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Yep, I was kinda going 'huh' on the whole Sundering thing. But at least thinking back on it, I recognized that Venat seemed to very much consider it a desperate last gambit, and the scene where she was pleading with the Zodiark worshippers to please don't do the 'sacrifice the new life to bring back the dead' was her trying to find a way out of that possibility. if they went 'Hm, you know what? Alright. Our dead friends wouldn't want the innocent life be snuffed out just to be brought back. Let us rebuild this world together, praise Zodiark' Venat presumably would have not engaged the Sundering Contingency. And she does acknowledge in the end that she caused a shitton of deaths too.
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Dec 13, 2021 18:47
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Also, regarding an earlier point that Hydaelin is given the 'she was right' thing. I feel that is perhaps a bit nuanced. In that Hydaelin, at her exist, engages with the suffering she caused. While Emet, even without the Tempering, even having full knowledge of how it played out, clearly states that he feels he made the right decisions. So I think the game does offer some shades of gray there.
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Dec 13, 2021 18:55
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You know, one of the results of Zodiark and Hydaelyn no longer being in the picture, is that there is no longer a 'Zodiark gets free, the Ascians make their wish. Eveyrone dies to bring back the old days' scenario. How would you try to do an Unsundering in a non genocidal way. I mean, if you could have travel between the Source and the Reflections, could you evacuate the people of said Reflection on a voluntary basis, then try to manage 'Calamities' in a way that avoids loss of life? Or could you try to have the Aether from a Reflection slowly drain back to the Source to make it less abrupt? Making sure that people of the Reflection being absorbed have ample time to transport their society to the Source, making sure you don't wipe out their legacy. But then again, that's kind of a hard ask, right?
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Dec 13, 2021 19:02
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Regy Rusty posted:Yeah but the Sundering itself isn't the cause of that. Venat does not originate suffering. She says that because she chose to risk a world of suffering and pain rather than allow the ancients to wipe out the planet while seeking an idealized past that didn't exist and could never be reclaimed, or allowing Meteion's song of despair and oblivion to end all suffering and pain forever with death. I think there is a fair amount of suffering and pain that is a direct result of the Sundering. Death and infirmity by old age. Death and suffering by because Creation Magics are no longer there. The Pre-Sundering world was not Perfect, but the Post Sundering world was worse... but the Sundering was the only way to avoid a mass genocide of newly created innocent life...
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Dec 13, 2021 19:07
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Lord_Magmar posted:I think the likely best solution would be something to do with the afterlife. If you can manage to get all the disparate streams back into a single sea, you could simply wait until everyone’s soul rejoins naturally from the shards and source dying on their own and their souls rejoining in the Afterlife. Imagine if you will, the WoL dies, whilst the soul is drifting around waiting to reincarnate, it finds shard of itself and rejoins together with zero suffering or loss of life beyond “natural” loss. It then reincarnates as 9/14ths of an ancient soul. Eventually you might start getting 13/14ths of a soul reincarnated without destroying the shards at all. The real issue becomes the 13th shard, the World of Darkness. I always had kind of expected that the kid from the 13th might actually be a fragment of Azem. In which case the WoL might be the ONLY person who could get fully Unsundered... Unless somehow, the 13th gets unfucked. Would that even be possible?
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Dec 13, 2021 19:08
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Regy Rusty posted:The post sundering world being worse than the pre-sundering world is exactly the Emet-Selch perspective and one that I think Shadowbringers pretty categorically rejected. I feel that Shadowbringers is more 'The people in the Post-sundering World's lives have values, and you can't just wipe them all out to get to your 'better world' and claim a moral high ground. If Emet came up with the. 'Alright, here is the plan for a slow 'rejoining' letting all these people once again enjoy long lives and increased abilities, without doing any wiping out, it'd be pretty drat awesome.
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Dec 13, 2021 19:20
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Regy Rusty posted:I just think that stuff like this is an absolutely nonsensical analogy. The good that the Sundering did is well established in the story, so comparing it to something pointlessly harmful like chopping off an arm doesn't really make any sense. While the Sundering did prevent a great evil, the consequence of it was that people were vastly reduced, were cursed to suffer old age, and all the misery and death coming with it, and destroyed the remains of a culture, as well as the power that they held. I absolutely understand why she did it. And it's clear she's aware enough of the hurting she's going to cause that if she saw an alternative, she would have taken it, but to say that she didn't cause any suffering is incorrect I feel. Every suffering caused by old age, and every death by it is a direct consequence of her choice.
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Dec 13, 2021 19:27
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TGLT posted:I mean, just Zodiark's presence alone is having him deal with their problems for them. Zodiark's function was to provide a shield against Meteion's song, a way to ignore her and pretend that problem just didn't exist. Now maybe they'd eventually have ripped that band-aid off themselves I don't know, but it definitely didn't sound like it. Their propensity to go die when they've fulfilled their "purpose" doesn't speak well to that. I feel that the 'Ideal Situation' for Hydaelin would be. 'Alright, well, we've staunched the bleeding with the Zodiark Solution. But obviously, this is not something that we can keep that way. Let us build society up again, together with this new life, and seek what caused this Final Days things. After that, we could seek to find an ethical way to bring back our loved ones... or learn to accept their loss, and move on with our life.' I feel that if that was on the table, we'd not have had the Sundering. But there were a bunch of traumatized folks very understandably going 'Nope, nope, just... please rewind the clock on this Zodiark. Everything back to how it was please, we do NOT want to deal with this poo poo'
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Dec 13, 2021 19:32
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Also, considering that it is revealed that the Tempering thing is a deliberate corruption of Creation Magics done in order to bring about the Rejoining, neither Zodiark nor Hydaelin were presumably created with 'Tempering' as a thing. So any worship the Ancients and Ascians give to Zodiark is just plain old normal one, and they can make normal decisions regarding him later. Edit: You know, I think that the 'Fault' of the Ancients that made the Sundering Hydaelin's go to was pretty in theme. When faced with Horrible Things, they surrendered to Despair, did not have what it took to accept the loss and the pain and struggle to make it better. Instead, they sought to escape it. To just throw innocent lives at the problem and not think about it any more. And the theme of Endwalker seems to be that when poo poo is hosed, you gotta deal with it. It doesn't make it good that poo poo is hosed, but don't go either giving up, or turning away from it. Shogeton fucked around with this message at 19:43 on Dec 13, 2021 |
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Dec 13, 2021 19:39
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Now that it's done, when Zenos got the nickname 'Viator' which is Latin for Traveller, I actually started thinking that he somehow was the 'other parts of Azem' somehow, and there was gonna be some kind of 'Fusion through battle' and we'd end up 'fully Unsundered', though perhaps briefly.
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Dec 13, 2021 19:46
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Raelle posted:Again, we don't know that. What Zodiark needs is aether - he's a primal, and primals can be summoned using crystals of aether alone. Ancient souls were the huge and immediate bundle of aether that they needed for the initial summoning because they needed it to happen RIGHT NOW to stop the apocalypse. But the soulless creations of the Ancients - indeed, basically everything in the world, according to lore - is made of aether. If they had been able to gradually swap that out for the souls, once again, to me, that's not even a choice. You do it as soon as possible, even if you come to the 'ideal' answer of Zodiark needing to stick around as a temporary measure until they come up with a more permanent solution. And saying "they probably" and "I suspect" and "eventually would have" isn't good enough for me when it comes to either a) leaving 75% of the Ancient civilization in a purgatory that goes straight against their beliefs about a meaningful death, and b) wiping them out and ending their civilization. Execution, not premise. I figure that the scene showcasing the situation right before the Sundering shows that the Ancients weren't really in a frame of mind to go 'Alright, let us nurture life sustainably, and just constantly send a stream of non sentient Aether to Zodiark, and get our sacrifices out. One of them every year or so, while slowly rebuilding our society on the ruins. They didn't want to deal with years and decades of losing their loved ones. They didn't want to have to deal with rebuilding on the ruins. They wanted their old lives back. Now.
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Dec 13, 2021 20:19
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You know, ironically, I believe that a Zodiark filled with souls who so much cherished life as a whole, even in the midst of all the despair that was unleashed on them, that they sacrificed themselves to save the lives of their loved ones, supported by the survivors stubbornly rebuilding on the ashes she caused and rising up again after she knocked them down, and then would go to find her would have been something that might have actually dealt with the issue.
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Dec 13, 2021 20:22
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I think that might be why they're relatively comfortable with the 'Huh, yeah, this species doesn't seem to work out, time to pull the plug' Even with themselves, they tend to have a view of 'Hey, if you don't really have a job left to do, time to get your reset and return to the Lifestream', so in a way, they treat Familiars in the same way they treat themselves. (With, you know, the notable exception that Familiars don't get to consent) But yeah, it is definitely the moral blind spot of the whole society. Something that Hermes might have made some real impact there. I mean, Emet probably would back him in a way. His reaction to Hermes making clear what he thought of it was to tell him to join the Convocation. Even if he doesn't agree, he clearly feels it's a perspective the ruling body has a place for.
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Dec 13, 2021 20:33
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Jetrauben posted:I think the essential point here is that to Ancients their purpose is not a job, it's a joy. It's not "you no longer provide utility to society" - and notably although Ancient society natters on about how they need to be frugal and harmonious, there's plenty of ancients engaging in whimsical excess and decadence, from Mitron and Loghrif's students cheerfully following their relationship drama to ancients lounging around relaxing and enjoying themselves or the frankly silly trend-chasing of creating new cool shark species just for the sake of making the world cooler. It is, in a more concrete sense, their life's work. They stick around as long as they find meaning and happiness in life and decide to have a reset when they no longer do. Yeah, I'm reminded of a certain series, though the series' name is a Spoiler. The Good Place does it with their vision of Heaven. You basically hang around until you feel you're done, and then your existence end, and you become... well... goodness, inspiring someone else in life to do a good thing.
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Dec 13, 2021 20:41
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A small thing most people probably noticed and might have been mentioned here. But I love how in the credits, the first music you hear is just the music of your starting City.
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Dec 13, 2021 21:13
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Kyrosiris posted:I seriously cannot conceive of being so self-absorbed that I would ever say "yes, I'm going to genocide all this new poo poo that my friends willingly gave their lives to see arise just because I miss them". That's just so utterly incomprehensible to me. In defense of those people. If I was sitting in the ruins and ashes of everything I held dear, having lost almost all my friends, and there was some way I might get them back, get my friends back, maybe get my world back, get our old life back, then I cannot say that I wouldn't be tempted, even if the sacrifice is pretty drat great.
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Dec 13, 2021 21:21
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Nero going to finally make his move. Was biding his time all along.
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Dec 13, 2021 21:43
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I'm kind of still wondering what is so special about the Heart of Sabiq that it's the song that got played at the last battle. Or is it just a reference to the Boss fight of ARR?
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Dec 13, 2021 21:46
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Exactly. Though apparently even their Scholars couldn't quite understand it. Which suggests it's Ancient Tech. Or possibly Omega Tech then I suppose?
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Dec 13, 2021 21:52
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ImpAtom posted:To be honest I'm getting more weirded out by the people who basically seem to insist on reading the story as "If you take any action to stop mass murder you are actually the baddie because you are making people suffer by not letting them commit mass murder." I think that sometimes the game does give a vague sense of 'Suffering in itself is actually a good, if you don't suffer from lack of something, you'll fall into despair' and that can influence folks to see Hydaelin's decision as a 'She sundered because she felt 'immortality and that Power were harmful in themselves, and it was better for mankind to be humbled and brought low' and not the 'The way the Power was being used was immoral and self-defeating, and she saw no other ways to fight than to break that power and the world, and with it, introduce the suffering of aging and 'normal' frailty to people who hadn't had that yet, which was an unfortunate side" effect of that' But yeah, I think perhaps the lesson here is kind of like in Stormblood. By all means, fight for what you believe in. It can be worth it, and the prize might be worth the price. But do not ignore the price. Do not look away from the suffering that was caused by the methods you used to fight. Which is why it was important that Hydaelin acknowledged the particular forms of suffering she introduced to people, and expresses regret over it, even if she feels she did the right thing in her situation.
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Dec 14, 2021 06:25
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Raelle posted:That's not the point and you know it. Yes, Venat has a group. And they were a significant minority compared to the vast majority who opposed her. If you want me to tweak my wording, then fine - Venat's small group, with her at the head, decided it was their place to cast judgment on their entire race, against their will. I feel that this is less a case of 'I judge you worthy of your punishment' and more of a 'An act that is both abhorrent and long-term harmful is being committed, and the only solution I see is something that is also abhorrent but less so' And one can argue whether her take on that was right. Emet seems to stand by his decision at the end of everything. But I think portraying it as Venat going 'All of you DESERVE to suffer old age and die for what you did' is not supported by what you see.
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Dec 14, 2021 06:35
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I suppose so. The defense why she couldn't do that made my eyebrows go a bit up, but I rolled with it for the story. Basically, Hermes' active collaboration was a requirement for anyone to even survive the Final Days, and she wasn't sure if revealing what happened might end up with him taking sides against them or not left in a position to help, leading to the Final Days just straight up killing everyone the first time. Because yeah. If not for that one, the most convenient way seems to be 'Hey guys, good news, I was there during the Memory Wipe' but escaped. So there's this huge disaster coming. We should take the time we have to prepare our response and have a measured debate about what sacrifices are and are not acceptable to perform, and emotionally prepare our population for all of this so they won't start performing desperate actions.
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Dec 14, 2021 06:46
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Which is kinda 'eh' because with G'Raha Tia they very much had a 'Oh yeah, you absolutely CAN change things around' thing. But I feel that Square Enix uses the Chrono Trigger theory of Time Travel. Don't worry too much about it, do cool stuff with it, when you're being inconsistent sprinkle some fancy words on it.
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Dec 14, 2021 06:55
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One thought I had when I was turned from 'vague spirit without any way to influence people' to 'Oh yeah, here you go, influence away, my good WoL' is that suddenly there's the question about avoiding the Final Days. Because I thought initially that they were going to do the thing where the WoL would only be able to watch, learn things but be otherwise helpless to avoid the coming disaster. But instead, they absolutely were put in a 'G'raha Tia' position. And yes, if they somehow HAD managed to pull a G'raha and avoid the final days... they would have prevented immeasurable amounts of death... on a galactic scale in turns out. But they'd have given up everyone they had ever known. None of them would ever have existed. And it's not really an ethical question but man, I can imagine that a Warrior of Light being 100% super stressed when they're made to spill the beans.
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Dec 14, 2021 07:22
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Lord_Magmar posted:Yeah he says that, but also admits you probably can’t change anything anyway because of how the travel will send less than a shade of you into the past. Well yeah, but the shade thing gets nixed about 20 seconds in. So I feel that you ARE in a G'raha Tia situation and if things had gone differently you could have created an alternate 'No Final Days, No Sundering' timeline.
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Dec 14, 2021 07:25
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Eimi posted:I wanted nothing more than to stay in the past. Yep. Though try not to think about the original timeline where the Warrior of Light went to check out something in the First... and never came back.
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Dec 14, 2021 07:30
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Also, there is this guy Decimus who's like 'Even now, the words of Lord Quintus serve as an inspiration' and I'm like... What? Like, that kinda bothers me more than anything with Hydaelin and Zodiark, the fact that Quintus is made to be 'oh well, not so bad'. What did Quintus do or say that gave him any redemptive value? He sacrificed his own people's wellbeing on a stupid, pride filled and treacherous attack on the people that were trying to help them, and what that turned out to be impossible, but he could still be there to be a unifying force to help rebuild, decided to gently caress off.
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Dec 14, 2021 07:51
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Yeah, I think that as it is, Quintus will become a 'legend' but to the Garleans who feel like 'they totally could have turned this around if not for perfidious traitors turned against the noble Garlean Empire' But yeah, Nerva might be a good shout. Perhaps combined in a way with re-establishing the Republic. And yeah, Garlemald is going to be interesting. Especially with Corvus being a 'location of interest'. Because as I understand it, Corcus, which is absolutely A+ kind of land, is where the Garleans originated, before they were driven to the lovely north.
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Dec 14, 2021 08:12
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Yeah. One of the things that made me yell at the screen is that you have some Garleans go 'But why all this war? Why not have happy unification and live in harmony' And I go 'If you want happy unification, how about consistently accepting non-Pureblood Garleans in positions of power instead of being racist shitheads. You didn't unify poo poo. You very much kept the division alive. Except it was a division between masters and slaves. That ain't unification. That's just 'war with only one side allowed to carry weapons' Which of course, is the point. But man....
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Dec 14, 2021 08:30
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Man, now I'm thinking about a hypothetical WoL who manages to act enough to prevent the Final Days from being quite as destructive, and thus gets stuck in the past. Very much acknowledged a hero, with Emet, Venat and heck, even their former incarnation very much trying to make them feel better. But much like Emet, they are someone out of their own time, having lost everyone they held dear. And worse, because they did it themselves. But of course, they had to right? "To ignore the plight of those one might conceivably save is not wisdom─it is indolence."
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Dec 14, 2021 10:28
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Yeah, and Emet very much calls out that lying is pretty much impossible in a world with the Echo. So I don't think 'they wouldn't believe her' is the issue. More a 'The only way we know the Final Days are survived is if Hermes does his level best to assist, if Hermes gets removed, it's entirely possible they won't live long enough to summon Zodiark.'
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Dec 14, 2021 13:00
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I think one thing to keep in mind is that for a lot of these people Sharlayan is 'home', either their original one, or a second one. Estinien and the WoL are the only one of the Scions who don't really have any ties to that place. Still, their hostility made me wonder why we're 'basing' ourselves from it. When I heard that we were taking the absolutely vital 'no getting Tempered amulets' and we were going to keep them in the place where the local government is pretty hostile towards us and disapproves of our meddling, I was pretty nervous.
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Dec 14, 2021 17:51
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I like to think that Forchenault has all the same mistakes as ARR Alphinaud. Well meaning, but arrogant, dismissive and secretive, and thinking he's so much cleverer than all these stupid, dumb Eorzeans. So ARR Alphinaud makes perhaps a lot more sense with that in mind.
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Dec 14, 2021 18:38
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One Chekov's gun that is still hanging on the wall btw is Y'shotla's eyes, and the fact that she's shortening her lifespan when she's using them to see Aether. Not even a mention of it in her epilogue. I wonder if that's some kind of plan SE has abandoned?
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Dec 14, 2021 22:14
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Pigbuster posted:Zenos' arc was realizing that plot was getting in the way of a truly satisfying fight, so his best option was to help us take finish off the plot so there was nothing standing in the way. And in the end he's still somewhat disappointed because the fight couldn't go on literally forever, because the story demands we move on. His entire character stands as an opposition to the story in general, so bringing him back into it would be really silly. Give him an extreme/ultimate trial/1v1 Dual, he'd be happiest there. The lesson that Zenos learned was to let players who do care about the story watch their cutscenes and not try to start the fight before.
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Dec 16, 2021 06:44
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Honestly, the tank rolequest made me all the more convinced that the Elementals should no longer be heeded as any kind of authority. Kan-E-Senna was basically pleading and begging them to do something about it, and the Elementals for the most part were 'nope, nope, deal with this'. I mean, the one claim you have to your authority is that you're some kind of defender of balance and stability in the Twelveswood, and during the crisis where every part of the Source is rallying together, the Elementals are 'Nooooo! Screw you, we need to protect ourselves' until they get coaxed and guilted into it. What I'm saying is, I want the Ixali, the Duskwights, the Miqo'te Tribes of the moon and those various poaches set up a new 'gently caress the Elementals' nation. Gelmorra 2 perhaps, but less underground.
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Dec 16, 2021 16:40
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Countblanc posted:The elementals are, for all intents and purposes, capricious gods who exist solely in the Twelveswood. You can't really decide that you don't want to see them as authorities without getting your aether exploded as long as you stay in the forest. Oh, I don't think it's dumb writing. But ever since the Calamity, they have very much tumbled down the power ladder. And while before the Calamity, I can appreciate 'it's either listen to them or go splodey' in the current time, they seem to lack the power to enforce their will, and I don't think they have any kind of moral authority. I don't expect the story to go that way, since they seem to consider the Elementals 'okay-ish' but reading through Sanguin's LP reminds me of how inhuman and callous the Elementals are. And I don't particularly rate them high on the 'moral leader' scale. So I wouldn't mind them getting them permanently depowered and no longer governing the Shroud.
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Dec 16, 2021 17:15
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Exactly, Zodiark, at the start is a force of people so loving their world they're giving their all to maintain and restore life
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Dec 16, 2021 19:44
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Regarding a 'Sundering' thing. People ARE right that Venat basically killed every living being when she did the Sundering, and then letting them get rebirthed in a lesser form. The reason why that might still be a morally superior position to letting them get sacrificed is that sacrificing them to Zodiark isn't just killing, it's trapping them inside that god, without even the relief of this being something you're doing out of your own free will to help you deal with it. No, it's just new life, curious and eager, only to be immediately locked into a bleak existence they do not understand for the rest of eternity. And yeah. Cephas feels like he's got some good insights there. I don't feel like this 'shortcoming' was necessarily an inevitable part of it. I think it would have been POSSIBLE that if things had gone somewhat differently, they might have found the fortitude to go. 'No, we can't do this. Our sacrificed friends are gone, and we need to build things up, and go off to face this threat so that our sacrificed friends might come back'. It would be traumatic and harsh for them, but they might have done it. And in a way, their plan to sacrifice new life to just press the 'undo' button on all the sacrifice showcases them being unwilling to face and deal with loss, regret and despair. Which is something the game is telling us we have to do. It's not that those are good things. But when they happen, you have to face them, not run from them.
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Dec 17, 2021 08:44
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Raelle posted:Yeah, as has been said multiple times, I think everyone here gets the intent of the text. The execution/convincing us of the intent is another matter entirely. I feel how that hits is a subjective thing? I mean, the pre-sundering scene feels like it's very 'metaphorical' and going into all the things that Venat tried would kill the pacing here and sounds like a full story all of its own. But I feel that in a metahporical sense. We were shown Venat desperately pleading to not go through with this, being rebuffed, and the other Ascians turning their back on her and getting ready to ask Zodiark to do the thing. I take that as a represenation of 'Venat tried really hard, did not do the Sunderling lightly or go 'Well, the weird future person said I was gonna do it, so I was gonna do it' It very much felt to me that up to that moment of pleading she really hoped she would through to them, and she wouldn't feel the need to go through with the sundering'. How exactly the pleas and tricks happened over the unknown amount of time Venat had between our leaving and the Sundering, we do not know exactly, but that scene suggests she was not eager to perform the Sundering, and used all methods to avoid it, except the ones she felt would bring about Worst Case of 'Everyone dies' (Which sadly includes anything with prevents Hermes from being in a position to assist, and so she can't just spill the beans) Huh... this means that in a situation where Hermes gets conked on the head before doing the memory wipe and just gets arrested or something, you get in a no win situation, since it might well be impossible to actually survive the Final Days long enough to do the Zodiark Thing.
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Dec 17, 2021 09:41
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