Did anyone ever figure out the "spoilers" in the Zodiark/Hydaelyn artwork?

[AnotherPerson]

Except they had already done that with Shadowbringers, didn't they? Explaining you Zodiark's true purpose and why Hydaelyn decided sundering the world and blowing up civilization was a better option than going on a constant murder spiral.

After the events of 5.0 and events of 5.3, it's clear that Hyadelyn has things she did not tell us, which prompts distrust. They could have done that a lot better, but in a way, what we say is supposed to express that after the events of 5.0 to 5.55, the WoL is now more wary over Hyadelyn's true purpose ever since knowing she is a primal. The second choice is definitely a reply with the events of Shadowbringers weighing heavily on their mind.

The First choice - "Why now, Hyadelyn?" - is to indicate either her disappearance and why she chose to contact us now (because we knew she was exhausted by Heavensward, but we didn't know why she decided to show up after disappearing for 2 expansions). At the time, we didn't know that's her true form and didn't know exactly why she wanted to talk to us after the events that told us she needed a voice to reach out to us (Voice of the Mother). It's considered the more lighter of the two, based on your interpretation to whether she needs to talk to the WoL because there's an urgent matter or because the WoL themselves are more wary and distance themselves slightly in a more polite tone after knowing she's a primal.

[kaynide]

Agreed on all of that. If anything, Endwalker strayed off-track by attempting to subvert the "Hydaelyn is purely benevolent with good intentions" narrative and repaint her in shades of grey, which is really only done in that one climax scene and jars with everything around it.

Either they needed to stick with that, or dive the whole way in and make her turn out to be Evil All Along – which also would have flown in the face of everything we'd seen up to this point, but at least better than the "by the way, she did this deliberately on flimsy reasoning" thing that seemed at odds with everything both before and after it.

The reveal that she was a primal and not a goddess was fine, but the additional bombshells after it don't seem well thought through, and/or subject to late-in-the-process rewrites that put things askew.

Agreed..it was just kinda… blah.

I had speculated waaay back that the creation of Hydaelyn was a mistake brought on by desperation and not some “dem souls Dynamis goal get dat derbdynamis”

It’s fanfic at this point, but I thought it was going to be:

1) The Sound happens, ancients panic
2) Lahabrea makes pandaemoneum to create weapons to defendfrom/fight the sound (creates summoning)
3) Lah accidentally discovers tempering and is tempered by Zodiark.
4) Lah tempers many ancients who (now enthralled) sacrifice themselves, protecting from the sound but ultimately will consume all people
5) Venat desperate to defeat Zod learns of primal summoning and does a Louisioux.
6) World is shattered completely by mistake.
7) Unnecessary, but I kinda was hoping to see a “could you kindly” moment from Hydaelyn to the WoL…

I even had thought the big reveal would be that Zod is in fact the will of the star, not Hyd…and thus Zod could never be destroyed without destroying the world….but here we are

[Atelier-Bagur]

Btw Im sorry OP for instigating yet another thread about Venat being the worst thing ever

Instead of continued discussion about the whole poster thing

[Midareyukki]

I'm guessing the secrets ended up being Ultima Thule and Meteion doing really weird cameos? And I'm assuming the "you'll turn something platinum" was the elpis flower?

[Zebraoracle]

Maybe the spoiler was just Zodiark grabbing his crotch in official art. :P

[Iscah]

It’s fanfic at this point, but I thought it was going to be:

My own theory, based on what we knew pre-Endwalker, was different to yours but also centred around the expectation that the Sundering was a mistake and not an intended outcome of Hydaelyn interacting with Zodiark.

Since all we knew at that point was that the creators of the primals sacrificed themselves and wiped themselves from existence to power their creations, my interpretation was that the primals functioned like computer programs essentially, and that maybe Hydaelyn was created to "patch" what her creators saw as a flaw in Zodiark's design, but her program wasn't perfect either. The end result was that Zodiark expected to be 100% in control and Hydaelyn expected 50/50 balance, read his actions as taking more than his half of the balance, and tried to correct that with the actions that caused the Sundering as a completely unintended side effect of banishing him out of the planet.

Btw Im sorry OP for instigating yet another thread about Venat being the worst thing ever

So far it's "Hydaelyn is badly written" rather than "Hydaelyn is bad", which I consider to be a completely different argument. I'm fully on board with the writers' intent that she is a good character, but they handled it badly, and the poster just feels like one more sign of the weird inconsistency in how they approached the story.

[Deveryn]

I'm guessing the secrets ended up being Ultima Thule and Meteion doing really weird cameos? And I'm assuming the "you'll turn something platinum" was the elpis flower?

It was that platinum would be the main color, where ShB was purple.

Maybe the spoiler was just Zodiark grabbing his crotch in official art. :P

Degeneration X?

[kaynide]

Btw Im sorry OP for instigating yet another thread about Venat being the worst thing ever

Instead of continued discussion about the whole poster thing

+1 to what Iscah said,it’s not so much that Venat is evil or bad, but the buildup kinda just went in a direction that was really..unsatisfying?

I mean, I had fun and in episodic form the expansion was fine…but in total I’m not sure what the point of a lot of prior buildup/established lore was.

I guess to me it felt a bit like the final season of Game of Thrones or the sudden introduction of midichlorians to explain The
Force. (IMO) It did damage to what was established before without really elevating the total story. Again in my very humble opinion.

[Catwho]

My takes were:

* The spoiler was that both of them turned out to be the main trials of the base game
* The spoiler was that they're opposing forces, not merely one is good and one is bad (and that's why you can flip them upside down)

But now that someone has mentioned Ultima Thule and the bluebirds being motifs in there, I'm going with that. Hell, Ultima Thule is in the logo of the game, and we mistakenly thought it was the moon until we got to UT and went "oh."

Hydalaen clearly has a bluebird on top of her head. That same bluebird was also seen in the Y'shtola art promoting the Fender guitar.

[Enkidoh]

The logo for the expansion isn't Ultima Thule at all, but is in fact the Moon - this is proven by the title screen outright showing the Moon looming over Hydaelyn which then literally turns into the logo - if SE wanted to hint at Ultima Thule they would have done so. And having the Ragnarok appear in the logo still fits because the ship's original purpose was to act as a shuttle moving people and supplies from the surface to the Moon as part of the Great Exodus.

Even without the title screen animation the logo on it's own all but says it's the Moon with that big black crater being clearly the Cradle of Darkness where Zodiark is/was imprisoned. Not to mention SE talked up the Moon's importance in the story long before the expansion was released, and the Moon being the logo all but underlines that.

And I can't see any bluebirds in the Hydaelyn/Zodiark artwork - Hydaelyn seems to have a crystal crown on her head, and the closest to a 'bird' that can be seen is actually parts of her staff she's holding. Ironically enough, Amano often fills his the borders of his artwork with birds and flying creatures which are there purely for visual interest and have no actual deeper connection to the subject matter, so even if there was a bluebird in there, I wouldn't take it as a hint foreshadowing Meteion.

EDIT: Annnnd.. looking very closely at said art part of Hydaelyn's crown does seem to resemble a beak poking through her hair, but... that really is stretching things, and, again I'm liable to just regard that as just part of her crown. As I mentioned Amano loves putting nondescript animals and creatures in his artwork around the borders so even if there was a bird in there, don't take it to mean "that's Meteion!", and just Amano's artistic embelishments again.