The questions I want EW to answer the most: WHY and HOW was the world sundered?

[Cilia]

Hythlodaeus' shade upon first meeting remarks that "we know what awaits them on the morrow... or would, if this weren't a moment plucked from time," or something to that effect, and everyone appears perfectly calm. Whether or not that amounts to a lack of concern is a very tiny part of my argument.

The big one is the fact they did not want to, or were perhaps unable to, accept that the world had changed, pre- or post-Sundering. An unwillingness to change is the practical definition of complacency.

[Vyrerus]

Apposite

Hurray, vocabulary expansion!

As far as FFXI references go, what really got my brain turned towards them was seeing Empty enemies in the Job display trailers. PLD fighting this.



Known as Thinker type Empty. They inhabit Promyvion, the dark shadow world reflecting the parts of the world where the Mothercrystals rest.

I think we're in for a rather lovely time in Endwalkers.

[Mansion]

This is annoying. I had made a nice post in reply, and somewhere along the line the internet has eaten it. I will now attempt a re-do:

Sorry I actually was more replying to Veloran than your post actually, I messed up the replies.
And to reply to you, well the point of Utopia is that... it can't exist to some degree. The etymology means "the non-place" so it's not surprising that it collapses everytime it's brought up in literature / arts in general (Chrono trigger, some SaGa game I forgot, Bioshoch...)
For your thoughts about Hythodealus, fundamentally I can only agree in principle that his name can be ambivalent, as it's also still early to tell because most of what revolves around this character is up to come in details in Endwalker's expected revelations. It may or may not happen, I expect it not to, because FFXIV has no history of deep foreshadowing and meaningful names for people and places.
Yet, interpretation is a big part of these references and that's just fine. Neither position on the topic are good are bad as long as they are documented. I know some people love to over-interpret, some don't.

[Cleretic]

Amaurot's flaw was that it was complacent.

Something I think is going on here is that while there's definitely signs suggesting Amaurot's imperfection, like these, it's all quiet and subtle enough that it's hard to say with certainty if that's something we're meant to be raising an eyebrow about or just 'some stuff that happened'. It's a problem that comes up a lot with some of the more lightly-written stuff in the game; for example, it is hard to tell if Nym's Royal Marines (and how gung-ho for combat Halga Tolga is) is supposed to be a red flag that they were aggressors in the War of the Magi, or if it's just supposed to be 'these guys had a cool army'.

One thing I think Amaurot's lacking that is affecting this whole discourse is that there's not really a 'counter-voice'; there's nobody who's victim to, representative of, or even just speaking to their flaws. That's actually the way a lot of the societal flaws of this game come out; the core city-states have their respective beast tribes (and Ul'Dah the Ala Mhigan refugees), Ishgard has Hilda and Ysayle, the War of the Magi's states have each other, Doma has Yotsuyu, Bozja has Misija, and so on. That at first appeared to be Venat's role with Amaurot, but them and their people haven't really filled that role.

And I'm wondering if perhaps that'll actually be Fandaniel's role. Whatever it is he truly wants, 'the return of Amaurot' is the absolute last on his list, despite being one of the few that has a pretty solid idea of how it was. Does he not want that because he's just generally not put-together mentally, or does he not want that because his different perspective has shown that Amaurot was some kind of secret hellhole?

Known as Thinker type Empty. They inhabit Promyvion, the dark shadow world reflecting the parts of the world where the Mothercrystals rest.

I think you're getting far too excited about nothing, here; it's just a character model. If they were going for something with that, they probably would've spotlighted the enemy in a similar way to how they went 'hey, look, Anima and the Magus Sisters'. There's whole stacks of recycled models from other FF games that don't mean zip, it's folly to assume this one suddenly does.

As much as I wish it was, because frankly, the Empty conceptually suggest a far more interesting apocalypse than we got from the trailer.

[Vyrerus]

I think you're getting far too excited about nothing, here; it's just a character model.

I think you're misunderstanding that I'm writing a detailed summary of FFXI to point out what might be referenced. {I'm chewing the fat.} They've reused almost every model from FFXI in FFXIV, and yeah, a lot of them don't mean anything to the story, but a lot of them didn't mean anything to the story in FFXI either, lol.

In Eureka, in the Baldesion Arsenal, they full frontal referenced the Absolute Virtue fight down to the support fate sporting nothing but Phuabos, reflecting needing to kill Jailer of Love's Phuabo adds(and other adds) repeatedly over and over again to annul Absolute Virtue's massive regeneration. Even that big reference had nothing to do with FFXI's story.

The Empty are a little different though, because until Abyssea they only occupied Promyvion. In Abyssea they were still considered otherworldly and had to be summoned with an Abyssite (Otherworldy beings in an alternate reality, otherworldly inception!).

Does their inclusion necessarily we'll see some direct lifting of say... Promathia into the game? No... but I mean, wasn't there something recently where Fandaniel has motive for the Gates of Paradise?

Also keep this in mind:

Notice anything that people keep mentioning... the rings behind the gods?





Broad strokes references have always been in XIV from its inception. XI, afterall, is the prototype without which we would not have had 1.0 and then no 2.0 up to now.

I'm not gonna fall to pieces if the references aren't more overt. I just think they're there.

[LineageRazor]

As much as I love the Empty mobs and their lore in FFXI, I gotta agree that they were probably chosen to be mobs on the moon solely because they look dusty, grey, and alien. No more meaning to it than the appearance of Cardian mobs in Bardham's Mettle - they just looked appropriate to the area (whereas in FFXI, Cardians had all kinds of cool lore such as their heads being made from fruits harvested from the great tree of Windurst - in Bardham's Mettle, they're just funky-lookin' automata). I don't really feel like the Empty fits the cosmology of FFXIV anyway; the story of Promathia and Altana, while poignant and bittersweet, was a very different one from that of Zodiark and Hydaelyn. I wouldn't want them to try to shoehorn that in, just to make the Empty mobs more meaningful!

On the topic of whether Venat and her crew were justified in their actions, the vibe I was getting from the storyline is that they had some kind of inside knowledge that the Convocation was either ignorant of, downplaying, or deliberately choosing to ignore because it was inconvenient to their goals. I suspect that the Resistance had discovered something about the Sound and the Final Days that made their current society basically unsustainable in its current form. SOMETHING about the way of life enjoyed by the Ancients was a direct contributor to the problem, and the only solution was to change their way of life, permanently.

The Convocation, on the other hand, was dedicated to PRESERVING the Ancients' way of life, and Zodiark was their solution. If the planet was fighting back against their way of life, then Zodiark was the vice that would hold the planet at bay. They were confident that Zodiark would be up to the task. If the laws of nature will not support our way of life, we'll build something to CHANGE those laws! The Resistance, on the other hand, saw it as best a stopgap measure, and one that would eventually fail, leading to the destruction of basically everything - and they will likely turn out to have been correct in that assessment.

[kaynide]

Kinda a dumb “showerthought” today I had…

So there is clearly life outside of our planet as evidenced by Omega, Dragons and even the “empty” like creatures on the moon.

Were the Ancients aware of this? Because if so, surely they had the means to go interstellar (assuming they even are originally from Hydaelyn), and if all they need is life filled with aether to fuel Zodiark, why not just procure it en masse from another planet… or even the moon.

Unless…

Not all life outside has aether, or (we can see Dragons do, but that’s one species)
Creatures on the moon are actually “empty” in that they lack crystals/aether, or
The moon was created post-sundering and/or is Zodiark’s jail a la Dalamud…

[Loggos]

Otherwise we hit stuff like that 'but what if Hydaelyn tempered the WoL' theory that completely ignores the fact that got shot down directly back in ARR.

I know it's kinda off-topic (sorry orz) but I wondered if anybody can link me a thread or copy paste an explanation where this theory is debunked?

Because tbh as a lore noob I had the same exact theory when Hydaelin's nature as a primal was revealed. Something like "Ohhh, what if she was the evil manipulator all along, making us do what she wants us to do and making us immune to other primals because we are already possessed by her".

All of this comes from the perspective of a player who has only very superficial lore understanding with big breaks between my playing periods and only learning about the story from the MSQ. That's more than a shaky background of course so I'd love to read the takess of people who actually understand the lore, unlike me.

[HiraishinNoJutsu]

Also keep this in mind:

Notice anything that people keep mentioning... the rings behind the gods?

Do the rings behind godlike characters hold special meaning? I always thought it was just iconography that represents a higher power.

Halos in religion are usually used to represent one's divinity and spiritual radiance given a physical representation.

It's throughout art of many "supreme beings"

Most art of a Bodhisattva:


Vishnu:


Jesus Christ:


ETC.

I always assumed that when a character is seen with a circle behind them it usually denotes a being of higher power because in so many places around the world halos are pretty recognizable but if FF has deeper meanings for them I am curious to know what they are.

EDIT:

Should have added the Zodiark and Hydaelyn mural for direct comparison so here it is:

[Veloran]

Should have added the Zodiark and Hydaelyn mural for direct comparison so here it is:

As an aside to this, it's very interesting how they share the haloes. First it starts with Zodiark having two, then Hydaelyn being summoned and them both having one, then Zodiark being defeated and Hydaelyn having both. Basically, it's like their divinity is shared.