Predictions from the Patch 6.2 Trailer & Patch Website

[RyuDragnier]

I think this Void stuff will either lead to us having to go stop an invasion in a far away land (likely Meracydia), or will result in us basically halting the Void stuff for the main part, thus "cutting" our last ties to the old stuff. Which would allow us to enter Meracydia, The New World, etc without any old plot hooks or old "we're falling back on this predictable enemy faction" decisions coming into play.

[Cleretic]

If the direction they are going in 7.0 will become apparent (only) in 6.5, then I don't think this void stuff is massively related to the route they are taking. Unless Yoshi-p thinks we are absolute idiots, which he probably does. I'm more confident in more dragons instead, thus Meracydia.

It's hard to tell at this stage how the Void stuff is connecting to what could come ahead, and I think some of the disagreements on where it could go come from us not knowing why exactly it's coming now. I'm seeing two potential reasons, and I feel like a lot of people have grabbed immediately onto one without thinking about the other:

A: That the Void is somehow related to the upcoming story, and so will naturally follow in while acting to ease us from one story to another through familiar faces and features.
Or B: That the Void actually isn't meaningfully related to any story coming up, but if we don't do it now, we never will.

Personally I think I'm leaning towards B, but that's largely because I haven't thought of or heard a particularly compelling way that it could lead into the next expansion yet.

[Gogoglovitch]

A thought on the raid characters: with the shot of Old Lahabrea crushing the glyph in front of his face (which we know is the symbol of his office on the Convocation), on top of the different-colored constellation crystal, I think that's a point in favor of the concept that he's not going to be the Lahabrea we knew. I know there are a few holes in the 'Erichthonos becomes our Lahabrea' theory, but if Old Lahabrea rejects his office and gets himself killed in this or the next raid tier, it could be that Ericthonos disguises himself as his dad and takes up his office to avoid tarnishing the family legacy, or something along those lines. If he (and possibly Themis) come up with a way to conceal his identity from even the Convocation's truth-detecting abilities, that could fill in all the plot holes nicely. They'd need to come up with a plausible reason for it, so I'm not going to call this at all guaranteed yet, but it's a bit more possible than it was before.

[RicaRuin]

It's a nice theory, but no matter how good their disguise is, there is a Convocation Member that can literally see and distinguish souls and who takes his offices very seriously.

[Tehmon]

It's hard to tell at this stage how the Void stuff is connecting to what could come ahead, and I think some of the disagreements on where it could go come from us not knowing why exactly it's coming now. I'm seeing two potential reasons, and I feel like a lot of people have grabbed immediately onto one without thinking about the other:

A: That the Void is somehow related to the upcoming story, and so will naturally follow in while acting to ease us from one story to another through familiar faces and features.
Or B: That the Void actually isn't meaningfully related to any story coming up, but if we don't do it now, we never will.

Personally I think I'm leaning towards B, but that's largely because I haven't thought of or heard a particularly compelling way that it could lead into the next expansion yet.

I think B as well, but it all depends on whether Golbez and the three fiends will be a trial series or part of the MSQ.

But I suspect this
- Scythe Lady is Zenos' voidsent and is the main character of the void/Golbez trial series.
- In the trailer we are seen riding a dragon that is not Vrtra. It might be Azdaja, and if it is, I suspect we successfully rescue her. Azdaja's return will probably be a hook to Meracydia eventually. But if it's just some random dragon, this won't obviously happen.
- The successful trip to the thirteenth will be enough for Y'shtola to close the focus on her for a while, because she has her lead on traveling to different shards which is all she needed.
- 6.3-6.5 will most likely include the Thancred and Krile focus that I think Yoshi was alluding to at the start of the year. I doubt their stuff is related to void in any way whatsoever, so I'm confident that our void trip will be just a trip, and the focus on it will fizzle out after 6.2 in terms of MSQ content.

Still have no idea whether Hydaelyn's crystal will play any importance going further.

[Cleretic]

It's a nice theory, but no matter how good their disguise is, there is a Convocation Member that can literally see and distinguish souls and who takes his offices very seriously.

Which doesn't mean that a switcheroo is completely impossible, it just means it requires two things.

First, we need either extremely concerted effort to look exactly like Old Lahabrea, or a confluence of luck that happens to result in exactly that as a side effect.

Second, we need to accept the possibility of Emet being wrong about this. On its surface that's not that bad, but the more things Emet is confirmably factually wrong about makes everything else he's said even less believable. Since I think a lot of Emet's both appeal and concept as a character is essentially based on him being factually correct in morally objectionable and concerning ways, making him factually wrong about things is a huge issue. A character can't be 'right, but a dick about it' if they're frequently wrong.


So, basically... it's not that Old Lahabrea has to be Our Lahabrea, it's that making him not Our Lahabrea would both require extra complexity and damage the integrity of another character when doing so.

[Alleo]

A thought on the raid characters: with the shot of Old Lahabrea crushing the glyph in front of his face (which we know is the symbol of his office on the Convocation), on top of the different-colored constellation crystal, I think that's a point in favor of the concept that he's not going to be the Lahabrea we knew. I know there are a few holes in the 'Erichthonos becomes our Lahabrea' theory, but if Old Lahabrea rejects his office and gets himself killed in this or the next raid tier, it could be that Ericthonos disguises himself as his dad and takes up his office to avoid tarnishing the family legacy, or something along those lines. If he (and possibly Themis) come up with a way to conceal his identity from even the Convocation's truth-detecting abilities, that could fill in all the plot holes nicely. They'd need to come up with a plausible reason for it, so I'm not going to call this at all guaranteed yet, but it's a bit more possible than it was before.

I am not so sure about that. Some say that the German voice sounds exactly like the voice of our future Lahabrea (sadly I am not sure about that myself. I can hear him in some tones but not 100%). Also we still have that NPC in Sharlayan that gave us the quest that also has a darker skintone which could possibly be a hint that this is Erics reincarnation.

I am also not sure that Themis would lie to the others in that way and if Eric would even fit, since he is really bad at creation magic.

[RyuDragnier]

Perhaps Eric is more than just the "physical son" of Lahabrea and Athena, and there may be going on more with him in terms of aether. The only way I can figure a twist happening here is if Eric IS Lahabrea, but not in the way we think. What if Lahabrea and Athena attempted an experiment to see if they could figure out how souls attached to bodies, and they split off a small bit of their own souls to create Eric, with Etheirys filling in the gaps, thus creating a manufactured soul.

[Kranel_San]

Even though everyone is speculating Eric might be the Lahabrea we all know. I find it difficult to imagine him going: "Mwahahahahahaha I'm evil!!"
Emet retained most of his old personality (If not all of it) while Elidibus showed signs of mental maturity but Lahabrea is way off in terms of personality from anyone we have seen so far.

[sidurgu-12]

Even though everyone is speculating Eric might be the Lahabrea we all know. I find it difficult to imagine him going: "Mwahahahahahaha I'm evil!!"
Emet retained most of his old personality (If not all of it) while Elidibus showed signs of mental maturity but Lahabrea is way off in terms of personality from anyone we have seen so far.

i think emet explains its because lahabrea was body hopping way too often which mentally warped him.