[MAJOR ENDWALKER/SHADOWBRINGER SPOILERS] On the introduction of dynamis.

[Loggos]

For me these are all not so much examples of hints but of instances that just retroactively make sense. As someone said before it's good that they created a concept that you can integrate into the story of the previous expansions so that it doesn't feel entirely out of place.

But I wouldn't really consider it hints in the sense that the story (subtly) directs your attention towards the future reveal of Dynamis *while* you play the story that comes before EW.

So to me, the direction of hints is "forwards" (even if you miss them or they are purposefully hart to spot) whereas Dynamis' integration now that it reveals only works "backwards" for me.



For example, it is certainly interesting that you can now explain the Limit Break as an expression of Dynamis but nothing about the Limit Break while playing the old game indicates to me that it ever could be anything else than aether + game mechanics (because we need a big ultimate team based attack).

Never did I once get the impression that the story (subtly) implies the Limit Break is an open question that could point to something new in the future.

To me it was the power of our collective aether because aether could explain it well enough already:

Aether also reacts to emotions and thoughts. Our soul is literally created from aether. Emotions and thoughts are the very expression of our soul/our consciousness. Memories (and fake memories) are aether manifestations as explained by the old elezen scholar and even Amon, who said the memories of That Day in Elpis have been edged so deeply into their aether/their soul that Kairos couldn't overwrite it forever. And lastly, magic is based on aether and magic is a manifestation of our will and thoughts/what we create in our head. That is literally the foundation of creation magic.


This is also why I thought this whole "Dynamis is moved by emotion and thoughts" attempt of an explanation felt too short and not all that satisfying to me because just as Y'shtola says, aether can pretty much fulfill the same function (but in a "magic-physically" different way).



Lastly, there is also a potential flaw/oversight here (but maybe a lore expert can correct me):

In the boss fight with Elidibus, when he turns into the First Warrior of Light, he literally casts four Limit Breaks against us, one of which we have to answer with our own Limit Break.

But he is both an unsundered Ascian and if I remember correctly he is also still a primal, which is a manifestation of pure aether.
(And the WoL he turns into is ALSO summoned, I believe? So he might be like...a double primal now. But even if I remember this incorrectly the two points before, Ascian + Primal (Heart of Zodiark), still stand.)

So, all in all, he shouldn't be able to cast a Limit Break if it's a manifestation of Dynamis.

Perhaps you could argue that all the souls of the other WoLs he summons are sundered and cast the big Limit Break for him but that still makes little sense to me, because:

A) It's still him who casts it himself. You could argue that he channeled their Dynamis but as a being of pure aether he shouldn't be able to channel and subsequently wield their Dynamis at all (or at least not to this level of proficiency). His massive aether should shield him from their Dynamis and also make perceiving and controlling it too hard or impossible.

B) He casts more LBs (LB1, LB2 and LB3) later on, while also saying "My soul knows no surrender" and the screen reads "the Warrior of Light tanscends his limits". During these moments no other WoL souls are present.
And if he has absorbed them at that point in the fight it would still not make sense to me because what primals absorb is aether. Even if sundered beings have less aether than unsundered ones, if you add a lot of "little" aether you will eventually have "a lot" of aether again.


So if even a being of pure aether can explicitly cast Limit Breaks in an incredibly important and thus memorable story fight I don't really agree that the Limit Break's nature has been a hint all along (and retconning it as a manifestation of Dynamis might not even make sense retroactively either).



For this reason I agree with OP. I think its reveal was very sudden and considering the importance and grand scale of this force it felt very rushed to me, even though I do like the concept of Dynamis itself.
I wish they would have taken more time to establish it by properly hinting at it earlier.

Or they could have saved the Dynamis story line for the second season of FF14 and close the first season with a story purely focused on Zodiark and Hydaelin.

(Although I still did enjoy EW so it's not like I think it was a trainwreck or anything. Separating these two storylines might just have been even better than what we have gotten.)
Because I think Meteion's story itself could be scaled up so much that it comprises at least a whole expansion on its own and not just two zones.

[Alenore]

See, I don't mind at all. They clearly stipulates Dynamis doesn't interact with aether, and so its effect are very slim.
Compare it to Dark Energy, which is pretty much a similar concept of expansion energy : we only literally supposed its existence 23 years ago. Neutrinos, which barely interacts with matter, has only been speculated around 1930 and discovered in 1956.
Why would people who research aether, which can explain most things, suppose there's anything else?

Thing is, we discover and theorize about new form of matter / energy quite often, and some we probably never heard about. What's to say most of the summoning that took place in Eorzea somehow used a bit of Dynamis to increase the effects?
We know Aether and Dynamis can interact, since Meteion was created by a being that cannot interact with Dynamis, just like the Elpis flowers that were happy accidents.

As for Limit Breaks, perhaps Elidibus did the same as Hermes or that Elpis maker, or perhaps it's just aether but what Meteion noticed was that we channeled Dynamis in addition to Aether when surviving an attack that would otherwise totally obliterate us, against all odds.
On a sidenote, my headcannons about LB is that we use the aether residues generated by spells and skills over the duration of a fight, and channel it into one big effect

[Loggos]

See, I don't mind at all. They clearly stipulates Dynamis doesn't interact with aether, and so its effect are very slim.
Compare it to Dark Energy, which is pretty much a similar concept of expansion energy : we only literally supposed its existence 23 years ago. Neutrinos, which barely interacts with matter, has only been speculated around 1930 and discovered in 1956.
Why would people who research aether, which can explain most things, suppose there's anything else?

Thing is, we discover and theorize about new form of matter / energy quite often, and some we probably never heard about. What's to say most of the summoning that took place in Eorzea somehow used a bit of Dynamis to increase the effects?
We know Aether and Dynamis can interact, since Meteion was created by a being that cannot interact with Dynamis, just like the Elpis flowers that were happy accidents.

As for Limit Breaks, perhaps Elidibus did the same as Hermes or that Elpis maker, or perhaps it's just aether but what Meteion noticed was that we channeled Dynamis in addition to Aether when surviving an attack that would otherwise totally obliterate us, against all odds.
On a sidenote, my headcannons about LB is that we use the aether residues generated by spells and skills over the duration of a fight, and channel it into one big effect

These are all good points and like I said I do like the concept of Dynamis itself.

My point was that I don't think it's fair to say that the game hinted at Dynamis before, even if it can retroactively be integrated into the story.

That's what I was getting at when I cited Y'shtola. Sure, there can be another force that reacts to emotions but because aether can do the same the phenomena cited in this thread as early hints don't feel like hints to me. For that reason the introduction of Dynamis felt rushed in my opinion.

And sure, you probably could even find a way to explain Elidibus' use of Dynamis for a Limit Break. But because of the reasons I mentioned it looks like the complete opposite and if the story tells you "Ascians can't really use Dynamis" and also "Ascian primal uses Limit Break" it's anything but a hint that LB is a force of Dynamis in my book.

(And tbh I'm not sure what I think about Hermes creating a complex being with thoughts and emotions made of Dynamis. It felt a little convenient to me that he could just Do That while at the same time the game stresses so much how incompatible Ascians themselves are to Dynamis. I do agree that there is a point to be made regarding Ascians' magical creations turning into monsters because of the Ascians' despair but that only happened once the aether that protected them from Meteion's really strong activation of Dynamis was destroyed.)

[Alenore]

The answer also was for OP, but it did drift on yours ahah

As for Meteion, I think that's why she *has* Aether : she was created as an aetherial being, with very little aether though, and in away to make her as attuned to Dynamis as possible. She's not literally made of it though, or at least a "proto meteion" isn't created with Dynamis, but she does use its energy on a day to day basis.
As Hermes said, just not having aether isn't enough to be an entelechy, so it probably took a lot of trial and error to get there. He kinda had the Elpis flower to retroengineer.

[Loggos]

The answer also was for OP, but it did drift on yours ahah

Oh oops, I'm sorry, haha!

As for Meteion, I think that's why she *has* Aether : she was created as an aetherial being, with very little aether though, and in away to make her as attuned to Dynamis as possible. She's not literally made of it though, or at least a "proto meteion" isn't created with Dynamis, but she does use its energy on a day to day basis.
As Hermes said, just not having aether isn't enough to be an entelechy, so it probably took a lot of trial and error to get there. He kinda had the Elpis flower to retroengineer.

Ah this makes a lot more sense. Then this means that Hermens didn't use Dynamis directly to create Meteion but constructed her in a way based on aetherial principles that would make her own ability to manipulate it possible.


(And now that I think more about it, I remember the reason for the magical beings in Amaurot turning into monsters was their low aether density.

So iirc it's not the Ascians' magic itself that was influenced by Dynamis.
They probably didn't accidentally manipulate it when creating something.

It was most likely the result of that magic, i.e., the beings which have some form of sentience and some sense of emotions (but perhaps not a soul), as stated by Hermes who told us creations were full of fear or rage when they were about to be killed.

So I guess these beings were able to feel some form of despair themselves that Dynamis could have reacted to - maybe because there were to be killed by Ascians.

Or maybe because being part of the natural food chain (in Elpis or after being released on the planet) causes despair. If you are about to be eaten by a predator in the wild then that fight for survival and the terror of dying, or the pain while being devoured (some animals eat their prey alive after all) could trigger the transformation of these creations.
From there on the chain reaction could have been set in motion because if suddenly gangs of super predators suddenly raid the planet then I can imagine that this naturally causes great fear in animals, esp. prey animals, and you can't just tell them to "control" it. This could also explain why Amaurot, being a big city removed from most mortal life and not "the wild", was hit last.

This kind of makes sense to me. But now I wonder why animals in Eorzea did not transform during our own Final Days because they probably were afraid of the monsters too and they should have a low aether structure that is similar to humans/cat and bunny people/elves/elves with scales/potatoes/demi giants and demi giants with fur.

Coming back to Elidibus I think this could be used to argue against him using Dynamis for a Limit Break because it means there is no known instance of an Ascian using Dynamis. So we only have the officially stated information to go on which says Ascians are not affected by and not (really) able to perceive, let alone control Dynamis.

That doesn't rule him using Dynamis during the WoL fight out completely of course but I think it makes it a lot more unlikely again.)

...perhaps it's just aether but what Meteion noticed was that we channeled Dynamis in addition to Aether when surviving an attack that would otherwise totally obliterate us, against all odds.

That seems like a really good explanation to me.

(I rewatched that part of the Endsinger fight and I think it really can be interpreted like you said:

We are fighting the apocalypse at the edge of the universe and we are using our Big skill to protect ourselves (and per our survival indirectly the rest of the universe, as well) against total oblivion in a space full of Dynamis. So the skill itself is probaly aetherial in nature but in this moment we just had so much determination and will to live/to protect everyone that Dynamis amplified it enormously. The fight with Zenos shows how we can boost ourselves with Dynamis, too, after all while still using what normally are aetherial skills (if you are a mage at least).)

[Alenore]

Oh oops, I'm sorry, haha!

No problem, the end of my message was for you!


Yes, the reason why we turn into monsters, while only Ancient's creations do, is because Ancients have way too much Aether and it negates dynamis : instead, everything that had a lower density would turn. I bet that if I was able to create things out of my imagination and some of the things around me started to turn into monsters, i'd try to summon something to help me ; which in turn turns into the exact thing I wanted to be protected against. Hello despair!
I can't seem to remember in which cutscene it was mentioned, though. Perhaps right after meeting Venat, during our little chat with the gang?

I don't think we ever were told that Creation magic started spawning things on its own, only that it went horribly wrong.

As for animals, the process is based on despair, not really fear. Meteion even says so herself : "Fear? I had forgotten about it, so occupied I was with ushering despair", or something along these lines, right before the twins sacrifice themselves. I'd even argue, most people fighting the final days are probably afraid to some extent, but would only turn when surrendering to despair : the old lady for his son, when faced against a beast, when their lifework turns to dust, when your city is destroyed, or when running away from monsters, knowing full well you're not qualified for the task, etc.
Can an animal actually feel despair, as in "I will never get back from that"? It feels to me as a really "human" emotion.

And finally, Elidibus may have used the simple good old "Limit Break" we use usually without the dynamis effects included!

I really feel like dynamis can make sense in the greater picture, it takes some theorizing on effects and stuff, but just clicks together. so kudos to Square Enix for that, because trying to add random energies and forces and all in a settings usually gors very badly ahah

[Loggos]

I don't think we ever were told that Creation magic started spawning things on its own, only that it went horribly wrong.

Ah sorry, I didn't mean that creation magic started to spawn things on its own. What I meant was this:

During our own Final Days it's actual people who turn into monsters because of our low aether density. In the original Final Days it was the beings created with creation magic that turned into monsters because of their low aether density.

I understood this as creation-magic-beings who already existed and were perfectly fine up to that point suddenly turning into monsters because they were vulnerable to Dynamis (whereas Ascians were not).

I may be wrong of course but to me it didn't sound like Ascians accidently created monsters directly by channeling their (Ascians') own despair into their creation magic whenever they used it (which once manifested as magical creation then reacted to Dynamis).

But I may have missed important points in the story that prove this perception wrong.

Anyways, this is why I was theoresing what could have led to existing creation-magic-beings feeling so desperate that they turn into monsters.


You are right, it's debatable whether animals can feel something like despair. For me despair is the "successor" of strong fear. At some point your fear reaches a tipping point and turns into despair that consumes your mind.
In my eyes this is something that could apply to animal-like beings, as well, e.g., when they are in a situation of life and death and are struck with terror because their death is imminent.
They may not consciously understand their despair but in my observations animals whose fear is pushed too far can absolutely "run wild" on that emotion which always looked like despair to me.

But that is just my personal perspective on this issue.

And finally, Elidibus may have used the simple good old "Limit Break" we use usually without the dynamis effects included!

Yep, that's what I think, too.

[dynus]

In retrospect, the Omega raid was all about dynamis if you ask me. Omega frequently asks 'how are you so strong?' and we don't have an answer. Now we do.

[Steelbreaker25]

For me these are all not so much examples of hints but of instances that just retroactively make sense. As someone said before it's good that they created a concept that you can integrate into the story of the previous expansions so that it doesn't feel entirely out of place.

But I wouldn't really consider it hints in the sense that the story (subtly) directs your attention towards the future reveal of Dynamis *while* you play the story that comes before EW.

So to me, the direction of hints is "forwards" (even if you miss them or they are purposefully hart to spot) whereas Dynamis' integration now that it reveals only works "backwards" for me.

That's pretty typical in a lot of storytelling though, particularly in long-running stories like FFXIV, and especially in stories that have multiple writers contributing to it. Them introducing a concept that retroactively makes sense than one that uproots what we know. Like if they had told us that dynamis is actually aether, and all of the things we've thought we were doing was actually something else entirely.

[Slatersev]

In retrospect, the Omega raid was all about dynamis if you ask me. Omega frequently asks 'how are you so strong?' and we don't have an answer. Now we do.

Even more then Omega, Dancer's story is all about Dynamis, they just didnt call it that.

Seriously, look up what the class story for Dancer in ShB was. All the things they talk about, the way the things that are happening work, the final boss of the quest line is a straight up Blasphemy. In retrospect Dancer is straight up and Endwalker advertisement.

But Omega is the other big one, and it makes a ton of sense that Ishikawa specified playing it and Coils being the most important side content for EW.