Quote Originally Posted by seekified View Post
My one question mark after all this is why Ilberd would summon Shinryu?
As others have mentioned in this thread, the game itself tosses a lot of excuses as to why a dragon might have emerged. Ilberd dreaming of a force to surpass Bahamut (thus producing a Primal that loosely resembles Bahamut), Nidhogg's eyes being used in the process, and so on and so forth. The meta reason, I'm sure, is that it is another piece of Final Fantasy fanservice: The devs knew folks would get excited about at Shinryu/Omega matchup, and so had to fish for reasons to produce that Primal instead of the more sensible Rhalgr.

Personally, I find the in-game reasons to be kind of unsatisfying, particularly since Ala Mihgans have attempted to summon Rhalgr before. It seems logical to me that a summon in his image would have been the natural result of so many Ala Mihgan sacrifices. But what is is what is.