Tale of Emet [FF14 x Nier Reincarnation event story]

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Originally Posted by Kozh

Leave it to you to twist it into emet's fault. Like Lurina said, if he who possess the echo couldn't understand what the sundered said, then it means the sundered doesn't have language to translate to. The echo wouldn't stop working just because we speak to what we deemed as lesser being.

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That isn’t how the echo works. It doesn’t need a language to translate from, that’s a gameplay convenience. We feel the intent and meaning of what something is trying to convey, which we gather meaning from. We literally talk to intelligent animals regularly, one’s who growl at us.

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Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

We’re able to communicate with a “smarter than average” troll that read a book but is still grunting and grrr-ing so I find it hard to believe the the newly sundered Ancients came out less evolved than a troll who discovered “language” on his own and taught himself to read. We can also understand that specific troll, but not other trolls, but that specific troll can talk to other trolls, implying that they have their own language the Echo doesn’t work on.

There’s also the Mandragora, who have their own language and culture that’s indecipherable to both us and the Ancients.

But previously the Echo was stated to connect souls together so that one may understand the other. If one with the Echo is unable to make a connection with someone else, they won’t understand.

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Originally Posted by EaraGrace

That isn’t how the echo works. It doesn’t need a language to translate from, that’s a gameplay convenience. We feel the intent and meaning of what something is trying to convey, which we gather meaning from. We literally talk to intelligent animals regularly, one’s who growl at us.

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What if the reason why we're able to talk to that one specific troll is not a matter of intelligence but because it has a soul while the others don't? In the same way creations were granted their souls by the star maybe the animals we know in the post-sundering world don't have a soul by default.

So, with the immediate post-sundering humanity... What if the sundering left them soulless initially and the star eventually started granting souls back to humanity?

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Originally Posted by Sicno

What if the reason why we're able to talk to that one specific troll is not a matter of intelligence but because it has a soul while the others don't? In the same way creations were granted their souls by the star maybe the animals we know in the post-sundering world don't have a soul by default.

So, with the immediate post-sundering humanity... What if the sundering left them soulless initially and the star eventually started granting souls back to humanity?

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Sundering doesn’t strip anyone of a soul as far as we know, it divides. It strikes at everything that defines a target but leaves the actual thing alone. For it to strip someone of their soul would be to kill them, which doesn’t fit Emets description. I think this is where we recognize the bias of the narrator.

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Originally Posted by EaraGrace

Sundering doesn’t strip anyone of a soul, it divides. It strikes at everything that defines a target but leaves the actual thing alone. For it to strip someone of their soul would be to kill them, which doesn’t fit Emets description. I think this is where we recognize the bias of the narrator.

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But the description of the state of post-sundering humanity goes waaaay beyond "leaving the actual thing alone". I don't think we can expect consistency anymore, only "being up to date with the latest retcons".

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Originally Posted by Sicno

But the description of the state of post-sundering humanity goes waaaay beyond "leaving the actual thing alone". I don't think we can expect consistency anymore, only "being up to date with the latest retcons".

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Not a single word in the collab hasn’t already been stated by Emet in ShB. This is isn’t a retcon, this a characters perspective. Notice how the “malformed” souls are walking about in both images, they aren’t screaming for help or catatonic like you would see if they were stripped of their souls (we were shown what this looks like in the StB patch series). There’s little to suggest that’s what happened.

And Sundering itself would not strip anyone of language, it would be a wiping of memory that would do that.

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Originally Posted by EaraGrace

Not a single word in the collab hasn’t already been stated by Emet in ShB. This is isn’t a retcon, this a characters perspective. Notice how the “malformed” souls are walking about in both images, they aren’t screaming for help or catatonic like you would see if they were stripped of their souls (we were shown what this looks like in the StB patch series). There’s little to suggest that’s what happened.

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Now that you mention it... on the one hand yeah, the scions were left in a deep slumber while their souls were dragged away. On the other hand... we have creatures like creations that were able to function before being granted a soul. How is it that losing a soul would leave them in such a state if it's not needed for a creature to function? This makes me question more things about the story and the lore.

But back to Nier, having someone narrate those events gives me the impression this is how things transpired and not "his version" or "how he perceived it". Sure, some of it may be colored by what pertains to him, but it's not him doing the description. So it should be less biased.

I'm thinking now they may not have been completely soulless but rather, their souls/aether may have have been thin and unstable for a while so not even the echo worked on them. That's still something pretty brutal to have faced. There was certainly no mercy.

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Originally Posted by Sicno

Now that you mention it... on the one hand yeah, the scions were left in a deep slumber while their souls were dragged away. On the other hand... we have creatures like creations that were able to function before being granted a soul. How is it that losing a soul would leave them in such a state if it's not needed for a creature to function? This makes me question more things about the story and the lore.

But back to Nier, having someone narrate those events gives me the impression this is how things transpired and not "his version" or "how he perceived it". Sure, some of it may be colored by what pertains to him, but it's not him doing the description. So it should be less biased.

I'm thinking now they may not have been completely soulless but rather, their souls/aether may have have been thin and unstable for a while so not even the echo worked on them. That's still something pretty brutal to have faced. There was certainly no mercy.

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Well when it comes to how events are being told through storyteller's words, it is often either under exaggerated or over exaggerated compared to what really happened even if the storyteller is trying to describe the perspective of a individual for the story they tell. The process of how the sundered became what they are now could have been under exaggerated from what we are told in FF14 to a point it may have been far more horrifying to see to a point we may never truely comprehend how it was while some may have been over exaggerated due to bias views of certain characters and maybe done so for some flare to the story.

Heck, stories about WoL is often over exaggerated as we learn in FF14 so the people who only know WoL through stories being told to them often don't recognize him/her on first meeting either because of the stories maybe changing certain things, such as WoL's appearance, personality, events, and power, to a point the story is trying to give off a more negative view or positive view.

Argos is probably the simplest example of how reflections work, and the in-game text directly refers to his duplicates as such. He essentially sunders and rejoins himself at will.

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Originally Posted by EaraGrace

Was this said in one of the weapons?

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It wasn't. He's just making that leap on his own.

Another in-game counterpoint to this "literal malformed creatures" thing is Emet's own demonstration of the Sundering with Ryne. He produces a perfect copy of her, not a devolved blob – which surely would have been the quickest way to impart the sheer horror of what he had been through, if it is indeed what he had been through.

I'm inclined to take it as unreliable narrator plus writing to convey in broad strokes for a non-FF audience plus possibly Ishikawa not checking the finer points of what the Echo can do, because that entire thing has been out the window for some time.

The rules of what is the Echo and what is the blessing of Light got completely flipped sometime between being laid out in 2.X/3.0 and revisited in 5.X/6.0, and the lorebook descriptions are from that earlier era so I really don't know how much of it we can trust any more. We direly need a third lorebook to hammer all this out.

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Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

But previously the Echo was stated to connect souls together so that one may understand the other. If one with the Echo is unable to make a connection with someone else, they won’t understand.

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That's an interesting way of looking at it too. If Emet, consciously or subconsciously, recoils from these sundered beings and refuses to see them as something he still can relate to, he can't connect to them and so reinforces his impression that they are in a worse state than they actually are.

Maybe they just weren't talking? They had just been sundered after all, I think we can all agree that getting chopped up into 14 pieces probably leaves you with a few aches and pains, enough to spur on some groaning at least. :p

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Originally Posted by Iscah

I'm inclined to take it as unreliable narrator plus writing to convey in broad strokes for a non-FF audience plus possibly Ishikawa not checking the finer points of what the Echo can do, because that entire thing has been out the window for some time.

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For the Echo to work, a being needs to have a soul plus at least some kind of conscious intent in the vein of language. Even Krile's Echo, which is even more sensitive to the "whispers of the soul" than WoL's, doesn't allow her to understand animals. Given how the souls of the first post-Sundering people looked from the story, literally twisted and malformed, it may be that they're simply so torn apart that the Echo can't work on them, or otherwise the only sentiment their souls are capable of expressing is a pitiful, senseless moaning.

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Originally Posted by Veloran

For the Echo to work, a being needs to have a soul plus at least some kind of conscious intent in the vein of language. Even Krile's Echo, which is even more sensitive to the "whispers of the soul" than WoL's, doesn't allow her to understand animals. Given how the souls of the first post-Sundering people looked from the story, literally twisted and malformed, it may be that they're simply so torn apart that the Echo can't work on them, or otherwise the only sentiment their souls are capable of expressing is a pitiful, senseless moaning.

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This wholly depends on whether you take Emet at his literal word and that we have an agreed upon conception of what is “malformed.” If you do, then we have reason to believe they were twisted as you do. If not, then Emets description is an exaggeration.

The reason why I’m personally inclined to the latter is that Emet does not seem to change his description of the Sundered even after their souls supposedly stabilized (if we believe they were unstable or malformed). His description of Varis and humanity is almost word for word how he describes the Sundered immediately post Sundering

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Emet: In the end, they were all just malformed creatures. Feeble, frail, and foolish. Thrashing blindly about in their fleeting, fragmented lives, repeating the same mistakes over and over again. Never could they replace his brethren.

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Which leads me to my interpretation, which is that the malformed beings he saw are the same in all aspects to the Sundered we know today, and the lack of words was only a lack of physical speech, and not indicative of a lack of or damaged soul. He probably could understand, but to a physical listener it’d sound like it’s written.

Why wouldn't someone take Emet at his word? He has a history of being brutally honest. Conversely, Venat has a history of being deceitful.

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Originally Posted by Rulakir

Why wouldn't someone take Emet at his word? He has a history of being brutally honest. Conversely, Venat has a history of being deceitful.

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Brutally honest is not the same thing as having a perfectly objective grasp of the situation.

And if you want to take him at his word in all situations, then we should conclude that his demonstration of sundering Ryne is an accurate depiction of what happened.

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Originally Posted by EaraGrace

This wholly depends on whether you take Emet at his literal word and that we have an agreed upon conception of what is “malformed.” If you do, then we have reason to believe they were twisted as you. If not, then Emets description is an exaggeration.

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I don't think that's Emet's description, I think it's the description of an omniscient third-party narrator. When you look at the narration in part 2, I would hardly call something like "At last, the Light of the future - The bright god emerges victorious" to be from Emet's perspective. Similarly the "Unnngh... Aaah..." is something we actually hear, quoted, and the twisted forms of their souls is something we actually see. I also don't understand why you think he'd be able to understand them with the Echo, or why the sundering of their souls would have no negative repercussions and be non-damaging. Again, Krile can't understand animals, and these people have effectively been reduced to the same state.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

we should conclude that his demonstration of sundering Ryne is an accurate depiction of what happened.

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He also says that in addition to the soul, a single sundering would half both strength and intelligence. The full sundering would have left people with - at most, depending on the exact method - 1/14th their original intellect and physical strength. So even if, in that example, both Rynes looked the same with his projection, in reality they would both be half what they were previously in every way.

1/14th the physical strength and I doubt any Ancient would even be capable of standing and moving around with those huge bodies of theirs. They probably all just died of exposure on the spot, if their organs were even capable of functioning and pumping blood and oxygen throughout their forms at that point.

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Originally Posted by Veloran

I don't think that's Emet's description, I think it's the description of an omniscient third-party narrator.

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I don’t think the narrator is completely separated from Emets view though. She even says in regards to the Sundering that “Such an outcome is unbearable.” The other uses of the words “malformed,” and “pitiful” are more than descriptors. If this story was written from Venats perspective you likely see words like “resilient” or “imperfect,” because quite simply she would interpret the situation differently. Which kind of calls into question whether the narrator is objective right?

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Originally Posted by Veloran

When you look at the narration in part 2, I would hardly call something like "At last, the Light of the future - The bright god emerges victorious" to be from Emet's perspective. Similarly the "Unnngh... Aaah..." is something we actually hear, quoted, and the twisted forms of their souls is something we actually see. I also don't understand why you think he'd be able to understand them with the Echo, or why the sundering of their souls would have no negative repercussions and be non-damaging. Again, Krile can't understand animals, and these people have effectively been reduced to the same state.

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I don’t think that Emet would disagree with that line, in fact I think he said something similar in Raktika but I’d have to find the quote. And once again those malformed souls we see are later human like with no indication that it’s a different scene. Everyone there is in the same pose, in the same places, with no mention that the souls themselves were repaired or becoming more formed. In one of the battles you see human-esque entities with big sundering symbols all over, clearly meant to imply their Sundered Humans, but it’s obvious that isn’t what they actually look like since… we’ll we know what the Sundered look like.

And while Krile can’t understand animals we can, so long as they’re intelligent (and even to a certain extent when they are not). Given those Sundered beings are us and we aren’t any less intelligent than the Ancients (imo) I think they could be understood by someone with the echo.

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Originally Posted by Rulakir

Why wouldn't someone take Emet at his word? He has a history of being brutally honest. Conversely, Venat has a history of being deceitful.

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The tragic thing about Emet-Selch is that while he reveals brutal truths to us, he lies to himself. He is an unreliable narrator not because he is deliberately trying to mislead us, he is one because his “truth” is from his own point of view, which itself is not consistent and comes from the viewpoint of someone who had gone too far to come back from and is trying to convince himself of his own righteousness.

Sure, he told us about the secret behind practically everything, but he also said that the sundered are “malformed beings”, despite legitimately falling in love (typically the opposite of thinking someone is a malformed being) and having a child who by his own shocked admission filled him with hope when he held him as a newborn.

He spent 12,000 years focused on a singular goal of trying to bring back his old world and talking about how great it was while dismissing the people of the new worlds despite simultaneously trying to find a spark of something in them that would make them worth inheriting the star. After a climactic battle in which he is finally defeated, cleansed of shadow, and put to rest, he isn’t spiteful and purposefully ruins his own original plans by destroying any possibility of the return of Amaurot, and enters the Underworld at peace while admitting that his enemy would have gotten further than he would have.

One line I really liked from the Tales of the Shadows in a conversation about a creation accidentally getting a soul filled with regret between Emet-Selch and Hythlodeus also shows his character:

"Consumed by the fear of death, it thrashes blindly about. It will know only pain and suffering and inflict the same upon others. A pitiful existence."
"Such moving empathy. It's as if you wore the feathers yourself."

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Originally Posted by EaraGrace

I don’t think that Emet would disagree with that line, in fact I think he said something similar in Raktika but I’d have to find the quote.

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In Rak'tika Emet describes Zodiark with terms like "His grace", "A savior mighty and magnificent", and Hydaelyn as just "Hydaelyn" or very derisively as "your Mother". Hardly descriptors like "dark god", "dark deity", or "brighter god" and "the Light of the future". In particular here the narrator, when speaking, describes Zodiark in almost ominous tones but Hydaelyn in almost reverent tones. None of this really matches with an Emet perspective.

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And once again those malformed souls we see are later human like with no indication that it’s a different scene.

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Between the two slides showing them going from twisted and malformed to more fully shaped, the narrator literally says "Decades, centuries, millennia pass. As he works tirelessly, the wretched creatures begin to learn. They speak in new tongues, worship new gods, and forge new histories." We're jumping thousands of years between that shift, I don't really see how it can be said that there is "no indication" that the scene is changing.

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In one of the battles you see human-esque entities with big sundering symbols all over, clearly meant to imply their Sundered Humans,

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What are you referring to?

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And while Krile can’t understand animals we can, so long as they’re intelligent

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There are instances where WoL can seem to "understand" animals, but I think the game usually makes it clear that this is simply due to a lot of experience and intuition, not the Echo.
https://i.imgur.com/SXktepm.png

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Given those Sundered beings are us and we aren’t any less intelligent than the Ancients (imo) I think they could be understood by someone with the echo.

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The sundered then and the sundered now are probably nowhere near equivalent. I mean Emet outright says that intelligence and physicality is halved with each sundering, I don't see how the full 13/14ths sundering could possibly leave them with anything similar in terms of intellect and physicality, as this very narrative seems to outline.

I feel like the people of the First call into question just how much being rejoined actually matters in terms of affecting any aspects other then soul density.

They don't really come across as "lesser" then the people of the Source in any meaningful capacity.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

I feel like the people of the First call into question just how much being rejoined actually matters in terms of affecting any aspects other then soul density.

They don't really come across as "lesser" then the people of the Source in any meaningful capacity.

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good point. i keep forgetting theyre still 1/14th.

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Originally Posted by Veloran

In Rak'tika Emet describes Zodiark with terms like "His grace", "A savior mighty and magnificent", and Hydaelyn as just "Hydaelyn" or very derisively as "your Mother". Hardly descriptors like "dark god", "dark deity", or "brighter god" and "the Light of the future". In particular here the narrator, when speaking, describes Zodiark in almost ominous tones but Hydaelyn in almost reverent tones. None of this really matches with an Emet perspective.

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I still think that would fit with Emet, in the optional dialogue he seems to speak of Zodiark similarly.

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Emet-Selch: And like one of your primals, He tempered us. It was only natural. There is no resisting such power. And so we Ascians came to exist solely to bring about the rule of darkness. His darkness. Of course, some would call us "evil" for it... and they would be fools. Though that is only to be expected, given their innate ability to conceive of the nature of our universe.

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My point more generally though is that the narrator should not be taken at her word, as she’s describing Emets view and tale. Even if she were to be out of synch with him in certain moments I don’t think I’d buy her statements as fact, even if they swung in the other direction. The fact she calls them “wretched creatures” I think seals the deal for me.

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Originally Posted by Veloran

Between the two slides showing them going from twisted and malformed to more fully shaped, the narrator literally says "Decades, centuries, millennia pass. As he works tirelessly, the wretched creatures begin to learn. They speak in new tongues, worship new gods, and forge new histories." We're jumping thousands of years between that shift, I don't really see how it can be said that there is "no indication" that the scene is changing.

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Because nothing is changing about the scene, the only difference is the souls. The poses and positions are the exact same. And once again Emet is very clear that he still views them as malformed “half men” even after millennia pass. If his feeling that they were abominations was purely because of the initial effects that were visible after the Sundering, then those wouldn’t be valid to use on us or Varis right?

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Originally Posted by Veloran

What are you referring to?

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Around 15:45 in this video

https://youtu.be/fGm29ROnFlk

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Originally Posted by Veloran

There are instances where WoL can seem to "understand" animals, but I think the game usually makes it clear that this is simply due to a lot of experience and intuition, not the Echo.
https://i.imgur.com/SXktepm.png

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I’m referring to the lost little troll sidequest, where we communicate with a small troll who only Grrrs. The echo allows us to understand him perfectly.

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Originally Posted by Veloran

The sundered then and the sundered now are probably nowhere near equivalent. I mean Emet outright says that intelligence and physicality is halved with each sundering, I don't see how the full 13/14ths sundering could possibly leave them with anything similar in terms of intellect and physicality, as this very narrative seems to outline.

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Ardbert and co. seemed just as smart as us, same with all the people we met on the First.

I have to say i find it a bit ironic that people talk about Emet lying or having a biased view meanwhile these same people are the ones who 100% trust venat/hydaelyn despite her lying and manipulating us far more and take her pity walk scene at face value without questioning it’s authenticity. Double standards i suppose…

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Originally Posted by Jandor

Maybe they just weren't talking? They had just been sundered after all, I think we can all agree that getting chopped up into 14 pieces probably leaves you with a few aches and pains, enough to spur on some groaning at least. :p

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Yeah, thinking about it, this is where I'm landing. Like, I wouldn't say I do a lot of incoherent screaming as a person, but 'incoherent, meaningless mumbling/screaming' is definitely something I do, especially when I'm in pain or stress. Even magical language-understanding wouldn't be able to get actual meaning out of it, because there's no intent of a message, it's just an outburst. And yeah, I don't know what being sundered would feel like, but I feel like I'd probably be in that state for a little while.

We know that's how Emet would hear that sort of thing, because we've got the same power and have heard similar.

EDIT: And yeah, even if 'power and physicality' is reduced with sundering, intelligence very clearly isn't. If intelligence wasn't being sundered, then we wouldn't have seen sundered people outsmart all three unsundered. Pretty easily in all three cases, too. And I wouldn't exactly call Thordan the greatest mind of his generation.

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Originally Posted by EaraGrace

I still think that would fit with Emet, in the optional dialogue he seems to speak of Zodiark similarly.

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I don't see that as being similar at all, in that dialog he's merely stating Zodiark's elemental alignment. A far cry from something like calling Hydaelyn "the Light of the future".

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My point more generally though is that the narrator should not be taken at her word, as she’s describing Emets view and tale. Even if she were to be out of synch with him in certain moments I don’t think I’d buy her statements as fact, even if they swung in the other direction. The fact she calls them “wretched creatures” I think seals the deal for me.

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Why? They are wretched. They've literally been devolved into shambling animals.

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Because nothing is changing about the scene, the only difference is the souls. The poses and positions are the exact same. And once again Emet is very clear that he still views them as malformed “half men” even after millennia pass. If his feeling that they were abominations was purely because of the initial effects that were visible after the Sundering, then those wouldn’t be valid to use on us or Varis right?

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"Same scene slightly changed" is a very commonplace cinematic technique. The point is juxtaposition of elements in a timelapse, which is particularly evocative when you have a central figure that remains the same. This is literally a slideshow, they're doing their best here. The point is that even as mankind began to improve, Emet retained his impression of them as misbegotten creatures.

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Around 15:45 in this video

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That is what Zodiark, Hydaelyn's actual target, ended up as. Could be the whole "torn apart" aesthetic is what happened to everyone's souls at first, but over time they healed and coalesced into more stable forms. This sort of thing would explain the similarity between shards as we have seen them now, in fact.

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I’m referring to the lost little troll sidequest, where we communicate with a small troll who only Grrrs. The echo allows us to understand him perfectly.

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You mean the troll that is as intelligent as any human, way more than other trolls, to the point that it can not only understand human speech but can also read? I'm pretty sure this is a case of the exception proving the rule.

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Ardbert and co. seemed just as smart as us, same with all the people we met on the First.

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We don't really know what proportion of aetherial density each shard ended up with, or how the souls of the people on each shard may have changed over time.

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Originally Posted by Veloran

He also says that in addition to the soul, a single sundering would half both strength and intelligence. The full sundering would have left people with - at most, depending on the exact method - 1/14th their original intellect and physical strength. So even if, in that example, both Rynes looked the same with his projection, in reality they would both be half what they were previously in every way.

1/14th the physical strength and I doubt any Ancient would even be capable of standing and moving around with those huge bodies of theirs. They probably all just died of exposure on the spot, if their organs were even capable of functioning and pumping blood and oxygen throughout their forms at that point.

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If you're going to get "sciency" about it, then you can't simultaneously have Ryne splitting into two visually identical entities (logically must be halved in density to remain the same size) and be concerned that the ancients would not be able to support their bodies with 1/14 of their strength. If strength is reduced and weight reduced to match, then – setting aside the properly sciency technicalities of how such things interact at different proportions – there is no issue. Their altered strength matches their altered bodies and all is even.

Or to look at it another way, if they all collapsed under their own weight and died immediately, the modern races cannot be descended from them.

Of course, you literally cannot halve "everything" about a person, numbers-wise. Halving the height of something while keeping the same proportions brings it down to an eighth of its volume. So there's a degree of ambiguity in exactly what would be reduced and by how much.

I have wondered in the past, but haven't fully investigated, if the relative size of human and ancient might work out to them being 14 times the volume – that would add up if the ancients are a little under 2.5 x the height of a human, which from memory sounds about right.

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Originally Posted by Veloran

In Rak'tika Emet describes Zodiark with terms like "His grace", "A savior mighty and magnificent", and Hydaelyn as just "Hydaelyn" or very derisively as "your Mother". Hardly descriptors like "dark god", "dark deity", or "brighter god" and "the Light of the future".

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Actually, there's at least one example of Emet using "dark" in the same positive connotation that we would normally use light/bright – specifically from the Dying Gasp: "dream now of a dark tomorrow" to mean a hopeful one for the ancients.

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Originally Posted by KizuyaKatogami

I have to say i find it a bit ironic that people talk about Emet lying or having a biased view meanwhile these same people are the ones who 100% trust venat/hydaelyn despite her lying and manipulating us far more and take her pity walk scene at face value without questioning it’s authenticity. Double standards i suppose…

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I had a lot of trust for Hydaelyn and how Hydaelyn was presented to us, because I thought to invert it at such a late stage would be poor storytelling.

Even at late post-Shadowbringers, she seemed to be a primal designed to act as a mother-goddess, and it was conceivable that the narrative was designed to maintain her as ultimately "good" and the Sundering some kind of accident, A.I. logic failure or urgently needed as the lesser of two evils.

Quite frankly, the writers failed to take any of these paths, diminished Hydaelyn from being something "bigger than us" to just a single person putting on an act, and gave her a motive that... well, aligns with what the game presents as thematically good, but rings hollow to me.

I'm not questioning this narrative of Emet's because I support Venat; I'm questioning it because it contradicts what Emet himself told us in the game.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

If you're going to get "sciency" about it, then you can't simultaneously have Ryne splitting into two visually identical entities (logically must be halved in density to remain the same size) and be concerned that the ancients would not be able to support their bodies with 1/14 of their strength. If strength is reduced and weight reduced to match, then – setting aside the properly sciency technicalities of how such things interact at different proportions – there is no issue. Their altered strength matches their altered bodies and all is even.

Or to look at it another way, if they all collapsed under their own weight and died immediately, the modern races cannot be descended from them.

Of course, you literally cannot halve "everything" about a person, numbers-wise. Halving the height of something while keeping the same proportions brings it down to an eighth of its volume. So there's a degree of ambiguity in exactly what would be reduced and by how much.

I have wondered in the past, but haven't fully investigated, if the relative size of human and ancient might work out to them being 14 times the volume – that would add up if the ancients are a little under 2.5 x the height of a human, which from memory sounds about right.

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Who knows the exact ratio of how aetherial density translates to physical density. Frankly I think it's obvious that the writers didn't really think this one through, and to coherently rationalize everything would either require a very convoluted explanation or some very diligent handwaving. But the fact is, we are told outright that their intelligence and physicality was reduced in proportion to how sundered people were, and what we see from this narrative supports this notion. This at least is one detail they're relatively consistent on, probably because Ishikawa herself wrote it.

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Originally Posted by Veloran

I don't see that as being similar at all, in that dialog he's merely stating Zodiark's elemental alignment. A far cry from something like calling Hydaelyn "the Light of the future".

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Ok so if we’re going with her being objective then you’d agree that Hydaelyn is the light of the future then?

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Originally Posted by Veloran

Why? They are wretched. They've literally been devolved into shambling animals.

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They’re human and even when they were incapable of speech they remained so. Through the calamity of wind, lightning, fire, earth, ice, water and darkness they remained so. Being “unable to from words” due to losing language, culture and knowledge doesn’t mean they lack the intelligence to do so and it certainly doesn’t make them “shambling animals.”

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Originally Posted by Veloran

"Same scene slightly changed" is a very commonplace cinematic technique. The point is juxtaposition of elements in a timelapse, which is particularly evocative when you have a central figure that remains the same. This is literally a slideshow, they're doing their best here. The point is that even as mankind began to improve, Emet retained his impression of them as misbegotten creatures.

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Which should say everything about why taking him at face value is foolhardy. The man himself wouldn’t defend those statements at this stage, however deeply he still thinks his beliefs “inviolable.”

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Originally Posted by Veloran

That is what Zodiark, Hydaelyn's actual target, ended up as. Could be the whole "torn apart" aesthetic is what happened to everyone's souls at first, but over time they healed and coalesced into more stable forms. This sort of thing would explain the similarity between shards as we have seen them now, in fact.

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My point is this is a tale from Emets pov, and the fact that there are discrepancies should provoke questions. I would’ve thought this would be something we can all agree on, given how discrepancies are used to dismiss the cutscene at the end of Elpis.

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Originally Posted by Veloran

You mean the troll that is as intelligent as any human, way more than other trolls, to the point that it can not only understand human speech but can also read? I'm pretty sure this is a case of the exception proving the rule.

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Yes I do mean that troll. That troll proves as long as a being is capable of intelligent thought it can be understood with the echo, even if what physically comes out is gibberish. Much like the Sundered described in the event. I have no reason to think that if Emet sat down with the Sundered and tried to teach them their letters he wouldn’t be just as a successful as he would be teaching the troll.

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Originally Posted by Veloran

We don't really know what proportion of aetherial density each shard ended up with, or how the souls of the people on each shard may have changed over time.

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There’s nothing to suggest the shards had an imbalance of aetheric density. The only one with more would be the Source post a Rejoining.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

Another in-game counterpoint to this "literal malformed creatures" thing is Emet's own demonstration of the Sundering with Ryne. He produces a perfect copy of her, not a devolved blob – which surely would have been the quickest way to impart the sheer horror of what he had been through, if it is indeed what he had been through.

I'm inclined to take it as unreliable narrator plus writing to convey in broad strokes for a non-FF audience plus possibly Ishikawa not checking the finer points of what the Echo can do, because that entire thing has been out the window for some time.

The rules of what is the Echo and what is the blessing of Light got completely flipped sometime between being laid out in 2.X/3.0 and revisited in 5.X/6.0, and the lorebook descriptions are from that earlier era so I really don't know how much of it we can trust any more. We direly need a third lorebook to hammer all this out.




That's an interesting way of looking at it too. If Emet, consciously or subconsciously, recoils from these sundered beings and refuses to see them as something he still can relate to, he can't connect to them and so reinforces his impression that they are in a worse state than they actually are.

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I think a lot of people don't want to admit that Emet... Well, he's sort of a racial supremacist. Shadowbringers is pretty obvious about it, with how much disdain he has for the Sundered, despite recognizing they are sapient beings. And even the subtext states this; he was directly responsible for Garlemald, who think Eorzea is full of "savages" and genuinely thinks genocide of the various tribal is entirely acceptable.

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Originally Posted by KizuyaKatogami

I have to say i find it a bit ironic that people talk about Emet lying or having a biased view meanwhile these same people are the ones who 100% trust venat/hydaelyn despite her lying and manipulating us far more and take her pity walk scene at face value without questioning it’s authenticity. Double standards i suppose…

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In the absolute worst possible interruption of what Venat did, she planetary genocide. Once. But that "genocide" birthed fourteen new worlds, each filled with sapient lifeforms. As in beings that were able to form cultures, create art, from languages.., Even if we take Emet at is word that he nudged them in that direction and believe that it wouldn't have developed without his help. And she only did it because if she didn't, the world would have literally be extinguished of all life.

Now let's consider Emet's actions. He also committed planetary genocide. Eight times. Seven of those lead to an apocalyptic event on the Source which ended many more lives. He also created two brutally oppressive empires and while we don't know everything about the Allagans, Garlemald is built on a doctrine of racial supremacy. And he had nothing but contempt for the Sundered, finding them inferior beings, even another Unsundered was outplayed an inferior being.

You can make the argument that Venat is bad. But Emet is much, much worse on every measurable level.

Yeah, I don't think we should be taking Emet "actually, I don't even consider any of you to be people" Selch as an unbiased observer of post-sundering humanity.

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Originally Posted by DreadCrow

In the absolute worst possible interruption of what Venat did, she planetary genocide. Once.

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No offense to you personally - I get the point you were trying to make - but this quote might be peak FFXIV Lore Forums.

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Originally Posted by Lurina

No offense, but this quote might be peak FFXIV Lore Forums.

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^This. That Q&A (and I guess now this crossover scene) really did a number on some. :D

Ya know what? I think "go touch grass" would be a good piece of advice for some of the Venat lovers in this thread. It's a gods damned video game

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Now let's consider Emet's actions. He also committed planetary genocide. Eight times. Seven of those lead to an apocalyptic event on the Source which ended many more lives. He also created two brutally oppressive empires and while we don't know everything about the Allagans, Garlemald is built on a doctrine of racial supremacy. And he had nothing but contempt for the Sundered, finding them inferior beings, even another Unsundered was outplayed an inferior being

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And ya know what? I don't blame him for his prejudice and contempt. There is a massive difference between real life bigotry [Which I stand against with every fiber of my being] and something in a video game where the man was legitimately correct when the prejudice began for him. He can see souls and could see these people were lesser than his own, and at the end of the day just wanted his friends back, something which even Alisae says she'd like as not do the same.

There is also the fact that they existed at the expense of his friends and loved ones. You can't tell me you wouldn't feel the same way in his shoes.

"My mass murderer didn't kill as many people as your mass murderer!"

We've truly reached ascended levels of conversation.

Can we please not make this "Who Was Worse" episode 73, accept both sides did some awful things and focus on the question of whether he is accurately describing the bad thing that happened?

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Originally Posted by redheadturk

There is also the fact that they existed at the expense of his friends and loved ones. You can't tell me you wouldn't feel the same way in his shoes.

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Correct, throwing around terms like "racial supremacist", whilst ignoring the fact that the sundered are the result of slicing and dicing his people for a utilitarian purpose (the effects of which are apparently denied as and when suits a narrative), which he was left completely in the dark about, and who now exist at the expense of his people, is more than a little strange, in my eyes.

Alright, I'll bite. As someone who's an avid Nier fan and was playing Reincarnation well before this event was unveiled, the narrator of Mama does have a tendency to describe things as the character in focus sees them. As I see it, she's relaying information as if she's telling a story to the protagonist. However, I would agree with the idea that certainly not all of what is said in the text is reflective of how Emet would describe it. I'm afraid that landing on a square answer of what is objective and what is not is pretty much impossible, as the narrator is a very clear 3rd party that is equal parts describing surroundings as she is reading into the character's feelings.

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Originally Posted by redheadturk

And ya know what? I don't blame him for his prejudice and contempt. There is a massive difference between real life bigotry [Which I stand against with every fiber of my being] and something in a video game where the man was legitimately correct when the prejudice began for him. He can see souls and could see these people were lesser than his own, and at the end of the day just wanted his friends back, something which even Alisae says she'd like as not do the same.

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Emet-Selch is absolutely not "legitmately correct" about sundered people being "lesser" in some way. He is judging them on a completely arbitrary standard 'aetheric density' and dismissing them because they do not have sufficently dense souls, despite clearly being actual people. The only difference between this and real life bigotry is that aetheric density of souls is a made up fantasy concept.

And sure, he wants his friends back. Maybe I would do the same in his position, but I'm not going to be suprised when some people object to all the death I'm causing for the sake of my friends, and kill me for being the genocidal megalomaniac that I am.

Heck, even Emet-Selch accepts his L and takes it in stride, it's one of the reasons I actually quite like him. (And it's actually funny I get lumped in with "Venat lovers who hate Emet-Selch" so much. If you forced me to do a character ranking, I'd put Emet-Selch above her.)

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Originally Posted by SpectrePhantasia

Alright, I'll bite. As someone who's an avid Nier fan and was playing Reincarnation well before this event was unveiled, the narrator of Mama does have a tendency to describe things as the character in focus sees them. As I see it, she's relaying information as if she's telling a story to the protagonist. However, I would agree with the idea that certainly not all of what is said in the text is reflective of how Emet would describe it. I'm afraid that landing on a square answer of what is objective and what is not is pretty much impossible, as the narrator is a very clear 3rd party that is equal parts describing surroundings as she is reading into the character's feelings.

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All the more reason why this stuff should've been shown in XIV, and not using stylised, very perspective-driven scenes like the post-Elpis one.

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Originally Posted by Lauront

All the more reason why this stuff should've been shown in XIV, and not using stylised, very perspective-driven scenes like the post-Elpis one.

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So it's a good thing we got that, then. This is the exact same details we got from and through Emet's perspective, it's just that we got it across about four or five different scenes in two expansions, plus a short story or two. The Nier collab is just getting compressed into a few flowery passages with no interruptions.

If you REALLY want to wring useful FFXIV lore we didn't have before out of this collab, then the most you'll actually get is the story of A-towa-cant in Thyrus' weapon story, which actually does have a few new pieces, as well as gathering details that actually aren't especially forthcoming in XIV itself.

You could also see that depiction of the End of Days and the Sundering and notice that it's basically the same as Venat's own flashback, which is useful in confirming that the two accounts do corroborate and validate each other as sources. Which for the most part is probably not needed, but it's a useful point for at least one person I can think of.