Revelations from Patch 4.3

[Anonymoose]

Traditions traditions traditions.

For anybody who's new to this process, we've organically fallen into this habit of always making a Patch Day freak-out thread where we give our knee-jerk feedback and trade a few points so we don't just go spoiler-bombing the rest of our open threads in the first 24 hours. By discussing each story arc in its own collapsible spoiler box, we ensure that people can take part in the thread without fear even before they've finished everything.

EXAMPLE

Like so.

MAIN SCENARIO

Slow to start, but good clean-up of leftover unknowns. Gosetsu-as-he-was hasn't necessarily survived; he's grown very weak. Asahi's parents...were...both alive and well. Though the hints about the upcoming primal were few, the white copper mirror indeed led directly to Tsukuyomi. I wasn't at all confident that's where it was headed, but I didn't have any other ideas with names, either, lol.

Asahi's angle was forecast a malm out, however, as Elidibus wouldn't undermine his own plans (4.0 makes little sense if he's not setting Eorzea and Garlemald up with balanced potential). It figures he'd have Zenos's corpse, but how we got there was a run ride that I didn't try to predict beyond that and am glad for it.

With regard to Tsukuyomi:
One, it was really nice seeing the old eclipse motif for a primal summoning, again - and a lunar, at that! Also, Gosetsu showing up as a moment of defiance against her inner torment was a wonderful little flourish.

One thing I did notice, however, was that they seem to have delicately danced around the previous seeming-inconsistencies with Thordan by weaving in a bit of the ambiguity of Susano's summoning. Recall that that Nabirales suggested that you need the Echo to host a deiform.

Nabriales
And so the vessel withdraws. A predictable outcome.

「超える力」を持つ者への「神」の憑依。
People with the 「exceeding power」 (Echo) can become possessed of 「gods」.

Und so entschwindet das Gefäß. Es war vorherzusehen.
And so the vessel vanishes. This was foreseen.

Les humains doués de l'Écho peuvent donc servir de vaisseaux pour l'influx divin...
The humans gifted with the Echo can thus serve as vessels for the divine influx...

Thordan made it feel as though there was something we weren't told. Was Nabriales wrong? Did Elidibus give him the Echo a la the Sahagin elder? Sources even contradict each other over whether the Knights of the Round are primals summoned ahead of Thordan, or Thordan was summoned first and they are extensions of his blessing rather than primals themselves. Their ability to shapeshift back and forth and not be tempered - including Thordan if he blessed them at all in the first place - is something I've struggled to understand.

Yotsuyu, meanwhile, tapped a bit of Susano's ambiguity and merged with a primal by way of a relic associated with kami. She wielded a primal as herself, like Ysayle and Thordna, but became consumed by it and - according to "Zenos" - essentially tempered herself. As far as the previous seeming-inconsistency goes, it doesn't solve it or worsen it, but seems to deliberately tread water and dance around it. It's such a small thing, but I noticed it, so I said something, lol.

Anyroad...That was actually a satisfying way to play the amnesia card, which is often terribly lame. In the end, the avoided an obvious fake-out, or a convenient relapse while staying more or less in consistency with the science of dissociative amnesia and/or psychogenic fugue. She was really Tsuyu, the almost let go of Yotsuyu, and then...well, you can only hope for so much. She died as her best narrative self, which is what I always hope for.

That Gosetsu is the only one to weep for her on either side I think does a lot to retrospectively justify the oddness of their time together since 4.0. A good ending makes or breaks a strange middle...(which brings us back to Zenos in a moment...).

Maxima's behavior as a Populares, even shorn of Asahi's front, was quite refreshing. It's wishful thinking to assume we don't have swords left to cross with the Empire and it's all pleasant gray from here on out, but that they're all villains is equally absurd.

Alphinaud going straight to the capital, though, caught me very off-guard. I thought we might use the embassies in Kugane. I thought we might have a limited war on Ilsabard to turn the tides. I thought Varis might go down hard. Where is this going? It's got my attention.

Back to Zenos. With regard to Robe Man in the capital, I was glad to see Y'shtola and Alphinaud were speaking sense. Even if they were wrong, the first suspect should obviously be Ascian possession. As far as we know, you can't Echo into a mortally-wounded vessel, and only Ascians and voidsent (and certain Tactics Ogre homages) have any talent with raising corpses. I was relieved to see Robe Man talking like Elidibus and clearly pushing Varis's boundaries.

I did not expect to see that actual Zenos had likely Echo-leapt into a Resistance fighter. That certainly makes things more interesting. 4.3 was an ending worthy of the oddities in the post-Stormblood Doman arc. Can 4.4+ convince me that continuing to use Zenos was a good idea? Why did we need this? The new ingredients make me a bit more optimistic; they didn't just blame Resonance-based new rules and stage a Crown Prince Comeback.

Regarding the Events in the Burn:

WOOOOOOOOOOOO--That is all.