[6.0 - 6.4 Spoilers] An interesting video detailing Venat's polarizing reception

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by RaenMan

A guy you still associate with openly outside of here, I know for a fact, and given the likes his posts were getting, it's safe to assume you all collectively approved of his actions. So.....yeah.

---

I'm genuinely confused. Who is 'you all' in this context and how do you 'know for a fact'?

That aside, the subject of this thread is the video which encompasses the answers that you seek. The game is a decade old at this point so any analysis of something deeply rooted in the overall story is naturally going to be rather meaty. It's already been pointed out multiple times throughout the thread, however, that the video itself is split into bite sized chapters to make it easier to digest.

If you have no interest in watching the video, that's absolutely fine - though to be perfectly honest, if that's the case then I'm not terribly certain why you're posting in a thread revolving around it. Especially when it wasn't even the creators of the video who posted it here in the first place.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by thegreatonemal

I figured it was strange you didn't answer my initial questions to you. Why are you assuming it's referring to her as a hero post sundering and not what she has already done for her people prior to all the final days stuff. It's rather a moot point seeing as the woman herself doesn't see herself that way nor do any of the character. You seem to act like the scions were ever called her a hero. If you can find that then by all means post it but barely a sentence from a minion, the game endorsing her as a hero. The three of you are really reaching.

---

I did answer your initial questions. Some of them, anyway. The rest had already been laid out earlier in the thread during a discussion with a different poster, which I (seemingly mistakenly) thought you'd already seen. I suppose that one's on me.

Now, to the rest of your post:
I'm not disputing she was a hero to her people, nor that the toy at least in part is referring to that. It's the last bit of the description that acts as a call forward to post-sundering. I've also never claimed the Scions directly referred to her as a hero. What I am saying, point blank, is that what I saw in the story - and I did thoroughly watch all cutscenes/read all text, including the side-stories and NieR Re[in]carnation, in both EN and JP, to be clear -- left me with the impression the intention was for us to view her in a heroic light. It's as simple as that. Put another way; I don't think the character was heroic save perhaps during the bygone age. I think she and the Ascians are birds of a feather in a fair number of ways. None of them were good, in my opinion. They're all different shades of grey.

As to the Scions; I just want consistency and for crap to make sense, man. Imagine if your entire belief system suddenly got uprooted, and on top of that you find out everything you thought you knew about the creation and early history of your world was wrong. This coming right before going to Ultima Thule and dying. Sure, they got better, but they friggin' died for a while there. There's a lot of crap they should've had a lot more of a reaction to. Like I said before, while I do think they should've at least questioned the moral implications of the sundering, that's all secondary to "huh, shouldn't these people be having a full blown existential crisis right now? Or at least, you know, be reacting in some way. At all."

You don't have to be directly told something to arrive at a conclusion. I played the same game you did. Your conclusions about the story don't line up with mine. That's all there is to it.

Youtube comments show me this video series was needed. A cathartic read! I think I can already guess exactly what some people are going to make of these commenters crawling out of the woodwork to say thank you because they felt so alone in this fan base that really, truly isn't an echo chamber.

You say you don't agree 100% but appreciate that there's someone voicing a different opinion out there because it is healthy to question and criticise, random Youtube person?

Well well well!

Actually, people would have you know that this topic is dead. Dead, definitely dead and buried. You hook it up to a cardiac monitor and there's nothing but a loud continuous beep, in fact all of its graphs are flatter than a female Lalafell's chest slider. Everything that could be said on this topic has been said thousands of times and nobody needs to hear it, at all, because I, personally, am sick of hearing about it. (Please stop!)

Do you ever wonder if a subject is well and truly dead, or if it is actually you who wish it were?

Regardless, I am very sorry to make the announcement that concerns over the MSQ of patch 6.0 did not suddenly poof out of existence after Christmas 2021. The MSQ itself, even though it is a new chapter, can hardly go on without making any mention at all, whether positive, negative or neutral, of past events. The codex was a new feature introduced in 6.1, continuously updated in subsequent patches, and its contents… have at times generated discussion. The two raid storylines were explicitly stated to act as epilogues of sorts: one only recently concluded, and as for the other… it is with a very heavy heart that I must break the news to some of you: please look forward to the conclusion of Myths in patch 6.5. I have no doubt a story focused on what is shaping up to be Hydaelyn's creations for guiding Her Children, with signs pointing toward them being based on Ancients (I Mean The Good Ones), is going to go down really, really well and please everyone in this fandom. Ha. Hm.
As it happens, anything is susceptible to reignite discussion… and it is likely because we are all passionate about this. Unfortunately. Reports of this horse's death appear to be greatly exaggerated.





On "why do you hate Venat so much!!!! (and why is it because you're all misogynists?)", I feel the need to point out that this… isn't really about Venat, as such. There are actually a couple of other videos, on the mishandling of Zenos's character and on why Hermes is absolutely, literally, 100% The Worst.

There are a couple of reasons why a lot of the discussion revolves around Venat: not only do a lot of Endwalker's story and themes rest on her and her actions, but because of the time travel, it also retroactively affects how you view past events. I can only speak for myself here, but I find that new coat of paint… quite unwelcome and unnecessary. Simply put, you can't really go in-depth with why you found the story of Endwalker off-putting without breaching the Venat subject, and once you've opened this can of worms, there are a lot of points to address.

Part of it rests on player reception, of course. It wouldn't really be picking Venat's character and role in the story apart if it didn't aggro the fanbase, such as it is. I think just about everyone who has voiced disagreement or discomfort over Venat has been met with a degree of incredulity and accusations of Not Getting It, and then some. But we did in fact all watch the same story, and personally I think it is worth taking the time to analyse why opinions would be so polarised. Note that I am not talking about the frequency of said opinions here – yes, we know positive opinions are the majority because we, too, happen to have an internet connection and functional sensory perception – but the qualitatively large difference in opinion.

In contrast, Hermes doesn't get nearly the same amount of discourse even though he is the one setting all events in motion, and as I see it this is due to two significant differences: 1. he is unambiguously presented as an antagonist (just like Emet-Selch, by the way) (I just felt like saying that) and 2. going off Yoshida/Ishikawa interviews, a fair amount of people don't really care for the guy. Simply put, when I call Hermes a whiny vegan edgelord who lived in a society bottom text and whom I couldn't relate to, I don't have to justify my position nearly as much as when I say the way the story treated Venat really didn't sit well with me.
With Venat, it's a bit of an ordeal, and this is because so much of Endwalker rests on her reasoning and why it needs to be right.



On "clearly Venat tried her best and this in-game dialogue proves otherwise, you never addressed this!": Kozh, KizuyaKatogami, Eisi, Magikazam and Alenore (only the first two have been involved in these videos – I have no particular knowledge of the other three, and frankly I want to hear more of their takes) have addressed this. Well anyway, let me add my name to that list.

What we know about the contents of Venat's partisans' warning to the Convocation is vague at best: they would be doomed if they were to "continue down the same path". Is this the path of continued sacrifices? We have never heard the Convocation members themselves speak of sacrifices any further than the one that would replace the people within Zodiark with life that is never given qualification as sapient. This appears to be a slippery slope argument, frankly, but honestly there is one crucial thing that bothers me when bringing up Venat's faction and Venat sending a representative rather than speaking to the Convocation herself:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/special/tales_from_the_dawn/sidestory_01/#sidestory_01

Unable to find the words, the archivist retreated into ritual. He held out a crystal—as he had countless times before—upon which was stored the last chapter of cosmological wisdom Venat had sought. Though she had spoken of its importance, he suspected she withheld the entire truth. Of her glimpse into the future, she had offered precious little.

---

They… are not operating with full information, here. This is the POV of the Watcher as a human being in the world unsundered. You will note that none of the three Ancients we speak to in the present allude to any knowledge of Meteion or Hermes's involvement in causing the Final Days at all.

Two of these have a somewhat plausible reason to have forgotten: The Watcher because his perfectly rounded gem saw fit to amputate his memory of "everything that came before and after the tragedy", and Elidibus because he has been steadily losing his identity. It should be noted however that once he grabs the memory crystals, he does get better, notably at remembering what led to his splitting from Zodiark, but also in parts of his life as Elidibus. Of interest here: he makes it clear our Level 86 knowledge of the Final Days (timing of areas hit correlated with celestial aether density)… which we learned from the Watcher himself… are consistent with the Convocation's. He is entirely unaware of Dynamis and the relevance of Elpis beyond Fandaniel's personal history and the fact that the current Fandaniel happens to be, ah, involved in matters at hand.

The most damning, though, is of course Emet-Selch. We are not given any indication Emet suffers from lapses in memory, other than the vague figure of the shades in Amaurot (which is honestly unsurprising for someone who belonged to a culture where physical appearance is outright stated in 6.0 to matter very little). In fact, Emet appears to be considered by the story like the "real" last Ancient: he is neither a primal nor the guy dismissed as having gone batty. He is the one who explicitly asks you to honour the memory of his people, and 'Ere Our Curtain Falls makes it clear he was keen on preserving his identity and memories. Emet never says anything that indicates the Convocation knew any more of the Final Days than what was stated by Elidibus and the Watcher, at any point in time. Yes, I know the Doylist explanation for this is "obviously, they hadn't written Endwalker yet". But operating purely from an in-universe POV, it is legitimate to wonder: what were the Convocation warned about? Is it just the slippery slope of Zodiark?

Venat's own words about the Convocation being unwilling to countenance a permanent solution: again, a permanent solution to what? The Final Days have been put on hold. The logical follow-up here is to rebuild society (which would be more logistically efficient with 75% of the surviving population of wizard scientists with crazy magic powers of creation), gather your thoughts and keep on safeguarding the star. This could very well involve investigating what was up with those celestial currents.

I am going, here, by Shade Hythlodaeus's words in 5.0 that never mention further sacrifices, in effect Emet's words put through a Hythlodaeus personality filter. Think of this what you will. Compare and contrast with Endwalker's insistence – coming from Venat's side – that sacrifices would be unending until they ended up like some distant alien civilisation. However, I will say that if you are going to dismiss Emet's words as motivated by bias and an agenda, then it follows that Venat's words would be equally biased in favour of her own agenda and dismissible, and this is especially because she has a known history of withholding information as discussed before, not to mention lying about everything for twelve thousand years. Call it a white lie for mankind's own good because mother knows best (of course she does, because how much she actually informed people is highly questionable), but it doesn't make for a good look when the subject matter happens to be whose version might be closer to the objective truth.

As for her words in the final scene of Elpis: they are words, not actions. I'm sorry. I know the story very much intends the viewer to take Venat at her word, and that the intended conclusion here most likely is that she tried her best to change the foretold history in the very difficult situation she was in but she tragically could not, and in her despair took the decision to follow our timeline in hopes of closing a causal loop. We both watched the same cutscene, and dissected the same lines (I mean… we did… right? chuckles nervously in French).

1. 'Fortifying defences and planning their escape': okay. Again, words, not actions. Anything she did objectively did not result in any significant divergence from the hell vision of the planet being literally on fire that we know of. Plans of escape are not mentioned in any testimony of the Ancient Final Days.

2. Obviously, she just can't tell anyone and everyone. Pandaemonium shows us that at least Elidibus is capable of handling secrecy and complicated hostage situations in complete earnest. The rest of the Convocation is comprised of experts and scientists that have been representatives of the planet for an untold number of years.

3. Of course, 'she can't tell the Convocation!'. This is never stated to be because of "standard procedure", which... appears to be interpretation…? (your dislike of Emet-Selch is … notorious, if I'm honest, and understandably none of us are free from bias) and this has been discussed by previous posts in this thread. Why not be entirely transparent and explicitly warn the Convocation they very much need to not apply this very much non-sensible-sounding standard procedure and they need to think this through?

4. Ah, because she reasons Hermes holds vital information, and needs not to be excluded or alienated. But there is no guarantee sharing full information would result in him being excluded or alienated. Are we assuming seasoned experts and intellectuals handling global matters have no idea how to sensibly handle an emotionally unstable person, especially if they are given all the information Venat has at her disposal concerning Hermes's personality and motivations? Has Pandaemonium shown us that the guy whose literal day job was to handle interpersonal conflicts had zero idea what he was doing? Not really, no. Maybe they don't need to tell Hermes himself the exact, full truth so he cooperates: considering how much he cares for life, I am unsure why he wouldn't help if they were to "break the news" to him that what he remembers of the events is, indeed, a big ol Kairos glitch, and that investigation into the incident and/or Venat being an unaffected witness have revealed that his creation has suffered catastrophic corruption of unknown origin in deep space and that this is going to have very, VERY dire consequences on everything he knows and loves, we SO need your expertise only you could ever bring us! Maybe they have the means to extract information without his consent at all, as Emet at one point threatens the WoL that the Convocation would know if they are being lied to.

You claim that Venat doesn't know how Hermes will be important, so she needs not to interfere with his nomination to the Seat of Fandaniel to naturally allow him to share his conclusion. This interpretation seems to entirely hinge on the vagueness surrounding what the WoL told her, because of the silent protagonist curse – specifically, you seem to assume that without Hermes, there would be no Zodiark to forestall the Final Days.
Now, on what the WoL said: It is stated by Emet that the WoL's story included the correlation of the Final Days with celestial aether.
Venat is standing right there when you then ask Hermes his opinion, with Emet explicitly asking the WoL to tell him the story as they told the three earlier.
The first thing our local expert on Dynamis says is that Dynamis indeed seems involved in both instances of the Final Days, confirming the WoL mentioned at the very least Dynamis.
Then he speaks of the celestial currents being hit first, deducing the malevolent source of Dynamis is coming from space.

This is the knowledge he brought to the table as Fandaniel.

Note that at no point is Dynamis itself ever mentioned by current Emet, Elidibus or the Watcher, only the correlation to celestial aether. So much for Fandaniel's area of expertise… But I digress. Venat knows what information Fandaniel gave the Convocation.

She is also aware of Zodiark's existence: the image of Zodiark being destroyed is shown while the WoL tells their story, Emet speaks of his brethren giving their lives to Zodiark for the good of the planet, and Venat admits she does not understand at this point why she would oppose the Convocation and the people by becoming Hydaelyn.
So, Venat knows that a. the cause of the Final Days is Dynamis, b. that the means to counter this was Zodiark, and c. that what brought the Convocation to this conclusion is solely the correlation to celestial aether without knowing the cause of the Final Days. This is assuming the WoL, for whatever reason, omitted from their tale that Zodiark was created for the explicit goal of strengthening celestial aether currents. Whether they did or not, claiming that she doesn't know how Hermes will be important to the fight against the Final Days is either stretching believability, or assuming she isn't very good at putting things together.

She was told of how utterly devastating the Final Days would be with history remaining the way it was in our timeline. At this point in time, she is committed to the idea of deviating from the established timeline and only fears the time loop as a consequence of the memory wipe. The argument is that, in possession of all this knowledge, the most obvious way to change history is to bypass this reasoning entirely: that the particular information on celestial currents needs to be organically brought by Hermes as Fandaniel – far too late, and in an incomplete fashion, because frankly the most crucial element here should have been getting every wizard scientist on this damned planet on board with kickstarting mass research on Dynamis ASAP –, and that Emet and Hyth for some reason can somehow never be told of what happened…? Maybe we should be putting more trust into these grown men who already deal with massive responsibilities as part of their day job, so long as full transparency and appropriate warnings on Hermes's potentially impulsive behaviour are involved.

4.5. I feel like it must be pointed out here that Hermes is not the sole scientist that studies the high atmosphere or is interested in Dynamis. The Convocation could feasibly call upon other people. It is said Dynamis in particular is a niche subject because of its very few practical applications on Etheirys, and it is true that Hermes is stated to be the first person to design an entelechy with a consciousness – intimate knowledge of which has not been wiped from his mind, as his designing Meteion happened much earlier than the events we witness. Well… I know of a good reason for everyone to suddenly start caring very very much about entelechies and practical applications of Dynamis, like right now. (Also should remind everyone here that we have no time frame for the span between the events in Elpis and the start of the Final Days. "They wouldn't have had the time" is conjecture.)

5. Indeed, we are in agreement here that everything she says in Elpis points towards not intentionally relying on the time loop at this point in time. My argument on Venat is that the limits she set upon herself in the preceding lines are flawed in their logic and reasoning, and my personal interpretation is that tragically this stems both from her own lack of faith in her people's ability to sensibly handle the situation, as well as her knowledge of future events resulting in bias over things she reasons cannot be changed… but… can't they? Really?…… To this, you might answer that Venat is very well-travelled and knowledgeable, and she is likely basing these fears and lack of faith of hers on something. Perhaps, yes. But perhaps she is not infallible, because she has not seated on the Convocation for an indeterminate amount of time, likely does not know what it is like to work with the younger and/or more recent members, and by her own admission she does not travel as much as she used to when she was Azem.



On "clearly you are just doing this for attention": I must admit I missed the part where this is bad, actually. Wanting to be heard is not mutually exclusive with having a point.
Yes, putting together videos to upload on the biggest video platform in the world is ultimately to reach an audience – one that might not be reached by ranting on a forum that is ignored by a portion of the fan base for various reasons.

The multiple mentions of not wanting to watch said videos is… in very bad faith, frankly, in a thread that was earnestly started to discuss said videos. It is said "the video" is too long: multiple posts have mentioned it was in fact posted in multiple parts of 10 minutes or less. If people in this particular thread do not want to engage with videos of 10 minutes or less, at all… well. I would question what the point of this discussion is anymore.



On making light of my call-out of propaganda and genocide by disingenuously saying "lol lmao check this crazy person out, ancients are not real XD": I was hoping not to have to explain myself that, yes, nobody here actually believes Final Fantasy characters and races are real. The purpose is to bluntly point out what Venat did and its consequences, and why people might take issue with the narrative of 6.0 justifying her and treating her as having ultimately done the right thing for mankind and the planet *.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Theodric

To be blunt, certain posters replying to this thread spent years railing against even the most minor of Garlean or Ascian missteps and took the stance that no matter how sympathetic the reasoning, there was never a justification for acts of genocide. How interesting that upon the reveal that Venat deliberately inflicted genocide upon her own people suddenly such things were framed as 'not a big deal' or a 'grim and unfortunate necessity'.

---

And that is the thing. Certain people choose to deny the Sundering was technically genocide, because I suppose Venat didn't literally kill everyone dead with her own bare hands right there – though I think we have all seen and heard the word be thrown around to speak of societal changes that are far more indirect than outright murder and would realistically take far more time than the 0-100 years it likely took for the newly sundered humans to die of their newly introduced old age and diseases.

Others might say they don't find the concept of splitting souls across dimensions relatable, so I guess this excuses the intentionally inflicted identity death, loss of language, drastically shortened lifespan and erasing civilisation from history (as per both Elidibus in 5.0 and the Watcher in the Omega side quest, Ancient civilisation being wiped from memory aside from the PTSD resting in the collective unconscious of humanity appears to be a feature of Hydaelyn's design, not a bug).

Ancient culture does not exist anymore. Ancients as a race do not exist anymore; this has been made clear by the recent Korean Q&A that the Sundered evolved into biologically different people. They do not possess the biological characteristics such as immortality, natural aether sight, vast resources of aether and absence of scarcity that characterised what Ancient society and culture appear to have been based upon. All of this, the erasure and negation of what made Ancients Ancients, was by design, to allow for Suffering Makes You Stronger™. Genocide does not solely consist of directly murdering people – emphasis on directly, because the Sundering does in fact amount to drastically cutting down the lifespan of people who routinely lived for centuries to mere decades, not accounting for civilisation, technology and medicine also being reset.

The way the word and the subject seem to be treated with kiddie gloves only when it comes to Venat, the Ancients and the Sundering very much feels like deflecting from an uncomfortable subject with pure semantics.

This sort of rhetoric touches upon the underlying problem some people have with the story and how it appears to go against the values of the story as previously presented. Somehow, standards are only strictly applied to The Other Side™, because RIP to the others but we're different. That is why repeat mentions of Venat's crime are made – sometimes in jest, because this is fiction –, not because I think the Ancients are totally real and deep inside I wish I was just as perfect and beautiful as they are. (What even was that one bit of armchair psych, by the way?…)

If you are sick of hearing about it, or it actually makes you uncomfortable because you hadn't seen it that way initially and in retrospect it makes the story lean uncomfortably towards "actually genocide is okay when………", then good: it is having the intended effect. This is the cognitive dissonance people bring up in the comments on the videos.



* Speaking of narrative intent and character portrayal, if you somehow deny that "she had no choice, she truly wanted not to repeat history but her hands were tied and the very cruel and unfair act she decided to bloody them with was literally the only single way to save life not just on the planet but in the entirety of the universe" was not the intended way to read the narrative of Endwalker, when it happens to be complemented by the "Wind-Up Herois", the main protagonist cast not showing the least bit of hostility to her but even finding additional justification in the form of Dynamis, the arguable figurehead for the main antagonists of the arc figuratively bowing to her as a graceful loser and the persisting positive treatment of her in patch content… I… where to begin.

Venat is acknowledged, by the visual presentation of her decision to sunder her people and by her own words, to be a character that took a morally very-dark-gray decision. I think most everyone would agree to this. The issue here is with the story feeling like it's bending around her to tell you the ends justify the means this time, actually. Her logic for ending up never telling anyone we know of the full truth of what she has learned in Elpis is never given the scrutiny it might have received had we been in the Convocation's place and learning of everything after the fact. The Elpis incident itself is somehow never investigated, even though it involved some of the most important officials on the planet and we have been shown since their introduction in 5.0 that Ancients were kind of anal with due process and regulation of their magical abilities and creations.

Hydaelyn is met with remarkably little, if at all, resistance from the WoL and the Scions once the truth of her reasons are revealed. There is nobody left in 6.0 among the main cast expressing empathy for the fact that the Ancients were wiped out by one of their own because they weren't reacting the right way (according to standards she never bothered to detail the why's and how's of – see, again, the complete lack of information the modern-day Ancients we talk to had on Meteion and Dynamis) to a horrible tragedy she hopefully did not truly want to set them up for, though in the end that is exactly what her paralysing fears of people reacting to the truth and not straying too far from the established timeline resulted in.

The justification sometimes bandied about of the Scions not wanting to grill Hydaelyn on this because they owe everything to her and wouldn't exist without this terrible act… well, first off, that uncomfortably reminds me of abusive parent logic. Secondly, yes, selfish and hypocritical protagonists who look the other way when a crime happens to benefit them can be interesting, of course. Yet given the historical portrayal of the Scions standing up to injustice, I would say we are given little reason to think this would be the intended reading at all. There's nothing really pointing to them being, to put it bluntly, kind of ***holes, not when they were shown to be so sympathetic to Emet and Elidibus's plight in Shadowbringers. It cannot simply be ignored that at literally zero point in history after the Elpis incident were these men she knowingly condemned to the role of survivors driven to villainy out of desperation in possession of actual facts and truth on why she acted the way she did, at all. Their whole suffering, which was very plainly presented in Shadowbringers, amounted to them playing their roles of being cogs in Venat's time loop machine, because she wrote their people off after not really giving them a fair fighting chance. Look. This kinda sucks. I expected our heroes to reflect on this. Call me old-fashioned and boring I guess (or "morally-challenged").

(Similarly, the weirdly dismissive rhetoric of "well, it happened long ago / there's nothing that can be done to change anything about it now, why would they pester her with this now when she had good intentions?" feels like rather situational disregard of the concept of justice. Are the roads to hell paved with good intentions or not? Is there some sort of time limit on judging crime, especially when its consequences have been felt to the present day? When do reparations officially cross the line into "oh my god why don't you just get over it"? Even when the actual perpetrators or victims are not physically around anymore, there is symbolic meaning in upholding justice and values.)

Anyway, as for the sole survivors of the genocide in question – you know, the guys who had their whole world crumble for an unknown reason they probably assumed to be a natural catastrophe then stamped out by the person who withheld the truth – well, one of them had a whole scene where his tsundere self goes "I hate to say this out loud, but wow, bravo, queen, you showed me, (looks directly at camera) we could have never succeeded!", while the other just plain never finds out what this whole deal was actually about – I'm so sorry, Literally Zodiark In The Story Of Zodiark And Hydaelyn –, and anyway he's so polite he doesn't really want to bother you with irrelevant things like his own personal feelings over his defeat by your hands and failure to save everyone he loved. That would get in the way of his sweet, sweet duty to the star. As for the untold number of people comprising the rest of Zodiark (which, as a reminder, we were told yearns to be free), wow, they're mentally unwell, a fact their jailer finds to be frankly bothersome (glad we at least had the option to ever so slightly go "uuuUUUuuhhhhhh" at him, by the way). Hythlodaeus in particular, however, remains as Hythlodaeus as ever: irrelevant to the plot, really just Emet's proxy and good angel fluttering over his shoulder, so carefree he seemingly has nothing to say on his best friend's predicament the past dozen millennia, or on his own forced stay in purgatory, but wow, he certainly is very easy on the eyes, 10/10.


All in all, I struggle to understand how someone could genuinely come away from 6.0 with the impression that Venat was not intended to be the tragic heroine who took it upon herself to do this one terrible thing that would end up saving the universe, and while she might be judged by the harsh – including herself – for the sins she knowingly decided to saddle herself with, WE know the truth of her ultimate sacrifice for her love of mankind and life and respect the ideals she led us to victory with.

Only… well… I am not seeing much of this negative judgement in-universe, both by characters who know the entire story and those who don't.

(So maybe this got a little long. You guys… to tell you the truth… I think there's something about that story in Endwalker that kinda bugs me…)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Absimiliard

As to the Scions; I just want consistency and for crap to make sense, man. Imagine if your entire belief system suddenly got uprooted, and on top of that you find out everything you thought you knew about the creation and early history of your world was wrong. This coming right before going to Ultima Thule and dying. Sure, they got better, but they friggin' died for a while there. There's a lot of crap they should've had a lot more of a reaction to. Like I said before, while I do think they should've at least questioned the moral implications of the sundering, but that's all secondary to "huh, shouldn't these people be having a full blown existential crisis right now? Or at least, you know, reacting in some way. At all."

You don't have to be directly told something to arrive at a conclusion. I played the same game you did. Your conclusions about the story don't line up with mine. That's all there is to it.

---

I know I said I meant another post of mine to be my last, but I just wanted to address this part. I guess part of why I didn't bat an eye at the Scion's nonchalance to learning what they did in EW about the sundering didn't effect me or come off as odd is because they react fairly much the same way when Emet-Selch explains the cave paintings. Sure, they show some shock yet they then kind of just shrug it off. Or at least that's how it given (and I took/interpreted it that way) in the English version. Yet I don't remember that reaction having as much debate over or people at least being passionate about wondering why they didn't seem to be bothered from learning all of that.

That and as had been said by myself and others any time this topic comes up we're playing a game where the writers chose to have the world be sundered. So, even if we feel that what the sundering did and how it came about was bloody awful we only are accepting of it from a meta perspective. I'm sure I'm not alone when I also highly doubt that the 3rd EE will shed more light on the parts many wish would get more light. This isn't solely aimed at you, but people grow up, mature, change or what have you. And are fully capable of changing one's opinion depending a variety of factors.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Absimiliard

I did answer your initial questions. Some of them, anyway. The rest had already been laid out earlier in the thread during a discussion with a different poster, which I (seemingly mistakenly) thought you'd already seen. I suppose that one's on me.

Now, to the rest of your post:
I'm not disputing she was a hero to her people, nor that the toy at least in part is referring to that. It's the last bit of the description that acts as a call forward to post-sundering. I've also never claimed the Scions directly referred to her as a hero. What I am saying, point blank, is that what I saw in the story - and I did thoroughly watch all cutscenes/read all text, including the side-stories and NieR Re[in]carnation, in both EN and JP, to be clear -- left me with the impression the intention was for us to view her in a heroic light. It's as simple as that. Put another way; I don't think the character was heroic save perhaps during the bygone age. I think she and the Ascians are birds of a feather in a fair number of ways. None of them were good, in my opinion. They're all different shades of grey.

As to the Scions; I just want consistency and for crap to make sense, man. Imagine if your entire belief system suddenly got uprooted, and on top of that you find out everything you thought you knew about the creation and early history of your world was wrong. This coming right before going to Ultima Thule and dying. Sure, they got better, but they friggin' died for a while there. There's a lot of crap they should've had a lot more of a reaction to. Like I said before, while I do think they should've at least questioned the moral implications of the sundering, but that's all secondary to "huh, shouldn't these people be having a full blown existential crisis right now? Or at least, you know, reacting in some way. At all."

You don't have to be directly told something to arrive at a conclusion. I played the same game you did. Your conclusions about the story don't line up with mine. That's all there is to it.

---

"Are you gonna pretend like what I quoted there doesn't exist and then proceed to speculate about what could have or should have happened and pass that off as canon? Or claim that the story views Venat as a hero and seems to give her a pass for what she did?" These are the two questions I asked you. you didn't answer either so before we go any further I'd like you to answer them.

You came to the wrong conclusion then. They clearly view her in shades of grey. The sunder was a tragedy but a necessary act. She took no joy in it. Admiring her strength of will to not falter or break at any point down the long road she traveled is admired but no one is calling her a hero. That was quite plain. to come to the conclusion you did you had to ignore certain things or refuse to see them in the light they were portrayed.

Holy wall of text batman. How is anyone supposed to read all of that and not get as lost as I did a few times. And I worry about my posts not having enough paragraph separations.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Teraq

snip

---

https://i.imgur.com/10xoxgF.png

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by thegreatonemal

It doesn't also the two sides had a fight. One side wanting to commit of genocide sacrificing the new souls to their shiny dark god and the other side rose up to defend those souls. She sundered mankind for two reasons, one to stop their god and defend those new souls the other to bring mankind to a form that could actually hope to fight Meteion, giving their aether dense bodies are useless against a foe like her. Unless you're gonna try and make an argument that you can't kill to save lives. Hell kill isn't even the right word, Emet decides her power in detail. He doesn't use the word kill.

---

Yeah my point of it being eugenics, replacing a whole race with a new version one that will lead markedly and intentionally short horrible lives of endless suffering is an act of evil and something at least as bad as anything to do with Zodiark and the fact that they had waved it with made up some magic force was just terrible writing.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by jameseoakes

I assume you mean the rejoinings? Part of the problem I have is that the game that it moralises hard on the evils of them which is something similar to the sundering then surely the sundering is as horrific a thing but the game bends over backwards to excuse it which leaves a deeply bad taste in my mouth.

---

I meant the third sacrifice the one that lead to the fight that led to the sundering.

To me it is simple, the story makes sure to point out that sacrificing innocent for a greater cause is bad. a bunch of characters did it and each time it made clear what they are trying to do is bad. When Venat does it, it showed as a good thing. The cinematic at the end of Elpis depicts her act as a heroic struggle (IMO).

That's kinda of an issue story-wise, cause it goes again a message the story keeps shoving up on us since ARR. EW made it bad cause we know Venat ain't affected by the memory-erasure and that means She knows what will happen, and she does it anyway. In SHB it was depicted in a more neutral view, life if the Ancients just split up into two factions and just escalated to extreme acts to prevent the end day.

It's interesting that he believes no TOS violations took place, but then all one need do is examine the tags still up here... or is he under the false impression that those are exempt from moderation? Either way, I do hope he gets the help he very desperately seems to need.

Maybe it’s pointless to discuss Venat, many people have tried to prove her evilness and refuted every argument of her supporters. But many people won’t listen to us. This makes me realize that some people debate for the sake of truth, while others just want to prove themselves right.
Venat is the biggest problem for this game’s plot. She is wicked, but she gets defended by the main characters, making every important character seem hypocritical. She turned my beloved protagonist into a ‘mommy’s baby’. Since you can travel back to the ancient times, why don’t you try your best to save the ancient people, aren’t you a hero? If you hate the ancient people and think they deserve to die, why do you make friends with them? You are so fake, so petty, you are a stranger. On our country’s forum, everyone is discussing whether hydealyn gets such a costly protection from the writing team because she is actually yoshiP’s avatar. (In fact, this discussion has been going on for two years, and people keep bringing it up), whether she is SE’s contemptuous portrayal of female stereotypes, just like other SE games’ female characters, who are either mothers or failures, who only bring disasters to men. We are all Asians, it’s hard not to think like this.

I don’t understand why many people pretend to care about new life and support Venat’s actions. If you have even a bit of concern for new life, you would realize that when Venat split the world, all new life, including those you mentioned, were split as well. If the souls of new life are thinner than humans, they only met the most miserable fate. Because the Beast Tribes are also ancient people. Look at the lalafell and lizardmen in shadowbringers. The Beast Tribes have been treated unfairly, think about the races with lower intelligence than them. And think about The Eighth Umbral Calamity,and that spaceship, it flew to the universe, and was immediately found by Meteion, it not only could save a few people, it couldn’t save anyone! If Venat was not ambitious, she was just a powerless, cruel, selfish, beauty. Just like the Japanese game makers like to portray beauties.

My god, The mental gymnastics that you folks make just to justify the nonsense you spew out is laughable at this point.

I still don't get why people think she's evil. So she should have just allowed mass murder of their children and offsprings to revive boomers and let their invention continue to permanently prevent life in the universe?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by JepMZ

I still don't get why people think she's evil. So she should have just allowed mass murder of their children and offsprings to revive boomers and let their invention continue to permanently prevent life in the universe?

---

What makes a person a person? Isn't it their memories? their experiences that they lived? If I killed a man, but revived him with no memories, no relationship to his former family, and his appearance is different, is it the same man anymore?

The sundering shattered the souls of countless people who ceased to exist, the sundered are not the same people who once walked the planet, even if they share souls. The cultures and customs that were there were erased after the sundering, the people are no longer the same.

If the sacrifices were going to erase the newly born lives, then the sundering erased all of the lives. The narrative's problem is that it try to justify it by saying that it is the same souls, except that's not what makes a person a person. The original person who had their own thoughts and relationships, who had their own loved ones, their own ways to live life, their own experiences and memories, it's all dead. Nothing of it remains except that they're part of the same "soul".

Yes, the sacrifices were not ideal, but to answer death with even bigger death is absurd. The sundering IS a sacrifice, Venat sacrificed the ancients (not by their will, which is why people refer to it as genocide) for the sake of the star. But that's exactly the very thing she was against isn't it?

The sundering is a direct parallel to the rejoining (the rejoining is horrible, and the game portrays it as such). Both are sacrificing lives for the sake of others. If the sundering is splitting the same souls, and the rejoining is putting them back together, then either both are horrible or both are neutral. They're the same concept, but the game excuses one (and even portrays it as heroic) while condemning the other. Which is just absurd.

Either the sundered and unsundered person are the same and therefore, neither the rejoining or the sundering is genocide, or they're different and both the sundering and the rejoining are genocide and should be condemned. The narrative can't have its cake and eat it too.

People are still people if you take their ability to use genocidal powers away. People who become mute or dislexic aren't suddenly not people or dead. I think the naysayers' core principle against Hydaelyn is the assumption that sundering is murder when it isn't. There is no facts that state sundering is death. Everybody got to live their mortal lives after the sundering, they just can't play being gods anymore. It's a lower quality of life, sure, but it's not the same thing as getting murdered. They still chose to live or else there wouldn't be offsprings

And there's no facts that support sundering and rejoining is the same thing. You can't just make up a rule that they have to have the same consequence when there are plenty of fiction with various outcomes of duplications concepts. If anything, shadowbringers prove the buildings are intact after a sundering, they only get killed because of future disasters, and not from the sundering itself. You don't die when your party gets sundered into two shards during a raid battle. What we do know that's given facts is that lifestream=life=sea of souls. The ascians going against the sacrificed people's wishes to save life by sacrificing the lives they saved is taking out huge portions of souls out of the life cycle with no guarantee that the souls in Zodiark could actually be restored. We already know at least one Ancient who died "naturally" during the final days, he could potentially be among the new life when he reincarnates. Without Hydaelyn's reaction, he might possibly would never had the chance to be reborn at all

The first step is to determine how sundering someone or something actually works, before arriving at any conclusions. This entire discussion hinges on whether sundering someone:

• kills them
• destroys all their memories

Emet-Selch's demonstration on Ryne in the Ocular during the Shadowbringers MSQ doesn't seem to support either of these. In fact, Emet makes a deliberate point of stating that 'this singular ability strikes not at such banal things as flesh'. We also know that sundered souls can retain memories from before the sundering, including some flashbacks of the Amaurotine Final Days. The entire plotline around Amon/Fandaniel hinges on him retaining his memories of Elpis from before the time that he was sundered. So that contradicts the second point as well.

We can try to piece together an understanding of how sundering magic works by inference. Argos seems to be an early precursor to sundering magic, and his duplicates are directly referred to as 'reflections' in the quest text when you encounter him on the moon. He appears to be able to sunder and rejoin himself without consequence, and his memories of who you are seem to be still preserved across 12000 years.

During the Pandaemonium questline, Lahabrea splits his soul into two, and deliberately seals away part of his personality and memories around Athena on to one of his soul fragments. This process doesn't kill him, but does result in some memories being unique to each reflection, while others appear to be shared. He seems to be able to consciously plan for what information each fragment is able to recall. That suggests to me that memories aren't necessarily 'encoded' to a single locus on a soul (perhaps there's a degree of redundancy, if you want to use a RAID analogy). Splitting the soul doesn't seem like it necessarily damages the information encoded on it.

I think if you want to develop a theoretical framework to explain all this, you need to have a clear understanding of how memory works in FFXIV and how this relates to aether. Because the rules are different from how they work in our own world.

Even inanimate objects have memory, as seen in Venat's demonstration of the Echo on Elpis. You don't need a living being to be physically present. And we know that the sundering affects inanimate objects as well, because the geographical features of the First were all parallels of Eorzea. It's not like they were destroyed in the process. So it really doesn't seem like Sundering actually damages corporeal aether (which again, we could have predicted if we listened to Emet-Selch's original explanation).

Dying doesn't remove your memories either. Endwalker used this 'underwater' effect as a storytelling motif whenever the narrator was floating around in the lifestream, during both the MSQ and Pandaemonium. Despite being very dead, both Emet and Elidibus still can recall what happened to them while they're waiting to dissolve back into the lifestream.

Your memories have to first be 'cleansed' by the lifestream before your soul returns back to the cycle. Until that happens, you still retain all your memories. Even after being sundered, those memories are preserved unless that cleansing process occurs fully. Cue to Asahi furiously scrubbing Fandaniel's soul.

I'm curious about what happens to all those memories after cleansing, but I have a personal theory that it's something important to the functioning of the lifestream and planet, as well as this slightly vague concept of 'the Will of the Star'. I'm predicting that there's an entity that predates Zodiark and Hydaelyn that was originally meant to occupy that position, similar to how Zodiark required a 'Heart' in order to function.

Either way, the fundamental assumptions that underpin this entire discussion are flawed, and the contradictions become quickly obvious if you were asking questions rather than trying to force conclusions of your own choosing.

The only reason why the term 'genocide' gets thrown around deliberately and inappropriately in here is because some Ascian enjoyers see it as an opportunity to pull an 'Uno Reverse' on the discussions of Stormblood from some six years ago. It has nothing to do with Venat herself outside of what she symbolizes to the protagonists. Previously, Garlemald has occupied a fairly uncomfortable space within game lore, drawing historical inspiration from real world fascist regimes and the war crimes they committed. Elidibus quite literally employed (al)chemical weaponry in warfare, in the form of the Black Rose. Enjoying the villains doesn't automatically mean that you condone such actions or sympathize with those ideologies, but it's not surprising that those discussions became heated back in the day. Either way, it's probably worth letting those grudges go if you're still clinging to them. And if you can't, well, it looks like this story is moving on with or without you.

The Sundering is a Garden of Eden story, with a sprinkle of Pandora on top. All these stories are fundamentally about answering the question of 'why does good and evil exist in our world?' and about how to transcend that. Is it a coincidence that the flower that Venat left behind for us, Elpis, is the spirit of hope?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lyth

snip

---

In fact, your understanding is flawed. Memories are absolutely split during sundering as well.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Emet-Selch, in The Burden of Knowledge

Until one calamitous day when the world was divided across ten and three reflections, sundering the land and all who dwelled upon it.
And the worst part? No one could remember it. Not really. Just fragments and fleeting memories of an achingly familiar world...
A vision shared of a paradise lost, preserved only in song and scripture and paint...
Once upon a time. Yet here we find ourselves again. To look, learn, and remember...

---

He directly says people couldn't remember the past, only fragments of it (let me guess, 1/14!).


There's also the Nier recounting of events
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVZh6oZziwQ
Their memories were absolutely not intact.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Emet-Selch, Nier event

Pitiful moaning of malformed creatures...

They can no longer shape words.

Language, culture, knowledge - forgotten.

---

Take a book, only keep 1 letter for every 14, let's see if you have something coherent in the end.
This was affecting people's memories and sense of self so badly they went back to the stone age.

Proof?
Eorzea's recorded history :
- First Astral Era : people rediscover tools, then forging, and only found town and villages here ;
- Second Umbral Era : the first form of magic reappers through prayers (thanks the Twelve I guess) ;
- Second Astral Era : steel and stonemasonry only start being developed.

Just took over an Era to actually reach somewhat medieval levels.



For all intent and purpose, they lost their powers, their memories, and their culture, were exposed to sickness, hunger and death.
Arguing that it's not genocide because "actually they still have SOME memories, and like, they didn't actually die as in their souls going back to the Lifestream to be reincarnated. And you're right using our definition of death, which is the end of life.

If you use that definition, people who turned into voidsent, sin eaters or blasphemies aren't dead : memories still on their souls, they weren't cleansed! And neither are those who get rejoined: they just merge with their counterparts on the source! Is Ardbert dead?
But somehow, I feel like if you asked random people in Eorzea if people transformed into Blasphemies were actually dead, they'd say yes. Well, it's the same in this case.

Every Ancient bar 2 disappeared in that moment. We obviously can't draw parallels from our world since magic isn't a thing, but if that happened, you'd call it a genocide as well. At the very least, a cultural genocide.

We're talking about two completely different points. I disproved two critical assumptions that underpinned an earlier post using a quote from Emet-Selch and a series of counter-examples. I haven't seen any evidence that sundering someone kills them, and Emet directly contradicts that statement in the scene in the Ocular in Shadowbringers. I'm not making any kind of a commentary about societal record-keeping in a time period that the EE Vol.1 specifically refers to as 'prehistory', because that has nothing to do with individual/personal memory. If you would like to attempt to offer a rebuttal, I would recommend that you revisit those points directly, as my argument still stands, unchallenged.

As for the discussion around being exposed to all the troubles of the world, including famine, war, pestilence, and death, there's a reason why I brought up both the Pandora's Box and the Garden of Eden. These are ultimately stories about the human condition that try to explain how 'good and evil' came to be. Pandora, in particular, has a long historical tradition of being vilified. It's ultimately a philosophical point if you choose to blame her for humanity's woes, but it has nothing to do with the subject of genocide.

I don't think that you understood my point. I did not mean the sundering kills someone in the conventional sense of the word, more like kills who they are as a person (hence the question of "what makes a person a person?"), and not just in regards to only memories, but in regards to their experiences, their relationships with their loved ones, their ways and views of the world, what languages they spoke and what culture they practiced, the things that make a person a person, which is way more than just memories.

It's hard to argue for something I never said. I never said the sundered are lesser or that I liked the ascians or Garlemald's actions. I don't have any grudges against Venat or any other character. In fact, I think she's another victim of the flawed narrative, and deserved way better.

About the ascians, Venat deliberately let Emet-Selch escape knowing what he will do (presumably because WoL needs the rejoinings to be strong enough? we weren't given any clarification about her intent), making her complicit in his and the ascian's crimes. But that is beside the point that I what making. Characters, ascians or Venat or any other, are merely puppets to the narrative of the story, which is what I was targeting. The problem isn't Venat, it's the writing and narrative as a whole.

And on the topic of it not being genocide, the term itself holds more meaning than just killing people. Preventing people from practicing their culture causing its death for example, is a form of genocide. Preventing them from speaking their language and letting it die is a form of genocide, preventing them from determining their fate and future is a form of genocide too.

I don't think I will argue further, it's disheartening to see what I say misinterpreted and me being treated as someone who agrees with ascians when I said nothing about that, or how "mute and dyslexic people are people" when I never hinted otherwise. I'm a disabled person myself, and have life-long conditions that affect my ability to function. Frankly, that hurt so much to read.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lyth

I'm not making any kind of a commentary about societal record-keeping in a time period that the EE Vol.1 specifically refers to as 'prehistory', because that has nothing to do with individual/personal memory. If you would like to attempt to offer a rebuttal, I would recommend that you revisit those points directly, as my argument still stands, unchallenged.

---

Pre-history would be before the First Umbral era.
Here's the rebutal.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lyth

The first step is to determine how sundering someone or something actually works, before arriving at any conclusions. This entire discussion hinges on whether sundering someone:

• kills them
• destroys all their memories

---

This entire discussion doens't hinge on that, it rests on the sundering destroying the sense of self and most memories of the previous person, to a point they are virtually gone. This is what people mean when they say it "kills them".

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lyth

Emet-Selch's demonstration on Ryne in the Ocular during the Shadowbringers MSQ doesn't seem to support either of these. In fact, Emet makes a deliberate point of stating that 'this singular ability strikes not at such banal things as flesh'. We also know that sundered souls can retain memories from before the sundering, including some flashbacks of the Amaurotine Final Days. The entire plotline around Amon/Fandaniel hinges on him retaining his memories of Elpis from before the time that he was sundered. So that contradicts the second point as well.

---

The rest of the sentence is "but everything that defines the target, diluting its existence". Which means the soul, the memories, the reality of the being itself. His demonstration on Ryne literaly states they would be identicial in appearance, but reduced in all respects : "all is halved" to borrow is term.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lyth

We can try to piece together an understanding of how sundering magic works by inference. Argos seems to be an early precursor to sundering magic, and his duplicates are directly referred to as 'reflections' in the quest text when you encounter him on the moon. He appears to be able to sunder and rejoin himself without consequence, and his memories of who you are seem to be still preserved across 12000 years.

---

Are we supposed to think every NPC that create images of itself is actually a form of sundering? I mean, it checks out since Argos is Venat's direct creation. But just recently, we had Oschon create images. Ifrit does it. Etc.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lyth

During the Pandaemonium questline, Lahabrea splits his soul into two, and deliberately seals away part of his personality and memories around Athena on to one of his soul fragments. This process doesn't kill him, but does result in some memories being unique to each reflection, while others appear to be shared. He seems to be able to consciously plan for what information each fragment is able to recall. That suggests to me that memories aren't necessarily 'encoded' to a single locus on a soul (perhaps there's a degree of redundancy, if you want to use a RAID analogy). Splitting the soul doesn't seem like it necessarily damages the information encoded on it.

---

No, it doesn't kill him in the sense his soul went to the Aetherial Sea to be reborn. He also split a part of his soul in a controlled manner, with specific informations. Venat split everything in 14, she probably didn't take time to check every single being and how it'd affect them.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lyth

I think if you want to develop a theoretical framework to explain all this, you need to have a clear understanding of how memory works in FFXIV and how this relates to aether. Because the rules are different from how they work in our own world.

Even inanimate objects have memory, as seen in Venat's demonstration of the Echo on Elpis. You don't need a living being to be physically present. And we know that the sundering affects inanimate objects as well, because the geographical features of the First were all parallels of Eorzea. It's not like they were destroyed in the process. So it really doesn't seem like Sundering actually damages corporeal aether (which again, we could have predicted if we listened to Emet-Selch's original explanation).

---

Inanimate objects don't have memory. The form of echo Venat use in Elpis is described as "piecing together an event from ripples left in ambient aether". The idea is aether simply has an afterimage of what happens. Since the Sundering splits everything (as said by Emet when he explained it), and since it's a well known fact that sunderign reduces the aetherial density, these memories are affected in the same way.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lyth

Dying doesn't remove your memories either. Endwalker used this 'underwater' effect as a storytelling motif whenever the narrator was floating around in the lifestream, during both the MSQ and Pandaemonium. Despite being very dead, both Emet and Elidibus still can recall what happened to them while they're waiting to dissolve back into the lifestream.

Your memories have to first be 'cleansed' by the lifestream before your soul returns back to the cycle. Until that happens, you still retain all your memories. Even after being sundered, those memories are preserved unless that cleansing process occurs fully. Cue to Asahi furiously scrubbing Fandaniel's soul.

---

You still use the definition of killing as in "going back to the Sea", which, again, is obviously not what people mean when they said the Ancients were killed. Ancients themselves never had a chance to even go back to the Sea, since they were sundered, effectively removing their memories, and their presence from the world, instead replaced by 14 beings somewhat like them, but with gaping holes in everything.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lyth

Either way, the fundamental assumptions that underpin this entire discussion are flawed, and the contradictions become quickly obvious if you were asking questions rather than trying to force conclusions of your own choosing.

---

See above

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lyth

The only reason why the term 'genocide' gets thrown around deliberately and inappropriately in here is because some Ascian enjoyers see it as an opportunity to pull an 'Uno Reverse' on the discussions of Stormblood from some six years ago.

---

No, it's because it's exactly the same.
- Venat split souls, and creates new life from shards of the previous. The ones who were before are gone, to the profit of new people. In doing so, calamities happen and people of the Source face hardships.
- Ascians merge souls, reinforcing the source version. The shards are gone, to the profit of current people. In doing so, a calamity happens on the Source as well.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by JepMZ

I still don't get why people think she's evil. So she should have just allowed mass murder of their children and offsprings to revive boomers and let their invention continue to permanently prevent life in the universe?

---

So was there any actual reason to bring up this subject again, or did you just want to restart the exact same argument we've already had over and over?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Alenore

...

---

Thank you for taking the time to formulate a critique.

The word 'kill' used in the context of a living being carries an unambiguous meaning. If that's not what you're implying, you cannot use the word. Emet-Selch makes it fairly clear in his explanation in the Ocular that sundering 'does not strike at the flesh', and then demonstrates using Ryne as an example (spoiler: she doesn't die).

Death occurs specifically in reference to the physical body. A soul without a body feels the pull of the lifestream/underworld. We know this from the Tales of the Shadows short story 'Through His Eyes.' In some cases, that soul can find a suitable vessel before departing, as we saw in the case of the Phoinix, which was the original inspiration for the hemitheoi.

As for a discussion of what it means 'to be yourself' - we're not the same people that we were yesterday. What you're calling 'the self' is just your narrative of that change. Amaurot underwent radical changes in the time of the Final Days. During the time of Elpis, they were completely secular. The Final Days all but destroyed them. After summoning Zodiark, Amaurot converted to religious worship in the wake of His enthrallment. The Convocation sacrificed three quarters of their surviving population to their God. And then the Amaurotines were stripped of their powers by the Sundering. Every one of these changes irrevocably altered their culture. But again, you can't conflate cultural shifts in response to political events with biological death.

The journal text for the Lv.84 MSQ 'Helping Hands' contains the following line: 'After a few moments, a swirling mass of aether takes shape, and Argos appears in a flash of light. The aetherial guardian is as friendly as before and, perhaps sensing what is to come, creates reflections of himself, one for each of your companions. With that, your party is ready to cross the chasm and meet the moon's crew.'

I'm not really sure where you were going with your discussion of Lahabrea. During the Pandaemonium: Abyssos questline, Lahabrea splits his soul into two in order to seal his memories of Athena away. He also refers to Hephaistos as 'his twisted reflection' in the quest 'Servant of Violence.' He later reabsorbs those memories back into himself on Elpis during the Anabaseios quest 'Guided by the Past' in order to ensure that he would once again have the strength to lead.

Lahabrea and Hephaistos' interactions suggest that the memories encoded by souls are not destroyed by partitioning them. It also implies that splitting souls doesn't necessarily mean that a memory only belongs to one and not the other. Both Lahabrea and Haephaistos both retained all facets of their practical knowledge, despite being split into two different soul fragments. Saying that Venat 'probably didn't have time to do this' is a vague handwavy answer that we don't actually have any evidence for.

I do also note that you chose not to address the point about sundered souls, like Amon, retaining their memories of Amaurot and Elpis even after being reincarnated. This too, suggests that memory itself is not necessarily affected by sundering a soul.

Being able to piece together the memory of an event from the ambient aether implies that the memory is, in fact, encoded on it. It doesn't have to be the same thing as 'having a soul'. It's just a form of data storage.

The primary issue with rejoining shards is that it requires mass murder on a planetary scale in order to trigger the shift. In addition, those souls all have individual lives of their own. In Ardbert's case, he had lived and died in the time of the Flood of Light one hundred years prior. But I think it would turn into a problem if we suddenly started hunting down Azem fragments on other shards specifically in the name of becoming more powerful.

Is this honest to god where we are with this now? It's not death because technically the sundering didn't cause an immediate cessation of their brain function? Genuinely? These are the straws you want to grasp at?

It's not death because the in-game text makes it clear that it's not death. Was there anything else?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lyth

The word 'kill' used in the context of a living being carries an unambiguous meaning. If that's not what you're implying, you cannot use the word. Emet-Selch makes it fairly clear in his explanation in the Ocular that sundering 'does not strike at the flesh', and then demonstrates using Ryne as an example (spoiler: she doesn't die).

Death occurs specifically in reference to the physical body. A soul without a body feels the pull of the lifestream/underworld. We know this from the Tales of the Shadows short story 'Through His Eyes.' In some cases, that soul can find a suitable vessel before departing, as we saw in the case of the Phoinix, which was the original inspiration for the hemitheoi.

---

Do you think Emet-Selch actually sundered Ryne here and there, instead of just showing a projection through the Ocular? I may have misunderstood the situation, but all this was demonstrative. Neither did a single blow move 13 different planet in a circle.

Killing means ending a life. But destroying the body doesn't exactly kill somebody in FF : there's the Echo, and we summoned people from the sea multiple times. Multiple beings from different races were recreated in Ultima Thule, and seem to have kept going on with their lives.
Souls are in a big cycle, usually evolving the same way. Ascians who take body don't consider themselves dead. Teleporting or using flow just turns you into pure aether and thus destroying your body, just to be recreated on the other end. But since your soul and memories are left intact in a new meat suit, you're still alive. So was Zenos after he cheated death. And so were the scions when their spirits were on the First without a physical body, in the end it's just a flesh mecha for the soul.
Again, i'll stress that no, the Sundering didn't kill them as in "left their souls without a body, in such a way that their souls were going to the sea". But it killed them in all but name.

Note that I'm not telling you you're wrong. Stricto sensu, you're right. I'm just explaining what people mean when they say the Sundering killed them, and why they consider it a genocide. Death simply isn't just biological in XIV.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lyth

As for a discussion of what it means 'to be yourself' - we're not the same people that we were yesterday. What you're calling 'the self' is just your narrative of that change. Amaurot underwent radical changes in the time of the Final Days. During the time of Elpis, they were completely secular. The Final Days all but destroyed them. After summoning Zodiark, Amaurot converted to religious worship in the wake of His enthrallment. The Convocation sacrificed three quarters of their surviving population to their God. And then the Amaurotines were stripped of their powers by the Sundering. Every one of these changes irrevocably altered their culture. But again, you can't conflate cultural shifts in response to political events with biological death.

---

I'm quite certain at least one Ancient mentions gods during Elpis. Even if not overtly religious, they do know the meaning and the term and use it. Hemitheoi and Athena meant to reach the status of godhood. Whiletheir societies were not a theocracy, they did seem to understand the concept of gods, which means they most likely had faith in their society.

Now, though, the Convocation didn't kill the population. Not do we have any proof that their culture changed so drastically after summoning Zodiark. They literally summoned a god to grant their wishes, through their creation magic, the very tool they used to shape the Star. Why wouldn't they use their new God-tool to keep doing so? It just enables them to act on a larger scale, but requires more aether due to how widespread the effects need to be.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lyth

The journal text for the Lv.84 MSQ 'Helping Hands' contains the following line: 'After a few moments, a swirling mass of aether takes shape, and Argos appears in a flash of light. The aetherial guardian is as friendly as before and, perhaps sensing what is to come, creates reflections of himself, one for each of your companions. With that, your party is ready to cross the chasm and meet the moon's crew.'

---

I'd argue that since he "creates" reflections instead of splitting himself, that'd be more like different avatars of himself than sundering.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lyth

I'm not really sure where you were going with your discussion of Lahabrea. During the Pandaemonium: Abyssos questline, Lahabrea splits his soul into two in order to seal his memories of Athena away. He also refers to Hephaistos as 'his twisted reflection' in the quest 'Servant of Violence.' He later reabsorbs those memories back into himself on Elpis during the Anabaseios quest 'Guided by the Past' in order to ensure that he would once again have the strength to lead.

Lahabrea and Hephaistos' interactions suggest that the memories encoded by souls are not destroyed by partitioning them. It also implies that splitting souls doesn't necessarily mean that a memory only belongs to one and not the other. Both Lahabrea and Haephaistos both retained all facets of their practical knowledge, despite being split into two different soul fragments. Saying that Venat 'probably didn't have time to do this' is a vague handwavy answer that we don't actually have any evidence for.

---

Like, if you're going to use the fact that everytime someone uses the word "reflection" it means he was sundered, please keep away from mirrors.
My point was, he sundered himself with purpose, one to keep specific memories out of himself. Of course he wasn't going to do that in a way it would have left him a drooling moron. And neither do you have any evidence that Lahabrea simply copied memories onto the other part, willingly or by mistake.
In the end, we have specific dialogs and content showing that sundered Ancients forgot all but a few fleeting memories of the Ancient world. And nothing saying Ancients, post Sundering, were fine. Venat literally had to reincarnate the Twelve (which wasn't in the original plan) to guide mankind. She wasn't going to do that and stray from her plan, expanding Aether in doing so, if that wasn't necessary.
If you have any source saying otherwise, i'm highly interested.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lyth

I do also note that you chose not to address the point about sundered souls, like Amon, retaining their memories of Amaurot and Elpis even after being reincarnated. This too, suggests that memory itself is not necessarily affected by sundering a soul.

---

I haven't covered it for a simple reason: it's already explained in game. Some memories are imprinted on souls, for instance the Starshower linking to the old memory of the Final Days.
As for Fandaniel/Amon retaining more memories, it's also stated in the cutscene at the end of Aitsacope: the use of Kairos etched these memories on his soul:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Amon, in Aitsacope

They were the memories of Hermes, that he himself erased using the power of Kairos. Or so he thought.
In his attempt to burn away the events of that fateful day, he succeeded only in searing them more deeply into his soul.

---

These memories do not wash away when reincarnating.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lyth

Being able to piece together the memory of an event from the ambient aether implies that the memory is, in fact, encoded on it. It doesn't have to be the same thing as 'having a soul'. It's just a form of data storage.

---

I think we both agree on that point and I misunderstood you before.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lyth

The primary issue with rejoining shards is that it requires mass murder on a planetary scale in order to trigger the shift. In addition, those souls all have individual lives of their own. In Ardbert's case, he had lived and died in the time of the Flood of Light one hundred years prior. But I think it would turn into a problem if we suddenly started hunting down Azem fragments on other shards specifically in the name of becoming more powerful.

---

These souls having lives and memories and friends and hope and dreams of their own is exacly the problem we face with the Ancient, forced to lose them to the benefit of new beings.
At some point you need to accept that if it isn't murder to split someone and erase his personality and memories to create another being, then neither is merging them. You're just technically unsundering them.
Before someone says I'm minimizing murder, my point of view is that they both are.

Ah, nice edit. Did that come off as too arrogant, even for you?

But let's put that and the lovely semantic cherry-picking you've done in an attempt to support one of the most ridiculously arbitrary arguments I've ever heard to one aside, and I'll put to you a scenario:

You have a family member. One day, when they're out walking, a driver hits them with their car. Your family member does not die right away; however, they lose all memory of themselves, their family, their surroundings, and even how to talk and function on a basic human level. Their IQ and basic cognitive ability plummets, they have to learn everything from scratch, they never remember you or anything of who they once were and you were told from the beginning they never will, and they eventually die six months later as a result of the effects the impact had on them.

Would you say they died as a result of the collision? And when would you start to grieve for them?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Alenore

...

---

Death is still relatively unambiguous in FFXIV, even when various characters employ workarounds. The souls that we've called upon dwelling in the Lifestream are no longer alive. Given enough time, their memories will be cleansed, and their souls will become part of completely new people. Even in cases where a backup such as a memory crystal is used to 'restore' a reborn soul's memories to an earlier state, the current owner still perceives themselves as a distinct person. Gaia is not Loghrif. Amon is not Fandaniel.

Sundihimal provides an explanation of teleportation and specifically outlines why it's not the same as death, despite traversing the lifestream. As for dynamis-derived life-forms, it's worth noting that dynamis also gives rise to completely new life that has never previously existed, such as in the case of the Miw Miisv. The rules on this topic are not clearly defined, however, so we have no way of drawing conclusions about aetheric life from this.

There's nothing wrong with discussing the negatives of the sundering. As I suggested earlier, this is the Pandora myth, giving rise to good and evil. You can even argue that losing your godly powers was a 'fate worse than death' if you like (being a statement that ultimately comes down to your personal value system). But you can't equate the sundering with death, even for rhetorical purposes, because that's directly refuted by the game text.

On the subject of culture, widespread religious worship of Zodiark didn't exist before the Convocation summoned Him. As such, His summoning represents a significant cultural change in Amaurotine society. Even if you want to argue that the Amaurotines were not secular and were deeply religious (again, I don't really see evidence for this, but let's go with it for now), you're still implying that Zodiark replaced their previous culture of religious worship of other gods overnight. Is tempering equivalent to cultural assimilation? Did the Convocation commit cultural 'genocide' by summoning Zodiark?

Lahabrea split his soul on-screen and explained exactly what he did. I'm not sure what 'sundering with purpose' means and how this differs from the Sundering. I understand that you've set out to try to prove that splitting a soul erases its memories. But we've seen multiple cases that directly contradict this fact. Lahabrea. Argos. Amon. If sundering a soul destroys memories, then it should have erased Fandaniel's memories of Elpis, even if the lifestream could not. I doubt these were all written with a single overarching set of rules in mind around how sundering a soul works. But I also don't think that you can invent a rule on how it works in the absence of one.

And that's really my main objection. You can hold whatever opinion you like on the sundering as an act, but you're still bound to refer back to the game text.

Just as a note; things depicted in the NieR Re[in]carnation crossover event are canon, whether or not posters want to acknowledge it. The sundered were clearly shown to have lost not only their sense of self, but even basic skills like communication. Notably, the Unsundered - or Ascians, as they would later come to be called - could not communicate with the first of the sundered in any shape, way, or form. Given the ancients (and anyone with an Echo, I might add) could communicate with anything that has a soul, this gives us a fairly good idea as to the state the Sundering actually left people in. They had nothing.

Anyway, the enemy of my enemy is my mom or whatever. Support women's wrongs. Move on. The story has.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Absimiliard

Just as a note; things depicted in the NieR Re[in]carnation crossover event are canon, whether or not posters want to acknowledge it. The sundered were clearly shown to have lost not only their sense of self, but even basic skills like communication. Notably, the Unsundered - or Ascians, as they would later come to be called - could not communicate with the first of the sundered in any shape, way, or form. Given the ancients (and anyone with an Echo, I might add) could communicate with anything that has a soul, this gives us a fairly good idea as to the state the Sundering actually left people in. They had nothing.

---

The first of the Sundered might’ve been reduced but they also had enough memory and coherence to make cave paintings of Amaurot as well as the actual Sundering with representations of Zodiark and Hydaelyn. I don’t think they were formless ghosts or drones for generations until people slowly reconstituted themselves like the End of Evangelion.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

The first of the Sundered might’ve been reduced but they also had enough memory and coherence to make cave paintings of Amaurot as well as the actual Sundering with representations of Zodiark and Hydaelyn. I don’t think they were formless ghosts or drones for generations until people slowly reconstituted themselves like the End of Evangelion.

---

FFXIV's own writers wrote that stuff for the crossover event. We can't attribute it to Shadowbringers shenanigans either, as the Re[in]carnation side of their deal was implemented well into Endwalker's lifespan. For my part, I think they should've either left that bit out entirely or put it in the main game. Forcing people play the NieR gacha to get lore for this game was kinda scummy.

As for the cave paintings; one wouldn't need to have their previous identities intact to recall those things. It may not even have been the first generation of sundered who made the paintings in the first place, merely people whose souls yet retained some deeply ingrained residual memories of those events and the major players therein. Even if it were, I'm afraid scrawling some half-remembered things on a cave wall isn't indicative of being remotely intact. Even chimpanzees have been known to produce primitive illustrations of things they found particularly horrifying or interesting. Not to say the sundered were as chimps, mind; merely that the ability to draw things is not limited to those of high intelligence or even complete sapience.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Absimiliard

FFXIV's own writers wrote that stuff for the crossover event. We can't attribute it to Shadowbringers shenanigans either, as the Re[in]carnation side of their deal was implemented well into Endwalker's lifespan. For my part, I think they should've either left that bit out entirely or put it in the main game. Forcing people play the NieR gacha to get lore for this game was kinda scummy.

As for the cave paintings; one wouldn't need to have their previous identities intact to recall those things. It may not even have been the first generation of sundered who made the paintings in the first place, merely people whose souls yet retained some deeply ingrained residual memories of those events and the major players therein. Even if it were, I'm afraid scrawling some half-remembered things on a cave wall isn't indicative of being remotely intact. Even chimpanzees have been known to produce primitive illustrations of things they found particularly horrifying or interesting. Not to say the sundered were as chimps, mind; merely that the ability to draw things is not limited to those of high intelligence or even complete sapience.

---

I don't think their point was that they were intact, but that sundered people weren't broken to a point they couldn't form coherent thoughts.

The fact Emet couldn't understand them would imply the Echo wasn't working, but on the other end, they would have lost their memories after their deaths.
I see a few possible explanations:
- The cutscene is wrong and Emet-Selch meant they couldn't form words but still understood them with the echo ;
- There was a time of adaptation where the sundered people were so disoriented they couldn't form coherent thoughts ;
- These memories took a few rebirth to be cleansed, somehow ;
- Zenos isn't the only one who dreams of the Final Days, perhaps it was more common back then.

Pure conjecture though,

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Alenore

I don't think their point was that they were intact, but that sundered people weren't broken to a point they couldn't form coherent thoughts.

The fact Emet couldn't understand them would imply the Echo wasn't working, but on the other end, they would have lost their memories after their deaths.
I see a few possible explanations:
- The cutscene is wrong and Emet-Selch meant they couldn't form words but still understood them with the echo ;
- There was a time of adaptation where the sundered people were so disoriented they couldn't form coherent thoughts ;
- These memories took a few rebirth to be cleansed, somehow ;
- Zenos isn't the only one who dreams of the Final Days, perhaps it was more common back then.

Pure conjecture though,

---

I can see where your interpretation might come from. However, the rest is a fair bit less vague. It makes clears some of the things lost in the sundering. The loss of culture and knowledge implies an incredible level of corporeal and spiritual damage, as does the loss of language as a whole. These are things intrinsically tied not only to civilizations but to individuals. To lose one or any of them is to lose an integral piece of oneself, and to lose them all is to be lost in turn.

https://i.imgur.com/0gSaqmC.png
https://i.imgur.com/0AS9vhu.png

To note, all of these little cutscenes are accompanied by narration from a neutral party. NieR does not make use of the unreliable narrator method.

As to the Echo not working; that appears to be correct, although it is important to note this would not be a problem on the Unsundered's part. Failure to communicate would instead have to come from the early sundered being so utterly ruined as to render even communication via the soul an impossibility.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Absimiliard

NieR does not make use of the unreliable narrator method.

---

...yes it does. Yoko Taro games in general do that a lot, to the point where even the raids he wrote for FFXIV do it at least twice; I'd say unreliable narration might be the main hallmark of his storytelling style through the years. Automata might even be the worst about it, one of the most common plot beats in Automata is 'learning someone lied to us both as characters and people'. Perhaps one of the big turns of the back end of Automata is when we finally get to play as a character that's being honest to both us and themselves.

I haven't played Reincarnation (if you have that would be a wonderful asset to bring to the table here), but from what I've been told and learned about Mama, she's... well, also a liar, albeit mainly in the context of the actual story of the game. When it comes to the context of the collab--basically, a story she tells--is that she's flowery, but detached: she'll big up this story, but it's ultimately second-hand, from a person who cares more about dramatics than veracity. Basically, it's someone telling us Emet's story, as told by Emet... which is how we got it in the first place. So it contains no new information, and anything that appears new could easily be explained as Mama Being Fancy.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Absimiliard

I can see where your interpretation might come from. However, the rest is a fair bit less vague. It makes clears some of the things lost in the sundering. The loss of culture and knowledge implies an incredible level of corporeal and spiritual damage, as does the loss of language as a whole. These are things intrinsically tied not only to civilizations but to individuals. To lose one or any of them is to lose an integral piece of oneself, and to lose them all is to be lost in turn.

To note, all of these little cutscenes are accompanied by narration from a neutral party. NieR does not make use of the unreliable narrator method.

As to the Echo not working; that appears to be correct, although it is important to note this would not be a problem on the Unsundered's part. Failure to communicate would instead have to come from the early sundered being so utterly ruined as to render even communication via the soul an impossibility.

---

From FFXIV, the actual game where all this is relevant:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Minifilia

You recognize these scenes?

---

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Emet-Selch

That I do. Indeed, there was a time when anyone and everyone would.
Until one calamitous day when the world was divided across ten and three reflections, sundering the land and all who dwelled upon it.
And the worst part? No one could remember it. Not really. Just fragments and fleeting memories of an achingly familiar world...
A vision shared of a paradise lost, preserved only in song and scripture and paint...
Once upon a time. Yet here we find ourselves again. To look, learn, and remember...

---

I took from this that the people sundered had definitely lost part of themselves, but they still had "fragments and fleeting memories". They felt like they were missing something and painted it onto the walls. Nothing in Emet-Selch's speech here in the game suggests that immediately following the Sundering, people were blobs who couldn't speak.

You also have to remember that Emet-Selch also refuses to recognize the sundered as actual people and he uses the same "malformed creatures" line in regards to his own grandson. Part of the Echo is being able to connect your soul to the wavelength of another, which I would find difficult if you don't view the other side as human.


From a meta standpoint, the dialogue from NieR may have been written by FFXIV's writers, but I don't think it was necessarily written for FFXIV's audience and meant to be a complete 1:1 retelling of events. Unless one of them outright says that the NieR mobile game overwrites Shadowbringers, I'd hesitate to consider anything that pops up in another game as pure and completely accurate canon. Especially since it appears to have just been a 2-panel blurb to inform players of a different game the context for a crossover event of something they're maybe unfamiliar with.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Cleretic

...yes it does. Yoko Taro games in general do that a lot, to the point where even the raids he wrote for FFXIV do it at least twice; I'd say unreliable narration might be the main hallmark of his storytelling style through the years. Automata might even be the worst about it, one of the most common plot beats in Automata is 'learning someone lied to us both as characters and people'. Perhaps one of the big turns of the back end of Automata is when we finally get to play as a character that's being honest to both us and themselves.

I haven't played Reincarnation (if you have that would be a wonderful asset to bring to the table here), but from what I've been told and learned about Mama, she's... well, also a liar, albeit mainly in the context of the actual story of the game. When it comes to the context of the collab--basically, a story she tells--is that she's flowery, but detached: she'll big up this story, but it's ultimately second-hand, from a person who cares more about dramatics than veracity. Basically, it's someone telling us Emet's story, as told by Emet... which is how we got it in the first place. So it contains no new information, and anything that appears new could easily be explained as Mama Being Fancy.

---

I have indeed had the misfortune of playing NieR Re[in]carnation. It's... aight, yeah, I'mma just be real; it's not great. I really only took it up because I had a feeling they'd shove some lore over there. And sure enough, they did.

I suspect I wasn't clear enough in my assertion regarding NieR Re[in]carnation's lack of the unreliable narrator trope. Allow me to elaborate briefly. Being the type of game it is, there's a lot more telling than there is show. You'll have instances where the narration hams it up, but the game is always very clear on what is actual narration of events versus what is not. You've been correctly informed regarding Mama's predilection for deception within the context of the game's main story, but the same is not true when she is serving purely as a narrator. Flowery words and dramatics are likewise for the most part absent from the crossover event's narration.

So here's the deal. For the most part you are correct in that it does introduce anything new, save one detail: the state of the sundered. As shown in the image above, there's really no mincing words. We get a brief example of what their attempts at communication were supposed to have been like, a line clearly meant to reflect Emet-Selch's feelings on what they'd become (i.e. malformed creatures), and finally a direct statement regarding the Sundering's immediate fallout for those affected by it. The entire crossover event is handled pretty much the same way. Things are kept consistent and clear, with easily recognized lines drawn between what is Emet-Selch's impression of something, what Emet-Selch is doing, and what simply is.

There's some extra stuff in the descriptions of some items, but none of it is of any real consequence. Mostly just neat little tidbits that have no real bearing on anything.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

From a meta standpoint, the dialogue from NieR may have been written by FFXIV's writers, but I don't think it was necessarily written for FFXIV's audience and meant to be a complete 1:1 retelling of events. Unless one of them outright says that the NieR mobile game overwrites Shadowbringers, I'd hesitate to consider anything that pops up in another game as pure and completely accurate canon. Especially since it appears to have just been a 2-panel blurb to inform players of a different game the context for a crossover event of something they're maybe unfamiliar with.

---

The crossover event contains several more panels. Those were simply the two most relevant to the topic at hand. Incidentally, the crossover actually came out several months into Endwalker's life.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

You also have to remember that Emet-Selch also refuses to recognize the sundered as actual people and he uses the same "malformed creatures" line in regards to his own grandson. Part of the Echo is being able to connect your soul to the wavelength of another, which I would find difficult if you don't view the other side as human.

---

Nothing in the game, to my knowledge anyway, indicates your view of a person (or a non-person, so long as they have a soul and serviceable intelligence) has anything to do with whether or not the Echo will work on them.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

I took from this that the people sundered had definitely lost part of themselves, but they still had "fragments and fleeting memories". They felt like they were missing something and painted it onto the walls. Nothing in Emet-Selch's speech here in the game suggests that immediately following the Sundering, people were blobs who couldn't speak.

---

Cave paintings are quite old irl, the oldest we've found being something like 64,000 years I think? They suspect it was the work of a Neanderthal. Our ancestors and their cousins were by no means dumb for the eras in which they lived, but they possessed barely a fraction of the intellectual advancements we enjoy today. One can be of extremely primitive intelligence and still manage to convert the images in their head into art or hum a tune. Heck, even chimpanzees have demonstrated the capacity for drawing.

In any case, I do recall it being said in Shadowbringers the Sundering split all attributes of its victims, not just their physical and aetherial mass. To quote the EN localization, "strength, intelligence, the soul itself--all is halved." Getting all that split fourteen ways is awfully excessive, even for something as advanced as an ancient. How could they not be reduced to mere shells? Doesn't mean they would remain that way. They did rebuild with time. They invented new languages, came up with new forms of art, and even worked out types of magic they were capable of using. Having said this, the key word is time. Who is to say that cave painting was made by the original Sundered? Or even if it was, would that in any way diminish the suffering an event like the Sundering would inflict on those first created by it?

I suppose, to sum things up:
I'm not here to argue on behalf of NieR Re[in]carnation or what have you. I popped in to bring to light something which contains potentially relevant information for the topic at hand, which I believe supports the premise of the Sundering indeed being comparable to, if not in some ways worse than, death. To connect this back to the prior discussion which I seem to have unintentionally derailed: death of personality is death all the same, to many people. Having your body and soul disassembled and reconstituted as something new, even should it somehow wind up with your face or even fragments of your memories, does not mean that thing is you.

Death in Final Fantasy XIV means returning to the lifestream wherein your soul will either be cleansed and reincarnated or broken down into its constituent aether and be counted amongst the building blocks of a new soul. Either way, you're not you anymore. The cleansing process removes your memories, save those burned deep into your soul (as by the Final Days or Kairos). The dissolution process presumably just gets rid of you entirely, but they weren't really clear on how that works. It's just a thing that can happen.

The Sundering split people, physically and spiritually, into fourteen pieces. FFXIV itself tells us these fourteen shards retained little of anything save their residual memories of the Final Days and seemingly bits and pieces of information from the world before. In other words, the Sundered were new people. They were not a continuation of the ancients from which they were created. For practical purposes this is basically a trip to the lifestream with extra steps and some really nasty side effects.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Absimiliard

So here's the deal. For the most part you are correct in that it does introduce anything new, save one detail: the state of the sundered. As shown in the image above, there's really no mincing words. We get a brief example of what their attempts at communication were supposed to have been like, a line clearly meant to reflect Emet-Selch's feelings on what they'd become (i.e. malformed creatures), and finally a direct statement regarding the Sundering's immediate fallout for those affected by it. The entire crossover event is handled pretty much the same way. Things are kept consistent and clear, with easily recognized lines drawn between what is Emet-Selch's impression of something, what Emet-Selch is doing, and what simply is.

---

Yeah, none of that reads to me as a reliable piece of intel, because it's being told through the lenses of two different characters who are, to be brief, massive drama queens. Not only that, but both Nier and FFXIV are happy to twist and accentuate representation even to the point of hiding factual truths for the sake of underlining emotional truths; my favorite example there is the Tsukuyomi fight, but it's also been used in the Ancients' story through way of Venat's post-Elpis scene.

Basically, I don't see that story as having new facts: I see it as having new embellishments.

Now, the interesting thing that one could bring up here was the Twelve. We get their story several degrees removed from that origin point as well, but there are new factual pieces to that 'immediate post-sundering' time, if that's what you care about: namely, the Twelve's yokes. These were things that needed overseeing in the immediate wake of the sundering; therefore, not only can we take as a given that concepts like glaciers, the tides, and time existed, but that they were at that point shaky enough to need some guiding hands to make sure things didn't fall apart. Most of those yokes are largely focused on natural or abstract phenomena, although they all have elements relating to man in some way, but most interesting to me is Byregot: construction and 'fortifying the works of man' only make sense if people are actually building things, which suggests to me an element of stability and advancement that isn't there in Emet's retelling. (And of course, that element's not there in Emet's retelling because he doesn't really care; both his and Mama's retellings of it focus on his emotional pain, and his feelings don't care if they're building things.)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Cleretic

Yeah, none of that reads to me as a reliable piece of intel, because it's being told through the lenses of two different characters who are, to be brief, massive drama queens. Not only that, but both Nier and FFXIV are happy to twist and accentuate representation even to the point of hiding factual truths for the sake of underlining emotional truths; my favorite example there is the Tsukuyomi fight, but it's also been used in the Ancients' story through way of Venat's post-Elpis scene.

---

Once again, Mama's drama queen tendencies only show through when she is actively taking part in the story. Instances of her acting solely as a narrator, of which there are several, see those elements completely removed. Additionally, the FFXIV crossover is, and I stress this, not part of NieR Re[in]carnation's storyline. It's simply a thing that is there in some form, and while presumably also canon to that world (as the NieR raids were on FFXIV's end, per the terms both teams agreed to), it's not something relevant to game's overarching plot at all. It's also not really being told from Emet-Selch's point of view. He is the character upon which the story focuses, but he plays no part in its actual telling outside of being one of several "actors" involved. That was kinda their intention with the crossover - it was to be his story, not necessarily that of the ancients. Not a story he participates in telling, but the story of his part in things. The crossover announcement and promotional materials corroborate.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Cleretic

Now, the interesting thing that one could bring up here was the Twelve. We get their story several degrees removed from that origin point as well, but there are new factual pieces to that 'immediate post-sundering' time, if that's what you care about: namely, the Twelve's yokes. These were things that needed overseeing in the immediate wake of the sundering; therefore, not only can we take as a given that concepts like glaciers, the tides, and time existed, but that they were at that point shaky enough to need some guiding hands to make sure things didn't fall apart.

---

It stands to reason those things, which were part of the world prior to its division, would remain in some form afterward. I'd have been more surprised to learn they were for some odd reason absent. I do find it logical they were unstable enough to require supervision immediately following the Sundering. Perhaps less so time since it's something of a universal constant (gravitational influences notwithstanding, of course), but I suppose that comes with the territory when you divide something into fourteen separate yet connected dimensions. It tracks that a blatantly unnatural event would have equally unnatural consequences.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Cleretic

but most interesting to me is Byregot: construction and 'fortifying the works of man' only make sense if people are actually building things, which suggests to me an element of stability and advancement that isn't there in Emet's retelling. (And of course, that element's not there in Emet's retelling because he doesn't really care; both his and Mama's retellings of it focus on his emotional pain, and his feelings don't care if they're building things.)

---

I'm not seeing the conflict here. We've ample reason to believe the sundered were in extremely poor condition immediately post-sundering, but that doesn't mean they would remain as such forever.

So if you consider the crossover event of no count, what do you consider acceptable sources other than FFXIV itself?