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I cried about four times over the course of the MSQ and outright bawled at least twice. Pretty impressive for a story that I last got an update for six months ago.
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Aug 12, 2020 02:45
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SpaceDrake posted:also wrt the zenos discussion in the main thread: frankly I'm also just happy to have an excuse for Matt McCooey to come back and consume ham through a microphone. Fandaniel is an absolute delight to listen to and I am looking forward to the sympathetic villains of Shadowbringers being contrasted by dudes who are just, straight up, no excuses, no sympathy, absolute loving monsters and played by talented actors who are having a ball with the production. A sign of how much their writing has improved since Stormblood is that they're deliberately pairing Zenos with an off-the-wall goofball type to serve as a straight man and provide contrast to his more dour, brooding personality. I think it's hard to stomach too much of a vollain whose primary personality trait is "terribly bored with everything," so having a secondary character who can do all the usual villainous antics lets you have your cake and eat it.
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Aug 12, 2020 02:54
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Emet mentioned in some of the side dialogue in 5.0 that the Sundered they deign to elevate to an empty Ascian office don't have the same dedication to the cause as the Unsundered, so Fandaniel not giving a gently caress about the original Ascian agenda is completely explicable.
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Aug 12, 2020 16:25
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Fister Roboto posted:Oh, I just realized that the shade who summons you back from the void is probably the shade of Emet-Selch, which is why he's doing his trademark sassy handwave. I thought it was Hydlothaeus for some reason. Yep. Y'shtola spells it out in the post-trial cutscene: Emet-Selch knew he was going to die, so he crafted the Azem crystal and ensured that Hythlodaeus would pass it on to you, knowing that you could use it to help put Elidibus to rest and end the latter's suffering.
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Aug 13, 2020 05:01
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hobbesmaster posted:Emet Selch in SHB also makes a bit more sense now. He was the last ancient after we cut through the others - Elidibus was a primal and wasn’t a real person anymore. It makes the entire plot of SHB some sort of elaborate suicide by WoL. I mentioned it in the other thread, but 5.3 contextualizes Emet's behaviour a lot more: he acts the way he does because he's fundamentally caught in an intractable dilemma. He comes to realize that you and your ilk really are worthy of being the new stewards of the star, but it's also impossible for him to give up his crusade, due both to the promise he made to his brethren, and the incalcuable sins committed in their name. He goads you on and invites you to witness the scale of his struggle to see if you really do have the drive and determination to forge your own way, because you're ultimately the only thing that can break the deadlock he finds himself in.
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Aug 13, 2020 05:11
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Drashin posted:Its a little late but I have always considered the Rift in FFXIV to be equivalent to the void in other Final Fantasy titles, ie the space between dimensions which is usually used for crossovers between the games like Gilgamesh and Dissidia. Gilgamesh can explicitly travel through the Rift in FFXIV, like in his other appearances, and it's stated to be what various other crossover characters have traversed to get to Eorzea, so it's likely meant to be the same thing.
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Aug 14, 2020 15:58
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erenoyo posted:The "Elidibus is a child" theory doesn't really convince me for one reason: why would a sitting member of the council of leadership for their society be a child? It's stated that one of the Convocation members resigned prior to the summoning of Zodiark, which could have well been the former Elidibus. The current Elidibus was thus picked because of the necessity of having someone innocent of outside desires, as the temperament of Zodiark would be directly affected by whoever performed the summoning.
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Aug 17, 2020 19:38
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Cythereal posted:That was Azem. The Hydaelen folks split off from the Amaurotines only after Zodiark was summoned, but Azem resigned her post and left before Zodiark was even summoned due to her objecting to the plan. You're right, my bad. I thought Hythlodaeus had said they'd always been separate from the Convocation, but I rechecked his dialogue and Azem did indeed split ways pre-Zodiark.
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Aug 17, 2020 19:42
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Nibble posted:The Bozja Incident feels oddly familiar, in that a similar event came up in the Crystal Tower raid story. Didn’t the Allagans try to harness some type of power that ended up being too much for the Tower and took out the surrounding area? More or less. The Fourth Umbral Calamity was caused by Xande attempting to call down the entire stored power of Dalamud into the Crystal Tower at once in order to tear open a Voidgate to fulfill his pact with the Cloud of Darkness. It proved too much for the Tower to bear, and the resulting energy spilled out, causing a world-shattering quake. Vermain fucked around with this message at 00:18 on Sep 10, 2020 |
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Sep 10, 2020 00:15
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Sorry, didn't mean to use spoiler tags up there. My brain's out to lunch today and I thought I was in the main thread. v v
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Sep 10, 2020 00:20
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Gaius isn't going to turn, both due to the logistical issue of him being a primary character in the Weapon questline (and they've been doing their damndest to avoid another Estinien situation), and due to him having no real reason to. The whole point of the Weapons questline is him realizing that his unthinking pursuit of nationalistic and militaristic virtue - values that he instilled in his foster children - has led to the transfiguration of his sons and daughters into actual monsters. Him pounding his fists on the rocks of Terncliff is the inflection point where he realizes that all the things he thought were good and just in the world were damnably wrong.
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Sep 14, 2020 18:22
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Chillgamesh posted:Sidestories like raids and trial stories are explicitly and specifically happening between the expansions. You already have continuity errors with "How is Thancred on the first right now when I just saw him leave and there's no way to come back?" if you wait until finishing MSQ to start Eden. It's becoming more and more rare for them to have large continuity gaps since HW, since, even if you give the player fair warning, it's jarring to have characters pop in with a decidedly different role than whatever they've had in the story going forwards. I far more expect him to become the leader of whatever remnant of Garleans remains post-6.X, given that he's the only Garlean - aside from Maximus - given any major screentime who's been given character development to the effect of realizing the wrongness of their past actions and the need to correct both their own course and that of their nation.
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Sep 14, 2020 18:34
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Zenos is a subtler, less ostentatious Weapon. He's a person who was "merged" with the pure, unfiltered essence of Garlean imperialism - the basest impulses of violence and dominance - and who came out the other end in a form only barely recognizable as human. The fact that he had his head filled with images of the end of the world since he was very young didn't help, but the outcome was more a consequence of his circumstances than his inherent character.
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Sep 14, 2020 18:57
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Hunter Noventa posted:I don't think he knows this, he's just doing it because he got done dirty by Lahabrea. What Gaius tells Valdeaulin is, "For millenia, mankind has danced to [the Ascians'] tune," which implies that he knows the Empire has been manipulated directly, if not necessarily founded by them.
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Sep 14, 2020 19:18
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Xarbala posted:I hope we get to fight in in 6.x. It'll likely be in 7.X. With the way they've laid everything out in the storyline, I'm betting that 6.X will involve finally wrapping up Garlemald - including dealing with Zenos and Zodiark once and for all - with 7.X then seguing into a new threat (Lavos/Jenova/whatever) over in the New World, where it supposedly originated. Vermain fucked around with this message at 06:48 on Sep 20, 2020 |
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Sep 20, 2020 06:45
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Sinteres posted:I think it's extremely unlikely that Zodiark is going to be dealt with or skipped over in patch content for this expansion. I don't think he'll be ignored, but they're not going to do much with him until 6.X. My reasoning is that they've been setting up Zenos to be the big showdown villain of the entire Ascian arc for a while now, and while I fully expect for him to follow through on his plan to absorb Zodiark, doing so in the pre-patch would immediately crank the stakes up to the max and not give a lot of room for the threat to grow during the 6.0 storyline.
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Sep 20, 2020 15:25
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The far more likely scenario is that she simply burns herself out completely helping you fight off Zenodiark. It'd put a nice, neat bow onto the whole storyline.
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Sep 20, 2020 22:40
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Chillgamesh posted:It's not even a secretly evil thing. Without Zodiark for her to keep in check, and likewise keeping her in check, she'd run rampant by her very nature as a primal. The whole aether-swilling thing the "standard" Primals do is a consequence of them having no aether to keep them around aside from ambient aether. Ones created by the Ancients - including Hydaelyn and Zodiark - were powered by the incredible aether of the Ancients' souls and therefore don't require it to survive.
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Sep 20, 2020 22:45
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erenoyo posted:Do we even really know what the Blessing of Light is? It grants you some vaguely-defined protections against the Ascians and various cutscene powers when appropriate. Sinteres posted:Emet-Selch suggested it could be that we're tempered by Hydaelyn just as he was by Zodiark, which would make us immune to tempering by other primals. He could have been wrong, but we do conveniently have anti-tempering technology now if we need to be reprogrammed. I don't think it'll be that blatant though. The Echo is what grants people protection from tempering. Given what Emet says about being tempered, it seems to be a simple matter of how powerful your soul is relative to the Primal's. The average Ancient was completely immune to tempering and could control Primals with ease, but Zodiark was so vastly above and beyond a standard Primal that even an Ancient soul stood no chance. Vermain fucked around with this message at 22:52 on Sep 20, 2020 |
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Sep 20, 2020 22:50
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Eimi posted:The ending shot of the Eden raid is real 'subtle'. It's just a rainbow-colored crystal forged by the undying bond of two young ladies. What's the big deal?
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Dec 8, 2020 20:37
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Eox posted:I'm expecting a sendoff in 5.5 with the festival they'd been talking about. Yeah, I think that's a fair bet. I've enjoyed the addition of the interstitial quests they've been adding for the raids. They help to add a bit of pacing for people who are playing patch-by-patch so that you're not waiting a full six months between story beats without something happening.
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Dec 13, 2020 21:48
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I think the simplest explanation is just that Emet's soul isn't powerful enough for him to avoid being tempered by something as strong as Zodiark, but it is powerful enough to keep him from completely losing all sense of self and rational thought. Ga Bu was able to keep himself from going completely over to Titan, so it's demonstrably possible for someone to maintain some free will while tempered, even if they're being compelled otherwise. Emet's whole demeanor speaks of someone who's long since lost faith in what he's doing, but feels bound to keep pushing forwards, even if he rationally realizes the futility of doing so.
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Dec 16, 2020 23:54
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Chillgamesh posted:Isn't Emet tempered by Zodiark in the exact same way the WoL is tempered by Hydaelyn? We are Hydaelyn's servant and we act in her best interest and in the best interests of her world, and Emet is much the same but in Zodiark's name, but we retain our sense of self and aren't total zombies like the Drowned or the Dreamers. Considering how cagey Emet is about the WoL being tempered, despite that being the perfect thing to needle them with, I think the question of whether the WoL is tempered or not is still up in the air.
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Dec 17, 2020 00:03
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bewilderment posted:Please let us use either the Azys Lla flagship or Nyunkrepf's Hope as a spaceship. It's gonna be the Lunar Whale, wherever it might be.
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Dec 22, 2020 08:47
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Strife posted:Remember that time the repeatedly abused native of a subjugated land who was sold into sex slavery rose to a position of authority, lost her memory, and was reminded of her upbringing by her psychopath brother, to ultimately murder her parents in a rage? Final Fantasy games have always walked a tightrope between serious subject matter and comical presentation. FFXII, for example, is a relatively grounded, serious work about the cost of war and the futility of revenge, but you fight a bunch of loving slapstick vegetables midway through it.
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Dec 23, 2020 19:46
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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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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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Eimi posted:To me in Emet in ShB, he's someone who does what he does because it's all he's been able to do for far too long and he's looking for a way out. It's why he wants to show all this information to you, he wants you to agree with him. This has been my reading of him for a while, too. I simply don't think his actions at Mt. Gulg make any sense as a "real" villain. He's telling you where he is, and giving you ample reason to find him, because he thinks you might be the one person who's genuinely capable of finally stopping him and good-hearted enough to continue to protect and shepherd the new world that he cannot bring himself to love.
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Jan 9, 2021 17:34
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I don't see Emet being tempered by Zodiark as "mind control." Like a lot of things in fantasy worlds like FFXIV, it's a reification of more abstract sentiments. When Emet and the rest of the Convocation summoned Zodiark, they necessarily infused it with their own fundamental desire: to save their people and their world at any cost. The tempering is, essentially, a manifestation of their mutual oath. They're bound until death to pursue that goal because of the promise they made to eachother, a promise that, in this case, is cemented by the magic of the world of the story. Zodiark is less an evil mind control god making them do bad things, and more the representation of that single-minded oath made real. The tragedy is the same: that, even though Emet has begun to realize the hollowness of his crusade, and Elidibus has begun to forget entirely what the crusade was for in the first place, they cannot help but continue to follow the path they set themselves on. It's Macbeth stuff.
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Jan 30, 2021 00:09
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It's also been implicitly set up as the next major villain for 7.0, given its origin in the completely unexplored New World and otherwise unresolved nature, so it kinda has to be something you can apply physical violence to.
Vermain fucked around with this message at 16:38 on Feb 1, 2021 |
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Feb 1, 2021 16:34
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Honestly, the characterization in all of the Bozja stuff is surprisingly strong for being told in so many little fragments. Misija runs along the same vein as Fordola and Yotsuyu, but she hits altogether differently: she's still motivated in part by vengeance, but she also has deeply-held political convictions that inform her decisions. She just doesn't see the inequality and oppression that marred old Bozja vanishing, no matter how well-intentioned Bajsaljan might be, and thinks that tearing it all down and starting over with Gabranth's new nation is the only way to assure that her past doesn't become someone else's future. It's an entirely understandable motivation. Mikoto's sympathies towards Misija also make a lot more sense now that I know about her past with Moenbryda. I think she sees a lot of her old friend in Misija, which is both why the betrayal seemed to sting so much more than it ought to have considering how little time they've spent together, and why Mikoto seems so intent on not killing the woman who betrayed her, kidnapped her, and stole a portion of her Echo. Vermain fucked around with this message at 00:43 on Feb 3, 2021 |
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Feb 3, 2021 00:41
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Gunnhildr's very clearly meant to echo Aztec/Mayan iconography, especially with the headdress/shawl, the oddly delicate hand gestures her and the robot make, and the blocky, geometric design of the magic circle on her back. Her whole design strongly resembles the more fantastical interpretations of Pakal's sarcophagus lid, which is often used by ancient astronaut cranks to claim that Pakal is, in fact, riding on a rocket ship or some other kind of otherworldly mechanical device.
Vermain fucked around with this message at 00:19 on Feb 4, 2021 |
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Feb 4, 2021 00:17
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It's a testament to the strength of their writing and presentation that the scene of an ageless, immortal wyrm being freed from shackles both physical and metaphorical isn't dramatically undercut by a flying pig taking center stage.
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Apr 14, 2021 01:39
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thetoughestbean posted:I definitely got the vibe that there was some political reason he disowned them, although I was less kind in my reasoning My suspicion is that (5.5+) Labyrinthos is, in fact, the failsafe plan that Sharlayan is cooking up to survive the Final Days, and the reason that they're being actively hostile to Eorzea is that they believe that everyone'll shift gears and try to conquer Sharlayan if they let slip that they have a lifeboat. Fourchenault's theatrics and disowning of Alphinaud and Alisaie is a deliberate attempt to keep them away from Sharlayan, knowing both that they'll never give up on Eorzea - even though, as a Forum member, he and his family are likely guaranteed a spot in Labyrinthos - and knowing that, if they keep poking their nose into Sharlayan's business further, it could very well put them in grave danger. Recall the 50+ AST questline; the Sharlayans do not gently caress around with people they consider enemies of the state, and Alphinaud and Alisaie digging too deep and blowing the lid on Labyrinthos would absolutely get them hunted down.
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May 26, 2021 02:44
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Galaga Galaxian posted:Now that he can’t fight (physical battles) anymore he’s free to find what he has a true talent for. They're just gonna do a repeat of Jean Havoc's change of career.
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May 26, 2021 20:04
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I've been helping a friend go through the MSQ recently, and I'm continually impressed with how much they remember the game's minor characters and how dedicated they are to trying to maintain the consistency of ambient dialogue. The corrupted crystals guy in Camp Drybone talks about how the Scions traveled to the First and managed to make it back (since I believe he was one of the guys who was being marshaled for his expertise pre-5.0), and Carvallain mentions that Garlean ships are fast disappearing and the Krakens are slowly shifting more and more into honest trade.
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Aug 3, 2021 00:26
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SirPhoebos posted:Have they ever discussed who Zenos got the echo from? It's implied he's always had it, at least in a limited form, and that his Resonant power is just him getting extra juiced up to be closer to a proper Ascian. I think they would've mentioned if his Echo template came from anyone special.
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Nov 2, 2021 00:36
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Orcs and Ostriches posted:And what Zenos had prior doesn't seem like the echo, per se, but the opposite. He's always had images of the end of days. But said images didn't seem to unlock anything. I think the implication is that he had the Echo, but that whatever the flaw was in the Garlean genome that made them unable to use magic prevented him from taking it further.
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Nov 2, 2021 00:45
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Cleretic posted:Why would they do that if they were already confident enough with the process to have used it on Zenos? It doesn't make sense. As Malus mentions in his dialogue during the Fordola cutscene, he was laughed out of Garlemald proper as a crank, and only managed to get Zenos interested in his theories. It's entirely explicable that Zenos would happily submit to a mad science experiment if it meant he could become even stronger.
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Nov 2, 2021 02:14
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Nibble posted:I don't remember this, when did it come up? When Zenos is on the Garlean ship with Fandaniel in one of the post-MSQ cutscenes (possibly 5.1?), he mentions having been haunted by dreams of a burning city and the end of the world ever since he was young.
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Nov 2, 2021 02:21
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