Revelations from Patch 6.2: Buried Memories

[EaraGrace]

I hope the "must be on said job doing the MSQ to get small tidbits" thing won't continue. I know I can just go to an inn room to replay those CSes but I miss it when the game would give you those tidbits so long as you had the job unlocked or did X content. One thing I do like is the post Vault CS change. At least it takes out the sting that if you play as a healer or have one leveled up the game won't completely ignore that fact until Zenos spanks everyone at Rhalgr's Reach and Krile yells at you to snap to it.

Endwalker had this as well, so it’s not like they haven’t done it in a while either.

Honestly, I think the problem is that they're not doing it enough. Small nods if you're playing Reaper around the voidsent stories to show that they actually are paying attention to that are great ideas both in terms of rewarding the player and patching up tiny little plot holes. But to avoid the hurdle of 'you must be playing this one specific job', they should be spreading it out a bit more and having other jobs get some spins. Reward the people who go in with one of the multiple jobs that reasonably speaking already have a foot in the water here.

They had one set up and ready with the statue on the Thirteenth too. As a PLD main I’d of loved to see our character go “huh they have that armor here as well” or something.

[SannaR]

Endwalker had this as well, so it’s not like they haven’t done it in a while either.



They had one set up and ready with the statue on the Thirteenth too. As a PLD main I’d of loved to see our character go “huh they have that armor here as well” or something.

Oh I know they gave nods to if you were playing as a certain job. Like if you were a healer going into Zot you can ask them if they made a mistake with you also being a healer and G'Raha tells you no we want our best in the Vanguard. Yet back during Heavensward you could be on any other job when meeting Estinien in the MSQ for the first time. But if you had done the lv 50 DRG quest he'd make a comment about you being one. 6.1 and 6.2 on the other hand make you go huh I wonder if there's any extra stuff but don't get anything even though you have all the boxes checked. Except the doing the story as X Job. And yeah I'm surprised PLD didn't get to say something like that looks like Passage of Arms.

[KageTokage]

I noticed something a little curious in one of the Pandaemonium cutscenes, namely that in the cutscene before P5 and before you turn in the quest "An Unwelcome Visitor", you're asked

whether or not Lahabrea would be capable of causing all the chaos, but there's a third option that does not appear for all players, suggesting there's some manner of optional quest/content that makes it show up.

However, the quest is not marked as having variables based on quest progression because said cutscene isn't in the Unending Journey.

I didn't pick said option so I'm at a loss as to what causes it to show up.

[Cleretic]

I noticed something a little curious in one of the Pandaemonium cutscenes, namely that in the cutscene before P5 and before you turn in the quest "An Unwelcome Visitor", you're asked

whether or not Lahabrea would be capable of causing all the chaos, but there's a third option that does not appear for all players, suggesting there's some manner of optional quest/content that makes it show up.

However, the quest is not marked as having variables based on quest progression because said cutscene isn't in the Unending Journey.

I didn't pick said option so I'm at a loss as to what causes it to show up.

...since people have apparently noticed, do we have any word of what this line supposedly is? I'm fairly sure I had it, just because I don't remember any two-option choices in that whole storyline, but I don't remember any standing out as connected to a sidestory.

[Iscah]

MSQ THOUGHTS

Zero *could* be our shard from the Thirteenth, but that doesn't mean the story needs to end with us merging. I'd consider it a positive twist for it to not happen, and just be happy knowing we have a connection.

Even better, we're not shards and we just develop a genuine friendship for not-magically-ordained reasons.

Talking of friends though, I found it frustrating how apparently our character is just going "no, Zenos wasn't our friend" and then nobody in the group makes any effort to explain further when Zero is confused by it.



The logic of the voidsent being able to absorb each other but also having negative consequences for doing so is an interesting way to explain why there still is a population of voidsent and they haven't all just eaten each other until there's one big fat one left.

I feel like they needed to explain slightly earlier that Zero wasn't willing to absorb aether from other voidsent, because it seemed really odd during the solo fight that we didn't even suggest that she could fight for us and receive her payment of aether by absorbing the enemies to deal with them. At that moment it seemed like two solutions in one and yet nobody was suggesting it on either side of the bargain.



Also it kind of bugs me that we're still using the term "voidsent" while we're in the void itself. The whole point of the term is that the creatures have emerged from the void into the living world, so it doesn't make sense for them to be using the term to describe themselves.



I loved the random moment with the mindflayer being the one mentioned in that journal in the Gubal Library.



I am excited about Cylva and Unukalhai getting new dialogue out of this, and I hope it's pointing towards a big sidequest merger later down the track. It already seemed like merging the role quests and Eden would be ideal, and I think Cylva was already talking about meeting up with Ryne and Gaia before this? I'll have to check on my alt who has finished the role quests but not gotten further yet.

Anyway, so we already had the role quests becoming "Void quests" which lasted all of one instalment and seemed to leave things unresolved, and that seemed to be primed to connect to Eden, and now we're in another relevant plot.



Keeping the archfiends' crystals might mean we (or Zero, or even Golbez) have some need to draw on them later. Or perhaps we can use them to restore the aether they have drained from Azdaja.

Or maybe it turns out the crystallisation process isn't quite as permanent as we thought, and they all break out and fight us at once.

I also recall that the basic explanation for what went wrong in the Thirteenth to begin with was that auracite *leaks* the power of the monster contained within it.

PANDAEMONIUM

Something I need to check - did Lahabrea definitely kill Athena? He's accused of it and doesn't deny it, but I don't think he ever outright states that he did.

Did he actually mean to kill her, or was it really an accident in terms of intent, and (once the "blanket denial" path is no longer an option) simply easier to take the blame for that specific mis-accusation than to tell the full truth of what happened?

Is Hephaistos all of Athena and half of Lahabrea? Did she "die" by being absorbed into him rather than being killed, as such?

Did Athena already split off some part of her soul, and Hephaistos is the rest of it plus half of Lahabrea?

How much *does* Lahabrea remember of the incident? It would have be enough that he doesn't want to go poking around and re-awakening the knowledge and desire to do whatever he tried to stop himself from doing.

Or does he still have the knowledge while only having removed the desire to carry it out?

I still need to do the post-MSQ sidequest and Tataru's quest. (Actually, I didn't do the previous chapters of Tataru's quests either.)

Characters

I'm calling it, we're getting [Zero's] hat-tip emote someday, but it'll be either mogstation like /snap or limited-time reward like /determined.

I don't think we needed Adult Varshahn for Trusts. Not only does it lose the whole 'Vrtra is a kid by his species' standards' thing, but it doesn't even look that good. To borrow the Mulaney bit: he doesn't look older, he just looks worse. Get some rest, tall child!

I don't think the emote is possible. At very least, it's only going to look right if you're wearing a hat of the exact right shape, and the hat needs to be moveable. I have no idea whether that's possible on our standard characters or if they're up to some kind of cutscene trickery with a hat that isn't actually equipped to the character model.

Also, adult Varshahn still looks young compared to even the youngest of the standard Au Ra face models, so I think that impression still works.

Statues

statues too in The fell Court of Troia gets me wondering also. The ones on the stairs and the sides not where we fight bearice....

I noticed those too. They remind me of the ones in Mt Gulg.

Estinien

Laughed pretty hard at Estinien's between CS dialogue just before entering the void. Saying he did them a favor, because they beefed up their new Alzadaal Ruins protectors, since he destroyed yet more of them last time.

Even better,

he says they beefed up the new protectors using pieces of the old ones, so he's trying to claim it as helping them out by dismantling them in advance.

So can we talk about how our actions in the Raid story may have...

Altered the timeline so that Pandaemonium survived past the Sundering.

If WoL never went back in time and changed the events where pandaemonium got blown up into pandaemonium is saved and all watchers are not killed then the upcoming Raid part 3 that will take place in present day will never have happened.

At the sametime we may have also changed the fate of Lahabrea as well due to the influence WoL had on him in Pandaemonium along with making Pandaemonium a bombshelter that may have prevented anyone or anything inside Pandaemonium from being sundered.

It will be interesting to see what Ancients may have survived the sundering in Pandaemonium as well along with seeing if the guess that Erichthonios is actually the Lahabrea we knew due to becoming his father's successor or Lahabrea was still Erichthonios's father.

Not to mention how they dealt with the sundering and years being alive.

I don't think that's the case at all.

I think it's more likely that Pandaemonium has not been in the Aitiascope all along, but rather has been moved.

Perhaps it has been drawn by whatever happened with Claudien and the crystal he was chasing?

It could have been lurking in the depths all this time, and the first crystal we found was released from it. Time travel could also be involved.

Whatever the circumstances, there is no need to assume that we have changed events by interfering. It may have simply been destined all along that we would go there and these things would happen, and Pandaemonium would appear at this point.

I noticed something a little curious in one of the Pandaemonium cutscenes, namely that in the cutscene before P5 and before you turn in the quest "An Unwelcome Visitor", you're asked

whether or not Lahabrea would be capable of causing all the chaos, but there's a third option that does not appear for all players, suggesting there's some manner of optional quest/content that makes it show up.

However, the quest is not marked as having variables based on quest progression because said cutscene isn't in the Unending Journey.

I didn't pick said option so I'm at a loss as to what causes it to show up.

I think you may be looking at the wrong quest and it's in the second quest which has a couple of player response opportunities.

ERICHTHONIOS
...And so there can be but one conclusion─Lahabrea was the driving force behind this chaos from the start!

THEMIS
[...]
You have met him, yes? Do you think he is capable of this?

Q1
What will you say?
A1
Lahabrea is capable of far more than you know.
A2
It's still too early to say for certain.

This seems to be the conversation you're describing but there is no third option listed here.

There are two more dialogue choices in the same quest: one when we first meet Lahabrea-actually-Hephaistos, and when Themis admits to concealing his identity as Elidibus, which seems the most likely to be a variable:

THEMIS
As Lahabrea said, I am Elidibus, one of the Convocation and emissary of their will.
For reasons which do not involve you, it was necessary to hide my identity while investigating this place. Still, that hardly excuses my deception.

Q1
What will you say?
A1
I had a feeling.
A2
Whatever your name is, you're still Themis to me.
A3
I know a thing or two about deception myself.

The third option definitely has a ring of being a nod back to something previously, but I'm not sure what it would be. If I had to guess I would suggest Hildibrand, but I'm pretty sure I had the response option and I haven't done those quests beyond the ARR section of the storyline.

[KageTokage]

Must be some really huge case of the mandela effect because others were claiming have noticed a third option there, too, though it most likely is just a case of getting cutscenes confused.

[SannaR]

Could you be confusing it with the one where the 2nd answer and I'm paraphrasing it "Lahabreha once wore a friend's body" as an option? As there was three choices there.

[Eisi]

PANDAEMONIUM

Something I need to check - did Lahabrea definitely kill Athena? He's accused of it and doesn't deny it, but I don't think he ever outright states that he did.

Did he actually mean to kill her, or was it really an accident in terms of intent, and (once the "blanket denial" path is no longer an option) simply easier to take the blame for that specific mis-accusation than to tell the full truth of what happened?

Is Hephaistos all of Athena and half of Lahabrea? Did she "die" by being absorbed into him rather than being killed, as such?

Did Athena already split off some part of her soul, and Hephaistos is the rest of it plus half of Lahabrea?

How much *does* Lahabrea remember of the incident? It would have be enough that he doesn't want to go poking around and re-awakening the knowledge and desire to do whatever he tried to stop himself from doing.

Or does he still have the knowledge while only having removed the desire to carry it out?

Now I understand why people write "ten characters" all the time, what a stupid rule!

Lahabrea definitely killed Athena and says so himself. There's nothing to suggest it was an accident either.

Hephaistos is part of Lahabrea (who's actual name is Hephaistos), he is not part of Athena. Lahabrea split off the part of him that after his merger with Athena would eventually come to fully understand and agree with his wife's ways and desires. It stands to reason that Hephaistos is the part of him that loved Athena as well.

Athena did not split her soul. After she and Lahabrea split again, she was 100% herself, as Lahabrea was 100% himself as well. And she died soon after.

[PawPaw]

I noticed something a little curious in one of the Pandaemonium cutscenes, namely that in the cutscene before P5 and before you turn in the quest "An Unwelcome Visitor", you're asked

whether or not Lahabrea would be capable of causing all the chaos, but there's a third option that does not appear for all players, suggesting there's some manner of optional quest/content that makes it show up.

However, the quest is not marked as having variables based on quest progression because said cutscene isn't in the Unending Journey.

I didn't pick said option so I'm at a loss as to what causes it to show up.

Was it this one?

[Cilia]

PANDAEMONIUM

Something I need to check - did Lahabrea definitely kill Athena? He's accused of it and doesn't deny it, but I don't think he ever outright states that he did.

Did he actually mean to kill her, or was it really an accident in terms of intent, and (once the "blanket denial" path is no longer an option) simply easier to take the blame for that specific mis-accusation than to tell the full truth of what happened?

Is Hephaistos all of Athena and half of Lahabrea? Did she "die" by being absorbed into him rather than being killed, as such?

Did Athena already split off some part of her soul, and Hephaistos is the rest of it plus half of Lahabrea?

How much *does* Lahabrea remember of the incident? It would have be enough that he doesn't want to go poking around and re-awakening the knowledge and desire to do whatever he tried to stop himself from doing.

Or does he still have the knowledge while only having removed the desire to carry it out?

I still need to do the post-MSQ sidequest and Tataru's quest. (Actually, I didn't do the previous chapters of Tataru's quests either.)

Pandaemonium

While we're never shown Lahabrea actually doing the deed, the fact Athena was said to have met with an untimely death in the Asphodelos story and what we're shown here heavily implies that he did kill his wife. He intended to do so, as during / after their soul fusion he was so horrified by her sociopathy and lack of concern for the Star™ he split the part of himself that had been "infected" by her during the soul merge into Hephaistos.

Agdistis suggests he still knows everything that happened, and he's just so ashamed about it and trying so earnestly to protect Erichthonios from the truth about Athena (whom he loved dearly since her sociopathy wasn't clear to him) he's kept the memory to himself. Hephaistos is, for all intents and purposes, who he could have become had he not removed that merged part of his soul from himself. He still knows everything, he's just not moved to act on Athena's infectious (for want of a better term) desires.

'course, this is only the second tier, and the Lahabrea we knew was a lot closer to Hephaistos in personality than the austere man we met in Abyssos... and given the Mateus parallels I'll hardly be surprised if even "good" Lahabrea winds up being not so good in the end.

The Tataru stuff is nice, but it's really just fluff unless you're hankering to spend 20k gil on portraits of the Scions circa Endwalker. The post-MSQ stuff is cool though, it explains Scarmiglione and Barbariccia's backstories as both mortals and Voidsent. Nice way to include character detail without slowing down the pacing of the story.