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So much for the glory of man.
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Jan 7, 2021 19:13
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if hydalen and zodiark are both primals, and primals drain the aether of whatever region they're in, how have they not sucked all the aether out of the entire universe by now? also in the 5.3 warrior of light fight, was that the real emet selch back from the dead? I hope so, I really liked that guy.
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Jan 9, 2021 02:13
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juggalo baby coffin posted:if hydalen and zodiark are both primals, and primals drain the aether of whatever region they're in, how have they not sucked all the aether out of the entire universe by now? I have a feeling the Primals we fight are summoned using a lesser version of the same magic. We see that the Ancients can create self-sustaining creations just fine, and I guess that sundered souls simply can't handle the ritual. Not to mention they likely wouldn't teach the whole, complete ritual to their patsies.
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Jan 9, 2021 02:19
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It's unclear if Zodiark and Hydaelyn drain aether. That might just be a side effect (or intentional flaw) of the summoning rituals that Ascians give out to sundered people.
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Jan 9, 2021 02:19
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It could be baked in, solely so they can't grow to rival or threaten the two things locked in, presumably, equal and eternal conflict.
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Jan 9, 2021 02:20
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juggalo baby coffin posted:if hydalen and zodiark are both primals, and primals drain the aether of whatever region they're in, how have they not sucked all the aether out of the entire universe by now? Being that they were the original primals summoned/created by the Ancients, their ability to sustain themselves might be a little different. The tought methods used by the various groups and tribes have summoned their primals are downright crude compared to the original creation magic. The constant aether siphoning might be a limitation. And no, that wasn't the real Emet-Selch. It was more like a contingency program set up to activate when needed. He had a good feeling that the day would come when it'd be needed, seems like.
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Jan 9, 2021 02:21
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As for Emet saving us in the Warrior of Light fight, I'm pretty sure that was just a contingency he made in the event of his death. Which is still cool, but I'm pretty sure the dude is very dead.
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Jan 9, 2021 02:21
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It was a big point that the ancients could fuel their creations with their own body's aether. Hydaelyn and Zodiark are charged purely off of what was given through their sacrifices, which is vast amounts more than what the current races can provide. Hydaelyn is almost running on empty. She's basically too weak to interfere or even communicate much. Plus, Hydaelyn essentially is the soul of the world. It wouldn't make sense to drain aether from herself to herself, but lesser primals could drain aether from her.
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Jan 9, 2021 02:31
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The way I understand primal aether draining isn't necessarily that they're an inherent drain (except in the sense that humans are an inherent drain on oxygen, I guess), and more that when they do big things, it depletes a lot of aether that doesn't come back. Remember Alexander: it wasn't necessarily its continued existence that was the problem, it was the fact its movement was an enormous aether drain. So Hydaelyn's not doing much aether drainage, because she's not doing much aside from shouting 'hear, feel, think' into space most of the time, and Zodiark's doing even less. Is it an inherent good that they're around? Probably not, but the concern isn't them sitting idle, it's them suddenly doing something big.
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Jan 9, 2021 02:46
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I think there probably is an inherent good to them both being around. Like Hydaelyn didn't just completely kill Zodiark when she had the chance, and since he had already done his work and somehow altered the laws of existence, life as we know it might depend on those rules. Who knows what happens when he disappears? Assuming, as I do, that they are basically aether neutral when not doing anything, both of their existences might be needed for the stability of the world.
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Jan 9, 2021 02:50
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Orcs and Ostriches posted:I think there probably is an inherent good to them both being around. Like Hydaelyn didn't just completely kill Zodiark when she had the chance, and since he had already done his work and somehow altered the laws of existence, life as we know it might depend on those rules. Who knows what happens when he disappears? Assuming, as I do, that they are basically aether neutral when not doing anything, both of their existences might be needed for the stability of the world. That's actually my general theory on Zodiark; while he's not doing anything, he's been around for so long that everything has sort of grown around him, making him something of a load-bearing figure, and getting rid of him will probably cause some unforseen consequences as a result of him suddenly being gone. We'll have to get rid of him anyway, of course. But that sort of approach causes a change in the status quo that's neither apocalyptic nor boring, which is a perfect thing to inject into an MMO.
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Jan 9, 2021 03:04
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Orcs and Ostriches posted:It was a big point that the ancients could fuel their creations with their own body's aether. Hydaelyn and Zodiark are charged purely off of what was given through their sacrifices, which is vast amounts more than what the current races can provide. Eeeh, I'm not sure that Hydaelyn is Hydaelyn, any more than any other primal is the entity they were modelled on. She's interwoven with the planet, but she isn't actually the planet.
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Jan 9, 2021 03:46
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I know Hydaelin was formed around the idea of sundering, do we know anything about Zodiark's... call it "nature" other than being strong enough to stop the Calamity.
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Jan 9, 2021 04:27
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Bruceski posted:I know Hydaelin was formed around the idea of sundering, do we know anything about Zodiark's... call it "nature" other than being strong enough to stop the Calamity. Basically all we do know about Zodiark is that it was formed to avoid the End of Days (separate from the first Calamity). And that it was apparently bad at its one job, given there were signs of it coming back which led to them attempting to summon it a second time, only to get curbstomped by Hydaelyn. Basically, Zodiark was designed to solve a complex problem, by people who didn't actually know how to solve the problem.
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Jan 9, 2021 04:34
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Bruceski posted:I know Hydaelin was formed around the idea of sundering, do we know anything about Zodiark's... call it "nature" other than being strong enough to stop the Calamity. They don't let on to it a ton, but my speculation is that the Final Days was caused by some kind of Dark-aspected imbalance in the world's aether, causing aetherial law to go haywire (in the same-but-opposite way as how the First's Light imbalance causes everything to go to a standstill). Consequently, they needed a being of pure, supreme Dark to be able to absorb and realign the aether, in much the same way as Eden absorbed and realigned the aether in the Empty. Cleretic posted:Basically all we do know about Zodiark is that it was formed to avoid the End of Days (separate from the first Calamity). And that it was apparently bad at its one job, given there were signs of it coming back which led to them attempting to summon it a second time, only to get curbstomped by Hydaelyn. Zodiark did its job fine. The splinter came from the fact that some of the Ancients wanted to use the new life that had grown on the planet after Zodiark repaired it as a sacrifice to bring back the Ancients that had been used to originally power Zodiark, while others objected and wanted the planet, and its life, to follow their own, new course. Vermain fucked around with this message at 04:39 on Jan 9, 2021 |
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Jan 9, 2021 04:35
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Cleretic posted:Basically all we do know about Zodiark is that it was formed to avoid the End of Days (separate from the first Calamity). And that it was apparently bad at its one job, given there were signs of it coming back which led to them attempting to summon it a second time, only to get curbstomped by Hydaelyn. Zodiark wasn't summoned a second time to refight the calamity, he beat it and brought back the rules of reality, they sacrificed more people to summon it a second time to restore life to the star and then waited as new life sprang up to use them as a sacrifice for a third summon to bring back all those sacrificed for the first two summons. Hydelyn was created to stop that third summoning. The reason poo poo's coming back is zodiark is weakened to all hell since the heart that he was built around has been out of him and doing things for eons and now is just straight up loving dead.
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Jan 9, 2021 05:24
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The raging battle between Hydaelyn and Zodiark: two decrepit centenarians raggedly drawing rattling breaths at each other menacingly
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Jan 9, 2021 05:33
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Vermain posted:Zodiark did its job fine. The splinter came from the fact that some of the Ancients wanted to use the new life that had grown on the planet after Zodiark repaired it as a sacrifice to bring back the Ancients that had been used to originally power Zodiark, while others objected and wanted the planet, and its life, to follow their own, new course. ZenMasterBullshit posted:Zodiark wasn't summoned a second time to refight the calamity, he beat it and brought back the rules of reality, they sacrificed more people to summon it a second time to restore life to the star and then waited as new life sprang up to use them as a sacrifice for a third summon to bring back all those sacrificed for the first two summons. Hydelyn was created to stop that third summoning. So weirdly, while I got the straight facts of that part wrong regarding a second End of Days, the general gist of it was still right. There were unforseen side-effects to trying to get Zodiark to fix poo poo, because his summoners didn't fully understand what they were being faced with. Hence the attempted second summoning, and the resulting curbstomp. I'm trying to think back to where I got the initial idea there, and I'm pretty sure it was some facet of Emet-Selch's whole messaging, since 5.2 was when we properly learned about the Hydaelyn-summoners' views on all this. Which checks out; the king of 'hey I technically didn't lie' would absolutely have neglected to properly explain why they went for more summonings, just that they did.
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Jan 9, 2021 05:47
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HenryEx posted:The raging battle between Hydaelyn and Zodiark: two decrepit centenarians raggedly drawing rattling breaths at each other menacingly pretty sure this is the plot to bubba hotep
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Jan 9, 2021 06:02
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Eimi posted:As for Emet saving us in the Warrior of Light fight, I'm pretty sure that was just a contingency he made in the event of his death. Which is still cool, but I'm pretty sure the dude is very dead. The current short story published actually implies the exact opposite. That's Actual Emet, temporarily back from the Lifestream. He's just ok staying dead and giving the future to the Sundered. Jetrauben fucked around with this message at 07:14 on Jan 9, 2021 |
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Jan 9, 2021 07:12
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Ere Our Curtain Falls? No it doesn't.
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Jan 9, 2021 07:17
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Cleretic posted:I'm trying to think back to where I got the initial idea there, and I'm pretty sure it was some facet of Emet-Selch's whole messaging, since 5.2 was when we properly learned about the Hydaelyn-summoners' views on all this. Which checks out; the king of 'hey I technically didn't lie' would absolutely have neglected to properly explain why they went for more summonings, just that they did. It’s all laid out by Hades during 5.0 (one of the mural scenes if I recall correctly). He’s quite explicit about it. 5.2 corroborated the story, introduced Venat, and established that Azem was not part of the Hydaelyn faction.
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Jan 9, 2021 07:19
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Orcs and Ostriches posted:Ere Our Curtain Falls? No it doesn't. ...that's exactly what the last part of the story isn't it? Emet's entrusted the future to the current lives and made a conscious decision from the lifestream to help us.
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Jan 9, 2021 07:25
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AstrialJam posted:...that's exactly what the last part of the story isn't it? Emet's entrusted the future to the current lives and made a conscious decision from the lifestream to help us. It literally says he never saw Elidibus again, once Elidibus went to speak with the WoL in 2.X. His shade sees Elidibus at the seat of sacrifice. And the poem at the very end is his last thoughts as he's dying, in the Dying Gasp, before he fades into a cloud of aether.
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Jan 9, 2021 07:28
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Defeating Zodiark will be our Cataclysm moment A Realm Reborn Reborn
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Jan 9, 2021 07:30
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Orcs and Ostriches posted:It literally says he never saw Elidibus again, once Elidibus went to speak with the WoL in 2.X. His shade sees Elidibus at the seat of sacrifice. And the poem at the very end is his last thoughts as he's dying, in the Dying Gasp, before he fades into a cloud of aether. No the very end is clearly when he rescues us in the 5.3 trial. It's made even more explicit in the other languages since it says something like "Even when I have no physical form I snap my finger", which is when he rescues us from the void.
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Jan 9, 2021 07:32
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I’m more concerned about the email that Yoship sent out that said that 6.0 will be the end of the story. It makes it seem more final than “the end of the Zodiark saga”
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Jan 9, 2021 07:34
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AstrialJam posted:No the very end is clearly when he rescues us in the 5.3 trial. It's made even more explicit in the other languages since it says something like "Even when I have no physical form I snap my finger", which is when he rescues us from the void. Well it really doesn't convey that in the English version. Not only does it explicitly say he never sees Elidibus again, it has the allusion to his faint breath / dying gasp, which is well before SoS.
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Jan 9, 2021 07:42
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Orcs and Ostriches posted:Well it really doesn't convey that in the English version. Not only does it explicitly say he never sees Elidibus again, it has the allusion to his faint breath / dying gasp, which is well before SoS. Yes the first part of the poem refers to his defeat in the Dying Gasp but the last stanza is when he rescues us, hence the "encore". The "that was the last time I saw Elidibus" reads more as "the last time I saw Elidibus as his actual self" and not him as the WoL primal.
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Jan 9, 2021 07:52
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i was really impressed with what they did with emet selch, prior to him the ascians had just seemed to be evil-for-evil's sake generic demonic bad guys, like literal devils just scheming for world domination, then through emet they're humanized and you find out that they're in essence trying to save the world, just like you are. it's just a different world that is mutually exclusive with the one you are trying to save. then, just as I was really coming to empathise with him, he springs it on you that as well as trying to rejoin all the worlds back into the original, they're going to murder all non-ascian life to bring back their dead homies. ascians are jerks. plus the consensual rejoining with ardbert made me wonder if the ascians had seen any value in non-ascian life, there could have been scope for some kind of grand scale peaceful rejoining project. edit: also it'd make sense for the 5.3 emet to be the actual emet, because he does the wave, which is the only way the WoL would know it was him and not some other ascian. the first time i did that fight i spent half of it arguing with our tank who insisted the summoned ascian was Azem, and not emet selch, even though the WoL IS azem. also is azem related to azim from the steppe guys? azim was their sun god who took mortal form in a xaela body, who were like the children of the dusk god, which sounds kind of similar to azem's deal as an ascian who is the embodiment of light. juggalo baby coffin fucked around with this message at 09:01 on Jan 9, 2021 |
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Jan 9, 2021 08:55
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thetoughestbean posted:I’m more concerned about the email that Yoship sent out that said that 6.0 will be the end of the story. It makes it seem more final than “the end of the Zodiark saga” They've already done a ton of table setting for a post-6.X story, and SE has no cause to terminate what is a remarkably successful - and, for a subscription MMO, remarkably profitable - part of their mainline franchise.
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Jan 9, 2021 08:55
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I would not be surprised if the specific intent of that scene was for you to think it was azem’s spirit/hythlodaeus for a second or two until the snap and wave hits you.
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Jan 9, 2021 09:11
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juggalo baby coffin posted:
if you talk to Urianger in the Rising Stones between 5.3 and 5.4 he mentions the similarity between Azem, Azim, and Azeyma as being pretty interesting but it's hard to say for certain if they're related
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Jan 9, 2021 09:18
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Babysitter Super Sleuth posted:I would not be surprised if the specific intent of that scene was for you to think it was azem’s spirit/hythlodaeus for a second or two until the snap and wave hits you. That's exactly what happened to me too
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Jan 9, 2021 09:28
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Babysitter Super Sleuth posted:I would not be surprised if the specific intent of that scene was for you to think it was azem’s spirit/hythlodaeus for a second or two until the snap and wave hits you. i think i was more primed for it cause I had done all the shadowbringers content back to back instead of having to wait for the content updates and stuff. there was like a week and a bit between me first meeting hythlodaeus and fighting elidibus, so the hinting about azem and emet selch being best friends was fresh in my mind. the emet selch stuff is where i really wished the game was more like a mass effect thing where you could direct the story. I felt like I could turn emet to the good side using dialogue options. I understand why the game isn't like that, and normally the writing is good enough I don't mind, but that was one situation where I felt like I could score a diplomacy victory.
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Jan 9, 2021 09:54
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juggalo baby coffin posted:the emet selch stuff is where i really wished the game was more like a mass effect thing where you could direct the story. I felt like I could turn emet to the good side using dialogue options. I understand why the game isn't like that, and normally the writing is good enough I don't mind, but that was one situation where I felt like I could score a diplomacy victory. You couldn't. You definitely couldn't. This isn't even a 'because they didn't give you the option', this is a man guilty of literally more genocides than we can count, whose only real priority is bringing back the people that you aren't, because he literally doesn't consider non-Ancients to be people. Nothing you ever could've said could ever have convinced him other than what he believed.
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Jan 9, 2021 10:13
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Well, nothing except prove you could bring an end to him.
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Jan 9, 2021 10:20
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Yeah, I felt for Emet Selch but the whole genocide deal is a bit of a deal breaker. Still, killing him really does feel like the best for him. He's lost pretty much everything he ever cared about, his homeland is gone and those things will never return. It felt a lot like a mercy killing and that's an outcome I thought to be satisfactory.
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Jan 9, 2021 11:00
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juggalo baby coffin posted:the emet selch stuff is where i really wished the game was more like a mass effect thing where you could direct the story. I felt like I could turn emet to the good side using dialogue options. I understand why the game isn't like that, and normally the writing is good enough I don't mind, but that was one situation where I felt like I could score a diplomacy victory. Emet-Selch created the Allagan Empire, whose main cultural exports are war crimes. To put it in dril terms: wint @dril posted:issuing correction on a previous linkshell transmission of mine, regarding the terror group Emet-Selch. you do not, under any circumstances, "gotta hand it to them"
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Jan 9, 2021 11:52
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NachtSieger posted:Emet-Selch created the Allagan Empire, whose main cultural exports are war crimes. See also: the Garlean Empire!
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