Did anyone ever figure out the "spoilers" in the Zodiark/Hydaelyn artwork?

So a few days ago someone brought up the promotional Zodiark/Hydaelyn artwork for Endwalker. And while I was looking at it again, I was reminded that Yoshi-P said there was a "story spoiler" hidden in the artwork. Now I've played through Endwalker, but I don't seen any subtle, or not so subtle, hints.

I mean I could make guesses and generalize some of what I see, but by the way Yoshi-P said it, the spoiler would be obvious once we realized; like if there was a blue bird in the artwork. But I don't see anything. Does anyone else have any ideas?

Maybe it's a metaphor? The descent and end of the era in which Zodiark stood watch, and a representation of the freedom Hydaelyn desired for Etheirys ascending.

You could consider it a spoiler just in the sense that it accurately depicted how the two gods looked in advance when that otherwise was a total enigma until we met them in person.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

You could consider it a spoiler just in the sense that it accurately depicted how the two gods looked in advance when that otherwise was a total enigma until we met them in person.

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I mean Hydaelyn looks similar, but Zodiark looks a lot more, uh, human, than what we actually see in game.

Didnt know if there was a spoiler without context in that poster, since its just Hydaelyn and Zodiark in the entire image.

I suppose if we try to bs guess what in the hells he was talking about would be how Hydaelyn bears a similar semblence to Endsinger???

Looking at it again, I see some parts of Ultima Thule in the top right. There are probably a few more easter eggs.
Flip the image and you can see a black bird in Zodiark's wing.

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/...1MzI@._V1_.jpg

I still get the feeling that the artwork was commissioned before they'd completely ironed out the story. So maybe whatever spoiler would've been there ended up not relevant to the final product. Might also explain why neither of them really looks much like they do in-game (although that could just be stylistic choice, too).

Even the reveal of the artwork made no sense at the time.

"We want to tell a story where there is no good side and no bad side!" they say as they show off a picture of angelic Hydaelyn and first-ever representation of Zodiark as a monstrous demon.

Zodiark absolutely should have had a human form to match Hydaelyn.

Well, now that I'm looking more closely, it almost seems as if a blue bird is laying on top of Hydaelyn's head. So there's the spoiler I guess.

Why the bird is on her side instead of Zodiark's might be a bit confusing but it could just be acting as a foreshadow of sorts.

Speaking as a fan of Yoshitaka Amano (who was the artist who did the artwork) you can't really take much out of his art at face value as his art is purely symbolic or metaphorical - also he tends to embelish artwork with his own unique flourishes, and that is pretty much the case with the EW cover of Hydaelyn and Zodiark. Also Amano seemed to have portrayed Zodiark as looking more like Chaos from FFI,

rather than the weird tentacled thing wearing a toilet seat lid for a mask with bits missing from him as he ended up as.

And remember, as we found out Zodiark wasn't even a conscious entity anymore but just an empty shell - really all we did in the Dark Inside was fight Fannyboy wearing him as a suit - so that artwork clearly doesn't give that vibe off either.

It's best to just take what Yoshi said as a red herring designed to throw players off the scent so that they will completely unexpect plot twists (which, after all, makes the story better anyway, or at least theoretically).

Agreed there really was a missed opportunity here, both in the art and in Zodiark’s form.

If we wanted to blow minds, they should have represented Z as a god-like human. Sure keep some dark aspects, but there really was no need to make him into a demonic entity, especially when we are learning “light” and “dark” do not necessarily mean classic angelic or demonic. I honestly expected him to be a beautiful Lucifer type dark angel.

The light wardens might have angelic aspects in the biblical sense, but the majority of the sin eaters we meet are merely corrupted animals or have a voidsent equivalent.

Eh...I never really GOT the whole idea of the story painting Hydaelyn and Zodiark as more than just good vs evil. I mean throughout the whole game its been very much clear the Ascians and Zodiark worshippers have been causing nothing but chaos based on their presentation such as in music, imagery and actions even if their reasons were for the greater good they firmly believed.

Hydaelyn throughout the whole ARR-EW arc was always shown and presented to us as the benevolent motherly figure and the speculations from the Scions of her true intentions due to recent as then recent discovered knowledge of Hydaelyn and Zodiark being primals was nothing more than just a red-herring, a writing technique this game loves to throw a lot.

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Originally Posted by Atelier-Bagur

Eh...I never really GOT the whole idea of the story painting Hydaelyn and Zodiark as more than just good vs evil. I mean throughout the whole game its been very much clear the Ascians and Zodiark worshippers have been causing nothing but chaos based on their presentation such as in music, imagery and actions even if their reasons were for the greater good they firmly believed.

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Agreed on all of that. If anything, Endwalker strayed off-track by attempting to subvert the "Hydaelyn is purely benevolent with good intentions" narrative and repaint her in shades of grey, which is really only done in that one climax scene and jars with everything around it.

Either they needed to stick with that, or dive the whole way in and make her turn out to be Evil All Along – which also would have flown in the face of everything we'd seen up to this point, but at least better than the "by the way, she did this deliberately on flimsy reasoning" thing that seemed at odds with everything both before and after it.

The reveal that she was a primal and not a goddess was fine, but the additional bombshells after it don't seem well thought through, and/or subject to late-in-the-process rewrites that put things askew.

have to remember these orders for artwork are put in MONTHS in advance of things finally being ironed out. I have absolutely no doubt the artwork has already been ordered for 7.0 assets already.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

Agreed on all of that. If anything, Endwalker strayed off-track by attempting to subvert the "Hydaelyn is purely benevolent with good intentions" narrative and repaint her in shades of grey, which is really only done in that one climax scene and jars with everything around it.

Either they needed to stick with that, or dive the whole way in and make her turn out to be Evil All Along – which also would have flown in the face of everything we'd seen up to this point, but at least better than the "by the way, she did this deliberately on flimsy reasoning" thing that seemed at odds with everything both before and after it.

The reveal that she was a primal and not a goddess was fine, but the additional bombshells after it don't seem well thought through, and/or subject to late-in-the-process rewrites that put things askew.

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Yeah. Our meeting with her on the ship to Sharlayan, for example. There was little point in approaching Hydaelyn caustically, yet one of the options we get is how we don't trust her. Why?

https://i.imgur.com/4Ef5NBG.png

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Originally Posted by DrWho2010

have to remember these orders for artwork are put in MONTHS in advance of things finally being ironed out. I have absolutely no doubt the artwork has already been ordered for 7.0 assets already.

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True. And we do know Yoshida delayed the game allegedly because he was still tweaking parts of the script.

It is rather awkward given that the only reason we'd have for distrusting her is all the stuff we'd learned from Emet-Selch in ShB which we admittedly didn't even know if it was true... and then we're not allowed even a smidge of negativity after we get more context behind her well-intentioned but extreme actions.

Even just being able ask something like "Was there truly no other way?" would've made me feel a bit better.

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Originally Posted by Midareyukki

Yeah. Our meeting with her on the ship to Sharlayan, for example. There was little point in approaching Hydaelyn caustically, yet one of the options we get is how we don't trust her. Why?

https://i.imgur.com/4Ef5NBG.png

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probably just to appeal to those that thought along those lines for the short purpose of throwing them a bone before steering back to the "correct" path.

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Originally Posted by DrWho2010

probably just to appeal to those that thought along those lines for the short purpose of throwing them a bone before steering back to the "correct" path.

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Except they had already done that with Shadowbringers, didn't they? Explaining you Zodiark's true purpose and why Hydaelyn decided sundering the world and blowing up civilization was a better option than going on a constant murder spiral.

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Originally Posted by DrWho2010

probably just to appeal to those that thought along those lines for the short purpose of throwing them a bone before steering back to the "correct" path.

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That still could have been done more neatly – something along the lines of "Emet-Selch said that you're a primal," which would raise the reason we have to be sceptical of her, rather than going straight to mistrust. And then she just has to say that it's true and she's sorry she kept the whole truth from you, but you'll just have to trust in her plan a little longer to avert a disaster of unprecedented scale.

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Originally Posted by TheMightyMollusk

I still get the feeling that the artwork was commissioned before they'd completely ironed out the story. So maybe whatever spoiler would've been there ended up not relevant to the final product. Might also explain why neither of them really looks much like they do in-game (although that could just be stylistic choice, too).

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Thats definitely style choice.
Older final fantasy art didn't look anything at all like the sprites usually, ff6 being a huge example

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Originally Posted by Midareyukki

Except they had already done that with Shadowbringers, didn't they? Explaining you Zodiark's true purpose and why Hydaelyn decided sundering the world and blowing up civilization was a better option than going on a constant murder spiral.

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After the events of 5.0 and events of 5.3, it's clear that Hyadelyn has things she did not tell us, which prompts distrust. They could have done that a lot better, but in a way, what we say is supposed to express that after the events of 5.0 to 5.55, the WoL is now more wary over Hyadelyn's true purpose ever since knowing she is a primal. The second choice is definitely a reply with the events of Shadowbringers weighing heavily on their mind.

The First choice - "Why now, Hyadelyn?" - is to indicate either her disappearance and why she chose to contact us now (because we knew she was exhausted by Heavensward, but we didn't know why she decided to show up after disappearing for 2 expansions). At the time, we didn't know that's her true form and didn't know exactly why she wanted to talk to us after the events that told us she needed a voice to reach out to us (Voice of the Mother). It's considered the more lighter of the two, based on your interpretation to whether she needs to talk to the WoL because there's an urgent matter or because the WoL themselves are more wary and distance themselves slightly in a more polite tone after knowing she's a primal.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

Agreed on all of that. If anything, Endwalker strayed off-track by attempting to subvert the "Hydaelyn is purely benevolent with good intentions" narrative and repaint her in shades of grey, which is really only done in that one climax scene and jars with everything around it.

Either they needed to stick with that, or dive the whole way in and make her turn out to be Evil All Along – which also would have flown in the face of everything we'd seen up to this point, but at least better than the "by the way, she did this deliberately on flimsy reasoning" thing that seemed at odds with everything both before and after it.

The reveal that she was a primal and not a goddess was fine, but the additional bombshells after it don't seem well thought through, and/or subject to late-in-the-process rewrites that put things askew.

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Agreed..it was just kinda… blah.

I had speculated waaay back that the creation of Hydaelyn was a mistake brought on by desperation and not some “dem souls Dynamis goal get dat derbdynamis”

It’s fanfic at this point, but I thought it was going to be:

1) The Sound happens, ancients panic
2) Lahabrea makes pandaemoneum to create weapons to defendfrom/fight the sound (creates summoning)
3) Lah accidentally discovers tempering and is tempered by Zodiark.
4) Lah tempers many ancients who (now enthralled) sacrifice themselves, protecting from the sound but ultimately will consume all people
5) Venat desperate to defeat Zod learns of primal summoning and does a Louisioux.
6) World is shattered completely by mistake.
7) Unnecessary, but I kinda was hoping to see a “could you kindly” moment from Hydaelyn to the WoL…

I even had thought the big reveal would be that Zod is in fact the will of the star, not Hyd…and thus Zod could never be destroyed without destroying the world….but here we are :)

Btw Im sorry OP for instigating yet another thread about Venat being the worst thing ever :(

Instead of continued discussion about the whole poster thing

I'm guessing the secrets ended up being Ultima Thule and Meteion doing really weird cameos? And I'm assuming the "you'll turn something platinum" was the elpis flower?

Maybe the spoiler was just Zodiark grabbing his crotch in official art. :P

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Originally Posted by kaynide

It’s fanfic at this point, but I thought it was going to be:

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My own theory, based on what we knew pre-Endwalker, was different to yours but also centred around the expectation that the Sundering was a mistake and not an intended outcome of Hydaelyn interacting with Zodiark.

Since all we knew at that point was that the creators of the primals sacrificed themselves and wiped themselves from existence to power their creations, my interpretation was that the primals functioned like computer programs essentially, and that maybe Hydaelyn was created to "patch" what her creators saw as a flaw in Zodiark's design, but her program wasn't perfect either. The end result was that Zodiark expected to be 100% in control and Hydaelyn expected 50/50 balance, read his actions as taking more than his half of the balance, and tried to correct that with the actions that caused the Sundering as a completely unintended side effect of banishing him out of the planet.

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Originally Posted by Atelier-Bagur

Btw Im sorry OP for instigating yet another thread about Venat being the worst thing ever :(

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So far it's "Hydaelyn is badly written" rather than "Hydaelyn is bad", which I consider to be a completely different argument. I'm fully on board with the writers' intent that she is a good character, but they handled it badly, and the poster just feels like one more sign of the weird inconsistency in how they approached the story.

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Originally Posted by Midareyukki

I'm guessing the secrets ended up being Ultima Thule and Meteion doing really weird cameos? And I'm assuming the "you'll turn something platinum" was the elpis flower?

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It was that platinum would be the main color, where ShB was purple.

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Originally Posted by Zebraoracle

Maybe the spoiler was just Zodiark grabbing his crotch in official art. :P

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Degeneration X?

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Originally Posted by Atelier-Bagur

Btw Im sorry OP for instigating yet another thread about Venat being the worst thing ever :(

Instead of continued discussion about the whole poster thing

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+1 to what Iscah said,it’s not so much that Venat is evil or bad, but the buildup kinda just went in a direction that was really..unsatisfying?

I mean, I had fun and in episodic form the expansion was fine…but in total I’m not sure what the point of a lot of prior buildup/established lore was.

I guess to me it felt a bit like the final season of Game of Thrones or the sudden introduction of midichlorians to explain The
Force. (IMO) It did damage to what was established before without really elevating the total story. Again in my very humble opinion.

My takes were:

* The spoiler was that both of them turned out to be the main trials of the base game
* The spoiler was that they're opposing forces, not merely one is good and one is bad (and that's why you can flip them upside down)

But now that someone has mentioned Ultima Thule and the bluebirds being motifs in there, I'm going with that. Hell, Ultima Thule is in the logo of the game, and we mistakenly thought it was the moon until we got to UT and went "oh."

Hydalaen clearly has a bluebird on top of her head. That same bluebird was also seen in the Y'shtola art promoting the Fender guitar.

The logo for the expansion isn't Ultima Thule at all, but is in fact the Moon - this is proven by the title screen outright showing the Moon looming over Hydaelyn which then literally turns into the logo - if SE wanted to hint at Ultima Thule they would have done so. And having the Ragnarok appear in the logo still fits because the ship's original purpose was to act as a shuttle moving people and supplies from the surface to the Moon as part of the Great Exodus.

Even without the title screen animation the logo on it's own all but says it's the Moon with that big black crater being clearly the Cradle of Darkness where Zodiark is/was imprisoned. Not to mention SE talked up the Moon's importance in the story long before the expansion was released, and the Moon being the logo all but underlines that.

And I can't see any bluebirds in the Hydaelyn/Zodiark artwork - Hydaelyn seems to have a crystal crown on her head, and the closest to a 'bird' that can be seen is actually parts of her staff she's holding. Ironically enough, Amano often fills his the borders of his artwork with birds and flying creatures which are there purely for visual interest and have no actual deeper connection to the subject matter, so even if there was a bluebird in there, I wouldn't take it as a hint foreshadowing Meteion.

EDIT: Annnnd.. looking very closely at said art part of Hydaelyn's crown does seem to resemble a beak poking through her hair, but... that really is stretching things, and, again I'm liable to just regard that as just part of her crown. As I mentioned Amano loves putting nondescript animals and creatures in his artwork around the borders so even if there was a bird in there, don't take it to mean "that's Meteion!", and just Amano's artistic embelishments again.

Peoplr keep giving me terrible reasons for why Hydaelyn/Venat was supposedly written terribly. I suppose these are the same group of people whom also believe Lyse was also written poorly. I should learn to ignore folks who dont know jack about good character writing.

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Originally Posted by Atelier-Bagur

Peoplr keep giving me terrible reasons for why Hydaelyn/Venat was supposedly written terribly. I suppose these are the same group of people whom also believe Lyse was also written poorly. I should learn to ignore folks who dont know jack about good character writing.

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I mean, you are entitled to your opinion sure, but people are gonna like/hate on what they like/hate.

As for Lyse, I happen to think she was indeed poorly written.

There was no mention of a “Lyse” character until suddenly there was a whole huge backstory about a girl who has been hiding her identity…from people who already knew she wasn’t who she claimed to be. There was no need for it and it didn’t really add to her character. She could literally just have stayed as Yda and said her sister died, or there could have been mentions/searches for a Lyse much earlier (3.0ish) to build up that this Lyse is important. It’s just out of left field.

People can dislike her leadership role but I don’t really care there- a lot of that can be hand waved as off camera happenings.

Honestly it’s more of the same “wtf are they grafting on the story now” like Dynamis, rather than introducing concepts/lore early and letting them grow/develop naturally. If Dynamis was really going to be a thing, it should have been introduced at the latest by Shadowbringers.

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Originally Posted by Enkidoh

The logo for the expansion isn't Ultima Thule at all, but is in fact the Moon - this is proven by the title screen outright showing the Moon looming over Hydaelyn which then literally turns into the logo - if SE wanted to hint at Ultima Thule they would have done so.

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Just because they placed one circular logo thing over a different circular thing in an image does not prove that they are the same thing. On the contrary, it's why people assumed it was the moon until they got to Ultima and saw the dead, hollowed-out planets. There's no need to hint at it beforehand – just put it there and let people realise that's what it is when they arrive at the context.

The Cradle of Darkness does not take up that much of the moon's surface, or it would have been very visible from the planet.

All the talk of the moon's importance turned out to be a red herring. Still somewhat important but not the centre and goal of the plot we assumed it would be.


Edit to add: I also have a vague recollection of Yoshida hinting in a pre-release interview that the logo might not be the moon.