The nature of the Sundering has been spelled out in a Nier Reincarnation side story.

[Lauront]

My only issue is why was this not all put in the game? I can guess why. Almost everything redeeming the story somewhat in my eyes has come outside of EW itself, be it the Q&A or this. Rather than stupid rabbit scenes or that post-Elpis pity-me walk, I'd much rather have seen all this.

Yes

Oh, cool. On what basis, then? I'd be interested to know.

[Rulakir]

I've mentioned before that I swallowed Endwalker's attempts to do so much better, I think because the crimes of Venat, Fandaniel and Meteion are so much more fantastical and less relatable to real-world events. Venat feels like a figure in a creation myth, Fandaniel feels like... well, a JRPG villain, and Meteion feels like a figure in a philosophical thought exercise like Laplace's Demon. That's actually a good angle for villains that 'aren't clearly evil', because their crimes become abstract and conceptual rather than things with real-world analogues. To me, the Sundering is like the flood from the story of Noah, it's too impossibly enormous to be declared much of anything.

This just sounds like "A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic." We don't even know what happens during a rejoining, we've never seen one from a shard's POV. However, we know in almost painful detail now what happened during the Final Days and after the sundering. It's odd to me that you place more emphasis on a situation that we know next to nothing about vs. the ones we do and yet claim that the one shrouded in mystery is more vile, especially because it's on an arguably smaller scale (it's still a whole planet)?

[hagare]

What.

I'm sorry, what.

They left the Sundering horrendously vague in the grand conclusion to the five-game Hydaelyn/Zodiark arc and expanded on it in what.

in another game. LMAO
a mobile game.

[MoofiaBossVal]

Let me get this straight: after wiping out humanity, Hydaelyn spent thousands of years sleeping inside the planet, while Emet was out doing the arduous work of singlehandedly raising apes to humanity.

Hm...

[Lurina]

My complaint here was more pointed at Shadowbringers as the initial instigator than Endwalker, but I do agree. I've heard that from around Shadowbringers on (which feasibly could've also influenced Stormblood and its patches) they wanted to write a story with no clear 'evil', where nobody is doing things for no reason beyond malice, because they don't want to put a story like that out into the world. And that's fine... but when we're talking about a setting where the main ongoing villains were omnicidal ghost wizards and a mashup of the Romans and the Nazis, trying to turn that setting into a story with 'no clear villains' apparently means finding pathos that justifies extremely horrible crimes. It doesn't feel right to compel forgiveness and liking for Emet-Selch, given his very tangible actions.

I've mentioned before that I swallowed Endwalker's attempts to do so much better, I think because the crimes of Venat, Fandaniel and Meteion are so much more fantastical and less relatable to real-world events. Venat feels like a figure in a creation myth, Fandaniel feels like... well, a JRPG villain, and Meteion feels like a figure in a philosophical thought exercise like Laplace's Demon. That's actually a good angle for villains that 'aren't clearly evil', because their crimes become abstract and conceptual rather than things with real-world analogues. To me, the Sundering is like the flood from the story of Noah, it's too impossibly enormous to be declared much of anything.

I don't really share your objections towards humanizing the Ascians, or even per-se the Garleans, though the latter was definitely a more delicate needle to thread that they botched quite badly, especially in Werlyt and the Gaius plotline. I enjoyed the central conflict in ShB a lot because, even though you developed an extremely strong sense of Emet's motives and could easily come to empathize with him, the narrative never expected you to understand the death he caused as justified or necessary. The coda on his arc only asked you to acknowledge him as a human being who was ultimately pursuing what he loved, while at the same time understanding the tremendous suffering it brought to others. It never glorified the harm he caused, just the love that motivated it. And you weren't expected to forgive him, just to understand him. Shadowbringers is a story about finding empathy and common humanity even in your worst enemies, while still fighting for what you believe is right.

...though admittedly, the seeds for undermining this careful tone were already being sown in the patch content, IMO.

Endwalker, in contrast, feels like it wants you to think of everything Emet and Venat did as just steps on the way to creating the good end. This is most embodied in the flower scene in Ultima Thule, where Emet is talking about how Venat manipulated him into playing his part like the whole scenario is some light-hearted joke. There is no weight given to the lives taken by any party, just sentimentality. It's gross, and worse, it's boring and empty.

Again, I don't really get where you're coming from with Venat or Hermes. Meteion gets a pass because she's literally not human, but Venat is portrayed as a human lady who broadly does human lady stuff until she whacks the planet with her sword. Garlemald aside, her actions feel no more or less grounded to me than the spooky void wizards smashing parallel worlds together.

[Jandor]

Let me get this straight: after wiping out humanity, Hydaelyn spent thousands of years sleeping inside the planet, while Emet was out doing the arduous work of singlehandedly raising apes to humanity.

Hm...

To me it reads more like humanity slowly developed along its own path, while Emet mostly busied himself with the rejoinings.

"The man throws himself into restoring his star, his people... his paradise.

-----

Decades... Centuries... Millennia pass.

As he works tirelessly, the wretched creatures begin to learn.

They speak in new tongues.
They worship new gods.
They forge new histories.

-----

He looks upon this and is repulsed."

We know of course that he does work with the sundered at various points in history, teaching them and guiding them, but he does so with the intent of setting them up to fail.

[Kozh]

No, Nier is part of FFXIV in the same way that FFXII and FF Tactics are part of FFXIV: it is not. Characters and events in FFXIV that resemble characters and events from Nier are not the characters and events from Nier. They are characters and events that resemble characters and events from Neir. In the same way, it's safe to say that characters and events in Nier that resemble characters and events from FFXIV are not the characters and events from FFXIV.


Until an XIV dev says, explicitly "the events in this other game that isn't FFXIV are canon to FFXIV" or the information appears in official FFXIV material, you cannot assume canonicity.

But Nier collab is different than 12 and tactics. FF14 pays homage to 12 and FFT; it borrowed lore, settings, character's names. Meanwhile Nier is a collab where we directly interact with the characters from Nier game. Just like how FF13 and FF15 collabs were. The Lightning and Noctis we met is the original one, even though we may never mentioned it in msq.

[Cleretic]

This just sounds like "A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic." We don't even know what happens during a rejoining, we've never seen one from a shard's POV. However, we know in almost painful detail now what happened during the Final Days and after the sundering. It's odd to me that you place more emphasis on a situation that we know next to nothing about vs. the ones we do and yet claim that the one shrouded in mystery is more vile, especially because it's on an arguably smaller scale (it's still a whole planet)?

You're right that we don't really know what a Rejoining is like. But we do know what being nuked is like. We know what genocidal campaigns are like. We know what lethal gas weapons are like.

The thing that casts an unforgivable shadow on the Ascians to me isn't the big, weird, conceptual part (again, I actually like Fandaniel); it's that they perform atrocities we know of from recent real-world history and just treat that as an acceptable course of events, and to accept the pathos that the game wants me to it wants me to brush all that under the rug. It's much the same thing that turned me away from Assassin's Creed's meta-plot, actually; assert alien influence on esoteric historical popes all you want, but the moment you declare the same thing to be responsible for Henry Ford's poor factory conditions and Hitler's rise to power, your faux-conspiracy's stopped being cute.

[EaraGrace]

I don't really share your objections towards humanizing the Ascians, or even per-se the Garleans, though the latter was definitely a more delicate needle to thread that they botched quite badly, especially in Werlyt and the Gaius plotline. I enjoyed the central conflict in ShB a lot because, even though you developed an extremely strong sense of Emet's motives and could easily come to empathize with him, the narrative never expected you to understand the death he caused as justified or necessary. The coda on his arc only asked you to acknowledge him as a human being who was ultimately pursuing what he loved, while at the same time understanding the tremendous suffering it brought to others. It never glorified the harm he caused, just the love that motivated it. And you weren't expected to forgive him, just to understand him. Shadowbringers is a story about finding empathy and common humanity even in your worst enemies, while still fighting for what you believe is right.

Emets crime was never loving his people though. It was deciding that his people deserved more than others because of that love. He even recognizes this in the whole “you’re not really human schtick,” even after the Sundering these were still humans and he knew that. Like truthfully I could say about ShB everything you say here:

Endwalker, in contrast, feels like it wants you to think of everything Emet and Venat did as just steps on the way to creating the good end. This is most embodied in the flower scene in Ultima Thule, where Emet is talking about how Venat manipulated him into playing his part like the whole scenario is some light-hearted joke. There is no weight given to the lives taken by any party, just sentimentality. It's gross, and worse, it's boring and empty.

In one moment Emet is giving a dramatic reenactment of his “conquering of the natives” and the next he’s pleading with us to remember the people he’s destroyed worlds for. The glorification or defense isn’t necessary because all thats needed is for him to be wacky or sassy and all is forgiven. It’s all played for jokes, and hell even the most evil onscreen action he takes that we didn’t know about beforehand (Vauthrys creation) is still given cover with the incredibly evil father laughin it up. Just look at the reaction to him appearing in 5.3, the player base was primed to forgive and forget. It’s sentimentality all the way through.

This just sounds like "A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic." We don't even know what happens during a rejoining, we've never seen one from a shard's POV. However, we know in almost painful detail now what happened during the Final Days and after the sundering. It's odd to me that you place more emphasis on a situation that we know next to nothing about vs. the ones we do and yet claim that the one shrouded in mystery is more vile, especially because it's on an arguably smaller scale (it's still a whole planet)?

I do remember thinking how nice and pleasant the First was when we initially arrived.

Let me get this straight: after wiping out humanity, Hydaelyn spent thousands of years sleeping inside the planet, while Emet was out doing the arduous work of singlehandedly raising apes to humanity.

Hm...

Yeah his disgust for them learning to write and speak was clearly just his teaching pride welling up.

[Rulakir]

You're right that we don't really know what a Rejoining is like. But we do know what being nuked is like. We know what genocidal campaigns are like. We know what lethal gas weapons are like.

Well, that sounds like a personal assumption as to what a rejoining is like. Given the emphasis of memories being etched onto the aether of the soul I could equally assume rejoinings couldn't be that bad or everyone on the Source would have severe PTSD from the trauma inflicted to their multiple soul fragments.

The world of FFXIV being the way it is with tangible souls and reincarnation prevent me from drawing any real world comparisons. The Ascians weren't killing people for the sake of it and the narrative addresses Emet's struggles with his duty. Conversely, Hermes and Venat knowingly chose violence for the express purpose of ending their world as they knew it. Intent makes a difference to me.