Were all our efforts wasted? *spoilers*

[Kallera]

Except that this World of Ruin looks about a zillion times more lively than Version 1's world.

Had it been like that in FFVI, people would have been thankful for Kefka's actions.

There will be a lot of empty chairs at the grand company meeting...

[Erana]

Personally I think we succeeded in limiting the damage caused by Bahamut and his shennanigans. If we had done nothing then there likely wouldn't of been anything left of Eorzea but ash and smoke.

[Airget]

Ya since we aren't aware if Nael was still active, would he had been able to control Bahamut? We defeated Nael, which I believe slowed down the progress of Dalamud falling, and gave them Rebels more time to devise a plan in order to limit the damage from Bahamut. If Nael was still around and since his power as given to him by Dalamud then odds are he would have been able to direct Bahamut's attacks to where he wanted them. Bahamut wouldn't have just been a mindless dragon spewing it's fire balls all over the land in utter chaos, he would have focused the attacks on destroying all the city-stats and then all the beastmen territories until there was no intelligent life left on Eorzea.

[Mudd]

In the storyline Gaius Van Baelsar was already plotting his agenda against Nael Van Darnus because he saw that Nael had become deranged. In the flashback with the soldier dying, at least for adder company, Gaius is having second doubts about Nael's plan, because as he states "What good is conquering the world that is destroyed?"

Maybe the reason Gaius was on the airship was he was leading a fleet of his own, knowing Bahamut was inevitable at that time, and going to try to repel him from destroying everything totally.
Maybe Gaius Van Baelsar has gone rogue and is trying to right his wrong of letting Nael plot such a catastrophic event.

That'd be neat

[Loony_BoB]

I see it this way: We survived about ten seconds longer due to the prayers to the Twelve we made and arguably due to Van Darnus being defeated or at the very least significantly weakened.

Ten seconds! Not a very long delay. But...

If we did not last that ten seconds, we would all be dead instead of teleported away.

[KaplanHomahru]

It wasn't supposed to happen at all, the 6th astral era (before Dalamud's fall) was supposed to be the end of the cycle, however the Garleans brought the 7th umbral era, the 6th astral era was supposed to be a time of eternal peace.

No, that's just what everyone thought before they discovered the final verse.

[Stanelis]

I see it this way: We survived about ten seconds longer due to the prayers to the Twelve we made and arguably due to Van Darnus being defeated or at the very least significantly weakened.

Ten seconds! Not a very long delay. But...

If we did not last that ten seconds, we would all be dead instead of teleported away.

I think the meaning of the prayer was to atune the players to the power of the "12" devices, in order to enable the warping.

[Mjollnir]

Maybe Gaius Van Baelsar has gone rogue and is trying to right his wrong of letting Nael plot such a catastrophic event.

That'd be neat

Yeah, I always figured he'd have the same kind of character development arc as his namesake in Battlestar Galactica and would play both sides off against each other to his own ends.

[Matsume]

Hello friends:

Let me make clear up front--this is a lore post, and this is not meant to be a complaining thread.

All we can do is speculate on the events we saw in the trailer--and until ARR that's all it will be--speculation.

However, I'd like your thoughts on one aspect of the speculation. What would have been different had we done nothing?

I know it's hard to argue about counterfactuals, but consider--what would have changed had we never assaulted the transmission tower in Castrum Novum? Had we never challenged Nael van Darnus on Rivenroad?

It seems, either way, that Dalamud would have fallen, Bahamut would have been released, and the realm savaged.

If anything happened, it was a result of the Twelve which 'fought back' somehow against Bahamut in the cutscene. We see they failed in their attempt to re-imprison him--perhaps they managed to drain him of power, or something, which we will not know until ARR. Yet in any event, surely as Dalamud grew closer the people of Eorzea would have prayed to the Twelve to save them, with or without our help.

Which leads again to the thrust of my question: Was there any point, at all, in any of our struggle against Garlemald and Van Darnus in the entire Grand Company storyline? Or was it all, from beginning to end, a doomed and pointless effort?

What I understood from the trailer is that The Twelve had no part in directly saving us from Bahamut... It would seem that the circle of knowing (paplymo and co) all prayed at the Twelve shrines simultaneously to invoke the powers of the twelve and Louisoux attempted to channel that power into a seal to contain Bahamut. Bahamut over-powered them and broke free from the seal before it was locked then followed up by wiping out the face of eorzea. In response to Bahamuts menace Louisoix seems to have transported all of eorzeas brave adventurers out of harms way and into the future, sacrificing himself to protect us... I imagine that we will being ARR by waking up from some sort of concussion years into the future in a world tht has been ravaged by Bahamut and work towards rebuilding our devastated empires...

Edit: to answer your question, I do not think that our efforts were done in vain. What Luisoix did was a last resort in response to an unexpected threat. No one could have known that Dalamud was Bahamuts' "Egg". We did the best we could with the information we had at hand and if there was just a slim probability that defeating the transmitter or Nael Van Darnus could stop the fall of Dalamud then that was a risk we had to take.

[Firon]

I think he teleported everyone even the garleans. If Louisoix really is an reincarnation of one of the twelve he saved everyone not just one side.