Quote Originally Posted by Lurina View Post
That's probably not the case - or at least, they hadn't decided. Banri Oda (I think it was Oda; it might've been Yoshi-P) stated in a Famitsu interview last year that, at the time ShB was finished, the developers had no firm plan about how the Hydaelyn vs. Zodiark conflict would be resolved, including which of them would be the final villain. Meteion and the concept of dynamis also didn't exist at that point.
Do you have a source on that? Unless we’re having completely different readings of the same source, I don’t remember anything about Hydaelyn ever being given the possibility of being the villain. I do remember an interview where it was said that we shouldn’t take Emet-Selch at face value and to wait until we have Hydaelyn’s story, even if that didn’t exactly pay off.

Meteion’s child birdgirl form and story behind her wasn’t written, but the concept of a surprise end boss behind everything was by the time EW writing first began in the autumn after 5.0’s release in 2019.

Interviewer: In the plot at that point, were elements such as Meteion already included?

Ishikawa: The name Meteion wasn’t there yet, but the base form of what she became had been decided.
The devs played around with some off-the-wall ideas but I didn’t read into this as it always having been up in the air whether or not she’s good, just possibilities that they never took.

Oda explains that the devs seek to balance delivering on players’ expectations and also having unexpected developments. Players were already expecting to fight Hydaelyn and
Zodiark, so it was debated among the devs whether to deliver the fights straightforwardly, or have a surprise development where one of them would take over the other and fight you. In the end, the team decided to go for the straightforward route, and the last boss would be something unexpected.
Especially since that idea contradicts against what Yoshi-P says right after:

Yoshida: At the residential no one thought Hydaelyn or Zodiark should be the last boss.