It’s all A Realm Reborn isn’t it? Always has been.
0:00 – Intro
2:30 – SPACESHIP
7:40 – Supportourbromance.com
8:35 – Underworld Breakdown
11:21 – The Aitiascope
24:37 – The Mothercrystal
33:55 – The Aftermath
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If you haven't already – the song "Flow" is worth breaking down lyrically.
You remember Venat from Elpis as the WoL because of time travel, but Hydaelin gets to know many versions of you over the ages.
The song Flow is Hydaelin singing to one of your many reincarnations after their death, welcoming you back to the Aetherial sea… but with the sad knowledge that you weren't *the one*.
This idea that Hydaelin nurtured your growth, watched over your soul, cared for you over millennia is just really moving and I get all blubbery crying when I listen to it.
"Two" Parts for the next video…? I'm going to tell them.
The way I took the golden spirits in the Aitiascope (Papalymo, Moenbryda, Minfilia, etc) is that they ARE the souls of our departed friends, but they have not yet faded and been washed clean, as like Amon and Asahi they haven't yet allowed themselves to move on. Not out of the anger or regret that we see from the purple spirits, but out of concern for their friends, companions, and loved ones. They have to see how this all plays out, before they can go peacefully onto their rest, cleansing, and eventual rebirth.
I think the Atiacope is a crappy dungeon, but not because of the choices of characters in bosses or npcs, but because it's super paint-by-the-numbers in terms of encounter design, music and even visuals.
Every other "X9" dungeon from every previous expansion exceeds it in terms of how fun it is to play, yes even Castrum Abania, though I guess I can't really speak to that one since it's been reworked. I hear the second boss is wildly different now.
Maybe Atiascope is the way it is for sake of pacing, but damn if they didn't have you running around with rabbits and nameless scientists for an hour and a half between Elpis and it, so that can't be right.
Guess I'll see how ya'll feel on the next Wall of Dungeons.
I needed to see Asahi again, it was very important to me to confirm that he was still a little twerp. Honestly, I loved that he was back just to be angry about Amon using his body to betray Zenos, it made me cackle out loud when it happened. It was one of my favourite parts of Endwalker- of everyone to bring back in an area full of angry people wanting revenge, Asahi was up there for me.
Edit: Also I really, really loved his voice, so that also made me happy to see him again.
I like Amon'e final appearance ultimately because it closes the loop on Hermes after two whole levels of making him sympathetic. He's still a jerk! He becomes a huge jerk! It's OK to not declare him an innocent uwu good boy! Using Kairos was the start of his descent into Amon, and it's a good little button to remind us Yes, They're The Same Guy, Just With Time And Memory Fuckery.
Things I wasn't expecting to remember today. Garth Nix's Sabriel series, don't think I've thought of that sense high school. Thank you Kyle for the sudden nostalgia
Zenos just kind of butting in on Amon's moment. XD
FF7 is Dieselpunk, not Steampunk. Hence, the black and green color palette. 😉
I love the adding of VAs pictures and name on screen! It's an awesome touch!
i love the cooking videos! even after there is plenty to cook on. your forgetting yall still have a ton of post endwalker even after thursday…. and the 26 hour stream.
Someone else finally mentioned how absolutely fantastic Joanna Roth’s VA work was in capturing the essence of Venat. She manages a perfect blend of passionate, heroic and motherly in all her lines, which just represents everything wonderful about Venat.
This is the fourth time you fight Amon/Fandaniel/Hermes, if you count the fight from the Crystal Tower.
Great video as always! It still amamzes me that they introduced me to a character halfway through a zone and made me care about her so much in that small time frame, that her death several hours later landed so well.
The bosses were chosen specifically for the despair theme, it seemed.
Livia and Rhitahtyn died despairing that they failed Gaius, the empire, their subordinates, and themselves.
They're holding together in the aetherial sea because they're waiting to see who shows up first, Gaius or you.
They want absolution from him, or oblivion from one last failed strike at you- and they don't really care which. Not any more.
I hope you guys eventually take a look at the alternate Amon line right before he is dragged to the depths, because besides it being more emotional, it also suggests that despite all his resentment towards the identity of Hermes being forced upon him (by both the Ascians and the seared memories into his soul thanks to Kairos), Amon at the end resigns himself/accepts the identity of Hermes to an extent.
Also while the imagery is similar to other media where characters are dragged down to hell, Asahi dragging Amon to the depths of Aetherial Sea isn't literally sending Amon to hell (or super-hell), in fact other than the hell spirits/souls/memories who refuse to pass on make for themselves, the lore of FFXIV basically establishes the aetherial sea/lifestream doesn't contain a heaven or hell. So Amon being dragged to the depths of the Aetherial Sea is more his souls being finally forced to be cleansed of his memories/identity to either be broken to make new souls or be directly reincarnated once again, as Asahi says, Amon's ultimate punishment is that he will have to start over and continue his search for answers in some form. Essentially Amon/Hermes will be forced to remain in the cycle of Saṃsāra (the concept from dharmic religions which Endwalker drew on many of its themes from).
I was spoiled on this fight way early, back in Heavensward or Stormblood, not from the Internet, but by the game itself when I got Hydaelyn's Triple Triad card during a random Open Tournament at Gold Saucer. Incredibly bad luck, just her humanoid picture with the Primal tag sitting in the back of my mind as I went through the entirety of Stormblood, finally getting a little payoff in the Qitana Ravel, then waiting for the shoe to drop through meeting her on the boat into Endwalker, through her hand puppeting Krile a couple times, until I finally got here.
I also had a few interesting theories running around. Like, one or two of the primals we fight tell us there's only room for one influence in our soul and ours is already taken by Hydaelyn, so I thought maybe we were actually tempered by her (No, it's just a traveler's charm Venat came up with as Azem, seems like nearly anyone could do it, as we found with the warding scales).
Later I had the thought that gee, we sure are accumulating a lot of friends willing to take a lot of risks and even die for us, and we've been noted to have significant reserves of aether, so maybe we're actually doing some tempering ourselves? This one hasn't quite been explicitly debunked, but if it was true they would have been dropping more hints about it, and certainly Lakshmi would have gone differently.
27:30 Well, you guys DID say that Venat is down for ANYTHING
Best part about the trial duty support is there is a moment when Estinien shouts out to Alphinaud to watch out, to which he responds with confusion because he's already in a safe spot…. it was Alisaei that was in the wrong spot. Estinien was actually talking to her.
I cried
18:40 I loved how you're having what could be an emotional moment with Hermes. And then Asahi shows up and all your smiles are gone.
33:25 Gotta do a correction there. Hydaelyn did not cause the Flood of Light, that was a calamity caused by the Ascians unbalancing the elements. Blaming her for the Flood is like blaming Ysayle for Coerthas being cold because she uses ice magic.
38:05 Garrett going crosseyed over the music was so good.
ah yes, almost time for wall of dungeon/trial, i miss them
What kills me is that Venat spells it out to you. When she dies, there is no returning to the sea. There is no rebirth for her. When she dies, her soul is utterly destroyed. I have a distinct feeling Venat knew this before she became Hydie. It's one thing to sacrifice your life. But your soul? Everything that you are completely wiped away? That is the ultimate sacrifice. It breaks my heart.
40:10 You're forgetting the patch content. It's still very much Endwalker. You yet have more cooking to do.
I think the right answer for the bosses would've been Olivia (as we got), Thordan calling us some ungodly monster, and Asahi himself. Asahi never really got his time in the sun short of some great zoom-ins and his sister rightfully ending him.
I asked this during the stream but, question.
How many JRPGs are out there where when you kill god their final words to you are:
Good job
Your ready
I'm so proud of you
Go get em
Cause I legitametly don't know.
There is a dialogue path with Amon you can do that makes him reference that Hermes' story is at an end there with his defeat before Asahi drags him down.
This is why I said on the last one to do this first time on an Aim job in Amon's outfit. 😛
The acients did want to return to the star or die when they felt like their duty was done. Venat for so long waited for that sweet release, and she even posed that question in Elpis "perhaps my other self is still waiting for it" and for that reason chose not to save herself. That crystal stealing the power she would have got was the best thing that could have happened for her
Gotta admit the opening triggered me a bit because I straight up like Hermes better as a villain than Hades, as unpopular as that may be.
Edit: And I'm triggered again when you're complaining about Rhitatyn not being interesting because I freaking love him and in my headcanon my WoL has ptsd nightmares about killing him to this day. He was a genuinely good person who had been misled by Empire propaganda, but just due to the circumstances of war, were were forced to violently beat him to death.
Edit 2: and then you criticize Hermes being retread too often by comparing him to Zenos, the most overused character in the game, who's still around 2 expansions after his character arc was completed with his death. that's kind of hilarious.
"hope you walk with us to the end" that is my hope as well! excited!
Fun fact: "Aitiascope" means something like "instrument for viewing causes(/origins)," coming from the same root as the modern word "etiology" (or "aetiology" if you're British), which refers to the study of the causes of disease, or the way a particular disease is triggered.
And with Venat/Hydaelyn: She is one of the few characters in all of fiction who truly earn apotheosis. It's a genuine achievement.
I still can’t listen to flow without choking up. Imagine for a moment all those people stewing in your discord thinking about you reaching this point.
What an experience it has been so far.
That intro, also Pre-watch.
VII is not steampunk, it's dieselpunk.
Midgar is diesel punk
Not even half way through endwalker yet 😮
I didn't take so much time to cook as you guy do when I first played Endwalker, so I've never been so profound when interpreting metaphors, getting the true meaning behind specific lines (which by the way is one of the reasons I keep following you. You do it really well), but one aspect this part of the game had me thinking was the "poetry" or the "message" being told us by Endwalker's choice of trials.
We always know that the .0 content is going to have 3 trials. So, taking that Endwalker was the expansion that would be closing this arch and close all these stories and deciding to go with "killing" the two most powerful entities we spent the last 10 years hearing about was beautifully designed in my opinion. And completely unexpected, I never imagined they would go in this direction.
Excited to see you guys endwalking next week (ba dum tsss!). I'm on vacation from work so I'll definitely will be watching!
Thanks again for this awesome video!
Something fundamental that I'm not sure either Kyle or Garrett picked up on about Hydaelyn: she's most decidedly NOT an omnipotent being. The very point of her is that no primal is omnipotent. She chose to limit her use of the few sources of power she had to conserve them for us down the line. For a deity, she is remarkably limited in every way. And she is selfless in exactly the way someone who is both in love with her world and in the way a divine being would. It has not ever been about her, not once. It has always been about us.
For anyone who maybe wanted to know, yes they did call her by Venat in the final dialogue.
15:26 If you'd fought Rhitatyn ("Twoshields") since the rework, you'd understand why he's in the Aitiascope. He HATES the WoL. He loathes us because he was a genuinely good commander to his men, who we killed despite him trying to send them away to save them, and because we are the reason he failed in his duty to Gaius. If intense emotion is what makes a memory stick around long enough and then be drawn to us to coalesce into an enemy, Rhitatyn's memory of us qualifies in SPADES.
"The man who knew so much, yet understood so little" is one of those lines that'll stick with me forever, and you only get it if you give Hermes/Amon a kind answer in his final moment.
"So fly my children…and never look back"
I love you guys but how are you still mispronouncing Amon (ah-MAHN) after his name was said in voice? 😂
Hydaelyn's power gets used up to keep Zodiark's influence in check, and the power of stasis gets weaker with every calamity. She's quiet because she's weaker than ever before, but she always saved some power for your final trial.
Hahahaha!!!!! 😂😂😂😂😂 that intro!!!!!
I feel like they chose the first 2 bosses for this since they pretty much removed/changed their previous fights right before or alongside EW comin out. I cant really remember.
Adding more to this now that life has stopped interfering and I was able to finish the video, it's shit like this that makes me love Kyle's cooking. That Zenos/Amon connection he drew, with the Zenos over-the-shoulder editing, was absolutely on point. Not only was it a great bit of videography but the point Kyle made is spot fucking on and I'm ashamed to say I never thought about it. Zenos answered Hermes' question years before we even knew Hermes existed. Hermes was just too caught up in his own BS to hear it really, too obsessed with his self-imposed oblivion.
Man what a great meal. My compliments to the chef.
Two points for me.
1: I always trusted Hydaelyn. I didn't believe for a second that this game was gonna pull a "she was the bad guy all along" twist. The reveal that she was a primal was entirely inconsequential. We've met several primals that weren't evil at all. Ramuh wanted to protect his domain. Susanoo and Ravana are combat sexuals. Shiva was piloted by Ysayle in the same was Venat piloted Hydaelyn.
2: As for why Venat didn't speak after we defeated Zodiark, she didn't want to fuck up the timeline. She left her hint with the flower and that's it. The WoL had to get to Elpis and do things exactly how she saw them occur in the past or the whole plan will go up the flames. Granted, that's probably just speculation, but if I was in her position the last thing I'd want is to fail the "conjunction between your time and mine".
I feel some vindication that ya'll were just done with Amon/Fandaniel/Hermes. I think what made it worse was just how long the death/defeat monologues were. Like, every time you beat/kill him, you have to hear his voice drone on and on.
I'm not even sure how long the speeches were, but the cadence of the voice made it feel infinitely longer. The cadence makes it feel like every sentence will finally be his last, and I was just constantly hoping that "finally, he's done talking" only for another sentence to start. And we have to go through it 3 times.