Ultima the High Seraph.

[Pimsan20]

So having no idea who the next big bad will be. There is a possibility that Ultima the High Seraph. Or rather the true Ultima and not the High Seraph we face in the Ivalice raid, we know so little who and where Ultima is.

And we also know Athena made contact with Ultima, and gain Auracite form the being. We still don't know when she came into the Etheirys and where she landed. We have little lore in the pandemonium, but it feels like we're getting preb to face the real Ultima in later expansion.

[MicahZerrshia]

Someone made a really long video on this theory months ago and it was a fairly good watch. They compiled all the little lore bits and hints to show she is out there biding her time and seems to be an even bigger threat than Hydaelyn was when she was at full power. And she split a world into 14 pieces and commited mass geno on all species of Etheirys. So they could do a lot of fun things with her.

Now the big questions are, will a writer they bring in have the chops to do it well? Will Yoshi PR be wise enough to allow a good writer to do it justice or will the character plot armor be so thick it hurts the story again? Will she be an actual threat or do we just need to invite her over for some tacos? Can they be more creative with her than reducing her defeat down to the power of friendship....again? Frankly there is so much potential, but at this point I don't really feel SE has the ability to do a story with so much potential, justice.

[Enkidoh]

Someone made a really long video on this theory months ago and it was a fairly good watch. They compiled all the little lore bits and hints to show she is out there biding her time and seems to be an even bigger threat than Hydaelyn was when she was at full power. And she split a world into 14 pieces and commited mass geno on all species of Etheirys. So they could do a lot of fun things with her.

Oh for the love of... I thought we'd moved on from this nonsense? Venat was right to sunder the world because the Convocation were just going to keep sacrificing more and more of the remaining Ancients and other life to Zodiark without any resolution and would have eventually ran out of sacrifices to do so, with Meteion's Song of Oblivion still threatening the universe, something they were powerless to stop without being able to directly interact with Dynamis. And Venat was the only one who realized this. Faced with this, Sundering the world was literally, the least abhorrent choice (and lets face it, if she hadn't, there would be no you), end of story.

As for the OP, given Ultima's whole connection to the Ivalice raids, that would kind of end up requiring SE to mandate completion of those raids just to make sense with any hypothetical introduction of her into the main scenario, and, well, given the last time SE mandated a raid series was required for the main scenario did not go down well with players (Crystal Tower for Shadowbringers), I don't see SE repeating that. Ultima's appearence during Pandaemonium was merely a callback to earlier in the game that Endwalker was already full of, it was not reflective really of her being pushed into a bigger role (and besides, do we really need yet another dull 'From Outer Space!' threat?).

[mallleable]

As for the OP, given Ultima's whole connection to the Ivalice raids, that would kind of end up requiring SE to mandate completion of those raids just to make sense with any hypothetical introduction of her into the main scenario, and, well, given the last time SE mandated a raid series was required for the main scenario did not go down well with players (Crystal Tower for Shadowbringers), I don't see SE repeating that. Ultima's appearence during Pandaemonium was merely a callback to earlier in the game that Endwalker was already full of, it was not reflective really of her being pushed into a bigger role (and besides, do we really need yet another dull 'From Outer Space!' threat?).

A bit of an elephant in the room, but if we expect to uncover the rest of Ilsabard in a future expansion, we're going to have to tackle Ivalice lore in the MSQ somehow.

[MicahZerrshia]

Oh for the love of... I thought we'd moved on from this nonsense?

Nope. If you don't want to hear opposing viewpoints and only high praise for the writing, go to the main reddit page. I will stand firm, always, that Hydaelyn was a genocidal villain and this game is a good example of how easy it is to convince ppl that complete eradication of not only one, but multiple species, by one person who took it upon themselves and refused to even consult anyone else about, is a good thing. If they wanted to make her sympathetic or that her actions were not only just but necessary, they needed waaaaaaaaaaay better writers and more than one expansion for that.

And also "no me?" lol that is just one of the many things you said that is just plain wrong. I am Azem, therefore I would exist, in my original unbroken form, happily traveling around solving problems, like I do now. Also sacrifices were voluntary and done in a way that all who were sacrificed could be restored. And sure the sundering was a good solution when the problem of metion and her sisters was an unknown, but as soon as we not only discovered this information, but relayed it to her and a few others, the problem was known, and if a bunch of broken shards could solve it, sorry if 1 broken shard could solve the problem, I am sure millions of unsundered ascians would have had no issues. They would have been a minor annoyance at best. But a true villain is the one who withheld all the information and decided to sunder her world and every single plant and animal on it because she felt she was right after meeting only 1 of those shards for an hour at best. Emet also felt what he was doing was right, and you have no problems calling him a villain. And his actions were also restorative, even if he had to cause pain. Sort of like when you have to rebreak a bone for it to heal correctly. It hurts like crazy, but in the end its the only thing that will make the bone whole again.

And one last thing, ppl can interprit things differently, some with media literacy some without, but we are not the ones who are still to this day having fits and get irritated when we hear casual opposing views about the EW storyline.

[mallleable]

I think it's too early to tell for sure where this next story arc is headed, but as an Ultima fangirl, I do hope it leads to Ultima. It would be great to have a pure evil cosmic horror big bad to contrast against all the sympathetic villains we've faced.

[Cleretic]

The struggle with Ultima as the Big Bad Villain is that... well, we kinda already beat her. Quite a while ago, in fact!

That's not an insurmountable obstacle to overcome in writing, but it is one: to do Ultima as a new, big villain that would feel fresh and interesting, you need to package it in a way that makes it more than just 'the boss we beat in Orbonne 30+ levels ago' (chances are good it'll be 40+ by the time they get to do anything), and importantly, feels like it. You need to frame and build up to this theoretical Ultima reprise in a way that doesn't feel like a rerun, or it'll just feel like a waste of time to a lot of people. The last thing we want to feel from a story is like we're watching a rerun.

As a bonus, if you do this right it also solves the 'make Ivalice mandatory' problem. If Theoretical MSQ Villain Ultima has an appreciable level of difference from Ivalice Raids Villain Ultima, then rather than requiring a previous reading we can be in the realm of 'healthy amount of optional dialogue but you still mostly get the idea if you haven't'. Something on a similar scale to, say, Omega's presence in Endwalker.


...All that said, there's also a new problem to this one that wasn't there most of the other times this idea's come up: that now, there's another villain named Ultima who's from space and had a storyline of appearing on the planet long ago and whose influence has caused some serious problems ever since both directly and indirectly. ...In a game that happens to share an awful lot of names in its credits with FFXIV. So now Theoretical MSQ Villain Ultima not only has to be appreciably different from Ivalice Raids Villain Ultima, it also needs to be different from FFXVI Villain Ultima, which is probably gonna be a harder job since most of the points of differentiation between XIV Ultima and Final Fantasy Tactics Ultima are actually exactly the things she shares with XVI Ultima!

[Catwho]

...All that said, there's also a new problem to this one that wasn't there most of the other times this idea's come up: that now, there's another villain named Ultima who's from space and had a storyline of appearing on the planet long ago and whose influence has caused some serious problems ever since both directly and indirectly. ...In a game that happens to share an awful lot of names in its credits with FFXIV. So now Theoretical MSQ Villain Ultima not only has to be appreciably different from Ivalice Raids Villain Ultima, it also needs to be different from FFXVI Villain Ultima, which is probably gonna be a harder job since most of the points of differentiation between XIV Ultima and Final Fantasy Tactics Ultima are actually exactly the things she shares with XVI Ultima!

Actually, it doesn't have to be that different from XVI Ultima.

FFXVI spoilers:

The Ultimas from XVI had to flee their planet because a natural disaster attacked it. Like the Ea, they lost their physical forms at some point and were using the Bearer breeding program to try to get the humans on their new planet capable of becoming hosts for at least one of them. I assume Clive as Mythos was only intended to become the first new host body. (Hello, slightly borrowed plot from FF9.) However, the ecosystem of Valisthea was not conductive to the humans having magic naturally, which is why they had to make the Mothercrystals as aether batteries and teach humanity magic. And when the humans realized they were being manipulated by their own gods and rebelled against them, they ended up getting subjugated by the Ultimas for the next 800 years.

Anyway, the implication is that the XVI Ultimas, of which there were originally 8-9 that we know of - were the only survivors of their disaster that made it to the world in XVI.

What if others made it to the world in XIV? Hitched a ride in white or black auracite, where Meteion couldn't get to them, and landed on planets where they could bide their time and try to make the local wildlife strong enough to eventually become hosts?

[Anonymoose]

Devil's Advocate - to me it feels equally awkward - big picture - that a thing worthy of the name ULTIMA, THE HIGH SERAPH was ever something we would beat in a sidequest chain 30 levels ago in the first place.

(Not insurmountably so, of course - game's gotta go on.)

But still, if we were told that the thing we faced in Ivalice, while powerful, was but a shade of the real thing... a primal-like manifestation of the fear inspired by a GLIMPSE of the genuine article ... I'd probably buy it.

Would be a lot of pressure on the art team to make it newer and cooler and bigger and badder, but they've lived up to the challenge before.

I admit that I felt like the end of Pandaemonium was explicitly threatening us with a lingering plot hook - attached to nothing for now - perhaps attached to nothing ever - that Ultima and Athena have touched more of history than we yet know.

That's why I keep making jokes about "Ultima Prime", lol.



...You know what, since this is FINAL FANTASY XIV, obviously the Greek version of the name is the genuine article. We should live in fear ... of Eschatos (...Eschate?)

[Cleretic]

Devil's Advocate - to me it feels equally awkward - big picture - that a thing worthy of the name ULTIMA, THE HIGH SERAPH was ever something we would beat in a sidequest chain 30 levels ago in the first place.

(Not insurmountably so, of course - game's gotta go on.)

But still, if we were told that the thing we faced in Ivalice, while powerful, was but a shade of the real thing... a primal-like manifestation of the fear inspired by a GLIMPSE of the genuine article ... I'd probably buy it.

Putting on my Mythology Nerd Hat, I would say that if we took the title 'High Seraph' to be literal, then it would be the highest of high second only to God itself. But that even the raw existence of a High Seraph implies that one higher figure.

...but only if you take it to be Christian. If you instead look to Jewish beliefs, then they're either first, third, fifth or tenth. So it's entirely possible that there's a few ranks higher.