12 Gods of Hell(Where are 12 hells/realms in FF14?)

[Catwho]

My understanding is that it wasn't an "error" but a request he made to the lore planners at the development stage for them to adjust the planned cosmology so he could have the "seven hells" swear.

This is my understanding as well.

Anyway, as others have said, we already got our Hell in the EW raid series and Pandaemonium. It was the parallel to the Heavens in Myths of the Realm.

Are there 7 stages within the Pandy arenas? I can't quite remember back that far. I remember the design of raid itself was weird, with a long tunnel in the main portion of 1-8, and then the 9th arena switching it up to the aetherial sea of the present time. So if the long tunnel had 7 different stages, with one boss arena being repeated, that'd match the idea of "seven hells."

[Daralii]

This is my understanding as well.

Anyway, as others have said, we already got our Hell in the EW raid series and Pandaemonium. It was the parallel to the Heavens in Myths of the Realm.

Are there 7 stages within the Pandy arenas? I can't quite remember back that far. I remember the design of raid itself was weird, with a long tunnel in the main portion of 1-8, and then the 9th arena switching it up to the aetherial sea of the present time. So if the long tunnel had 7 different stages, with one boss arena being repeated, that'd match the idea of "seven hells."

We got teleported to another part of the complex for Phoinix, but I think the rest of Asphodelos and Abyssos were one continuous path.

[Catwho]

We got teleported to another part of the complex for Phoinix, but I think the rest of Asphodelos and Abyssos were one continuous path.

Then 7 stages of Pandemonium in the long raid tunnel with one boss arena being outside of it would match 7 Hells.

They just didn't explicitly call it "seven hells."

[Enkidoh]

Not a tunnel, at least, not how I remember the first part of Pandaemonium - you fight Eric in that open area at the entrance, then you're sent down into the sewers under the complex against the Hippokampus. Phoinix seemed to change it's surroundings though to that weird ShB-esque "ruined colleseum in golden clouds" place, but it appears that it was meant to be somewhere in the main containment facility itself. And then you go and fight Vincent inside Shinra Mansion Hesperos inside the main hall of the castle itself.

Gameplay wise I guess you could call it a long tunnel of sorts though, but lore wise it's clearly not.

[yuurei94]

XIV could have had a wonderful and expansive metaphysical universe but someone at SE really hates Gods and liberating souls from the grinding wheel of samsara. It honestly makes XIV extremely bleak.

[Voidmage]

XIV could have had a wonderful and expansive metaphysical universe but someone at SE really hates Gods and liberating souls from the grinding wheel of samsara. It honestly makes XIV extremely bleak.

The problem is less missing true gods or cosmology, that has been the case in basically every FF.
Quite a number of media actually don't have those while being interesting.

The problem is that we are at a point where basically everything has been explained and demystified, even lesser things.
The twelve tbh should have never been shown given their importance and even being in the character creator, simply having those raids with "stand-ins" not sure where they came from themselves would have been better imo, leaving room to think if they are just primals, not real at all or actually do exist.
It's also not good that almost everything can be traced back to either the Ancients or (before them) the Allagans.
Even our learning of the Ancients and Hydaelyn felt hollow given that Sharlayan somehow knew all along, even about the Loporitts. Endsinger as well was connected to the Ancients.

At this point the world is at a very weird place of having no real mystery at the moment that isn't related to Shards (basically the aftermath of the Ancients) and as such feels kinda boring in worldbuilding.
Like if an Excel manager did the worldbuilding and even if we find some new mystery it just get's solved and cleared at the same moment.

I would welcome the hells and such but these writers have honestly not the talent or the will to tell stories in a "non-solving" way anymore.
Even something that is not connected to the Ascians, Ancients or Allagans would be fine at this point, like for example a "parallel world" outside our cosmos or a civilisation that existed independent from the Ancients back then.

[Astronis]

The problem is that we are at a point where basically everything has been explained and demystified, even lesser things.

Exactly this. They've overexplained everything. It's a trap a lot of fictions fall into, unfortunately.

Even something that is not connected to the Ascians, Ancients or Allagans would be fine at this point, like for example a "parallel world" outside our cosmos or a civilisation that existed independent from the Ancients back then.

There are a couple of things like this still in game (Chekhov's Heart of Sabik is still sitting on the mantlepiece, though it gets picked up and shown off every once in awhile), though at this point I am not sure if I want the devs to leave them there or do something with them.

[Underscore]

I just really do feel like it was the intention of the developers, because we can't ignore how they took this very strange step of making us go underground, where a hell would theoretically be located, to find Pandaemonium in the present time.

We can't ignore that Pandæmonium is the capital of Hell in John Milton’s Paradise Lost nor that it means "all demons" or "all-demon-place" in Greek.

It goes further than just the name of Pandaemonium itself. In the Japanese version of FF14, the levels of Pandaemonium are explicitly named after the layers of the afterlife.

The first level is Limbo (辺獄/Hengoku - changed to Asphodelos in EN).
The second level is Purgatory (煉獄/Rengoku - changed to Abyssos in EN).
The third and deepest level where we fight Hephaistos is Hell (地獄/Jigoku - changed to Tartaros in EN).

The third raid tier is called Tengoku (天獄), which is an interesting play on words. The reading sounds like 天国 (Tengoku, meaning heaven) but it's written using the second kanji from 地獄 (Hell). Funnily enough, 獄 (goku) on its own also means prison or jail.

I haven't thought of a good localization for it, but the general vibe is "hell in heaven" or something like that. The "heaven" here being the aetherial sea, since that's the closest thing to a real afterlife in FF14's setting, where Pandaemonium (the hell prison) has manifested. The English changed this to Anabaseios.

[Astronis]

It goes further than just the name of Pandaemonium itself. In the Japanese version of FF14, the levels of Pandaemonium are named after the layers of the afterlife.

They are named such in the English localization, too. In keeping with the Greek theme of the Ancients: Asphodelos is meant to evoke the Asphodel Meadows, part of the Greek afterlife. Abyssos is Greek for...the Abyss, which is in some cases thought of not as Hell but still an abode of demons and lost souls in the afterlife. Tartaros (Tartarus) is Hell, more or less. Anabaseios is a bit weird, but is based on the Greek for an ascent, the opposite of a journey down into hell. So the word is meant to be a place of moving upwards from the depths, rather than any location in any afterlife. Kokytus is a river in the Greek underworld.

ETA: Thinking about it a bit more, I wonder how much of it was serendipity or just a bit cheeky that one of the attacks on the way out of the nine (per Dante) hells was called Harrowing Hell while the one who went into it all to free the captives there beat the ever living crap out of Pandaemonium itself.

[TempusFinis]

So, now we all know why…I guess that’s it. I’m looking forward to what the developers come up with in the future. Thank you for your responses.


BTW, I have this sixth sense that some of these forum posters are undercover Square Enix employees…but that’s a whole different discussion for another day…