*Spoilers* Anyone feel joining Emet would have been better

[Theodric]

If you like the story it hangs together well enough that you can make it work, and if you don't like the story there are plenty of loose threads and messy retcons to tug at until it unravels.

I'd be inclined to suggest that it isn't as simple as that. Disliking some elements of the story does not negate fondness for other elements elsewhere.

There also isn't really an obligation for anyone to simply accept anything and everything piled upon their plate for consumption, especially in such cases where there are inconsistencies in play.

[Nayukhuut]

I've been seeing a lot about the devs getting some hate lately, so I just wanna take a break in this to say that I really appreciate that, no matter which side of this debate you personally fall on, these characters are believable enough as people that we can have these discussions. My personal qualms about character motives and story direction aside, I really am thankful that the writers have taken the time to craft characters and a story nuanced enough that we can have these differing opinions on them. The writers have managed to make characters that feel like real people, and that resonate differently with different players based on their own personal beliefs and perspectives, and I think that's great.

Also, shoutout to everyone in this thread taking part in this discussion. I know a lot of us fall on different sides of this argument, but it's wonderful that we can converse back and forth without it devolving into insults and name calling. You're all great, no matter which character you support.

I know the devs don't read the forums, but on the off chance that they ever do read these threads I just wanted em to know that the fact that people can debate for 55 pages on a forum (and this is just one thread) about topics such as this means they did something right.

[Jandor]

I'd be inclined to suggest that it isn't as simple as that. Disliking some elements of the story does not negate fondness for other elements elsewhere.

There also isn't really an obligation for anyone to simply accept anything and everything piled upon their plate for consumption, especially in such cases where there are inconsistencies in play.

Well that depends really. Is the lore forum primarily for discussing the lore, or for discussing the writing of the lore?

If we're doing the former then yeah we do sort of have an obligation to accept everything piled upon on plates for consumption. I don't like every element of the story either, but no matter how crap a certain part of it might be, it's still part of it.

There isn't much actual discussion to be had if everyone is just picking and choosing their favourite bits and discarding the rest, none of us will be talking about the same thing.

[Veloran]

If we're doing the former then yeah we do sort of have an obligation to accept everything piled upon on plates for consumption. I don't like every element of the story either, but no matter how crap a certain part of it might be, it's still part of it.

There isn't much actual discussion to be had if everyone is just picking and choosing their favourite bits and discarding the rest, none of us will be talking about the same thing.

By that same token it's hardly reasonable to suggest ignoring inconvenient information ala "1.0 Echo isn't canon because it can't be rationalized with how it's talked about in Endwalker."

[Kordarion]

By that same token it's hardly reasonable to suggest ignoring inconvenient information ala "1.0 Echo isn't canon because it can't be rationalized with how it's talked about in Endwalker."

The issue with that is that it appears as if the 1.0 echo has been retconned rather than being ignored for its inconvenience. Keep in mind I've never played 1.0, but from what I can gather from what I've seen in this thread that most of its unique parts, like interacting with the past through the echo seems to have been dropped started in ARR. And its not like this doesn't have a precedent, during his recent Radio Mog Station interview Yoshi-P stated that as of 3.0 the devs had completely rewritten the Ascian lore from 1.0 and ARR. So its not out of the realm of possibility it was dropped like Gelmora and Silvertear appear to have been.

[Jandor]

By that same token it's hardly reasonable to suggest ignoring inconvenient information ala "1.0 Echo isn't canon because it can't be rationalized with how it's talked about in Endwalker."

Sure, but it's hardly reasonable to ignore what Venat tells us about how it works either.

[Veloran]

The issue with that is that it appears as if the 1.0 echo has been retconned rather than being ignored for its inconvenience. Keep in mind I've never played 1.0, but from what I can gather from what I've seen in this thread that most of its unique parts, like interacting with the past through the echo seems to have been dropped started in ARR. And its not like this doesn't have a precedent, during his recent Radio Mog Station interview Yoshi-P stated that as of 3.0 the devs had completely rewritten the Ascian lore from 1.0 and ARR. So its not out of the realm of possibility it was dropped like Gelmora and Silvertear appear to have been.

The issue is they could easily rewrite Ascian lore because almost none of it had actually been written to that point. They were mostly an enigma, and nothing new they introduced really conflicts with what they had previously.

Sure, but it's hardly reasonable to ignore what Venat tells us about how it works either.

The problem is that what Venat tells us and what we've seen doesn't line up. Not just in 1.0, but all the way from ARR to relatively recently. So instead of disregarding quite a lot of the game, I can only conclude that what Venat was saying doesn't capture the full picture.

[Kordarion]

The issue is they could easily rewrite Ascian lore because almost none of it had actually been written to that point. They were mostly an enigma, and nothing new they introduced really conflicts with what they had previously.

I'm going to take everything you just said with a mountain of salt seeing as, unless your a dev, you couldn't possibly know how much lore there was to be rewritten. And you could be right there might not have been much but that is a very definitive statement to make with little evidence. Also when has a little thing like minor conflicts between old and new lore every stopped game devs from retconning the past? Not that I think doing it much if any at all of that is a good thing, but it doesn't mean they don't do it.

[Lauront]

The issue is they could easily rewrite Ascian lore because almost none of it had actually been written to that point. They were mostly an enigma, and nothing new they introduced really conflicts with what they had previously.

To add to that, any re-purposing of the Ascian lore that took place between ARR and 3.0 would've been behind the scenes stuff, rather than in-game, much as Emet's introduction did not pose an in-game breach from prior lore, either, even if a new course had been charted out for SHB. So it's not a case of showing stuff in-game and then dropping it, but of altering the direction it would take. I don't really see how the same could be said of verbal explanations at odds with things we've been demonstrated at earlier points of the game - and not in the sense of providing a new perspective but simply not cohering much at all, which would suggest there's more to it than being spoken about. So I lean to the same interpretation as you.

Moose had a pretty good quote relevant to that in how they use foreshadowing:

Three types of foreshadowing: 1) It was planned all along. 2) It was added without an exit strategy and we worked it out later. 3) It's actually different than what was intended but was made to look foreshadowed with clever writing. Good writers use all of these. Great writers can trick you into confusing them. FFXIV's team deserves a lot of credit for their time and dedication on that front. I'm really curious if Yoshida laughed so hard because the Ascians either didn't actually have much background lore when he showed up in the first place, or because they were going in a different direction and they didn't know what they were doing with them in ARR until fairly recently.

[Veloran]

I'm going to take everything you just said with a mountain of salt seeing as, unless your a dev, you couldn't possibly know how much lore there was to be rewritten.

I wasn't referring to what they had written in their own notes, I was talking about what they had actually implemented into the game and published story. If it's only something inside their heads, then for the purposes of looking at canon material and determining retcons/contradictions it doesn't exist.