6.0 Story Speculations

[BlitzAceRush]

Given that one of the reasons we do so little actual fighting in cutscenes is for them having to account for you being every available job and then having to go back and animate any new ones added, I've always hoped we'd get some generic WoL powers we could use in the story that all of us would have access to independent of our job, like the barrier we use to protect people from tempering and the weapons of light we sparsely use.
Hopefully if we do use the crystal, that's one of the things it leads to, would love to see us a little more animated during combat cutscenes.

[Anonymoose]

Except how many times in those quests were there things like reveling in the blood of people and creatures. Doesn’t sound very heroic to me .

I wouldn't equate "good"-coded and heroic; those were functional quotation marks, lol.

And this is a theme i see a lot of throughout playing the game. There's things the protags do that are very questionable and a lot of people turn a blind eye to it, but then crucify the antagonists for doing the same thing. Such a double standard.

I agree with this cynicism in principle, it's the increasingly common tendency react to it with arguments that sound more like "Always give the villain-coded character the benefit of the doubt that their atrocities were well-intentioned and if you had all the context (and, usually, bend it into a logic pretzel) you'd see they were the good guys actually, but if an ally-coded character ever did anything that hurt anyone, directly or indirectly, deliberately or incidentally, everyone must accept that they are inherently an irredeemable monster, forever, period." that feels awkward to me. There's balancing the analytical scales, and there's inverting them. Which isn't to say either is bad, it's just the insisting the latter is the former that feels awkward.

I might have missed this if it came up before, but... is there anything in particular keeping us from using Azem's crystal to become an Ascian?

Like an Ascian, or an Ascian? The "without shadow" aspects of them is rooted in something we likely can't mimic just by having a stone that, if we used it in a certain way, might awaken the Azem identity to a degree that it overwhelms the Warrior of Light identity. But even the Warriors of Darkness were said to be "like the Ascians;" Minfilia, too. But Azem wasn't there to summon Zodiark, and therefore probably lacks some of the qualities that 1:1 define "AN ASCIAN." (Recall that Lahabrea had to "raise up" the of the Twelfth Blah Blah, himself.) That said, if you had the Azem stone, an Overlord, and whatever Emet-Selch was musing about in the jungle, you might stand a chance of pulling it off! lol

[Cilia]

I don't feel like getting into the usual circular arguments on morality these things tend to devolve into anymore, but I will say this:

The PC is mentally ill in the DRK 30-50 questline. Legitimately. Remember that.

[BlitzAceRush]

While true I was referring more to DRK's overall as their general mandate is "Do what you believe to be right, help those in need, regardless or the laws of the land or any rules that would stop you." If they see a perceived injustice, they act. Were as PLD's while at their core have the same "help those in need" they burry it under oaths, rules and following the law, the ones today are pretty much all in the service of the Sultanate as well before the PC comes along, further compromising that idea. Not to say DRK's are always good, as they're using their judgment, which may not always be correct nor may their sense or right or justice be free of flaws, but at it's core they are there to stand up for the oppressed, the weak or anyone else who can't stand up for themselves.

[Veloran]

Still holding out hope that Azem/Ascian of Light is going to be a secret job you get during the Endwalker MSQ.

Given Ascian means "shadowless", I'd suppose the opposite would just be Scian, and mean "shadow".

Kind of appropriate, I guess.

[Vyrerus]

With all that we have learnt of Primals, and all the possible lore points they might draw on (e.g. auracites as their potential batteries as per Mikoto's exposition), it's fair to say the usual fare of Primals are rather basic by comparison to Hydaelyn and Zodiark and that we are learning more and more of how the analogy is only correct at a rudimentary level. They're Primals+++.

It's truly a shame that the Warring Triad trials and associated quests were not made mandatory at some point.

There's a wave of information where Unukalhai explains to us that not all primal-like entities are the same, and that ones of far greater power and persuasion are the only beings truly dubbed as Eikons by the Allagan Empire.

In the course of the quest line, the Warring Triad is shown to be able to Temper by sheer proximity, through walls, without even needing to launch some good ole tempering orbs/lances/energy.

They have also been used as a power source for Azys Llla for 5,000 years. Rather than needing a constant swathe of believers and crystals and aether, they are the power source. This is part of the reason we were able to best them.

You'd think with all our perusings of Azys Lla, they'd at least get some mention for us to understand the nature of deiform entities better, but they don't, and it's criminal imo.

It also shows that back in the day, the summoning rituals that the Ascians were handing out were even closer to creation magicks, and they may have directly helped with them, in order for the Meracydian tribes to have such powerful primals. That's supposition on my part, obviously, but what other explanation is there(aside from the meta one where they are direct lifts from FFVI, where they were the original Gods and Progenitors of Magic).

[Ceridwenae]

I don't feel like getting into the usual circular arguments on morality these things tend to devolve into anymore, but I will say this:

The PC is mentally ill in the DRK 30-50 questline. Legitimately. Remember that.

This is so. It's a war with the self and extends further in the DRK storyline with learning to love oneself, warts and all. You have to allow yourself to feel emotions, you must own yourself, don't stymy the self or it'll bite you in the backside - anytime something morally southwards occurs with the DRK WoL, it's because they're not processing in a healthy manner. Once there is acceptance, and you no longer hate yourself, you can become a functional person, or at least a continuous work-in-progress who accepts their flaws and owns them. The sort of person who isn't ashamed to apologise, etc. You can have thorns, but know where and when they're needed. Then you can really defend others selflessly and with a whole heart. In short, you have to learn to love yourself before you can truly love* anyone else, and the WoL did that as a DRK. It's why it takes a while to get TBN (my head cannon, anyway, to explain DRK only truly came into its own when I got TBN).

Anyway, when I tank anything, my tank of choice is typically DoRK and I cheekily insert cake and grief counselling references where I can .

*that's selfless love in nearly any sense, and it's pretty hard to achieve that. WoL is awesome.

[Kesey]

snip.

If tempering can be done by objects and primals can be made to not temper and ideas like nationality can be a dominating force for a temper, then it stands to reason that tempering that comes from an Elder Primal could be different. Hydaelyn's blessing of light might be tempering that places you on the path to destiny. We see it in the WOL, but also in other echo users who hear her calls (Ysayle did speak with Hydaelyn and says as much). Zodiark's tempering could be a sense of nostalgia that runs so deep you would commit genocide to have the "good old days" back. I think what we're seeing here is SE showing us multiple paths to understand tempering before they nail down the specifics of what it can actually do in Endwalker.

[MilkieTea]

I don't feel like getting into the usual circular arguments on morality these things tend to devolve into anymore, but I will say this:

The PC is mentally ill in the DRK 30-50 questline. Legitimately. Remember that.

This. WoL wasn't experiencing supernatural events - they were fighting with their depression, anxieties, self-doubts, loneliness, hopelessness, PTSDs, etc etc. They experienced an episode of psychosis, quite possibly one that spanned several months at that - it's not them reveling in blood, it's them not being able to differentiate between reality and nonreality to a worrying degree.

The DRK questline isn't saying that what happened was good or heroic. It was [b]BAD[/i] - your friends were worried for you, you were talking to a LITERAL CORPSE. The DRK questline wants you to understand that what happened was bad and that the WoL needed people. They needed help.

[Jandor]

I might have missed this if it came up before, but... is there anything in particular keeping us from using Azem's crystal to become an Ascian?

Yeah, Emet forgot to include instructions.