire to mean they're already tempered, when it really could just be a protective ward. As far as Midgardsormr, my impression was that he simply cut our link to Hydaelyn, considering we stopped hearing her voice then and only started hearing it again once we got several crystals back.

And again, other characters like Minfilia, Krile, Fordola, not being able to be tempered, did they ever say that WoL was the only one who had the traveler's ward? Or that the Echo (which is said to be granted by the mother crystal) is not just the same thing with multiple effects? This has never been fully clarified or broken down, so there's still room for them to establish a canon since not even Hydaelyn or Venat fully explains its exact workings. We've now got Blessing of Light, Echo, Traveler's Ward, all sort of jumbled in together. We know the Unsundered can awaken something akin to the echo in anyone simply by showing them scenes of the final days, but it's more like awakening their old soul's memories more than it is a proper blessing.

The nature of the final days, we've already had several posts as to why this wasn't retconned. It's just not. Taking the words of a shade of Hythlodeus recreated by Emet Selch as immutable fact is already bordering, especially since we have to remember that Ascians were also people, not omnipotent all knowing beings. People with extraordinary powers, but people with all their limits on knowledge all the same. Hythlodeus's recollection of the final days sounds just like anyone from Radz at Han would tell it. There was a terrible cry that seemed to come from the world itself (hearing the screams, cries, and terrors of people both transforming and those witnessing the transformation) then monsters poured forth. Yep, that sounds like an account of someone who doesn't know the root cause and only sees the effects in person.

This fixation on the "noise" and the "planet being sick" seems to be your own impression of what you thought was true. I'm not seeing very many people confused on this subject, other than those who wanted the story to flip on its head and for Hydaelyn to become the evil final entity and just kind of made that semi canon before it was established as absolute fact. But again, I was never expecting Hydaelyn or Zodiark to be the final final evil. Final villains are not revealed until the 11th hour, or are side characters who are revealed at the end.

Yes, they did not answer why Garleans cannot use magic. Something I think they should have gone over at least as a side note of Garlean history, but was probably one of the things dropped in making this whole ending one expansion instead of two.

No they did not explain how the unsundered escaped sundering. But I also don't really think that's a very pertinent question, even if it is one involving everyone's favorite boy emet selch. They also didn't explain the mechanism whereby an unsundered soul can become sundered merely by dying.

In 5.2, it is revealed that the WoL/Azem initially rejected Venat's group's invitation to help summon Hydaelyn, but after the Sundering the reincarnations of the WoL/Azem have been serving Hydaelyn ever since. What caused the WoL/Azem to change his view?

7. The WoL/Azem resigned from the Convocation, and then rejected Venat's invitiation to join them to summon Hydaelyn. No one knows what Azem was doing after that. Did he try going down to the center of the earth, trying to cure the sickness/fix the source of the Sound? Why did he fail?

I think these are both adequately answered, if only indirectly. It's very clear that Azem is willful, stubborn, and independent. Everyone else was summong Zodiark, while the rest were summoning Hydaelyn. Don't you think it's characteristic enough of Azem to look for the THIRD option, how to stop everything? And ultimately failing? Maybe going into the planet in search of this mysterious "noise" (that just turned out to be the cries of people in terror) is what ended them after all. But Venat uses the pronoun of your character's gender when referring to the "new" Azem.



And I will repeat, one thing I do not see people criticizing is the double time loop paradox, wherein g'raha traveling to the past from a world where the WoL dies in the next umbral calamity, but then prevents it, then WoL travels back in time and witnesses these events and collaborates with Venat, and your entire adventure happens because of this, but then what about the future where you die?

This double time loop paradox is imo the worst offender of this expansion, but I see nobody talking about it. And I think they're willing to suspend their disbelief on this merely because Emet Selch/Hythlodeus are involved. And that's it. If it involved any other characters they probably would have been beating the hell out of it.

[Vakir]

No way, man. All retcons. And Endwalker should've been The Emet-Selch Show.

5/10, not enough dead Scions. /s

[Tojara]

I'd have to look through everything, but the only part that's super weird is a lot of the Venat/Azem/Hydaelyn stuff towards the end of ShB, the post-MSQ and anything after Elpis. Some of the time shit makes sense, other parts of it doesn't.

I think the source version of the WoL was just seen as more important to save, compared to the reflection versions of WoL possibly?

As far as the crystals go I don't really think it's that big of a deal. Why she would hide her true form is anyone's guess, but it's probably because they A) didn't have her real form thought out and B) having Zodiark or Hydaelyn be a crystal when you actually encounter them would probably just be dumb.

It's possible that the Aether (crystal) that's suppose to represent Zodiark is still deep within the moon. Going back there you still see a metric shit ton of red energy just seeping out of the center mass, and it makes sense that it could be there, and perhaps a product of the Aether drawn from reflection shards that the Ascians successfully caused calamities on.

In regards to tempering, I'd have to read back, but it's possible Midgardsorm just severed the link and didn't specifically remove the ward granted to you from Hydaelyn. Also, in the event that Midgardsorm did take away our blessing not every primal even tries or attempts to temper people to begin with.

[Drindorai]

No way you mean Val is just constantly nitpicking shit that they didn't like that the story didn't go their way.

Shocker man.

Could have told you that before I even started Endwalker that would be their response.

This fixation on the "noise" and the "planet being sick" seems to be your own impression of what you thought was true.

This is virtually all of the problems Val complains about regarding this story that I've seen since I joined the forum. "My headcanon was wrong, therefore bad/retcon/ect."

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Got my DRK to 90 and did the tank rolequest. Coming off of the fun melee DPS questline, this was one was pretty disappointing.

They changed the Seedseer's characterization. Before this (well, before her Tales from the Twilight short story), she was a confidant sage who was implied to be the eldest of the nation leaders. The rolequest recharacterizes her to being a somewhat insecure (or easily demoralized) young woman. Also prior to this point, nobody ever contested her, even when you had multiple Garlean invasions bringing with them weapons of mass destruction, but then a monster roams the woods and the people start getting uppity and acting as if she and Raya aren't doing their best to save them, and want to leave the Twelveswood (yeah, as if the desert kingdom led by a girl in her late teens/early 20s who is being undermined by greedy syndicate members is going to do a better job!).

Now I'm not complaining here; the Seedseer was the most boring nation leader, so the change of characterization does make her mildly more interesting. I think it ties into the fact that the writers don't really know what to do with Gridania, and/or Gridania just hasn't been set up to have interesting stories. Pretty much every Gridania story is a retread of the same boring "the forest is in danger! The Elementals are getting angry! We gotta cure the taint!". There are good stories set in Gridania (1-30 Lancer) but they're not really about Gridania and could've been set in any other country.

It has also become apparent that the Endwalker rolequests are just rehashes of the formulaic ShB rolequests (team up with an NPC to hunt a monster which you kill at the end), though I am vaguely more invested in the EW Rolequests as they have characters I at least already like. The only ShB rolequest I can remember was the healer one, and that wasn't because the story was memorable (none of the ShB ones were) but because it had Giott.

I'm hoping the other three rolequests are more interesting (hopefully on the same level as the melee DPS one!), though one of the five being a flub is rather disappointing given that we went from having 16 job storylines down to just having 5, ostensibly for quality > quantity, but we got one that was pretty much just yet another bad white mage questline. I'll probably level Summoner next so I can knock out two questlines for the price of one. I wonder if we will see Arenvald in the healer questline, given that he showed up in the last Summoner quest.

[Tojara]

I haven't finished my role quest because I don't really see a reason to do it. Before in ShB they were basically required and gave you starter gear, in this expansion you just get the start gear at 89 regardless. The only reason I even did some of the role quest in EW (I think I have two steps left) is because I was gated on XP near the end, and figured it was better XP to do that than just queue for the duty finder.

Tank one seemed boring thus far, but mostly because I don't really care about the Seedseer to begin with. Pretty much every other leader is more interesting, and I hate Lalafel a lot (so that should speak volumes).

I wouldn't complain if they went back to job storyline quests, but I suppose it makes sense in the last couple expansions anyway. You've basically mastered your job at this point, what more is there to really learn? The Dark Knight one ended really well and to be perfectly honest, most of them that I did were really awful (especially GNB). No idea if Reaper has a good story or not, so can't comment.

[Biske]

-snip-

Regarding #3 with the Garleans and magic, while I don't have an answer (the closest thing we get to an answer is them saying they can't manipulate aether, but we never find out why that is), now that we've seen dynamis can basically be used similarly to aether for magic, maybe we could see some kind of Garlean casters.

But anyway, what I actually wanted to address was #5. They do mention that the "corruption" is still coming from within the planet. Basically, the planet is filled with dynamis and aether, but on our planet, aether is more prevalent, which differs from most of the rest of the universe. Dynamis can be manipulated from range by Meteion, with her song. So she sings at the planet, the dynamis in the planet reacts to it, and corrupts people in areas where aether is weak. The Ancients didn't even know about dynamis because, well, the only one studying it was Hermes and the memory wipe made him believe that his research just led to a dead end, so they never came to a full understanding of that force, so from their point of view, the corruption was only coming from this weird sound that came from the ground, which was just Meteion's song resonating with the planet's dynamis.

(repost and deleted original because it was bugging out on my end)

[Pannonian]

Physical Range DPS role quest handles the aftermath of the "war" in doma - some of the questions coming up there and the motif were quite interesting imho - i.e.: Why did Hien not put Tsuyu to death.

Did Tank which was ... meh - never like Girdania, and also Healer, which i mostly skipped because i absolutely despise the characters involved (Arenvald/Fordola)

[Drindorai]

Also Healer, which i mostly skipped because i absolutely despise the characters involved (Arenvald/Fordola)

I could not disagree more. The Healer role quest was truly phenomenal. The moment with Fordola and Arenvald at the end of it all was just fantastic.

Skipping all the dialogue even though seemingly you had done the role quests on another job first seems completely asinine and backwards to me, the entire point of them not being mandatory is to enjoy the wrap up of several plot threads that (While not necessarily needing wrapping up) were left hanging.

Glad that my faerie does most of my healing when I pop its cooldown because I was wiping my face during the final trial.

[Pannonian]

I could not disagree more. The Healer role quest was truly phenomenal. The moment with Fordola and Arenvald at the end of it all was just fantastic.

Skipping all the dialogue even though seemingly you had done the role quests on another job first seems completely asinine and backwards to me, the entire point of them not being mandatory is to enjoy the wrap up of several plot threads that (While not necessarily needing wrapping up) were left hanging.

Glad that my faerie does most of my healing when I pop its cooldown because I was wiping my face during the final trial.

I wanted to dye my class gear - everyone has his personal taste - haven't skipped anything else - i just cannot stand Arenvald and Fordola.

Edit: And i said i skipped mostly (meaning a lot) not everything. I think telling other people their style of play is asinine is... well asinine.