The Road to 5.0

[Anonymoose]

I'd like to just say up front that this is just an opinion of mine - one that could very well turn out to be a mistaken.
It doesn't have as many citations as most things, there are other possibilities, etc. etc. etc.

I really struggle with the "We're winning too hard!" thing. The story went out of its way to show us that to do so is possible, but how confident should we be that this revelation was intended to be taken as foreshadowing something that accurately reflects what is coming for our world?

What if it was just Final Fantasy III-esque wallpaper for setting up the Warriors of Darkness and the complexity of Elidibus's schemes? What if it's a red herring to fill us with doubt and fracture speculation? What if that experience and knowledge is what stops us from going down that route when we finally come to that fork in the road?

We're "close" to Hydaelyn, who has been hit with seven straight failures. She can barely speak, and on the rare occasion She does, it's usually to us. (Isn't that usually Her excuse? That she can't control things Herself and can't speak to everyone? But She speaks to us on occasion. Would She leave out a necessary warning? She doesn't want a Flood, either.) Everywhere we go, more people die, larger aetherial disturbances are set off, greater chaos erupts, and just because we happen to stop that section of it and warily march off to the next - and even bigger - clusterfluff, we're "winning too hard"? I don't see it.

It always seems to be Elidibus selling these alternative facts. Usually to people he's misled about the context of...everything else.

So any theory that spins that yarn another direction I'm inclined to take seriously for the time being.

[Vulcwen]

I'd like to just say up front that this is just an opinion of mine - one that could very well turn out to be a mistaken.
It doesn't have as many citations as most things, there are other possibilities, etc. etc. etc.

I really struggle with the "We're winning too hard!" thing. The story went out of its way to show us that to do so is possible, but how confident should we be that this revelation was intended to be taken as foreshadowing something that accurately reflects what is coming for our world?

Yeh, winning too hard is something I don't really understand, and it doesn't make much sense. However, there is one point.. Minfilia got sent to the first to absorb light.. where does it go? Was all of what happened in 3.4 actually according to Elidibus' plan?