Revelations from Patch 6.4: The Dark Throne

[Cleretic]

Happy patch day, everyone! Iscah hasn't posted her usual by the time I wanted to post my takes, so I'm making it now!

For the first plenty-of-pages, remember to put all your stuff in spoiler tags, separated by quest group. The code for spoiler tags is [ HB ] and [ /HB ], without the spaces.

Now, let's talk about LORE AND STORY!

[Eisi]

I'm just glad we got confirmation that

Bolbnez is Thordan

[Cleretic]

So far I've done the MSQ and the Tataru questline, since it turns out the MSQ was longer than I expected!

General no-spoilers MSQ vibe: Started slow, picked up a LOT of good momentum, this is pretty firmly my favorite of the 6.x MSQs so far.

-Genuinely REALLY love the dip back into Complicated Garlean Political Identity. They're so tied up in their own sense of national pride that they unironically tout 'at least when our nation exploded and ruined our lives it was our fault' as a positive.
-Varshahn literally notices the same thing about Garlemald that Godbert did about Ala Mhigo: that as nice as charity is, it's not gonna do the job by itself, because that leaves the nation with no power in their own destiny.
-Go back to the scene where Zero tells the story about meeting the two Obvious Golbezes; the first still on her speech has dev console readouts on the top edge. Whoops!
-Hooray, Y'shtola's getting a story arc all her own! And it's the one I was hoping for her!
-They low-key solved a dumb minor thing I'd been talking about regarding dragonspeak for ages; it turns out the dragons' names are spoken differently in their native language! You can hear it in when Vrtra and Azdaja refer to each other. Azdaja's dragonspeak name especially is basically missing a syllable.
-Even a dragon that hasn't been on the Source for five thousand years knows that Nidhogg is a total idiot. Wow.
-Golbez and Golbez (okay, one of them was Durante, but somehow just calling them both Golbez is less confusing) were about to head back to meet the King of Baron... soooooo, I suspect I know where and how Golbez got killed.
-It's actually kind of charming that Golbez is such a no-frills slugfest, because it reflects how in FFIV he also didn't really have any tricks.
-You know, in retrospect, we really should've expected that there would be Some Problems with the Zodiark piece in the shard where nothing dies right.
-I love how the story around Zeromus is somehow both brazenly lifting from FFIV, and yet finding different routes to every single major beat. It's really fun! I certainly didn't expect THAT angle for Zeromus.
-After all this, Golbez's plan still isn't really clear... well, to us. It clearly still makes sense to him, we're just missing a few connecting pieces. Granted, I wouldn't be surprised if he'd lost a few marbles over the millennia.

And for Tataru, no-spoilers vibe: If you didn't like how Werlyt treated Gaius, you're not gonna like how this does, but it's still really good if you do.

I know I planned to have more extensive takes on this one, but the entirety of my notes for this quest is just 'FULL FRONTAL'.

[RyuDragnier]

Pandaemonium

This tier was intense emotional damage, between fighting Themis, having a heart to heart with him, and knowing Eric's final fate. Also figures that Lahabrea would be the one making himself go stark raving mad of his own accord by bringing his power back due to needing it. Overall a good finale to Pandaemonium.

However...Athena may (it's never outright confirmed) have met Ultima at some point, or Ultima came to Etheirys after the Sundering, because it was confirmed that Auracite is not of the planet. Athena found Auracite somewhere, which helped her go completely insane, and she created the Heart of Sabik after studying the Auracite. Which explains why Ascians couldn't do anything against White Auracite, it's literally not of this world. I suspect at least one expansion will involve us dealing with wherever the Auracite came from...or at least finding a way to completely eliminate it.

Tataru's quest

Fake Valens, I hope he's dealt with properly and doesn't torment those kids anymore. But the end where Gaius and Allie have the family portrait together, with the rest of them there thanks to the machine...my heart. Oh look, I'm crying again.

[WhiteArchmage]

So far I'm only halfway through Pandaemonium but the thing at the forefront of my mind is

IT BEATS, THE HEART OF SABIK, THE HEART OF SABIK, THE HEAR OF SABIIIIIIIIK

That's been one of the most nagging questions ever since 2.0, with some form of answer from Koji Fox, and to see it finally come back in-game... I'm just hyped. (And I realize this non-spoilered part is probably spoiler enough if one knows the context)

[EdwinLi]

The Main story had multiple teases for the expansion storyline involving.....

Thancred, Urianger, and Krile getting invitations.

I suspect these are meant to show a bit who are going to return in the expansion storyline since they will need to set up characters for Trust and it will take time for them to build up new characters for the new storyline as well. However, it is still unknown what are the details since they never go into what is said in their invitations. Only that the people involved are looking for people with certain skills.

[Raiya]

Surprised this hasnt been commented on yet.

One of the flashbacks has you see the PoV of the REAL Golbez with his friend Durante. What's interesting is besides this fact is that the real Golbez has no voice while Durante does (and who is the Golbez in the void). His death prior to the flood of darkness makes me suspicious that his friend sealed in the Memoria, later found in what is essentially a grave on the 13th's moon and which later falls into Zeromus may end up being in fact our missing shard from the void. That they don't show the real Golbez's face or voice makes me strongly suspicious that this may be the missing part of our soul from the 13th. Would also be an interesting way of playing the Golbez and Cecil being siblings element as essentially us and them having essentially the same soul instead).

[Anonymoose]

Happy patch day, everyone! Iscah hasn't posted her usual by the time I wanted to post my takes, so I'm making it now!

I'm glad to see we've organically established a clear flow chart of if "If x doesn't do it by y hours, z will get it", ahaha.

Since Endwalker, I've stopped playing on Tuesday (which is a heavy work day for me anyway) and started streaming new content the upcoming weekend after anyone who cares about my opinion has finished it and can follow along. I'll get back to the discussion after my lorebrary is updated...

/salute

[Cleretic]

I'm glad to see we've organically established a clear flow chart of if "If x doesn't do it by y hours, z will get it", ahaha.

I assure you, it was not a reasoned decision, it was 'I must Post and there isn't a thread for it yet'.

[KageTokage]

MSQ

It was nice to see the Garleans getting a small bone thrown to them with Vrtra establishing a trade arragement to help get them back on their feet.

As far as the actual void business goes, I was kind of hoping we'd just end it here, but nope, they decided to throw in another FFIV reference by pulling Zeromus out of nowhere, and is touching on the whole power scaling issue I was thinking would crop up post 6.0 because really, something made from only a tiny fraction of Zodiark's aether and a horribly weakened dragon shouldn't be an issue for us deal with at this point.

The main things I'm really wondering about is whether or not the memoria crystal we Echo might've been housing an Azem shard because the way the vision was presented was very...unusual compared to how it usually is, with the perspective character being both unvoiced and unseen, as well as the hypothesis that rejoinings are something that would occur naturally for the Source but were being actively stopped by Hydaelyn, now officially raising the question of whether or not her absence is going to have any consequences.

Pandaemonium

Conveniently sidesteps the issue of getting the trio involved with the present era as well as any potential moral conundrums by simply having us interact with inconsequential simulacra of them as opposed to the real deals.

I knew I was going to be left with an ugly feeling once we inevitably just leave to allow fate's cruel embrace to take Ericthonios and Themis for the sake of our own future, but I would've honestly felt better if they actually tried to guilt-trip us about it instead of just ignoring the issue entirely.

As far as positives go, it was nice to finally get some closure behind Sabik, and that last remark from Themis about the star's current course has me questioning if it's meant to be interpreted as something hopeful or ominous because he did say back in SB that the balance of light and dark would be destroyed if things were allowed to continue unabated and now we're seemingly primed to attempt to turn the First's abundance of light against the darkness of the 13th, which seems like a potentially very bad idea with how nebulous our understanding of the two forces is.

The actual fights and music were also great as usual.

Faith not restored in the writing so far.