Revelations from Patch 4.56

[Belhi]

Before moving into 5.0, some thoughts...

Loose ends

There's a number of outstanding plot points, which remain "hanging":

1. How the Resonance came to be and what its real purpose is
   
2. Whether the Ascian Overlord in Solus's guise was possessing him before he sired Varis's father
   
3. What Solus has been doing all this time
   
4. Why Elidibus was so eager to test the vessel

Well I feel we have something of an answer already to some of these:

1. The Resonant are an attempt by the Garleans to overcome their inherent inability to channel Aether, which being a race that currently thinks themselves better than everyone else is a sore point. This evolved into effectively creating an artificial Echo by basically forcing the Anima from many souls into a single host. This is the basis for both Fordola and Zeno's resonant 'echo'. It is basically an artificial echo the Garleans managed to develop while researching how to overcome their inability to channel Aether. I suspect the reason we don't see a lot more is that it requires a lot of souls to make and sounds like it often kills the host. Zenos was pleased but surprised Fordola survived the process.

2. I think it is all but certain that from the start of his rise to power, Solas was an Ascian. They have pretty much outright stated he built the empire as a tool. Considering Solas was pretty young when it started it seems likely he sired the Garlean Imperial line.

3. We know that when their bodies die the Ascians can go to a place between worlds. It could be, having done his part, he handed the work over to Lahabrea. Alternatively he could have taken up a role in one of the other shards. We honestly don't know a great deal about the Ascians. However, effectively they seem to be souls with a powerful echo so maybe they can fatigue. After all we know they aren't without limit because we have beaten them down before and even destroyed several of those souls. It might be that every thousand years or so they take a rest to recharge the Aether in their shadow realm.

4. Its a powerful new toy. He wanted to take it for a spin. More importantly we are approaching a flood so naturally he wants to curtail that by putting us down. The balance actually might hint at us why the Ascians tend to allow Astral Eras to run for a while. After a Calamity they probably need to allow the Balance to correct back before having another huge disaster.

On the dangling threads:

I suspect that many of these threads will be left dangling till late in the patch cycle or even till next expansion. The only tie in to Orbonne I can think of is the Dalmascan Fusalier who was at the Eastern Alliance meeting and pretty much said that the Dalmascans still need to get organised and unified before they can be proper members of the Eastern Alliance. There is also the fact that it does tie into old MSQ as it establishes there is very likely a link between the High Seraph and the Ultima spell we ran into at the end of ARR, which suggests to me that the Heart of Sobek was a chunk of Auracite.

MSQ thoughts I suppose.

I'm not surprised at the disappointment there seems to be in this thread about it. I've generally not been a fan of Stormblood's MSQ as a whole, so it having an unsatisfying ending is almost fitting. I was hoping/expecting for them to wrap up Elezen!Zenos though, if only because I think Zenos is a super boring character so I want to know what purpose they think bringing him back could have served.

...I don't mean to sound negative I just really haven't enjoyed Stormblood's MSQ at all.

I'm very excited to see where Shadowbringers takes us, but maybe there should have been a stinger at the end of the Scions all waking up in Nordrant or something. Something to tie it together better. The ARR->HW and HW->SB transitions were all very fluid, but this one wasn't.

I don't think it helped that a lot of the reveals happened after Fanfest when things like us going to the First were already known. It would have been a much bigger twist if we didn't already literally know that.

I wouldn't say it isn't fluid per say because frankly we haven't seen the Shadowbringers half. There is a limit to what they can do at this point as we are still on the source. The need to go to the first isn't without context however. Finding a way to beat the Ascians while avoid a Flood of Light has been a problem we have had no solution too since we found out it was a problem from Albert in 3.4.

As for Zenos, I am afraid if you don't like him much I have a bad feeling that after Shadowbringers will bother you. My hunch is he is going to become a much greater antagonist in the expansion after Shadowbringers which is when I suspect we will deal with Zenos properly. I think it is very likely he will end up on his father's throne.