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Galaga Galaxian posted:no, they ended up in the throne room because Gaius heard Varis scream in pain and his first thought in the middle of a dangerous stealth infiltration was to immediately rush into the throne room shouting "YOUR RADIANCE!" in great concern for his former boss and blow the whole mission. Eh, that seems slightly unfair. Instinct and all that. I feel like Gaius is trying to turn over a new leaf. Certainly he is radically opposed to the genocidal programs - even with the various tribes of Eorzea he urged them to surrender and tried to show summoning was futile, he wants a conquered land, not a wasteland - and he was willing to kill Garlean loyalists to get answers and destroy the Black Rose stores.
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Sep 15, 2020 08:49
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Onmi posted:I mentioned in the main thing that the thing that struck me with Varis wasn't his facisim and "THE RACE WAR STARTS NOW!" but how ultimately when you break down his character, he's someone who discovered the truth of his nation, his people, his family line, and just completely collapsed until the fear of it all. He was confronted with his entire life being a lie, and all those deaths being for nothing, and rather than gritting his teeth and deciding to fight back against it, he bowed his head and started mumbling something about how if they give the Ascians what they want, then, eventually, when they're complete, they can get their revenge. I mean I'm kinda sketchy about this being a theme, since it's, well...biased in favor of those who already wield strength as globe-trotting Men of Power. But I've had this argument before.
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Sep 15, 2020 18:59
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Honestly the big justification for needing to send Hydaelyn off is probably that she's tired. I mean, imagine the incredible abyss of time that Hydaelyn has experienced since her time as Venat. All that time protecting and guiding the sundered worlds has no doubt left its mark.
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Sep 21, 2020 00:45
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G'raha is, himself, a very smol hero.
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Sep 24, 2020 17:11
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I'm not convinced he's unrepentant. If anything it seems he's repentant but struggling with his upbringing. I'm willing to cut him a tiny bit of slack about his shock RE: Varis' death, if only because he was functionally raised to see Varis as practically a God, or at the very least a divine ruler.
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Dec 4, 2020 20:37
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Chillgamesh posted:He has a few lines about how HIS EMPIRE is on the wrong track and he JUST NEEDS TO SET THINGS STRAIGHT in a few scenes prior to the one where he's heartbroken over Varis. I'm not saying it's impossible for him to truly turn his back on the Empire and I wouldn't be surprised if that's the direction the writers take him but given what we've seen of him so far, I think he'd jump at the chance to take control of the Empire and reorganize it into a country that would eventually become a global threat again. It's pretty clear that's never going to happen, and it's not really the sort of thing FF14 does. That said, yeah, I can believe he believed in the promise of his empire, because remember, the Republic of Garlemald, prior to becoming an empire, was a bullied and marginalized power driven to the rear end-end of the world. The Empire does seem to have been an improvement in the lives of many common Garleans. That's a tough nut to crack. Unlike real-world fash, the Garleans were actually a bullied and marginalized group.
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Dec 4, 2020 21:01
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Orcs and Ostriches posted:I don't really care what he believes of his empire. They left their subjugated neighbors in ruins, and have gone far past securing a safe and prosperous position for his native people. Nobody's blaming them for defending themselves, but what they've done past is inexcusable and he has no remorse for it. I mean I'm not really excusing it at all.
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Dec 4, 2020 21:08
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Wasn't Ivalice post-Allag? And yeah, I'm not excusing Garlean bullshit, so much as saying that it's logical the average Garlean has been inducted into a supremacist and imperialist political mindset because the Empire was good to their people after a long time of being bullied by other powers, and that therefore it's pretty hard for them to snap out of it.
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Dec 4, 2020 21:33
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Cleretic posted:The thing to remember about Gaius' story and retribution in the upcoming patches is very simple: Gaius is arguably in the inverse position, really - he's a genuine true believer in Nietzchean will-to-power and wants to actually help people. He's almost like a negafascist; he had no personal animus and seemingly refused to engage in genocide or the persecution of specific marginalized groups and wanted them all to flock to his banner...of authoritarian strongman pseudo-enlightened despot politics.
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Dec 5, 2020 04:33
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Cleretic posted:Regulus and Ysayle. It's hard to determine exactly how much time is 'supposed' to have passed between him killing her and the Warring Triad storyline where he's on our side, but in terms of his screentime, he gets basically no space between those points to either continue being an antagonist or to endear us to him otherwise. To be fair, I'm not convinced that we necessarily like Regula. We just cooperate with him temporarily and give him the bare minimum of respect after his death.
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Dec 5, 2020 05:12
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Gaius explicitly doesn't want genocide. It's the big thing I find questionable about calling him a straight fascist. He wants conquest, but he wants to induct the conquered into the Empire for their (in his eyes) and the Empire's benefit and is a big believer in meritocracy. Gaius is an imperialist, but he doesn't have the Nazi focus on wiping out the underclass.
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Dec 5, 2020 20:43
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Tin Can Hit Man posted:Fascism doesn't always mean genocide though. And genocide doesn't always mean killing everyone of a particular group or race. Genocide can be suppression, oppression, assimilation and subjugation of said race until their unique identity and culture no longer exist or are remembered. This is an entirely valid point, though I personally think the pressure for total genocide and extermination of underclass groups is intrinsic to the core of fascism. I just feel like it's kind of a weird case where Gaius' authoritarian imperialism doesn't directly interact with a lot of what made real world fascists so much worse than other (still bad!) forms of imperialism. "Induct these other nations into your own" is like Standard Empire 101. Chillgamesh posted:Slavery might not be extermination but one look at how the Empire treats its "auxiliaries" should show how much of a difference that makes. True, although the game also tried to have Gaius be the big Roman style champion of induction and integration. The obvious problem is where we hit the Garlean aggressive hatred for other nations' religion and therefore culture. It's hard because I don't personally know how much I think you can directly apply the word fascist outside of the modern context. It's very much not my saying that Gaius was a good person or not an imperialist rear end in a top hat. thetoughestbean posted:Didn’t Gaius have leaflets demanding the slaughter of the beast tribes dropped over Eorzea in 1.0? I actually don't know, I didn't play 1.0. 
Jetrauben fucked around with this message at 22:20 on Dec 5, 2020 |
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Dec 5, 2020 22:14
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Orcs and Ostriches posted:Yeah, Gaius thinks the genocide of anyone that summons primals is A-OK. At the time it was only beast tribes, but we know that's not the case. I got the impression he didn't see any essential difference between Spoken and "beast tribes?" It was all just Garlean's Burden bullshit.
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Dec 5, 2020 23:14
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To be specific, Zenos selected Yotsuyu because he doesn't want a functioning and healthy-ish society the way Gaius and presumably Kaien did. He wants Doma falling apart at the seams and screaming bloody revolt, because that has the potential of producing someone worth his time to fight. It's why I think he selected Fordola for the Resonant project and deliberately had her fire on her friends for limited-at-best return. He's trying to make enemies. If you hadn't panned out, he'd probably have overtly kept goading Fordola until she revolted.
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Dec 6, 2020 21:15
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Orcs and Ostriches posted:That would be great. He gets a big arc. 5.3 comes around and he gets a new life and uniform. 5.4 comes around and he gets Haurchefaunted. DON'T YOU DARE PUT THIS OUT INTO THE WORLD
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Dec 7, 2020 23:09
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Jesus loving Christ, Valens is just... the worst.
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Dec 9, 2020 06:27
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So, what are we thinking about Ryne and Gaia? Entirrly out of the story now, or "probably gonna drop up later seeing as they're both technically part-immortal and Gaia all but said outright she could remember her Ascian world jaunting stuff?"
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Dec 9, 2020 10:36
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It's also stated that Ancients lived considerably longer than Sundered do. So even if we don't have any supernatural tomfoolery going on, Loghrif/Gaia's memories would logically have a lot more of her/their (it's not clear if gender is retained?) memories from her Amaurotine life. Then there's the pretty heavy implications in this patch that souls retain enough of their essential natures for it not to just be a case of "totally erase identity in the Lifestream" in the interims between death. Although, also, this patch does seem to confirm that killing even a true red-masked Ascian doesn't actually destroy the soul, just kills them hard enough they stay dead. Otherwise Gaia would have been annihilated when she was killed while fused with Mitron by Ardbert and co. I guess I need to reassess my idea that Gaia was just a tryhard compared to Ryne, huh? They've both Seen Some poo poo.
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Dec 9, 2020 19:28
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Cythereal posted:It's not. This is made explicit if you play as a woman: Azem's gender is the same as the PC, and that leaves Ardbert as a male reincarnation of a soul of an Amaurotine woman. Yeah, I assumed as much, just wasn't so sure if it applied to Ascians because Ascians can reshape their hosts to fit their self-image. Mitron's true name being Artemis is interesting as a wrinkle here.
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Dec 9, 2020 19:35
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SirSamVimes posted:Lohgrif didn't survive, her soul just got recycled back into the lifestream, the same way anyone's does when they die. Actually, if you look closely, Emet's soul splintered into seven shards when he perished. Orcs and Ostriches posted:One of the big 2.x revelations was that the main Ascians at the time, like Lahabrea, pull themselves back together if their soul is intact; killing their body is a minor inconvenience since they could just echo away and either take a new one, or just reform it. Thordan destroyed Lahabrea's soul, and we did the same of Emet-Selch. Elidibus's was a snack for the Crystal Tower. I got the impression Gaia/Loghrif properly died when Ardbert gibbed her and Loghrif, it's just soul memories linger between incarnations.
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Dec 9, 2020 21:21
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Orcs and Ostriches posted:Physically Gaia died, but if her soul was destroyed like with the rest of them, there wouldn't be a Gaia soul fragment in a new life on the First. That's what I'm not sure about. I don't think you can Cessation of Existence a soul, you can just kill it hard enough it gets fed back into the reincarnation cycle. That's what the Eden stuff seemed to imply to me, along with the Emet 5.3 story.
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Dec 9, 2020 21:26
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Orcs and Ostriches posted:This was an explicit point in the 2.x / 3.x Ascian kills. An Ascian soul in the lifestream can reform itself, and they needed to be irreparably destroyed to finally deal with them. Hence containing their aether in the white auracite, and then destroying it with something well beyond the WoL at the time - Tupsimati or an Eye of Nidhogg. Mister Olympus posted:I feel like there definitely has to be something more with Fandaniel and the issue of memories that makes him not as invested in The Plan. Initially I thought Mitron might be the exception but then the echo scene changed that. Fandaniel's soul crystal had something very wrong with it. Jetrauben fucked around with this message at 21:34 on Dec 9, 2020 |
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Dec 9, 2020 21:30
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Orcs and Ostriches posted:Does he? His little parting gift may have just been a farewell imprinted into the stone. I don't think there's anything showing any part of Emet-Selch still exists as an intact, or even a collection sundered souls. And the particle effects when he dies are unconvincing. The 5.3 short story is explicitly him post death choosing to help us and then saying goodbye to the reader in a cute little faux Tempest monologue.
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Dec 9, 2020 21:35
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Orcs and Ostriches posted:Ere Our Curtain Falls? The story happens post Solus zoz Galvus death. 2.0 era Solus, before we ever met him. I'm pretty sure it's meant to be post-death, referencing his actions in Seat of Sacrifice? It just seems tremendously more convoluted to go "ok so clearly the crystal of Azem contains a wholly unrelated second contingency to put Elidibus down like a dog with a single cast spell and a sassy wave!" as opposed to "yeah, uh, you know how you, as Azem, have the power to wish for aid from your friends? Regardless of distance? The Lifestream is a place." It's more internally cohesive, it's a better capstone for the character, and it frankly fits more with what we've seen about the mechanisms of souls. Jetrauben fucked around with this message at 21:48 on Dec 9, 2020 |
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Dec 9, 2020 21:45
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I mean the story is definitely jumping around in different places and times, just like the first Emet one was, but the conclusion seems to register as Seat of Sacrifice to me. Plus, Emet's whole deal is being connected to the Underworld/Lifestream. The whole "we can (relatively) casually annihilate souls" thing doesn't seem to even really describe what they did with Nabriales et al, and we've seen other depictions of supposedly "destroyed" immortal souls clearly having some sort of post-death existence - the Warriors of Darkness being the big example thereof. And again - Mitron was not killed with any supernatural mojo beyond hitting him repeatedly. The initial deathblow was Ardbert's Sword of Light; if not for that he and Gaia could just come back for another go, as Nabriales actually threatened us with doing in the first place. It seems more blade of light stuff results in "gently caress off, ghost!" Jetrauben fucked around with this message at 21:53 on Dec 9, 2020 |
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Dec 9, 2020 21:50
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Chillgamesh posted:Tangentially related to this conversation, why does Amaurot still exist after Emet-Selch is defeated? I get why Anamnesis Anyder is there (it's real), but shouldn't the phantom Amaurot have disappeared? It's a construction, not a consciously maintained working. It takes a while for the enchantment to fade in the absence of maintenance, just as it does for anything else - functionally, Amaurot is a gigantic Primal of a city. Its inhabitants are "real," they're just limited.
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Dec 9, 2020 21:55
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Darth Walrus posted:Remember that when we did as Ardbert did to Mitron and Loghrif and smacked a senior Ascian with a Blade of Light (Lahabrea at the end of ARR), it didn't permakill him, which is why he came back for Heavensward. Ardbert and his crew honestly did more damage than we did on our first try. Lahabrea was an Unsundered, though. Nabriales, Igeyohyrm, Mitron and Loghrif were all subjected to the gently caress-off-ghost blade with fatal results.
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Dec 10, 2020 01:34
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Y'know, that actually makes me think: the reason that Eden seems to be a structure or vehicle is maybe because it's Mitron's creation magics running haywire? Playing off his idea of the perfect orderly world and bringer thereof? I do like the explicit mention that sin eaters are basically just hegemonizing reflections of his influence though. They look like beautific angels (sometimes) not because there's any sort of cosmic law of spirituality but because they're ultimately molded by a mind dominated by a corrupted desire to purge darkness, fear and suffering.
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Dec 10, 2020 01:51
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MadFriarAvelyn posted:RE: the Emet shade that appeared during Seat of Sacrifice, I like to think of it as a bit of a contingency plan. Emet knew he was going to throw down with the WoL eventually, and there would be one of two outcomes: either Emet was right and the WoL died, or Emet was wrong and the WoL proved that sundered people were worthy of living. So he created a shade of himself, that he could dispel if the former happened, but if the latter did and he turned out to be wrong, at least he could back up the WoL when they would, inevitably, throw down with Elidibus as well. I feel like collecting the constellation soul stones and the conversations with Hythlodaeus were more an orchestration following that line of thought. I know Y'shtola suggests something like that, but that seems excessively convoluted given that the alternative answer - that Azem is capable of calling up the shades of dead friends as well as living ones - is not only elegantly simple and far more so, we have prior examples of it. Haurchefant and Ysayle show up to help us at our darkest hour, after all. I think Emet's plan just consisted of leaving us the crystal so we could remember the power we wielded as Azem. Hogama posted:Sometime I appreciated of the Eden outcome was reaffirming through Gaia as a mirror to the WoL that just because she's a reincarnation of Loghrif!Gaia doesn't mean that she's not very much her own person, too, even after gaining memories of her earlier incarnation. Is it weird I got literally the opposite message? Gaia denies her connection to her Loghrif-life, initially, but then she explicitly accepts it and chooses to turn over a new leaf, fully armed with the memories of both her lives. She doesn't seem to have lost anything essential from her Ascian life, she just tells her old boyfriend "look I think we should see other people, I've got this cute girlfriend now" and then even says "maybe we'll meet again in a next life." That doesn't work so well if she's not acknowledging continuity. Gaia accepts she was an Ascian, and decides to stop pursuing that course in favor of a new life. Saying the new life has value doesn't necessarily mean that the other life isn't valuable or contiguous. Ryne is a weird case because it's not clear if Ryne is actually directly connected to Minfilia "naturally." I got the distinct impression Minfilia was going around involuntarily bodysnatching teenagers for a while; was Ryne born as A Minfilia? I thought it was more Miang-esque "bonds with another young woman when the last host dies." Which given that Minfilia sublimated herself into Ryne, Ryne's more like some sort of horrible soul-chimera. Jetrauben fucked around with this message at 07:01 on Dec 10, 2020 |
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Dec 10, 2020 06:58
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erenoyo posted:All of the First's Minfilias were born as Minfilias Huh, really? I thought it was a possessed state, given she compares herself to an Ascian.
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Dec 10, 2020 07:02
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Hogama posted:I mean, we let Ardbert have one last chat with Seto, too. And Gaia immediately questions who she was just talking to after Mitron fades out, and still perceives the former Gaia as a separate entity. I mean, maybe. She talks about being maybe able to shard-jump due to Ascian-ness as though it were her talent, and after all she's literally keeping the true name of her prior self. Reincarnation and identity are messy.
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Dec 10, 2020 07:56
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CharlieFoxtrot posted:Konogg definitely got a lungful of white dust in the factory... So did you though.
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Dec 13, 2020 08:27
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So I was thinking earlier in another thread about mind control and it occurred to me we may have an answer to the whole "what does it mean that Emet is tempered?" Namely: I hypothesize it's not that it renders him a brainwashed thrall or anything so much as it subtly bends the answer to all problems in his head as "well we can fix that by appealing to Zodiark!"
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Dec 16, 2020 22:45
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Badger of Basra posted:Yeah this was confusing. They look Mhachi! Maybe it's because they're made of metal and Garlemald does that more than Mhachi did? A lot of Mhachi stuff looks like (bizarrely worked, organically carved) stone rather than cermet. CYBEReris posted:the way the void quest concludes almost seems to be teasing the possibility of a time skip on the first? don't know whether they'd do that, a sort of anti-calamity localized on the first where you get to come back and check up on how they're rebuilding into the receding empty and stuff and continue the void quests to spread this prosperity to a world that's been taken for granted as lost would be cool Clearly the solution will be to collapse the Void and the Empty into a single semi-functioning world. :P Honestly I'm actually wondering how much the Empty was restored. The little oasis around Eden is to all appearances a paradise, but you can still see large swathes of what looks like salt flats - which I appreciate, to be clear ; I like that even after fixing parts of the Empty and bringing the First back from the brink the unearthly scars remain. But it instantly made plants grow back in the oasis. Would that entail animals, as well? Or is it just sort of a scoured, beautiful void? Jetrauben fucked around with this message at 20:52 on Dec 22, 2020 |
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Dec 22, 2020 20:49
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Cythereal posted:They tell you at the start of the Eden storyline that they're only restoring life to major nexuses of ley lines at first, and the effects of the restoration will slowly spread across the rest of the Empty. So it's probably going to be a long time, but we've set the process in motion. I'm more wondering like, does this just include plants, or does it include animal life as well? 'Cause a planet without meaningful animal life across 90% of its surface is gonna be hosed for a looooong time.
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Dec 22, 2020 21:09
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How long exactly has Zenos had custody of Ala Mhigo? I get the impression it's been at least five or more years? That's a fair bit of time for things to go pear shaped. And Doma got much worse relatively recently?
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Jan 5, 2021 05:08
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CharlieFoxtrot posted:20 years iirc, basically there's been one generation that's grown up entirely under imperial rule Is that twenty years of Garlean rule, or 20 years of specifically Gaius?
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Jan 5, 2021 05:24
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Another aspect is we don't know what the internal politics between Legions are, although indications are that it isn't exactly pleasant. Gaius may have seen atrocities and gone "well clearly it's because my rival legions are jerks." A fair bit of Ala Mhigo appears to be recent battlefields, so that may be part of why it looks so devastated.
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Jan 5, 2021 18:40
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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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Honestly self made heroes are bootstraps bullshit anyways. I'll take "you have a spiritual and historical legacy that reflects who you are and reverberates even into your current incarnation" any day over "I'm real strong because Reasons and that Reason is I'm an ubermensch driven by pure Will." Screw Plucky Nobody stories. They're boring and bad.
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Jan 26, 2021 18:57
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