Thread: Revelations from Patch 5.3

Originally Posted by Alleo

About Ardbert

Maybe I missed something but why is he still that much with us? At the end of Shadowbringers I thought he joined fully with us and is gone (since our soul was stronger and healed afterwards) I always took that walk towards his friends as symbolic.

When Minifila fully joined with Ryne she stopped existing so why does Ardbert still exist?(Not that I am not happy just confused)

It is most likely because he is a actual fragment of our original soul why he still exists as part of our being. With Ryne she was a new soul and not a fragment of Minfillia's soul.

However, since Ardbert is actual part of our soul thus he has become us and we have become him in the best way I can describe things. I will say more but it gets very confusing even for me and is going into Persona series level of a person's inner/true self, mentality, and desires.

In both Ryne and Minfillia case, both were separate beings that could not be compatible with each other thus one has to be delete for or else both will die due to constant rejection of both souls by the body. If both souls were compatible then they would have fused together like Ardbert and our character thus combining both memories and powers together. However, since their souls were far too different and the body was rejecting the existance of two different souls not compatible with each other, one had to disappear or else both could have died.

Originally Posted by Alleo

I guess this could be true if Ryne was not a soul part of Minfilia (which I guess was never stated ingame?). But shouldnt every single person on the source then have a big amount of voices in their head? Everyone on the source is rejoined with soul parts x amount of times. Why would Ardbert be special?

Also even though I really like Arcbert it kinda feels a little creepy, especially if you are a female. So that guy can just see what we see? And if he does exist why does he not comment more on stuff? He is his own person with his own dreams now caged in a body not his. I really liked the implications more that he was finally able to rest. Maybe..maybe it was just the crystal? Maybe it gave one last chance for him to talk?

The difference between Ardbert and the other souls is that Ardbert choose himself to rejoin while everyone else from the fragments were forced into rejoining via calamity.

Since Ardbert rejoined with us willingly, he most likely did not become completely erased but became a inner Shadow personality instead while at the sametime his dream, desires, and certain aspect of his personality has become part of our character as well. Those that were forced into the rejoining most likely faced losing their memories and even personality due to it being forced on them. Like I said this is going into the Persona series level of a person's soul, Shadows, and True self which is very confusing at certain points.

Originally Posted by Alleo

Also even though I really like Arcbert it kinda feels a little creepy, especially if you are a female. So that guy can just see what we see? And if he does exist why does he not comment more on stuff? He is his own person with his own dreams now caged in a body not his. I really liked the implications more that he was finally able to rest. Maybe..maybe it was just the crystal? Maybe it gave one last chance for him to talk?

Emphasis mine since, you know I'm female myself and have a female avatar. While I'm sure there's going to be ideas for a lot of ...interesting... fanfiction/art. I find none of that to be creepy as this is going through a lot of beliefs regarding reincarnation and plays out a lot like Avatar The Last Airbender's cycle. He is us, and I mean it could play out that if you feel soul wise you're the lusty creeper type, then maybe your other soul is what you deserve. Our counterpart could be gay, demisexual, bisexual, pan, trans or asexual. We could have lived many lives as an Adventurer so who knows. Plus even if Ardbert is of opposite gender he may not be "into me" even if he is "me" I'm willing to cut him some slack and not go pearl clutching just because we happen to be opposite genders.

But besides that, it's simply because we are Azem and can summon others in times of need, which I'm assuming even can be our own counterpart soul to wish a beloved companion a heartfelt goodbye.

Originally Posted by QT_Melon

Emphasis mine since, you know I'm female myself and have a female avatar. While I'm sure there's going to be ideas for a lot of ...interesting... fanfiction/art. I find none of that to be creepy as this is going through a lot of beliefs regarding reincarnation and plays out a lot like Avatar The Last Airbender's cycle. He is us, and I mean it could play out that if you feel soul wise you're the lusty creeper type, then maybe your other soul is what you deserve.

But he is not us. He is his own person that may share some traits but otherwise has his own beliefs and things. The creepy part is that he could just watch us everywhere. And if he does stay he is forced into things he might not like. The WoL getting a partner somewhere on the line? Things like that. Not in the case of him lusting after us.

So finally did the Nier raid

Still find it medicore at best. Even if the last part is a masterpiece it would not make up for the other parts. I am of the opinion that a story should be good throught the way and not only at the end..

There are things that make no sense to me. How did nobody notice all the big buildings? If its an illusion (as the sky being fake) for the first raid then who is powerful enough to do that? Even Emets Amaurot was not completely real. So I have to take that this can be seen from above..nobody ever noticed that? And lets not start with the new one..if it was hidden in the mountains how did it land into it without leaving a trail behind? Things falling from the sky are not "eaten" up by the landscape..

Also I had to laugh a bit when the attack on the village happened..especially since afterwards barely anything is destroyed and seemingly there are no death dwarves laying around..its like the Bahamut situation in the video..it fully attacking Limsa and Limsa being mostly fine afterwards..

I dont feel anything for these characters and I would not care a bit if they die in the last part..2P being a traitor was not that surprising..I am more surprised that 2B came out of nowhere and we somehow trusted her enough to show her 9S and even let them go..yeah give that android her partner..its not like we got betrayed by a twin of her only seconds ago...(the judgement on who of the two dwarfes were at fault just bad..especially since the situation was solved by 2B going out there with her weapon..and of course the one going "muhaha" runs away, leaving her poor brother behind to deal with the situation. I wonder if she will die in the next raid.

Story itself is barely here. Hey we came from out of space (how is that possible on the first?) and something about aliens..nothing more..seemingly the machines wanted to give birth too leading to that strange boss..and we learned nothing more..

The last part of the raid has to be huge to even make sense of it but I doubt that..you would need to explain so much and lets not even start with character development..Yoko Taro might be able to pull such things of in his own game..but those games are big and take hours to complete. Enough time to slowly built characters and the world..this is not the case with this raid, so seemingly pulling the big punshes only at the last raid is just bad imo. Either the last one will be soo full that it buries you under the information or it will disappoint and barely explain anything..

In the end I doubt that I will feel like this belong to the lore of FF14..it just feels like a big advertisement for Yoko Taro and maybe some things for Fans of Nier..but that could have been done with an event like all the other ones..why throw away a whole 24 man raid for this?

At least the music is nice I guess..most bosses were boring though..just aoe after aoe.

Originally Posted by Vyrerus

While it's true that seemingly the souls of Haurchefant and Ysayle came back to help the WoL and Alphinaud(not Aymeric, he was a witness not a participant) pull the eyes out of Estinien, that's something I chock up to the writers wanting a symmetrical capstone moment, rather than adhering strictly to the in world soul lore, which is already wishy-washy at best. Up to that point we're already shown that despite our first blade of aether not killing Lahabrea, merely banishing him from his host body, that we could use something very much like it to straight up kill an Ascian, and we do kill one when we, with the aid of Moenbryda, kill Nabriales.

The reason Ser Zephirin uses a javelin of light in his attempt to kill the WoL, which Haurchefant thwarts, is to put us down, since the WoL is effectively immortal unless their body is completely destroyed due to The Echo. I guess we could say the writers have never 100% decided whether or not it means soul death, but I'd always considered the Ascian soul destruction context to mean that when blades of light are in play, souls die.

So we should just assume that in the case of Haurchefant it was purely fanservice, instead of taking the more logical idea that he simply just got killed? Not every light attack will kill a soul otherwise any light based attack in the game would be horrible to use at all. The destruction of the ascians where always one a whole other level. Lahabrea only got destroyed by Thordan who was charged up by thousands of years of prayers and Nidhoggs eye. And suddenly a mere add can do that? I doubt it.

Why should anyone of the knights of the round even know about us being immortal? (And we are not immortal at all..we did die in the bad future and as far as we now that did not destroy our soul either) And if they believe that, why did they never use that attack again? (Ex mechanics are just that, mechanics imagined by the wandering npc)

Originally Posted by Katie_Kitty

For what it's worth, I don't think Elidibus was out of character here at all.

I mean yeah Elidibus is DIFFERENT here than he was before, but I would argue the change is justified. Consider this: For thousands upon thousands of years, you have been able to control who and when new heroes rise up to challenge your friends, and you have done so in service to a specific duty related to maintaining balance between light and dark. One day, you feel that dark is too powerful again, so you approach a random adventurer who gave one of your friends some trouble and test them in order to determine their fitness as a new hero.

From then on, that random adventurer goes on to become a full-fledged Warrior of Light and accomplish many great deeds, but you're always confident in your ability to control the situation if needed. That is, until they are whisked away from certain doom and transported to the site where the next rejoining is in progress. From there, they go on to stop the plan and even murder your only remaining unsundered comrade-in-arms.

Now, suddenly there is something very different about this random adventurer. Suddenly, they've demonstrated abilities faaaarrrrrr beyond anything you've ever expected. Suddenly, you're not in control anymore - You may not even be able to defeat them if you tried. Now you're desperate, scared, trying to find something - Anything - That will let you gain control back over the situation. That's definitely going to make you drop the "hur hur I'm a big bad brilliant schemer who knows all" act and very rapidly too.

Don't forget the part that Elidibus never intended for our character to defeat Lahabrea and Emet-Selch.

Since the beginning of 2.0 as revealed in 5.3 now, Elidibus was the one who set our character on the path to become the Warrior of Light all this time and the lesser rank Ascian we defeated in our starting city state was there for the purpose of making us into the Warrior of Light. Heck, Elidibus fully expected us to have lost the final battles of 2.0, 3.0, and 5.0 because he was the one who pulled the strings of our adventure from behind the scenes this entire time yet some how our character always wins.

This mentally destroyed him and leaving him feel responsible for the downfall of all their past plans and the death of both Lahabrea and Emet Selch because he never intended for our character to become such a threat to their plans as the plan was to make our character into the Warrior of Light to maintain the balance and lose to them by the end of 2.0, 3.0, and 5.0 so the calamity can properly happen without any overload on the specific element.

From the beginning we were puppets being pulled on a string like countless other warriors of light with expectations that every victory and defeat being exactly as planned by the Ascians but at some point in some place something made our character different from the other Warriors of Light that gave us the power to defeat the Ascians in actual defeat rather than a planned defeat they setup.