What/Who will be the 6.0 expansion final boss? And what about the raid bosses?

[Lauront]

Consider it 'payoff' to the plot of the ancients and the remembrance theme, and the promise to Emet and the as yet undisclosed identity of the person Elidibus swore his oath to, quite likely to be Azem. The WoL may not be Azem but the remembrance theme is there.

Azem had no dealing with Venat's faction either.

Frankly I consider the 'payoff' arguments to be rather weak as an excuse not to subvert expectations. Just because Zenos hatched some half baked plan doesn't mean it's going to go exactly that way.

WoL 'always' working with Hydaelyn doesn't rule out there being false pretences in the relationship - we already know there are, and 5.2 has raised further questions about it. It's a case of whether there's yet more to it. They can generate 'payoff' with any number of possible outcomes.

[MoofiaBossVal]

I hope it is NOT Zodiark. Or the Sound. Or Hydaelyn. Or any other god monster.

I will be fine with Zenos being the final boss (PLEASE don't turn into a god monster!)

[Lanadra]

It'll be something involving Zodiark. I find the theory of 'WoL suddenly goes with Zodiark' to be silly considering we spend the entirety of ARR, HW, SB and ShB's foiling the plots to bring Zodiark back. Also, isn't Hydaelyn already supposed to be pretty much gone? Hell, she needed Minfilia as a host because she'd lost most of her strength.. she couldn't even shield the WoL from a second round of Ultima in the Praetorium because she hadn't the strength. I was under the impression everything with Hydaelyn had been tied up in ShB, with the final death of Minfilia and Ryne becoming her own person.

[KizuyaKatogami]

It'll be something involving Zodiark. I find the theory of 'WoL suddenly goes with Zodiark' to be silly considering we spend the entirety of ARR, HW, SB and ShB's foiling the plots to bring Zodiark back. Also, isn't Hydaelyn already supposed to be pretty much gone? Hell, she needed Minfilia as a host because she'd lost most of her strength.. she couldn't even shield the WoL from a second round of Ultima in the Praetorium because she hadn't the strength. I was under the impression everything with Hydaelyn had been tied up in ShB, with the final death of Minfilia and Ryne becoming her own person.

I don’t see how it’s silly really. We do that not so much because him being back could be necessarily bad, but because the methods used to bring him back are considered “bad”. They could easily make it so we have no other choice but to go to Zodiark. As for Hydaelyn, just because ryne/minfilia is gone doesn’t mean she is. She lasted fine in post arr after ultima before minfilia became word of the mother, and we see in 5.3 that she’s still alive and kicking, just on what appears to be on auto pilot but she’s still very much alive.

[Lauront]

Yep and that's also before Midgadsormr suppressed the Blessing for a while so the MC could strengthen a bit and not tax her all the time, so the Blessing is drawn upon more sparingly. One can find such possibilities as "silly" as they like but clever writing can push it in either direction.

[linayar]

....what? WoL is Azem.

WoL is a sundered incarnation of Azem, not Azem.

And we know there is a connection between us and zodiark all the way back in ARR when he gave us a brief echo vision of him.

That is not a connection, and even if it was, we still have a bigger connection with Hydaelyn.

Also with everything we’ve learned recently and with the shady stuff it seems hydaelyn is a part of, Azem(WoL) seems to be taking the remembrance of the ancients over Hydaelyn.Hell, just look at the Endwalkers trailer where it has WoL as an Elidibus stand-in on the moon.

What shady stuff are you talking about? And being on the moon does not make the WoL an Elidibus stand-in.

Azem had no dealing with Venat's faction either.

Right, but the WoL does have dealings with Hydaelyn, again showing that the WoL is not Azem.

Frankly I consider the 'payoff' arguments to be rather weak as an excuse not to subvert expectations. Just because Zenos hatched some half baked plan doesn't mean it's going to go exactly that way.

Subverting expectation is a bad excuse to not have a payoff to the end of a 10-year running storyline.

WoL 'always' working with Hydaelyn doesn't rule out there being false pretences in the relationship - we already know there are, and 5.2 has raised further questions about it. It's a case of whether there's yet more to it. They can generate 'payoff' with any number of possible outcomes.

Do we know there are false pretenses? What are they and do they negatively affect our current good relationship with Hydaelyn?

[Shougun]

It'll be something involving Zodiark. I find the theory of 'WoL suddenly goes with Zodiark' to be silly considering we spend the entirety of ARR, HW, SB and ShB's foiling the plots to bring Zodiark back. Also, isn't Hydaelyn already supposed to be pretty much gone? Hell, she needed Minfilia as a host because she'd lost most of her strength.. she couldn't even shield the WoL from a second round of Ultima in the Praetorium because she hadn't the strength. I was under the impression everything with Hydaelyn had been tied up in ShB, with the final death of Minfilia and Ryne becoming her own person.

I don't think it's silly at all if you see as yin and yang, which there is a lot of imagery for it as well as a sort of philosophical standing Yoshida has said he personally holds. To be clear I don't think I've ever heard him say explicit yin yang stuff, but the general concept of balance fits well within that and the imagery is starting to look like that.

If Hydaelyn is mother then Zodiark may as well be father. The imagery on a concept art holds decently well to this. The actions of each 'primal' have also loosely been in the line of chaos (freedom, don't read chaos as evil or whatever lol- in this situation it's not) and order, both of which have consequences at their extremes (and each person may have a bias to which extreme they'd like to be, but I think most would ask for balance of both). This is then where I note on multiple occasions Yoshida has mentioned the importance of balance, things going too far, extremes, and the differences between history written by the victors vs those who did not win.

In such a way neither are really evil as much as they're ideas- which is what primals have always been anyways. So if we do use or get help from Zodiark it's not because suddenly Hydaelyn is evil (especially if Zenos has decided to slurp her up), it also doesn't suddenly make everything Zodiark has represented and done as purely good (by receiving his help you're not like "why yes I too also think we should restore ascian power and down with the low blood races"). There is a lot of stuff they could do for the end thoughts but if they're actually closing the whole chapter I imagine Zodiark and Hydaelyn are going to become one (and or perhaps begin to decay together returning their energy to the life stream).

I hope it is NOT Zodiark. Or the Sound. Or Hydaelyn. Or any other god monster.

I will be fine with Zenos being the final boss (PLEASE don't turn into a god monster!)

I would be disappointed if it was Zenos, at least as himself. Zenos... Agaaaainnn?

Much rather a god monster where the visual spectacle can be out of this world. They will need to go back down a bit in scale for the next expansion otherwise it'll be ever growing issue but.. for the finale of multiple expansions they decide to just do "zenos"? That'd be a huge let down. I'm full expecting full on gross use of budget on scale of fight to represent the end of the saga. Anything low key for the end is going to be a let down, imo.

God monster eeeverryyy singgleee expansionn with ever growing concerns can certainly get tiring but this is the finale, I'm sorry but anything but grandiose for the finale is like a weak firework fizzling out lol.

[linayar]

I don't think it's silly at all if you see as yin and yang, which there is a lot of imagery for it as well as a sort of philosophical standing Yoshida has said he personally holds. To be clear I don't think I've ever heard him say explicit yin yang stuff, but the general concept of balance fits well within that and the imagery is starting to look like that.

If Hydaelyn is mother then Zodiark may as well be father. The imagery on a concept art holds decently well to this. The actions of each 'primal' have also loosely been in the line of chaos (freedom, don't read chaos as evil or whatever lol- in this situation it's not) and order, both of which have consequences at their extremes (and each person may have a bias to which extreme they'd like to be, but I think most would ask for balance of both). This is then where I note on multiple occasions Yoshida has mentioned the importance of balance, things going too far, extremes, and the differences between history written by the victors vs those who did not win.

In such a way neither are really evil as much as they're ideas- which is what primals have always been anyways. So if we do use or get help from Zodiark it's not because suddenly Hydaelyn is evil (especially if Zenos has decided to slurp her up), it also doesn't suddenly make everything Zodiark has represented and done as purely good (by receiving his help you're not like "why yes I too also think we should restore ascian power and down with the low blood races"). There is a lot of stuff they could do for the end thoughts but if they're actually closing the whole chapter I imagine Zodiark and Hydaelyn are going to become one (and or perhaps begin to decay together returning their energy to the life stream).

So, first things first, I don't know how the ending will turn out, which excites me even more.

That said, what I have a problem with is people wanting Zenos to go after Hydaelyn and forcing us to go after Zodiark. That, to me, doesn't make any sense if Zenos knows of our association with Hydaelyn. He wants to fight against us, not take over our source of power (at least one of).

Also, while I'm aware of the idea of balance, Hydaelyn was summoned to keep Zodiark in check. Which means, unless they merge or are both destroyed, balance in this case means Hydaelyn being strong enough to do exactly what she was summoned to do, especially since Zodiark being stronger potentially means the deaths of existing lives. So if balance is the ideal, and Zenos as the antagonist wants to destroy that balance, then he would go after Zodiark to stand against the combined force of Hydaelyn-WoL.

[Bright-Flower]

Subverting expectations only works if the subversion is at least as interesting, preferably MORE interesting, than the expectation.

Having it be just Zenos would be boring IMO. I don't want it to be a mindless monster with no personality, but they also shouldn't go against expectations of having a big fancy final fight like they normally do just for the sake of subversion.

Unless said final fight is a 'victory lap' fight where the level 90 trial is a big battle and then there's an instanced 1 on 1 fight after. Like Cloud's final duel with Sephiroth at the end of FFVII or in a sense the easier Lahabrea fight at the end of Praetorium but without having party members around.

[Theodric]

Personally I've never found Hydaelyn to be sympathetic or trustworthy. She's responsible for the current state of the world - which the writer's themselves, in interviews, have claimed to be a bad thing. She sought to hide the truth of the world's origins, completely snuff out the memories and lives of a proud and ancient race. She claims to love 'all' of her children, yet only saved the one that benefitted her when the Isle of Val was plunged into the Lifestream. Namely Krile. She had another of her 'blessed' sacrifice themselves to be her puppet in the form of Minfilia. Who was depicted as being bound in thorny chains in one of the art pieces for a content patch...

For a while, a lot of her fans were convinced that she was some sort of benevolent goddess guiding the Warrior of Light to always do good. The game has actively embraced nuance and hammered home the fact that Light is not always good and Dark is not always bad.

I still remember someone making a thread on the lore forum speculating, long before Shadowbringers, that Hydaelyn might be a Primal. That poster received a lot of bile and smug mockery because that could never be the case, supposedly. Then 5.0 came and revealed the theory to be correct.

In short, maybe it's best to be cautious with absolutes?

I'd also note that neither Hydaelyn or Zodiark currently appear on the character popularity lists in any region. The likes of Emet and Zenos, however...do. With that in mind, there's a good chance both Hydaelyn and Zodiark will 'just' be Primals and little else when we confront them directly or they're dealt with off screen.

But, yeah...of the two, Zodiark made a genuine attempt to save his world. Hydaelyn simply destroyed it. Through malice, incompetence and/or subversion. I don't consider her to be a heroic figure. Tragic, perhaps - especially if a third party is involved and misled her somehow. Part of me is expecting some sort of Jenova like entity to be involved if that's the case. Amaurot's illusion/remains happened to be located on a coral sea bed, much like the City of the Ancients in FF7 after all. Perhaps the references will go further and it'll turn out that the Ancients were turned against each other for the benefit of a manipulative parasite from outer space.

It is a Final Fantasy game/JRPG after all.