Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers

[Hioki]

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...m/0fb58c0d79d/

Scroll down, Images tab. What an absolute lad.

[Raldo]

Question, and not spoilering because it has nothing to do with Shadowbringers story, but has it been said that Zodiark is Dark Elemental, and Hydaelyn is Light Elemental?

Aside from adopting the usual Dark=black/purple Light=white/blue color scheme, I don't recall it ever being stated that the two entities have any particular elemental affinity. But perhaps I'm not the best person to answer that. If "light" can be bad (as seen in ShB), then what even is "light" and "darkness"?

I thought the story was amazing and extremely well written, not sure what you guys are complaining about here.

Spoiler: show

I was actually glad the "Warrior of Darkness" wasn't literal, that would've been way too obvious. And if you've actually understood the whole story you'd know why we can't use the actual Darkness here, it's not the choice we made.

I am someone who struggled to fully understand all the weird shit that was going on in FF7, so I wouldn't be surprised if I'm failing to fully grasp the various implications of the story. If you know of someone who's written up a sort of ShadowBringers-story-for-dummies, I'd be happy to read it.

Spoiler: show

You're right that I don't understand why "we can't use the darkness", and that is part of why I'm disappointed with the story. If light can be bad, then what even is "darkness"? THAT is the question I had hoped this expansion would explain. Given all the bad shit going down with all the "light" in the first, I'd assume there's an equal and opposite way to harness the "darkness" for good. I went in expecting some sort of epic failure story, that could only be resolved by "accepting the darkness" and "achieving balance" (whatever that would mean in the context). I expected to gobble up the last light warden and then shit would go super bad. Instead we just pokemon-gotta-catch-em-all with the Light Wardens, stuff goes kinda-bad-but-nothing-actually-bad-happens and then at the end everything is magically okay because you believed real hard and a dead guy kissed your boo-boos away.

You COULD argue that subverting my expectations is a fun plot twist (as Dotsudoku said), but when the conclusion is "your soul is fixed because you bro-fisted a dead guy" (yes, I'm aware that dead guy is basically a shard of your original soul or whatever) and "the ascian's darkness cancelled out your lightness so now you're super-duper a-ok"... it's not a satisfying conclusion, in my opinion. I cannot roll my eyes hard enough.

I'll concede that there are certain aspects of the story that I like. The whole time-travel shit with the Crystal Tower is a clever idea (though I'm generally not a fan of adding time-travel into stories). I loved learning what the Ascians whole shtick was about. But that conclusion... "And everyone lives happily ever after" just ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. I came here to embrace the DARKNESS, give me some DARKNESS. Not even the Exarch dies? For fucks sake, man.

[Dotsudoku]

Spoiler: show

it's all but confirmed at this point that we're tempered by hydaelyn. we're unable to wield any kind of blessing from zodiark

even the "warrior's of darkness" were acting at the behest of an ascian while in possession of hydaelyn's blessing

[Abandon]

Spoiler: show

I'd have to get Rocl in here to really explain it, but the skinny is that we are Warriors of "Light" because we are tempered by Haedalyn, as she is a primal of sorts. Zodiark was the original, and people deemed his required sacrifices to be too many, and created Haedalyn to counter him. They fought, and she broke his ass in pieces, hence the shards and the Source. The Ascians are people of the original world, before the shattering of the original world, tempered by Zodiark. We can't "use" the darkness, because that would entail us no longer being tempered. The only question yet to be answered that i personally give a damn about is, wtf is the Echo actually. The theory is that the WoL is as strong as he/she is because they are the combination of the souls of an ascian combined from the worlds that have already been recombined with the source (via the Calamities we've been trying to stop from happening).

[Alkar]

Aside from adopting the usual Dark=black/purple Light=white/blue color scheme, I don't recall it ever being stated that the two entities have any particular elemental affinity. But perhaps I'm not the best person to answer that. If "light" can be bad (as seen in ShB), then what even is "light" and "darkness"?


I am someone who struggled to fully understand all the weird shit that was going on in FF7, so I wouldn't be surprised if I'm failing to fully grasp the various implications of the story. If you know of someone who's written up a sort of ShadowBringers-story-for-dummies, I'd be happy to read it.

Spoiler: show

You're right that I don't understand why "we can't use the darkness", and that is part of why I'm disappointed with the story. If light can be bad, then what even is "darkness"? THAT is the question I had hoped this expansion would explain. Given all the bad shit going down with all the "light" in the first, I'd assume there's an equal and opposite way to harness the "darkness" for good. I went in expecting some sort of epic failure story, that could only be resolved by "accepting the darkness" and "achieving balance" (whatever that would mean in the context). I expected to gobble up the last light warden and then shit would go super bad. Instead we just pokemon-gotta-catch-em-all with the Light Wardens, stuff goes kinda-bad-but-nothing-actually-bad-happens and then at the end everything is magically okay because you believed real hard and a dead guy kissed your boo-boos away.

You COULD argue that subverting my expectations is a fun plot twist (as Dotsudoku said), but when the conclusion is "your soul is fixed because you bro-fisted a dead guy" (yes, I'm aware that dead guy is basically a shard of your original soul or whatever) and "the ascian's darkness cancelled out your lightness so now you're super-duper a-ok"... it's not a satisfying conclusion, in my opinion. I cannot roll my eyes hard enough.

I'll concede that there are certain aspects of the story that I like. The whole time-travel shit with the Crystal Tower is a clever idea (though I'm generally not a fan of adding time-travel into stories). I loved learning what the Ascians whole shtick was about. But that conclusion... "And everyone lives happily ever after" just ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. I came here to embrace the DARKNESS, give me some DARKNESS. Not even the Exarch dies? For fucks sake, man.

Spoiler: show

I haven't seen anything written for this story yet but I'll link to it if I come across something. Basically the whole point is that we are a fragment of those ancient beings that summoned Hydaelyn long ago to contain Zodiark and thus are tempered by her. It's actually implied that we were a close friend of Emet-Selch and the leader of the opposition that formed after all the sacrifices made to Zodiark (you see our phantom in one of the cutscenes while we're waiting for the writ of passage to the Capitol, can't remember the name right now). This is why we use her blessing to do anything and can't properly use "darkness" as that's usually associated with him and his servants. However we did restore darkness to the world anyway.

[Rocl]

Spoiler: show

I'd have to get Rocl in here to really explain it, but the skinny is that we are Warriors of "Light" because we are tempered by Haedalyn, as she is a primal of sorts. Zodiark was the original, and people deemed his required sacrifices to be too many, and created Haedalyn to counter him. They fought, and she broke his ass in pieces, hence the shards and the Source. The Ascians are people of the original world, before the shattering of the original world, tempered by Zodiark. We can't "use" the darkness, because that would entail us no longer being tempered. The only question yet to be answered that i personally give a damn about is, wtf is the Echo actually. The theory is that the WoL is as strong as he/she is because they are the combination of the souls of an ascian combined from the worlds that have already been recombined with the source (via the Calamities we've been trying to stop from happening).

since you were kind enough to reach out to me i'll respond, lol—let's see:

Spoiler: show

The jist of this expansion was Warrior of Light and Warrior of Darkness, like we heard in 3.4, is just an appellation with no real meaning—whether or not we're a WoL or WoD is strictly based on who's legend we're fulfilling (though I can't recall now if Hydaelyn herself uses the term WoL, but I wouldn't be surprised if She did so just because it's something we'd latch onto). Hydaelyn and Zodiark being Primals is probably true, though like Emet-Selch says, it's "after a fashion" I think. They were brought into being by the Ancient's "power of creation" which is the 'true art' with Primal summoning being a pale imitation of it—aether itself is created by the Ancients to aid in summoning, and we're told that (via sidequests in The Tempest, maybe? can't remember if it was MSQ) that our souls simply aren't strong enough to use the "art of creation."

Basically, sure, Hydaelyn and Zodiark are probably Primals, but on a scale never before seen summoned by a means that is now impossible. Do they still qualify as our run-of-the-mill banshin or toshin? The Ascians would have you believe that—and Emet claims Zodiark tempered them as a matter of summoning but... I'm worried about the how or why of that. None of their other creations seem to display this quirk, is it because when they imagine a God that's what they think a God would do? (Compel worship?)

The Ascians are the survivors of an apocalypse that took place on our planet some 12,000 years ago. They are probably the last surviving Ancients, well, Lahabrea Elidibus and Emet-Selch anyways. The others seem to be souls from the shards of that planet raised up unto Ascianhood somehow. (I think, anyways, I haven't pored over the dialogue enough yet to remember everything 100%.)

Basically, there was a super advanced civilization thousands of years ago with the power of what we'd consider Gods. (This is likely the mythical Age of Gods, and the Convocation of Thirteen being the basis for the Twelve, as always, wouldn't surprise me [Nald'thal is cited as 2 gods in Living on a Prayer in 1.23b, don't @ me]) For some reason, their wanton creation of new life beget spontaneous generation of new beings that were terrible and vicious—they considered these the manifestations of their darkest fears. These unintended summoning/creations made a lovely feedback loop of killing people that scared people into accidentally summoning more to kill more people to scare more people to summon more to kill people to scare people to summon more. This confuses me because the Ancients are immortal. We're also considered children by Emet-Selch's aetherial shades due to our small stature, which means the Ancients fucked reproduced. I personally don't understand how this all happens because we're only given information of how the planet works in terms of the Lifestream which may not have even existed pre-Hydaelyn.

The Ancients decide to give the star a will to fight off their misbegotten creations, and decide on summoning Zodiark. But this took massive sacrifices; something around probably ~75% of the population ends up getting used in powering up Zodiark. People get fed up with this sacrifice and summon an opposition who eventually win. I suspect, though I don't think it's stated, that the opposition saw the sacrifices to Zodiark as rather needless and "just as bad" as the Apocalypse eventually. They summon Hydaelyn, she wins, puts Zodiark in a moon and shatters reality (at least around the Source); through this life is forever saved in a cycle of reincarnation and life knows a paradoxical eternity and finality—something we're not sure the Ancients had. (This also dumped some Ancient souls into the Lifestream, of which it looks like the Player Character has some shard of one—probably the fourteenth member of the Convocation who left in opposition of summoning Zodiark).

Every Calamity has made mortal life stronger, especially in the Echo, according to Elidibus in 2.1, so it stands to reason it has something to do with the idea we're like 8/14ths whole now (the WoL being 9/14 after Ardbert).

As for: what is Light and what is Darkness? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Prior to Shadowbringers Light and Darkness were forces that did not interact with any other thing we've known of. Astral and Umbral were unrelated polarities of the six elements (the most common example is Astral Fire is the raging inferno of a flame, while Umbral Fire is the oppressive heat of a drought), and had nothing to do with Light/Dark which were reserved for Zodiark and Hydaelyn respectively. It was sort of similar to how void and Void are different, in that regard. The Void, the Thirteenth, was the Ascian's first bungled attempt at a rejoining, devoid of aether and home to monstrosities (that look remarkably similar to those that appeared in Amaurot at the Apocalypse). Now we've learned that Light and Darkness are also what the First call what the Source calls Astral and Umbral but in reverse.
Light is apparently stasis and Darkness is chaos; Astral was typically the 'active' and Umbral the 'passive.' It's just... messy now.

Lower case darkness, what the Dark Knights uses, (if memory serves) is instead fueled by emotion. Which, I guess is a certain sort of chaos, they impress upon channeling your inner darkness could be as simple as drawing upon the desire to protect those you love. Which, I suppose, could also be what the Ascians tell themselves too.

Is the Player tempered? Maybe, I guess. If we are, our directions while under the Tempering have been to "hear, feel, think" which is basically "live your life as if you were never Tempered" imo. Emet says people were tempered as a consequence of summoning Zodiark, but the player character wasn't the one who summoned Hydaelyn but just part of a person who did—which means killing all those Tempered people as the only 'cure' we did was utterly useless.

I've lost the plot here, but this story undid a lot of commonly held beliefs, and rewrote the rules Heavensward's Alexander set up for time travel; it's also casually 'retconned' some old 1.0 things. Like... the starshower everyone sees when awakening to the Echo is probably definitely supposed to be reminiscent of the Ancient Apocalypse and not the Battle of Silvertear now—though we knew the starshower visions also predated the Sixth Astral so.....

[Lokus]

The expansion definitely made more questions than answers for me...

Spoiler: show

Isn't the order and reasoning for summoning Zodiark a bit off? As I understood it, there was already something happening to the world before it even got to the city of the Ancients which is what initiated the Convocation of Thirteen to come up with a solution for the Calamity, a calamity that they didn't know the cause. It was only when the Calamity arrived at their doorstep that their own creation magicks ran wild and hastened their own destruction. It was then that Zodiark got summoned using half of the surviving population to give the star it's own will and stop the Calamity but since the world was still a hot mess, they sacrificed half of the remaining population (75% total like you mentioned) to fix the land and seed new life which would eventually be sacrificed to bring back the population that summoned and powered up Zodiark. That latter part never happened though cause Hydaelyn. Maybe with subsequent patches, we're delve into what caused the Calamity to begin with and the "sound from the earth" that caused a lot of the Ancients to freak out. Also, would that be considered the first Calamity or just Calamity Zero?

The expansion does make me think that those with the Echo are at least a shade of an Ancient but it still doesn't really explain how it came about and who activated it, we just know people awaken to it when a Calamity is looming in the future. And I was thinking that the Echo is maybe an after effect of the Sundering that affected everyone, including those that didn't get Sundered since Lahabrea had it.

[Rocl]

Those are all good questions we don't really know the answer to, other than:

Spoiler: show

The Sundering has to be Calamity 0. What the Eorzeans call Umbral Calamities are what the Ascians call Rejoining, the act of a shard being rejoined to the Source. We not only know this Calamity happened, it was aspected toward wind, and was recent enough that the moogles of Moghome still have legends about it.

Perhaps more than ever, the expansion's biggest questions and story will be in the #.X series.

[Dotsudoku]

only thing I don't understand is what made the 13th different than, say, what they were trying to do with the 1st. what are the circumstances in a flood/rejoining vs whatever creates an aether vacuum

[Lucavi]

The 13th was their first time, and I guess they just were overzealous in how they brought that shard to its end. Since it was their first one, they were probably the most zealous and fervent in their actions to rejoin all of the shards. Nuked it from orbit or brought some crazy plague or something into existence with their powers.

[Prothescar]

Most importantly, they didn't know that they needed a Calamity to coincide with a flood in order to trigger a rejoining

[Dotsudoku]

ah, that makes sense. so a flood overwhelms the individual shard with an element, and at some point the shard bursts open leaking its aether. a calamity on the source opens it to receive the hemorrhaging aether

if the source's "door" isn't open, the aether is just gone, and the shard is left a vacuum

[Gokulo]

One thing I keep thinking about or maybe I just missed something

Spoiler: show

How come summoning Hydaelyn, a being that's at least a match for Zodiark, did not require as much sacrifice? Or is it something like Zodiark was summoned for a much more harder role, while hers was only to counter him?

[Dotsudoku]

Spoiler: show

pretty sure that's the answer. Hydaelyn is probably considerably less "powerful" in a general sense, but given that she was summoned with Zodiark's constraint in mind, she's able to succeed at that

[Vaspinne]

Can someone explain to me the point of VII materia? It's less of a boost then VI stuff, so I'm wondering if there's some special niche or something it fills

[Fiye]

Basically VII materia is the +1 version of V materia. If you're just a DoW/DoM you can ignore it unless you want to max overmeld with the crafted raiding gear.

Otherwise its what you'll use instead of Vs for overmelding crafted/gathering gear. They only cost 50 yellow script more so unless you have an assload of Vs stocked up from Stormblood you might as well go for them.

Basically the new 6s are 8s

The new 5s are 7s.

They have the same % success rate.

[Vaspinne]

Oh I see, they're for endgame raiding mumbo jumbo, AKA I'll never need em.

[Raldo]

I appreciate all the spoilery explanations, but I'd be curious if anyone has any commentary on the ending that would perhaps make me hate it less.

Spoiler: show

Maybe I'm just tired of sickly-sweet happy endings. You join with Ardbert and suddenly your soul is suddenly fine, despite previously being "nearly broken", and "your light vs the ascian's darkness cancelled each other out" and now you're 100% back to normal?

Do I have that right? I guess it makes sense in the context of a fantasy world with magic and shit (and frankly, a pretty common trope in JRPGs now that I think about it), but ughhhh it's all so convenient and boring. You weren't fighting the Ascian with the intent to fix your light problem, but suddenly you're fixed anyway? Am I the only one that finds that utterly unsatisfying? It was so vanilla, it left a bad taste in my mouth about the story as a whole. I hope whatever they come up with for the rest of the expansion is more interesting.

[Alkar]

I appreciate all the spoilery explanations, but I'd be curious if anyone has any commentary on the ending that would perhaps make me hate it less.

Spoiler: show

Maybe I'm just tired of sickly-sweet happy endings. You join with Ardbert and suddenly your soul is suddenly fine, despite previously being "nearly broken", and "your light vs the ascian's darkness cancelled each other out" and now you're 100% back to normal?

Do I have that right? I guess it makes sense in the context of a fantasy world with magic and shit (and frankly, a pretty common trope in JRPGs now that I think about it), but ughhhh it's all so convenient and boring. You weren't fighting the Ascian with the intent to fix your light problem, but suddenly you're fixed anyway? Am I the only one that finds that utterly unsatisfying? It was so vanilla, it left a bad taste in my mouth about the story as a whole. I hope whatever they come up with for the rest of the expansion is more interesting.

Spoiler: show

You join with Ardbert which makes you stronger (you are both fragments of the same ancient being) allowing you to contain the Light. Later in the fight with Hades you use that Light against it (Active Maneuver part) because that's what you can do as the Champion of Hydaelyn (and you're now stronger after rejoining with Ardbert) which in turn expends the extra Light you had accumulated and cures your condition.

[Kaslo]

I appreciate all the spoilery explanations, but I'd be curious if anyone has any commentary on the ending that would perhaps make me hate it less.

Spoiler: show

Maybe I'm just tired of sickly-sweet happy endings. You join with Ardbert and suddenly your soul is suddenly fine, despite previously being "nearly broken", and "your light vs the ascian's darkness cancelled each other out" and now you're 100% back to normal?

Do I have that right? I guess it makes sense in the context of a fantasy world with magic and shit (and frankly, a pretty common trope in JRPGs now that I think about it), but ughhhh it's all so convenient and boring. You weren't fighting the Ascian with the intent to fix your light problem, but suddenly you're fixed anyway? Am I the only one that finds that utterly unsatisfying? It was so vanilla, it left a bad taste in my mouth about the story as a whole. I hope whatever they come up with for the rest of the expansion is more interesting.

I interpreted it as:

Spoiler: show

The Light aether you absorbed was channeled into the shards of the White Auracite along with the aether being channeled by the Scions before to destroy Hades. The bonding with Arbert just gave the WoL the strength to continue on since it increased his power by adding another soulshard to his own.