Fan Fest Lore Revelations [Spoilers]

[RoroCookies]

If there's one thing that bothers me so far is Hydaelyn not being aware that doing too much good can cause a Flood of Light. Her intentions might be well but I can't imagine she wouldn't know that pushing her WoLs to destroy all darkness wouldn't be the best idea due to the balance issues going on.
Like, it took the WoDs to come to our shard to get her attention about what happened to their shard. I know she's a lot weaker than before but Hydaelyn's lack of awareness in situations is concerning.
Unless I'm missing something here since I've recently been trying to get into more lore, then please do correct me.

[Balipu]

Maybe it's Rielle. When I saw the artwork of a dark DRK on a dark horse holding a little girl in white I immediately figured it was totally Sidurgu on his way to punch more Moogles.

One of the doubts I'm having about this "become the Warrior of Darkness" plotline is that quite honestly, I don't see how our actions have caused our dimension to come anywhere close to falling to a Flood of Light. So if there is a risk, it would be due to writer fiat.

And that worries me, because despite all the claims of "light is not always good, dark is not always bad", all we have to do is look at what the Ascians are doing, compared to what we do. If "balance" requires us to commit a few genocides and atrocities to bring about more darkness and chaos, the way the Ascians have been doing every single time, I have a hard time seeing how "dark is not always bad".

Even when "our side" does morally bad things, we as the WoL clearly still think it's bad and wrong, so having to abandon that in order to side with the Ascian Way is going to be a huge personality change.

I would also like to note that Hydaelyn herself also thinks that the Flood of Light is a bad thing that should be stopped, hence sending Minfilia over with the 3.x Warriors of Darkness. She clearly cares for us in a way the Ascians do not; the only way I could see us turn against her is due to some tragic difference of opinion where we merely disagree with the methods of caring, even if we agree on the end goal. This is in contrast to the Ascians, who, as I've mentioned before, almost always treat people as things. (I think the only exception so far is Unukalhai.)

Who said anything about siding with the Ascians?

[zuzu-bq]

If Warrior of Light is a champion of Hydaelyn, the opposite would be a champion of Zodiark. This isn't necessarely an ally of the Ascians.

[Dualblade]

So a possibility I've seen brought up is that the travel between world's will, in-universe, be us going to one of the shards. So my theory is, we are not causing a Flood of Ljght, but the war with Garlemald is on the path to Calamity...and if the Calamity happens, Hydaelyn won't be able to stop the Flood in the first shard.

It could even be that the other Scions have already been pulled over to try and speed up the process of stopping the Flood, while the WoL/D will go between the Source and First Shard to try and prevent both.

[ObsidianFire]

The opposite of the Warrior of Light is not the Warrior of Darkness, but an Ascian. Both the Warriors of Light and Darkness were blessed by Hydaelyn and follow her ideals ultimately. Even when Albert and Co. became WoDs, their goal was to save the aether (life) of their Shard from nonexistance. I can easily see us becoming a WoD not because we havr to fight against Hydaelyn, but because Hydaelyn herself says we have to do that for some reason. We know she cares about preserving life, so I could see her be willing to do whatever she has to to preseve it. Even if that means asking us to spread Darkness.

[Raiu]

Am glad to have seen a Raen question being picked in the lore panel

...only to see the question not being answered at all.

Sadly, the answer had nothing to do with the question at hand, and they gave an answer which everyone already knew? What also does not make sense is how he says; "A lot of the Au Ra that live in Doma and Hingashi are of the Raen clan, and they make up a great deal of those two cultures" with the Lorebook saying that Hingashi only has 10% Raen in it.

I am left confused and only got more questions.

[Cilia]

The important thing to note about the constructs being fought in the trailer is that they're both of Amdapori origin. The Lost City of Amdapor is the only place to have Light elementals (in Hard mode), which further suggests we're going to be up against a "Tyranny of the Light" situation. But everyone knew that already.

With the addition of NG+, I suspect time travel will be involved. Who's going to be our Observer?

There are many questions to ask, but I have a hard time articulating them so I will just answer what others ask as best I can.

[Iscah]

So from the sequence of events in the trailer, we have....

1. WoL stumbling lost in a wasteland. Echo-headache and past flashes of WoL. Whiteout to SE logo.


2. A battlefield, implied to be part of WoL's vision (edit: and now revealed to be the 'dungeon' for patch 4.5).
- (0:44) A shot of Alliance banners, including purple for Ala Mhigo, so this must be post-Stormblood. Also a green banner that I'm not sure who it belongs to - Doma? Idyllshire??
- Samurai-WoL vs Zenos (presumably Elidibus).


"How many years have come and gone since that day...? How many years have I waited [...] for the one they called the Warrior of Light?"

So is this being spoken from some much later time, and 'that day' is the day of the battle we are seeing?

And is it only in past tense that we were called Warrior of Light?


3. Back to 'present' as WoL seems to be coming out of an Echo vision. The gremlin taunts him as Kuribu descends in a blaze of light.

She attacks, breaking WoL's bow. He switches from archer to warrior. (Instant job-and-costume changes are canon!)


4. Cut to scene of Thancred running through the city with the mystery child. An Amdapori lion attacks. "This town has changed, and certainly not for the better." - is this in a familiar place then? It looks like it could be Ul'dah, and that's Thancred's 'home base' as a Scion.


5. WoL continues to cycle through his various jobs as Kuribu destroys his weapons, until he switches to dark knight, and the aura of his sword seems to be what allows him to block her attack.

"This tragedy... must be undone."

"If history must be unwritten, then let it be unwritten."

Something major has happened. Was WoL's victory on the battlefield the final blow against the Darkness that tipped the scales too far towards the Light?

And must history be unwritten? I feel like it might fit with the theme of the game that a tragedy cannot be undone, but needs to be accepted and 'rebuilt from', and life continues.

It is also worth noting that it is arguably not confirmed that we do 'switch sides' to become Warrior of Darkness - only that we are told we should. Until it actually happens, there's always a possibility of deliberate misdirection.




Don't mind me, I'll just be over in the corner trembling at the thought of where my character's personality is going.... ;_;

[Iscah]

The opposite of the Warrior of Light is not the Warrior of Darkness, but an Ascian. Both the Warriors of Light and Darkness were blessed by Hydaelyn and follow her ideals ultimately. Even when Albert and Co. became WoDs, their goal was to save the aether (life) of their Shard from nonexistance. I can easily see us becoming a WoD not because we havr to fight against Hydaelyn, but because Hydaelyn herself says we have to do that for some reason. We know she cares about preserving life, so I could see her be willing to do whatever she has to to preseve it. Even if that means asking us to spread Darkness.

I have to replay the WoD arc, but I'm not entirely convinced the "Warriors of Darkness" were really defined as such on a cosmic scale as such. Hydaelyn blessed them as Warriors of Light and they still bear Crystals of Light.

I'm concerned about how the idea of 'working against the Light to increase the strength of Darkness' will play out in practice. Is it just going to be "here are some Light-aspected enemies for you to fight because they're conveniently just as dangerous as the Dark voidsent"? That's going to be sort of cheap. But I don't know what else we'd be doing.

...hmmm, we're not going to be going after the Twelve, are we...?

[ObsidianFire]

Am glad to have seen a Raen question being picked in the lore panel

...only to see the question not being answered at all.

Sadly, the answer had nothing to do with the question at hand, and they gave an answer which everyone already knew? What also does not make sense is how he says; "A lot of the Au Ra that live in Doma and Hingashi are of the Raen clan, and they make up a great deal of those two cultures" with the Lorebook saying that Hingashi only has 10% Raen in it.

I am left confused and only got more questions.

The Raen are liike the Seawolf Roegaydeyn in Limsa Lominsa. We've never seen what a "Seawolf only" culture looks like because there is no such thing (in Eorzea at least). So it looks like in Hingashi and Doma there is no such thing as a "Raen only" culture. Instead we see a bunch of races living together with one main culture. We see this a lot not just in Hingashi and Doma, but in most of Eorzea's city-states as well. Single race/clan cultures are not very common in FFXIV. The major ones that come to mind are the Xalea, Gyr Abania, and maybe Ishgard.