Death Vs. Defeat - Disintegration Effect?

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Originally Posted by MilesSaintboroguh

Well, Lahabrea was totally obliterated by the Blade of Light at that time, so he'd have no time to take Gaius' body before the base blew up nor did Lahabrea had time to recover after the fact (we don't see him again until a few patches later). Even then, Gaius' body is probably mangled beyond belief since he was caught in the explosion, so it does the Ascian no good to posses a broken body.

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Hmm, not so sure. Lahabrea was cast out of Thancred but he was by no means destroyed. So then since he wasn't, who else is still there. Gaius. Lahabrea jacks him right before the place goes up and ports off to lick his wounds.

When it comes to The Ascians they ARE Deus Ex Machina.

When i say obliterated, I mean "got his butt completely wrecked" and we don't see him until a few patches later. Not to mention there's really no need to keep Gaius alive at this point when the Ascian's plans seem to be going as planned regardless other than them speeding it up because one of their other key players was actually killed.


And I know the Ascians have a plan for their plan, etc. But I believe they wouldn't be major ass pullers; if Giaus did return, I better see a REALLY good reason behind it other than "lol a wizard did it".

Hmmm, I guess you have a point. Gaius did fulfill his role in Lahabrea's plot. (Despite the plot failing) So there'd really be no reason for them to keep using him.

I guess I just want Gaius to be alive because of my personal bias towards him since he's now in my top 3 Final Fantasy Villains behind Caius Ballad and before Sephiroth.

Enemies that disappear out on the field and in dungeons do so to remove them from the scene so they no longer require rendering. This is common in all MMOs and isn't so much a lore device.

There are some enemies that disintegrate due to lore reasons though. The primals and voidsent both turn to aether when killed which is why they usually have a special death animation.

As for ambiguity regarding some major character deaths I would suspect that's entirely deliberate. Any story that gives you too many absolutes tends to get a little dull. Ambiguity is what gives rise to speculation in this very lore forum. I will say though that other than Gaius it was all rather explicit about who of the Garlean generals did and did not die; Nero's escape in particular was made very obvious.

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Originally Posted by Reinhart

I feel like I should point out that we had several corpses to carry out of the waking sands - including our sylph friend - so people not disappearing and instead leaving a body when they die is perfectly normal. Plus, there's the cemetery in Eastern Thanalan.

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I like how they made each corpse take up a unique cast time depending on how heavy they were. Really stuck it in there.

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Originally Posted by Reinhart

I feel like I should point out that we had several corpses to carry out of the waking sands - including our sylph friend - so people not disappearing and instead leaving a body when they die is perfectly normal. Plus, there's the cemetery in Eastern Thanalan.

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Well, as some have already pointed out, the fading thing is mostly to reduce the workload on the graphics engine (and most enemies serve no purpose after being killed, so there's no reason to make the engine work to keep them rendered), and Cilia made a good point in saying that leaving dead bodies lying around can make some players start to feel bad about themselves. So though we see the bodies disappear, the characters themselves probably do not.

So the bodies in the waking sands (or in any of the many other quests that require you to interact with dead bodies) were left unfading because they needed to be on screen for us to see and interact with.