[SPOILERS] Minfillia' Fate in 3.2

[Berethos]

Devoting one's life to a cause does not imply that one is willing (or ready) to give their life for it. It just means they wish to spend their life pursuing a cause.

Something like that is contextual. Devoting one's life to feeding the hungry and clothing the poor? Doesn't carry the implication that one is willing to give their life for that cause. Heading into life threatening battle on a frequent basis for a cause, on the other hand? That does carry the implication that said person is willing to die for that cause.

Yet the contextual distinction in types of devotion to a cause and types of causes is actually a separate debate to what I was talking about, which is that for those who are willing to die for a cause that it does not necessarily mean they are seeking death, and the distinction between those.

Also, I really don't think those we've lost along the way in various forms were consciously trying to fulfill their ultimate purpose. Case in point - Haurchefant. He didn't jump in the way and raise his shield with the intent to die, he did it to protect us. He was almost certainly aware that the action could kill him, but the risk of that was outweighed by a desire to protect a dear friend (and in some headcanon cases, more than a friend). It's "I don't want to see you hurt, so I did this completely irrational thing" rather than "I must fulfill my purpose in life by dying for you here."

As for the why and for what purpose my main reason (again) for saying what I did is that we keep getting stuck on those questions as they relate to the idea that Minfilia was asked to sacrifice herself (and seemingly assuming that it's exactly what happened, despite the current thin evidence), instead of also considering other possibilities for what happened and asking why and for what purpose for those.

To try and kick that off again...I find the silence once Minfilia reached the Aetherial Sea to be interesting. Possible, certainly, that it was part of Hydaelyn being manipulative...but what if that isn't the case? She already has in Minfilia someone who listens to her, and is willing to run back into the spell to be sent to that location...why would she need to resort to tricking Minfilia like that? It leads me to believe that the merger wasn't her original purpose in bringing Minfilia into the Aetherial Sea. If she was being manipulative, then that series of events is exactly how she'd get Minfilia to the point of the merger and even make her think it was her idea...but if not, then it's really just a series of circumstances.

Which then has me wondering just how willing (or reluctant) Hydaelyn was to the merger, assuming (as it currently appears to be) it was Minfilia's idea.

Too often, though, they can get confused. Believing that the presence of an option that demands your death (either literally or symbolically, like a certain Allagan mancat) makes that choice the only viable option is not the same as exhausting every alternative and fighting on. It's a distinction that I believe Alphinaud is going to make in the coming storyline.


Considering it's from Dark Arisen, and the trigger for that dialogue is clearing the game twice and defeating True Daimon, I always thought of it as a metafictional saving throw, meant to clean up any potential misunderstandings about the suicide required to trigger the true ending.

For the first, it's not about the presence of an option that demands your death and choosing that over other options. That is seeking death. That doesn't happen often in this story.Knowing that you are engaged in a profession or working for a cause that has the potential to lead to your death, yet continuing to work toward that cause or in that profession with the intent of continuing to do so? That's the kind of willing to die for friends or a cause that we routinely see...again, see Haurchefant, a knight who fights dragons and leads men and women in battle and who jumped in front of what he certainly knew was a potentially lethal attack and did his damn best to keep it from getting to you, because protecting someone else was what was important to him in that moment.


He was willing to die to protect some one. It got him killed. He was not seeking death.

The only one that really straddles the line is Ysale. On one hand, she seemed to know and acknowledge that her actions were likely suicidal. On the other hand, in that moment with our ship being fired upon, what alternatives could she take the time to exhaust? Something worth considering, I think.

That's kinda the thing - often the times where you are presented with a life or death choice, you usually don't have the luxury of taking the time to think about it or explore alternatives. It's do or let someone else die, and hope that you don't die in the process.

For the second, that was admittedly tongue in cheek a bit on my part, as out of context the snippet seemed to be staunchly anti-dying-for-a-cause-seeking-death yet in context is a helluva lot more nuanced, and I wanted to point out that in context it (in my opinion) doesn't read to be quite as anti-dying.

Oh boy, Dragon's Dogma.

The game where you walk around with a mindless servant at your side that is such a blank slate and so heavily influenced by your actions that it literally becomes you when you die and that's somehow viewed as something to celebrate, as if they're gaining some sort of individuality when they're really just taking on someone else's traits.
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Not exactly. Their physical appearance is yours...their soul is their own (if Selene is your beloved, she notes that the Arisen who wakes up on the beach after the "true ending" is not quite her beloved, having been a pawn that gained a soul of her own if you follow through with her quests she is apparently sensitive to these things). It's a weird middle line of sorts, and that still probably isn't an accurate way to describe it.