Thoughts on how we might go from WoL to WoD

So I'm thinking we're in for another 2.5 series of events in 4.5. No, not the "bloody banquet" as it was, but rather we fail at performing a duty. So, read me out here.

Let's say in 4.5 MS Part 1 we have a moment with Hydalean and for some reason, our connection to her is severed completely. Thus, we wonder the realm not knowing what to do next. Pretty sure we have to fight Zenos-Elidbus again in Part 1. However, after that and failing Hydalean, we are weakened with no will to go on because we did not bring forth the "flood of light" as the WoD told us in 3.4 and 3.5.

Now onto 4.5 MS Part 2 after weeks of wondering the realm with our lost blessing of light if we do lose it, we come face to face with those of the Light. Hence the WoL getting rekt in the Shadowbringer Trailer by some Amdapor Hard beasties. After a fruitless battle we are beaten truly and unable to go on. Unable to get up. So, in our moment of defeat, we hear the voice once again "Throw wide the gates so that we may pass." We attempt to resist, but we can't. Thus the WoD comes back and talks to us. Asks us that balance must be bought to the shard and in order to do so we must accept the darkness or their darkness to beat back the flood of light. This goes back to the Twin Calamaties which I think now mean the two stars.

So once that is done, we absorb the power of darkness. Getting Kingdom Hearts up in here and use it to beat back the light and thus through 5.0 we seek balance between the Light and Darkness. Balance between Hydalean and Zodiark. But the Ascians as we know, seek to undo that balance.

Thoughts? Maybe I went too farfetch'd?

As I recall the Warriors of Darkness' journey from their Shard to the Source was a one-way trip; by returning to their home world they submitted to the natural flow of the lifestream and properly died, so they aren't likely to come back.

Beyond that I'm not keen on guessing on where things are going to go, because I can't make sense of it all without adding time travel in there, and things get loopy when you do that.

I had a similar thought although I was a bit crazy on my thread xD.

Although personally I think the Zenos-Elidibus battle would be in part 2 of 4.5 as a dungeon boss similar to how Illberd/Griffin was handled in Baelsar's Wall during the Far Edge of fate patches in Heavensward

As for how we'd become the warrior of darkness,I expect that the scene we saw in 5.0's trailer is from a solo instance fight at the end of 4.5 where Zodiark,making use of our severed connection with Hydaelyn,would temper us,allowing us to become the warrior of darkness and fend off Kiribu and the other Amdaporian light beasts coming to kill us.

And much like how we did with Hyadelyn in ARR where we collected the elemenal crystals from Eorzea's primals, we might need to collect crystals for Zodiark from Primals situated in Garlean territory.

Tho I wonder if the assault from the Amdaporian figures are the result of either Hydaelyn or Solus Zas Galvus's actions.

A huge thing to remember is that the previous WoD never stopped being on Hydaelyn's side or ever supported Zodiark. The Ascians have always been implied to be the Echo-users who are allied with Zodiark. The Warriors (whether of Light or Darkness) have always been allied with Hydaelyn. For that to change would require one hell of a set-up that doesn't have any foreshadowing.

Until 4.5 Part one hits, the WoL siding with Zodiark to become the WoD is at the bottom of my predection list.

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Originally Posted by ObsidianFire

A huge thing to remember is that the previous WoD never stopped being on Hydaelyn's side or ever supported Zodiark. The Ascians have always been implied to be the Echo-users who are allied with Zodiark. The Warriors (whether of Light or Darkness) have always been allied with Hydaelyn. For that to change would require one hell of a set-up that doesn't have any foreshadowing.

Until 4.5 Part one hits, the WoL siding with Zodiark to become the WoD is at the bottom of my predection list.

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But Hydaelyn is heavily associated with Light heck she is more or less the source of light for the world.I mean it is still possible to become WoD through Zodiark and then turn on him to be on Hydaelyn's side again but I doubt Hydaelyn could give darkness to her chosen ones.

iirc during the WoDs plot in Heavensward their goal was to kill each beast tribe's primal as many times as they can until the ascians can goad them to pray to Zodiark instead so I assumed it was Zodiark that gave them the power of darkness

.........then again you can become a dark knight while being at Hydaelyn's side so it's a bit confusing

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Originally Posted by MetalSnakeXI1

iirc during the WoDs plot in Heavensward their goal was to kill each beast tribe's primal as many times as they can until the ascians can goad them to pray to Zodiark instead so I assumed it was Zodiark that gave them the power of darkness

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Not per sé. The goal was to have the Warriors of Darkness kill primals to the point the beastmen had to collectively create a new god (primal) to protect them - one more powerful than their individual gods. Though the Warriors of Darkness ultimately failed in this endeavor, Ilberd succeeded with the added bonus of starting a war with the Empire.

Zodiark Himself never factored into it.

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Originally Posted by MetalSnakeXI1

.........then again you can become a dark knight while being at Hydaelyn's side so it's a bit confusing

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The difference is that Dark Knights wield their own darkness - or more accurately their hearts, negativity and all - as a weapon, as opposed to wielding Zodiark's divine power of Darkness.

It's worth noting that even the Ascians want a balance between light and darkness just like Hydaelyn does. However, they also want to spread Chaos. That is sosmething Hydaelyn and us do not want to do.

I like all the points everyone's making. It'll be interesting to see how we transition. But I see Time Travel being a thing. So, time to hopefully not mess up the timelines!

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Originally Posted by MetalSnakeXI1

I had a similar thought although I was a bit crazy on my thread xD.

Although personally I think the Zenos-Elidibus battle would be in part 2 of 4.5 as a dungeon boss similar to how Illberd/Griffin was handled in Baelsar's Wall during the Far Edge of fate patches in Heavensward

As for how we'd become the warrior of darkness,I expect that the scene we saw in 5.0's trailer is from a solo instance fight at the end of 4.5 where Zodiark,making use of our severed connection with Hydaelyn,would temper us,allowing us to become the warrior of darkness and fend off Kiribu and the other Amdaporian light beasts coming to kill us.

And much like how we did with Hyadelyn in ARR where we collected the elemenal crystals from Eorzea's primals, we might need to collect crystals for Zodiark from Primals situated in Garlean territory.

Tho I wonder if the assault from the Amdaporian figures are the result of either Hydaelyn or Solus Zas Galvus's actions.

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That wouldn't work - the Blessing and the Crystals of Light (as in, Hydaelyn's hotline to us) is not what makes us immune to tempering/negative influence from a higher power, but the Echo. The two concepts are interlinked, but also seperate ideas.

As far as Crystals of Darkness go, they are already what the Ascians use as their way of trapping mortals to their will (specifically, it's how they enthrall a host, like what happened with Thancred). It's not clear exactly how the Ascians create them, but it appears it's rather easy to reproduce, or at least, a synthetic replica - the Students of Baldesion did just that, creating a synthetic Crystal of Darkness for Minfilia as a means to free Thancred from Lahabrea's control (although it appears it was never used, becoming just a red herring).

Sadly I think I'm going to hold off trying to theorycraft exactly what leads us down the path of darkness in 5.0, in that we just don't know enough from the teaser, so I'm just going to wait and see where this new Path takes us and deal with the results as they happen - exactly how my character would probably deal with that, come to think of it.

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Originally Posted by Cilia

The difference is that Dark Knights wield their own darkness - or more accurately their hearts, negativity and all - as a weapon, as opposed to wielding Zodiark's divine power of Darkness.

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That's a very good point which I think may be the key here to understanding this: the teaser just shows Derplander becoming a DRK to destroy a light-elemental Kuribu (after all his other Jobs failed), so his monologue about becoming the WoD therefore might be metaphorical rather than literal. Still Hydaelyn's Champion, still in fact literally the Warrior of Light, but needing to balance things by understanding that light and darkness are two sides of the same coin, and for Hydaelyn to be saved, that metaphorical coin now needs to be flipped side on, and DRK is the ultimate expression of that - a Job that uses emotion, both positive and negative, to power it, and learning to become, effectively lawful neutral (to use a DnD term). It's an interesting idea in any event.

If this is our Wings of the Goddess expansion how do you think it will get pulled off? In XI we went to the past via Atmos statues that sucked the player into them and spat them out into the past. Course that same expansion said the world you regularly played in was a fake and that the Shadow Lord won the huge war. The stuggle between us and the "real" time line's future made Atmos angry and he started eat both or something. I do hope this isn't what we don't go that route and end up finding out that the 1.0 Wol has been in a coma this whole time and everything has been a dream and that in reality Bahamut actualy won or something.

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Originally Posted by SannaR

If this is our Wings of the Goddess expansion how do you think it will get pulled off? In XI we went to the past via Atmos statues that sucked the player into them and spat them out into the past. Course that same expansion said the world you regularly played in was a fake and that the Shadow Lord won the huge war. The stuggle between us and the "real" time line's future made Atmos angry and he started eat both or something. I do hope this isn't what we don't go that route and end up finding out that the 1.0 Wol has been in a coma this whole time and everything has been a dream and that in reality Bahamut actualy won or something.

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I sure hope it is not like WotG though, more for pragmatic reasons, as WotG's time travel idea became sadly just a go-to excuse plot for uninspired level and game design (instead of making new zones, here's xxx zone, but in the past! - never mind it's just the same zone with some palette changes!), and the retconning of the player's earlier actions in FFXI's story just put me right off the whole concept, which is a shame as I'm actually very interested in time travel as a literary idea.

Frankly, what makes us the Warrior of Light comes down to the Crystals of light we gathered during the original span of Realm Reborn and restored from Midgardsormr's seal during Heavensward. I would have to assume it would required us to become deattached from the power of those crystals whether that would be a willing choice on our part or if the Crystals are forcefully removed as a factor somehow.

Though there are a number of questions of what being a Warrior of Darkness actually means in the long run. The Warriors of Darkness we encountered in the latter half of Heavensward were just Warriors of Light from another shard, down to the fact that they literally used their Crystal of Light as a means to transition from their shard to the source. What was shown in the Trailer though seemed like it was an entirely different kind of power all together. Yet we are still apparently fighting the Garleans and Ascians so it's not like we seem to be switch over to Zodiark's view in any particular way either. Nor do we know what the significance of these monsters of light from the trailer are either. There are too many questions and until 4.5 I don't think we can do anything other then make assumptions.

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Originally Posted by Enkidoh

I sure hope it is not like WotG though, more for pragmatic reasons, as WotG's time travel idea became sadly just a go-to excuse plot for uninspired level and game design (instead of making new zones, here's xxx zone, but in the past! - never mind it's just the same zone with some palette changes!), and the retconning of the player's earlier actions in FFXI's story just put me right off the whole concept, which is a shame as I'm actually very interested in time travel as a literary idea.

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Time Travel stories are very, very easy to screw up. I would honestly prefer if we avoided ever going down that route on FFXIV

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Originally Posted by Enkidoh

That wouldn't work - the Blessing and the Crystals of Light (as in, Hydaelyn's hotline to us) is not what makes us immune to tempering/negative influence from a higher power, but the Echo. The two concepts are interlinked, but also seperate ideas.

As far as Crystals of Darkness go, they are already what the Ascians use as their way of trapping mortals to their will (specifically, it's how they enthrall a host, like what happened with Thancred). It's not clear exactly how the Ascians create them, but it appears it's rather easy to reproduce, or at least, a synthetic replica - the Students of Baldesion did just that, creating a synthetic Crystal of Darkness for Minfilia as a means to free Thancred from Lahabrea's control (although it appears it was never used, becoming just a red herring).

Sadly I think I'm going to hold off trying to theorycraft exactly what leads us down the path of darkness in 5.0, in that we just don't know enough from the teaser, so I'm just going to wait and see where this new Path takes us and deal with the results as they happen - exactly how my character would probably deal with that, come to think of it.



That's a very good point which I think may be the key here to understanding this: the teaser just shows Derplander becoming a DRK to destroy a light-elemental Kuribu (after all his other Jobs failed), so his monologue about becoming the WoD therefore might be metaphorical rather than literal. Still Hydaelyn's Champion, still in fact literally the Warrior of Light, but needing to balance things by understanding that light and darkness are two sides of the same coin, and for Hydaelyn to be saved, that metaphorical coin now needs to be flipped side on, and DRK is the ultimate expression of that - a Job that uses emotion, both positive and negative, to power it, and learning to become, effectively lawful neutral (to use a DnD term). It's an interesting idea in any event.

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Hmmmm, I think you're right

We're missing a lot of details from 4.5 that it's a bit hard to make a proper theory without enough details to back it up so I'll probably hold on until 4.5 comes in January and see what we'll be doing in part 1

I feel like we're only going to be the WoD in the sense that we'll be fighting to prevent an overflow of light from occurring.

I don't think it's actually going to require much of a change in our methodology in the long run.

Hmm. Maybe we just snap I mean Fordola did ask us how do we keep on doing what we do while staying sane and whatnot without breaking down. Sure we have down time but the game paints it as though we don't really take much if any down time to really unwind. As it's been said in the side stories and in the msq that we always seem to be busy. That being doing the raids, helping the friendly beast tribes, crafting/gathering, or helping the enclave rebuild we're painted as work addicts. So, maybe after the events of 4.5 and I guess a little into 5.0 we just go after this crisis we're taking a vacation go bug Estinien or something.

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Originally Posted by SannaR

Hmm. Maybe we just snap I mean Fordola did ask us how do we keep on doing what we do while staying sane and whatnot without breaking down. Sure we have down time but the game paints it as though we don't really take much if any down time to really unwind. As it's been said in the side stories and in the msq that we always seem to be busy. That being doing the raids, helping the friendly beast tribes, crafting/gathering, or helping the enclave rebuild we're painted as work addicts. So, maybe after the events of 4.5 and I guess a little into 5.0 we just go after this crisis we're taking a vacation go bug Estinien or something.

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Even with downtime the scions overly depends on us for literally everything and all 5 nations now request our services so personally the downtime for the Warrior of Light isn't quite enough to wash out out battle scars and trauma if the dark knight questline conclusion is anything to go by

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Originally Posted by Enkidoh

I sure hope it is not like WotG though, more for pragmatic reasons, as WotG's time travel idea became sadly just a go-to excuse plot for uninspired level and game design (instead of making new zones, here's xxx zone, but in the past! - never mind it's just the same zone with some palette changes!), and the retconning of the player's earlier actions in FFXI's story just put me right off the whole concept, which is a shame as I'm actually very interested in time travel as a literary idea.

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I'm curious now - what retconning are you referring to? I don't recall any part of the WotG storyline as "undoing" or "retelling" anything the player character did. There was a bit of that in the intro to Rise of the Zilart ("Oh, did you forget what ACTUALLY happened at the end of the Shadowlord fight? Let me remind you!"), but not anywhere else in any of the expansions, that I can recall.

If I recall rightly, by the end of WotG, the timeline we were on wasn't EXACTLY the same as the original (such as the whole deal with Lilisette's parents not originally getting the Odin power-up), but by the end we were back on track for Shadowlord's unlikely (and Altana-assisted - she's such a cheater!) defeat, Lilisette's parents were depowered, and everything was set for the player to have handled things in vanilla/RotZ/CoP/ToAU without any changes whatsoever.

Perhaps the gremlin's mockery is a hint, in that the world forgets who we are again via the magical amnesia from 2.0, and we are forced to literally act on our lonesome.

from the trailer it seems like we won a decisive battle with Zenos and the Garleans. Which in turn could start a huge revolution and freedom across the realm. But also in the trailer we see the WoL in an empty and barren landscape.

If I may speculate, we win the battle as I said but then Hydalyn decimates the battlefield killing everyone expect us. Pretty standard. The fact that we know what happened in the battlefield makes us question everything we did. Of course a fight with light (whether internal or external takes place.) Dark Knight makes more sense since in that Storyline (SPOILERS) you actually fight your inner darkness.

I believe the struggle is internal and we finally accept our inner darkness to combat the seemingly nondiscriminatory light which killed everyone on the battlefield.

Hopefully the story takes us on a journey back to Eorzea as the WoD and our character feels like they had forsaken the realm and must commit a dark act to save it from the "Flood of Light". In general we are rewritting history as this same fate happened on the original WoD shard and our new allies might be the WoD we fought in 3.x.

I believe that would honestly make for a better story and would fit in with the themes of Final Fantasy

The big thing with the trailer I think is that it implies backwards time travel, which can be really sloppy in games with shared worlds (even when it's just an alternate past like WoW, and not actively trying to change the past). I could see SE getting around this though with a jump forward in time to show us everything ruined, then a jump back to right before it was all ruined and we go on another path, keeping the overworld consistent and basically sequestering the time travel to a few cutscenes/solo duties.

If I had to guess, the timeline of events would go something like
-start shadowbringers quests
-eventually, defeat solus in a dungeon or something and defeat the empire
-start of the "solo content" portion (cutscenes/solo duties)
-fast forward in time, show everything destroyed by light after having gotten rid of the empire's darkness/chaos
-maybe a bit of an RP dungeon with thancred, he or someone else tells us "hey you ruined everything, you have to go back! You ruined the balance!"
-go back in time somehow to right after defeating the empire
-end of the "solo content" portion
-you tell the scions that future-thancred/whoever told you you ruined everything, and it's decided that you have to become the WoD to fill the spot you destroyed by getting rid of solus+the empire, in order to keep the now-burgeoning light in check. Maybe have us defeat some avatar of Hydaelyn as the 5.0 endboss, who knows.

I am convinced that it will be one or any combination of the following tropes:

Both Order and Chaos are dangerous

God and Satan are both jerks

Nice job breaking it, hero.

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Originally Posted by Jonnycbad

I am convinced that it will be one or any combination of the following tropes:

Both Order and Chaos are dangerous

God and Satan are both jerks

Nice job breaking it, hero.

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I will go for all of the above.

Garleans are trying for Order through control by world conquest and the Alliance is aiming for freedom which we have seen brings Chaos because corrupt individuals are given freedom to act and control the innocent.

Hydaelyn actions for the world of light has been shown to bring destruction still (with the fact she ignored the other worlds which is why she was ignorant of the WoD World being consumed by light until they came to our world to destroy it) and Zodiark will only bring destruction.

From the teaser trailer, it is expect that the WoL basically first breaks the world after successfully defeating the "darkness" that we have spent so long fighting against since 2.0.

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Originally Posted by EdwinLi

I will go for all of the above.

Garleans are trying for Order through control by world conquest and the Alliance is aiming for freedom which we have seen brings Chaos because corrupt individuals are given freedom to act and control the innocent.

Hydaelyn actions for the world of light has been shown to bring destruction still (with the fact she ignored the other worlds which is why she was ignorant of the WoD World being consumed by light until they came to our world to destroy it) and Zodiark will only bring destruction.

From the teaser trailer, it is expect that the WoL basically first breaks the world after successfully defeating the "darkness" that we have spent so long fighting against since 2.0.

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Hydaelyn doesn't have to be a bad guy for us to go WoD. One way or another there was a conflict between Hydaelyn and Zodiark that resulted in the world being split. The thing is, even if she wants to, Hydaelyn cant fix that because she is only a being of light. She, by definition of her nature, cant bring balance. What is needed is a team dark that is open to a final balance and everything we have heard about team Ascian is they want Zodiark to win. The thing is, Zodiark, by his very nature, cant bring balance either.

I think we will be going WoD, not because Hydaelyn is the enemy, but because someone has to take over the role the Ascian's play in maintaining balance. That is in reality the only way we can stop the Ascians permenantly without it triggering a Flood of Light. I do think in Shadowbringers we might get a better learning about why the Darkness is necessary but what is needed is a non antagonistic agent of Darkness who is willing to look on how things could be fixed rather than just carrying on the same conflict that has lead to this situation and caused so many Calamities.

Our characters and the Scions need to find a third option, something that has been the case since we learned Albert's story. I actually have a suspicion that that has been Hydaelyn's intent from the start. Consider the theme song Answers. In it Hydaelyn is basically saying you have to understand and go through the pain of living to understand life's worth and grow. Her words at the very start were her telling us to learn for ourselves.

When we come into the story Hydaelyn is pretty much about to lose. She has lost every encounter so far and she is so weak that in HW she cant even communicate with her champion anymore and needs Minfilia to be her mouth peace. This state is confirmed by the Ascian's dialog stating that she is weak. People think she doesn't care because of what happened to the first shard but if she couldn't even communicate with her own champion on the source it isn't a stretch that she would be completely powerless to stop what was happening on the first. It is only due to being bolstered by the Crystals of Light that she is able to free her emissary to do anything about it.

Currently we are team Light and the Ascians are team Dark. That is a fight no one wins. In the end we need a team Light and a team Dark that can find a middle ground and that almost certainly requires replacing team Dark.

I also feel I should state that Solus himself said he only created the Garlean Empire to create a source of chaos and strife and frankly they have lived up to it. Much of the disasters and even the spread of Primal summoning has been triggered by their aggressive and expansionist approach. That doesn't mean that the Garleans are inherently bad or that most of the empire don't want to achieve order, but that effectively and quite ironically the Ascians have been using achieving that goal as a justification for causing the exact opposite.

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Originally Posted by EdwinLi

Garleans are trying for Order through control by world conquest and the Alliance is aiming for freedom which we have seen brings Chaos because corrupt individuals are given freedom to act and control the innocent.

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"Corrupt individuals are given freedom to act and control the innocent" applies to the Garlean Empire just as much, though. The Legions are given next to no oversight, and act as their own warlords over their fiefs.

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Originally Posted by Jonnycbad

I am convinced that it will be one or any combination of the following tropes:

Both Order and Chaos are dangerous

God and Satan are both jerks

Nice job breaking it, hero.

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Potentially add to this:
Zero-Approval Gambit

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Originally Posted by Belhi

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I never said hydaelyn is evil, i said her actions focus on the Light of existence while Zodiark focus on the Darkness of existence.

Neither Light nor Darkness are good nor evil. They are by their nature just the two aspects of existance a being will struggle to align themselves as.

Hydaelyn by her nature is the a being of pure light while Zodiark by his nature is a being of pure darkness. Due to this they only see one side of the full picture when it comes to existance itself. They are neither Good nor Evil, they are just aspect of life that represents the extremes of either Light or Darkness. The "middle ground" is never met because both sides always only see one side of events. For Ascians they only see the darkness side of events which is why their actions always leads into a risk of a wave of Darkness consuming the world (which has happened in one of the shards which is why Eldibus has to be cautious with his own actions and his other Ascians) while WoL actions lead to a wave of Light if they win due to focusing on the light side of events by elmiminating all Ascians in their world(which we see in WoD world when they finally beaten all Ascians).

It is something better explained in game series such as Shin Megami Tensei.

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Originally Posted by YianKutku

"Corrupt individuals are given freedom to act and control the innocent" applies to the Garlean Empire just as much, though. The Legions are given next to no oversight, and act as their own warlords over their fiefs.

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No matter which side takes the most control, Order or Chaos, corrupt individuals will always find a way into power but just through different methods. Order leads to corruption through absolute control while Chaos leads to corruption through absolute freedom. That is why a balance between Order and Chaos must always be maintained because there needs to be enough Order to bring proper development to make people's life better while maintaining enough freedom where people can help advance outside the current norms of society. Also, to maintain enough control to prevent corrupt individuals from reaching a position of power or abuse their power while enough freedom to stop people in power from abusing their control.

This is another thing better explain in a game series such as Shin Megami Tensei.

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Originally Posted by Belhi

Buncha stuff

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This is...Roughly what I was thinking, though parts of my train of thought are more dependant on timing more than anything. The idea of needing Zodiark to balance Hydelaen made me wonder if she hadn't done anything about the First Shard was twofold. First, she just couldn't do it, since a Flood of Light had to be countered by Darkness, which is Zodiark's domain, and because Hydelaen was completely unable to notice it happening due to...Whatever caused the split in the first place.

Unfortunately, the whole idea of needing Zodiark doesn't become absolutely apparent until it is too late, probably after we deal with Elidibus. At that moment, it doesn't matter if we still fight for the Light, because the Flood of Light is starting, and is working to create the perfect world, which includes things like Kuribu coming to personally deal with us. With everything that has happened and everything going on, we take the only route we believe would work. We become the Warrior of Darkness. We fight back the Flood of Light, trying to find a way to release Zodiark without him causing the same issues that triggered the first split, and in doing so fixing the balance that has so desperately gone out of sync. I suppose the first shard and the Void are completely lost to the ability of Hydelaen and Zodiark to fix, but the two together could probably fix the rest, given time, if we can keep the balance where it needs to be.

I feel like most people would take our turning to the 'Dark' side as a betrayal of Hydelaen, but in reality we are doing what is best for everyone, and like usual, we'll be doing it no matter what happens.

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Originally Posted by EdwinLi

(which has happened in one of the shards which is why Eldibus has to be cautious with his own actions and his other Ascians)

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I feel like Elidibus is more on the side we're about to take than specifically with the Ascians, namely, that balance is absolutely required. He wants Zodiark back, yes, but because Zodiark is *needed.* I suspect he would have been working with Minfillia and the Scions if the positions were reversed. I need to doublecheck a cutscene if I can find it to remember the conversation, though.

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Originally Posted by Ilenya

I feel like Elidibus is more on the side we're about to take than specifically with the Ascians, namely, that balance is absolutely required. He wants Zodiark back, yes, but because Zodiark is *needed.* I suspect he would have been working with Minfillia and the Scions if the positions were reversed. I need to doublecheck a cutscene if I can find it to remember the conversation, though.

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Well, I doubt we'll ever be on Elidibus's side, due to the fact that the balance he seeks hinges on the deaths of all currently living beings. It might be balanced. It might be the way that the planet is "supposed" to be. But the cost is just too high. We might change to WoD for the purpose of seeking balance, but it's almost assuredly the case that the balance we seek will be a different balance than the one Elidibus believes to be necessary.

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Originally Posted by LineageRazor

Well, I doubt we'll ever be on Elidibus's side, due to the fact that the balance he seeks hinges on the deaths of all currently living beings. It might be balanced. It might be the way that the planet is "supposed" to be. But the cost is just too high. We might change to WoD for the purpose of seeking balance, but it's almost assuredly the case that the balance we seek will be a different balance than the one Elidibus believes to be necessary.

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It's a Final Fantasy game, though. There's a long list of characters in previous titles that have been antagonists and have done terrible things only to team up with the protagonists at a later date for the sake of necessity, a change of heart or some other reason. Kain, Beatrix, Kuja, Rufus, Golbez and Gabranth are but a handful of examples.

It might not happen...but if it did, it wouldn't be without precedent. The story and the characters within are constantly evolving. A few years ago it was unlikely that we'd see the Warrior of Light team up with Gaius. Now that is looking to be inevitable due to necessity.

If Solus pulls a Lahabrea and does something extremely stupid that ticks off even Elidibus, a temporary alliance for the sake of eliminating a mutual threat could very well be on the table.

Kain started out as a good guy though, it's not his fault he got brainwashed after a bomb exploded right before an earthquake. Then got re-brainwashed because dark luminary magics while being super jealous of his best friend.

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Originally Posted by SannaR

Kain started out as a good guy though, it's not his fault he got brainwashed after a bomb exploded right before an earthquake. Then got re-brainwashed because dark luminary magics while being super jealous of his best friend.

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That's correct. He isn't to blame for what happened to him, though it wouldn't have been easy for either Rosa or Cecil to deal with the aftermath - and he felt extremely guilty about it all.

Elidibus isn't a friend, though that doesn't mean that the story couldn't play out in a way to have him become an ally in the future. Perhaps there will be revelations regarding Zodiark that will shake even his faith. Perhaps there will be revelations about Hydaelyn that will shake the faith of the protagonists. There's a lot that could happen and I don't see it as an impossibility for Elidibus to change his tune later on.

Well, it's very simple.

You see, time travel may be involved, and Hydaelyn will refuse to observe us in the attempt as it's breaking one of Her laws. Thus, we will be forced to turn to Zodiark and have Him observe us while we're messing around in the past. This is why the forces of Light are attacking us in the Shadowbringers teaser.

Maybe. Possibly. Who knows.

I'm not sure it'd be that seeing as the Warriors of Darkness never lost their crystals or connection to Her when they tried to cause calamity or kill Her chosen. As events so far have shown, she's got a pretty high priority on free will.

It can also be all of the above; are any of these things really all that mutually exclusive?

Hydaelyn and Zodiark can't control much directly, and can't stop their agents from going overboard. If empyrean horrors are flooding in from elsewhere, or even spontaneously generating due to the abundant Light, there's not much She can do about it unless Minfilia steps in. And not only does Hydaelyn probably want the world Her children are thriving in the keep on being a thing, Zodiark probably doesn't want the cosmos He (allegedly) wants power over wrecked before He gets there there. Hypothetically, why wouldn't He offer to break down the barriers of time and space to prevent it? We could worry about beating the figurative and perhaps literal hells out of one another later. And if wielding Darkness saves our world, what is She gonna say about it? Zodiark could be top-shelf evil and if we defeat Him all signs still point to that Hydaelyn would just go back to sleep like She does every Astral era if we shut Him up.

Don't fight for either of them; fight for the reins of history in the hands of man and with anyone who has mortals' backs.
(Which feels weird to say. "Don't fight for Hydaelyn, but as far as allies go, clumsy as She can be, I trust Her as far as things She can control to control them in our favor.")

Light, Dark, it doesn't matter. What matters is how you use it.

For a deity that could potentially have a lot of control over the way history ends up working out, Hydaelyn is never shown to be interested in that. She'd much rather leave that up to the normal everyday people who want to live out their lives as they see fit. Unfortunately, her counterpart (or people who claim to work for her counterpart) seem to want to be involved in directing history every chance they get...

There seems to be a lot of reasoning here that depends on what Hydaleyn could do rather then what she has been doing (or not doing as the case often is). In fact, I could easily see this being something that gets discussed in-game. Up until the Battle of Silvertear Skies, it seems the Garleans' reasoning was running on what they thought eikons could do, rather then what eikons had been doing. I can easily see them extending this kind of reasoning to Hydaelyn and Zodiark as a way for the Ascians to still keep messing with them.

Varis wants history in the hands of humanity, but aside from Ascian involvement, I'm hard-pressed to think of an incident when history wasn't in the hands of humanity to begin with. Finding out that there are gods out there that really do have some measure of control over the world is probably not going to go over well. Nevermind that one of them is imprisoned and the other barely interacts with the world at all. I would not be surprised if Varis ends up messing with Hydaelyn or Zodiark to get rid of their influence on humanity (he thinks) only for that to massively break something.

Obsidian's post just above lead me to a bit of an epiphany. Some folks have been suggesting that Light and Dark represent Order and Chaos, rather than Good and Evil, which is fair enough to suggest. But it suddenly occurred to me that Hydaelyn (who is, in theory, the bastion of Light) wishes for people to do what they want (she espouses FREEDOM, a trait typically associated with Chaos rather than Order). The Ascians, on the other hand, representing Darkness, wish for the people to do what THEY want (they desire CONTROL, a trait typically associated with Order, rather than Chaos). The Ascians guide mortals down a narrow path, quite forcefully at times. Hydaelyn wishes for mortals to choose and follow their own path.

Confusing the issue, of course, is the fact that the path the Ascians want folks to walk down leads to MOAR CHAOS, generally in the form of rampant death and misery. Still, I thought it was an interesting enough contrast to point out.

It all depends on your definition of ORDER and CHAOS, as well.

In the sense of cosmogony, chaos is a state of lacking distinctions. Chaos is a singular, formless mass; the universe in potentia. It takes an act of distinction, of separation, for the universe to come into being in esse. To return to chaos is to unmake the divisions and merge the opposites. This is why Hydaelyn and Zodiark are so often linked not just to order and chaos, but genesis and entropy. Genesis creates distinctions and puts things into ordered bits. Entropy is the gradual breakdown of those bits into chaos, the removal of distinction towards a state of disorder. Many fans theorize that these concepts are vaguely or explicitly in play somewhere. The state of mortal souls, the corporeal world, the elements, etc. etc.

These are one definition of order and chaos.

However, the more distinctions you make (order) the more there is difference and conflict, which gives rise to chaos by a different definition.

If you try to understand order and chaos as both definitions at once, you're gonna have a bad time.

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Originally Posted by Theodric

That's correct. He isn't to blame for what happened to him, though it wouldn't have been easy for either Rosa or Cecil to deal with the aftermath - and he felt extremely guilty about it all.

Elidibus isn't a friend, though that doesn't mean that the story couldn't play out in a way to have him become an ally in the future. Perhaps there will be revelations regarding Zodiark that will shake even his faith. Perhaps there will be revelations about Hydaelyn that will shake the faith of the protagonists. There's a lot that could happen and I don't see it as an impossibility for Elidibus to change his tune later on.

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Yet both of them forgave him rather quickly. I mean heck Cecil forgave the brother he just found out about putting him through everything up to that point. Anyway I don't see us working with Elidibus because I think he'd have offered it by now than just saying hey we both really want the same thing and oh btw you should learn how to use your echo during our first meeting with the guy. The only time we see that he isn't as bad as he's been shown to be is near the end of the waring triad story. If he really wanted us to work with him I'd think he'd of offered to show us how to use the echo more instead of just kinda going ok this talk was fun but now I gotta go.

To add to the Order and Chaos discussion, there are other dichotomies that involve Chaos, but involve something other then Order. We see Rahmu link the Warrior of Light's cause to Harmony instead of Order for instance. And Harmony fits well as an opposite of Chaos and describes Hydaeyn's general disposition pretty well.

Order and Chaos seems to be a very big story and how too much of either side will lead into a very bad result unless a balance is achieved.

FF14 is now entering this story since the introduction of the WoD and been building up on this.

Makes me wonder if Garlean Empire locations may end up being like the Collective in FFMobius where they focus on Absolute Control (Complete Order) of lower ranking citizens resulting in the higher elites of society dictating the life people of lower birth from the day they are born to the day they die with absolute no freedom to choose what they want to do with their life unless they are of the few higher ranking families of society.

The Alliance been representations of Freedom and Garleans been represented as Order (despite their actions resulting in chaos from behind the scenes to create events so they can justify why they need to take control and bring Order to the locations) to the public as their goals in this constant war against the Garlean Empire.