Revelations from Patch 6.4: The Dark Throne

[KageTokage]

an explanation regarding how Themis, Hephaistos and Hades were the only 3 survivors of the sundering

There's been two references to such, though one was in a live letter Q/A, and the other was in the Emet-Selch story that featured as a cross-over event in the Nier mobile game.

The former suggested that Venat might've purposefully let the unsundered escape due to knowing of their involvement in the causal loop which is...yeah.

The latter just states that Emet-Selch and company "barely survived" by mustering all of their strength to resist the effects of the Sundering.

[Fenral]

I had my thoughts written up patch day, but life intervened and kept me off the forums for a bit. (Also Tears of the Kingdom and an inexplicable urge to play FFVI PR.) Has it really been two weeks already? I can drop the play-by-play and limit myself to things I haven't seen pointed out yet.

MSQ

Zero - Zeromus link confirmed! Just, not something anyone had any reason to expect. There's an ancient hero of the Thirteenth named Zeromus, and Golbez just gave the name to his new toy to be ironic. Said hero is also the source of our Zero's name, and she's not thrilled about it.

Zero's 6.5 arc is looking to be a "real heroes don't exist" stock shonen manga crisis. A bit cheesy but, I mean, have you played Final Fantasy IV?

Pandaemonium

I spent most of the cutscenes hissing at Athena and don't really have much to add on the subject.

The incantation Athena uses for Ultima after the add phase is word-for-word the same one Lahabrea uses in the Praetorium Porta Decumana phase transition (in JP, anyway), which always stuck out at me because the EN script is trying really hard to pretend it's not a Slayers-style spell incantation for some reason, and just Lahabrea boasting like a maniac. Anyway, the callback was nice, even though it's (another) one of those points where the localization sabotages its own continuity.

[Cleretic]

MSQ

Zero - Zeromus link confirmed! Just, not something anyone had any reason to expect. There's an ancient hero of the Thirteenth named Zeromus, and Golbez just gave the name to his new toy to be ironic. Said hero is also the source of our Zero's name, and she's not thrilled about it.

Uhhh... no? I get that just a flat 'no' isn't a great thing to be responded with, but... no.

Zero's name came from Y'shtola. ANd they both agreed they were basically talking about the mathematical concept, although they disagreed on its connotation. Zero reads it as 'nothing', Y'shtola as 'a beginning.

[Fenral]

Uhhh... no? I get that just a flat 'no' isn't a great thing to be responded with, but... no.

The four-month patch cycle is really killing my ability to hold onto minor details.

Nonetheless, she does visibly react to it, so I think there's something there. Never mind how Y'shtola magically pulling "Zero" out of a bag of names in an FFIV homage storyline is as on-the-nose as randomly nicknaming your newly-resurrected uncle "Judas" with absolutely no knowledge of his true identity or how he died. (That's Tales of Destiny 2, FYI)

[Alleluia]

The four-month patch cycle is really killing my ability to hold onto minor details.

Nonetheless, she does visibly react to it, so I think there's something there. Never mind how Y'shtola magically pulling "Zero" out of a bag of names in an FFIV homage storyline is as on-the-nose as randomly nicknaming your newly-resurrected uncle "Judas" with absolutely no knowledge of his true identity or how he died. (That's Tales of Destiny 2, FYI)

Its apparently named after a "hero of eld". My current guess is that the original Zeromus is who that statue in Zero's domain is.

[Fenral]

Its apparently named after a "hero of eld". My current guess is that the original Zeromus is who that statue in Zero's domain is.

I mean, yeah. I got that bit. Zero reacts like she has some baggage there, either just with heroes or with the name "Zeromus" in particular, and all of that works fine... except for the part where Y'shtola pulling "Zero" randomly out of a hat several patches ago now strains credibility to the breaking point. I let it slide when I thought it foreshadowed our Zero being involved in the (anticipated) Zemus -> Zeromus transformation, but instead we just skipped Zemus entirely and coincidentally have two characters named Zero, one entirely on accident. It bugged me then, it's really bugging me now.

Maybe Y'shtola will say later that she really pulled it off an inscription on that statue or something, except she can't because the naming thing happened before going to Zero's domain.

[Iscah]

The former suggested that Venat might've purposefully let the unsundered escape due to knowing of their involvement in the causal loop which is...yeah.

That very much had the ring of "made up on the spot without fully considering the implications because we didn't previously think about it for some reason".

[Brinne]

The implication of deliberately allowing Emet to escape was written into the game script, though, which Yoshi-P also pointed out in his answer. Not that that makes things any better or not ill thought-out, of course. Even when it was being written into the game, I'm sure they were operating from a perspective of "wouldn't it be cool if all the pieces fell into place and everything Came Full Circle as part of the Grand Plan?" without thinking of the further implications.