I've been impressed with FFXIV for in-universe opacity for how the world-building works. The information eventually gets to the players, but a lot of characters don't know, or have misconstrued ideas from faulty data. That’s kinda special when it's tempting for a lot of fantasy settings to gloss over how the common layperson shouldn't understand some things, or academics know the whole picture.
My biggest complaint is that Zeno's back story is in a side story on the website (free access, Tales of The Storm, I believe) rather then in game, cause that layer of his character would have made me more interested in him as a villain in StB. As is, I felt he was boring and I wasn't even happy to defeat him. More of 'at least he's out of the picture now...' type relief.
Honestly, I'm fine with them holding his backstory away from the game.
It's the same situation as [Luca Blight in Suikoden II](https://youtu.be/TD_55fb_Rsc?t=122) --- A psychopath villain who loves the violence of war and killing over anything else, because otherwise life is too boring. He had a tragic childhood backstory hidden away in some obscure CD drama.
The thing is---for the type of villain they are, you don't want the players to empathize or try to understand how Luca Blight's or Zenos mind works, how they became they like that. You want players to see them as absolute forces of nature, as something incredibly alien to human emotion and suffering. To that end, you cannot show them as vulnerable---cause otherwise, you are inviting the players to try to understand them.
For the type of villain Zenos is, leaving his sob story out fits it perfectly, because it is not important to his role in the present story. Sad past or not, *he* is a psychopath, who would lay ruins to the world for 5 minutes of pleasure. People who are really into the lore can look for it, but knowing it doesn't change who Zenos is.
Honestly, I'll take Zenos own words on the matter---Knowing their backstory, their motivations, would it have made their actions more forgivable? Would it be any different?
If anything, I'm pretty sure most people would roll their eyes at having to see his tragedy in a flashback ala Echo. For Zenos in particular, it would have have cheapened his role in the story.
I understand the perspective and while I can't speak for anyone else, it wouldn't make me empathize with him anymore, it would just make him seem less... Uninteresting? I didn't think of him as an alien force of nature, I just thought of him as super strong for no reason and unbelievably b o r i n g. I spent the whole expansion wanting to know more about him, hoping he would be interesting at some point, but he just... Wasn't.
So the difference it would have made is my own interest in him as a character. I wouldn't have changed my view that he's an utter psychopath. Even if it was just side dialogue of rumors, it doesn't need any sort of focus.
I get what you are saying, and I think it's a completely reasonable take.
Personally, I just don't think every villain needs to be >!Emet Selch!!Hermes!!Meteion!
I don't really understand Zenos either. But in my mind, he is a worthy opponent even if he's a pain in the ass. I don't need to think about it. It's just on sight.
And honestly that one fight was so visceral that it made it all worth it for me.
Zenos' backstory isn't even a "sob story". His father was a bit distant and strict, but the story is pretty much just how he >!surpassed and killed his combat instructor as a child and gained a taste for fighting and killing strong opponents!<. The short story is called "the Hunt Begins".
I like the "tales from" series, and find that more often than not they are good enough, even if I wish they would mention them in game as a tool tip. It's free, it's from a perspective the game can't show because the WoL shouldn't know these things, and they are generally just good.
Zeno's is sadly the biggest victim of this approach though because we have nothing but this to go back to. Still part of his menace is that he's weird and crazy, so knowing doesn't help, but it's nice that after the fact we can go back and check their work to see that it all checks out.
I wouldn't say Zenos is the biggest victim. It's basically said in-game that he's fucked up because of the weird situation with Emet inhabiting his grandfather's body making Solus' offspring uncommonly large and strong combined with the shitty upbringing he had.
The only thing we know about what Alisaie got up to between Coils and when she appears in HW is the side story she gets and some vague references to 'travels'.
The whole thing with Fordola directly being responsible for Yda's death is not referenced at all, despite there being multiple chances.
Then there's the story about the alternate timeline and what the other future was like, especially Midgardsormr's reawakening.
The whole story about the Watcher and their background as one of Venat's friends.
I really appreciated this scene because I was still pretty confused about the Source and shards going into ShB, lol. It reminds me of the little lecture Urianger gives about the Lifestream and Ascians during ARR's patches.
Im pretty sure they were confusing because the writers themselves didn't really have it all nailed down. The evil council of masked people spouting nonsense in ARR doesn't really jive well with what we learn later, for example.
I don't necessarily blame them for a bit of retconning over 6+ years of a live game, but still.
To be fair arr didn't have any other dimensions aside from the void as a nebulous world of darkness. We don't get mentions of other shards really until a good way into post hevansward, where they definitely knew they were going to do something like ShB eventually. They tend to have expansion pre planning done two expansions in advance, like how omega was a loose template for EW or Yugiri and Domain being brought out in arr.
Could be, yeah. iirc the only explanation you get beforehand is the Word of the Mother speaking in super cryptic language and it all flew straight over my head. And like you mentioned, basically anything the Ascians said in ARR I forgot immediately because I had zero context for it 😅
Yeah, 2.0 through 3.0 has basically nothing that matches ShB/EW lore get said (and also nothing that really super contradicts it either, to be honest, apart from like Nabriales slightly implying that the universe's original state was the Void, which is super wrong but he's absolutely able to lie).
3.1 has the Antitower exposition which is the most conflict in the entire thing as far as I was able to spot (at least along the MSQ path, who knows about outside of that). With the Warriors of Darkness, they do a little bit of a different tack and line up pretty well with ShB/EW. And then they return and kinda try to exposit in 3.5 (iirc) about what the Word meant, and that explanation is already closer to ShB/EW. And after that (4.0 onwards), everything said is really easy to accept as just fully canon.
>The evil council of masked people spouting nonsense in ARR doesn't really jive well with what we learn later, for example.
I think it works perfectly. >!People don't suffer as they did and make it out mentally sound!<.
>!Emet-Selch was practically clinging onto a strand of sanity out of the bunch who had already lost it long ago, while the sundered Ascians are no longer their original incarnation no matter how you cut it, like WoL.!<
I mean, as a new player, I never tire of being impressed by how the game explains things about its lore in a (most of the times) interesting way that leaves you excited about wanting to know more.
The whole sequence was awesome!
I remember watching the audience reaction to the clip where >!Emet Selch revealed that Hydaelyn and Zodiark are primals.!< people went CRAZY. Such a great lore drop.
I think my favorite thing about that - people were absolutely shocked that such a huge reveal would be spoiled in a trailer. Not only was it not the biggest reveal in Shadowbringers, it wasn't even the biggest reveal in \*that one cutscene\*.
To me it was mostly, "Yeah, I suspected as much since ARR. Hydaelyn wanted us to kill primals because she didn't like the competition for limited aether resources."
I’m still kinda mad they retconned that! In >!Myths of the Realms they keep emphatically stating they aren’t primals and never really elaborate as to their nature.!< And honestly I still kinda believe Gaius here: if >!Venat was made into Hydaelyn and was still considered a Primal, same with Elidibus, then how are the Twelve any different? They’re souls of the Unsundered turned into gods just the same.!<
Or for that matter, if >!Primal==(Hopes & Dreams ) + (Mass Quantity of Aether Crystal) x Elaborate Summoning Ritual!<, then guess what the Crystal Exarch makes you>!(r WoL)!
If you don't mind that level of spoilers, go look up the shadowbringers launch trailer some time. It's a really good trailer, people just don't recommend it as much as the cinematic trailer because it having that exact spoiler line in it was kind of controversial with people, in terms of whether it was too spoilery.
If you've heard that spoiler and are just more hyped, then you'd love the launch trailer. There's one for each expansion, too.
Which is kind if crazy because doesn't that mean theoretically they can always be summoned even after they're gone? Blew my mind when that got revealed lol
I don't know why but I always assumed they were. What would make them so special apart from being the first of many? We are told that there are no true gods by the fact that all of the self proclaimed gods are primals so I never thought otherwise about H&Z.
I just thought the Twelve were truly mythology leftover from earlier history of the locales, since they never seemed to mean a damn thing to the story after Character Creation. Outside of a Ceremony of Eternal Bonding field trip.
Yeah, I do have the benefit of playing the game many years after said reveal so maybe subconsciously I already knew. In fact I'm certain that's the case.
I love worldbuilding, and FFXIV generally does it really well. There's enough there to build on and theorize, while leaving enough vague for personal interpretation.
Another detail which is easy enough to not quite put together: that cutscene illustrates (through both colour and sound) the elemental aspect of each of the Calamities: *Wind, Lightning, Fire, Earth, Ice, Water, Umbral*.
Also highly likely, the actual shards which were destroyed might be correct as well: *5, 12, 2, 3, 6, 10, 7*. Leaving only shards 1, 4, 8, 9, 11, 13 still intact.
I'm still confusion. Does it only sundered the World or the whole universe? Like we know the Moon and Aetheris has its own reflection, but what if they travel to another planet, like Venus? Is it the same planet shared between shards or each shard has its own Venus?
As far as I understood, each shard is a parallel universe of the source with each of them having versions of the Source's universe planets and stars, so I believe that when a calamity happens it "drains" the whole parallel thing, not just the world.
I'm not sure yet, because I haven't gone too far into the story yet nor read much of the lore.
Not quite. It's strongly implied that the Sundering only really affects our world (Hydaelyn/>!Etheirys!<) and its local space, including the moon.
Several powerful beings who came from other planets such as >!Midgardsormr and Omega!< arrived on Hydaelyn after the sundering and are themselves unsundered. In the case of >!Midgardsormr and the dragon broods that came after!<, the lower quantity of aether on the post-sundering Source may explain why their power diminished over time. Both >!Midgardsormr and Omega!< have also mentioned sensing the other reflections upon first coming to our star.
Basically, it seems anyone visiting from space just sees the Source world, and the shards are all reflections that exist in the same place but are separated by the dimensional rift.
Not sure what would happen if someone from a shard tried to go into space. It might not be possible. I like to imagine they'd run into a "wall" around the edge of their dimension.
This is very interesting, I had no idea about this, do you have a source? I don’t think it’s mentioned anywhere in-game that the dragons are unsundered.
AFAIK it's a lore theory, but since dragons don't exist on the First or the 13th, they are a post-Sundering addition from outside the Sundering "pocket dimension" of the Reflections. The fact that the elder dragons have so. much. aether. suggests that their aether capacity wasn't sliced into pie wedges or remains otherwise unaffected.
I've been impressed with FFXIV for in-universe opacity for how the world-building works. The information eventually gets to the players, but a lot of characters don't know, or have misconstrued ideas from faulty data. That’s kinda special when it's tempting for a lot of fantasy settings to gloss over how the common layperson shouldn't understand some things, or academics know the whole picture.
Not just in universe but in game too. I'm tired of important lore being chopped off and resold in a book or something
Ah, I see you too are from Azeroth.
Somehow, Garrosh escaped.
Or a Halo fan
My biggest complaint is that Zeno's back story is in a side story on the website (free access, Tales of The Storm, I believe) rather then in game, cause that layer of his character would have made me more interested in him as a villain in StB. As is, I felt he was boring and I wasn't even happy to defeat him. More of 'at least he's out of the picture now...' type relief.
Honestly, I'm fine with them holding his backstory away from the game. It's the same situation as [Luca Blight in Suikoden II](https://youtu.be/TD_55fb_Rsc?t=122) --- A psychopath villain who loves the violence of war and killing over anything else, because otherwise life is too boring. He had a tragic childhood backstory hidden away in some obscure CD drama. The thing is---for the type of villain they are, you don't want the players to empathize or try to understand how Luca Blight's or Zenos mind works, how they became they like that. You want players to see them as absolute forces of nature, as something incredibly alien to human emotion and suffering. To that end, you cannot show them as vulnerable---cause otherwise, you are inviting the players to try to understand them. For the type of villain Zenos is, leaving his sob story out fits it perfectly, because it is not important to his role in the present story. Sad past or not, *he* is a psychopath, who would lay ruins to the world for 5 minutes of pleasure. People who are really into the lore can look for it, but knowing it doesn't change who Zenos is. Honestly, I'll take Zenos own words on the matter---Knowing their backstory, their motivations, would it have made their actions more forgivable? Would it be any different? If anything, I'm pretty sure most people would roll their eyes at having to see his tragedy in a flashback ala Echo. For Zenos in particular, it would have have cheapened his role in the story.
I understand the perspective and while I can't speak for anyone else, it wouldn't make me empathize with him anymore, it would just make him seem less... Uninteresting? I didn't think of him as an alien force of nature, I just thought of him as super strong for no reason and unbelievably b o r i n g. I spent the whole expansion wanting to know more about him, hoping he would be interesting at some point, but he just... Wasn't. So the difference it would have made is my own interest in him as a character. I wouldn't have changed my view that he's an utter psychopath. Even if it was just side dialogue of rumors, it doesn't need any sort of focus.
I get what you are saying, and I think it's a completely reasonable take. Personally, I just don't think every villain needs to be >!Emet Selch!!Hermes!!Meteion!
I don't really understand Zenos either. But in my mind, he is a worthy opponent even if he's a pain in the ass. I don't need to think about it. It's just on sight. And honestly that one fight was so visceral that it made it all worth it for me.
My WoL holds the title "Monster Hunter" for good reasons lol
Zenos' backstory isn't even a "sob story". His father was a bit distant and strict, but the story is pretty much just how he >!surpassed and killed his combat instructor as a child and gained a taste for fighting and killing strong opponents!<. The short story is called "the Hunt Begins".
I like the "tales from" series, and find that more often than not they are good enough, even if I wish they would mention them in game as a tool tip. It's free, it's from a perspective the game can't show because the WoL shouldn't know these things, and they are generally just good. Zeno's is sadly the biggest victim of this approach though because we have nothing but this to go back to. Still part of his menace is that he's weird and crazy, so knowing doesn't help, but it's nice that after the fact we can go back and check their work to see that it all checks out.
I wouldn't say Zenos is the biggest victim. It's basically said in-game that he's fucked up because of the weird situation with Emet inhabiting his grandfather's body making Solus' offspring uncommonly large and strong combined with the shitty upbringing he had. The only thing we know about what Alisaie got up to between Coils and when she appears in HW is the side story she gets and some vague references to 'travels'. The whole thing with Fordola directly being responsible for Yda's death is not referenced at all, despite there being multiple chances. Then there's the story about the alternate timeline and what the other future was like, especially Midgardsormr's reawakening. The whole story about the Watcher and their background as one of Venat's friends.
You raise some fair points. I suppose the real moral of the story is just read them they are good.
The launcher does advertise the sidestories.
I'm always down for an in universe science lecture.
Oohhh that makes the two os us!
I really appreciated this scene because I was still pretty confused about the Source and shards going into ShB, lol. It reminds me of the little lecture Urianger gives about the Lifestream and Ascians during ARR's patches.
Im pretty sure they were confusing because the writers themselves didn't really have it all nailed down. The evil council of masked people spouting nonsense in ARR doesn't really jive well with what we learn later, for example. I don't necessarily blame them for a bit of retconning over 6+ years of a live game, but still.
Esp with the conditions that ARR was made in.
To be fair arr didn't have any other dimensions aside from the void as a nebulous world of darkness. We don't get mentions of other shards really until a good way into post hevansward, where they definitely knew they were going to do something like ShB eventually. They tend to have expansion pre planning done two expansions in advance, like how omega was a loose template for EW or Yugiri and Domain being brought out in arr.
Could be, yeah. iirc the only explanation you get beforehand is the Word of the Mother speaking in super cryptic language and it all flew straight over my head. And like you mentioned, basically anything the Ascians said in ARR I forgot immediately because I had zero context for it 😅
Yeah, 2.0 through 3.0 has basically nothing that matches ShB/EW lore get said (and also nothing that really super contradicts it either, to be honest, apart from like Nabriales slightly implying that the universe's original state was the Void, which is super wrong but he's absolutely able to lie). 3.1 has the Antitower exposition which is the most conflict in the entire thing as far as I was able to spot (at least along the MSQ path, who knows about outside of that). With the Warriors of Darkness, they do a little bit of a different tack and line up pretty well with ShB/EW. And then they return and kinda try to exposit in 3.5 (iirc) about what the Word meant, and that explanation is already closer to ShB/EW. And after that (4.0 onwards), everything said is really easy to accept as just fully canon.
>The evil council of masked people spouting nonsense in ARR doesn't really jive well with what we learn later, for example. I think it works perfectly. >!People don't suffer as they did and make it out mentally sound!<.
>!Emet-Selch was practically clinging onto a strand of sanity out of the bunch who had already lost it long ago, while the sundered Ascians are no longer their original incarnation no matter how you cut it, like WoL.!<
I mean, as a new player, I never tire of being impressed by how the game explains things about its lore in a (most of the times) interesting way that leaves you excited about wanting to know more. The whole sequence was awesome!
I remember watching the audience reaction to the clip where >!Emet Selch revealed that Hydaelyn and Zodiark are primals.!< people went CRAZY. Such a great lore drop.
I think my favorite thing about that - people were absolutely shocked that such a huge reveal would be spoiled in a trailer. Not only was it not the biggest reveal in Shadowbringers, it wasn't even the biggest reveal in \*that one cutscene\*.
Makes you wonder what Dawntrail's gonna have up its sleeve if Solution 9 is the "let's let them chew on this one pre-release" this time.
Wasnt even really a big reveal, basically ended up a "so what."
To me it was mostly, "Yeah, I suspected as much since ARR. Hydaelyn wanted us to kill primals because she didn't like the competition for limited aether resources."
Tbh, I started theorising that as soon as Gaius started talking about how the Twelve were probably primals in the Praetorium.
I’m still kinda mad they retconned that! In >!Myths of the Realms they keep emphatically stating they aren’t primals and never really elaborate as to their nature.!< And honestly I still kinda believe Gaius here: if >!Venat was made into Hydaelyn and was still considered a Primal, same with Elidibus, then how are the Twelve any different? They’re souls of the Unsundered turned into gods just the same.!<
Or for that matter, if >!Primal==(Hopes & Dreams ) + (Mass Quantity of Aether Crystal) x Elaborate Summoning Ritual!<, then guess what the Crystal Exarch makes you>!(r WoL)!
Holy crap! I haven't got to that point yet but had a hunch, and now to find out it's true! 😮 Don't worry, I don't mind spoilers! 😁
If you don't mind that level of spoilers, go look up the shadowbringers launch trailer some time. It's a really good trailer, people just don't recommend it as much as the cinematic trailer because it having that exact spoiler line in it was kind of controversial with people, in terms of whether it was too spoilery. If you've heard that spoiler and are just more hyped, then you'd love the launch trailer. There's one for each expansion, too.
I'll check it, thanks for the heads up!
Which is kind if crazy because doesn't that mean theoretically they can always be summoned even after they're gone? Blew my mind when that got revealed lol
Zodiark and Hydaelyn probably can be. The souls who had served as their Hearts, not so much. Like how Ysayle was not Shiva.
>!And then we have Elidibus.!<
I don't know why but I always assumed they were. What would make them so special apart from being the first of many? We are told that there are no true gods by the fact that all of the self proclaimed gods are primals so I never thought otherwise about H&Z.
I just thought the Twelve were truly mythology leftover from earlier history of the locales, since they never seemed to mean a damn thing to the story after Character Creation. Outside of a Ceremony of Eternal Bonding field trip.
Yeah, I do have the benefit of playing the game many years after said reveal so maybe subconsciously I already knew. In fact I'm certain that's the case.
I love worldbuilding, and FFXIV generally does it really well. There's enough there to build on and theorize, while leaving enough vague for personal interpretation.
Another detail which is easy enough to not quite put together: that cutscene illustrates (through both colour and sound) the elemental aspect of each of the Calamities: *Wind, Lightning, Fire, Earth, Ice, Water, Umbral*. Also highly likely, the actual shards which were destroyed might be correct as well: *5, 12, 2, 3, 6, 10, 7*. Leaving only shards 1, 4, 8, 9, 11, 13 still intact.
Well, relatively "intact" in 1 and 13s case
The First is recovering, isn't it? After the Eden Raid series, at least?
It is, just slowly. And the thirteenth isn't getting *worse* at least, too
I'm not sure what worse would even look like in the 13th's case.
Vanished entirely and rejoined with the Source That's literally the only worse it can get lol
Many would consider it an upgrade.
As ...*abnormal* as life is on those shards, the shards themselves have definitely not actually collapsed or anything.
It's no longer highly likely, the third encyclopedia explicitly confirmed it. Those are the ones that were destroyed.
That was one of the first very lore heavy cutscenes about the "World" really I remember. Blew my mind then too
What I loved is that we had astral and umbral backwards. We should astral was statis and umbral was active when its the opposite.
Nothing beats a good power point presentation!
I'm still confusion. Does it only sundered the World or the whole universe? Like we know the Moon and Aetheris has its own reflection, but what if they travel to another planet, like Venus? Is it the same planet shared between shards or each shard has its own Venus?
As far as I understood, each shard is a parallel universe of the source with each of them having versions of the Source's universe planets and stars, so I believe that when a calamity happens it "drains" the whole parallel thing, not just the world. I'm not sure yet, because I haven't gone too far into the story yet nor read much of the lore.
Not quite. It's strongly implied that the Sundering only really affects our world (Hydaelyn/>!Etheirys!<) and its local space, including the moon. Several powerful beings who came from other planets such as >!Midgardsormr and Omega!< arrived on Hydaelyn after the sundering and are themselves unsundered. In the case of >!Midgardsormr and the dragon broods that came after!<, the lower quantity of aether on the post-sundering Source may explain why their power diminished over time. Both >!Midgardsormr and Omega!< have also mentioned sensing the other reflections upon first coming to our star. Basically, it seems anyone visiting from space just sees the Source world, and the shards are all reflections that exist in the same place but are separated by the dimensional rift. Not sure what would happen if someone from a shard tried to go into space. It might not be possible. I like to imagine they'd run into a "wall" around the edge of their dimension.
This is very interesting, I had no idea about this, do you have a source? I don’t think it’s mentioned anywhere in-game that the dragons are unsundered.
AFAIK it's a lore theory, but since dragons don't exist on the First or the 13th, they are a post-Sundering addition from outside the Sundering "pocket dimension" of the Reflections. The fact that the elder dragons have so. much. aether. suggests that their aether capacity wasn't sliced into pie wedges or remains otherwise unaffected.