6.4 patch speculation

[RyuDragnier]

There's also the chance that the symbol is there pointing out exactly what is going on WITH Golbez, that he's missing a part of himself or his power...or is under somebody's control.

Though anybody else noticing that blue sword there? It looks like the ones seen in Zodiark's prison before he's freed.

[Alleluia]

Isolated image for closer examination if anyone needed it:

https://img.finalfantasyxiv.com/lds/promo/h/r/j7-rKYDlCbSUqW9XN63K3Fg8C8.jpg

And some thoughts:

Is that blue line supposed to be a leash or tether coming from Azdaja's mouth? It seems to go down over Golbez' shoulder and possibly be gripped by his left hand on his knee/in his lap, behind the letters.

And does the backing of that throne remind anyone else of a paladin's blade in their new lvl 90 attacks? The one where swords come out of the ground or w/e.

EDIT: Sorry, the forum wasn't showing me that I got ninja'd to posting the clean image till just now. But mine's technically a different link, and imgur gives my browser fits for some reason, so I'm still leaving it here just in case.

[RyuDragnier]

Is that blue line supposed to be a leash or tether coming from Azdaja's mouth? It seems to go down over Golbez' shoulder and possibly be gripped by his left hand on his knee/in his lap, behind the letters.

And does the backing of that throne remind anyone else of a paladin's blade in their new lvl 90 attacks? The one where swords come out of the ground or w/e.

Now that you mention it...it does.

I wonder, is this hinting that Golbez is in fact half of Zero? Zero's original job as seen in the past was a PLD after all, plus we don't know what effects occurred when Zero was put under Zenos's control. And since time flows differently between shards...if Golbez IS Zero's other self, that would explain why she's missing emotions. Considering of course, that Voidsent tend to show a lot of emotions and instinct and Zero seems devoid of them.

[Cassar]

It could just be a neat way of getting it in there, without actually being connected.

See for example, Lahabrea being pictured in the Eden-themed poster art for 5.4 without having any real reason to be there in the end besides "something about Ascians".

I suppose so, but this seems pretty damn major in comparison to 5.4's. In fact up until you mentioned it I had never even noticed Lahabrea in that poster, I had to go back to check!

Also...

I just went back and checked 6.2's Abyssos cutscenes and it seems that Lahabrea "threw away" the right half of his sigil (technically his left side, but right side from our perspective), while remaining with the left one. The sigil seen on the image is "bad" side... I have a feeling Golbez might be very closely related to Lahabrea's other half, or he might even BE his other half. (Of course, this would imply that the Endwalker raid would have to be mandatory for the MSQ but I think they could very well do that)

[Iscah]

(Of course, this would imply that the Endwalker raid would have to be mandatory for the MSQ but I think they could very well do that)

Time travel is a free pass for continuity. Everything we have done or will do in Elpis/Pandæmonium has already objectively happened, whether we've experienced it yet or not.

That said, it's unlikely that they would tie it together quite so strongly, but they wouldn't have to make the side story mandatory to enable it if they did.

[Iscah]

Something I don't know if we can expect, but I would like to see, is that if you've got the "Pandæmonium complete" tick on your account and you rewatch the 6.0 credits, the scene of the Elpis group and Scions crossing paths will also include the Pandæmonium characters.

[Kranel_San]

I think some players are looking way too hard into the Lahabrea's glyph in the artwork, which I believe is just a teaser of Pandaemonium's conclusion.
That being said, someone on social media did point out that the Shadow Dragon does not match Azdaja's appearance in-game and I think it's possible that the Shadow Dragon is but a manifestation of the aether Golbez has absorbed from Azdaja. It could be something similar to P8N, E11N, and Ranjit dragons where they're part of the main entity instead of being a fully separate entity on their own.

[Cassar]

Okay so first of all I just want to point out that this is the most reaching and most wild theory I've had and it's most likely 100% wrong BUT wouldn't it be cool if:

Athena plants some idea in Lahabrea's (Hephaistos') head. We don't know what this idea is but it's so terrible that he needs to get rid of it and so he decides to completely rip off half of his soul and lock it up forever. This we know from the Abyssos raid, now what if his idea was to create a world in which no one could die, even if they wanted to, they would just be reborn no matter what. I base this on the fact that on Hephaistos' savage raid, he experiments on the players and seems satisfied when he finds a way to make them revive. Hmm, dying and reviving, doesn't that sound very much like he Void? Maybe Hephaistos wanted the whole (still unsundered) world to be like the void shard, but couldn't accomplish his goal. Then, after the world was sundered, Hephaistos found a way to sabotage Emet-Selch, Elidibus and Lahabrea's (his other half's) plan of rejoining the 13th and intentionally caused it to turn into the void. Emet-Selch mentioned that they made a "mistake" out of "ignorance", but perhaps Hephaistos took back control of Lahabrea and knew exactly what he was doing.

As to how Golbez fits into this, I don't know, maybe he's Hephaistos from the future (our present), regretting his decision. Or maybe he could be someone else who became a victim of his decision.
Again, I know this is a wild theory and I'm reaching like crazy here but... What if....

[Sinstrel]

I doubt that is Azdaja in the photo tbh. Azdaja was described to have birdlike features and more of a beaked snout, more feathered appearance similar to Hraesvelgr, and talin like claws. The dragon in this photo is anything but that, and also has both of its eyes. This dragon resembles more Tiamat. And as we learned from completing Eureka Orthos floor 30, Tiamat is one of the only living beings with mastery over the void/dark aether.

Tiamat is probably our way back to the 13th and will be assisting us in the trial against Golbez to rescue Azdaja is what my opinion is.

[Cleretic]

Now that you mention it...it does.

I wonder, is this hinting that Golbez is in fact half of Zero? Zero's original job as seen in the past was a PLD after all, plus we don't know what effects occurred when Zero was put under Zenos's control. And since time flows differently between shards...if Golbez IS Zero's other self, that would explain why she's missing emotions. Considering of course, that Voidsent tend to show a lot of emotions and instinct and Zero seems devoid of them.

This is a baseline misread of the character.

She's not 'missing emotions', she's been stuck in a horrible hellhole for ten thousand years and is, to be light, poorly socialized. There has never been a moment where she appears to completely lack emotions, she just lacks expression of those emotions and a lack of experience with and understanding of things we generally associate with those emotions. She has a full range of emotions, she's just been deadened to a lot of the negative through overexposure and is unused to the positive due to underexposure, so she's coming from a fundamentally different road.

While she's not autistic (and I caution to never treat her as if she is), it's a similar situation you see with people on that spectrum; it's not that she doesn't have emotions, it's that she's not expressing it in the ways you're typically used to seeing.

And god damn I hope Golbez isn't some fragment of another person in any way. Let him be his own person! God knows that of any FF reference character, it's Golbez that deserves that respect.

I'd also caution: there is absolutely no way that Golbez is directly related to the Pandaemonium story, because that's just not how they write these things. Side stories fork off of the main story or just run completely in parallel, and only come back in if it's REALLY important (see: Crystal Tower, and to a lesser degree Alexander). This is mostly because it'd really suck for the people who aren't doing side content for whatever reason to just be left out of understanding the story.