Revelations from Patch 6.5: "Growing Light", Part 1

[Iscah]

After not being able to queue for Thaleia yesterday, I did it tonight, and wow Yoshida was not joking when he said it might be a bit harder than the previous ones. That final boss was the most stressful fight we've had in ages.

Funny thing, I've been jittery-nervous all day and I think "finding out what will happen at the end of Myths" has been subconsciously causing at least some of it.

So.

Final thoughts on Myths of the Realm

My overall feeling is that this is a reasonably nicely told story that shouldn't have existed.

Up until this point, the Twelve's existence was ambiguous. They were the gods that the population of Eorzea believed in, with no tangible proof and plenty of past implication and speculation that they might not be real at all. It could have been left at that, especially once we had already found the real gods (or closest thing to it) that had physical influence over the planet.

Are we now going to have to confirm and deal with the existence of the kami, Azim and Nhaama, the Mol tribe's elder gods, the real Mriga and Manusya and whatever gods we find out there too? I assume and hope not. And if those can all remain ambiguous, then why did the Eorzean pantheon need resolution?

On a separate note, the ultimate irrelevance of the Watcher feels odd. His entire involvement in the story and addition to the list of the Twelve seems to have been to act as a red herring for what we expected as the final boss.

Also, as a few others have similarly commented, I didn't really like the "here are the true mortal identities of the Twelve" thing but did appreciate learning that Hythlodaeus had a competent second-in-command running the show, because of course he did.

But anyway. Godsspeed, Deryk; may the eternal wind carry you onward, and may we meet you on the road. Maybe hanging out with a yellow bird and a little robot.

[Eisi]

Totally agree with you, Iscy.

Does Deryk now actually travel the world like Alpha and Omega? He explicitly said he'd visit the places named after the gods so that might be a hint for potential spawns? Would be neat!

[SannaR]

MSQ quandary

I don't understand how Durante was able to go back to normal looking after he crushed that memoria crystal. Golbez gets hit by a beam from one and starts turning yet he seems fine. Also if Golbez is supposed to be our shard of the 13th then how did they start turning? If they had the Blessing of Light then that shouldn't have been happening. Unless they were soaking up a lot of Darkness off screen and that was a tipping point.

Myths

If Nald'Thal was a merchant what stuff would someone even sell in the pre-sundered world? Most things were hinted at just being made with creation magics. I also feel the whole being made a twin aspected god is a meta nod.

@Isach I guess that would make sense. Just felt that it would have been nice to have something unique from a healer of Doma.

[Eisi]

Myths

If Nald'Thal was a merchant what stuff would someone even sell in the pre-sundered world? Most things were hinted at just being made with creation magics. I also feel the whole being made a twin aspected god is a meta nod.

There are some goods we know of in the ancient world, I don't know if concepts would be subject to trade? But there are certainly raw materials still like the black goo thingies from Amaurot we use to create stuff out of that maybe have some special properties that make certain transmutations easier? Not everyone is good at creation of anything, so if I'm good at creating windows for example and just have exceptional talent at that, I might trade them with you who has great talent for creating nice garden gnomes. Sure, I might create my own (or maybe not even!) but yours are just better. Food is still a thing in the Ancient world which if you could just create it you would essentially eat the same you spend right? Netting zero, so you gotta intake. I assume worldwide "international" trade is important too. But maybe trading is just done for fun in the ancient world largely.

Fun fact: Hidden text doesn't contribute to the minimum 10 chars.

[Tehmon]

Answer to both questions of point 4

Yes to both. It literally was another Crystal Exarch situation. Not everyone is going to give it their all in these kinds of situations. To point 1 look at Ishgard they just recently got told the war they had been fighting for one thousand years was based on a lie. Now go and tell them that Halone was an ancient construct of sorts that fought you, doesn't like how their prayers made her into a goddess of war and then left. Or anyone who didn't believe in the twelve. Sorry the kami and any other religious figures aren't real. Sucks to be you bro. Yes, it would have been a messy thing to tackle, but it kind of misses the entire point.

Myths of the Realm

And that's really my issue. We are yet again harboring '' forbidden knowledge '' that when spread, could have severe consequences. And, well, I want to see those consequences. But now, not only are we incredibly powerful, our understanding of the world is completely different than most people's of Etheirys, and we know the truth about our existence and our world and our gods in a way most people will never know it. We know the truth, and it causes an even further rift between the main characters and the people of Eorzea. Of course, there's always going to be something that sets the main characters apart from the rest, that's obvious, but at this point we know too much and we are too powerful to the point it's kind of overbearing to me, and breaks my immersion.

It's not a huge deal I guess but... I don't want more '' forbidden knowledge that may never be passed on because it would cause huge changes in Eorzea's cultural landscape (which would be cool to see) '' nonsense in the future.

[Lunaxia]

If Nald'Thal was a merchant what stuff would someone even sell in the pre-sundered world? Most things were hinted at just being made with creation magics. I also feel the whole being made a twin aspected god is a meta nod.

.

Just throwing my own thoughts out there:

I'm pretty sure they did sell... some things. I do have a memory of being surprised somewhere in Elpis (?) when one of the NPCs talked about that sort of thing matter-of-factly and thinking "oh woah so they do bother with money."

Just guessing, I'd say maybe stuff like herbs, medicine, food, wine, flowers - anything you'd be more inclined to take from the natural world (I think they mention even their creations seem to fare better growing in soil than anything else.) And then we're assuming everyone is super proficient at concept creation and design and frequently submitting concepts - perhaps it's a smaller group than we realise, and everyone else tends to purchase their daily wares much like we do in the present day. Somehow I can't imagine things like pans, pots, furniture, various forms of equipment, books, writing utensils and the like qualifying for the bureau. So maybe that?

I kinda wish we could get some flavour text on the Ancients like we did with items for the Ishgard restoration, since I find small, goofy things like that really fun and interesting lol.

[SannaR]

Myths of the Realm

And that's really my issue. We are yet again harboring '' forbidden knowledge '' that when spread, could have severe consequences. And, well, I want to see those consequences. But now, not only are we incredibly powerful, our understanding of the world is completely different than most people's of Etheirys, and we know the truth about our existence and our world and our gods in a way most people will never know it. We know the truth, and it causes an even further rift between the main characters and the people of Eorzea. Of course, there's always going to be something that sets the main characters apart from the rest, that's obvious, but at this point we know too much and we are too powerful to the point it's kind of overbearing to me, and breaks my immersion.

It's not a huge deal I guess but... I don't want more '' forbidden knowledge that may never be passed on because it would cause huge changes in Eorzea's cultural landscape (which would be cool to see) '' nonsense in the future.

10 things kupo

I get the whole disliking hiding knowledge that could change the world view of many. Yet it took humanity this long to get to the point the "gods" felt it was OK to stop doing their job. I don't think the average person of Etheirys is there yet to be told what we learned. Look at the kind of stir we were making when discussing openly Nald'Thal near one of his shrines. I like to think that at some point down in the distant future this knowledge could be shared with the general public. Sort of like it took many a cycle for the races of the Milkyway to get to a point where they could co-habitate with synthetic life in the Mass Effect universe. I'm more concerned that we now seem to be stuck with somewhat biblically accurate angels.

[SannaR]

Just throwing my own thoughts out there:

I'm pretty sure they did sell... some things. I do have a memory of being surprised somewhere in Elpis (?) when one of the NPCs talked about that sort of thing matter-of-factly and thinking "oh woah so they do bother with money."

Just guessing, I'd say maybe stuff like herbs, medicine, food, wine, flowers - anything you'd be more inclined to take from the natural world (I think they mention even their creations seem to fare better growing in soil than anything else.) And then we're assuming everyone is super proficient at concept creation and design and frequently submitting concepts - perhaps it's a smaller group than we realise, and everyone else tends to purchase their daily wares much like we do in the present day. Somehow I can't imagine things like pans, pots, furniture, various forms of equipment, books, writing utensils and the like qualifying for the bureau. So maybe that?

I kinda wish we could get some flavour text on the Ancients like we did with items for the Ishgard restoration, since I find small, goofy things like that really fun and interesting lol.

@Eisi they sort of do count as you get yelled at for having a 5k character count even if most of those are hidden.

Man I swear I must have missed that or at least not picked up on it. As there didn't seem to be a lot of hints that there was any kind of economy either from Emet-Selch's Amurot or from many of the researchers on Elpis. Even when we would get told about that overseer and their subordinate dinner plans it didn't sound as though they were going to use items they didn't create themselves. Although I guess it didn't really hit me until now with the fact Venat told us she didn't have the supplies to make anything but tea as a sign that not everything was "poofed into existence". Even with the Volcano story it came off as an "Oh no it's going to destroy the grapes... not like we can't just conjure up some more." mindset that was part of why they chose not to intervene. I also wish we got more flavor text with some of the furniture that's supposed to be from then.

[Iscah]

On the discussion re merchants

The simplest in-game answer is that there are merchants around Elpis, some with an explanation like the gemstone trader (IIRC she says she's got some kind of familiar that eats bicolor gemstones), others being harder to explain like the multiple junkmongers selling player equipment that, from a lore perspective, would be outlandish garments no respectable Amaurotine would be caught dead in. (Some sell the PVP-copy sets and others the Neo-Ishgardian sets.)

Thinking over Myths of the Realm, I put a finger on something that was bugging me...

I dislike it in something of the same way I dislike the Sorrow of Werlyt, in that it spent a large chunk of its time introducing a cast of characters with one-note personalities for no other purpose than to kill off every last one of them by the end of the story.

On a totally different track, I checked the variable cutscene in the Ocular.

Confirming that if you turn off the "reflect quest progression" button, the cutscene ends just before Gaia would have arrived.

Other than that, the scene up to that point mostly has the same script either way, besides one line where Beq Lugg mentions working with Unukalhai.

Also, for anyone who picked the line about coffee biscuits when Gaia was asking who you were, that answer doesn't really make clear that she was just joking, which she says straight away if you ask whether she's lost her memory again.

Does Deryk now actually travel the world like Alpha and Omega? He explicitly said he'd visit the places named after the gods so that might be a hint for potential spawns? Would be neat!

I don't know, but it seems possible.

Just after he left, I flew down to Moraby and checked the Mark of the Spinner in case he was there, but he wasn't. Though it would have been lucky to find him on the first try even if it actually is a thing that can happen.

Purely speculative, but if he does turn up, it would be neat if he gave little bits of extra lore about something useful when you found him.

[Cleretic]

MSQ quandary

I don't understand how Durante was able to go back to normal looking after he crushed that memoria crystal. Golbez gets hit by a beam from one and starts turning yet he seems fine. Also if Golbez is supposed to be our shard of the 13th then how did they start turning? If they had the Blessing of Light then that shouldn't have been happening. Unless they were soaking up a lot of Darkness off screen and that was a tipping point.

I've got some reads on this but it's basically just gut feel.

I feel like voluntarily memorializing yourself (that's a worthless verb for greater contexts but it'll do today) gives you a lot more control. Perhaps it's a matter of training for the situation you can be sure is coming, maybe it's something like 'you reflexively hold back when punching yourself'', something like that. So blasting someone else with it just drives them into a frenzy that they can't feasibly control, like we saw from the trash mobs like the Vampiresses.