Tales from the Dawn #3: "A Question of Life" (Hermes)

[Absimiliard]

There not perfect for sure. But given Emet confirms they are 100% correct five minutes later, I’d say this isn’t one of those times.



So we once again have to conclude that either they are right or they were written to be wrong on the facts but got lucky and ended up with the correct conclusion. The latter again makes no sense from a writing perspective.



They’re stated to not be able to form words, which can happen when you lose a lot of your memory. It’s also stated in that same event that Emet was repulsed and viewed them as “misbegotten husks” and “wretches” in our current time, so I’m disinclined to believe he can be trusted to give accurate descriptions. Even less so after he said Varis’ body was “wrong” and that the WoL was a broken husk.

Not to mention, Emet himself stresses that the Sundering does not touch flesh, and uses an exact copy of Ryne as an example.

A couple thoughts. Firstly, if we choose to disregard other in-game conversations and take this one purely at face value, nothing in there indicates the sacrifices to be limited to sapient life. He appears to be speaking of all life, and any kind of assumption otherwise would indeed be mistaken on part of the Scions. However, this is decidedly not what the original Ancients had planned. Conflating the two is disingenuous.

We are informed rather clearly their original plan was to cultivate life in the world, then sacrifice that life to bring back those sacrificed to Zodiark. The Ancients, and by extension Zodiark, were at no point shown capable of willfully creating sapient life -- or granting a new organism a soul, for that matter. Both of these things were dictated not by them but by the planet itself. Even the Meteia were produced only after an absurd amount of experimentation, with all involved acknowledging the one Meteion's full sapience as a fluke. If the Ancients were not able to create sapient life or grant souls, then that does rather limit their choices when it comes to intended sacrificial lambs.

Now on to the second point: It isn't merely that they couldn't form words. They were quite literally incapable of any form of communication, even that facilitated by the Echo (or whatever you want to call the remaining power the unsundered had). Communication was an impossibility. We're also given a far more detailed description of their forms than simply the labels Emet-Selch applied to their condition. The amount of body horror that took place was honestly a bit impressive.

Isn't the Nier game narrated from the perspective and viewpoint of the focus character? Emet-Selch's initial revulsion and abhorrence of the newly sundered people can't be taken at face value imo.

I mean, we see that they are capable of forming communities that had paintings, scriptures and songs that communicated half-remembered visions of Amaurot, the Final Days, and the Sundering.

If they were just shambling husks incapable of communication, why did they end up doing all that instead of you know, starving to death?

These various structures and art pieces arose later on. You will note that even in FFXIV proper certain individuals yet retain trace memories of the world's original state, though most are limited only to recalling bits and pieces through dreams about the Final Days. The subconscious mind is a powerful tool, and many artists draw a great deal of inspiration from their dreams. These individuals no doubt had zero idea what they were creating, only than it was something that evoked strong emotion in themselves and some others.

As for starving to death? Seeking out food is a primal instinct. Even the least intelligent animals have never had any difficulty doing that. Why would the sundered be unable to feed themselves? Being reduced to a shambling mass of incoherent blubbering and body horror does not preclude the ability to meet one's basic needs.

There not perfect for sure. But given Emet confirms they are 100% correct five minutes later, I’d say this isn’t one of those times.

Isn't the Nier game narrated from the perspective and viewpoint of the focus character? Emet-Selch's initial revulsion and abhorrence of the newly sundered people can't be taken at face value imo.

I felt compelled to revisit this briefly. Curious that Emet-Selch's words should be taken at face value at certain times yet handily dismissed at others even when context should indicate he's being truthful at a given time. We're to immediately accept everything he says about the Ascians' grand plan and him willingly going along with it as fact, yet his descriptions of the state the sundered are in directly after the act are inherently suspect.