Zodiark's Codex entry what do we think about it?

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

That's a two-degrees removed tale, clearly taking heavy liberties, where at least one of the two sources was heavily biased. And from what I've heard from Nier Reincarnation players, Mama isn't the most reliable narrator either.

I'd struggle to enter it in as evidence for much of anything.

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That's a little pedantic. Obviously it's biased, but it still presents one person's perspective of events faithfully, otherwise there'd be no point in it as a dramatic device. So no matter what, there's still something to be gleaned from the fundamentals.

You might as well use that argument to say there's no point in paying attention to Encyclopedia Eorzea's reckoning of the early eras either, since it's all presented as pseudo-in-universe inference.

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Originally Posted by Lurina

You might as well use that argument to say there's no point in paying attention to Encyclopedia Eorzea's reckoning of the early eras either, since it's all presented as pseudo-in-universe inference.

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Bad example, I don't pay much attention to those, because there's basically nothing substantial about them except in the cases of the Third and Fifth, where we have substantial physical evidence anyway. Probably mostly true, but also probably about as relevant to the present day as the Songhai's history is to my life.

If we ever went back to the Second Astral Era it would turn out more complex and nuanced than what the Encyclopedia tells us, which was basically 'holy wars happened and things burned'. At that point I'll care, but at that point I'll also have more to care about.

With regards to the OP, it looks like the codex entry was typed in a rush by a localizer inserting as much of their own bias as possible. In spite of the entry saying, "These weren't viewed as good and evil back in Ancient times." the entry goes on to only use negative connotation words with regards to Zodiark, and then needlessly positive/modern within setting connotation for Hydaelyn.

All in all, I'm not big on these new codex entries in the first place. They seem to be trying to offer up too much revolving around story elements rather than the characters they are about. We learn basically nothing about Zodiark from this entry, however you wanna take it. They coulda gone into specifics on his creation, how taxing the spell/ritual was for the people performing it. How they probably struggled to maintain their composure for the creation magicks, knowing they were using the lives of people they loved to do it. They coulda wedged in some sort of new details about him.

But no. Like half of the Zodiark entry is instead about Hydaelyn and Fandaniel. /shrug Just another missing lifeboat on the failboat that is Endwalker.

I'm not really sure why there's so much agitation over the revelation that the Convocation ordered the people of Amaurot to sacrifice themselves to their God. Conscription is just the logical extension of the decision to summon Zodiark in the first place. It seems a bit silly to fail the summoning ritual simply because you met part of, but not all of the sacrificial quota.

What is more interesting is the question around why the Amaurotines would ever come to worship Zodiark as a God in the first place. Amaurot was, for all purposes, a very scientifically-minded people, if you can agree to see magic in this universe as a form of technology. Concepts were just viewed as tools to be utilized and discarded in order to meet the dictates of society. It's strange that a Concept would become the subject of divine worship, emphasized by the capitalization on 'He'. It's also interesting that the decision around additional sacrifices didn't seem to be part of the original plan - they were perpetuated by those who had come to worship Him. You can't help but wonder how lucid the decision-making was around these later decisions.

We've seen recently seen a lot of discussion about the corrupting influence of auracite, a tool that the Amaurotines weaponized but themselves didn't fully understand. We also know that there's overlap between auracite and eikonic corruption. Who knows, perhaps if the Amaurotines had required a Light-aspected summon to construct their celestial barrier, they might have ended up worshipping the High Seraph instead of the Keeper of Precepts.

Fanaticism is pretty universal, especially when it comes to having an omnipotent figure such as Zodiark. I have my own perspective where Zodiark is anthropomorphization of a authoritarian state (all powerful power figure controlled by a tight, elite cabinet? wowza), which easily fits into the society of the Ancients. Also if you are going to kill exactly half of the population in a mandatory sacrifice, I would feel random draft is the most uncomplicated egalitarian way to do it, which is itself just forced action through the proxy of random chance (which can be rationalized as fair thing because random choice cannot have bias right?).

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Originally Posted by Vyrerus

With regards to the OP, it looks like the codex entry was typed in a rush by a localizer inserting as much of their own bias as possible. In spite of the entry saying, "These weren't viewed as good and evil back in Ancient times." the entry goes on to only use negative connotation words with regards to Zodiark, and then needlessly positive/modern within setting connotation for Hydaelyn.

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Much of the codex entries so far have been written VERY similarly to Encyclopedia Eorzea entries (I don't think they're identical in any cases, but I haven't been so bored as to check; I know the character bios in the EE1 are much shorter in comparison). So I wouldn't be surprised if many of these entries are from Encyclopedia Eorzea 3, or at least written from the same perspective of 'in-universe academics writing on the subject'.

And from that perspective, yeah, Zodiark's gonna be written about like that. Zodiark hasn't exactly been 'a neutral entity venerated by a caring group of ancients' for very long, or very recently. For most of its twelve thousand year run, Zodiark was sitting there inanimate, being venerated by planet-smashing shadow wizards. From an in-universe historical perspective, he's far more pertinent as a recently-dead elder primal.

Genuinely, yes, I think the proper balance of subjects in this entry is what it is: About half on the summoning and context around Zodiark, about a quarter about its main long-term opposition, about a quarter about the guy that blew it up and the aftermath'. As a largely passive and inert figure, they write Zodiark in almost the same way you'd write about a statue, and I think that's about right. It wasn't exactly doing anything for a while there.

EDIT: Also, remember that on top of that in-universe perspective, it's also largely written about the events that were relevant to us--and again, Zodiark's not much of that. Have you read the First's entry? Because Literally none of it is about the locations and people that you'd find there, it's all about the Flood and the aftermath, because that's the important part. Information more like what you'd want would be found in either a theoretical Amaurot entry (which doesn't exist), or possibly the Ascian entry (which actually kinda breaks from my assumptions, because most of that entry is more about 'fallen Ancient convocation' than 'murderous ghost wizards').

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Originally Posted by Lurina

Yeah we do. There was that NieR crossover short story.

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Which tells us nothing. Here's the exerts from it, written out from the imgur screenshots.

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Light triumphs with a sundering blow.
The powerful mage and his allies manage to withstand its impact. Barely.
When he opens his eyes...As the star lies shattered, so too do the souls upon it.

"Unnngh...Aaah..."
Pitiful moaning of malformed creatures...
They can no longer shape words. Language, culture, knowledge--forgotten.

Such an outcome is unbearable.
The man throws himself into restoring his star, his people...his paradise.

Decades...Centuries...Millenia pass.
As he works tirelessly, the wretched creatures begin to learn.
They speak in new tongues.
They worship new gods.
They forge new histories.

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Nothing about that tells us anything about the time between the Sundering and the first Calamity. Supposedly the Twelve were around during that time, and we have no clue what they were doing either. 6.5 might tell us with the final 24-man's story, but until then, we know absolutely nothing.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

I'm not really sure why there's so much agitation...

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Edit: Actually, forget it. I genuinely don't have the energy for this anymore, lol.

If we're at the point of ignoring overt and fundamental plot points, refusing to acknowledge lore written by the main scenario writer herself and now moving into painting the Amaurotines as fanatical fascists who conscripted innocent bystanders unto their deaths, go ahead. Have fun.

I still do not understand why this "official" extra text from Emet's perspective goes against how he describes the Sundering within the game, where he demonstrates it as perfectly splitting a person into two copies with no mention of the horror of seeing them reduced to literal malformed creatures.

When there's a mismatch between actual canon and a simplified summary written for the audience of another game (and in this case until and unless we get a better explanation from the creators), I'm going to assume the discrepancy is down to the external version taking creative liberties for the sake of a self-contained capsule of story.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

I still do not understand why this "official" extra text from Emet's perspective goes against how he describes the Sundering within the game, where he demonstrates it as perfectly splitting a person into two copies with no mention of the horror of seeing them reduced to literal malformed creatures.

When there's a mismatch between actual canon and a simplified summary written for the audience of another game (and in this case until and unless we get a better explanation from the creators), I'm going to assume the discrepancy is down to the external version taking creative liberties for the sake of a self-contained capsule of story.

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I think people acted like it was more important partially because he describes them as 'malformed creatures' in the memory crystal we pick up in Etched in the Stars, and people looked at the Nier Reincarnation art and go 'oh that's what he was talking about'.

Which would make sense, if he weren't using exactly that same language to describe Garleans (and the sundered people as a whole) while living as Solus in one of his short stories. Which tells me that... no, he wasn't describing it literally, and also his internal rhetoric and monologue hasn't changed in twelve thousand years.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

I still do not understand why this "official" extra text from Emet's perspective goes against how he describes the Sundering within the game, where he demonstrates it as perfectly splitting a person into two copies with no mention of the horror of seeing them reduced to literal malformed creatures.

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This is what Emet says about the Sundered in that scene.

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Originally Posted by Emet-Selch

Two individuals, identical in appearance, yet reduced in all respects. Strength, intelligence, the soul itself--all is halved.

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Originally Posted by Emet-Selch

The inhabitants of these fourteen fragments were feeble, frail, and foolish. Oblivious to their imperfection, ignorant of their past.

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It's a narrative necessity that the way he explains the concept to Ryne is a simplification, as the player races are, via word of god, variants of the Ancients that mutated in response to the Sundering. This is what Emet means when he calls them "malformed creatures". They were physically different, weaker, and had lost "their" (so to speak) identities and almost all memory of the Ancient world.

He's kind of an asshole about it, but there's nothing contradictory about the core details.

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

Which tells us nothing. Here's the exerts from it, written out from the imgur screenshots.

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This originally came up because of the question of the potential "die-off" made by Venat blasting all forms of life back to the Stone Age. The insight that the forms of humanity that emerged from the Sundering couldn't even form words is relevant to that conversation, I would think.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

I still do not understand why this "official" extra text from Emet's perspective goes against how he describes the Sundering within the game, where he demonstrates it as perfectly splitting a person into two copies with no mention of the horror of seeing them reduced to literal malformed creatures.

When there's a mismatch between actual canon and a simplified summary written for the audience of another game (and in this case until and unless we get a better explanation from the creators), I'm going to assume the discrepancy is down to the external version taking creative liberties for the sake of a self-contained capsule of story.

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As I've said to you before, we also had hard confirmation in the text that the Sundering did, in fact, physically change its subjects in a way not reflected by Emet's PowerPoint demonstration, simply because of the sheer size difference between the Sundered and the original Ancients. So his explanation could never have been fully accurate. We also now have Oda's answers from the recent Korean Q&A confirming that the Sundering physically warped its targets to the point that they should be considered a different species, and confirmation from him prior that the Sundered Ancients had to "evolve" into the player races we know now, so there was a large degree of physical malleability in the early stages, considering Roegadyn versus Lalafell.

So we have Ishikawa's word, Oda's word, and what we literally see in-game in one corner, and Emet-Selch providing a simplified introductory explanation on the other.

I'm not sure why the suggestion of "Emet-Selch's biased viewpoint" must necessarily reflect "oh, he must be lying in the third-person sequence written by Ishikawa about his experiences and perspective for no reason" instead of "he simplifies and partially sanitizes the explanation of what was a horrifying and traumatic experience for him when speaking to a crowd that includes a child."

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Originally Posted by Lunaxia

Edit: Actually, forget it. I genuinely don't have the energy for this anymore, lol.

If we're at the point of ignoring overt and fundamental plot points, refusing to acknowledge lore written by the main scenario writer herself and now moving into painting the Amaurotines as fanatical fascists who conscripted innocent bystanders unto their deaths, go ahead. Have fun.

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This has been going on since 5.0 when Amaurot was revealed, sadly. It can get a bit exhausting and disheartening, yeah - play down their humanity, play down the atrocity inflicted on them. Ah well.

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

Which tells us nothing. Here's the exerts from it, written out from the imgur screenshots.

Nothing about that tells us anything about the time between the Sundering and the first Calamity. Supposedly the Twelve were around during that time, and we have no clue what they were doing either. 6.5 might tell us with the final 24-man's story, but until then, we know absolutely nothing.

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Sorry, I missed this on the last page.

My point in bringing up the Nier short story is that it firmly establishes that mankind post-Sundering lost their cultural knowledge, though that's already inferrable from the text of Shadowbringers stating twice that they lost their memories and the fact that were reduced to making cave paintings. Actually, it was probably unnecessary to bring up the Nier stuff at all. All the rest of it, including this discussion on the meaning of "malformed creatures" and the state of their physical bodies, isn't even really relevant.

No cultural knowledge + no magic = hunter-gatherers.

Bringing up the 12 as stewards of the planet is a fair point, but even then they were only active on the Source, so for 13/14 people "created" post-Sundering they're not really relevant. That's not to say the game won't add more information and make the post-Sundering period come across differently, but with the information we have about the 0th Era we have at the moment, that's how it seems to me.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

I'm not really sure why there's so much agitation over the revelation that the Convocation ordered the people of Amaurot to sacrifice themselves to their God. Conscription is just the logical extension of the decision to summon Zodiark in the first place. It seems a bit silly to fail the summoning ritual simply because you met part of, but not all of the sacrificial quota.

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ShB moral message: the sundered may not be as selfless as the Ancients are. Half of the population won't voluntarily sacrifice themselves to save the Star. But doesn't mean that they are a lesser for it, nor that it's okay to kill them (rejoining) because of it.

Meanwhile, some people: "noo the convocation definitely ordered them to sacrifice themselves! Probably rounded those people up themselves to be taken behind the shed!"

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It's also interesting that the decision around additional sacrifices didn't seem to be part of the original plan -

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Yes, it is interesting to see the effect of emotional trauma that happens after seeing: 1) Mosters everywhere eating people, 2) your world nearly died, 3) 75% of the remaining population (including your loved ones) sacrifice themselves to save the planet

Bonus point: the realization that those souls are not in forever purgatory and couldn't even return to lifestream. A culture they held in high regard.

I think the correct term for what the writers are describing in that translated letter (as well as the March 2022 live letter) is evolutionary divergence. Contrary to what is often suggested in popular culture, a mutation refers to a singular statistical event that causes that divergence as it is accumulated over time (these events are happening in us every second due to replication errors and strand breaks, but most get caught). It's not quite the same as dramatically morphing yourself a pair of helmet destroying rabbit ears (although this is still possible with the power of Fantasia.)

Genes will naturally show gradual changes over time in response to selection pressures from the environment. Amaurotines had significantly longer lifespans, so you would expect their generation time would be slower on average than current populations. In addition, as people dispersed and migrated to remote areas following the Sundering, this rate of divergence would have become more rapid, leading to the modern peoples that we see in Etheirys now.

Language is acquired, and the meaning of those sounds is established through social convention and our collective memory. Like our genes, our languages evolve over time as well. Even if you look at English in isolation, you'll see how dramatically the language has changed on its own the span of a thousand years. In the wake of the Sundering, you would expect a dramatic linguistic divergence as people dispersed and formed new cultures. In short, Babel.

As for the description provided in the Nier retelling, Emet uses the exact same words to describe our own modern peoples of Etheirys, in the Crystarium scene:

'The inhabitants of these fourteen fragments were feeble, frail, and foolish. Oblivious to their imperfection, ignorant of their past. Malformed creatures thrashing blindly about. Pitiful. Disturbing. Depressing.'

'Case in point - I do not consider you to be truly alive. Ergo, I will not be guilty of murder if I kill you.'

To Emet and his brethren, the people of our civilizations were less than human. This is not at all unique to Amaurotine thinking. There are plenty of 'enlightened' human civilizations in history that have seen their neighbors as savages who lacked the sophistication to speak the 'correct' language. This is the rhetoric that gets used in jingoism and war. It's just that the Convocation has the capability to escalate this to an entirely different level, having the ability to incite widespread warfare and destroy entire worlds.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

'The inhabitants of these fourteen fragments were feeble, frail, and foolish. Oblivious to their imperfection, ignorant of their past. Malformed creatures thrashing blindly about. Pitiful. Disturbing. Depressing.'

'Case in point - I do not consider you to be truly alive. Ergo, I will not be guilty of murder if I kill you.'

To Emet and his brethren, the people of our civilizations were less than human. This is not at all unique to Amaurotine thinking. There are plenty of 'enlightened' human civilizations in history that have seen their neighbors as savages who lacked the sophistication to speak the 'correct' language. This is the rhetoric that gets used in jingoism and war. It's just that the Convocation has the capability to escalate this to an entirely different level, having the ability to incite widespread warfare and destroy entire worlds.

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It's rhetoric that you can see literally today if you know where to look, and/or are the sort of person that these people consider 'less than' enough to attack.

(This is the main reason I do not consider Emet particularly sympathetic, but that's beside the point.)

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Originally Posted by Lyth

I think the correct term for what the writers are describing in that translated letter (as well as the March 2022 live letter) is evolutionary divergence. Contrary to what is often suggested in popular culture, a mutation refers to a singular statistical event that causes that divergence as it is accumulated over time (these events are happening in us every second due to replication errors and strand breaks, but most get caught). It's not quite the same as dramatically morphing yourself a pair of helmet destroying rabbit ears (although this is still possible with the power of Fantasia.)

Genes will naturally show gradual changes over time in response to selection pressures from the environment. Amaurotines had significantly longer lifespans, so you would expect their generation time would be slower on average than current populations. In addition, as people dispersed and migrated to remote areas following the Sundering, this rate of divergence would have become more rapid, leading to the modern peoples that we see in Etheirys now.

Language is acquired, and the meaning of those sounds is established through social convention and our collective memory. Like our genes, our languages evolve over time as well. Even if you look at English in isolation, you'll see how dramatically the language has changed on its own the span of a thousand years. In the wake of the Sundering, you would expect a dramatic linguistic divergence as people dispersed and formed new cultures. In short, Babel.

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The idea that the divergence of the Sundered races happened over time rather than as an immediate response to the event makes no sense because the player races are the same across all Shards, when if that were the case they should be radically different in accord with their divergent early history. The only alternative explanation is Doylist - that the writers didn't think it through when re-writing the setting's foundations.

As for language, I don't know how many times the game can say "they all lost their memory" before people will actually believe it. It's even in the Zodiark codex this thread is about.

Half of the Elpis episode and Panda raid was to talk about how the many years of struggle radicalized lot of the Ascians, so well yeah.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

It's rhetoric that you can see literally today if you know where to look, and/or are the sort of person that these people consider 'less than' enough to attack.

(This is the main reason I do not consider Emet particularly sympathetic, but that's beside the point.)

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Cleretic, this isn't even about Emet! No one in this conversation is denying he's a huge fantasy racist(ableist...?)!

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Originally Posted by Lyth

As for the description provided in the Nier retelling, Emet uses the exact same words to describe our own modern peoples of Etheirys, in the Crystarium scene:

'The inhabitants of these fourteen fragments were feeble, frail, and foolish. Oblivious to their imperfection, ignorant of their past. Malformed creatures thrashing blindly about. Pitiful. Disturbing. Depressing.'

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This quote is from when Emet is explaining what it was like to witness the Sundering and its immediate effects, hence the past tense. So it actually lines up very neatly with the Nier portrayal.

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Originally Posted by Context

Only three were fortunate enough to escape the sundering─me being one of them.

When I beheld the shattered remnants of our home, I knew deepest despair.

The inhabitants of these fourteen fragments were feeble, frail, and foolish. Oblivious to their imperfection, ignorant of their past.

Malformed creatures thrashing blindly about. Pitiful. Disturbing. Depressing.

So we took it upon ourselves to rejoin the worlds.

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Why is there such a determination to prove the Nier portrayal as wrong and invalid, anyway? It's kinda weird seeing people rush to discredit it. What happens that's so terrible if we accept it as basically accurate? Even if it's accurate, it doesn't do anything to further justify Emet and the Ascians' actions. That has no bearing.

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Originally Posted by Lurina

The idea that the divergence of the Sundered races happened over time rather than as an immediate response to the event makes no sense because the player races are the same across all Shards, when if that were the case they should be radically different in accord with their divergent early history.

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Actually, that just sounds like convergent evolution to me. The shards and the Source were all (at least at first) the same places geographically, with the same environmental and climate challenges, so I don't find it surprising at all that they evolved similar life forms that basically have parallel niches. The thing that came up in the live letters of 'the sundered people subconsciously yearned for certain features' adds a bit of a (semi-)intelligent design bent to it, but I still see it the same; if all fourteen versions of the planet had the same circumstances that meant that, say, cat-people were a viable evolutionary niche, it stands to reason that all fourteen of those planets would produce cat-people. Especially if, as suggested in the Live Letter, they were being semi-consciously shaped by minds that knew that 'cat people' were a thing that fits the purposes they need.

It's carcinization, only with elves.

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Originally Posted by Brinne

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Yes. That's in the same breath that he tells us that he does not believe that we are truly alive. To Emet, the sundered were less than human. We naturally beg to differ.

Yes, which, again, has no correlation to whether or not the Nier portrayal is consistent or lines up. How Emet continues to see the Sundering, even after its targets have evolved, and how one evaluates that in relation to his personal character is irrelevant to that question, and a completely different discussion.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

The thing that came up in the live letters of 'the sundered people subconsciously yearned for certain features'

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If we're talking about this anyway, then I'm going to digress for a moment to say that, like the Black Mage materia eyes you like to cite, this is a basically fanon invention that's become accepted because people find the idea of the Ancients subconsciously yearning to become elves and catgirls relatable. And while that is relatable, let me remind you what the liveletter response actually was:

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Originally Posted by Post-EW Live Letter

Question: If you look at the Source and it’s reflection today, they are inhabited by various races such as Miqo’te, Au Ra, Lalafell and so on. However, all the Ancients seem to be human-like races so is there a lore regarding how mankind came to have such a varied amount of races?

Answer: When the world was Sundered all living beings became incomplete. But that said incompleteness allowed them to develop strengths and weaknesses and that overtime compounded into racial traits. That sort of thing like strengths and weaknesses over time, with elements of little bit more or little bit less increases or be stronger in certain tribes and in turn developed into distinctive features.

I don’t know about the official lore for this but people are asking things like “Ok why are Miqo’te’s ears are so big?” and I was like “I don’t know maybe they couldn’t hear that well and tried super hard to hear and maybe that…was what led them to develop those big ears.

So why are the Lalafell so tiny…like I don’t know, maybe they are under a lot of pressure, or maybe they were really…intense?

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It had nothing to do with what they wanted.

Anyway, the key point of ambiguity here is in the phrase "over time" - whether that means over generations (with the Sundered 'evolving' into their present states) or over the lifetime of a single individual, which is what I meant when I said "immediate" a minute ago, since we're talking about a species timescale here. If it wasn't immediate but rather something that happened over thousands of years (as Lyth seemed to be suggesting), one would think that the landscape and its circumstances would also change in a way that wouldn't be so tidy a convergence. It is more ambiguous than I remembered, but that just makes me more confused about how it was supposed to have happened.

But again, none of this is even really related to why I brought up the Nier story in the first place. I was trying to make a comment about cultural knowledge and food scarcity, and now it's derailed the entire thread.

In all honesty, any answer to why big people turned into catgirls and elves is probably going to sound asinine. I mean they get asked the question and feel responsible to respond with something, but it is almost worse trying to really rationalize it. You will just dig yourself into a hole if you need to explain catgirls and lalafell.

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Originally Posted by Ayche

In all honesty, any answer to why big people turned into catgirls and elves is probably going to sound asinine. I mean they get asked the question and feel responsible to respond with something, but it is almost worse trying to really rationalize it. You will just dig yourself into a hole if you need to explain catgirls and lalafell.

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I dunno, I understood it well enough the moment I realized that meant the sahagin were probably the fragments/descendants of the guys who were Really Into Sharks.

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Originally Posted by Ayche

In all honesty, any answer to why big people turned into catgirls and elves is probably going to sound asinine. I mean they get asked the question and feel responsible to respond with something, but it is almost worse trying to really rationalize it. You will just dig yourself into a hole if you need to explain catgirls and lalafell.

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I agree, but they said it, so we have no choice but to try and have it make sense. Or else we might wonder why we're on a forum devoted to obsessing over JRPG story minutia at all and have to question our life choices.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

I dunno, I understood it well enough the moment I realized that meant the sahagin were probably the fragments/descendants of the guys who were Really Into Sharks.

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I just posted the quote that rebuts that interpretation of how it works! You can't just say it anyway!

...I mean, you can, because none of this is even really important to the rest of the lore anyway and is basically meaningless fluff, but...

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Originally Posted by Brinne

I'm not sure why the suggestion of "Emet-Selch's biased viewpoint" must necessarily reflect "oh, he must be lying in the third-person sequence written by Ishikawa about his experiences and perspective for no reason" instead of "he simplifies and partially sanitizes the explanation of what was a horrifying and traumatic experience for him when speaking to a crowd that includes a child."

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Ryne is not a child, she is described as a young woman – and Emet is trying to horrify them and convey the horror he felt. If he was trying to protect her poor childish sensibilities then surely he wouldn't have picked her to creep out with a duplicate?

Either we accuse him of being inaccurate in one of those two passages or we accuse him of it in the other. All points considered, I think inaccuracy in the non-FFXIV story to be more likely.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

I dunno, I understood it well enough the moment I realized that meant the sahagin were probably the fragments/descendants of the guys who were Really Into Sharks.

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Originally Posted by Lurina

I agree, but they said it, so we have no choice but to try and have it make sense. Or else we might wonder why we're on a forum devoted to obsessing over JRPG story minutia at all and have to question our life choices.

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I know this sounds really silly to say in the Lore forum, but sometimes less lore is better than more lore. Like in that QnA moment, you could had left it at "well sundered people started changing due to reduced aether" and that would had left enough mystery to it while also satisfying the question. The moment you gotta start thinking "Well uuuh, cat people, now cat people started appearing because uuuh there were ... a lot of ... mice..." you know you have gone too far. Miqote were not in FF14 because someone had something really profound to tell us that what if we were not evolved from apes, but cats instead...

Sometimes things are aesthetic, but I think everyone already knew that.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

Ryne is not a child, she is described as a young woman – and Emet is trying to horrify them and convey the horror he felt. If he was trying to protect her poor childish sensibilities then surely he wouldn't have picked her to creep out with a duplicate?

Either we accuse him of being inaccurate in one of those two passages or we accuse him of it in the other. All points considered, I think inaccuracy in the non-FFXIV story to be more likely.

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Okay I think emet doesn’t try to protect ryne from the horror of sundering, yet I disagree thta he picked her solely to creep them out, as it’s literally just making an illusion of her copy.

But anyway, idk what you guys even want. Nier collab is written by Ishikawa, the Word of God, basically. While it contains some pf emet’s perspective (which, yes, is bias), the rest are historical depiction that don’t contradict any info from shb. One other thing to remember, the souls are particularly important for the Ancients. Would it be far fetched to you to consider that when emet said the sundered are “malformed creatures”, it’s not only due to their physical appearance but also because of the souls?

We have proof from anamnesis anyder that the sundered truly are smaller than the ancient btw

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Originally Posted by Iscah

Ryne is not a child, she is described as a young woman – and Emet is trying to horrify them and convey the horror he felt. If he was trying to protect her poor childish sensibilities then surely he wouldn't have picked her to creep out with a duplicate?

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It's not really about sparing them - it's about him not making himself needlessly vulnerable by delving with extreme graphic detail into a horrifying, traumatic experience he had. Emet is demonstrably a very emotionally defensive sort at the same time he's trying to appeal to the Scions, which is what makes a lot of his behavior throughout Shadowbringers so interesting because of the resulting self-sabotage. But yeah, getting into debates over the precise nuances of Emet-Selch's characterization and his internal war with himself, as far as this context goes, is almost certainly a non-starter (I have been down this road before, lol!) It just comes down to "Do we take his direct POV as written in third-person or his dialogue simplifying things to an outside party as more reliable, if we're going with the 'he's unreliable' slant to justify dismissing one or the other'?" and how inherently silly it is to use a take by Emet-Selch to dismiss... a different take written around Emet-Selch.

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Either we accuse him of being inaccurate in one of those two passages or we accuse him of it in the other. All points considered, I think inaccuracy in the non-FFXIV story to be more likely.

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We know he's partially inaccurate in the Crystarium explanation. We know his demonstration never reflected the full scope of the physical reality of the Sundering as far back as 5.0 itself. People can take the interpretation they like, but I dunno, I'm more inclined to go with the one that hasn't already been demonstrated beyond doubt to be inaccurate, the one reflected in direct description and not second-hand dialogue, and the one written at least two years more recently to show events that, as of the writing of 5.0, the writers have fully admitted they didn't have the details or background fully planned out or in mind.

Let me put it this way. An FFXIV fan decides to try out the Nier crossover because they heard, as advertised, it's about Emet-Selch and it's written by Ishikawa herself. When they read it, are they going to accept what it shows as perhaps an updated portrayal of the Sundering, or go into convolutions about how it doesn't precisely match up with a piece of exposition from 2+ years ago, so clearly this means that what Ishikawa has written is just Emet being nonsensical, and what a waste of time this all was, just shows more of Emet being overdramatic about what happened, etc, etc?

Do you really think the latter take is what Ishikawa had in mind when she personally wrote this story after Endwalker?

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Originally Posted by Kozh

But anyway, idk what you guys even want. Nier collab is written by Ishikawa, the Word of God, basically. While it contains some pf emet’s perspective (which, yes, is bias), the rest are historical depiction that don’t contradict any info from shb. One other thing to remember, the souls are particularly important for the Ancients. Would it be far fetched to you to consider that when emet said the sundered are “malformed creatures”, it’s not only due to their physical appearance but also because of the souls?

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Perhaps you could phrase those ideas as a theory suggestion rather than an accusation? I don't think I've seen anyone in all this time propose that it might be to do with how Emet perceives the souls rather than the bodies of the sundered, and it actually seems quite plausible to help resolve the difference.

As far as I've seen, discussions of the NieR story seem to revolve around "look, he really said they were really malformed creatures in this isolated story written by Ishikawa, even though the part of FFXIV also written by Ishikawa described it differently".

It's Emet's word against Emet's, Ishikawa's word against Ishikawa's, in a part of the story that the game repeatedly shies away from examining in enough detail to verify which version is true.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

Either we accuse him of being inaccurate in one of those two passages or we accuse him of it in the other. All points considered, I think inaccuracy in the non-FFXIV story to be more likely.

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This is predicated on assuming you think both versions are incompatible, which is very strange to me, I must admit.

Do you honestly picture the Sundering as Emet-Selch going about his day until, suddenly, lightning flashes and he is surrounded by coworkers exactly 1/14th the size they were prior, with no other differences? Come on, now.

Your failure of imagination in regards to what 1/14th of a person's faculties would look like is your own problem. It's not a narrative inconsistency.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

Perhaps you could phrase those ideas as a theory suggestion rather than an accusation? I don't think I've seen anyone in all this time propose that it might be to do with how Emet perceives the souls rather than the bodies of the sundered, and it actually seems quite plausible to help resolve the difference.

As far as I've seen, discussions of the NieR story seem to revolve around "look, he really said they were really malformed creatures in this isolated story written by Ishikawa, even though the part of FFXIV also written by Ishikawa described it differently".

It's Emet's word against Emet's, Ishikawa's word against Ishikawa's, in a part of the story that the game repeatedly shies away from examining in enough detail to verify which version is true.

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/shrug I didn’t accuse anyone, if someone feel that way, that’s on them sorry to say.

Idk, seems to me the discussion is more often about how the nier story is outright biased and should not be considered canon, rather than discussion about malformed creatures.

I genuinely don’t get why people become so technical and literal about the terms used in Nier story. It’s malformed because sundered and unsundered is proven to be different biologically. It’s malformed because the sundered is weaker than the unsundered. It’s malformed because they could no longer use creation magic. It’s not trying to say the sundered looks like a blob monster.

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Originally Posted by Teah_Kaye

As an aside, I have a small gripe with the narrative surrounding Emet. He was never really forced to confront the reality of what he did or acknowledge the humanity of sundered people. I think EW 6.0 would have been a better "redemption arc" (air quotes) for him if he had been.

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I beg to differ. Emet was extremely aware of the reality of what he was doing, that's why he's such a bitter broken person by the time we actually get to meet him. He's at a point where he's layering his actual feelings behind several layers of dehumanization, because its the only way he can really reconcile with what his goals required. He came to acknowledge their humanity, but his duty would never allow him to do anything but suppress that feeling. Nevertheless I don't really think EW's intention was to 'redeem' Emet in any capacity, so much as it was to further humanize him. After all, he doesn't regret a single thing he's done, he says as much in Ultima Thule. That cost, heavy though it was, was the demand that saving his people required, and he'd do it again for their sake.

As for the Nier crossover, I think it is plain to see that the scene with Ryne was a low effort demonstration used for emphasis, rather than any kind of factual hardboiled depiction of what being sundered is like. It's been pointed out already that it's a bit silly to take that portrayal as exact. I see no reason why the event's portrayal and this scene can't coexist.

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Originally Posted by Teah_Kaye

I put "redemption arc" in quotes for a reason and included (air quotes) in parentheses after it. I do not know how I could have made the air quotes any heavier on the page, haha.

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I saw the quotes! But I'm not sure if I'd even call it anything even approaching it tbh. I guess it's more like a reaffirmation of what we already knew than anything else. I think his position as far the narrative sees him was largely unchanged from Shb to EW.

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Originally Posted by Teah_Kaye

I just think that's a bit of a missed opportunity. EW tries to paint him in a more positive light, but without doing the legwork to make it feel earned. You can sort of guess at character development that might have occurred off the screen after he died and got his memories back and went "oh frick" but it's sort of funny how he tried to kill us but we blew a hole in him so we're just cool now? Because... Elpis? The same Elpis where he threw a tantrum and ran off after we told him what his future self was going to do? He did help us escape at the end (along with Hyth, while insisting that he still doesn't believe us) and helped a snake learn to fly, and we got confirmation that Azem/Emet/Hyth were really close, but yeah...

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Oh don't take my defending the writing of Emet's view of his actions as a defense of 6.0's handling of him. On that, you have my complete agreement. That's sort of just a consequence of EW's writing as a whole. I, and several other people here, talked about it with far more energy back when 6.0 initially dropped, and I don't want to get into it at length here for brevity and topic's sake, but it essentially tried to have its cake and eat it too. It put fan favorite characters like Emet back on screen, but also kind of sidestepped the aspects of his character that made him who he was, or any other kind of controversial elements surrounding him in favor of just having the WoL pal around for fanservice. It's not just him either, this holds true for characters on both ends of the 'questionable deeds' spectrum, and is largely a product of wanting to keep the player comfortable in a way I don't particularly respect. Endearing us to a version of him *before* these things happened is kind of an easy out. It's just that EW for me has so many other glaring issues that Emet's handling just feels like small potatoes by comparison.

But honestly these discussions would go a lot easier for everyone if he stops being treated like the forum boogeyman for which everyone has to fixate on for any kind of discussion to occur. I recognize the irony in my doing the same, but I really don't believe he's THAT hard of a character to read, that we need to scrutinize the frame by frame of literally every word that comes out of his mouth.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

A really important thing to remember with Emet is that while he's usually telling a version of the truth, it's always colored by whatever his angle is. You can always trust him to be telling a version of the truth, but you should never take him exactly at his word, because his angle is never just 'tell them the full, unvarnished truth'. (Again, Mama in Nier Reincarnation is similar, although less insidious.).

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But we should definitely trust Venat for saying the "unvarnished truth" right? Because she certainly never lie, right? Or that her action isn't based on what *she* thinks is right.

For me the strangeness about the use of order is that it's not their style. Look at the Volcano instance where it got treated to how most people who stay during hurricanes. They didn't order anyone to leave or seem to give an ordnance for people to leave. Even when the beginnings of the Final Days started to hit other cities the Convocation again didn't give an order for people to flee the areas that already were being affected. So, to have them give an order of some kind that most obeyed probably more so out of social pressure than anything felt odd to me.

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Originally Posted by SannaR

For me the strangeness about the use of order is that it's not their style. Look at the Volcano instance where it got treated to how most people who stay during hurricanes. They didn't order anyone to leave or seem to give an ordnance for people to leave. Even when the beginnings of the Final Days started to hit other cities the Convocation again didn't give an order for people to flee the areas that already were being affected. So, to have them give an order of some kind that most obeyed probably more so out of social pressure than anything felt odd to me.

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Did the people there even answer to Amaurot? It was mentioned that Amaurot had a sister city elsewhere in the world, which means people followed different societies or countries. That volcano area may have been an area that was not under Amaurot's purview, but another's. Or it may have been under nobody's, and Azem waltzed in there because "I'm not about to let people die or lose their homes."