Thread: Revelations from Patch 5.3

Caught up on the thread, now, and a few comments on others' posts:

Originally Posted by Vyrerus

As for a line of dialogue that tells us that their souls are destroyed, it comes from Urianger, the second time the scions convene after defeating Iceheart as Shiva. The line is, "'Tis our belief that an Ascian soul may be permanently undone if smitten by a sufficiently concentrated burst of pure aether."

One thing to bear in mind while speaking of Nabriales, while this theory may be true, it was speculated BEFORE learning about the origins of Ascians - specifically that many Ascians are raised from individuals bearing fragments of a Convocation member's soul, and then imprinted with memories using the soul crystals. In such a light, while the Ascian's soul might be destroyed, only a FRAGMENT of a soul is being destroyed. In theory, they could find another Nabriales soul fragment, imprint it with the crystal, and Nabriales will be back in action.

In the case of unsundered Ascians, you just need to destroy their soul once, and that Ascian is done. The Sundered ones, as long as someone exists to raise them up, could in theory come back as many times as they have soul fragments remaining.

So, Urianger was both right and wrong. Right in that Ascians may be permanently undone. Wrong in that most Ascians have plenty of leftover soul bits if you happen to undo just one of them.

None of that has any bearing on stuff like whether Hauchefaunt's the same or different or whatever - just a bit of musing on Urianger's theorizing from a basis of incomplete knowledge.

Originally Posted by Lium

YoRHa fights against 10 characters in an effort to post this.

Did you see those flight units attacking the dwarf village? Are you kidding me? Those things could wipe out the entirety of the First in the blink of an eye. Forget Ascians, Zenos, Fandaniel, Zodiark, Hydaelyn, Rejoinings...none of that would matter in the face of virtually anything from the YoRHa universe. The technology is quite literally light years ahead of ANYTHING in FFXIV. The Source would be utterly destroyed. In short order. It would be like Blade Runner showing up in Game of Thrones.

I disagree. Allagan technology is LEAGUES beyond anything portrayed in Neir, and we get that thrown at us all the time. The flight units? Even Garleans have equivalents. Sure, they ran roughshod all over the village, but it was a sneak attack. Set up some proper magical defenses, and things would not have gone so smoothly for them.

To be honest, even in their own game, the technological capability is not that far beyond even real-life stuff. Heck, at one point in a Neir: Automata sidequest, 2B and 9S wrestle with the decision of whether or not to give Pascal access to blueprints that allow for the creation of nuclear devices - with the implication that doing so would greatly improve the destructive capabilities of the Machine Lifeforms, if Pascal ever went rogue. So these high-tech alien robots haven't even mastered the concept of nuclear fusion? Or been able to replicate the destructive power of it in other ways?

Much like Garlean technology, Neir technology is DIFFERENT, not BETTER than what can be fielded by the natives.

Alleo also brought up the subject of how the buildings and such could have gone unnoticed for long enough for them to become ruins. I think I answered it once before, but it's entirely possible. Flight technology on the First seems to be limited to Airships and Amaro, both of which could have a flight ceiling that puts them well below the ability to fly over mountains. More than that, aside from Dwarves, the population of the area is pretty sparse; even if the capability was there to fly higher, there might not be any interest. Even if there was interest, it's possible that the interested tried, succeeded, and never returned, because they were shot down by Machine Lifeforms, leading others to believe that the attempts were too dangerous (wind, or faulty technology would be blamed - they'd have no reason to believe that intelligent robots were the cause). Or, maybe they weren't shot down, and they really DID die from wind or faulty technology.

Basically, in a fantasy setting like this one, we can't assume that high-altitude travel is something the natives practice regularly enough that they would have had the opportunity to find the ruins before now. There has to be a first discovery for everything - and in this case, the ruins were first discovered by the Dwarves.

Originally Posted by Iscah

I'm kind of surprised they didn't just go the route of transferring the Exarch's memories without his soul, though. I think it would have made the death scene more poignant, but at the same time I think I'd be stuck wondering whether he truly died (i.e. body considered dead, soul free to return to the Lifestream) or whether his soul would remain trapped in his crystalised body. That said, I had contemplated that as a potential ending for him - fusing with the tower completely and watching over the Crystarium forever - but then there's the running theme over the story that immortality is actually pretty miserable.[/hb]

I don't get this feeling at all, really - pretty much all the immortals we encounter seem to think immortality is pretty groovy. The dragons are comfortable with it, the Ancients found it natural, and the Ascians are flat-out affronted that we don't have it.

While the remaining Ascians are miserable, it's not because they're immortal, it's because they witnessed the END of all their immortal friends, and the only way to (maybe) get them back is a whole lot more murder. (Only it's not murder, you see, not really, and if we keep telling ourselves that, eventually we'll believe it!) If Immortality has lost its appeal, it's only because there's no one else around to be immortal with.

Midgardsormr went through a situation very similar to that of the Ascians, but he seems to have pushed through it, and now has a new population of immortal dragons thriving. He was able to set aside the past and forge a new future - something the Ascians were never able to manage.

Outside of FFXIV, stories that speculate on what a drag it is to be immortal tend to focus on the problem of all your mortal loved ones dying on you again and again - but that doesn't really apply if your entire society is immortal.