The Heart of Sabik

[Cleretic]

Still don't think the Heart of Sabik needed explanation, nor do I really feel like Pandaemonium benefited from its inclusion.

I'd be curious to get a bit of a 'behind the scenes' look at the planning for Pandaemonium, because honestly it feels like it was stapled on in a later draft, either because the Anabeisos story needed some bulking up or for 'now let's finally Answer The Questions' fanservice. It doesn't necessarily feel like Pandaemonium needed it for the story, and it also felt like it came out of nowhere in that story.

...and I bet there's still some people, somewhere, asking 'but what is Sabik' as if the Heart of Sabik was a literal name and it's part of a big creature.

[Catwho]

Soooo... I'm shamelessly necroing this post because... well, now we know.

I for one was wrapped up in this mistery a lot back in the day, and this went WAY past even the craziest theories I could think of.

So, what are your thoughts, specially in contrast of our earlier theories?

First, this is actually a worthy thread to necro. We've got 10 years of arguments all in one place. It was a very fun read.

I like how one of the 2013 posts nailed it: "It seems like it's something they found."

[Turnintino]

Glad they finally tied up that loose end, but annoyed they had to shamelessly throw Ivalice fanservice into a raid series that's supposed to be homage to II.

I don't know if I'd describe it as shameless, exactly, when it might've been stranger not to acknowledge the connection at all, since the revelation in ShB that the Heart was auracite all along. Auracite's inexorable connection to the Ivalice content kind of necessitates its mention at this point, imo.

(This is not me saying, "so you have to like it!" for the record lol.)

That said, I don't feel the Heart's inclusion added anything at all to Panda's story, but then... Idk, the whole climax felt kind of lackluster to me in general. Its whole premise made it difficult to care very much without the actual characters we'd made the journey with up to that point.

[Cleretic]

since the revelation in ShB that the Heart was auracite all along.

Reminder: this wasn't a revelation then either, since the original Japanese name for the thing was 'Black Auracite Sabik'. (I'm not sure what other languages called it, but what I know about the translation process says they probably derived their names from the Japanese version too.)

I've been curious for ages if this was even a 'mystery' to the Japanese community, since they've had it pretty clearly named the entire time.

[Turnintino]

Oh, I didn't realize! From the Japanese playerbase's perspective, I suppose the revelation was just auracite's origins, in that case; something I assume we learned when they did. They just had the added benefit of already knowing what the Heart was by then lol.

[TowaIsBestGirl]

Still don't think the Heart of Sabik needed explanation, nor do I really feel like Pandaemonium benefited from its inclusion.

I'd be curious to get a bit of a 'behind the scenes' look at the planning for Pandaemonium, because honestly it feels like it was stapled on in a later draft, either because the Anabeisos story needed some bulking up or for 'now let's finally Answer The Questions' fanservice. It doesn't necessarily feel like Pandaemonium needed it for the story, and it also felt like it came out of nowhere in that story.

...and I bet there's still some people, somewhere, asking 'but what is Sabik' as if the Heart of Sabik was a literal name and it's part of a big creature.

Honestly I think the deeper rabbit hole was tying it to the High Seraph. Why the heckleberry would they do that, that opens up a much bigger can of wormy questions.

[GrizzlyTank]

Though... A question now is. Was the heart from The High Seraph or are both the heart and the Seraph merely fragments of a bigger entity.

[Cilia]

Honestly I think the deeper rabbit hole was tying it to the High Seraph. Why the heckleberry would they do that, that opens up a much bigger can of wormy questions.

This is my big problem with it, though I'm less concerned with "why" (fanservice) and more with how they try and jam Ivalice references into everything.

As everything in fiction is a consequence of author fiat, the idea that a piece of auracite could come from a source other than Ultima the High Seraph isn't that far-fetched. It doesn't really add anything to the story, and other than tying up the loose end serves no purpose (given as Athena herself says little to nothing would be different had she not found the auracite), but they had to throw the Ivalice reference in there anyway.

I suppose it's a way of referencing how the Emperor has a shade of tragedy around him as per a novelization of II suggesting he was under demonic influence the whole time, or a different novelization suggesting his powers came from a pact with Satan; both apply well enough here, with the shades of doubt Athena could have ended up a better person if not for the auracite's influence as well as giving her a source of power that like the Emperor she ultimately exceeds (with him having taken over Hell and returned from the afterlife, and her having persisted beyond death and exceeding the High Seraph as a threat).

Still, it rankles.

[TowaIsBestGirl]

It bothers me since the odds of a continuation to Pandaemonium don't seem particularly likely, which makes you question why they bothered to even put this in here. I can only guesstimate, but I suppose the Warriors of Light of the Thirteenth Shard utilized Auracite to bolster their powers during the Contramemoria war. Assuming of course that hasn't been retconned and I simply missed it. So I suppose they could take it somewhere, though that still begs the question as to how the High Seraph comes into play. It just feels dirty, you don't just introduce what is basically Jenova/Lavos into your setting and then completely leave your players hanging.

[Cleretic]

Honestly I think the deeper rabbit hole was tying it to the High Seraph. Why the heckleberry would they do that, that opens up a much bigger can of wormy questions.

I actually think the Ultima the Nice Body was a fairly logical thing to bring up. We know it can make auracite, so of course if we're talking about the origin point of a piece of auracite, it's natural to raise it. And if you're mad that this auracite is related to that auracite at this point... I feel like you should've gotten mad a good few years ago when more auracite turned up in the first place.

I actually made it a point to check the epilogue cutscene to make sure I wasn't missing anything, and I find it weird that everyone's almost preemptively mad at 'why did they tie it to the Ivalice stuff', because... honestly, it doesn't. They discuss Ultima more as a theoretical origin/linking point than anything concrete, almost as a 'for want of a better name' thing. All that any of this really says is 'this known source of auracite came from space, so this other auracite probably did too'.

I doubt that it's actually going to link directly to Ultima and that's going to be it--mainly because, if this is gonna be a big thing, it'd suck pretty hard for us to learn we killed the big bad at least three expansions ago before we had any idea they were actually behind much of anything. More likely, if they follow this to a whole story arc (which they very well might not), it'll actually be that both Ultima and the Heart of Sabik have a common origin point that we aren't aware of yet.

...and if they do that, you can save worrying about Ivalice references, because that origin point will be Jenova. Of course it'll be Jenova, we all know it, we're not stupid.