*Spoilers* Anyone feel joining Emet would have been better

In retrospect, was it actually possible for Azem to die prior to the point where they go back in time to Elpis? The ironic thing is, despite all the effort that Elidibus expended trying to kill you off, whatever time you spent with him on Elpis sounds like it was critical to Amaurot's attempts to stave off the Final Days. Even his Warrior of Light and the associated summoning magics are probably based in some measure off of Azem in Elpis. I wouldn't be at all surprised if his promise ends up dating back to that period either, given that he can't remember exactly who he swore it to.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

Are you also the type of person that was mad you didn't get to agree with Gaius in the Praetorium?

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I've never liked the Garleans. There are a myriad of reasons why, but some of my friends are fans so I won't go into them plus it'd derail the thread. :P

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Originally Posted by Veloran

I didn't really mind joining the Scions, but I did have a big problem when Y'shtola told Unukalhai during the WT that WoL signed up knowing full well that they would be forced to kill tempered individuals.

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My issue started with the Scions in ARR. The only one who doesn't treat you as a tool is Thancred (bonus points if you started in Ul'dah). The rest only care about you as much as what you can do for them and that includes Minfilia*. Alphinaud flat out admits prior to the bloody banquet that that he intends to use you as the 'muscle' if anyone gives him or his ambitions any problems.

HW had little to do with the Scions for the most part. SB is one of the few times I felt I was given a variety of dialog options. I was at least able to tell Alphinaud that Ala Mhigo wasn't my problem and even though that didn't amount to anything other than him saying he's sorry I feel that way, I derived some satisfaction from it.

* I don't know what it is with Minfilia and Venat. You're not only not allowed to not like them, you're forced to be BFFs with them. Even in Amh Araeng I chose the "..." option with Minfilia only for my character to do an emotionally positive facial expression (just like every other interaction with her). I've seen people gripe about being forced to have dinner with Aymeric and I'm thinking, at least that's a one time thing. Imagine any character you dislike and every time they're on screen your WoL lights up and the only dialog options you get are favorable.

Conversely, even though I don't like the Garleans, it's ridiculous that my WoL goes into 'come at me' stance whenever I run into one. Like we've never come across good Garleans before (Cid, Lucia, Maxima, etc.) and as soon as we see the 3rd eye it's fight time. Racist. :P

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

The Eden primals were entirely willing to be part of exactly this.

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Do you have a source or citation on this? Because the dialogue in these fights says otherwise. With Garuda saying something along the lines of “you dare defy me?!”

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Originally Posted by KariTheFox

Erm, Venat did not give the WoL the means to return the scions to life(also they were never actually dead). She gave the WoL the means to call something that had been lost, which was used to summon Emet-Selch and Hythlodaeus, and they granted us the means to get the scions back.

Venat had absolutely no way of knowing how you would use the power she bequeathed you, because she was dead at the time. I really fail to see how she could possibly be a hypocrite under those circumstances.

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Didn't Hydaelyn say it was the ability to make the immaterial material? Then we used that to summon "half faded souls of the dead" Emet and Hythlo. If someone has that screenshot about what power she put into that crystal could you please share it? I can't remember the exact words

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Originally Posted by Alleo

And the sending with the flowers was created by us because they questioned us what we do to the death. So before they just returned them to aether. I do like the quest chain because we are able to question their belief. When the one Anient talks about the isle where they grow vegetables the "normal sundered" way, she says that she finds it useless because the results are not perfect. We are able to ask if only a perfect being is allowed to exist and then she realized that we as familiar would also fall under the not perfect and things about it. That shows that they are of course able to change but that even someone as nice as her is still stuck in the "everything perfect way".

The quest chain is still just one side of Elpis. The rest still dont have any problems with just disposing of the creatures. And its quite shown in just the MSQ. After all Hermes would not have such a negative outlook in life if most people were like the ones that at least gave them a sending. I mean he himself also still creates creatures to send out on his behalf.

I guess one can say that if they would have created less perfect beings that would even do some really bad things outside of Elpis they might have had been more used to grief. Maybe then they would have not planned that third sacrifice and life would have gone on.

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The whole thing about "being used to grief" or death is very weird for me in the context of the ancients because several of their actions suggest they should know about it quite well but then they apparently don't? For example, the entire reason visitors to Elpis have to remove their masks is because the creations there can hurt them. That might just be excellent foresight on their part but other quests confirm that the ancients can and do get hurt by their creations with one guy even saying that he sends familiars to do dangerous work so he doesn't have to risk himself. Erichthonios mentions mercenaries, which is weird if allegedly there was no war, and expanding on that point, Emet-Selch and Venat have tanking abilities which also seems weird if the whole world was mostly peaceful. It seems like dying from an accident or some other way other than "returning to the star" is fairly rare but then given the existence of what I mentioned, seems like random deaths should be more common and more people should have been used to grief and sorrow than it seems like.

Given how hard it was to kill ascians by conventional means, I think being maimed or gored by one of thier creations would be a painful inconvience, rather than lethal. Something you would want to avoid, but not life-ending.

Prior to the final days, dying suddenly and unexpectedly seemed unheard of for the ancients. To the point where "death" as a concept seemed like a pretty strange idea to them.

When it comes to the Ancients, going by how Hytho mentions how "death" is a word he hears very rarely, I imagine its the same for alot of things, its not that they never dealt with them, its just that it was so rare as to not really factor into there lives at all.

Like, Emet namedrops sophistry, so they clearly understand it as a concept and even have people among them who can identify it. Like Hermes wonders if he is the only Ancient with his issues, he likely isnt, and I don't think the game is actually trying to say he was literally the only Ancient to suffer depression ever. More that its just so insanely rare that there society didn't really have any mechanism to even try to help the few that did.

I imagine when it comes to like, depression, grief, premature death etc its something they had a textbook definition for but very little actual experience with.

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Originally Posted by Alleo

I guess one can say that if they would have created less perfect beings that would even do some really bad things outside of Elpis they might have had been more used to grief. Maybe then they would have not planned that third sacrifice and life would have gone on.

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An example for a "non-perfect" creature they need to put down would be the Lycaon, a creature that endlessly tried to kill everything around it for no purpose. They had tried different environments for it, placing it with toughened prey animals that would be harder to hunt, wiping it's memory to see if it was just an individual behavioral issue, but no matter what they did the results were always that it would eventually depopulate whatever region it was in to the point that it would starve to death. As the researchers rightly point out, such a beast simply couldn't be released into the wild because it would completely destabilize whatever ecosystem it was in. It's at that point that they decide they have no choice but to unmake the few specimens they'd made, and store the concept away.

I don't know about you, but with the amount of trouble they went though and the amount of leeway they were willing to give it, it doesn't look like the researchers were overly flippant about it's disposal, and if it hadn't been aggressive to the point of self-destruction they would have been willing to seed it in the wild.

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Originally Posted by EaraGrace

We are shown their reactions though! They nearly broke during the Final Days, understandably, and turned to Zodiark. If they knew the cause was out there, that it was the result of the death of all known life, and that defeating it would require them to face unimaginable despair, they wouldn’t have survived.

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Why? The unknown is the most frightening thing of all. Do you really not think that telling them the truth before 99% of the world was destroyed wouldn't have helped their situation at all? One of their own creations going rogue and trying to kill them is a much less terrifying threat than an unknowable force striking at random.

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Given she tells us to find her and to “honor the promise made in another age,” I believe it was more than a back up.

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I'm just saying the evacuation plan was clearly going ahead before the confrontation plan.

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If you wish to hold that view by all means do so. But that’s not the correct view, it’s one of many.

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Well sure, and it just so happens to, again, be one that WoL themselves indulges in regularly.

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And my point is that that’s illogical and requires way more leaps than than the inverse.

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I think your point is incorrect and the notion that he would be needed requires way more logical leaps.

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You’re now taking completely different situations with differing context and conflating them. She did not manipulate him.

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She chose not to tell him the truth in order to ensure he would work for her cause. In what way is that not manipulation?

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Emet has not given up on the plan for millennia. Using the Sources inhabitants to replace the souls in Zodiark directly relates to the earlier plan to do just the same, this seems obvious.

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The context of the plan then and the context of the plan now are nothing alike. Just because Emet remained committed to the idea even as the world around it changed utterly, that doesn't mean the morality of it in one situation versus the other is the same.

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Originally Posted by KariTheFox

Erm, Venat did not give the WoL the means to return the scions to life(also they were never actually dead). She gave the WoL the means to call something that had been lost, which was used to summon Emet-Selch and Hythlodaeus, and they granted us the means to get the scions back.

Venat had absolutely no way of knowing how you would use the power she bequeathed you, because she was dead at the time. I really fail to see how she could possibly be a hypocrite under those circumstances.

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Emet does say "good job with your masterplan and making me the lynchpin here Venat." And also that he was returned to life through the magic but refuses to accept it because it's insulting on her part.

Basically what I got was that the magic she put in the crystal would have allowed WoL to go forward or revive the Scions and this was sort of the final test, except she also wrote in a third option cheat that would allow WoL to do both if they were smart.

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Originally Posted by Veloran

Emet does say "good job with your masterplan and making me the lynchpin here Venat." And also that he was returned to life through the magic but refuses to accept it because it's insulting on her part.

Basically what I got was that the magic she put in the crystal would have allowed WoL to go forward or revive the Scions and this was sort of the final test, except she also wrote in a third option cheat that would allow WoL to do both if they were smart.

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I think Emet was just being cheeky, rather than trying to imply thay everything that happened in Ultima Thule was somehow planned out by Venat. How could it have been? Venat knew nothing about how Ultima Thule or Dynamis worked, and couldn't have possibly predicted that the scions would sacrifice themselves one by one in order to help the WoL progress. It's ascribing a level of foresight to her that borders on omniscience.

It's more that she gave the WoL that power because she was entrusting them and the scions to do something useful with it. She had no idea what the specifics would be. Her whole deal is entrusting our future to us and giving us the tools to forge our own path.

Though "summon Emet-Selch and have him help" would be a pretty good guess, she doesn't need to have a master plan in order to have faith that he would help out in some way if called on by the WoL.

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Originally Posted by Veloran

Why? The unknown is the most frightening thing of all. Do you really not think that telling them the truth before 99% of the world was destroyed wouldn't have helped their situation at all? One of their own creations going rogue and trying to kill them is a much less terrifying threat than an unknowable force striking at random.

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And the knowledge that all civilizations found are dead, many of them begging for that end as a release from existence? Or the fact the universe will end inevitably? That knowledge made Hermes rebel, and gave even Emet, Hyth and Venat pause. The Ancients, having just suffered the Final Days, learning all of this as well as learning that they don’t even possess the power themselves to fight against Meteion would’ve broken them. Venat made that judgement and Emet and Hythlo agreed at Ultima Thule her plan was best. All three have no reason to make such a judgement lightly.

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Originally Posted by Veloran

I'm just saying the evacuation plan was clearly going ahead before the confrontation plan.

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They occurred concurrently, with Hydaelyn willing to die to make the confrontation plan work. Given Her joy at Her loss, it’s clear what She wished to have happen.

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Originally Posted by Veloran

Well sure, and it just so happens to, again, be one that WoL themselves indulges in regularly.

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I don’t believe the WoL thinks 99% of people are terrible.

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Originally Posted by Veloran

I think your point is incorrect and the notion that he would be needed requires way more logical leaps.

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I suppose we’ll have to agree to disagree then.

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Originally Posted by Veloran

She chose not to tell him the truth in order to ensure he would work for her cause. In what way is that not manipulation?

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To ensure he doesn’t doom all life is a pretty good reason. I don’t think I’d be “manipulating” a serial killer if I lied to them about their target.

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Originally Posted by Veloran

The context of the plan then and the context of the plan now are nothing alike. Just because Emet remained committed to the idea even as the world around it changed utterly, that doesn't mean the morality of it in one situation versus the other is the same.

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If what you believe is true, and the replacement souls were meant to be from the equivalent of livestock, then I don’t see why he would not just do what he originally planned, i.e. sacrifice livestock. In the moment before this he states that he will sacrifice the Sources inhabitants after they were rejoined. Why would he do so if they are the fully reformed souls when he apparently wasn’t going to do so in the past? What changed? It would be genocide for genocides sake if the option of just sacrificing a bunch of cows was still on the table.