Thread: Is the warrior of light a revenant?

In the "final" fight with Zenos if you lose, he says some rival type words and you rise from the dead. I mean that's kinda how one becomes a revenant just someone with a strong enough will decides" No I'm not done yet." and gets back up.

Originally Posted by Cleretic

No, you come back from not-actually-dead in that fight because you're in a space where emotion is stronger than anything thanks to dynamis, and you literally just want to win more than him.

The WoL isn't undead, they're just stubborn.

They were there physically it was kinda like the warp from 40K not saying they are the same just alike. So when the HP bar hit zero and the physical body died the spirit said no?

In all the final fantasy games I've played none have really stated how it worked. I always liked the theory that Aeirth wasn't as dead as it seemed and was really just paralyzed and died from drowning. But really, they need to change that lore because I would like it not to sound like we lost a Pokémon battle and have to go see nurse joy.

Originally Posted by Iscah

I interpret HP not as the full measure from "100% health" to "dead" but effectively a shield of personal aether reserves that can go into instantly healing any damage you receive. When you hit zero (which the average townsperson is going to do much quicker than a trained fighter) that's when you shift from intangible HP loss to physical injury and the possibility of death.

That would make phoenix downs more than fancy smelling salts.

Originally Posted by innis31

In all the final fantasy games I've played none have really stated how it worked. I always liked the theory that Aeirth wasn't as dead as it seemed and was really just paralyzed and died from drowning. But really, they need to change that lore because I would like it not to sound like we lost a Pokémon battle and have to go see nurse joy.

So your feeling is that Aerith shouldn't have died from being stabbed, she should have died either because she fell into water as the immediate next thing, or because Cloud put her in water as an impromptu funeral after she got stabbed, depending on when you think she should be drowning? That's an absolutely horrible 'rewrite'.

They don't 'need to change this lore', it has worked fine and worked for functional and compelling stories for over thirty years, in large part because even if people do miss the lore as you did, most people have enough suspension of disbelief to recognize that in a lot of games, 'hit 0 HP' dead is different from dead dead. People usually don't question beyond that, but if they do, they usually find the game's a step ahead of them!

Making it 'actual dead-ness' would also make every single FF party member a necromancer. And just in FFXIV itself, necromancy in multiple forms is a constant narrative subject, and one that's universally treated in the same way: as a bad idea that you shouldn't do, because the dead are dead and you have to move on. It's very much one of the core thematic concerns of the game, and there's a big, clear reason why we don't do it.

You want to throw that away completely, because you don't personally believe in someone getting beaten up so hard they pass out? Because that's what's happening, with a few fudged details for gameplay's sake: healers are field medics, they're peeling you off the ground and patching you up before you bleed out. The fight against Zenos is your character getting up of their own volition despite all that and going 'I didn't hear no bell'.