What difference did the Twelve tangibly make?

[Cleretic]

I don't think the Twelve were ever intended, from the in-universe perspective, to be gods, and acting like they were is going to lead you down a false path. Our actual window into the intention of Hydaelyn is that they more more supposed to be stewards than gods: they were made to make sure the world didn't melt back in a time where it was very much in need of help. It's just that being that sort of visible, assumed-positive influence got them worshipped as gods, and over time that had an effect. While they're not primals, I think the best comparison is probably Bismarck: mortals ascribed deific attributes to a thing that they saw. They're only worshipped in Eorzea because that's their base of operations, that's where they've been seen but that doesn't mean the Far East is left high and dry--in fact, there is scant evidence they know of the Twelve, they just don't care that much, because they have their own extant phenomena to build their belief systems around.

So they're not intended to be gods, but their actual intention is over now: they watched over the world until they were confident we could do it ourselves. If they vanished back in the First Astral Era, we'd have been screwed, but now they can take their leave.

I'm honestly happy with how the Twleve stuff turned out, but it did take until the finale for me to be okay with it. Boiling the Myths of the Realm storyline down into functional 'things it needed to do', I think the requirements looked something like this:

• Come up with an excuse to fight the Twelve (because the game's a people-pleaser at its heart, and the devs knew we'd want to fight them)
• Do the former in a way that makes it more than just empty fanservice (so it can't be 'someone summoned primals, go punch 'em')
• ...but also doesn't elevate them too far beyond the known elements they're adjacent to.

That last one is pretty important, because the message the game's been trying to carry is that the most important part of a religion is what people get out of it; that the fact that it's real to you is more important than the fact it's real at all. That effort starts to ring hollow if one of those religions is objectively right, though; 'Ul'dah recognizes the Amal'jaa's right to believe in their lame, fake religion, just as much as we're allowed to believe in Nald'thal, who is factually real and looks exactly the way we depict them' doesn't really work.

The way they did it, essentially coming at the Bismarck style of primal from a different direction, actually solves that; there's not a meaningful difference between Ramuh and Rhalgr, and so one is no less real than the other. There's even sort of an element of Thordan in them, in recognizing the problems in deifying a real thing... specifically, that those real things were kinda trapped in the narrative people built around them.


EDIT: If anything, my actual complaint is that the fights sucked. Myths of the Realm was a 'fight these cool bosses' excuse plot, and that's fine (I love Omega, which is very blatantly an excuse plot for cool bosses), but it needs those bosses to be able to hold up their end of the bargain, to really pull off that spectacle. And that just doesn't work if the bosses are so weak that we can out-DPS their entire combat script before the weekly restrictions are even lifted.