Inconsistencies with the sundering (Spoilers)

[PeaTearGriffin]

The Tales of the Dawn sidestory, A Friendship of Record, seems a little more indicative of there being some kind of fight between Hydaelyn and Zodiark.

"Venat's faction thus resolved to manifest an entity capable of shackling that power. To have any chance at defeating the nigh-omnipotent Zodiark, however, the sacrifice must be absolute."

- https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes.../#sidestory_01

The language is still somewhat ambiguous as it doesn't explicitly say "Hydaelyn and Zodiark go head to head in a battle," or something along those lines, but I can at least now believe that there was some sort of major conflict between them prior to the Sundering.

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.

Guess we could say endwalker is our star wars 9.

[Ravenblade1979]

i could have sworn they were explaining the hydaelyn/zodiark battle since shadowbringers

[Iscah]

The Tales of the Dawn sidestory, A Friendship of Record, seems a little more indicative of there being some kind of fight between Hydaelyn and Zodiark.

That isn't merging, though – it's going back to the "old" narrative that Hydaelyn battled Zodiark with no mention of it ending in a philosophical clash between the factions.

Merging the two would require actually talking about what happened when Hydaelyn and Zodiark fought each other while clearly connecting it to the allegorical cutscene, which they seem extremely averse to doing.

Either they really did try to overwrite "the fight" with "Venat turned up at a meeting", or they've written it confusingly enough that a fair chunk of the audience feels like they did that, and either way they have made no attempt to explain or justify the discrepancy – not in further stories and not in interviews. They just avoid any explanation of it, which makes me feel like they don't actually have a good answer for how to reconcile the two.

[Xirean]

That isn't merging, though – it's going back to the "old" narrative that Hydaelyn battled Zodiark with no mention of it ending in a philosophical clash between the factions.

Merging the two would require actually talking about what happened when Hydaelyn and Zodiark fought each other while clearly connecting it to the allegorical cutscene, which they seem extremely averse to doing.

Either they really did try to overwrite "the fight" with "Venat turned up at a meeting", or they've written it confusingly enough that a fair chunk of the audience feels like they did that, and either way they have made no attempt to explain or justify the discrepancy – not in further stories and not in interviews. They just avoid any explanation of it, which makes me feel like they don't actually have a good answer for how to reconcile the two.

Alternatively you can use that bad cutscene as Venat's moral justification of what she did during battle. The sundering does still take place during battle but that doesn't mean Venat didn't intend to do it for reasons beyond just defeating Zodiark.

[AmiableApkallu]

The cutscene starts with Venat telling us, "Even now, I remember standing there. Locked in a moment where the sky is aflame."

The entire cutscene is her telling us a story: her story of the sundering.

It's natural that she tells a different story from Emet-Selch's: She remembers Meteion; he does not. She's motivated by pushing mankind forward; he's motivated by restoring the past. The stories they tell us are the stories that they've each been telling themselves, to remind themselves of why they've been carrying their burdens for thousands of years.

[kpxmanifesto]

That isn't merging, though – it's going back to the "old" narrative that Hydaelyn battled Zodiark with no mention of it ending in a philosophical clash between the factions.

Merging the two would require actually talking about what happened when Hydaelyn and Zodiark fought each other while clearly connecting it to the allegorical cutscene, which they seem extremely averse to doing.

Either they really did try to overwrite "the fight" with "Venat turned up at a meeting", or they've written it confusingly enough that a fair chunk of the audience feels like they did that, and either way they have made no attempt to explain or justify the discrepancy – not in further stories and not in interviews. They just avoid any explanation of it, which makes me feel like they don't actually have a good answer for how to reconcile the two.

So right before that line I quoted from Tales of the Dawn earlier, there's another line that says: "Venat, along with the archivist and their like-minded companions, objected to this undertaking. The future, they believed, must not bear the cost for saving the past. Only in accepting pain and loss─by learning from the mistakes of yesterday─could they greet the morrow. A power such as Zodiark possessed was anathema to the progress of man."

The chain of events from Tales of the Dawn doesn't directly match up with the allegorical cutscene we saw in EW, but I personally feel the writer of Tales of the Dawn at least attempted to include both reasons for the Sundering that we saw from ShB and EW. ShB had the clash between Zodiark and Hydaelyn as the primary cause of the Sundering, EW had Venat's philosophical reasons for the Sundering, and Tales of the Dawn mentions both.

But you're right when you say "Merging the two would require actually talking about what happened when Hydaelyn and Zodiark fought each other while clearly connecting it to the allegorical cutscene." That would be the correct way of merging the two versions of the Sundering.

Guess we could say endwalker is our star wars 9.

Somehow, the cause of the Sundering from ShB RETURNED!

[Iscah]

The chain of events from Tales of the Dawn doesn't directly match up with the allegorical cutscene we saw in EW, but I personally feel the writer of Tales of the Dawn at least attempted to include both reasons for the Sundering that we saw from ShB and EW. ShB had the clash between Zodiark and Hydaelyn as the primary cause of the Sundering, EW had Venat's philosophical reasons for the Sundering, and Tales of the Dawn mentions both.

I still don't think that's adding anything new to the table. We knew since Shadowbringers that Hydaelyn was created by a faction philosophically opposed to Zodiark.

[kpxmanifesto]

I still don't think that's adding anything new to the table. We knew since Shadowbringers that Hydaelyn was created by a faction philosophically opposed to Zodiark.

With how vague the storytelling is, I can see this being the case for many people. That's not to say I think your interpretation is wrong, but it is different.

i could have sworn they were explaining the hydaelyn/zodiark battle since shadowbringers

Yeah, right until the infamous EW cutscene which completely ignores that.

[PeaTearGriffin]

That isn't merging, though – it's going back to the "old" narrative that Hydaelyn battled Zodiark with no mention of it ending in a philosophical clash between the factions.

As the other poster pointed out, we get a hint of this philosophical clash between the factions in the tales of the dawn quote - "Venat, along with the archivist and their like-minded companions, objected to this undertaking. The future, they believed, must not bear the cost for saving the past. Only in accepting pain and loss─by learning from the mistakes of yesterday─could they greet the morrow. A power such as Zodiark possessed was anathema to the progress of man."

I think this is very much saying there was a clash between the ideologies of those that supported zodiark and those that supported hydaelyn. This should've been included in the endwalker cutscene too.

Either they really did try to overwrite "the fight" with "Venat turned up at a meeting", or they've written it confusingly enough that a fair chunk of the audience feels like they did that, and either way they have made no attempt to explain or justify the discrepancy – not in further stories and not in interviews. They just avoid any explanation of it, which makes me feel like they don't actually have a good answer for how to reconcile the two.

And this is why there's a few of us on these forums that think the endwalker cutscene is a retcon.

[kpxmanifesto]

As the other poster pointed out, we get a hint of this philosophical clash between the factions in the tales of the dawn quote

This should've been included in the endwalker cutscene too.

Yeah, not only should this have been included in the cutscene, but it wouldn't have hurt to expand upon this in Tales of the Dawn too. They spoke about it briefly in Tales, but sadly, it leaves a lot on the table.