Revelations from Patch 5.3

[MicahZerrshia]

Count me among those who aren't terribly impressed with the Nier Automata raids thus far.

The Copied Factory setting up the plot with a bunch of mystery boxes was one thing, but we're two acts into a three act story now. Only one of those boxes has been opened: "Who is 2P?" That answer came along with a host of other mysteries, meaning that it's all up to Act Three to explain why all of what we've seen has happened. That's a tall order for any writer, and it's entirely reasonable to be concerned that Yoko Taro won't be able to pull that off—and that's if he even tries to.

But that's not the real problem with the Automata raids, I think. The truth is, the overall story thus far has been painfully sparse. This is partly the fault of the story's format—Three Allied Raids and the quests surrounding them is a far cry from a full length RPG, to say nothing of 2 1/2 full length RPGs (which Nier Automata kind of is). But previous raids were able to do more with the space they had than the Automata raids thus far.

So to be frank, I don't expect the final raid to make good use of the space it has, and I don't see how it can. That doesn't mean I'm not hoping for it to turn out great—just that I'm not exactly holding my breath anymore.

As an aside, 2P is actually kind of interesting and it's a shame she had to die to make that happen.

I have to agree here

I have been completely surprised by how short and just rushed the Nier story has been. It feels almost like Yoko had no interest in doing it but had to so he just threw something together. The Ivalice raids felt like they were really involved and the story, the cutscenes, everything had much more to them. A lot of the story is about the 2 lala and doesn't feel like it has much to do with Nier at all outside of having the themes from the series. You could remake 2b as almost any other character and it would barely change anything. Not to mention that it just does not feel right. There is this giant factory beneath open sky, and giant crashed ship and no one ever noticed even though its a stones throw away from a major metropolitan area? Does not compute. At least the past raids, even Ivalice which was a nod to XII, fit into the world and felt like it was naturally part of it. This neir thing tho, just makes no sense and doesn't feel like it has any heart. It's simply there to excite Nier fans. It feels as out of place as a Pepsi machine in Eulmore would be.

[Jandor]

I fear not. As I understand it, when you pierce an ascians soul with light, it fades out of existence.
It doesn't return to the lifestream, because the soul itself has been destroyed.

I always just interpreted the beams of light and such as simply one of the few ways to attack something as intangible as a soul, functionally equivalent to stabbing a mortal with a sword.

Stab a mortal to death and their soul gets auto-kicked from the material plane, booting a being that is essentially just a disembodied soul riding around in a meat suit though, well that requires an equally intangible sword.

Maybe I'm wrong but I always thought the end result would be essentially the same, both souls ultimately ending up recycled.

[Alleo]

To expound on this, if you pierce any soul with a pure aether blade, then the soul will be destroyed rather than return to the lifestream. This is part of what made Haurchefant's death so poignant. That javelin of light, "Spear of The Fury" was meant to kill and destroy an immortal Echo user(the WoL). Instead it kills Haurchefant, body and soul.

We haven't just been killing Ascians, we've been erasing them completely. At least, that's how it goes in the writing of the NA version.

You need a huge amount of aether to pull of killing the soul. We used the whole Light we gathered by slaying the sineaters to kill Hades. The spear attack was basically from an add. It did not destroy his soul, it "just" killed him. This is shown by Ysayle and Haurchefant helping us later.

[JeanneOrnitier]

I have to agree here

I have been completely surprised by how short and just rushed the Nier story has been. It feels almost like Yoko had no interest in doing it but had to so he just threw something together. The Ivalice raids felt like they were really involved and the story, the cutscenes, everything had much more to them. A lot of the story is about the 2 lala and doesn't feel like it has much to do with Nier at all outside of having the themes from the series. You could remake 2b as almost any other character and it would barely change anything. Not to mention that it just does not feel right. There is this giant factory beneath open sky, and giant crashed ship and no one ever noticed even though its a stones throw away from a major metropolitan area? Does not compute. At least the past raids, even Ivalice which was a nod to XII, fit into the world and felt like it was naturally part of it. This neir thing tho, just makes no sense and doesn't feel like it has any heart. It's simply there to excite Nier fans. It feels as out of place as a Pepsi machine in Eulmore would be.

That's exactly my issue with it.

[ObsidianFire]

Ascians are immortal because they've already "died". Their original bodies are dead, however, their souls haven't finished dying by going to the Lifestream to be reincarnated later. To keep their souls from going the Lifestream, Asicans either possess dead bodies or hang out in the Rift, which they can only get to if they have Crystals of Darkness.

The entire point of Auracite is to put an Ascian soul somewhere it can't escape to another body or the Rift. All while someone is charging up aether to blast the Auractie with. I can't find any mention (even in the English version) that Ascian souls are really destroyed with this method either. What seems to be happening is that the aether blast is simulating the Lifestream. That is, it's surrounding an Asican soul (that should already be in the Lifestream) with so much aether the soul just... joins up with the aether. And then when the Auractie is destroyed and the aether blast dissipates back into the world, the Ascian soul goes with it. Instead of an Ascian soul joining up with the Lifestream, the Lifestream joins up with the Asican soul.

This would explain why the Thordan primal could absorb Lahabrea's soul and then Lahabrea is dead for good. Lahabrea is nothing more than a soul made out of aether... that doesn't have a firm tie to a body anymore. So Thordan can just absorb the aether of Lahabrea's soul like he absorbs all the other aether around him. And we know from other primals that what a primal is defeated, their aether is returned to the Lifestream. What we do with Auracite and the Blade of Light is... probably about the same thing Thordan did. We just are skipping the "kill off the primal" step and letting everything dissipate.

We actually do the "Blade of Light" thing even earlier to force Lahabrea's soul out of Thancred's body at the end of 2.0. But since Lahabrea isn't in an Auractie and has a Crystal of Darkness, he can escape to the Rift just fine there. He doesn't stick around long enough to be surrounded by so much aether he's overwhelmed by it. Bummer.

What does seem to be a reoccurring theme is that the aether of people's souls is somehow tied to the aether of their bodies. So long as their bodies exist, their soul doesn't seem to naturally want to go to the Lifestream. It's only once a body is truly dead that the soul wants to be in the Lifestream. So, I don't think what we do to kill the Ascians would really work on anyone else who is properly alive.

About Elidibus and Emet-Selch

Elidibus is the only one I'm not certain is in the Lifestream, because we see his aether (and the aether of all the Memorial Stones) be absorbed by the Crystal Tower and the Crystal Tower itself never gets destroyed to release the aether in it. The Tower can safely hold so much aether indefinitely that I can't see Elidibus breaking out either. The other thing that makes Elidibus different is that he's part of Zoidark, Zoidark's heart to be exact. I don't know if we really can return Eldiibus to the Lifestream until Zodiark himself is killed. So the Crystal Tower might just be a stop-gap solution until we're ready to defeat Zoidark for good.

Emet-Selch is weird, but not because of how we defeat him. We still flood him with all the Light Aether we picked up from the Lightwardens and also a lot of the Scions' donated aether. We just don't try containing him in an Auracite first like we do the other Ascians. Emet-Selch is weird because his own aether affinity is the aether of the Lifestream. (Check out his short-story from last year's Rising for more details.) He was quite literally the best Ancient at manipulating it. In fact, it's why he had the office of Emet-Selch to begin with. So when we killed Emet-Selch for real, we essentially sent him to the place his aether was already very, very skilled at manipulating. Which... could be interesting going forward. Or rather, has been interesting already most likely given who shows up when we use our Azem power to bring in someone who can pull us out of the Rift.

The Lifestream is where Hydaelyn also is. And we haven't been able to have contact with her since 3.4 when Minfillia left to save the 1st Shard. So it's high time we had a chat with Hydaelyn about all this... but how to get to her? I find it... very convenient... that someone who was really good at manipulating the Lifestream in life is now actually in the Lifestream. And we've already somehow called upon them once...

[Rosenstrauch]

Ascian spoilers, natch

I'm inclined to believe that Elidibus met the same fate as the rest, if only because right after he's eaten by Syrcus Tower, there's that giant burst of light that destroys the starshower illusion. If the aether used for that effect was the captured essence of Elidibus, then in all likelihood he was properly dissipated and his soul returned to the Lifestream.

Also, I am now kind of hoping that a later expansion takes us, say, 30 or so years into the future, if only so the writers have an excuse to get us adventuring with a bunch of familiar faces reborn.

[EdwinLi]

I guess this could be true if Ryne was not a soul part of Minfilia (which I guess was never stated ingame?). But shouldnt every single person on the source then have a big amount of voices in their head? Everyone on the source is rejoined with soul parts x amount of times. Why would Ardbert be special?

Also even though I really like Arcbert it kinda feels a little creepy, especially if you are a female. So that guy can just see what we see? And if he does exist why does he not comment more on stuff? He is his own person with his own dreams now caged in a body not his. I really liked the implications more that he was finally able to rest. Maybe..maybe it was just the crystal? Maybe it gave one last chance for him to talk?

The difference between Ardbert and the other souls is that Ardbert choose himself to rejoin while everyone else from the fragments were forced into rejoining via calamity.

Since Ardbert rejoined with us willingly, he most likely did not become completely erased but became a inner Shadow personality instead while at the sametime his dream, desires, and certain aspect of his personality has become part of our character as well. Those that were forced into the rejoining most likely faced losing their memories and even personality due to it being forced on them. Like I said this is going into the Persona series level of a person's soul, Shadows, and True self which is very confusing at certain points.

[QT_Melon]

Also even though I really like Arcbert it kinda feels a little creepy, especially if you are a female. So that guy can just see what we see? And if he does exist why does he not comment more on stuff? He is his own person with his own dreams now caged in a body not his. I really liked the implications more that he was finally able to rest. Maybe..maybe it was just the crystal? Maybe it gave one last chance for him to talk?

Emphasis mine since, you know I'm female myself and have a female avatar. While I'm sure there's going to be ideas for a lot of ...interesting... fanfiction/art. I find none of that to be creepy as this is going through a lot of beliefs regarding reincarnation and plays out a lot like Avatar The Last Airbender's cycle. He is us, and I mean it could play out that if you feel soul wise you're the lusty creeper type, then maybe your other soul is what you deserve. Our counterpart could be gay, demisexual, bisexual, pan, trans or asexual. We could have lived many lives as an Adventurer so who knows. Plus even if Ardbert is of opposite gender he may not be "into me" even if he is "me" I'm willing to cut him some slack and not go pearl clutching just because we happen to be opposite genders.

But besides that, it's simply because we are Azem and can summon others in times of need, which I'm assuming even can be our own counterpart soul to wish a beloved companion a heartfelt goodbye.

[ObsidianFire]

Hythlodaeus hints that what race/gender/etc. a being is has... very little to do with what makes a specific soul and specific soul. What makes us and Ardbert similar (and compatible for a soul melding) has nothing to do with the fact that Ardbert is a male Hyur. We were part of the same soul at one point. The same soul that genuinely liked traveling around the world and helping people out.

Part of why our friendship with Ardbert works so well in Shadowbringers is because we can connect with him about everything we were both doing on our own shards. We're connecting with him over random fetch-quests we did, the group of people we met up with and partied with, our faithful animal companions who carried us around everywhere, how neither of use wanted to be heroes but found ourselves in the role anyway, etc. It's because of all of those things that Ardbert tells us in the Tempest that he'll be with us to the end. And then makes good on that promise by willingly melding his soul with ours so our soul can contain the aether of the Lightwardens. We see each other as the kind of person we want to be with because we are soulmates in the most literal way possible.

It's also confirmed as canon that the Lifestream doesn't really change the souls that are in it. Azem's soul has the desires of Azem's soul even when it's split up across different Shards or is reborn into the bodies of very different beings than an Ancient.

[EdwinLi]

Hythlodaeus hints that what race/gender/etc. a being is has... very little to do with what makes a specific soul and specific soul. What makes us and Ardbert similar (and compatible for a soul melding) has nothing to do with the fact that Ardbert is a male Hyur. We were part of the same soul at one point. The same soul that genuinely liked traveling around the world and helping people out.

Part of why our friendship with Ardbert works so well in Shadowbringers is because we can connect with him about everything we were both doing on our own shards. We're connecting with him over random fetch-quests we did, the group of people we met up with and partied with, our faithful animal companions who carried us around everywhere, how neither of use wanted to be heroes but found ourselves in the role anyway, etc. It's because of all of those things that Ardbert tells us in the Tempest that he'll be with us to the end. And then makes good on that promise by willingly melding his soul with ours so our soul can contain the aether of the Lightwardens. We see each other as the kind of person we want to be with because we are soulmates in the most literal way possible.

It's also confirmed as canon that the Lifestream doesn't really change the souls that are in it. Azem's soul has the desires of Azem's soul even when it's split up across different Shards or is reborn into the bodies of very different beings than an Ancient.

SPOILER below

Yep this is certainly the part most people seem to be confused with being that our character and the other fragments of the original soul are not exact copies of who and what Azem looked like. The only similarities that are carried from the original soul into the fragmented soul, revealed in 5.3 MSQ, is the desire to explore the world and help others. The appearance, species, personality, interests, and gender will all be completely different from each other. Heck, if I remember right, the only reason why Emet recognized our character was because he looked into our soul's color since our character's appearance is completely different from what the Original Soul looked like. Thus we can assume Azem appearance, personality, and interests will be completely different from our character's appearance and the personality we gave them with the only similarities being our passion to explore the world and help others even if we choose our character to have a personality that don't like helping but still do it anyways.

This actually brings up more questions into who IS the Original Soul Azem and it appears from what we have seen in 5.3 that next part of the storyline may also focus on exploring into who Azem is and potentially finally revealed what Azem looked like before he was sundered into our character and the other sundered fragments.

I honestly won't be surprised if at some point in 5.4 to 6.3 that we have a moment to talk with Azem thus seeing how different our character is with him while also noticing the only similarities we have with Azem is passion to explore the world and help others even if those reasons we have for doing so are just far too different.