Inconsistencies with the sundering (Spoilers)

[Atelier-Bagur]

Isn't that poor story telling? You know, having to have the creators of the story explain things outside of the story themselves?

I mean...we didnt really need to go into the details of everything. That question always bothered me really. I always assumed just like in any story that the bad guys were just quick thinkers, strong and successfully adapted to the situation. This is being selective I know, but outside sources for extra context and information isnt required to understand the plot so those LL were fans ask stuff like this always seem like the devs try to think fast and come up with a response. If it aint the FFXIV lore master and designer, Banri Oda or even Ishikawa directly answering these questions, I'm taking the info with a grain of salt.

[Catwho]

If the sundered weren't capable of, or didn't chose to save the star, wouldn't the refugees in the moon ship also be susceptible to the song after Zodiark was killed? And where was there to go? What kind of back up plan is that?

I think we're not done with the Lopporits and the spaceship just yet. I suspect that the moon is capable of traveling between dimensions, or perhaps out into the Rift.

If the ancients couldn't manipulate dynamis, how did Hermes create Metion?

It's not that they couldn't manipulate it, it's that they couldn't interact with it directly, and most of them had no interest in doing so. Hermes is the one that realized that it was our aether that blocked it.

I think of it as like radio waves for humans. Prior to the invention of the Marconi radio, no human could manipulate radio waves. We knew about them. We even knew how to create them. The waves were always there before - cosmic background radiation is constantly raining down on us. But all it took was one human figuring out how to both send and receive them, and all of a sudden we were able to manipulate them for our own purposes.

(Dynamis as a concept from ancient Greece referred to the energy that existed in potential. An entelechy like Meteion was a complete being who could interact not only with aether (the energy that already is) but dynamis (the energy that could potentially be.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potent...hy_(entelechia)

[Kaurhz]

Honestly, a lot of the cutscenes, like Hydaelyn walking, or doing the sundering were just meant to be symbolic/representational, and not necessarily taken to be an accurate depiction of events. To accurately depict these in cutscenes would be a pretty exorbitant amount of time otherwise. The way I view what Zodiark did for the shard was/is just akin to what the Ozone layer does for us, essentially. I suppose in this regard... Sun = Meteion, Ozone layer = Zodiark.

I think the flowers etc., reacting to emotions is just more of a natural phenomenon than a deliberate manipulation of dynamis itself. That being said (and I may be misremembering), I don't think it was ever explicitly stated that they could not interact with dynamis, just that they weren't very good at doing so.

On the topic of Dyanmis, it's not really an avenue I liked to see - Or rather, it's an avenue that should have been explored and mentioned far, far earlier in the story - They've essentially built a foundation, albeit a very weak foundation, and most of this just lends itself to dynamis only being introduced in this expansion.

[Atelier-Bagur]

Honestly, a lot of the cutscenes, like Hydaelyn walking, or doing the sundering were just meant to be symbolic/representational, and not necessarily taken to be an accurate depiction of events. To accurately depict these in cutscenes would be a pretty exorbitant amount of time otherwise. The way I view what Zodiark did for the shard was/is just akin to what the Ozone layer does for us, essentially. I suppose in this regard... Sun = Meteion, Ozone layer = Zodiark.

I think the flowers etc., reacting to emotions is just more of a natural phenomenon than a deliberate manipulation of dynamis itself. That being said (and I may be misremembering), I don't think it was ever explicitly stated that they could not interact with dynamis, just that they weren't very good at doing so.

On the topic of Dyanmis, it's not really an avenue I liked to see - Or rather, it's an avenue that should have been explored and mentioned far, far earlier in the story - They've essentially built a foundation, albeit a very weak foundation, and most of this just lends itself to dynamis only being introduced in this expansion.

You can sort of feel like this was being foreshadowed in various parts of the story though, and funny enough with some of the new ARR solo instance reworks they seem to retroactively try to implement its usage much early on, such as how Rhitahtyn used dynamis to continue fighting.

[AwesomeJr44]

Isn't that poor story telling? You know, having to have the creators of the story explain things outside of the story themselves?

Yes. Yes it is.

It's the same type of bad writing that happened in Star Wars 9 where Palpatine's return required reading outside material to be explained properly.

[PeaTearGriffin]

Just because Zodiark stopped the continuation of the Final Days doesn’t mean it’s only just powerful enough to stop it.

It was created as the epitome of a very powerful if the THE most powerful society’s creation magic and made up of the aether of a large chunk of their people in the form of a living god that can rewrite the laws of nature. Considering what little we know of how aether and dynamis interact, Zodiark is likely overkill in its role of blocking the Final Days to the point that 1/14 of its power is sufficient.

But remember that just blocking it isn’t the only thing Zodiark was built for and that it had to fix the world too. By the time of the Sundering, Zodiark had already finished with the heavy lifting goals only a god could accomplish.

I suppose that could be the case, but then the idea that Zodiark has the potential to be that powerful introduces an additional inconsistency. With that kind of difference in power where just 1/14th of Zodiark's aether is enough to stop meteion, the ancients (barring venat's personal moral opinion that people should suffer) could just summon zodiark, have him kill meteion because he's so much more powerful than meteion in this scenario, and then work on restoring etheirys. We already know from the game's cutscenes that "Dynamis is a far weaker form of energy, and is almost completely nullified by Aether in equal quantities." If just 1/14th of Zodiark's aether is enough to nullify meteion, we can assume that zodiark can kill meteion with an additional fraction of his aether, then use his remaining aether to restore the world. Of course these are just fan theories at this point, but the hypothetical scenario that Zodiark is indeed that aetherically powerful creates more possibilities that might be better alternatives to sundering the world.

[PeaTearGriffin]

Isn't that poor story telling? You know, having to have the creators of the story explain things outside of the story themselves?

I'm not going to defend square enix on this one because it's definitely a detail they overlooked.

[Kaurhz]

You can sort of feel like this was being foreshadowed in various parts of the story though, and funny enough with some of the new ARR solo instance reworks they seem to retroactively try to implement its usage much early on, such as how Rhitahtyn used dynamis to continue fighting.

It was foreshadowed, but the direct build-up and actual introduction to dynamis were both too sudden and too short. At least in the informative aspects of it.

I think, ideally, dyanmis should have been directly mentioned in Shadowbringers, really.

I daresay we'll continue to see more information regarding it going forward.

[Atelier-Bagur]

I suppose that could be the case, but then the idea that Zodiark has the potential to be that powerful introduces an additional inconsistency. With that kind of difference in power where just 1/14th of Zodiark's aether is enough to stop meteion, the ancients (barring venat's personal moral opinion that people should suffer) could just summon zodiark, have him kill meteion because he's so much more powerful than meteion in this scenario, and then work on restoring etheirys. We already know from the game's cutscenes that "Dynamis is a far weaker form of energy, and is almost completely nullified by Aether in equal quantities." If just 1/14th of Zodiark's aether is enough to nullify meteion, we can assume that zodiark can kill meteion with an additional fraction of his aether, then use his remaining aether to restore the world. Of course these are just fan theories at this point, but the hypothetical scenario that Zodiark is indeed that aetherically powerful creates more possibilities that might be better alternatives to sundering the world.

You forget that Meteion was at the edge of the universe. The Ancients could'nt have killed her even if they tried, nor even then be able to manipulate and counter the gathered dynamis in Ultima Thule to their advantage. The Ancients were focused on rebuilding their world than wanting to fight despair.

Even then if we're going to start nitpicking the story like this, then we might as well go ALL the way back to every single thing in this story to nitpick some of the power inconsistencies if this is truly such a bother. Why is a single WoL more powerful than another set of WoLs? How come Nidhogg took his sweet time to ravage Ishgard unless if we're treating him like Meteion....maybe he wasnt trying hard enough? How come the Garleans with all their superior magitek still lost the war? What about Emet-Selch whom lived multiple lives and for thousand of years suddenly thought "oh I wonder if maybe I try to understand these people and follow them". Its stuff like this when you start dissecting a simple jrpg story causes more unnecessary crutches and issues that would make the average story cynic have an aneurysm.

[PeaTearGriffin]

Metion was there singing her song of oblivion since the events in Elpis, possibly even killing more worlds while Hydaelyn waited for the WoL to arrive.

There are a lot of inconsistencies and plot holes in EW.

Why did Hydaelyn sunder herself? (The Watcher mentions that she did.) Are there mini-hydaelyns in the shards? Why then did she get weaker with each rejoining?

If the sundered weren't capable of, or didn't chose to save the star, wouldn't the refugees in the moon ship also be susceptible to the song after Zodiark was killed? And where was there to go? What kind of back up plan is that?

If the ancients couldn't manipulate dynamis, how did Hermes create Metion? Why did the elpis flowers react to their emotions? How did Emet-Selch and Hythlodeus use creation magic in Ultima Thule to not only make an entire field of elpis flowers, but also make the liveable environment permanent so the scions could come back? What part of manipulating dynamis were they incapable of, that only the sundered could do?

I'd love to believe that the writers will make everything clear by 6.5, but Yoshi said that 6.0 was the end of the Hydaelyn and Zodiark arc, so I guess we wait and see.

These are all great questions that are currently unanswered and we can only hope that square tries to patch these plot holes up. That reminds me that I have even more questions myself.

Can sundered ascians use dynamis? What about sundered primals? Both sundered ascians and sundered primals are less aetherically dense so theoretically they could wield dynamis as another power source. If anyone knew the answers to that feel free to say so here.