A potential reading of The Dead Ends' story.

[Cleretic]

The upshot of the Expert Roulette constantly giving me the same dungeon is that over time I start to read that dungeon's story more and more. And today, it finally clocked over that the Dead Ends may have a more full allegorical reading than what we've previously only picked up on about its third part.

Basically, while we can directly read the three parts of the Dead Ends as three different stories of the ends of worlds (which, well, they literally are), I think it's probably also intended that we be able to read them as mirrors to parts of the Ancients' story.

Meteion: Once upon a time, there was a beautiful blue star...
Meteion: ...that fell to pestilence, and rotted inside and out.
Meteion: The more its people clung to life, the more they suffered.
Meteion: Until they cursed not the illness, but their fellow corrupted.
Meteion: Those who lived and festered, those who died and decayed...

The first world is the analog of the Ancients in the time after Zodiark's summoning, through to after the second sacrifice and leading into the third. While the Pestilent Sands faced plague rather than the more destructive forces the Ancients faced, both planets still struggled with the complex emotions of it all, lashing out at people who were also victims and ultimately making the wrong decisions. For an extra punch, the Caustic Grebulon suffered from the exact same thing that led the Ancients down the dark path of the third summoning and onward: crippling loneliness.

Meteion: In a faraway place, a brilliant star eradicated disease...
Global Citizen: It means to kill us all!
Meteion: ...before destroying the selfsame lives it had saved.
Global Citizen: I have to end this!
Global Citizen: If I can reach the terminal...
Meteion: Its people sought ever greater freedoms no matter the cost...
Meteion: They tried to buy peace with fire and steel...

The second world is the analog of what I would call 'the Ascian Era'; not just the days of the Ascians themselves in the sundered world, but more importantly, the time leading up to the sundering itself, with the third summoning. The period where the Convocation turned to using violence and murder to get back the world they wanted, even if it meant that every single one of their people died.

Meteion: Farther still existed a star without strife...
Meteion: ...where none remembered life's trials─or its joys.
Meteion: What its people had gained from ease, they lost to apathy.
Meteion: So they created the kindest, most gentle of beasts.

And the one most everyone could see, so I'm not exactly giving new information here, the eventual end result of the Ancients' sacrificing to Zodiark, especially after the Sundering. Striving for perfection and a world without suffering, but tearing the planet apart to do so, and no longer having the perspective to appreciate it (if they ever had it). A hollow victory, on a global scale.

It just struck me as an interesting reading, as well as a way that the Ancients' end may have been fleshed out without necessarily having to be there for it. We didn't see the entirety of the roads they embarked down--but we don't need to, because we saw their Dead Ends.

[Fenral]

That is a really deep analysis. Ishikawa loves connecting all her themes together, so I'd say it's probably intentional on some level. Even if it isn't, Death of the Author definitely applies whenever Final Fantasy starts waxing philosophical.

I think there's also a nod to the Allagans in the third stage. It's aesthetically different, but the people there the same attitude towards life as people in the twilight period of the Allagan Empire, the very decline that Amon sought to reverse by resurrecting Xande. More ominously, G'raha, once charged with restoring hope to the world by the light of the Crystal Tower, a tower Doga and Unei once implicated as a major factor in the decline, can't quite get his head around it if you take him through as a Trust. Probably not foreshadowing anything at this point, but it makes you think.

[Berteaux_Braumegain]

Personally, I saw the plague as analogous to the First and Sin Eaters, the Peacekeepers analogous to Allag or Garlemald after they released Black Rose in the bad future, and the final section as what would've befallen Amaurot without Venat's intervention.

[vormela]

The namazu noises at the beginning are all I can think about in that dungeon (the namazu being a parable for the ancients as well). I am glad to read other ideas. I saw the second zone as Allag but that seemed too obvious.

Meteion's report in Elpis and her challenges to the scions are on the interpersonal level. But I like this idea of her illustrating time periods in between the calamities a lot better. And maybe in some sense they are like our calamities but with a different scope. This sounds very obvious to write out but hopefully it makes sense. The story is a rich fabric woven into different sized patterns that echo the basic twisting of thread on a tiny scale. Not unlike how a big honkin' crystal of a mineral retains properties of its molecular form. Interpretations like this are always a pleasure to read.

[Vyrerus]

Ehh, I don't really see those interpretations at all. I mean, a lot of people have jumped onto the Ra-La civilizations = Ancient Etheirysians' end over the past month, so that one I've seen a half dozen times by now.

I took the Dead Ends to be where FFXIV waxed philosophical about what the authors are seeing in real life as possible dead ends for our own planet (Save the third area).

The first section is about the social reaction to the COVID19 Pandemic.

The second section is about theorized nuclear holocaust.

The last section is definitely meant to be taken on face value as being an analogue for the Ancients. But with a thorough analysis of it, you realize it's merely the civilization that tainted the Meteion hivemind the most. It is a parallel to what she believes she is doing for Etheirys. She is our Ra La. It's not a dead end for the Ancients relating to Zodiark sacrifices. There's no Zodiark sacrifice parallel in it whatsoever. And the Ancient Etheirysians were far from apathetic. It was their extreme affinity for joy, love, togetherness, and peace that caused the Final Days to be such a dramatic wound for them. You should also take notice that it wasn't the Ra-La people who decided when they died, it was Ra La.

Etheirysians already existed in a cycle where when they tired of life they could choose to physically die and be reborn to experience all of life anew.

[Kesey]

So, everyone did the side quest with Ea where you read the epitaph about the dead end?

This is where this terminology stems from. A "dead end" is end of a civilization, it's a marker like an epitaph or a tomb. Now we've been presented 6 ends, not 3, because you have to count the dragons, Ea, and machines too.

Each of these 6 have been pushed to their final days by Meteon. As she continues to destroy worldsm she continues the cycle of self-justification. The methodology employed in causing the end organically feels like it was that civilization's fault, but really it was a manipulation of dynamis causing their own fears to destroy them. Meteon has pre-judged them.

When we are confronted in the Dead End dungeon, Meteon is just showing us why she is justified in doing what she is doing. The irony is "if" each one would have reached that conclusion without her is up for debate. We are literally there to fight her to show her the other side of the argument, which, regardless if we reach a natural conclusion, was worth the journey. The journey of a civilization is just like the journey of an adventurer; in the end it's a complex simile.

I think the metaphor, if one is found here, is for own lives/world and things we can see potentially destroying our civilizations. Will we or will we not destroy our world? Is the journey of life worth it, even if we reach the dead end in the future?

[Cleretic]

Each of these 6 have been pushed to their final days by Meteon.

This whole thing is more discussing allegorical parallels than in-universe fact, but I do want to point out that factually speaking this is wrong. Only two of them were ended 'by Meteion'--Judgement Day and The Plenty both mention her in notes as a major catalyst (although I'd say that Judgement Day was waiting for a trigger and would've eventually happened anyway). Of the others, we know that the dragons and the Pestilent Sands had other reasons for their demise and were on the way down anyway, the Ea and the Omicron had entirely internally consistent reasons for their demise, and the Nekropolis was already gone when she got there.

Your conclusion might not necessarily be wrong, but your working out has some problems.

[andrealfus]

not the dead ends but the omikrons are a pretty interesting parallel to garleans. they started out as a weak civilization that was constantly victimized by others, and ended up becoming a massively destructive and powerful race that only lived to conquer others by the end

[Kesey]

This whole thing is more discussing allegorical parallels than in-universe fact, but I do want to point out that factually speaking this is wrong. Only two of them were ended 'by Meteion'--Judgement Day and The Plenty both mention her in notes as a major catalyst (although I'd say that Judgement Day was waiting for a trigger and would've eventually happened anyway). Of the others, we know that the dragons and the Pestilent Sands had other reasons for their demise and were on the way down anyway, the Ea and the Omicron had entirely internally consistent reasons for their demise, and the Nekropolis was already gone when she got there.

Your conclusion might not necessarily be wrong, but your working out has some problems.

My guy, I was agreeing with you, and expanding and clarifying your original post. The Ea coin the phrase "dead end" and you are excluding them from this analysis. I'm sorry you took this as an attack.

[Cleretic]

My guy, I was agreeing with you, and expanding and clarifying your original post. The Ea coin the phrase "dead end" and you are excluding them from this analysis. I'm sorry you took this as an attack.

Oh, not taking it as an attack or anything! Just being a massive nerd making massive nerd factual corrections.