The summoning of Zodiark and Hydaelyn postponed the Final Days for thousands of years, and in that time untold trillions of lives were lost due to Meteions’ songs of ruin devastating many worlds. We survived, and pushed back against despair, but at what cost? Today let us remember those who will never again see the brilliance of the world they once adored.
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I'll never forget when we first meet Hydaelyn, and we hear Flow for the first time. Ahhh the emotions, the heartache 💔
Venat and all of their absolute sacrifice reminds me of my favorite quote (from Epsilon in RvB):
"There are so many stories where some brave hero decides to give their life to save the day and because of their sacrifice, the good guys win, the survivors all cheer, and everybody lives happily ever after. But the hero never gets to see that ending. They’ll never know if their sacrifice actually made any difference. They’ll never know if the day was really saved. In the end, they just have to have faith. Ain't that a bitch."
Didnt she say as she was dying that her soul would be reborn?
I got the impression that the twelve were somewhat like Elidibus at the end of Pandaemonium. The remainder of the original person's soul infused with additional memories. Hence why they remembered us somewhat from Elpis.
EW Alliance spoilers
The gods' talk about departure and meeting again on the other side makes it sound like they aren't just soulless creations of Hydaelynn but true Ancients that have done their job and are returning to the star
Venat is an idiot
Honestly she came off more like good version of Athena to me and overall anti villain you don't commit a genocide and still be called somebody who loves life.
the fact that Yoshi p had to come out and say she was a "Good guy" speaks volumes on how people interpret her actions as amoral.
Would have been better if her memory got erased as well but she stumbled her way forward like the rest of the heroes.
I think more people should stick to saying "Hydalin" and not "Eythiris" because I just freaking panic when some dweeb says it out loud in an rp venue around my sprout friend.
All it takes is one "What's that?" "I can't say" and she'll be like "hmmmmmmm." -_-;;;
amazing job
Great video as always! The hardest hitting moment for me in the 6.0 MSQ was the post 89 trial. You can choose the dialogue option "We will find our way Venat" and she cries before truly leaving. It was a direct response to the conversation you have in Elpis :
"And amidst it all a people. Beacons of light and life. Laughter that warmed my heart like naught else before. They are my meaning and my purpose. My love. And so long as they need help, I cannot return to the star. Perhaps my future self is still waiting for it. The moment she can let go and walk unto the end… Safe in the knowledge that man will find his own way."
The sacrifice that Hydaelyn and her followers made was not glamourous, but it was made in the attempt to preserve life moving forward.
I'm pretty sure Athena is what Venat was supposed to be written as until Yoshi threw a tantrum behind the scenes and forced Ishikawa to rewrite everything. I've never seen a more inconsistent character or how ridiculous the writing has been trying to bend over backwards to forcefully get across how "good" she was despite her being little more than a genocidal, deceitful witch who massacred her own race.
No, being turned into sundered jello does not mean they "survived" somehow when all relationships and ties to their past lives were effectively severed. Except for her co-conspirators apparently. The most useless pantheon and most botched creation mythos in the entire Final Fantasy franchise.
it does make me question what we see in the credits, with Venat walking with the other ancients
Wait…were the supporters of Venat the Twelve Gods and the Watcher? The Twelve Gods must have known also Zodiark and Hydaelyn?!?
I only really got one thing to add to that last part there.
I think Hades would approve. After all, he said it himself. "Remember us. Remember we once lived."
We can call the Source as Hydaelyn while including the shards as Etheirys since Etheirys is the unsundered star. Imo
Thank you for explaining that the world is still, in fact, called Hydaelyn. Ive had a few people tell me that im wrong for calling it that lol. I guess people forgot that the first thing you hear when you create your character is Louisioux telling you the name of the Star.
Thanks for pointing this out. A lot of the comments here make me seriously think that a pretty good chunk of the fanbase is braindead; Endwalker makes it pretty clear that Venat's whole point in the story is to help fight Meteion, but the amount of people that ignore that and say that she's just a genocidal psycho is insane. It gets made clear that she certainly feels guilty about what had happened, and that it paints her fight as assisted suicide, in a way.
What she did was messed up, there's no questioning; thing is, it was to try an actually give the world a future. It gets made clear that the Ancients were either too stuck in the past – or Tempered by Zodiark – to be able to fight Meteion, and that the Sundering was basically a very risky plan to try and prepare humanity to be able to deal with Dynamis. The game makes it abundantly clear, and yet so many people ignore it…
the battle between zodiark and hydaelyn is somethong i would like to see (maybe as an echo flashback)
Dives into the Unsundered World always get my attention!
I mean, from another point of view sacrifice of people forming Zodiark is not any higher than that forming Haedelyn – sure, their souls survived but personality, memories etc., all that makes us human, did not.
If I reuse wood of my table to make chairs that table does not exist anymore so the only difference is permamently lowering population number unless new souls emerge with rest being purely cultural.
Are there enough hints and hooks to align each of the 12 to somebody of the distant past?
Since the First's Crystal Tower is still connected to the Unsundered timeline, I hope we get to eventually go back there someday and spend more time with Venat and meet the original Ancients the Twelve were based on.
True!…But our WoL when they were still "Azem" was against the whole thing About Hydaelyn and Zodiark, because probably our Azem did not wanna see the most important people to them die just like that they did not wanna see Themis and Venat die just like that cus they were too important for our Azem.
To be honest, I never got warm with the name "Etheris" anyway… and it was irrititating sometimes how easily NPCs around us started to use the name. And if you think about it, the world cant be named that anyway, since Etheris would be the world as it was, as a whole world, not a shard among many (even if it was the Source). So, yeah, Haydaelyn still sits better with me…
I'm not so sure about your tale about the Twelve… After all, in the alliance raid, we see them saying their farewells and talking about "returning to the Star"… This implies to me, that despite everything being told a fraction of their souls lives on. Which… to be fair, I didnt like… I thought, like you said here, they were "snuffed out" into nothingness after fueling their creation… To be honest, I didnt get warm with the conclusion of the raid story… When you quest in Elpis, the Ancients often talk about "gods". Hell, even Lahabrea mentions "the Gods" in front of Athena, telling her that the meddeling with souls is not for men but gods. I had hoped to get something along that line… Not that the raid story was bad, it was quite good… but I had hoped for something else ^^°
Hydaelyn did nothing for the 13th , 1st and countless other shards worst she created the situation that alllowed them all to perish. She only actively helped her "Brave little spark" and damned every single other person who ever interacted with her.
The 12 did nothing for eons. But special mention to Halone for doing fuck all during the dragonsong war and Nophica claiming the spirits act "out of love". Lets not forget how they collectively ignored Lousouxs pleas for help when Bahamut emerged (Thank goodness he said "Fine I'll do it myself") their suicide pact unironically makes the world a better place and good riddance. I only wish Oshon/Derek wasnt suchba coward and commited to the action.
Hydaelyn's permanant death is the perfect punishment for her actions.
Yes she was ultimately proven right but alot of people died and suffered due to her actions. Its fitting that she only live to see a world of suffering and die never to see that world move past her cruel test and even better the ones who she wronged get to enjoy reincarnation.
Personally, I'll call the star Etheris in remembrance to the Ancients who gave up everything to give the star a fighting chance. Not Hydaelyn for the vain Eikon who dare call herself a goddess.
When you believe in reincarnation on our own Star
I mean, not all hope is lost to the Ancients, even to those who were sacrificed to create Hydaelyn. With the ability of the Crystal Tower, there's nothing stopping a sufficiently motivated civilization from either preventing the Final Days feom even happening, or at worst individually plucking people from the past and sending them into the future.
I was always a little confused as to how the final days for the ancients differed from the one we experienced. Our final days was dynamis causing people that gave in to despair to transform into blasphemies but it was the creations of the ancients that started turning for them, correct? I guess theres just a piece of info here that is causing me to not understand.
Our Mother gave everything for us. It would be an insult to refer to the world as anything else. Hydaelyn it shall forever be.
I love Hydaelyn so much. Her story helped me get through a hard time. I want to get a tattoo of her.
Lalafel do just fine without souls.
Thanks for the spoiler warning – I'll be back once I catch up
I gonnna cry
May i know how you can return to the restricted area of the Noumene ?
Is this why I cried for an hour finishing the Myths of the Realm storyline? ToT
(Having met some of those who became the Twelve in the side quests in Elpis made it worse)
What is the difference between Venat and the Twelve's sacrifices, compared to Elidibus' sacrifice sending us to Elpis? Elidibus does say that this should consume every last mote of his essence. I always assumed for that to mean soul sacrifice, but we see him in Pandæmonium, that is to say, the version of him that sent us to Elpis.
Venat's soul-death being a sacrifice would imply that she valued souls to begin with and I'd argue that she did not. She misled her followers into sacrificing their souls to her and she knew that in the future the sundered becoming blasphemies would result in their soul death (as far as the WoL knew). She's also the one whose plan involved irrevocably tearing every living being's soul apart and whose backup plan involved abandoning every soul on the shards to death. They're acceptable costs to her so, no, I don't believe she held any particular value to souls, including her own. She accomplished everything she wanted and went out on her own terms, so where was the sacrifice on her part? The sacrifice came from the decimation of the Ancients, the 12k years the Song of Oblivion was sung unchecked destroying untold stars while she waited for the WoL, and the shards that were obliterated in order to make that happen. There is no cost to life or souls that is too much for her.
Personally, I'm glad the game is calling the star Etheirys because I don't believe Hydaelyn should in any way be celebrated. She is a textbook anti-villain that in any other scenario the Scions would've thoroughly condemned, in fact, 6.0 is a glaring outlier that exists solely to spare her from facing any judgment. Her motivations and methods are antithetical to the game's values regardless of the outcome and, as others have mentioned, Athena is her direct mirror who is denounced by all, Ancient and sundered alike. The Scions put in the place of the Ancients would've fought tooth and nail against her sentencing of their species just as they did Emet-Selch. The only difference is Venat "won" and it turns out the Scions become hypocrites when the mass slaughter of innocents benefits them, so now history is written from that perspective.
Something that's kind of amiss here is the parallels one can draw to Buddhism.
The life-stream perpetuates an endless cycle of life and death, in Buddhism this is called Samsara, (輪廻, rinne). The first truth of Buddhism is duhkha (苦), often translated as suffering, but rather more embodies unease at being incomplete, driven by craving and ignorance. The most prominent example of this is Hermes, but all the Ascians do in their own way.
The general goal is to achieve enlightenment and become free from the cycle of life and death, Samsara, and to do so you need to accept and know the four great truths.
When the End of Days came, the Ancients faced involuntary death for the first time as far as anyone could remember. Venes says "It was the first pain they ever felt, and it was unbearable. It shackled their hearts to the resplendent days when none knew of it." She asks her brethren to accept suffering as a constant companion, to engrave it upon their hearts and walk on, but they refuse. They long for their days of ignorance, and so they beseech Zodiark to absolve them from it and return them to the days already lost.
Venes however, accepts duhkha, she sees, and understands, and in creating Hydelin, she breaks free from Samsara and becomes quite literally Enlightened. She reaches Nirvana.
The idea that the soul is something inviolable and permanent comes from Abrahamic religions, there's no such thing in Buddhism. Venes became Hydelin. Hydelin still has the memories and experiences of Venes, but she isn't Venes.