Cute Little Lore prediction: Lunar Subterrane to feature the Fathercrystal

Yoyoyo!

The Fathercrystal just disappeared from the story and we didn't see it in 6.0. I hear people claim it's beneath the Zodiark fight arena, but I never saw it myself.

I think the reason why they didn't wanna show more of the Lunar Subterrane dungeon in the Live Letter (Yoshi said it would be too spoilery) is because we'll see the Fathercrystal there at the end.

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

Well, it's assumed that the dungeon is on the Moon of the 13th, so I guess it depends on whether or not the crystal exists there.

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Originally Posted by Carin-Eri

Well, it's assumed that the dungeon is on the Moon of the 13th, so I guess it depends on whether or not the crystal exists there.

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True!

I think there's one in each reflection, but who knows?

Sure, why not, let's have a weird rock inside this bigger weird rock.

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Originally Posted by Eisi

True!

I think there's one in each reflection, but who knows?

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Considering how Aether-starved the 13th is, said Crystal could perhaps be the reason Golbez doesn't appear to be lacking in it.

We saw, through various cutscenes, that he had Aether to spare, perhaps this is the reason.

To be honest, I always assumed that they dropped the "Father crystal" concept once they confirmed that Hydaelyn≠Mothercrystal. Zodiark was supposed to be the Father crystal to balance Hydaelyn but... Here we are.

Just out of curiosity, how does one get a dark-aspected crystal? Light governs stasis, so it's not surprising to see aether crystallize when Hydaelyn was the Will of the Star. Given that Dark governs movement, you would expect the opposite when Zodiark was the Will of the Star, with aether essentially evaporating.

With this being a Moon of the Thirteenth, where the ambient aether is so unstable due to the Flood of Darkness that its denizens are described as 'aether-starved', how does an aetheric crystal of any form materialize?

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Originally Posted by MercuryD

To be honest, I always assumed that they dropped the "Father crystal" concept once they confirmed that Hydaelyn≠Mothercrystal. Zodiark was supposed to be the Father crystal to balance Hydaelyn but... Here we are.

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Oh, they definitely dropped it, otherwise it absolutely would've come up at some point in Shadowbringers or Endwalker. There's a big purple crystal below the Zodiark arena, but that doesn't really look the same outside of being a purple crystal.

However, the developers are often prone to using orphaned plot points in future stories to make it look like said future story is an ongoing part of the world. They're open about that, it's not them just pretending they planned it the whole time, but the intention is for the story to look more coherent to us. So it's in no way invalid to speculate if that crystal could turn up again, we just need to be aware that we're structuring that question as 'what could they use that crystal for' rather than 'what is the crystal doing'.

EDIT: On the point of 'how would a crystal of darkness' form': we have lightning crytals. We have crystals of a phenomena so inherently transient that there's a saying about how it doesn't stick around. I don't know how a darkness crystal happens, but I can only imagine it's easier to make than a lightning crystal.

Were we ever even told that vision was of Zodiark's crystal? I took it at the time to mean "something's going to happen that will corrupt the Mothercrystal", on par with having a vision of a known character dying or something.

Probably not, because that would be far too interesting.

Would be nice, though. I did wonder when they showed Golbez on the moon a few patches ago if he/ it might come up in the story, but after they swerved from the Void into FFIV: FFXIV edition I pretty much gave up on it. At this point, I really doubt they'd do anything with it since it might open a can of worms when Dawntrail is on the horizon, and they seem really eager to get away from anything to do with EW.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

Were we ever even told that vision was of Zodiark's crystal? I took it at the time to mean "something's going to happen that will corrupt the Mothercrystal", on par with having a vision of a known character dying or something.

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lol, I remember thinking the same thing. Looking back, they were likely laying more of the groundwork for the Ascian backstory ready to dip into when they felt like it.

...thinking on it, kind of sucks how everything Lahabrea and Elidibus came out with early on about "maintaining the balance" and such and the danger Hydaelyn might pose ended up being absolutely nothing. I feel like they had the material for something potentially intriguing there.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

Were we ever even told that vision was of Zodiark's crystal? I took it at the time to mean "something's going to happen that will corrupt the Mothercrystal", on par with having a vision of a known character dying or something.

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They never said... anything about it, really. Definitely not in the game, and I don't think they've ever discussed it in development interviews either, but there's been an awful lot of those over the years. Everything saying it was Zodiark was ultimately just assumption from context, albeit fairly plausible given that context: if all the raving Lahabrea was going on about balance was at that point actually supposed to be accurate as opposed to 'he got pretty close for being crazy', then it made sense that what we were seeing in this cutscene right after that fight was the counterbalance to Hydaelyn. That's ultimately circumstantial evidence, but when we're talking dramatic narrative then circumstantial evidence is the best kind.

I feel like I far prefer what we've got to what we could have, because I think 'there must be balance' is contrived and arbitrary as a plot point every time I see it (I blame Star Wars), but ultimately we just don't know what they were planning back then, save that it wasn't what we got. All I can say with confidence about it is that it was probably abandoned for a reason, and when it's a plot thing like this it's probably not for logistical reasons. I love cut content in games, but a big thing we always have to remember when looking at those is that things often hit the cutting room floor because they're just not as good as the stuff that didn't; there's every possibility that this plot idea was thrown out because it sucked.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

They never said... anything about it, really..

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I mean, I feel like Zodiark's existence being vaguely defined as a Problem that Affects Things because of his primal nature when Hydaelyn is a complete non-issue despite tearing apart the very fabric of the universe and rewriting the laws of reality in accordance with her wishes to be a lot more arbitrary than exploring the effects both primals may have (had) on each other and the world, but to each their own, I guess. I would have liked more from their relationship with one another. Even Venat and Elidibus barely came into contact with each other.... actually, I don't think they ever did.

And if they bothered to implement a scene about it, I'd be more inclined to believe it was a matter of logistics than anything else. Most things they include either wind up getting addressed (sometimes much later, hi Heart of Sabik) or explained why it couldn't work. My assumption would be any development of Zodiark hit a wall after Emet-Selch's popularity and they looked around for the nearest thing they could woobify next, and Elidibus found himself in the firing line.

As have already said, it wouldn't surprise me if we discovered the crystal was hidden away in Golbez' lair, serving as his source of Aether in an otherwise Aether-starved world.

I'd like to believe that Venat and Themis met prior to the final days. From what we know while Venat was still Azem she was it long enough to have Emet-Selch think doing things like using Ifrita and doing other "foolish" heroic stuff has to be something all Azem do. Venat also knows Emet-Selch long enough to feel free to tease him. Now we don't know exactly when Themis became Elidibus, but we do know that by the time of Elpis he's already accepted the role. When I saw the presumed Father Crystal I want to say I had both ideas that it was the opposite of the Mother Crystal as that tends to be a thing in the series and that it could have been a hint at a want to corrupt the Mother Crystal cause again that also tends to be a trope.

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Originally Posted by Lunaxia

My assumption would be any development of Zodiark hit a wall after Emet-Selch's popularity and they looked around for the nearest thing they could woobify next, and Elidibus found himself in the firing line.

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Your assumption doesn't work, because of what we know about the development of the game: they outline the next expansion a couple months after the release of the previous one (and of course, the ideas didn't come from nowhere before that point). They literally just wouldn't have had the time to introduce major elements into Endwalker based on fan response from Shadowbringers. I usually bring that up to point out that Elpis couldn't have been a response to Emet's popularity and was instead one hell of a called shot, but it's true here too: the Zodiark and Hydaelyn conflict in Endwalker (and Shadowbringers' patches) couldn't have been significantly restructured based on 'oh people turned out to really like this one character in Shadowbringers'.

What's interesting is that they have said that they increased Emet's role in Endwalker because of his popularity. That doesn't say they added him to Endwalker, he was already there somewhere. The best guess I've heard is that he got the 'narrator' role because of it; he's too important to Elpis' structure to have been more minor there, and I can't think of a version of the Ultima Thule finale that has someone other than him that still works, but the narrator role is something they could give him without needing to reorganize things.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

Your assumption doesn't work, because of what we know about the development of the game.

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If they outline the next expansion after the release of the previous one, then Shadowbringers' reception would have had an effect on Endwalker. They've discussed how they went on a writers' retreat to work out Endwalker's story at the end of 2019, and considering by that point the idea of two expansion packs was still in the air, it's evident there was massive restructuring going on at that time that would have been directly influenced by ShB's success. Ishikawa herself stated she practically rewrote the entire thing over the course of several days, so there's no saying what the story resembled prior to that, and presumably the course of the 5.x patches were tailored to follow suit.

...I also can't really imagine thinking Elpis, home to some of the wonkiest writing in the entire game, was added in as anything other than a prime opportunity for gratuitous fanservice at some of its finest. To go back in time in some fashion? Sure, but there was every way open to us to do it in a much less awkward and convoluted fashion than we did, only they didn't give us the chance for our character to wind up Emet-Selch for several hours, lol.

I'm aware we're all in the same realm of pure speculation in terms of what we think might have gone on and what was and wasn't included and why, and none of us will ever know for certain unless they tell us outright, but the faint hand of ShB's success and its effects on the game's writing is really palpable to me when I compare the writing and pacing of the story pre-5.0 and after, to the degree I'm a little mystified by people who claim they don't see it. We all have our own standards and preferences, I suppose.

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Originally Posted by Lunaxia

and considering by that point the idea of two expansion packs was still in the air, it's evident there was massive restructuring going on at that time that would have been directly influenced by ShB's success. Ishikawa herself stated she practically rewrote the entire thing over the course of several days, so there's no saying what the story resembled prior to that, and presumably the course of the 5.x patches were tailored to follow suit.

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I'm gonna need your citation for this, because to my knowledge they'd already combined Theoretical Garlemald Expansion and Theoretical Apocalypse Expansion well before any planning, in that retreat or otherwise, was put to pen. Which, of course, makes sense when you consider that the fact we know Anima was Theoretical Garlemald Expansion's final boss--meaning that the Telophoroi were always present in that part--and that Thavnair straddles the line between both stories in a way where it couldn't have landed on either side of that line. I have heard of that rewrite, but as I recall, it was less structural and more tonal; the events, characters and all that everyone was generally happy with, the problem was that it felt like 'just another expansion' rather than the storyline finale that they wanted it to be. Given all that I actually suspect the bulk of her rewrites would've actually been in Labyrinthos/Sharlayan and Ultima Thule, but I don't like speculating on real-world events like that without evidence.

I caution against baselessly fabricating reasons why things turned out in ways you like or didn't like about how a game turns out, because you've every chance of being wrong and leading yourself down a false path that's only going to lead to disappointment. What if Dawntrail comes out absent of anything you've blamed for Endwalker not pleasing you, like FFXVI's next-door development or that boogeyman that is The Rewrite, and you don't like that one either? Are you going to find more phantom events to blame, or are you going to accept that the developers might just have a different idea of how to write their story than you do?

You're allowed to not like the game's story, but perhaps in doing so you should try to accept that there might not be something else to blame for that.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

I'm gonna need your citation for this, because to my knowledge they'd already combined Theoretical Garlemald Expansion and Theoretical Apocalypse Expansion well before any planning, in that retreat or otherwise, was put to pen.

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Apparently not.

https://www.fanbyte.com/news/ffxiv-e...two-expansions

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Yoshida explained that during the development of Shadowbringers, the team felt it might be possible to extend the end of the Hydaelyn-Zodiark saga for two expansions. After the response to Shadowbringers, however, it was ultimately decided a single expansion would be a better option.

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Yoshida also revealed the executive team had a retreat towards the end of 2019 to hash out Endwalker’s story. Following the retreat, however, Ishikawa felt the planned plot wasn’t good enough for the finale, so she rewrote the entire story and got it in two days before the hard deadline for the cinematic team.

“I was in charge of filling in the details of the story elements, but when I looked at the structure of the content again, I thought, ‘this might be okay for just another expansion, but if this is labeled the ‘finale’ is it really okay?’ So I reworked the story from the plot outline,” she said.

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Nothing especially "phantom" about that. Sounds like a considerable overhaul to me, and aligns with what I've always suspected to be true - that maintaining their usual standard of consistency and quality in their writing was made second to making a big enough splash with their ending.

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I caution against baselessly fabricating...

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I find it comical and more than a little arrogant for you to accuse me "baselessly" fabricating anything, not only because this is the lore forum and all we do here is meaninglessly speculate, but because you tout your own ideas with precious little in the way of evidence behind them as near unequivocal truths. You seem to forget we're all in the same boat here, as I've said, and just because my reasoning led me to less favorable conclusions than yours does not make them any less valid.

I appreciate the "concern" about as much as the thinly veiled insults, but it's neither wanted nor needed. I'm aware of what Endwalker was - more than you, apparently - what FFXIV is these days, and what that means for Dawntrail. I'm merely sharing thoughts and chatting like everyone else.

Yet we also have been told by the same dev team when they start in on things for the next expansion and .X patches. So the rework they needed to do for Endwalker is an anomaly and not par for the course. This dev team is predictable more often then not. Just look at how long it takes them to try and improve content. It took them until Pyros to implement some of the changes people had wanted back in Anemos. Same thing is happening now with Variant and Criterion dungeons. Why? Cause it takes them that long to implement things as that's how far along these patches are. That by the time we the players get to experience something the devs are probably a patch or two or sometimes the next expansion head so that when they find out that a character is a fan favorite they're unable to immediately cash in on that.

Heck part of the reason we got the delay was so they could add in Emet-Selch's laundry list as another layer of reassurance that the game wasn't ending at the end of 6.0 despite the various times Yoshida in interviews et all said the same thing. That it was just an end of a story arc. Yet some act as though Endwalker was as bad as Season 8 of GoT where it ignored seasons if not also series worth of character development or personality. Or how Episode 9 and a game majorly retconed the whole "can't clone force users and even if you try it won't ever come out right. Thus why we used a non force user for clone troopers and partly why Vader is the way he is." thing and gave us the hot mess that is Palpatine having a few clones at various stages of success. That and J.J Abrams being himself.

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Originally Posted by SannaR

Heck part of the reason we got the delay was so they could add in Emet-Selch's laundry list as another layer of reassurance that the game wasn't ending at the end of 6.0 despite the various times Yoshida in interviews et all said the same thing. That it was just an end of a story arc. Yet some act as though Endwalker was as bad as Season 8 of GoT where it ignored seasons if not also series worth of character development or personality. Or how Episode 9 and a game majorly retconed the whole "can't clone force users and even if you try it won't ever come out right. Thus why we used a non force user for clone troopers and partly why Vader is the way he is." thing and gave us the hot mess that is Palpatine having a few clones at various stages of success. That and J.J Abrams being himself.

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A big part of the reason why I don't appreciate baseless speculating about the events that led to what we got is because of that last part. There seems to be this compulsion in recent years to declare that this thing you don't like is Actually Objectively Bad, to the point of inflating what evidence of turmoil or compromise they can find or completely making things up, rather than just accepting that maybe they just don't like a thing. (Out of all of Star Wars I think Episode 8's actually the worst victim of it these days.) I'd hardly say I'm innocent of it--I know when Shadowbringers was new I was really trying to do the same thing, but eventually just realized that I have tastes and preferences, and they happen not to line up 100%. Yeah, it sucks to realize that the reason you aren't enjoying something you might've wanted to ultimately lands with you, but it's healthier for everyone when you do.

I love rampant, low-evidence speculating about events within the game's narrative and world--in part because, as I've mentioned earlier in the thread, that's also what the developers do. Us asking 'what could the developers do with this one orphaned ARR plot thread' when playing is fundamentally the same question they're asking when writing. But throwing that speculation on the other side of the author-and-work line like that, it so often just turns into an effort to attack both the thing you didn't like, and the people who did like it, while also often serving to create some false dichotomy. I see fundamentally the same thing in people bigging up Daichi Hiroi's future (or maybe present at this point) work as the new lead writer, mainly because he actually hasn't written a lot of MSQ stuff before and those people have convinced themselves that he somehow holds exactly the same views for what makes a good story as they do; I'm not sure how they're gonna fall when it turns out he doesn't.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

A big part of the reason why I don't appreciate baseless speculating about the events that led to what we got is because of that last part. There seems to be this compulsion in recent years to declare that this thing you don't like is Actually Objectively Bad, to the point of inflating what evidence of turmoil or compromise they can find or completely making things up, rather than just accepting that maybe they just don't like a thing. (Out of all of Star Wars I think Episode 8's actually the worst victim of it these days.) I'd hardly say I'm innocent of it--I know when Shadowbringers was new I was really trying to do the same thing, but eventually just realized that I have tastes and preferences, and they happen not to line up 100%. Yeah, it sucks to realize that the reason you aren't enjoying something you might've wanted to ultimately lands with you, but it's healthier for everyone when you do.

I love rampant, low-evidence speculating about events within the game's narrative and world--in part because, as I've mentioned earlier in the thread, that's also what the developers do. Us asking 'what could the developers do with this one orphaned ARR plot thread' when playing is fundamentally the same question they're asking when writing. But throwing that speculation on the other side of the author-and-work line like that, it so often just turns into an effort to attack both the thing you didn't like, and the people who did like it, while also often serving to create some false dichotomy. I see fundamentally the same thing in people bigging up Daichi Hiroi's future (or maybe present at this point) work as the new lead writer, mainly because he actually hasn't written a lot of MSQ stuff before and those people have convinced themselves that he somehow holds exactly the same views for what makes a good story as they do; I'm not sure how they're gonna fall when it turns out he doesn't.

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I'm not sure what you're trying to get at? As the Emet speech isn't baseless speculation.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...alkers_2_week/

As it states there.

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Originally Posted by SannaR

I'm not sure what you're trying to get at? As the Emet speech isn't baseless speculation.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...alkers_2_week/

As it states there.

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Oh, no, that's absolutely very much based, and not speculation at all! I'm more talking about the tendency to try to pin everything that a person happens to not like on 'FFXVI was stealing people', 'the rewrite (either the one after the retreat or the one shortly before launch; both are unlikely, one much more so) changed this for the worse', 'something something pandemic', stuff like that, when there's not a shred of evidence for it.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

Oh, no, that's absolutely very much based, and not speculation at all! I'm more talking about the tendency to try to pin everything that a person happens to not like on 'FFXVI was stealing people', 'the rewrite (either the one after the retreat or the one shortly before launch; both are unlikely, one much more so) changed this for the worse', 'something something pandemic', stuff like that, when there's not a shred of evidence for it.

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Ahh ok. Some times ya confuse me. I try my best to not to do such though sometimes trying to find or remember around when something was said that was an expansion or two or more back can be difficult. Especially if it was stated during one of those who would even think to watch X things that has Yoshida baking cookies and drinking wine. Or from an interview that happens outside a patch or expansion drop from a Japanese site that's not as well known outside of Japan like Famitsu or Dengeki. The man I want to say has even appeared on a in-house podcast a few times. When I say in-house I mean something that is like the SE music channel's interviews.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

A big part of the reason why I don't appreciate baseless speculating about the events that led to what we got is because of that last part. There seems to be this compulsion in recent years to declare that this thing you don't like is Actually Objectively Bad, to the point of inflating what evidence of turmoil or compromise they can find or completely making things up, rather than just accepting that maybe they just don't like a thing. Yeah, it sucks to realize that the reason you aren't enjoying something you might've wanted to ultimately lands with you, but it's healthier for everyone when you do.

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Honestly it's very refreshing to read this, because every time I read comments in this forum I get that exact same feeling - that people are trying to prove that what they dislike is objectively bad instead of just accepting that it ultimately falls on them. I mostly lurk in this forum for this reason, because there's nothing to argue, it's people trying to prove the story is good vs people trying to prove it's bad - no one wins. I stay away from it, I only really comment when it comes to in-game story stuff because that's more fun to speculate.

I'm really just responding to say that knowing that at least one other person in here also sees this is a relief. :D