I Don't Understand the Light Theme

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Originally Posted by ApolloGenX

I should say that when I said religious themes- I was really referring to style, not story.

Maybe it is just me... I just came back from Europe, where we saw so many churches.... the abundance of feathers and angelic creatures just reminds me of recurring religious iconography. In any case, the style seems to bend more toward light as a concept and less toward light as an element, imo.

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The creatures of the light have always looked like that, though. Think back to Amdapor Keep Hard's second and third bosses. They look like the sin eaters do, and that's an ARR dungeon.

Not every work of fiction can, will, or should reflect everyone's particular worldview. However, they've done a pretty good job of demonstrating that any element or belief system can be bad when taken to the extreme.

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Originally Posted by ApolloGenX

I should say that when I said religious themes- I was really referring to style, not story.

Maybe it is just me... I just came back from Europe, where we saw so many churches.... the abundance of feathers and angelic creatures just reminds me of recurring religious iconography. In any case, the style seems to bend more toward light as a concept and less toward light as an element, imo.

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Because in XIV, Light isn't an "element" so to speak. There's only six elements: Fire, Water, Ice, Air, Earth, and Thunder. Astral ("Light") and Umbral ("Dark") are more like attributes, so any Light aspected monster or spell tends to lean more to the "Holy" instead of using Literal Light Spells (like what would be lasers). And SE has a thing of using said "Holy" designations for their Light spells, anyway: SD3 used Holy Ball and Saintly Beam for their tier 1 and 2 Light Spells, Alexander has a lot of religious imagery (Holy Judgement)...

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Originally Posted by ApolloGenX

I am really enjoying SHB... but I am having trouble understanding what they are doing with the light theme.

No spoilers, I just don't get the "Forgiven" tag on monsters... or the "Sin Eater" taxonomy.

It seems like they are confusing elemental light and religion.... and it is confusing to me.

I don't understand why instead of this they aren't using names like "radiant" and "luminous".

To me, they seem to be confusing "holy" and elemental light, so there is this strange quasi religious connotation to stuff.

Maybe I am not far enough along in the story and they fix this- but I always loved how Secret of Mana kept light and dark as elements and left out that religious stuff.

Hopefully, those of you who are over achievers and finished the MSQ can let me know if it straightens out.... I really like the elemental concept and love the idea that elements are neutral primordial forces. This language and connotation might just be a localization issue.

It just feels like the game is borrowing heavily from D&D on the theme without any of the context. Maybe it's just me lol.... but I also don't want the same to happen with darkness/shade in a future expansion where they have some kid of evil connotation. I was never comfortable with them implying that shade/dark was bad and I don't want that to be a future theme. As both an AST and as someone that happens to love the nighttime and sleep, I happen to feel like darkness can be comforting, relaxing, and peaceful.

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how far away are you in the story? because they will explain it.

the Source people worship the Twelve. The First basically worshipped the Light and later on the Darkness. kinda like pagan people used to worship aspects of Nature irl

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Originally Posted by ApolloGenX

I should say that when I said religious themes- I was really referring to style, not story.

Maybe it is just me... I just came back from Europe, where we saw so many churches.... the abundance of feathers and angelic creatures just reminds me of recurring religious iconography. In any case, the style seems to bend more toward light as a concept and less toward light as an element, imo.

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Then how would you personally depict "light"? You need to design a lot of enemies and bosses around this concept.

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Originally Posted by Edax

Then how would you personally depict "light"? You need to design a lot of enemies and bosses around this concept.

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Good question.... I suppose I was expecting things like

Luminous Shimmer
Gleaming Orb
Radiant Spark
Prismatic Warden
Lucent Guardian

Things like that... light based.

Although I am far enough along that they offered an explanation... of sorts.... except that I still don't understand what "primordial light" is, if not like an element. I suppose I was in a Secret of Mana frame of mind, where it is like an element.

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Originally Posted by ApolloGenX

Although I am far enough along that they offered an explanation... of sorts.... except that I still don't understand what "primordial light" is, if not like an element. I suppose I was in a Secret of Mana frame of mind, where it is like an element.

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It's a form of magic. Here on the source we called it astral energy, not light, with umbral being the equivalent dark magic. Straight from the wiki:

"Astral energy is the light-based polarity present in all six elements (see Chapter 4 of Essences & Permutations - A Treatise of the Six Elements). The opposite of Astral energy is Umbral energy. Astral energy can exist in all 6 elements, as demonstrated by the odd-numbered months of the Eorzean Calendar."

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Originally Posted by ApolloGenX

Let me give another example - There are a lot of white feathered angel-like creatures. I wonder since we are talking about light if we will see prismatic creatures and abilities. I wonder if we will see lucent creatures, gleaming creatures, or radiant creatures. I wonder if we will see refracted creatures and diffused creatures.

So far, the theme has been very one dimensional and light is such a fascinating concept- I just feel like it has been whitewashed (sorry for the bad metaphor).

Just to be clear, I am loving the expansion so far... I am just hoping the theme goes beyond the traditional angelic/quasi religious archetypes.

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So youre confused about light producing angelic seeming monsters but not confused about Darkness producing demon seeming monsters like Diabolos?

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Originally Posted by Kitya

It's a form of magic. Here on the source we called it astral energy, not light, with umbral being the equivalent dark magic. Straight from the wiki:

"Astral energy is the light-based polarity present in all six elements (see Chapter 4 of Essences & Permutations - A Treatise of the Six Elements). The opposite of Astral energy is Umbral energy. Astral energy can exist in all 6 elements, as demonstrated by the odd-numbered months of the Eorzean Calendar."

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Yes... and this is related to the explanation they give... I still don't see how it squares with the style of enemies. Aside from things being white... which I suppose is the thematic astral/white color palette, I don't understand the angelic/feathery theme, which to be follows more religious iconography as I stated than it does the overall description of polarity. Sure, some of it looks pretty neat, I am not saying that it doesn't... I just find the aesthetic a confusing choice.

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Originally Posted by kidalutz

So youre confused about light producing angelic seeming monsters but not confused about Darkness producing demon seeming monsters like Diabolos?

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I don't consider primals.... they can look like anything.... but yes- given the explanation, I don't know why dark would produce demonic style creatures, either. In fact, if they are not elements, and more of a polarity... maybe they would even look the same, but have different color themes...if astral and umbral are surrogates but not equivalents for good and evil....good and evil creatures might look the same...possibly color difference for stylistic flair, but you can't tell just by looking what something is...