Final Fantasy XIV’s biggest crisis, the Final Days, are over. Meteion seems like the one responsible for wiping out Etheirys, but is she really a villain? Or is someone else to blame for her fall? Let’s discuss her character in detail and explain why her master is really to blame.
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Dude love the video keep it up.also what is the name of the background music
Great video. I do find it very important and meshes with your idea that Meteion is modeled and acts like a CHILD – we’re not supposed to see her as a logical functioning adult – she’s just reflecting what is taught to her. I feel pity towards her, not hate. She just lacked a teacher or parent to guide her through her confusion.
It’s a seed of an idea, but I think that it’s very interesting that this feeling of pity (for me at least) is also evoked by the Garleans (who were more or less brainwashed into hating the other Eorzians) and Zenos (whose childhood clearly shaped him into what he is). I didnt hate them, was annoyed by them, but overall I pitied them.
Agreed. Hermes and his lack of control over his mental instability is at fault. He knew his negative emotions hurt her. Remember the scene where he has us take her out of the room. Mentally she was just a child growing and learning. No child could have handled what was thrust upon her and stay sane.
I personally like to think of Meteion and her sisters as programmes to a main computer. The little birds fly out, while the "base of operations" stays on the planet. The mission in itself was inherently flawed, and so was the design of Meteion. A childlike being, highly empathetic to the point of her experiencing other peoples feelings without the means to process them, being tasked to find the meaning of life itself is beyond madness. When her sisters collected their report, Meteion felt the sorrow and sadness of dying worlds – not only those that were in the report, but maybe even hundreds of them. She felt death by plague, death by loneliness, death by apathy, death by war, sorrow, fear, rage, anger, and confusion at the same time to an extent that it would break even the strongest character. And she broke.
I agree with her being the victim in the broader sense, however, she and her sisters have been singing this song of oblivion for thousands of years in a row: considering that the Third Umbral Era is dated to be around 6000 to 5000 years ago, after being precedented by the Calamities of Wind, Lightening and Fire have occured before those times essentially also means that the time Emet-Selch approaches Emperor Xande of the Allagan Empire precedented after three Shard rejoinings. So, in a rough estimate, the Sundering and the Beginning of Man as myriad races was way before this. In this time, she hoarded suffering, and sang her song of oblivion. How many worlds has this song reached? How many worlds, who were not aether shrouded like Etherys, were subjected to the Final Days? How many countless lives were lost in those thousands of years, while the Ascians were spinning their schemes?
She is a victim, but she is by no means innocent.
Emet: Yes yes Hermes but did you install them with copium?
Hermes: With what now?
Everyone: Fuck.
Now of course Hermes didn't install them woth copium, he made the Meteia because he didn't have copium for himself to begin with.
Hermes just needed a vacation amd touch some grass.
Even before watching this video that I agree that Hermes/Amon is the biggest mass murderer in ff14 to a point that it makes all Ascians crimes look like a big slap to the face. Heck maybe he's the biggest mass murderer in all of final fantasy.
I say the name of this video anytime I am in the Dead Ends. In case people forget that she is best bird.
I’ll be honest, I didn’t think there was ever going to be a way for square to make fandaniel a good villain and they did that shit AND managed to make him likable too in a way. Both meteion and Hermes are characters that I feel immense sadness for. Meteion was essentially pushed to discover a horrifying truth that ultimately warped her and almost ended up destroying everything and Hermes not only was dealing with his inability to reconcile his world and his own existence but I’m sure he felt immense guilt realizing what he had done to his creation in his own pursuit of meaning considering his obvious concern for all the creatures of ethierys. Hermes was flawed absolutely but imo I think there was real truth in his apprehension for the ways of his people. It’s such a shame that what came of his questioning was only destruction. Certainly a tragic story and a damn well written one.
I don't necessarily think Hermes is 100% to blame here either. Yes, he was deeply mentally ill and had a fundamentally flawed wold view, but the society of the ancients pushed him over the brink.
Hermes' mental illness was downplayed and ignored by those around him. His overwhelming empathy for the the lives in his care considered a weakness. The other Amarotians had no empathy and no compassion for their own creations. If a concept was even minorly flawed it was slaughtered mercilessly and forgotten. They treated these living, feeling beings as if they were base objects with no value and no right to live. This only exacerbated Hermes' own feeling of worthlessness and hopelessness.
The Amarotians' "Perfect World" was a dystopia. It was flawed and broken. The ideal existence they claimed to live never existed. Which is fitting, seeing as how everything about the Ancients is based around Thomas More's "Utopia." A word that literally means "A place that doesn't exist." "Amaurot" A city that no one's heard of. "Anyder" On river with no water.
The Ancients as a whole are responsible for their own downfall, and all the evil that followed. They were as doomed to die as all the other civilizations Meteion visited.
I had very little sympathy for Hermes since he reminded me of people I knew in my real life. Deeply wounded individuals, devoid of empathy for others, but rather adapt at convincing people they care, since if they need to draw other people into their misery. The whole arc in Elpis, where he bemoans how cruel it is that the creature he's tasked to put down has to die..? He never really brings up the suffering that it caused because he doesn't care. He just cared about how it made him feel that he had to do something about it.
This was all the more clear when Meteion was getting consumed by despair and he encouraged it and didn't take any steps to bring her back. He never cared about her or her sisters… They just confirmed what he believed.
I don't think Hermes is flawed or is the reason for all problems. I consider it a complicated issue and the collective circumstances of Hermes is what also pushed him to do what he did.
Don't forget, he sincerely opposed the idea to unmake creations just because they were not useful/not do what the creators want them to do. He believed everyone and everything has a right to live. Even a bloodthirsty monster, can have a purpose if they would be willing to research it. Dangerous, obviously. So are some animals in real life. Hermes believed every living thing has a function, and to have him turn over Meteion, he didn't want to lose her either. If any, Hermes considered this a test, as well as a point to prove in the sense of how would you feel if something else has agency over whether you live or die when you can no longer serve your purpose?
We saw in Thavnair that the first blasphemy, was of a salesman we met when we first landed there, who was struggling to make due, something good was going to happen until it got cancelled again.
The roots of his despair is that salesman felt he failed, can't make it, everything he tried still didn't work out, attempting something even felt pointless, and that made him susceptible to transforming into a blasphemy. All those things lead to the idea that your life has no purpose, and should it be so, you should be unmade. That's how the Ancients worked, that's what Hermes opposed, and I'd like to believe that same feeling was also transferred to Meteion.
To point fingers at who is the ultimate villain is far more difficult I'd say, since it was all circumstances.
On the surface, folks who do not know the circumstances, would consider someone a villain without knowing their circumstances.
As the video pointed out, Meteion and her sisters are definitely not mature enough to cope and grasp with pain like this, but it's also a lesson that can be seen today. People that grow up with a messed up childhood and mostly suffer, have 50/50 chance that either makes them become the solution to what they went through, or breaks them and contribute to the same thing that made them suffer. The Warrior of Light's experience made him be a solution, Meteion's experience broke her to become part of the problem.
I always thought that Hermes is to blame and that Meteion is just another victim of him. I mean….she´s very naive, inexpierenced and child-like, yet incredibly powerful. Why would you send such a being to explore the depths of space? It was very obvious that she was not mentally prepared for that but only physically and I´m pretty sure Hermes could have prepared her better but wasn´t willing to wait because of his own state of mind.
I agree, it's not her fault that all she saw was despair. However it is her fault for not going to Etheirys, and studying it first. But how would she have known that Etheirys was a world of hope if she wouldn't have become the embodiment of despair?
Yep. It was all Hermes giving her and her sisters the wrong info. The good stuff was in Etheirys all this time. What a waste of a search.
I used /handover to starbird and she eats it, so she feeds bird feeds.
100% Hermes is the true Villian of the Hydaelyn/Xodiark Arc.
Hermes actually more at fault than we think he is, Ancients had strict regulations and vigorous testing grounds for new creations, some Ancients even commenting on the fact they observe newly created life-forms for decades and see changes withing newly created lifeforms in the multiple generations of it. What Hermes does? Creates a new life-form, doesn't report it and immediately releases it for some obscure personal task, which come to think of it would never be approved by convocation. More hilariously, he is a leader of this testing ground facility and must be aware of all standards and regulations, but he thinks he is better than this. He was never cut-off for this job to begin with, this is kinda on the nose, but it illustrates how often people in charge are not even qualified to be in charge to begin with.
I love that there's no real villain in the end but rather everyone fighting for what they think is right
Imagine having Multiple Apocalyptic events literally caused by the crying of an edgy teen forever stuck in her emo phase…
I mean it wasn’t her fault but she absolutely killed millions
Ahhh, nothing kicking back with the lads after a hard day of 'venturing and cracking open a nice cold can of "Meteion did nothing wrong."
Nobody says she did, that’s what make her a well-written villain. The clashing of different perspectives is how to tell a good story, not always the cliche good vs bad.