Question about the real gods and how they relate to the story

[Mugear_bahamut]

I'm not talking about primals. I mean the actual deities of the FFXIV world.

During character creation, we are given an option to choose who our guardian deity is going to be. This doesn't appear to serve any real purpose, either in gameplay (no passive buffs or traits or anything) or in the story. And it's the latter that has me curious.

With all the talk of Zodiark and Hydaelyn, and how the WoL appears to be tempered by Hydaelyn, what if anything, is our guardian deity going to do about it? Do they even exist? What purpose is having a guardian deity if they don't actually guard you?

I'm not sure if the writers ever thought that far ahead, and perhaps choosing a god at character creation was just for RP purposes, but I have to figure there's a reason for it?

I've never played any other Final Fantasy game, so can anyone tell me if this is a feature in the other games as well? I assume the gods and goddesses talked about in FFXIV are references to other Final Fantasy games.

They're basically just guardian Deities. They used to be fictional "gods" until people learned of Hydaelyn and Zodiark, which degraded them to guardians. They're like guardian angels/mythology gods of the real world.

Also everything in character creation from your race, tribe and deity used to provide elemental bonuses which were devoided in later patches.

[Enkidoh]

They're basically just guardian Deities. They used to be fictional "gods" until people learned of Hydaelyn and Zodiark, which degraded them to guardians. They're like guardian angels/mythology gods of the real world.

Also everything in character creation from your race, tribe and deity used to provide elemental bonuses which were devoided in later patches.

Not true. The Twelve have been revered as 'guardian' deities of the citystates in Eorzea since time immemorial, possibly dating back to the First Astral Era - it was stated outright in the manual to FFXIV 1.0, that the citystates of Eorzea would take members of the Twelve as their guardian and that the wars between the citystates were regarded as holy wars:

"The pantheon of the Twelve is followed devoutly by most, and doctrine holds that the past wars of the realm were the wars of the heavens, with the gods and goddesses choosing nations as their respective champions. Whether because of this celestial struggle or more wordly grievances, war spread throughout the realm, discouraging unity and peace."

Of course, ARR retconned or outright abandoned a lot of 1.0's story concepts, but it still appears that does remain at least tenuously true, that the Twelve have been regarded as the guardians of the nations of Eorzea far far longer than just five years previously (in 1.0 Hydaelyn's existence as a 'goddess' was never mentioned outright but merely hinted at, and Zodiark's existence was never mentioned at all).

[Ultimatecalibur]

One think to remember is that the symbols for the twelve are ancient to the point that they are older than the Allagans and they represent 13 entities. It is quite possible that the 12 are actually a mythological remnant of the Amaurotian Conclave.