Quote Originally Posted by Teraq View Post
I'll add that personally, as an unabashed Ascian enjoyer since before 5.0, I expected a lot more out of the closing chapter of Hydaelyn/Zodiark. I wanted this to be a high school reunion of Sundered Ascians with conflicting ideals and "what now?" questions, I wanted the Heart of Zodiark to have a lot more to do with the Hydaelyn/Zodiark expansion on equal footing with, you know, the Heart of Hydaelyn, I wanted Gaia to have any sort of significance at all, and you know what, I'll even take involving Unukalhai ever so slightly. I have my criticisms of 5.3, especially now in hindsight that it wasn't setting the scene for more involvement of my favorite character, but one of the things that really hyped me was seeing all the Convocation crystals embracing the Zodiac/FFXII reference and starting to flesh them all out for, presumably, relevance in the near-future. I mean, of course, I was a fool: this never was meant to be the Hydaelyn/Zodiark expansion in the first place, but the Hydaelyn/Sound expansion. I guess I should applaud SE for subverting my expectations. What a curveball! You little rascals.
Agreed, I had a similar sense of disappointment, and I dread them even touching on them in the future, if it's just as villain props for more of the same moronic "move on, sweetie" type rhetorical nonsense I have no interest in.


Instead I got Damn Daniel, who never even bothers appearing in full Ascian regalia and showing us his absolutely-not-lion-shaped mask! I mean, I realise that's precisely his point because he gives zero shits, but I just want to be petty about it. Now that we've had confirmation that Gaius's obviously lion-shaped mask was not actually foreshadowing for an upcoming antagonist supposed to represent Leo (consider my expectations subverted again), we don't even know what Fandaniel's mask actually looked like and I am disproportionately irked by this, and I don't care if it's just me.
(And speaking of that particular Q&A regarding Gaius's masks, the fact that YoshiP opened with "Wow that’s really meticulous of you, you all are really paying close attention to this game." makes me feel a very particular way, like I can't help reading it as "wow, you guys care about this throwaway tidbit??? (proceeds to check notes)".)
Yep, pay no mind to us zooming into the masks.


Sundered humans were actually lucky the Terminus beasts were actually them undergoing horrific transformation: this way there can only ever be an actually finite number of beasts instead of humans spawning several monstrosities like the Ancients presumably did. Truly, Venat was an unsung definitely sung enough genius.

(As for The Sound itself coming from the earth: I had just presumed it was Meteion's scream bouncing off the ground. I realise this is the most boring theory ever, but it's what we've got so far, and I doubt they're going to go back to that.)
It's funny, because we know she induces despair, but the phenomenon is described as taking control of their creation magicks first, then siphoning every dread impulse. It may well be one and the same thing, but it never really was clarified - and I agree that it's possible it never will be and we're just meant to assume that.