Revelations from Patch 5.2

[Alleo]

About MSQ and the WoLs

Honestly I dont see the solution being us fighting against them. Even if we somehow stop them Elidibus has time on his side. Once we are gone he can just start up the next round of WoLs.

I also dont think that its bad that we have a few with the echo because Elidibus does have a point: We will be gone somewhere in the future and there needs to be more adventurers that will protect the normal people.

I guess we just have to stop and put an end to the Ascians. Because it seems that WoL are born in conflict. And its not that easy to become one because even on the source there had only been a couple of them active at a time, at recent times we had three and there should be many more echo users than that. Maybe those two soldiers wont even become WoLs.

So if we stop the Ascians then there should be no conflict that needs specifically WoLs thus no loss of balance. If we just stop the WoLs then its just a short time win.


About Venat: The Amaurotine was female. Yet when Hythlo talkes about Hades old friend (which is us) he changes it to he or she depending on our own gender. I think that might be a good clue that Venat is not us.

[Swilly]

Brief thought about Werlyt:

Struck me as strange that Nero isn't there, in a plot concerning the ugly consequences of something he directly influenced. However, I guess there is still room for him to show up later to brighten everyone's day...

In any case, it was a sad bit of meta that Gaius gave Nero no recognition for his rather large role in restoring Ultima—just the thing he was so desperately afraid of all the way back in 2.0. Then again, I would hope that after everything he's been through since then, Nero isn't quite so proud of this anymore anyway...

[JeanneOrnitier]

And now, Eden's Verse

Did I miss it or did they not explain how that darkness inside Gaia could control the sin eaters? You wouldn't expect polar opposites to work that way. Does it mean a powerful light could control voidsent? If they didn't explain it then I assume an explanation will come next time, but I may have just missed it.

On a gameplay level Ifrit/Garuda was complete anti-fun. It's not that it was hard to figure out the mechanics, it's that there was too much aoe going on to do much of anything at all. I don't think I'll ever be going back to it. The other fights were good though. And Shiva! Shiva was amazing. My favorite fight of this patch, and that's counting Ruby Weapon and the dungeon too.

[Khala]

The Sorrow of Werlyt:
This is the first time I'm contemplating not finishing a story arc in all the time I've played.

They could have done many things but bringing back a guy who has never once given a single solitary rip about anyone but Garlemald and his own power is .. odd. He has destroyed countless lives (Fordola, Livia, all of Ala Mhigo - to name a few) and seems to be held hostage (from the sounds of it) or he'd be on the opposing side yet again. And fridging yet more characters (and this first one felt especially bad since we never even saw her face ), whom we've never had a chance to even know makes it hard to feel the emotional impact this should have had. All this while making our character the hand that kills them to further Baelsar's "redemption" arc feels really gross. Am I supposed to feel sorry for him after all he's done? Yeah, no. I'll be honest and say I wish he'd stayed dead and we'd gotten a new character for this story.

MSQ:
I really liked it, and the voice actors have been amazing. I got answers to questions and now I have more questions.

Eden:
I unlocked it but there was so much to do I haven't had a chance to run anything yet.

Beast tribes: scree!

[Cilia]

I have this feeling

That Ryne and Minfilia are souls sundered from Venat.

Because of these pictures:

What's going on here is a bit complicated, but I don't think that's really the case...

Due to some combination of Ryne's weaker ego compared to other incarnate summoners, her close connection to Hydaelyn as the Oracle of Light, and ice's closeness to the absolute Umbral polarity / Light, Eden Shiva essentially has two forms - Ryne as Shiva (which is actually pretty close to how she was when Ysayle summoned her), and Ryne as a bootleg Hydaelyn.

To wit, her Hydaelyn form has the wings and halos as shown on the Ronkan mural. Her super move is called "Shattered World," as Hydaelyn did to defeat Zodiark, and has her stomping the battlefield, using the same pose, as shown on the Ronkan mural as well. To stop her from triggering another Flood of Light you have to stop miniaturized Hydaelyn crystal lookalikes from devouring too many elemental sprites - keeping the meter at 0 grants you the "Blessing of Light" for a minute as well. At the end of the fight you have to stop her from triggering another Flood of Light with aid from Gaia, and throughout the fight Shiva mixes Light powers with her innate ice abilities.

The whole implication is that the Shiva primal is tapping into Ryne's wellspring of Light to augment its powers - which is preternaturally effective due to ice being very close to pure Light on the elemental wheel - and in so doing takes on the appearance of what Ryne believes Hydaelyn to look like, albeit channeled through her like OG Shiva and Tsukuyomi are channeled through Ysayle and Yotsuyu, respectively.

Easily my favorite fight since Tsukuyomi. Easily.

P.S. Savage version has a third form where Shiva "wears" a simulacrum of Hraesvelgr a la Golbez' EX Mode in Dissidia. Appropriate, given their connection and Hraesvelgr's light / ice elemental affinity.

MSQ Musings

While Zenos' mysterious benefactor being Venat does make sense given meta-text, I'm not entirely sold on the idea yet. Hydaelyn's purpose is to shackle Zodiark, not destroy him, so aiding Zenos in doing as much doesn't seem like something Hydaelyn's "heart" would want to do. Furthermore he says he only has "secondhand knowledge" of the Final Days - were this Venat s/he would have firsthand knowledge, being an Ancient and all.

The ambiguity surrounding the Convocation's fourteenth defective member continues to imply they were the Warrior of Light's original self.

As for Elidibus' scheme, assuming he's trying to trigger the Flood of Light again what he's doing makes sense - by empowering and sending out a bunch of would-be "Warriors of Light," the scales will tip back to Light if they do well enough. By sending out so many he's also destabilizing society, at least in the Crystarium; this is immediately apparent when Elidibus' newly minted WoLs all try to desert or resign at the same time, leading to a manpower shortage. Additionally, the vainglorious attitude displayed by some of them... suggests things won't end well to me. (Reminds me of a Magic card's flavor text: "Heroes act without thought of glory or reward. Accolades are a consequence, not a goal.")

YoRHa: Dark Apocalypse

No real development on that front - but the two quests do imply the next leg will be the carnival zone, and likely feature the iconic opera singer boss (Simone).

Sorrow of Werlyt

Surprised there aren't more people seeing similarities between it and NGE! It's an older anime but it's a classic, and even then newer generations have the Rebuild of Evangelion films to retell the story(ish) for them... the similarities between the Sorrow of Werlyt Weapons' functionality and other surrounding bits of the story and NGE are uncanny.

[Eyvind]

Sorrow of Werlyt

Surprised there aren't more people seeing similarities between it and NGE! It's an older anime but it's a classic, and even then newer generations have the Rebuild of Evangelion films to retell the story(ish) for them... the similarities between the Sorrow of Werlyt Weapons' functionality and other surrounding bits of the story and NGE are uncanny.

Everywhere in the fandom I see references to Gundam, which gives me that same sensation of suddenly aging I get whenever I run across a young'un who thinks Tolkien ripped off Dumbledore for Gandalf

It is impossible to describe the effect Evangelion had on Japanese geek culture - anime and games and manga. For about five years after it, everything felt like a footnote to Eva, and somehow the dissatisfying ending somehow prodded people harder to conplete the story their own way.

Back to FFIV...

I think I could name individual episodes those scenes were, though the full on mecha body horror was more reminiscent of the movie. I was definitely thinking of the episode where Shinji was absorbed into his Eva's consciousness and all that was left in the physical world was a suit in the cockpit. The Werlyt orphans are like the pilots. But who is our Gendo in this scenario? Someone new must be leading them if Gaius is gone.

[polyphonica]

Honestly I dont see the solution being us fighting against them. Even if we somehow stop them Elidibus has time on his side. Once we are gone he can just start up the next round of WoLs.

I also dont think that its bad that we have a few with the echo because Elidibus does have a point: We will be gone somewhere in the future and there needs to be more adventurers that will protect the normal people.

More speculation...

Ultimately dealing with Elidibus is the key and best outcome, but it also depends on how quickly his actions have the effect of tipping the balance back towards light. We might be forced to first try to unravel the immediate scheme before we can deal with the underlying root cause. I also assume it's not like Elidibus is going to go out of his way to fight us at this point given how many other Ascians have fallen at our hand. So if Elidibus keeps himself out of reach for the time-being, our options might be limited.

I guess this all comes back to what Elidibus said of his plans at the end of 5.0:

"I will keep these 'heroes' mired in the First, and victory will be ours at the last. Warriors of Darkness now, are they? Then their fate is decided. They shall meet the same end as those who came before--death at the hands of Warriors of Light!"

At the time I guessed he meant he was going to bring WoL from other shards (like the void) to face the "threat" of the WoD somehow. But given what we see him doing now, it seems like his end-game here after awakening all these new "Warriors of Light" is to turn them on us instead. (This way also he doesn't have to face us in a direct confrontation and so risk himself -- he just manipulates things to the outcome he wants.)

A lot of this patch focused on us meeting up with various people who we helped along the way who pledged they'd never forget what we did for them and for the world. But it also focused on how, after the flood of light happened, all the good deeds of the past Warriors of Light were quickly forgotten to assign them all the blame (and that an accurate version of history got basically blotted out by bias). Taking all these points in composite, the question seems to be: what sort of calamity could cause the new army of heroes of the First to turn against us?

I guess if they really want to spin the story on its head, it'd be a flood of darkness. The Crystal Tower as we know was used in the past to open a gateway to the Void. What if somehow that gate is opened again and a flood of voidsend pours out of the Crystal Tower -- enough forces of darkness to blot out the day sky, say... The blame for this would fall on the Crystal Exarch and his friends/allies -- the Warriors of Darkness. Some people would say (wrongly, but likely encouraged by a certain "Warrior of Light"...) that we brought back the night so that we could unleash a new breed of terror (and we all can't be trusted because of things we've hidden from everyone). Elidibus's hope, then, would be that the First's new Warriors of Light (perhaps under the misguided influence (tempering?) of "Hydaelyn") would step in and beat all the "forces of darkness" -- taking us out of the picture and ushering in the new/"final" flood of light that triggers the rejoining. Basically, this way he solves all the problems at once without having to put himself at risk of being killed by the "Ascian-slayer."

Assuming they went that route, obviously the question would be how would we thwart it. I think, despite it all, we will still have some allies who won't turn so easily. But somehow we'd have to stop the flood of darkness without contributing to the world tipping to light. As I said from the start, killing Elidibus would be ideal, but my guess is he's going to play pretty cautious. At the very least you'd have to undo the scheme enough so that you could get to him.

Anyway, obviously all this is going way out on a limb in pure speculation. We'll see what happens...

[Naria]

MSQ/The Fourteenth

After this patch I'm wondering if the Fourteenth was just opposed to summoning or perhaps large scale creation magic (because of it's contributions in escalating if not starting the Terminus). They may have agreed with Venat's rebels about the problem but not the solution. They may have felt creating another god would just perpetuate or escalate the problem.

Also in the record of the rebels there are 12 Ascians plus Venat. So more fuel for the Twelve are based off of Hydaelyn's summoners fire.

[Cilia]

Everywhere in the fandom I see references to Gundam, which gives me that same sensation of suddenly aging I get whenever I run across a young'un who thinks Tolkien ripped off Dumbledore for Gandalf

It is impossible to describe the effect Evangelion had on Japanese geek culture - anime and games and manga. For about five years after it, everything felt like a footnote to Eva, and somehow the dissatisfying ending somehow prodded people harder to conplete the story their own way.

Back to FFIV...

I think I could name individual episodes those scenes were, though the full on mecha body horror was more reminiscent of the movie. I was definitely thinking of the episode where Shinji was absorbed into his Eva's consciousness and all that was left in the physical world was a suit in the cockpit. The Werlyt orphans are like the pilots. But who is our Gendo in this scenario? Someone new must be leading them if Gaius is gone.

I'd believe it's Gundam, but...

Gundams are purely mechanical, and whatever's going on with the Weapon project they're clearly biomechanical in nature to some degree. Can't sprout a naked Nael deus Darnus out of its back otherwise!

Err. The big question I have, other than who is the VIIth's new Legatus spearheading the project, is how the kupo did they get combat data on deus Darnus? She only appeared in her winged, facemarked form in the Binding Coils... and the only people who saw her down there were Alisae and the WoL, so what the kupo is going on?!

The whole "Oversoul" bit reminded me more of Mari using the "Beast" mode in Rebuild 2.0, albeit with the opposite outcome (Oversoul makes the Weapon stationary, while Beast makes the Eva go totally berserk and frenzied). Whatever's going on, it's some bad shite... though not unexpected of the Imperials.

[Anonymoose]

I'd believe it's Gundam, but...