Inconsistencies with the sundering (Spoilers)

[MikkoAkure]

And what happens if they didn't post the short story resolving the two different versions of the sundering? Which version would we accept as canon?

You don’t need the writers to hold your hand to be able to reconcile the fact that Hydaelyn stomped Zodiark and had more than just 1 reason to be summoned, as was stated back in the Shadowbringers patches.

But maybe we do need handholding and we need giant flashing warnings in cutscenes now to tell us whether what we’re seeing is an artistic description of events condensed into one thing or if it’s meant to be taken literally.

Again, I think they should’ve done it literally and showed us the fight we should’ve had.

We already addressed this. You're falling behind.

I was hoping for a better response than the one you gave that cherry picks parts of the cutscene that support your idea that it’s meant to be literal, but the part of it is “obviously metaphorical” doesn’t count so you’re supposed to think it’s literal and then metaphorical.

[PeaTearGriffin]

You don’t need the writers to hold your hand to be able to reconcile the fact that Hydaelyn stomped Zodiark and had more than just 1 reason to be summoned, as was stated back in the Shadowbringers patches. But maybe we do need handholding and we need giant flashing warnings in cutscenes now to tell us whether what we’re seeing is an artistic description of events condensed into one thing or if it’s meant to be taken literally.

In the endwalker cutscene, whats the metaphor for hydaelyn's battle with zodiark? You can't answer that, can you.

[Ranaku]

The bait is strong in this thread.

[MikkoAkure]

I don't think the question is whether it's an allegory. It clearly is.

If you’d been following the OP, he doesn’t think it’s an allegory.

Where then is the room for the clash of primals?

I want to know why they didn’t put it in there too.

But just because they made a weird decision not to show it doesn’t mean that the writers for some reason decided to backtrack on it ever happening and then backtracked on backtracking and put it back in through short stories and jackets.

[kpxmanifesto]

But just because they made a weird decision not to show it doesn’t mean that the writers for some reason decided to backtrack on it ever happening and then backtracked on backtracking and put it back in through short stories and jackets.

Let's be real here. Tales of the Dawn does help provide clarity to the audience on what the cause of the Sundering was. I want to say that it was definitely put there to help clear things up.

[kpxmanifesto]

I seem to have missed Tales of the Dawn adding new information on this? Venat's chapter with the Watcher was bogged down in as much vagueness as the cutscene.

The Tales of the Dawn sidestory, A Friendship of Record, seems a little more indicative of there being some kind of fight between Hydaelyn and Zodiark.

"Venat's faction thus resolved to manifest an entity capable of shackling that power. To have any chance at defeating the nigh-omnipotent Zodiark, however, the sacrifice must be absolute."

- https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes.../#sidestory_01

The language is still somewhat ambiguous as it doesn't explicitly say "Hydaelyn and Zodiark go head to head in a battle," or something along those lines, but I can at least now believe that there was some sort of major conflict between them prior to the Sundering.

[PeaTearGriffin]

The Tales of the Dawn sidestory, A Friendship of Record, seems a little more indicative of there being some kind of fight between Hydaelyn and Zodiark.

"Venat's faction thus resolved to manifest an entity capable of shackling that power. To have any chance at defeating the nigh-omnipotent Zodiark, however, the sacrifice must be absolute."

- https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes.../#sidestory_01

The language is still somewhat ambiguous as it doesn't explicitly say "Hydaelyn and Zodiark go head to head in a battle," or something along those lines, but I can at least now believe that there was some sort of major conflict between them prior to the Sundering.

Yes. Yes it is.

It's the same type of bad writing that happened in Star Wars 9 where Palpatine's return required reading outside material to be explained properly.

Guess we could say endwalker is our star wars 9.

[Iscah]

The Tales of the Dawn sidestory, A Friendship of Record, seems a little more indicative of there being some kind of fight between Hydaelyn and Zodiark.

That isn't merging, though – it's going back to the "old" narrative that Hydaelyn battled Zodiark with no mention of it ending in a philosophical clash between the factions.

Merging the two would require actually talking about what happened when Hydaelyn and Zodiark fought each other while clearly connecting it to the allegorical cutscene, which they seem extremely averse to doing.

Either they really did try to overwrite "the fight" with "Venat turned up at a meeting", or they've written it confusingly enough that a fair chunk of the audience feels like they did that, and either way they have made no attempt to explain or justify the discrepancy – not in further stories and not in interviews. They just avoid any explanation of it, which makes me feel like they don't actually have a good answer for how to reconcile the two.

[Xirean]

That isn't merging, though – it's going back to the "old" narrative that Hydaelyn battled Zodiark with no mention of it ending in a philosophical clash between the factions.

Merging the two would require actually talking about what happened when Hydaelyn and Zodiark fought each other while clearly connecting it to the allegorical cutscene, which they seem extremely averse to doing.

Either they really did try to overwrite "the fight" with "Venat turned up at a meeting", or they've written it confusingly enough that a fair chunk of the audience feels like they did that, and either way they have made no attempt to explain or justify the discrepancy – not in further stories and not in interviews. They just avoid any explanation of it, which makes me feel like they don't actually have a good answer for how to reconcile the two.

Alternatively you can use that bad cutscene as Venat's moral justification of what she did during battle. The sundering does still take place during battle but that doesn't mean Venat didn't intend to do it for reasons beyond just defeating Zodiark.

[kpxmanifesto]

That isn't merging, though – it's going back to the "old" narrative that Hydaelyn battled Zodiark with no mention of it ending in a philosophical clash between the factions.

Merging the two would require actually talking about what happened when Hydaelyn and Zodiark fought each other while clearly connecting it to the allegorical cutscene, which they seem extremely averse to doing.

Either they really did try to overwrite "the fight" with "Venat turned up at a meeting", or they've written it confusingly enough that a fair chunk of the audience feels like they did that, and either way they have made no attempt to explain or justify the discrepancy – not in further stories and not in interviews. They just avoid any explanation of it, which makes me feel like they don't actually have a good answer for how to reconcile the two.

So right before that line I quoted from Tales of the Dawn earlier, there's another line that says: "Venat, along with the archivist and their like-minded companions, objected to this undertaking. The future, they believed, must not bear the cost for saving the past. Only in accepting pain and loss─by learning from the mistakes of yesterday─could they greet the morrow. A power such as Zodiark possessed was anathema to the progress of man."

The chain of events from Tales of the Dawn doesn't directly match up with the allegorical cutscene we saw in EW, but I personally feel the writer of Tales of the Dawn at least attempted to include both reasons for the Sundering that we saw from ShB and EW. ShB had the clash between Zodiark and Hydaelyn as the primary cause of the Sundering, EW had Venat's philosophical reasons for the Sundering, and Tales of the Dawn mentions both.

But you're right when you say "Merging the two would require actually talking about what happened when Hydaelyn and Zodiark fought each other while clearly connecting it to the allegorical cutscene." That would be the correct way of merging the two versions of the Sundering.

Guess we could say endwalker is our star wars 9.

Somehow, the cause of the Sundering from ShB RETURNED!