SPOILERS: After Endwalker... I have some questions

[LittleArrow]

Please do not read this if you haven't finished Endwalker - there are SPOILERS for the entire story!!!






After finishing Endwalker, I felt it would be a bit therapeutic to get this down in writing and hopefully bounce some ideas off of other people be they theories, criticism, or confessed mutual bewilderment. Quickly, I would like to stress I am in NO WAY disparaging the XIV writing team. When I refer to the XIV writing team as being detailed yet leaving plot points out, it is to say I believe they did this intentionally and it piqued my curiosity due to how incredible they are at their job. They've done an exceptional job with Endwalker, and I'm brimming with questions / curiosity due to their skilled talents with this expansion.

Either way, at the end of the story... I have some questions:

1. The big question, so what happens to all of the souls that Meteion took and stored in her egg? I thought it was pretty obvious when the shimmering goop coalesced and spilled out. They're going to dissipate back to the lifestream and be reborn. Her egg was to prevent rebirth, it's broken, so they're going to be reborn. Much to my surprise when I teleported back to the zone after the story ended... the goop is still there. Albeit, there are streams coming forth, the soul-jello is still intact. So... what happens to those souls?

-My assumption / answer: The soul egg was so dense with such a massive amount of collected souls, it'll probably take a very long time for it to completely dissipate, which speaks volumes to the sheer amount of souls she took. Otherwise, I have no idea why it's still there?

2. What happened to souls / people who were transformed (thinking about the little boy b/c that was awful and I didn't enjoy it at all)?

-My answer / assumption: I assumed when people were transformed then dissipated, they get sent to the egg-gloop at Ultima Thule. However, much to my surprise, no one in the Scions or Meteion gave mention as to "Now those souls will be free..." or anything of the sort. The XIV team isn't known to let little details like that slide, I mean they even explain that Amaurot will disappear on the First, so if that is what happened to the souls, why wouldn't they mention it? Also, if it is true the souls just disappear, then why were there SO many comments from the Scions saying "but there was something of them in there," or that very last comment with G'raha saying, "where do they go?" or something like that. I don't believe they just get obliterated, b/c why would Meteion need to make the egg in the first place. Yet, it unsettled me that it was left unanswered or even addressed.

3. Why were people specifically turning into the exact some horrifying beasts as Amaurot and why were they titled terminus ___?

-My answer / assumption: When I went through the dungeon and Ultima Thule, I noticed one or two similar monsters in that zone that the people had turned into. I assumed, Terminus was a hint that these monsters were coming from somewhere. Naturally finding comparable monsters in the final zone, I thought Meteion was projecting, through despair dynamis, the peoples forms of destruction / despair - mutated fish people / twisted death machines / murdering monsters. These Terminus monsters were coming from her terminal - collective conscious database - of all the planets she visited. However, when we get to where she is, there isn't a hint of Terminus anywhere. I was positive at the end of the game we would go to the Terminus, and we didn't. Although I'm not completely satisfied with throwing my theory out the window, I otherwise have zero clue what the monsters were / connection to anything... which isn't at all satisfying with how detailed the writing team is in FFXIV.

4. Meteion had the power to literally destroy ALL of existence, yet at the end all she can do is throw some pretty golden sparkles and fly off??? She can't fix ANYTHING despite her seemingly inexhaustible amount of power?

-My answer / assumption: Although Meteion was exceptionally powerful, her power was by wielding SPECIFICALLY despair. Once we beat that despair with our hope powers, she no longer wielded that amount of power. However, we learn through this expansion how dynamis makes up the majority of power in the universe. Meteion runs off of dynamis and apparently goes faster than light. If despair was that powerful and we beat it with hope in the concentrated place of dynamis where emotions can become tangible (scions dying = giving passage) how could she not possibly use any of that power for good? Slow down the universe's expansion which she was previous helping, ferry the souls she stole to the lifestream, I mean literally anything? I have no clue...

5. What happened to our Azem during the Final Days of Amaurot?

-My answer / assumption: Before they retconned the keening / scream from coming OUTSIDE the planet, the scream came from WITHIN the planet in Shadowbringers. I was 1000% positive our mystery foe was going to be Lavos from Chrono Trigger, or more appropriately, Jenova / Soul Sucking Tree (FF9) / Planet Parasite. With that knowledge, I knew where our Azem was, she/he went down into the center of the star to silence / seal / put to sleep what had started the Final Days. Azem was too busy being Azem to deal with the politics of the convocation. Why would there be a need for sacrifice if we could just deal with the problem head on... as we do now being the Warrior of Light? It totally made sense to me and really seemed like that was where the story was leading. However... we know that's not true. The planet's villain was Meteion, and now Azem's disappearance doesn't seem mysterious or heroic, but sad and cold-hearted. I know the XIV writing team won't leave this mystery forever. They expanded upon the 1.0 cutscene characters for goodness sakes (thank you again for that <3). Yet, I felt honestly robbed to 1. not get to see my Azem during Elpis / flashbacks, and 2. not have any explanation knowing Yoshi said this story is over and all the ancients essentially told us to move on we're done with that history of Etheirys. Maybe the Pandaemonium raid will have answers, but otherwise I'm totally lost on that story detail.

I'm so incredibly sorry for the long post. If anyone reads this, I'm so thankful you stuck it out. I'm honestly curious for any sort of theories or answers to really any of the unanswered questions in Endwalker. I'm also curious to see other's unanswered questions as well.

[kaynide]

...

I'm going from memory, apologies as I might be wrong!

1) That soul-ball took since the Ascian age to be made; something like 10,000 years. I'm assuming it will take time to dissolve.

2) I believe at some point in the MSQ it was explained that those who transform (become "Blasphemies") die a true death; that is they do not rejoin the lifestream to be reborn. There's just nothing left of them to rejoin.

3) This is a good question- I'd add "Why do so many blasphemies look so similar to Voidsent?". As for an in-game answer, it's likely due to the nighmarish nature of their form, but game-answer it's just they needed to recycle monster models much like they did for the Sin Eaters. As for the names themselves, I assume it's more just to keep things organized for devs on the back end. "Terminus" means "End"; as in the End of Days. In-game the creatures don't necessarily have names beyond their class (ie "Sin Eater" or "Blasphemy"). Nobody in game is going "Ok ok, THAT is a...Forgiven Greed!".

4) "Emotions be crazy, yo". I don't think she was ever intent of fixing anything, not that she couldn't.

5) Good question; I don't remember specifics of the Keening came from within the star, but I do remember that being a thing... Maybe the Amarout dungeon? At any rate, I can't remember specifically if the planet's sound was a reaction to the Song of Oblivion (as in was the star "Crying" in response?). Regarding Azem, I assumed they were absent because they wanted Azem's appearance to be whatever headcannon people have..and I also assume Azem was off being a hero as our time in Elpis was really during a peaceful time, generally speaking.

[LittleArrow]

-snip-

Thank you so much for your response! Also, thank you for reading through my little pamphlet LOL! I really appreciate your thoughts on these questions. I'm hoping the team doesn't leave them unanswered, but I figure, I had to have missed some detail / glossed over some dialogue. When I get to play new game+ I'm going to pay particular attention to their dialogue again! ^^

[Iscah]

1. The big question, so what happens to all of the souls that Meteion took and stored in her egg? I thought it was pretty obvious when the shimmering goop coalesced and spilled out. They're going to dissipate back to the lifestream and be reborn. Her egg was to prevent rebirth, it's broken, so they're going to be reborn. Much to my surprise when I teleported back to the zone after the story ended... the goop is still there. Albeit, there are streams coming forth, the soul-jello is still intact. So... what happens to those souls?

-My assumption / answer: The soul egg was so dense with such a massive amount of collected souls, it'll probably take a very long time for it to completely dissipate, which speaks volumes to the sheer amount of souls she took. Otherwise, I have no idea why it's still there?

What you're calling an egg is consistently referred to as the "dead sun" within the game so I took the blue stuff to be star-gas, except behaving like a liquid because... reasons. Gravity is weird in that place.

I was positive at the end of the game we would go to the Terminus, and we didn't.

Given that "the Terminus" simply means "the end", I feel like it was a missed opportunity that they didn't call the final zone by that name. It would have set the mood so much better.

(And given their love of referencing past FF games, it would be a nod to Kingdom Hearts' "End of the World" final zone besides.)

[kaynide]

What you're calling an egg is consistently referred to as the "dead sun" within the game so I took the blue stuff to be star-gas, except behaving like a liquid because... reasons. Gravity is weird in that place.




Given that "the Terminus" simply means "the end", I feel like it was a missed opportunity that they didn't call the final zone by that name. It would have set the mood so much better.

(And given their love of referencing past FF games, it would be a nod to Kingdom Hearts' "End of the World" final zone besides.)

While I don't think it was the main reason, I am inclined to believe the naming was to be more evocative of where it is, and because there's more meme potential.

(Spoiler about final zone)

As the zone is trying to be essentially "The end of the universe", and there is a literal Douglas Adams' Restaurant at the End of the Universe, amongst other things. Ultima Thule really just meaning "the extreme limit of travel and discovery."


That said, there really was no reason it couldn't just be named "Terminus", since that has lots of potential with memes etc as well via Dr. Who. Both are equally Latin and similar in meaning. Lost opportunity I guess?

[RyuDragnier]

On 2, the answer can be inferred at the end of the Healer role questline for the expansion.

At the end of the healer role questline, you destroy the blasphemy, yet Fordola sees his soul, the soul of his friend, smiling and walking off with the rest of his friends, something that makes no sense if there is truly nothing left of the individual. However, if Dynamis is cloaking the Aether to make it seem like it's all but gone (people can't sense dynamis after all), then it's being used to trick people into despair by the Endsinger.

That's an explanation I can think of anyway.

[HyoMinPark]

While I don't think it was the main reason, I am inclined to believe the naming was to be more evocative of where it is, and because there's more meme potential.

(Spoiler about final zone)

As the zone is trying to be essentially "The end of the universe", and there is a literal Douglas Adams' Restaurant at the End of the Universe, amongst other things. Ultima Thule really just meaning "the extreme limit of travel and discovery."


That said, there really was no reason it couldn't just be named "Terminus", since that has lots of potential with memes etc as well via Dr. Who. Both are equally Latin and similar in meaning. Lost opportunity I guess?

While they didn’t

name the final zone “Terminus”, “Ultima Thule” itself means a place “beyond the borders of the known world”; so, in a way, it’s fitting without constantly reusing the same word. Since “terminus” has been in use since the Amarout dungeon in ShB, I’m kind of glad they didn’t just reuse it here, and opted for a name of similar meaning.

[Iscah]

No need for spoiler tags when the thread title is clear.

As the zone is trying to be essentially "The end of the universe", and there is a literal Douglas Adams' Restaurant at the End of the Universe, amongst other things. Ultima Thule really just meaning "the extreme limit of travel and discovery."

I don't see how Ultima Thule makes for a better pun than Terminus. Both are "the end" but Terminus seems more instantly evocative and can mean both "farthest" and "final" (and was already used in that sense for the terminus beasts) while Ultima is only "farthest" and a stranger phrase if you haven't come across it before.

It's the furthest place in the universe but also the ending point of worlds, and those endings are the conspicuous thing once you're there.

And if I remember correctly, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe was of the final apocalyptic variety, making Terminus the better reference on that front too.

Since “terminus” has been in use since the Amarout dungeon in ShB, I’m kind of glad they didn’t just reuse it here, and opted for a name of similar meaning.

That's exactly why I think they should have used it for a thread of consistency. They didn't actually use it as a location name there, so bringing it up now at the end of everything seems to make sense.

[HyoMinPark]

Pardon, some of us are used to just using spoiler tags everywhere due to the amount of people not yet finished with the MSQ. It’s a habit.

“Ultima Thule” also has real-life connotations to it that I think might have resulted in the lore team choosing it as the final zone’s namesake over “Terminus”. Terminus is more in reference to the blasphemies that we’ve fought, not necessarily a place. They don’t manifest from Ultima Thule, but rather from within an individual as the product of panic and despair—they don’t even manifest in Ultima Thule itself (I don’t recall any mobs with the name “Terminus” present there; I’ll have to swing by and check later).

Terminus is an end—the people that became blasphemies later ceased to be in their entirety, hence “the end” of them. Ultima Thule is simply a place at the edge of the in-game universe—hence the name “beyond the borders of the known world”. Even if it’s described as the “end of the universe”, the universe is massive. For all we know, it’s not the very end. Merely the furthest anyone has managed to travel. Much like our own universe.

[Iscah]

Terminus is an end

That's my point.

Not the end of the people who turned into blasphemies, but the end of their very worlds – the crumbling remnants of so many, hanging together in that alien sky. That's what the zone is about to me: not just being a "faraway place" but a place of endings.

Back on the would-be Kingdom Hearts reference I mentioned earlier, the "world terminus" was a sub-zone of the End of the World: a gauntlet of deserted and monster-infested recreations of the worlds you had visited previously. That's stuck with me even though I haven't played it in years.