10th Anniversary Amano key art [6.5+ Spoilers?]

[WellGramarye]

The special 10th Anniversary site has blessed us with this image:

So the question is, who is she?

First of all I doubt its Hydaelyn.
Every time we've ever seen Hydaelyn in Amano's style she has had a different colour motif. That of being Blue.

Secondly Hydaelyn is always shown with head-wings which this image lacks.
Next there is a Solar/Sun/Fire motif about its head, as well as seemingly galaxies being spun off from behind her.

Amano key art for each of the expansions has always been important to the plot and characters, and this coming out right as they announce Dawntrail has me believing that its connected.

So here are my top theories of whom this is in no particular order.

1. Cosmos. The overarching Final Fantasy deity that they have shown through the fighting games of which FF14 has also been included with a character crossover.

2. Altana. The Dawn Goddess. She was the deity of the FF11 world Vana'diel, which FF14 gets a lot of its world DNA from.

3. Hydaelyn. Now in yellow! Kind of a boring answer IMO.

4. Krile. What? Tin foil hat time! With Zodiark and Hydaelyn gone, whats left holding the shards apart? Might they naturally start to converge and try to reunite? So perhaps one who was basically possessed by Hydaelyn and so loves the world, may need to seek a new form to hold the convergence at bay.

5. Its someone new! Yay! New unheard of character that makes life complicated! (See also Meteion)

6. Its no one. Its just pretty art that represents the world they built and has no bearing on the story itself.

I'm sure we'll find out (or not) eventually! What's your thoughts on the image?

[Cleretic]

I think an important factor here is that it's the anniversary event key art. It's not going to be connected to the story, because this is gonna be served up to people still in A Realm Reborn; similarly, any content it's attached to will be released during the Rising, rather than any major content. (Incidentally, that second one also knocks out a contender I've seen put forward that you didn't: Asura, the Fanfest trial.)

So whoever this is, it can't be someone whose description would require dipping into spoiler tags.

[WellGramarye]

I think an important factor here is that it's the anniversary event key art. It's not going to be connected to the story, because this is gonna be served up to people still in A Realm Reborn; similarly, any content it's attached to will be released during the Rising, rather than any major content. (Incidentally, that second one also knocks out a contender I've seen put forward that you didn't: Asura, the Fanfest trial.)

So whoever this is, it can't be someone whose description would require dipping into spoiler tags.

I don't doubt that at all! It was also a fun time to just come up with some theories. Though I will posit that the image may not be connected to the actual anniversary quest itself since this is a much larger anniversary event overall with a multifaceted campaign. Also in as far as I know, they've never tapped Amano for anniversary art before.

I hadn't seen anything about Asura! She does have a passing likeness to the image too. (Hilariously you'd think I'd notice since my character's surname is Asuran. Though that was from Asuran Fists. I was a FFXI player for years.)

[Denishia]

If it is connected to Hydaelyn and not something completely different involving the Manderville questlines, then a good reason for the discrepancies is that the form is strictly Venat's form. We have confirmation/an example in P11 with Themis versus Zodiark.

If the Golden Araya FanFest fight is separate from the anniversary key art figure or not.

[KageTokage]

I'm kind of hoping this is a future character who's going to be relevant to the second story arc somehow.

Perhaps an actual god instead of a fabricated one...? We know the origin of the Sundered races, but not the Ancients and the star proper.

[Absimiliard]

1. Cosmos. The overarching Final Fantasy deity that they have shown through the fighting games of which FF14 has also been included with a character crossover.

I don't know that I'd refer to Cosmos as any kind of overarching deity. She was just another creation of the Lufaine, an advanced manikin imbued with the appearance and memories of Cid's late wife for the purpose of keeping Chaos in check. Unfortunately, being weaker than the woman upon whom she was based, she could not properly subdue him. Her warriors referred to her as a goddess largely because they'd been lied to about her nature, as were they that of Chaos.. It wasn't until after many cycles in World B she took on the mannerisms players saw from her in Dissidia; she learned to care for her summoned warriors, which ultimately lead to her giving her power to them and thus being killed by Chaos.

Her death wound up being permanent. Part of her essence returned as Materia in Dissidia NT, but this incarnation has no recollection of its former life and very little of its previous strength.

[Enkidoh]

Definetely Hydaelyn in yellow! Remember, Venat was once Azem, aka, the sun, and as Hydaelyn she was the planet's 'light' so to speak (notice the small bluish globe in her hands - it's clearly the Source). And as this is art for FFXIV ARR's tenth anniversary, the art would clearly reference what has come before up to this point, not hint at things still to come (and certainly not try and shoehorn in a figure from another game for no reason).

And Amano does tend to be rather free with how he portrays a character throughout his art, often tweaking or altering designs to suit a painting's overrall theme.

Also, an interesting point to remember is back in 1.0, Amano's cover art for 1.0's collector's edition was this.

At the time people thought it might have been one of the Twelve (Hydaelyn the character being hinted at but never shown or specifically mentioned by name), but the development team confirmed it was actually meant to be Siren (apparently the actual name of the piece is "Siren with Adventurer"), so take from that what you will.

Given the amount of callbacks and retconning that's already occurred throughout EW, Hydaelyn being depicted in gold in the Anniversay art instead of the usual bluish white might have also been just a subtle callback to FFXIV's origins in a meta way, but I think I'm grabbing at straws with that one.

So yeah, definetely boring answer - it's Hydaelyn.

[WellGramarye]

I don't know that I'd refer to Cosmos as any kind of overarching deity. She was just another creation of the Lufaine, an advanced manikin imbued with the appearance and memories of Cid's late wife for the purpose of keeping Chaos in check. Unfortunately, being weaker than the woman upon whom she was based, she could not properly subdue him. Her warriors referred to her as a goddess largely because they'd been lied to about her nature, as were they that of Chaos.. It wasn't until after many cycles in World B she took on the mannerisms players saw from her in Dissidia; she learned to care for her summoned warriors, which ultimately lead to her giving her power to them and thus being killed by Chaos.

Her death wound up being permanent. Part of her essence returned as Materia in Dissidia NT, but this incarnation has no recollection of its former life and very little of its previous strength.

I honestly didn't play Dissidia, but she's specifically called a Goddess in Theatrhythm so I assumed it applied the same. Besides, her story is an overaching story that includes the first 15 main line Final Fantasy games. The main point is any character presented in FF14 wouldn't be the exact characters as they are in the original material they are being inspired from.

[Absimiliard]

I honestly didn't play Dissidia, but she's specifically called a Goddess in Theatrhythm so I assumed it applied the same. Besides, her story is an overaching story that includes the first 15 main line Final Fantasy games. The main point is any character presented in FF14 wouldn't be the exact characters as they are in the original material they are being inspired from.

She has nothing to do with most of those games. The Dissidia games are in their own self-contained world, and the events transpiring therein do not in any way interact with other Final Fantasy titles unless otherwise noted by said titles. This is further reinforced in Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin (itself nothing more than an alternate take on FF1), which does invoke Dissidia, but it does so in a way that makes it clear it's just one of many different realities unfolding concurrently with one another.

As much as a lot of us would've liked for many of the games to have overlap, most of'em just don't. The only characters I can think of that are the same entity across most Final Fantasy titles are Shinryu, Omega, and Gilgamesh. Even then, there are some exceptions where we get versions of those characters that explicitly aren't their mainstream counterparts -- like FFXIV for the latter two, whereas Greg seems as if he might actually be the Gilgamesh.

[SilverArrow20XX]

I don't know that I'd refer to Cosmos as any kind of overarching deity. She was just another creation of the Lufaine, an advanced manikin imbued with the appearance and memories of Cid's late wife for the purpose of keeping Chaos in check. Unfortunately, being weaker than the woman upon whom she was based, she could not properly subdue him. Her warriors referred to her as a goddess largely because they'd been lied to about her nature, as were they that of Chaos.. It wasn't until after many cycles in World B she took on the mannerisms players saw from her in Dissidia; she learned to care for her summoned warriors, which ultimately lead to her giving her power to them and thus being killed by Chaos.

Her death wound up being permanent. Part of her essence returned as Materia in Dissidia NT, but this incarnation has no recollection of its former life and very little of its previous strength.

Though Cid was Lufenian, it was Onrac that he worked for, so they aren't exactly creations of the Lufaine. The Lufaine are probably one of the enemy nations they were developing Chaos to fight against, since one of them used Omega, which is a Lufenian weapon in Stranger of Paradise.
Cosmos probably wasn't weaker than Cid's wife ether. Cid's wife was able to keep Chaos under control because he loved and trusted her as his mother. Not because she was strong.