Meteion vs WoW's The Jailer (Spoilers)

Normally, it is poor writing to add in a plot element that was not in any way known earlier in a long story mystery, but in Endwalker we have Meteion introduced for the 1st time as the core trouble behind the End of Days. Over in WoWland we have The Jailer introduced for the 1st time as the puppeteer behind most everything that happened before.

So far, consensus seems to be no real complaints about Meteion being brought into the narrative while there seems to be a lot of griping about The Jailer being brought in as a plot device in WoW.

Thoughts?

Meteion makes a lot of thematic sense, and while the Final Days are newish, we really never knew anything about the Ascians until last expansion anyways so it’s not contradicting anything. Meteion and the mechanics of what was going on were explained fairly well too.

No idea what’s going on in WoW but I feel they did a good job with Meteion, in a way that makes narrative and thematic sense.

the final days had already been established, we just didn't know what caused them.
meteions an answer to a question we're familiar with, afaik the jailor is an answer to a question noone was even aware existed.

I don't think FFXIV players are as lore intensive as WoW players as a whole. The game is also designed differently. WoW is an MMO dropped into an already existing world that has other games and even books written within its world published for it. FFXIV is whatever Banri Oda and Koji Fox want it to be for the next expansion. Oda even dropped tons of dinosaurs into HW just because he really likes dinosaurs. I don't think you can get away with that in WoW.

And to piggyback onto what Mirron said, we only found out that the Final Days were a thing 2 years ago in the previous expansion. And back then, the fact that Zodiark and Hydaelyn were primals also came out of nowhere. People brought the possibility up on the forums, but there wasn't anything concrete until foxy grandpa started giving us exposition dumps. And then in HW before that, the fact that the world is split into shards and when there's a calamity, a shard is returned to the Source came out of left field. There didn't seem to be anything at all alluding to that and it also changed our view on the void, which was something else entirely. And then before that in 1.0, we had no idea that the 2nd moon in the sky which until then was just a neat little fantasy thing, was an ancient superweapon. And when we found out it was an ancient superweapon, we had no idea that it had an ancient dragon primal inside it.

I can't speak for WoW because I know nothing of it, but most of the revelations in FFXIV bring more to the story. At the start of the game, the Ascians were just a bunch of mustache-twirling villains who went around menacing adventurers for literally no reason other than to be evil (which is weird to replay after recent events). They longed to revive their long-dead god who our crystal mom killed and that was the story we had. Now it's a lot richer and the Ascians' actions have been given new light, but a part of me still misses the simple old days before calamities were even a thing and we only had 1 linear uncomplicated world history and the Allagan Empire was just a bunch of snail-eating, road-building onion knights.

As soon as Fandaniel revealed his plan in 5.4, people started guessing that he was responsible for the Final Days.
While Meteion was a new character, she was really just a toy created and protected by Hermes.
Hermes was the real villain this expansion, not Meteion. We even had to beat him thrice (as Zodiark, as Hermes, and as Amon)...
If she wasn't Hermes' puppet and just came out of nowhere it would have been a different story IMO.

Agreed. It's why I didn't like the idea of it being some sort of truly alien thing. By tying it back to the Ancients as a whole, it ties in better.

In part because WoW players will complain about anything Blizzard will release. We "knew" Sylvanas had a boss/powerup/big plan for a while now, since around Legion when she made a deal with Helya. Of course we didn't have his name, but people saying "wow intorducing a villain now?!" are just shortsighted : our characters obviously are not omniscients.

Also in part because the Jailer is the basic mustache twirling villain: he was meant to have *reasons* to want to do what he wants. Turns out they explained that he was doing that, because he wanted to take *his revenge* because he was jailed... For doing what he's trying to do now. What's the reason then? Unmaking everything for shit and giggles? Getting Azeroth because that's apparently the best loot the multiverse wants? That's literally what the Burning Crusade wanted, but it's undeads instead of demons.
Let's not add the whole"morally gray" of Sylvanas when it turns out everything she did bad was because the Jailer had a part of her Soul and could control her, undermining every bit of character progression she had since post-LK.

While in EW, most of the lore that has been added was without retcons and with plausability. The blessing of light / echo is probably the only grip I have.

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Originally Posted by Garnix

As soon as Fandaniel revealed his plan in 5.4, people started guessing that he was responsible for the Final Days.
While Meteion was a new character, she was really just a toy created and protected by Hermes.
Hermes was the real villain this expansion, not Meteion. We even had to beat him thrice (as Zodiark, as Hermes, and as Amon)...
If she wasn't Hermes' puppet and just came out of nowhere it would have been a different story IMO.

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I don't exactly agree. First, because Amon goes to great lengths to tell us he refuses to be Hermes. Just saying "they share a soul so they're the same person" is just wrong, it'd be like throwing Gaia under the bus because she used to be an ascian.
Then, because Hermes just had a wish to know more about other life and find the meaning of life, but turns out it was depressing, and he was already ill fitting in the society. So he decided to give the Ancients a taste of their own medicine (deciding what lives/dies) through Meteion, and let them prove they were good for the natural order, if the natural order was to die.

I think this is a lot simpler to explain than people are making it. While I agree mostly with what was said about how well Meteion was wrote in and how she was an answer to the question we had long had.

This is Final Fantasy one of the oldest tropes in the franchise is “Hey hey look over here look at this bad guy right here!” And then it gets revealed in the 11th hour that no the real threat is this other person over here.

Adel and Ultimecia (FF8)
Kuja and Garlond (FF9)
Kuja and Necron (FF9)
Empire and Ardyn (FFXV)
Sin and Yu Yevon (FF10)

This list goes on and on, so for those who are FF franchise fans, this was not a “out of left field move” for the franchise sure it was a little surprising but it was really well done

So... Adel was revealed after we learn of Ultimecia. And Adel was never set up as a major threat. Edea was (who you may be confusing her with), but even then we learn about Ultimecia pretty early on, and the real threat is just... you know, Sorceress. For Necron he isn't the real threat of IX, no two ways about it. And Yu Yevon is just the central part of Sin, so they aren't exactly different things to be threatened by.

As for Meteion I wouldn't really call her a threat that beats the real threat, mostly because for ages we had zero knowledge on Zodiark. Garlemald was never the main bad guy, so they don't really have room to be upstaged. But the Ascians have had a huge mystery for... pretty much their entire existence in the game. It wasn't until we hit Shadowbringers we get an idea of why they want Zodiark, and in that same moment we find out "but wait, there's more" pretty much. So I do think there is a subtle but distinct difference between this game and other "Giant Space Flea From Out Of Nowhere" types.

Might want to change the title of the topic though! It might be kinda spoilerish if you relate The Jailer as a last boss and Meteion's name!

On topic... It's more than just the character Meteion herself. The threat is not her (as a character) but an existential situation that goes beyond anybody's control (unless its proven wrong by future narratives). Meteion is just a mean for this power to manifest, as well as contextualizing that Fandaniel is indeed "shallow" like that but for a very deep reason. That's why it works without extensive build up across expansions.

Meteion was slightly hinted at especially in Shadowbringers with the Final Days. We just didn't know what the cause was. In Crystal Tower there's also morse code that decrypts to something she oftens says: "It's all wrong!". Ever since the end of 1.0 and ARR, we knew the Ascians wanted to bring back Zodiark we just didn't know why. In general there was a natural progression to her.

I used to play WoW so I can speak on this. Back in Legion, Vol'jin chose Sylvanas to take over the Horde with his dying breath. Nobody knew why except the spirits told him. In BFA then the troll god of death started mentioning how she had a secret boss. And she was acting erratic, but there were hints she was serving someone else.

In Shadowlands that's revealed to be the Jailer. There are a few issues with the Jailer though. The first is that he's retroactively retconned to have secretly been manipulating events thoughout history the entire time. That he was secretly behind the Legion, the Scourge, etc. But there's never been any hints of this ever. WoW up until WOTLK was pretty much following off of Warcraft 3's storyline, and in WOTLK when you fight the Scourge there's no hints of the Jailer at all. Now they're retroactively acting like The Lich King Arthas was trying to defend Azeroth against the Jailer even though he never mentioned anything of the sort. They're telling us the Nathrezim secretly served and manipulated the Legion and its Demon Lords the entire time, even though again there's no hints of it. Even the Appendices of the Warcraft 3 manual, which is what Blizzard had to dig into so they didn't have to finish off the Legion storyline for three expansions after WOTLK, nothing about the Shadowlands or the Jailer or First Ones etc is ever mentioned. The problem with WoW's story is after WOTLK it started to become more centered around its player retention model, which is to drag things out as long as possible and timegate everything. WoW's other big issues is they constantly retcon things to suit their needs. I could go on for days about WoW and Blizzards fall from grace but that's not what the topic is about.

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Originally Posted by Dagget

So far, consensus seems to be no real complaints about Meteion being brought into the narrative while there seems to be a lot of griping about The Jailer being brought in as a plot device in WoW.

Thoughts?

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Meteion and Zovaal were introduced too fast, IMHO. I have also a problem with Meteion that ... he/she/it became way too powerful in a very short period of time. Wiping out the entire life on a planet is crazy.

But i find Meteion was way better introduced than Zovaal. The problem with Zovaal is that he is a boring standard villain. In Shadowlands the player gets told that he is the mastermind behind all troubles since Warcraft 3. But ingame he is ... stupid. You will never ever believe that he is a mastermind of something because he stumbles some one-liners like Arnold Schwarzenegger in a 1980ish action movie. Such a stupid villain would never be a danger for anyone. But why is he a successful villain? Because his enemies .. and your allies are more stupid than he is. So one not so smart villain overhelms totaly stupid "good guys". That is the story of Shadowlands in a nutshell. :)

But because your allies ... bilion years old powerful beings are so stupid this is totaly immersion breaking. It is unbelievable how your allies can act like that. Elune could save the lives of millions of nightelves. But she let them die because she wanted that the souls of those nightelves would be a kind of fuel for the Ardenweald. What happened? Zovaal got the souls of millions of nightelves. But because nobody of this billion years old powerful beings in Shadowlands told Elune that the arbiter is dead. So every soul which enters the Shadowlands will be directed into the maw.

Maybe six years old kids could be impressed with such a story but not teenager or adulds.

Cheers

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Originally Posted by Dagget

Normally, it is poor writing to add in a plot element that was not in any way known earlier in a long story mystery, but in Endwalker we have Meteion introduced for the 1st time as the core trouble behind the End of Days. Over in WoWland we have The Jailer introduced for the 1st time as the puppeteer behind most everything that happened before.

So far, consensus seems to be no real complaints about Meteion being brought into the narrative while there seems to be a lot of griping about The Jailer being brought in as a plot device in WoW.

Thoughts?

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I think it's more the Jailer having been retconned to be behind a lot of stuff. Whereas Meteion was only behind one event, the Final Days, and nothing else, retconning absolutely nothing, since everything that followed was a result of a domino effect. She pushed the first domino, but had her hand in nothing else.

The Jailer is also worse because his introduction opens up a story that was already done just to retcon it real badly.

Warcraft 3's story was done, Wrath and Legion for better or worse put a pin in all its plot threads. The Jailer popping up just to be behind it all not only undoes that, but it does so in an insane and nonsensical way.

The plot of Warcraft 3 is now a bunch of pawns of the Jailer stumble around fighting each other despite all working for the same dude. Its just dumb and totally removes every characters agency

The jailer has been introduced as the god of death (on an entirely new pantheon) after the original Pantheon\\'s death titan, Argus, was inexplicably killed by us in the same patch he was introduced. He had been corrupted, so it had to happen. There seems to be no explanation for whether his responsibilities overlapped with the jailer\\'s or how they were both titans of death. (I am conflating the titan/death pantheons here but there is no dividing line I have been able to find and as of 9.0 there was no way to compare "power levels" so the threat he is making is impossible to measure.)

Meanwhile, the planet has had a titan sword sticking out of it for two expansions now with the rogue titan "jailed" in another dimension that is still visible in the skybox of every zone.

So they have developed this new, extremely flat character on top of the story that was developing with actual titans that have been in the lore since forever.

I would compare the jailer to Ranjit in Shadowbringers. He is ever present, ever watching, he is on the hunt for you constantly, he never really seems villainous because there is no way to assess his motives.

When you meet him, he is from a different planet with different rules, and you are already disoriented enough. In both experiences (going to the Maw, going to the First) you\\'ve been kidnapped or held against your will somehow. Ranjit is like the jailer of the first only more relatable because at least he was loyal to Eulmore, had a backstory, and cared about all the Minfilias he felt guilty for not being harsh enough toward in their training.

With Hydaelyn/Zodiark, it was always going to end with both eventually killed. They could have been the same entity, there could have been an older entity/pantheon/force, corruption of one or both, or a third party. I thought Meteion made total sense and can see how Venat would incorporate the emotionally affecting star showers into her vision for Hydaelyn.

You could contrast the jailer\\'s lack of clear motivations in WoW to Fandaniel/Zenos\\' pact to bring on the Final Days. We knew and found out more about how that plan came to be and how it unfolded. That was the entire story from 80-83. We made observations, went back in time, and the way we reached Meteion unfolded throughout the rest of the story made sense. They even took us back to the actual source of the problem at t=0! I wasn\\'t expecting that AT ALL!

I am not sure if the WoW 9.1 or 9.2 patches expand upon the jailer/maw\\'s purpose or how it fits into the system, or its relevance if the "rules of reality" are changed, or what the limiting bounds for that change are (at least in FFXIV it is explained through rejoinings... and we have seen a place that experienced an elemental flood, and 90% of it is pretty much gone). There is nothing like that to compare to in WoW that they have decided to compare reality-unmaking to in the two patches since this guy was introduced.

ETA: I am not the one to come up with the Ranjit/Jailer comparison but I cannot for the life of me find the original post I saw. It was on a gaming forum. If anyone has this that'd be helpful. Sorry for copying. It was just such a good analogy that I haven't been able to forget it.

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Originally Posted by Larirawiel

Meteion and Zovaal were introduced too fast, IMHO. I have also a problem with Meteion that ... he/she/it became way too powerful in a very short period of time. Wiping out the entire life on a planet is crazy.

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It was explained why she grew so powerful so fast, it's because she was the first being able to freely use Dynamis, and that concept was introduced this expansion only afaik.

Also, they also pinpointed a very few selection of people knew something about Dynamis, Hermes being probably the sole expert in the area. Even Venat knew close to nothing about it, and Meteion being the only one to properly manipulate Dynamis at will is what made her insanely powerful.

Remember, even to the present days, there was only 1 entity was aware of it's existence, that Arkasodara I forgot it's name, Nadhila or something like that, and she only knew as a theory of what it was.

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Originally Posted by BlackClaud

It was explained why she grew so powerful so fast, it's because she was the first being able to freely use Dynamis, and that concept was introduced this expansion only afaik.

Also, they also pinpointed a very few selection of people knew something about Dynamis, Hermes being probably the sole expert in the area. Even Venat knew close to nothing about it, and Meteion being the only one to properly manipulate Dynamis at will is what made her insanely powerful.

Remember, even to the present days, there was only 1 entity was aware of it's existence, that Arkasodara I forgot it's name, Nadhila or something like that, and she only knew as a theory of what it was.

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Akasa or dynamis was basically only a theory that was only proven with the Elpis flowers during the ancient times, problem is that it was stated to be weaker than aether during a time the world was bursting with aether so generally speaking was pretty useless and incompatible with the Ancients due to them being filled with aether that negated dynamis

When the Final Days appeared first dynamis was used on a very subtle way making creation magicks go crazy, only when Zodiark was gone when dynamis was used more bluntly (and probably due to stockpiled power during 13k years), due to people having less aether thus making them more vulnerable to dynamis direct action

Meteion works because she isn't retconned in to be the cause of everything bad in history the way the Jailer was. She was only responsible for the Final Days, something that we didn't know the cause of beforehand anyway so of course the person behind it was going to be new. And she wasn't a secret chessmaster manipulating the Ascians all along who deprived them of their agency as characters, the way that half of WoW's villains were actually working for this guy Blizzard just made up a year ago.

Meteion also works on a thematic level since the WoL being a symbol of hope fighting against despair has been present since at least ARR.

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Originally Posted by Larirawiel

Meteion and Zovaal were introduced too fast, IMHO. I have also a problem with Meteion that ... he/she/it became way too powerful in a very short period of time. Wiping out the entire life on a planet is crazy.

But i find Meteion was way better introduced than Zovaal. The problem with Zovaal is that he is a boring standard villain. In Shadowlands the player gets told that he is the mastermind behind all troubles since Warcraft 3. But ingame he is ... stupid. You will never ever believe that he is a mastermind of something because he stumbles some one-liners like Arnold Schwarzenegger in a 1980ish action movie. Such a stupid villain would never be a danger for anyone. But why is he a successful villain? Because his enemies .. and your allies are more stupid than he is. So one not so smart villain overhelms totaly stupid "good guys". That is the story of Shadowlands in a nutshell. :)

But because your allies ... bilion years old powerful beings are so stupid this is totaly immersion breaking. It is unbelievable how your allies can act like that. Elune could save the lives of millions of nightelves. But she let them die because she wanted that the souls of those nightelves would be a kind of fuel for the Ardenweald. What happened? Zovaal got the souls of millions of nightelves. But because nobody of this billion years old powerful beings in Shadowlands told Elune that the arbiter is dead. So every soul which enters the Shadowlands will be directed into the maw.

Maybe six years old kids could be impressed with such a story but nut teenager od adulds.

Cheers

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Very short amount of time? It was millenia ever since she left Elpis to join her sisters until the present days.

Meteion also isn't a singular being - it's an untold number, maybe hundreds or thousands, of beings that can hook into each other to become a lot more intelligent than each one individually. Unfortunately, Hermes failed to put any kind of fail-safe in there, so when each unit failed, the emotion that they generated was despair and horror, and that soon became the only emotion that each Meteion could feel - all radiating from each other.

The local Meiteon seems to have been drowned out by them, but she was still in there, desperately trying to change her sisters all that time, probably because she knew that destroying the world would make Hermes even sadder than his experiment's failure. But it was too late - all the sisters were overwhelming and she lost control of the meta mind.

If the local Meiteion is the "bluebird of happiness" then her sisters became the "ravens of despair" which is a pretty neat metaphor.

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Originally Posted by Dagget

Normally, it is poor writing to add in a plot element that was not in any way known earlier in a long story mystery, but in Endwalker we have Meteion introduced for the 1st time as the core trouble behind the End of Days. Over in WoWland we have The Jailer introduced for the 1st time as the puppeteer behind most everything that happened before.

So far, consensus seems to be no real complaints about Meteion being brought into the narrative while there seems to be a lot of griping about The Jailer being brought in as a plot device in WoW.

Thoughts?

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The Jailer is terrible writing because he was literally retconned into completed storylines.
Another way to put it is that they wrote in the Jailer as the mastermind of masterminds to try and elicit an emotional response from the players who lived through the events the Jailer is supposed to have been responsible for. He would otherwise be of absolutely zero interest to the players if they didn't retcon him as the villain responsible for everything bad.

Blizzard tried to make him out to be the "root cause" of every single bad thing to happen in the warcraft universe.
There was absolutely no hints or mysteries whatsoever at any point in the franchises history that pointed towards a "mastermind behind the mastermind behind the mastermind" that they're trying to portray the Jailer as being.
He was entirely shoehorned in specifically because the Shadowlands needed a big bad and done so badly that the community feel like the older stories are being disrespected.

On Meteion, using spoiler tags just in case you havent finished the MSQ entirely

Meteion works because there has always been a mystery as to what causes the Final Days. We knew only that Zodiark saved the planet from it but didn't defeat the source of it.
We've been getting hints that something isn't right with aether as early as ARR (I didnt play 1.0, sadly, so i have no frame of reference prior to ARR) in which the Scions are investigating a 'thinning of the aether'.
At the time, we are led to believe that the Primals being summoned is what leads to a thinning of the aether. Corroborated by the fact that Primals do in fact drain aether from the land while alive. So we assume that thinning aether indicates a primal summon. And then we find primals have been summoned.
But then we later find out that the aether is still undergoing a thinning event despite no primals being active anywhere. The Scions keep investigating that but can find no cause for it.

Then we get to Endwalker. During which we re-trigger the Final Days and learn one important factoid from Y'shtola, that when a person changes, their aether "crumbles and rots away". Begging the question, if aether is life then how does a creature exist without it?
That question sets up dynamis, of which we get a suggestion of what it might it be. But even before all of that, we have a suggestion of a non aether based emotion based power in the Elpis flower when Hydaelyn ensures that we recieve it in Labyrinthos.

So the comparison between the Jailer and Meteion's inclusion to the story is that there were unsolved mysteries being set up so that discovery of Meteion answers those mysteries, while the Jailer is shoehorned in with a vapid "The Jailer was behiind everything the whole time and was such a perfect strategist that he left absolutely no trace of his existence until now".

Oh and Meteion herself was that which was going to end the universe and we needed to fight against her despair to win, while the Jailer is "hurdur if i get to the thing, i will rule the universe!"

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Originally Posted by Dagget

Normally, it is poor writing to add in a plot element that was not in any way known earlier in a long story mystery, but in Endwalker we have Meteion introduced for the 1st time as the core trouble behind the End of Days. Over in WoWland we have The Jailer introduced for the 1st time as the puppeteer behind most everything that happened before.

So far, consensus seems to be no real complaints about Meteion being brought into the narrative while there seems to be a lot of griping about The Jailer being brought in as a plot device in WoW.

Thoughts?

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I previously had thought that you cant really develop and feel invested in a character throughout the course of a single expansion, you just dont have enough time.

But Emet Selch proved me wrong, a character that mostly appeared a bit before shadowbringer and was not only a great character, but because one of my favorite characters in any video game, and I did love his very rational points. So you know, if we were given the option, I would have joined him instantly and burned down all the shards together xd


As for meiteion, I didnt really feel invested or care about her, I disliked the early cutsie behavior so I couldnt possibly get attached and her character was very simple and dumb since she was just a familiar. The fact that she got affected strongly by negative emotion was clearly a hint she might be related to the end of days, at the end, I just wanted to kill her so she stops, not rly emotionally invested in her character.

The jailer on the other hand is beyond a joke, it is the typical villain that goes around saying "your soul shall be mine", has barely any backstory and was introduced only to be killed in the same expansion, the writing is simply atrocious in WoW at this point and the ever changing lore, history and characters mean an incredibly unstable universe that nobody can be invested in anymore and it cant be salvaged at this point imo

My problem with the story is, that they also introduced this new universal Power (forgot the name) out of nowhere and it is the cause of all evil.

It would have been nice to have it hinted somewhere before. Like, reading/ hearing about something else beside aether that has to exist in the universe.
It could have been done in the omega raids, or mentioned by Raha because he had the allag knowledge.

Speaking of universal powers...

Dynamis isn't intrinsically evil, any more than Aether is intrinsically good. It's just a reflection of what you have in your soul. Meteion just so happened to absorb a lot of the ambient despair from the multitude of dying civilizations that she encountered. This is not intrinsically any different than the Elpis blooms that you bring forth as the spirit of hope (this expansion really doubled down on Greek philosophy).

Most fantasy worlds don't emerge fully formed from their creators' brains. They evolve over time. This is even more true in a game that is essentially a love letter to the rest of the series. Characters or places are pulled from the aether as it were as homages, and then are made to fit in with the broader continuity of the story over time. Dynamis happens to be a reference to FFXI, and its presence here shouldn't be any more surprising than Omega and Shinryu showing up to fight each other.

I think that it's a fantastic addition to the game's lore. There are plenty of players who are now starting to re-evaluate what their chosen jobs actually are doing the context of this new energy system, simply because Aether is too cold and dispassionate of a concept to explain what they do. Or sometimes you walk the line between both, as DRK does with the Flame in the Abyss.

I think that it's unreasonable to expect to have all of the pieces of the puzzle available in advance. The first challenge that you're tasked with is finding out what caused the Final Days. As it stands, the voice that you hear in your head during your vision after obliterating Zodiark narrows down the possibilities significantly. I think that if you had encountered Meteion previously, there wouldn't be a mystery at all.

Learning new things about the world is an important part of travelling.

Others have pointed out that dynamis as a concept has existed before in other storylines of the game, notably in the dancer storyline. Aetherial currents are not new (ask any fishers.) Aether corruption is not new (that goes back to ARR.) Other forces besides aether are not wholly new, but were not understood or ever given a name.

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Originally Posted by Catwho

Others have pointed out that dynamis as a concept has existed before in other storylines of the game, notably in the dancer storyline. Aetherial currents are not new (ask any fishers.) Aether corruption is not new (that goes back to ARR.) Other forces besides aether are not wholly new, but were not understood or ever given a name.

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Ohh, you are right.
Then with this I have nothing more to complain about the story.

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Originally Posted by Catwho

Others have pointed out that dynamis as a concept has existed before in other storylines of the game, notably in the dancer storyline.

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the worst thing about not having new job quests is we arent able to explore jobs like drk or war through the lense of what we now know about dynamis ;n;

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Originally Posted by Lyth

Speaking of universal powers...

Dynamis isn't intrinsically evil, any more than Aether is intrinsically good. It's just a reflection of what you have in your soul. Meteion just so happened to absorb a lot of the ambient despair from the multitude of dying civilizations that she encountered. This is not intrinsically any different than the Elpis blooms that you bring forth as the spirit of hope (this expansion really doubled down on Greek philosophy).

Most fantasy worlds don't emerge fully formed from their creators' brains. They evolve over time. This is even more true in a game that is essentially a love letter to the rest of the series. Characters or places are pulled from the aether as it were as homages, and then are made to fit in with the broader continuity of the story over time. Dynamis happens to be a reference to FFXI, and its presence here shouldn't be any more surprising than Omega and Shinryu showing up to fight each other.

I think that it's a fantastic addition to the game's lore. There are plenty of players who are now starting to re-evaluate what their chosen jobs actually are doing the context of this new energy system, simply because Aether is too cold and dispassionate of a concept to explain what they do. Or sometimes you walk the line between both, as DRK does with the Flame in the Abyss.

I think that it's unreasonable to expect to have all of the pieces of the puzzle available in advance. The first challenge that you're tasked with is finding out what caused the Final Days. As it stands, the voice that you hear in your head during your vision after obliterating Zodiark narrows down the possibilities significantly. I think that if you had encountered Meteion previously, there wouldn't be a mystery at all.

Learning new things about the world is an important part of travelling.

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Perfectly put.

Also, if I may add, Yoshida reiterates from times to times in his interviews that he doesn't like the plot or elements of the story to become overly complex that they start to be difficult to understand. He often points that if fans and players alike can tell and remember the story in a straightforward and fairly simple, direct manner, then this is exactly what he is aiming for.

And it seems the concept of Dynamis adds in such regard. Aether was starting to become contrived, with various types, memory aether, soul aether, and even more like celestial aether, etc... so, from this perspective it's understandable why the producers and writing team did prefer to come up with a new, fairly simple and direct concept (as Yoshida likes) to be the basis for development further ahead, instead of yet again create another ramification of aether definition. It also seems something fresh, new and it adds to our curiosity about what are the possibilities and how much can we achieve, how far can we reach, with this new attribute.

Ranaa actually has new dialogue talking about how you went to Thavnair. Unfortunate that she doesn't have anything to say on the similarities between the Totentanz and Final Days.

Meterion was an okay character but inappropriate as the final antagonist. She was introduced too late. Endwalker's ending was a rehash of ShB's ending with the heroes pursuing the villain to their inaccessible hideout (final zone) and then talking to the shades of a long dead civilization, and then going through a final dungeon that depicts said civilization's end as the bad guy narrates, and then the heroes try reasoning with the villain and are knocked out one by one... except that Meterion was not endowed with a charismatic voice actor like Emet was, and fails to carry climax. Meterion will be forgotten. The final antagonist should have been simply Zenos or Zodiark, as they had a presence throughout the story and are more interesting.

The Jailer in WoW is also a forgettable character like Meterion, but the Jailer is way more offensive because he comes along with a dozen awful, nonsensical retcons (if the Dreadlords were serving him all along, then why were the Dreadlords fighting against the Lich King if the LK was supposed to be another agent of the Jailer?)

Pretty sure the song of oblivion is referenced in a lvl 60 bard quest lol. Meteion was mostly shown to be more of a force of nature that existed far beyond your time. Hermes already sent out like thousands of her before you even arrive, and by that point all the Meteoins are a hive mind of doom and gloom. It's not really immediate villain of instant power when you consider it like that.

I also consider it more similar to WoW's Ulduar story where you find out the Old God's corrupted the OG Titan races. The Jailer on the other hand has mostly been used as a plot device to make Sylvanas the main character of WoW for some reason. Meteion naturally ends up filling in the blanks while The Jailer does the exact opposite, the story is adjusted to justify his existence

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

If you talk to Sidurgu after the end of the MSQ, he's one of the few NPCs you can actually discuss the matter with and he does question a possible connection between dynamis and the dark arts...though I suppose we'll have to wait and see if they build on that.

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Interesting, and it's definitely something I could see being the case. If Dynamis is powered by emotions, then a DRK, who harnesses their emotions for power, is a master of a form of Dynamis. The same could be said of Warrior, who unleashes their inner rage. It's possible that BLU may also be a manipulator of Dynamis, considering that while you are able to copy the moves of monsters, you'd also need to know the circumstances of how and why they use them before being able to harness them yourself.

I posted this elsewhere and felt like it would be fitting in this thread. Since I wrote it up already, I felt like I might as well throw it in here.

No, Meteion is not like the Jailer and her relatively late introduction isn't bad, because Meteion isn't the villain. The "villain" is philosophical argument that corrupted her, and it certainly didn't come out of nowhere; it's been a part of the game since the beginning.

She's just a piece of said philosophical argument, which serves as the thematic center of not only EW, but XIV itself. In real life ー in the face of our increasingly secularized world, religious institutions argued that a loss of faith would lead to a loss of purpose in living and self-destructive nihilism. For the faithful, God provides meaning, and Meteion's creators are the closest things we have to gods in FFXIV, literally shaping their world as they see fit in paradise. But even here among the gods, Hermes could not find the answer for why we live. Thus, he looks to the stars for answers, but what Meteion finds is emptiness: nihilism, and as Hermes falls to despair, so does Meteion, when her god cannot provide her purpose.

But that is because the answer to living was always within ー internal, not external. The story is literally about exploring Nietzsche's concept of "God is dead," where we find that every one of the gods in our world, once examined, are not really gods at all, and thus it falls on us define the purpose of our existence.

• In ARR, we are questioned why we don't simply call down the Twelve in defense, if our gods are real. The entire casus belli of Garlemald is to force us at gunpoint to abandon our gods, after all.
  "For the world of man to have meaning, man must own the world!"
  
• In Heavensward, Ishgardians struggle with the fact that the Halonic Church that's literally defined their purpose for living for the past millennia is based on a lie.
  "You reject my divinity, yet what have you to offer my people in its stead? Bitter truth? Virtuous suffering?"
  
• In Stormblood, we meet Zenos, who represents the dark mirror half to the existentialism of the Scions, and what people feared existentialism would bring about ー uncaring humans who answer to no god, and thus are morally inculpable to whatever cruelty they desire.
  "We tower above the gods! You by your gift, I by my might! And before the Resonant the gods shall be made to kneel!"
  
• In Shadowbringers, the entire basis of our counterargument against Emet-Selch is an affirmation of existentialism; it is neither Gods nor Ancients that gives value to our lives, it is found within ourselves.
  "We define our worth, not the circumstances of our creation!"
  
• And finally, in Endwalker, we discover that even the benevolent mothercrystal that watched over and protected us ― the closest thing to a true god in the setting of XIV ― was nothing more than a construct crafted by humanity to end our own godhood, urging us to find our own strength and Answers within.

As a side note, notice how the specific statement that causes Zenos to rethink his approach is Alisae's assertion that he needs to start considering the needs and wants of others. In essence, she's arguing that existentialism still needs to be married with empathy, or else you become a caricature of it. Theologists in real life argue all the time that without a god to constrain our morality and define our purpose, we will devolve into bloodthirsty, selfish animals driven purely by our whims. Sound familiar at all?

Anyway, these themes definitely have been established since the very beginning of the game. Meteion is not and was not meant to be the final antagonist or even an antagonist at all in a thematic sense, she merely serves as the vessel through which the antagonist is actually delivered, because it's quite difficult to punch philosophical concepts in the face, you see, and this is still a game in the end. That's why her relatively late introduction does little to harm the narrative integrity of the story, because if anything, she's just another victim to the self-destructive nihilism that the Scions are, and have been trying to defeat all along through existential nihilism. And in the end, they emerge victorious ー they cast away gods and faith in a supreme being for faith in themselves, each other, and you, which is exactly how you as the WoL are able to reach Meteion at the end of the universe.

FFXIV does a much better job at working new concepts into established lore. All the crazy revelations we got in ShB and EW felt like expansion and explanation of existing lore rather than feeling like BS retcons. Yes, the whole Meteon thing came out of nowhere fairly close to the end but it also fit the themes and made sense in context. Compare to WoW where most of the story in the past few expansions, and especially in Shadowlands has felt incredibly forced and unbelievable.

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Originally Posted by KatsuraJun

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Of all the philosophy in this game that was great I hope this is the one that is utterly not true as then I can't play it anymore because it goes completely against my religion.

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Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

I don't think FFXIV players are as lore intensive as WoW players as a whole. The game is also designed differently. WoW is an MMO dropped into an already existing world that has other games and even books written within its world published for it. FFXIV is whatever Banri Oda and Koji Fox want it to be for the next expansion. Oda even dropped tons of dinosaurs into HW just because he really likes dinosaurs. I don't think you can get away with that in WoW.

And to piggyback onto what Mirron said, we only found out that the Final Days were a thing 2 years ago in the previous expansion. And back then, the fact that Zodiark and Hydaelyn were primals also came out of nowhere. People brought the possibility up on the forums, but there wasn't anything concrete until foxy grandpa started giving us exposition dumps. And then in HW before that, the fact that the world is split into shards and when there's a calamity, a shard is returned to the Source came out of left field. There didn't seem to be anything at all alluding to that and it also changed our view on the void, which was something else entirely. And then before that in 1.0, we had no idea that the 2nd moon in the sky which until then was just a neat little fantasy thing, was an ancient superweapon. And when we found out it was an ancient superweapon, we had no idea that it had an ancient dragon primal inside it.

I can't speak for WoW because I know nothing of it, but most of the revelations in FFXIV bring more to the story. At the start of the game, the Ascians were just a bunch of mustache-twirling villains who went around menacing adventurers for literally no reason other than to be evil (which is weird to replay after recent events). They longed to revive their long-dead god who our crystal mom killed and that was the story we had. Now it's a lot richer and the Ascians' actions have been given new light, but a part of me still misses the simple old days before calamities were even a thing and we only had 1 linear uncomplicated world history and the Allagan Empire was just a bunch of snail-eating, road-building onion knights.

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WoW does rule of cool stuff all the time, including DINOSAURS. WoW has a lot of lore but they are NOT afraid to do stuff they want to in the moment and are NOT afraid of retconning past lore in the slightest.

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Originally Posted by Nekaru_Infitima

Of all the philosophy in this game that was great I hope this is the one that is utterly not true as then I can't play it anymore because it goes completely against my religion.

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I really don't think the game is trying to push anti-religious themes given how most of the people of Etheriys have their own gods they turn to for comfort in trying times.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

I really don't think the game is trying to push anti-religious themes given how most of the people of Etheriys have their own gods they turn to for comfort in trying times.

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Anti-religion isn't exactly the point of it, no. Seeking comfort and help in a higher power isn't portrayed negatively, as Hydaelyn herself serves as that kind of higher power that people pray to, and she was indisputably good - much to the chagrin of the "hydaelyn is evil!" crowd.

The fatal decision is to look for a reason to live in that higher power. Hydaelyn, nor any other god can tell you why life is worth getting out of bed for every morning. The story asserts that only you can answer that for yourself, because everyone has a different answer.

Think about the religion practiced in Thavnair and you can see exactly why religion isn't necessarily incompatible with the philosophy being discussed here.

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Originally Posted by Nekaru_Infitima

Of all the philosophy in this game that was great I hope this is the one that is utterly not true as then I can't play it anymore because it goes completely against my religion.

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Maybe this will help?

https://i.imgur.com/riBnxRl.jpg

To elaborate further, since I was in the middle of a meal earlier;

You only need to look at the difference between the tempered and untempered versions of each beast tribe to see the story's stance on religion. That is to say, the untempered tribes look to their gods as protectors, as loving mothers and fathers who watch over their growth. They are free to choose their purpose in life, knowing that their gods are there to cradle them with a gentle hand.

The tempered, on the other hand, treat their zealotry as an end in itself. Every atrocity committed is in dedication to their god's infallible greatness, living and dying in sole dedication to it above all else. Their purpose in life becomes defined solely by their god.

As you can see, religion isn't incompatible at all, just certain ways of practicing it. The game extols the virtue of the gentle prayers of those who find their life purpose in helping the unfortunate, and disdains the violent zealot that pillages and murders in the name of their god's glory.