Quote Originally Posted by Terin View Post
All that build-up, just to reveal Zodiark was essentially just a husk for Fandaniel to possess, just really wasn't a terribly satisfying "twist". I loved the Fandanial arc, don't get me wrong, but where Fandaniel and Ilidibus both had their chapters closed in a meaningful way, it just never felt like we got to really experience *Zodiark*, in the same way we got to experience Hydaelyn through Venat.
The degree of power they used to suggest Zodiark had, it wouldn't be something we would be capable of fighting because it would be too big and too powerful. To make this larger-than-life god more on the level of a mortal, they had to do quite a lot of things to it...
  • Say that it's been binded to a location (so you have a fixed arena to fight it in).
  • Sundered (split into shards), so you are just fighting a small fraction of its true power.
  • Say it was actually a vessel being piloted by a heart and that the heart left it ages ago.
Regardless, the fight is one of my favorite in the whole of Endwalker.

The reason we can beat Venat is she isn't actually meant to be much stronger than the toughest Ascians we have faced like Emet Selch. Although Hydaelyn might have had more power, they made the argument she had been weakened by the Ascian's activities.

Otherwise, the way they had portrayed those beings for a long time was that they were beyond anything we could hope to match, even just because it would be hard to match their overwhelming size and keep them still and vulnerable without them having weaknesses such as being bound to the moon or having been weakened by Ascian activity.