Agreed watching people share the same reactions as myself always makes me appreciate the game. But I also like when people have different conclusions and reactions to the story then I did as well. One of the biggest reasons I love shadowbringers so much
Its weird, out a group of my friends in 14. Im the only one who appreciates the MSQ. Pint dont read the rest of this please... But the post Endwalker msq just isn't as strong of a story which makes me sad. I don't think its because Square Enix is running out of ideas but they just cant put too much content into one patch at a time.
Meteon: I'm a smol new born bby that feels every single emotion by everyone around me deeply 🥺. My dad put me in charge of answering the simple question "Why are we alive?" and I'm going to make him proud uwu. Hermes: Go out into deep space by yourself and meet all the strangers while downloading all their emotions and words into a hive mind this is a great idea.
the issue wasn't sending her out, the issue was not giving her a base case. she outright says what he was hoping for was on etheirys the whole time. he just didn't want to expose her to etheirys because he didn't want to "bind" her to the star. had she known about the joys found on the planet, maybe met with Venat's friends and the Azem of that time, she likely would have been fine.
Even Meteion recognised that the premise of Hermes's question was flawed from the get-go at the end. Hermes was a depressed sophist who jumped to the worst possible conclusion when he did not get an answer that satisfied him without considering that his own queries were flawed. Even Emet-Selch called his conclusions as "sophistry".
@@mrrodgers0 ARR: A Story About Nationalist Militarism Producing Cool Machines And No Unintended Consequences Thereof ARR patches: Why Independent Paramilitary Law Enforcement Bodies Are A Bad Idea HW: Be Careful What You Believe In, Because It Might Come True Stormblood: ARR 2, or: Nationalist Militarism Also Produces Cool People Who Do Exclusively Cool Things, Creating Yet More Cool People: A Travelogue Shadowbringers: Failure To Accept Loss Will Turn You Into A Theatre Kid: A Cautionary Tale
Yoshi P must have threatened their pets or something cuz everyone was putting their whole soul into it. Seriously, AAA games coming out this year sound like a bunch of amateurs reading a script for the first time. :P
re-watching the ktisis hyperborea ending cutscene again opened my eyes to something that makes emet-selch an even more sentimental character to me that i didnt catch the first or even second times through. most of us know that emet-selch (as an ascian) has a taste for theatrics/the performing arts evident by a part in garlemald's zone story that revealed solus did a lot to hold performance art in high regard in garlemald's society during his rule. i have a sinking suspicion that his holding theatrical performances in high regard is his way of remembering hythlodaeus. its clear from how emet and hythlo act during and after hythlo's improv stunt that hythlo is prone to improvised performances like that and emet is prone to playing along. how better to memorialize your best friend who is a great actor and improvisor than by fostering the love of something that best friend is known for in an entire society of people. that way even if solus and emet were to die somehow, as long as that civilization lived and prospered enough to indulge in performance artistry his best friend would be remembered.
I think there is also the thing of, ultimately, all these people being reflections of the ancients he remembers. So during a theater performance, when the people don masks of character, for that momentary performance he can feel like the shattered pieces have come together, and he sees a glimpse in that past he yearns for. Especially when the Emperor Solus is the patron of the theater and can have them perform whatever he wants - who's to say he does not commission enactments of his past put to drama? Yet to everyone else, it merely seems like the Emperor has specific tastes and just go along. No doubt there is place in this performance for one jovial and supportive friend that prefers to remain in the background, as well as a very stalwart, reckless and heroic friend doing their best...
Don't mean to um actually as it's fine either way, but Hades mentioning "a certain incorrigible associate" is referring the the current Azem. Hades and Hythlo had gotten used to improv because Azem was prone to firing from the hip. Everything else is seemingly correct though.
@@Reshapable oh true. i suppose our character does wing it enough to make that a defining character trait. just makes hythlo feel like a not-so-little little brother figure to me that way by emulating azem.
??? pretty sure the story is about not giving up hope even in the most horrible situations and striving forward. not sure where your brain came up with therapy.
@@drakologarnus7248if Hermes had sought out therapy, had worked through his frustrations and fears and learned to healthily process them, he could have avoided being broken by the Metia's declaration, avoided siding with her.
@@mad_max21 the whole point of Endwalker is that *no* Hermes wasn't alone, suffering did exist, and pretending otherwise isnt wisdom, but weakness. While sure there might not have been proper *therapists* in the unsundered world, Hermes didn't invent depression, and could have still reached out to his peers like any scientist.
@@PinkFluffyAlex the ancients were on their way to becoming like the people with Ra-La. once they achieved perfection they'd all just kill themselves which is what Hermes said. there was nothing beyond their duty and so they lead empty lives in a way. it was necessary for Hydaelyn to sunder them because they were about to make a dragon in the mountain deal and would have lead to another bad end on meteion's list. choices that lead to suffering and ultimately proved that life was pointless. reasons for living have to be forged, learned, and shared over time and now the regular people can achieve hope beyond the entelechy of biological life. move past the idea that our forms determine our function and destiny. that pain and suffering do not damn us.
That Venat cut-scene was the pinnacle of endwalker. That expounding on Answers was so amazing, it was almost like they had planned it from the start even though they certainly had no clue of endwalker, so crazy good.
It's impossible to say how much they had planned but I think they definitely knew the _vibe_ of where it was going ever since 2.0. No specific plot points, just the general idea.
Some people have complained about Venat's Sundering cut scene. Not that it doesn't hit like an emotional truck, but because the timeline in it is extremely wonky. How can the Ancients go from suffering the Final Days, Hythlodaeus leaving Emet to summon Zodiark, to Venat summoning Hydaelyn and Sundering the world in the space of time it takes for Venat to stroll down the street? How can Venat decide to Sunder the world after only a single argument? The simple answer is: they didn't. The cut scene isn't portraying the actual events. The cut scene is portraying Venat/Hydaelyn's memories of those events. After 13000 years (I believe that figured is dropped somewhere during the MSQ), Venat's recollection of those events are of course hyper compressed. She remembers doing certain things and seeing certain things, but all the trivia events that happened in between are forgotten about except perhaps as subconscious feelings, and only the most pertinent details remain. Well, that's my interpretation of the scene. And the greatest proof that this scene is Venat's memory is Venat's narration at the very start of the scene begins with "I remember..."
@@tuanang7889 I will blame them, in a game so hellbent on using the symbolic and metaphorical to tell its story, taking this cutscene as if the events happened in the span of a single day, or even week, is downright insanity. Sometimes, misinterpretation is on the viewer
Krile: Ah, you are back. How went your sojourn to the First? Have you learned aught of the Final Days? WoL: Well, I successfully met with Elidibus, who was surprisingly cordial and cooperative considering the fact that I killed him. And his brethren. And caused the extinction of his people. And undid over 10,000 years of hard work. And killed his God, can't forget about that one. Anyway, one thing lead to another and I ended up 10,000 years in the past, befriended an OG God before it was cool, encountered a Causality Loop paradox, witnessed the results of both a Fermi Paradox and the Threshold Theory, discovered that the Final Days are caused by untreated depression and a lack of peer reviewed research, and now we need to chase down a creepy monochromatic little girl empath with cute little birb wings on her head to the literal edge of the universe where emotion dictates reality in order to prevent her from mercy killing all life in the entire universe via thermodynamics-induced entropy that she is accelerating through the use of her empathic dark-matter manipulation abilities... Krile: Huh... Tataru? A cup of tea, if you wouldn't mind. Make it _very_ Irish. Tataru: I think I'll join you in that. WoL: Pour a cup for me, too. Hold the tea.
@@fnerXVI Caduceus is the staff with snakes wrapped around it, that the Greek god Hermes is depicted as carrying. The boss in Coils was named after the staff because it is a snake.
some folk interpret her getting bloody in the ending walk in the darkness as either Rejoinings, or her taking hits for her champions (and you). so each time a sundering happens. she weakens. she's damaged. or maybe when she takes the hit for you to survive crazy shit. she's damaged.
I'd feel more sorry for her if she literally didn't set herself up for it. She was the one who let Emet pass and do his rejoining thing. Thanks for taking that hit from Ultima and that bit in the Anti tower but otherwise the world is objectively a better place with her dead.
some people say they can hear the sound of the Ultima weapon when it hit you on the Praetorium (now porta decumana) and Venat getting bloody as the result of protecting us in "the walk" cutscene
1:30:40 I think this moment is one of the more brutal little bits of the expansion for me. Imagine finding someone who killed the entire town where they were the mayor, and when you ask them what gives meaning to their life they just kill themselves right in front of you.
I think it was more like a "God" and his people, where he ended the whole society and lived alone, and when Metion came he realized there was no more reason to live.
@@Scapemaster00 OP describes situation in a more grounded (albeit still wildly bizarre) setting using metaphor to add another frame of reference, then in comes yourself with "nah it was more like - *actual cutscene event that transpired* - happened" as if no one already knew that. You don't describe a thing as being itself to better illustrate what it is. Whoosh what? Whoosh that.
That ending for you today, was the biggest TRUTH / LORE BOMB w/in the game. Mattering on how much you relate to your character will involve how much that, & what you'll be going thru soon will hit you, & stick with you for the rest of your life, but me knowing you've been playing as Pint from even back in WoW, you're not going to need a handkerchief, you're going to need a beach towel, there is no one that doesn't cry their eyes out. It hits me, & still does like a NUKE, I modeled my character after my real life hero, my late big sister.
Mate we all been there. Those who care about the story all have cried their eyes out. My character is modeled after a fictional character i made years ago. I Loved endwalker so much! The end hits like a truck. I'm Really, really interested in what 7.0 is going to bring
Granted, a line from Answers is litterally “Tell us why, given life, we are meant to die helpless in our cries?” And the first line of the song is “I close my eyes, tell us why must we suffer?” The question has always been there.
It really is sweet that the gift Hermes would give Meteion after the mission was him being happy. Also really like that underneath her robes Venat has what look like hiking boots. Perfect distillation of her character.
When we entered the Ocular near the end of 5.0 we viewed the event of G'raha talking to Urianger without anyone else present - indicating that we did so by piecing it together from the ambient aether
Zereth Mortis and Elpis may have been in development at the same time _but the entire concept of creation magicks and the _*_ancients_*_ creating the creatures that now inhabit the world is from back in Shadowbringers_
he even accidentally setup meteion for failure too, he set his aether to be what she should look for in the universe so she was ONLY looking for depressed people
Here it is. The cutscene that dispelled all doubts that Venat/Hydaelyn was a malevolent being especially after learning about her and Zodiark's true nature in Shadowbringers. In the end she did what she had to do - the Sundering, just to give us even the smallest of chance of surviving against Meteion and her sisters. 1:47:33 The level of self-restraint required not to post pics with the Trust System for this dungeon during launch... once again, kudos to the community for not immediately spoiling for everyone through social media. 2:27:35 Meteion flew up so high in the sky in space full of dynamis, looked back, only to see a bird's-eye view of the (rejected) TOP RWF clear. I imagined that also caused a bit of despair to her and her sisters.
@@NeoSpira imo the omega quest lets you come to your own conclusion the best. what venat did was for the future of the star she loved, but you have to realize that she effectively killed everyone on Etheirys. The people that they were all sundered into...are not the same people that existed. She basically pulled the same thing the Ascians did, but in reverse. Some people don't vibe with one person deciding what should be done for the greater good, thinking Venat should have tried to tell them about Meteion and Dynamis and searched for an alternative solution. I disagree, but that's how those people think
@@ApexGale it's a misunderstanding of why she actually did it. It wasn't a "kill everyone for the greater good" thing. It was a "if I don't do this they will all die anyway". What the ancients wanted to do was release the aether from Zodiark and revive the ancients who sacrificed themselves. The problem is this would have stopped the shroud of aether that was keeping the bad vibe waves away, so everyone would have died anyway. She had to shackle Zodiark in order to preserve his existence, and sunder the world so that none would seek to revive the lost ancients. She didn't quite get everyone but that ended up working out, or maybe it was intentional in order to ensure the time loop would be closed.
@@ApexGale You're 100% right. And it wasn't like she felt righteous or good about her choice. She carried that guilt for so long. I guess I'm just more sad that her actions and choice were more nuanced and not a black/white thing.
its actually quite cool to go back and do the zodiark story fight. Meteion's speech and Fandaniel''s are very reminisicent. Showing that although he forgot her, her song laid dormant still ringing throughout his heart.
Idk if you will read this but the whole memory inheritance thingy started after the Final Days iirc. The convocation made crystals to store their memory and those who will inherit their will. Azem doesnt get one initially, but a certain best friend secretly made one. This crystal is significantly different that it doesnt function to store memory, but a spell to call your allies when you need it
The thing I adore about the end of thou must live, die, and know is that its a heavy scene, and when it wraps up in the CT and your character is coming too, there is a moment of pure silence, followed by a very familiar area we spent a long time introspecting, and the familiar song coming back in almost like the game and the player are reminded to breathe.
The real life equivalent to dynamis is dark energy. It is noted in a cutscene earlier that dynamis accounts for 68% of the universe, which is the exact amount of dark energy our current models predict exists.
Venat's story is just too damn good. God tier! She became my most favorite character. Venat's walk cutacene at the end with the music were just amazing. Kudos to the team that produced this masterpiece. Who knew a game(mmorpg) could be so damn good with its story telling!
the point where you're climbing into the sky, and you slowly realize: wait, i've been here before fighting hermes atop the platform where Emet showed you his world dying. welp
Loosely has something to do with the rejoinings (Which she set herself up for so zero sympathy from me) and just the handiest Meat shield in taking that hit from Ultima. As for walking our path pfff that's a shit take.
everyone has their own interpretation ... I personally consider the first hit to represent the 7th Calamity - after witch it took almost all of her power to keep the 8/14th of Zodiark sealed ... making her unable to act in the world as much and as strongly as before .... even to the point that it was almost impossible to communicate in a regular basis - this is represented by her loosing her sword The second hit is her shielding us from Ultima - as Lahabrea say in that cut scene she exhausted what little strength she had left to act to shield us ... which fits to her getting covered in goo (while the goo is a stand in for blood) the dark can be interpreted in her light being exhausted at least on the outside - she falls completely silent afterwards ... But of course since there is no official explanation you are free to interpret it as you want
That last cutscene is just so damn good. The music, the writing, the voice acting, the direction tying them all together. They should have created an Academy Award for best cutscene in a video game just so they could give this an Oscar. Being so overwhelmed by emotions you feel physically exhausted and can't form words to express your reaction is a pretty common reaction. It isn't nearly as bad rewatching it, but I still get chills and tear up a little every time, even though I've watched it dozens of times.
It still blows my mind that Venat / Hydaelyn waited 10,000 + years and sent out the "hear, think, feel" message to everyone that could hear it JUST TO FIND US!! A-FU**KING-MAZING.
It's probably a lot more than 10000 years. In Shadowbringers Emet Selch says he "lived a thousand, thousand lifetimes" when talking about having lived among the people of Etherys. Let's be conservative and assume he only meant a thousand lifetimes and not a million. I don't know the average lifespan of people post sundering, but lets low-ball it and say each lifetime he lived averaged to 50 years. That gives us a minimum of 50000 years, and if we decide to stretch the numbers we get up in the 100'000'000 year range. Venat waited for a long, loooooong time.
@@Hammer1987 We know for a fact that the sundering happened roughly 12000 years ago (on the source), although the source of that info comes from the shadowbringers announcement at fanfest. Also "thousand thousand" isn't meant to be taken literally in the same way that "myriad" usually isn't taken to mean 10000, the expression also gets used at other places in the game.
@@vulcwen This is just my opinion, but I believe info found in-game should take precedence over other sources of info. Emet says a thousand, and he says it twice. I'll have to go over all his dialogue again to know for sure, but he doesn't seem prone to lies or exaggeration. So when he says "a thousand, thousand" I have no reason to not take that at face value. Especially when (And I might well be wrong about this) nothing else in the game contradicts him. For me the only issue is whether he said it twice to mean a million, or simply repeated it for emphasis. Let's do some more math. If the sundering happened 12k years ago, he on average lived for 50 years per lifetime, and he took no breaks between lifetimes, what would be a reasonable number of lifetimes for Emet to have lived since the sundering? The answer is 240 lifetimes. In that case "a thousand, thousand" is a gross exaggeration, basically a lie. And he has no reason to lie about this. Hundreds of lifetimes are quite sufficient to hammer his point home. So if he lived between 200 and 300 lifetimes it would have been more appropriate to say he had lived hundreds of lifetimes. And also bear in mind that this is only assuming an average life duration of 50 years. I am by no means a FFXIV lore expert, so there may be other ways to measure the time since the sundering, and more accurately too. Somewhere between a thousand and a million lifetimes of indeterminate duration is not exactly a very precise measure. I've been thinking about this a lot and if there is more in-game info on the subject I would love to know.
This is why you leave little threads and leads for yourself when you write. Not big plot holes, mind you, just little threads... the stories you can write and the way it fills out your world more by writing off these threads... its phenominal
@@starofaetherius george rr martin had a discussion regarding world building that its not constructing a house but more on gardening you plant seeds (plot points) and you nurture them and if someone grows great then use it later
It's crazy that they managed to do this while only planning one expansion at a time. I for sure thought they had it all planned out until I saw that interview with Yoshi-P where he says they don't really plan beyond the expansion they're currently working on. Mad skills.
I mistrusted her too, told it to her face and she just painfully smiled and took it. Once the Elpis section was done, and I saw the full picture of her self-sacrifice, I felt awful for doubting her to the point I couldn't log into Sharlayan for a good while because Flow just reduced me into a sobbing wreck.
I remember seeing the the quest name 'Thou must live, die and know' and just feeling my heart race and drop at the same time. Bringing Answers full circle... *Chef's kiss*
Okay i cant be super specific because of spoilers but dont listen to the people who were like "ascians cant LB because reasons 🙂" because trust me as someone who spends HOURS rewatching cutscenes, reading dialogue, doing side quests... new game +... theyre wrong. The thing theyre thinking of was an exception because of some really wacky circumstances. We have known how Limit Breaks work for years with no questions or mysteries about it.
I would say its the other way around ... Answers is a 1.0 creation and they basically made it their guide ... adding layer upon layer to it as they went... absolutely spectacular work
@@Ower8x Answers was not a 1.0 creation. While it was technically first shown in patch 1.23, it was the kill switch for 1.0 that brought us forward to 2.0 and the true beginning of the story - it was the catalyst and the starting point for the 8-year journey that is the Ascian arc. I can guarantee you they had the entire timeline nailed down by the end of Heavensward. It was 100% planned from the beginning, they've been telling the plot in part through the music from the second they did a hard reset on the game. The 1.0 opening cinematic is just a bunch of generic fantasy-ish music. Though, they did have a decent hard rock interlude for the Garlean fleet. Here's the "End of Eorzea" that players experienced as Square Enix shut down servers on vanilla FFXIV. ruclips.net/video/YgEg8kXmifo/видео.html
That first 'hit' when she's walking, where she drops the sword. That was her shielding us from Ultima..... The 2nd hit, was her keeping us from fracturing under all that light we had 'absorbed' in Shadowbringers before Ardbert joined with us to strengthen us without needing her help. At least, that is my head-cannon. She didn't help us any in Heavensward, as Grandpa-dragon severed our link to her and we had to re-forge it anew on our own. Post Heavensward, all the way up to Shadowbringers, we stood on our own (and got knocked down a few times). It wasnt till Emet swamped us with all that light, that she had to intercede again.
I generally consider the first hit to be the 7th Calamity ... the reason is that afterwards she withdrew as she had very little power to spare to keep the 8/14th of zodiark sealed ... - this is represented in her loosing her weapon ... the second I consider as Ultima ... this is represented in her being covered in black almost fully as Lahabrea says she exhausted what little power she had left ... afterward even through could not help us directly she still walked forward like we did believing in us and doing what she could for us ...
@FerretSnot well the reason I don't feel those were rejoining because, in a way, the 'rejoinings' don't really impact hydaelyn directly. It's shards rejoining and havoc for the star yes, and likely weaken her own power due to the loss of 'prayers' from an entire shards worth of life praying to "the crystal", but they are not a direct attack on her. She's battered a bit at the start of her walk, likely from her fight with Zodiark and likely a few ascians, but the 2 "hits" she takes are likely her taking direct intervention on our behalf, which she only did twice. Once with Ultima, then struggling to keep us from falling apart till Ardbert showed up.
Dont mean to be rude, but yall head-cannons are wrong. Sundering cutscene and the cutscene that follows that represent her walking amidst the despair of humanity she created are meant to be HYPER methaporical. The "hits" she are taking are meatn to represent the despair and sadness she is burdened with from sundering the whole humanity. The whole ""walking" cutscene shows how the choice she made weighs on her and as the humanity takes hits with sandess and despair (represented by death of some roegadyn there, argument betweeen two random npcs etc etc.) and isnt meant to be taken literal that its her taking hits during our encounters in Eorzea. AS someone mentioned rejioning dont make sense to hurt her and anyways, thats my take and pretty much most universal between the biggest fans of venat on various forums (especially people that waifu her on twitter having whole fucking fanpages dedicated to her). FUNFACT: ther whole dark "slimy" thingy that ecompases her being was meant to be blood in the first place but producers wanted it to be more PG and Symbolical so they made it "dark despair slime" or something (the blood would represnt her pretty much walking forward, butdened with all these accumulating pain of the mankind through all these 10k years, waiting for our WOL to come); imma look for source of this fast cuz i had it somewhere Thinking these "hits" are rejoinings or her shielding WoL from the attacks dont make much sense, especially with whole thing shown as symbolical cutscene (the previous one where she sunders OFC didnt happen, where she approaches like 12 ppl and walks past hythlo/hernes/emet. You can clearly see it shows how everything played out in a brief/symbolical way and it follows for the second cutscene where she walks among the mankind) Sorry for a mess of an essay but there are so many people who dont fully understand thisc cutscene and i dont blame them; its quite ambigious without thinking a lot about it,
Even the pararell that cutscene draws between venat walking foward, butdened with all the pain and suffering of the manking and weigh of her choice and our WoL walking towards Emet in his arguably WEAKEST and most desperate moment in pretty much whole adventure, is meant to just show how Venat and WoL are walking forward, no matter the costm the loss, the suffering. It wasnt meant to show she "guarded" us in this moment. And dont get me wrong, the "guarding" thing MIGHT be included in these "hits", but they are showing a much BROADER thing, that shows her emotions and struggle inside, not some direct actions she did in the EORZEA in a span 2 years of our WoL existence in Eorzea.
Like I don’t know but maybe it’s just nostalgia since I started with endwalker, but I just don’t see how they can top this, a truly captivating story and beautifully constructed twist and turns that don’t leave you confused but in shock if it be for good and bad. Ugh I’m not crying!
This is my favorite part of Endwalker. Especially when it's revealed that Venat was the Jailer all along. Can you believe they planned it all the way since ancient times?
@@holmesholmes.8784 pretty much, wow writers tried to pull a "it was this guy all along, planned from warcraft 3" kind of shtick and it went entirely tits up
This is one of the most well written stories considering they didn't actually have a plan, but what they did as they went along, was go back into their own story and do the best they could to make it all fit within the original lyrics of the song Answers... It's not perfect, there are clear points in the story where actual story-beats were left behind, probably because they couldn't make them work or they just decided on a different direction... but overall, I have to hand it to them, they really made that original song Answers really, really fit the arc of the entire story so far... and the end, while as I said earlier, not perfect (you can find a few holes, but not many) they sure do a pretty good job of wrapping things up in such a way as to finish the story but open new doors! I know your probably still 'cooking' all the story ingredients together... but man, Venat walking with us every step of the way and taking crit damage to help protect us... Mommy!!!!!!!
I had a feeling and felt heart broken knowing Hydaelyn/Venat was there walking with us taking the blows we took in order to help us grow, live and overcome our trials up until that cutscene. On the other hand it felt good being right when a lot of ppl I knew had lost trust in her character and then saw that moment with me when we all played the expansion. One of the most satisfying "You were right," Moments I have ever experienced.
This story meant so much to me, makes you really appreciate life even when you've gone through so much shit and at least for me gave a new strength to carry on
I got to this point where he ended today & I couldn't stop, iI was a hooked, if it was a book I would have stayed up & read to the ending. I played from this point to the ending, only taking small breaks to let the dogs out in the backyard, feed them, & for me to grab another 16 oz Coca-Cola & another half a coffee cup of Jameson.
56:38, when they're talking about how someone is using Dynamis to send "bad vibes" to cause the apocalypse, someone in the chat said, "Bobby Kottick is willing FFXIV to die." That legit left me in stitches. Not literal stitches, mind, but legitimate ones...if that makes sense.
That cutscene was sich a masterpiece. Left me speechless when I experienced it for the first time myself and keeps me tearing up each time i rewatch it. Especially when the music hits in at 3:13:48
ngl, it's kinda annoying when chat spams the smiley face when they don't have to because what pint was doing was reiterating previous information in a way it made sense to him and just needed confirmation on it. they really ought to figure out if it's spoiler or not. especially considering zodiark information is from way back when we were on the moon. or they could be spamming because it was the turning point of the whole elpis arc
in thou must live die and know, theres a time jump, when you see hythlodaeus walking away from emet, hes going to become a sacrifice, when venat said "in covering the star in a shroud of aether, we forestalled the final days" which means, zodiark had been summoned, so between the summoning of zodiark and that line, the scene we saw at the end of anamnasis anyder happened, where venat and her fellows were talking about creating hydaelyn and how she had to serve as the heart
being relatively new to FFXIV I'm about at the same location... I get so much out of watching these reactions as in the moment I don't always make all the story connections.. also its just fun and rewarding to share in such a great experience... love it! thank you...
at about 25:00 - graha's doomed timeline is actually resolved in one of the Tales from the Shadows short stories which everyone should absolutely go read
Also, no, Hermes is there right from the beginning. You can run past every monster and talk to him right away without killing anything (as I did on my alt). Pint just ran everywhere except where he was for 10 minutes.
Daeus is a Bard! I knew there was a reason I connected with him on my playthrough. XD Can't wait until you know the true meaning to Answers! It blew my mind that that song has existed since the very beginning of 2.0, and that we only truely understood it's meaning in Endwalker.
It's more likely Ishekawa give the song an entirely different meaning, writing and plotting endwalker since Shadowbringer. There is no way they planned for Answers to have this mwaning back in ARR. Back then it was Hydaelyn consoling her children after the 7th umbral calamity. Ishekawa probably added a second, much more powerful meaning when making Endwalker and tying up as much as she could from ARR-SHB in endwalker, leaving the 10 year story with a very satisfying conclusion while laying the groundwork for her next masterpiece.
Completely agree with the whole ending feeling like a sort of death thing, they did such a good job making you feel like this is going to be the end of the game even if you know there's more to come. I spent the entire last half of EW half-convinced they were somehow going to kill off the WoL at the end XD or else make it so that story-wise we technically have to leave Etherys and go somewhere else.
The closest to real-life in the relationship between Dynamis and Aether are neutrinos, I think. They're very abundant particles but they're so small and light, they can't interact with basically anything. They do _basically_ nothing to us or our tech and are super hard to detect. Actual particle physicists are welcome to tell me I'm wrong or elaborate further, please! That cutscene is the best. Just absolutely perfect.
"Overwhelming'. If theres one word to describe Endwalker, it would be "Overwhelming". Overwhelming when the Garleans rather die in the cold wastes than receive your help, Overwhelming when you're fighting Zodiark at LEVEL 83. Overwhelming when the entire world is collapsing after "defeating the Big Bad". Overwhelming when you're forced to tell a beloved character about theirs and their entire civilization's Fall from Grace. Overwhelming when you learn the Truth of the world... And standing here, there's still more. I've watched Endwalker cutscenes six times so far (my own, three strummers, and two friends), and every. single. time. it makes me cry.
Venat's walk is the most gut-wrenching, heartbreaking scene of the entire franchise. She never left our side, she took all the hard blows, every Calamity, but never left her Warrior nor her children.
The whole scene is fake. It's meant to be emotionally manipulative, so you don't think about the fact she committed ideological genocide. The billions who died as a result of her actions don't care that she was always on the WoL's side either.
@@dullahandan4067 1- they all lived- they were just sundered. 2. As far as she could tell, if she didn't do something, it would mean the end of all life in the universe. And she did everything she could to find another way before going through with the Sundering.
2:47:00 he is so right! Rushing in week 1 did kind of ruin the story for me, which is why I'm so glad to be able to watch other people replay it more slowly and take time to savour the story beats.
"THOU MUST, LIVE DIE AND KNOW" Who would've known that ANSWERS the song from all they from freaking 1.0 would actually tell us the overarching theme of the whole game
@@Keira_Blackstone Yup. Either she split them, or the Meteia came and stuffed every soul into her egg, unable to reincarnate then get destroyed by the heat death of the universe. Venat's choice is harsg but really necessary.
just wanted to say that there might be another part you may want to do with trusts that i hope should be somewhere in your next stream, i wont say anything other then you'll know when you see it (i hope)
You aren't Azem. You are a reincarnation of a fraction of the last Azem's soul. You, however, don't have their memories or personality. The soul crystals that the Unsundered used to raise mortals to a position in the ascians were created after the sundering, and are based on the Unsundereds' memories of the convocation members as they were before the world was sundered. These crystals, to my knowledge, don't overwrite the mortal's personality, but instead kind of mix them together with what's inside the crystal. It's speculative on my part, but I think Hermes' anxiety and sorrow mixed with Amon's nihilism and misanthropy, turning them into the madman that was present day Fandaniel. I also think it has more to do with Amon's personality, as he wouldn't have any memories of Meteion's message.
Only part that generally confused me about this whole scene is the flash forward to when the WoL stumbles toward Emet and it flashes between them and Venat, was that supposed to be them telling that the shade Emet saw then was Venat? I always assumed it was Azem since, at that point, we didn't even know about Venat in the story.
No, it was Azem that Emet saw. The point of showing Venat stumbling forward then flashing to WoL stumbling towards Emet is to show that she's just like us, or more accurately we're just like her.
I’ve always interpreted that part as them showing that Venat has always been there, walking with us, as she promised. Even though you couldn’t hear her at all as Hydaelyn during the entirety of SB and ShB, it still shows that she’s still watching over us and mirroring our struggles with her own. It was actually this realization that drove the first tears from me while watching this cutscene. Especially since the game did a very good job at making you question her real intentions before the events of Endwalker. Even when we doubted her, she continued to believe in us and walked with us 'til the end. But yeah. Emet saw Azem in us during that confrontation in ShB, but Venat was also there, unseen but present in a way.
It's to show that even though we didn't perceive her presence (since she had weakened), she was walking alongside us all along, trying to guide and help us.
There is nothing I find more satisfying than watching people's reactions to ShB and EW cutscenes.
I’m playing with a friend for that very reason
I can’t wait to see there reactions when they see this cutscene in particular
I've been called an emotional vampire, a fitting term
Agreed watching people share the same reactions as myself always makes me appreciate the game. But I also like when people have different conclusions and reactions to the story then I did as well. One of the biggest reasons I love shadowbringers so much
We're like vampires feeding on the emotions of streamers
Its weird, out a group of my friends in 14. Im the only one who appreciates the MSQ. Pint dont read the rest of this please... But the post Endwalker msq just isn't as strong of a story which makes me sad. I don't think its because Square Enix is running out of ideas but they just cant put too much content into one patch at a time.
Meteon: I'm a smol new born bby that feels every single emotion by everyone around me deeply 🥺. My dad put me in charge of answering the simple question "Why are we alive?" and I'm going to make him proud uwu.
Hermes: Go out into deep space by yourself and meet all the strangers while downloading all their emotions and words into a hive mind this is a great idea.
the issue wasn't sending her out, the issue was not giving her a base case. she outright says what he was hoping for was on etheirys the whole time. he just didn't want to expose her to etheirys because he didn't want to "bind" her to the star. had she known about the joys found on the planet, maybe met with Venat's friends and the Azem of that time, she likely would have been fine.
Even Meteion recognised that the premise of Hermes's question was flawed from the get-go at the end.
Hermes was a depressed sophist who jumped to the worst possible conclusion when he did not get an answer that satisfied him without considering that his own queries were flawed. Even Emet-Selch called his conclusions as "sophistry".
Endwalker: A Story About The Necessity Of Peer Review In Project Engineering
@@xalrath This makes me want a summary of ARR through EW written by Terry Pratchett.
@@mrrodgers0 ARR: A Story About Nationalist Militarism Producing Cool Machines And No Unintended Consequences Thereof
ARR patches: Why Independent Paramilitary Law Enforcement Bodies Are A Bad Idea
HW: Be Careful What You Believe In, Because It Might Come True
Stormblood: ARR 2, or: Nationalist Militarism Also Produces Cool People Who Do Exclusively Cool Things, Creating Yet More Cool People: A Travelogue
Shadowbringers: Failure To Accept Loss Will Turn You Into A Theatre Kid: A Cautionary Tale
The voice actors in this expansion are so insanely good, every cutscene hits so hard because of their performances
Yoshi P must have threatened their pets or something cuz everyone was putting their whole soul into it. Seriously, AAA games coming out this year sound like a bunch of amateurs reading a script for the first time. :P
They really gave the characters life. Perfection!
This is what happens when you focus on theater actors for roles
@@ferretsnot 😊
Only game where dubs are better than subs
re-watching the ktisis hyperborea ending cutscene again opened my eyes to something that makes emet-selch an even more sentimental character to me that i didnt catch the first or even second times through.
most of us know that emet-selch (as an ascian) has a taste for theatrics/the performing arts evident by a part in garlemald's zone story that revealed solus did a lot to hold performance art in high regard in garlemald's society during his rule. i have a sinking suspicion that his holding theatrical performances in high regard is his way of remembering hythlodaeus. its clear from how emet and hythlo act during and after hythlo's improv stunt that hythlo is prone to improvised performances like that and emet is prone to playing along. how better to memorialize your best friend who is a great actor and improvisor than by fostering the love of something that best friend is known for in an entire society of people. that way even if solus and emet were to die somehow, as long as that civilization lived and prospered enough to indulge in performance artistry his best friend would be remembered.
i just think like ancient greeks, amaurotine are also kind of like to do things dramatic
I think there is also the thing of, ultimately, all these people being reflections of the ancients he remembers. So during a theater performance, when the people don masks of character, for that momentary performance he can feel like the shattered pieces have come together, and he sees a glimpse in that past he yearns for. Especially when the Emperor Solus is the patron of the theater and can have them perform whatever he wants - who's to say he does not commission enactments of his past put to drama? Yet to everyone else, it merely seems like the Emperor has specific tastes and just go along.
No doubt there is place in this performance for one jovial and supportive friend that prefers to remain in the background, as well as a very stalwart, reckless and heroic friend doing their best...
Don't mean to um actually as it's fine either way, but Hades mentioning "a certain incorrigible associate" is referring the the current Azem. Hades and Hythlo had gotten used to improv because Azem was prone to firing from the hip. Everything else is seemingly correct though.
@@Reshapable oh true. i suppose our character does wing it enough to make that a defining character trait. just makes hythlo feel like a not-so-little little brother figure to me that way by emulating azem.
@@baronfuath5872 Whoever started it, clearly it's something they're comfortable facilitating even without their foremost instigator :)
Endwalker is a story about the importance of therapy and peer review.
??? pretty sure the story is about not giving up hope even in the most horrible situations and striving forward. not sure where your brain came up with therapy.
@@drakologarnus7248if Hermes had sought out therapy, had worked through his frustrations and fears and learned to healthily process them, he could have avoided being broken by the Metia's declaration, avoided siding with her.
@@PinkFluffyAlex LOL what therapy. Hermes literally invented depression. The ancients have zero concept of depression beforehand.
@@mad_max21 the whole point of Endwalker is that *no* Hermes wasn't alone, suffering did exist, and pretending otherwise isnt wisdom, but weakness. While sure there might not have been proper *therapists* in the unsundered world, Hermes didn't invent depression, and could have still reached out to his peers like any scientist.
@@PinkFluffyAlex the ancients were on their way to becoming like the people with Ra-La. once they achieved perfection they'd all just kill themselves which is what Hermes said. there was nothing beyond their duty and so they lead empty lives in a way. it was necessary for Hydaelyn to sunder them because they were about to make a dragon in the mountain deal and would have lead to another bad end on meteion's list. choices that lead to suffering and ultimately proved that life was pointless. reasons for living have to be forged, learned, and shared over time and now the regular people can achieve hope beyond the entelechy of biological life. move past the idea that our forms determine our function and destiny. that pain and suffering do not damn us.
That Venat cut-scene was the pinnacle of endwalker. That expounding on Answers was so amazing, it was almost like they had planned it from the start even though they certainly had no clue of endwalker, so crazy good.
I mean, its basicly adding to whats there and fcourse thinking about what is a Logical way to have the story to go to.
its final cutscene worthy 80% through the game its incredible.
It's impossible to say how much they had planned but I think they definitely knew the _vibe_ of where it was going ever since 2.0. No specific plot points, just the general idea.
Some people have complained about Venat's Sundering cut scene. Not that it doesn't hit like an emotional truck, but because the timeline in it is extremely wonky. How can the Ancients go from suffering the Final Days, Hythlodaeus leaving Emet to summon Zodiark, to Venat summoning Hydaelyn and Sundering the world in the space of time it takes for Venat to stroll down the street? How can Venat decide to Sunder the world after only a single argument?
The simple answer is: they didn't. The cut scene isn't portraying the actual events. The cut scene is portraying Venat/Hydaelyn's memories of those events. After 13000 years (I believe that figured is dropped somewhere during the MSQ), Venat's recollection of those events are of course hyper compressed. She remembers doing certain things and seeing certain things, but all the trivia events that happened in between are forgotten about except perhaps as subconscious feelings, and only the most pertinent details remain.
Well, that's my interpretation of the scene. And the greatest proof that this scene is Venat's memory is Venat's narration at the very start of the scene begins with "I remember..."
yea people took things too literally and thought that was exactly what happened. can't blame them for not thinking that far.
yeah. the scene isn't meant to be literal. it's the emotional experience she went through portrayed artistically.
I dunno about her memories, the entire scene from the start is just a representation of what happened, even her walking at the end.
Who the fuck took that literally? WTF
@@tuanang7889 I will blame them, in a game so hellbent on using the symbolic and metaphorical to tell its story, taking this cutscene as if the events happened in the span of a single day, or even week, is downright insanity. Sometimes, misinterpretation is on the viewer
Krile: Ah, you are back. How went your sojourn to the First? Have you learned aught of the Final Days?
WoL: Well, I successfully met with Elidibus, who was surprisingly cordial and cooperative considering the fact that I killed him. And his brethren. And caused the extinction of his people. And undid over 10,000 years of hard work. And killed his God, can't forget about that one. Anyway, one thing lead to another and I ended up 10,000 years in the past, befriended an OG God before it was cool, encountered a Causality Loop paradox, witnessed the results of both a Fermi Paradox and the Threshold Theory, discovered that the Final Days are caused by untreated depression and a lack of peer reviewed research, and now we need to chase down a creepy monochromatic little girl empath with cute little birb wings on her head to the literal edge of the universe where emotion dictates reality in order to prevent her from mercy killing all life in the entire universe via thermodynamics-induced entropy that she is accelerating through the use of her empathic dark-matter manipulation abilities...
Krile: Huh... Tataru? A cup of tea, if you wouldn't mind. Make it _very_ Irish.
Tataru: I think I'll join you in that.
WoL: Pour a cup for me, too. Hold the tea.
You should seriously be writing the dialogue for at least one character lol 14/10 🤌
The absolute best ☝️
Nah most WOLs are canonically scared of any booze they personally don't pour between bloody banquet and the uprising that Vdrolfnir injured
@@Ladywizard you can ask for a drink in radz at han
😂😂😂 it’s funny because it’s so true!
To the Ancients, transforming like Hermes did is like exposing yourself in public.
I like how his staff is the actual Caduceus
The minion from Ktisis is also called Caduceus. It was done to connect Amon with the boss in coils called Caduceus, who is also a snake.
@@fnerXVI Caduceus is the staff with snakes wrapped around it, that the Greek god Hermes is depicted as carrying.
The boss in Coils was named after the staff because it is a snake.
Thats hot
I like how this means we totally told Venat and Hythlo that Hades went commando in the Dying Gasp against us. No wonder he was so prickly about it.
Did you know that staff was also used as a communication device for the Meteia according to his TT card?
39:24 The absolute relief on Pint's face when he realized he was justified in his attraction to his totally-not-blood-related crystal mommy.
"If she's my mom, call me Oedipus Rex." - Rich
"Get that Oedipussy." - Some guy in his chat
Pint -"Let me cook."
Fans -"You need all the ingredients first."
some folk interpret her getting bloody in the ending walk in the darkness as either Rejoinings, or her taking hits for her champions (and you). so each time a sundering happens. she weakens. she's damaged. or maybe when she takes the hit for you to survive crazy shit. she's damaged.
I think you mean Rejoinings, as each shard rejoins the Source Zoiark becomes stronger and she becomes weaker by comparison...
@@wolffontech oh yes. thank you. that's what i get for multitasking.
its all of it, the rejoinings, and the various protections of all the Heros over the years, each cost a piece of her.
I'd feel more sorry for her if she literally didn't set herself up for it. She was the one who let Emet pass and do his rejoining thing.
Thanks for taking that hit from Ultima and that bit in the Anti tower but otherwise the world is objectively a better place with her dead.
some people say they can hear the sound of the Ultima weapon when it hit you on the Praetorium (now porta decumana) and Venat getting bloody as the result of protecting us in "the walk" cutscene
> "I WOULD NOT SUFFER US TO WALK SUCH A WRETCHED PATH!"
And then he does.
Alone.
For twelve thousand years.
1:30:40 I think this moment is one of the more brutal little bits of the expansion for me.
Imagine finding someone who killed the entire town where they were the mayor, and when you ask them what gives meaning to their life they just kill themselves right in front of you.
I think it was more like a "God" and his people, where he ended the whole society and lived alone, and when Metion came he realized there was no more reason to live.
@@Scapemaster00 whoosh
@@midoribookstore Whoosh what? I was just giving my alternate interpretation on the report.
@@Scapemaster00 OP describes situation in a more grounded (albeit still wildly bizarre) setting using metaphor to add another frame of reference, then in comes yourself with "nah it was more like - *actual cutscene event that transpired* - happened" as if no one already knew that. You don't describe a thing as being itself to better illustrate what it is.
Whoosh what? Whoosh that.
Beings of Aether are Beings of Thought
Beings of Dynmis are Beings of Emotion
Beings of both are beings of life
That ending for you today, was the biggest TRUTH / LORE BOMB w/in the game.
Mattering on how much you relate to your character will involve how much that, & what you'll be going thru soon will hit you, & stick with you for the rest of your life, but me knowing you've been playing as Pint from even back in WoW, you're not going to need a handkerchief, you're going to need a beach towel, there is no one that doesn't cry their eyes out. It hits me, & still does like a NUKE, I modeled my character after my real life hero, my late big sister.
Mate we all been there. Those who care about the story all have cried their eyes out.
My character is modeled after a fictional character i made years ago.
I Loved endwalker so much! The end hits like a truck.
I'm Really, really interested in what 7.0 is going to bring
In A Realm Reborn we learned the Answer, but it wasn't until Endwalker that we would learn the Question.
The same answer, and the same question as from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Granted, a line from Answers is litterally “Tell us why, given life, we are meant to die helpless in our cries?”
And the first line of the song is “I close my eyes, tell us why must we suffer?”
The question has always been there.
It really is sweet that the gift Hermes would give Meteion after the mission was him being happy. Also really like that underneath her robes Venat has what look like hiking boots. Perfect distillation of her character.
When we entered the Ocular near the end of 5.0 we viewed the event of G'raha talking to Urianger without anyone else present - indicating that we did so by piecing it together from the ambient aether
Zereth Mortis and Elpis may have been in development at the same time _but the entire concept of creation magicks and the _*_ancients_*_ creating the creatures that now inhabit the world is from back in Shadowbringers_
This is why so many reaction videos go up saying "X Reacts to THAT Endwalker Cutscene" and everyone knows exactly which one they mean.
Which is impressive, because there are quite a lot of incredible cutscenes in Endwalker, but i think everyone agrees on which is the best of the best.
Hermes' story can be very roughly summed up as "Ancients will literally cause the apocalypse inadvertently before going to therapy"
He has one session with WoL before deleting it from his memory💀
Sounds like eastern Asian countries in nutshell
he even accidentally setup meteion for failure too, he set his aether to be what she should look for in the universe so she was ONLY looking for depressed people
@@thunderborn3231 That's not how aether works... lmao
Alternatively: "the dangers of running experiements without peer review"
Here it is. The cutscene that dispelled all doubts that Venat/Hydaelyn was a malevolent being especially after learning about her and Zodiark's true nature in Shadowbringers. In the end she did what she had to do - the Sundering, just to give us even the smallest of chance of surviving against Meteion and her sisters.
1:47:33 The level of self-restraint required not to post pics with the Trust System for this dungeon during launch... once again, kudos to the community for not immediately spoiling for everyone through social media.
2:27:35 Meteion flew up so high in the sky in space full of dynamis, looked back, only to see a bird's-eye view of the (rejected) TOP RWF clear. I imagined that also caused a bit of despair to her and her sisters.
"dispelled all doubts" if only :c
ppl til this day despise venat and think what she did was heartless.
@@NeoSpira Emet just can't let go
@@NeoSpira imo the omega quest lets you come to your own conclusion the best. what venat did was for the future of the star she loved, but you have to realize that she effectively killed everyone on Etheirys. The people that they were all sundered into...are not the same people that existed. She basically pulled the same thing the Ascians did, but in reverse. Some people don't vibe with one person deciding what should be done for the greater good, thinking Venat should have tried to tell them about Meteion and Dynamis and searched for an alternative solution. I disagree, but that's how those people think
@@ApexGale it's a misunderstanding of why she actually did it. It wasn't a "kill everyone for the greater good" thing. It was a "if I don't do this they will all die anyway".
What the ancients wanted to do was release the aether from Zodiark and revive the ancients who sacrificed themselves. The problem is this would have stopped the shroud of aether that was keeping the bad vibe waves away, so everyone would have died anyway.
She had to shackle Zodiark in order to preserve his existence, and sunder the world so that none would seek to revive the lost ancients. She didn't quite get everyone but that ended up working out, or maybe it was intentional in order to ensure the time loop would be closed.
@@ApexGale You're 100% right. And it wasn't like she felt righteous or good about her choice. She carried that guilt for so long. I guess I'm just more sad that her actions and choice were more nuanced and not a black/white thing.
its actually quite cool to go back and do the zodiark story fight. Meteion's speech and Fandaniel''s are very reminisicent. Showing that although he forgot her, her song laid dormant still ringing throughout his heart.
Idk if you will read this but the whole memory inheritance thingy started after the Final Days iirc. The convocation made crystals to store their memory and those who will inherit their will. Azem doesnt get one initially, but a certain best friend secretly made one. This crystal is significantly different that it doesnt function to store memory, but a spell to call your allies when you need it
"EVEN NOW. I DO NOT BELIEVE YOU. CARRY THIS MESSAGE WITH YOU INTO THE FUTURE."
"I. AM. NOT. OWNED."
After all this time.. I still can’t get over their long necks.. once I saw it.. I could never unsee it.. their necks are just too long.
The thing I adore about the end of thou must live, die, and know is that its a heavy scene, and when it wraps up in the CT and your character is coming too, there is a moment of pure silence, followed by a very familiar area we spent a long time introspecting, and the familiar song coming back in almost like the game and the player are reminded to breathe.
The real life equivalent to dynamis is dark energy. It is noted in a cutscene earlier that dynamis accounts for 68% of the universe, which is the exact amount of dark energy our current models predict exists.
@pint dude this legit has been the most enjoyable streamed playthrough to witness. thanks for sharing your experience with us.
Venat's story is just too damn good. God tier! She became my most favorite character. Venat's walk cutacene at the end with the music were just amazing. Kudos to the team that produced this masterpiece. Who knew a game(mmorpg) could be so damn good with its story telling!
Everything can have a good story if story is what you build the game on.
Unlike most other games building on gameplay
Watching other people play through FFXIV for the first time and crying is the FFXIV experience.
To all of my children whos live flows abundant. To all of my children to whom death past his judgment
the point where you're climbing into the sky, and you slowly realize: wait, i've been here before
fighting hermes atop the platform where Emet showed you his world dying. welp
I always wonder if the reason she gets hurt so much is everytime her "Gift" saves us, she takes the brunt of the damage.
It's implied that every time she got "hurt" in the walk, it symbolised a rejoining and her progressively getting weaker due to it.
its the rejoinings and all the times she has to use up her power, since she cannot/will not draw upon the earth.
Loosely has something to do with the rejoinings (Which she set herself up for so zero sympathy from me) and just the handiest Meat shield in taking that hit from Ultima.
As for walking our path pfff that's a shit take.
@@Beathemighty that was obviously a GNB weapon she is a tank she's just tanking hits for us all
everyone has their own interpretation ...
I personally consider the first hit to represent the 7th Calamity - after witch it took almost all of her power to keep the 8/14th of Zodiark sealed ... making her unable to act in the world as much and as strongly as before .... even to the point that it was almost impossible to communicate in a regular basis - this is represented by her loosing her sword
The second hit is her shielding us from Ultima - as Lahabrea say in that cut scene she exhausted what little strength she had left to act to shield us ... which fits to her getting covered in goo (while the goo is a stand in for blood) the dark can be interpreted in her light being exhausted at least on the outside - she falls completely silent afterwards ...
But of course since there is no official explanation you are free to interpret it as you want
That last cutscene is just so damn good. The music, the writing, the voice acting, the direction tying them all together. They should have created an Academy Award for best cutscene in a video game just so they could give this an Oscar.
Being so overwhelmed by emotions you feel physically exhausted and can't form words to express your reaction is a pretty common reaction. It isn't nearly as bad rewatching it, but I still get chills and tear up a little every time, even though I've watched it dozens of times.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Pint just goes and gets the boop noodle on his first run like a gigachad.
It still blows my mind that Venat / Hydaelyn waited 10,000 + years and sent out the "hear, think, feel" message to everyone that could hear it JUST TO FIND US!! A-FU**KING-MAZING.
It's probably a lot more than 10000 years. In Shadowbringers Emet Selch says he "lived a thousand, thousand lifetimes" when talking about having lived among the people of Etherys.
Let's be conservative and assume he only meant a thousand lifetimes and not a million. I don't know the average lifespan of people post sundering, but lets low-ball it and say each lifetime he lived averaged to 50 years. That gives us a minimum of 50000 years, and if we decide to stretch the numbers we get up in the 100'000'000 year range.
Venat waited for a long, loooooong time.
@@Hammer1987 We know for a fact that the sundering happened roughly 12000 years ago (on the source), although the source of that info comes from the shadowbringers announcement at fanfest. Also "thousand thousand" isn't meant to be taken literally in the same way that "myriad" usually isn't taken to mean 10000, the expression also gets used at other places in the game.
@@vulcwen This is just my opinion, but I believe info found in-game should take precedence over other sources of info.
Emet says a thousand, and he says it twice. I'll have to go over all his dialogue again to know for sure, but he doesn't seem prone to lies or exaggeration. So when he says "a thousand, thousand" I have no reason to not take that at face value. Especially when (And I might well be wrong about this) nothing else in the game contradicts him.
For me the only issue is whether he said it twice to mean a million, or simply repeated it for emphasis.
Let's do some more math. If the sundering happened 12k years ago, he on average lived for 50 years per lifetime, and he took no breaks between lifetimes, what would be a reasonable number of lifetimes for Emet to have lived since the sundering?
The answer is 240 lifetimes. In that case "a thousand, thousand" is a gross exaggeration, basically a lie. And he has no reason to lie about this. Hundreds of lifetimes are quite sufficient to hammer his point home. So if he lived between 200 and 300 lifetimes it would have been more appropriate to say he had lived hundreds of lifetimes. And also bear in mind that this is only assuming an average life duration of 50 years.
I am by no means a FFXIV lore expert, so there may be other ways to measure the time since the sundering, and more accurately too. Somewhere between a thousand and a million lifetimes of indeterminate duration is not exactly a very precise measure.
I've been thinking about this a lot and if there is more in-game info on the subject I would love to know.
Pint finally getting to the REAL GOOD STUFF let's go dude
The fact that they managed to tie Endwalker to the Answers song so well it felt like it was planned all along from way back from 1.0 is INSANE.
This is why you leave little threads and leads for yourself when you write. Not big plot holes, mind you, just little threads... the stories you can write and the way it fills out your world more by writing off these threads... its phenominal
@@starofaetherius george rr martin had a discussion regarding world building that its not constructing a house but more on gardening
you plant seeds (plot points) and you nurture them and if someone grows great then use it later
It's crazy that they managed to do this while only planning one expansion at a time. I for sure thought they had it all planned out until I saw that interview with Yoshi-P where he says they don't really plan beyond the expansion they're currently working on. Mad skills.
@@greggreyes6869 don't forget that those seeds you planted eventualy bear more seeds and you can continue on.
Same for me. Didn't cry when I watched it. The number of times after watching others travel the path? Yup, cry.
I keep thinking it'll be great to watch someone else's reaction, forgetting it still hits hard ;_;
I love how Pint is going around finding the source of the coming apocalypse.
And Charmion is there too.
Pint at the start: “We can’t trust her.”
Pint now: “She’s always been my best friend.”
I mistrusted her too, told it to her face and she just painfully smiled and took it. Once the Elpis section was done, and I saw the full picture of her self-sacrifice, I felt awful for doubting her to the point I couldn't log into Sharlayan for a good while because Flow just reduced me into a sobbing wreck.
I remember seeing the the quest name 'Thou must live, die and know' and just feeling my heart race and drop at the same time. Bringing Answers full circle... *Chef's kiss*
Hey Lil' JC, I know you're here somewhere. Show yourself, emotion vampire!
Okay i cant be super specific because of spoilers but dont listen to the people who were like "ascians cant LB because reasons 🙂" because trust me as someone who spends HOURS rewatching cutscenes, reading dialogue, doing side quests... new game +... theyre wrong. The thing theyre thinking of was an exception because of some really wacky circumstances. We have known how Limit Breaks work for years with no questions or mysteries about it.
How much answers matches to the plot is so amazing. As if it actually was planned from the beginning
I would say its the other way around ... Answers is a 1.0 creation and they basically made it their guide ... adding layer upon layer to it as they went... absolutely spectacular work
@@Ower8x they said "as if" i think they know it wasnt lol
@@Ower8x Answers was not a 1.0 creation. While it was technically first shown in patch 1.23, it was the kill switch for 1.0 that brought us forward to 2.0 and the true beginning of the story - it was the catalyst and the starting point for the 8-year journey that is the Ascian arc. I can guarantee you they had the entire timeline nailed down by the end of Heavensward. It was 100% planned from the beginning, they've been telling the plot in part through the music from the second they did a hard reset on the game. The 1.0 opening cinematic is just a bunch of generic fantasy-ish music. Though, they did have a decent hard rock interlude for the Garlean fleet.
Here's the "End of Eorzea" that players experienced as Square Enix shut down servers on vanilla FFXIV. ruclips.net/video/YgEg8kXmifo/видео.html
@@jackyoung1208 it plays in the starting cutscenes for each city ... so yes it was created for 1.0 :D
@@Ower8x All of those were redone as part of the ARR relaunch, lol. Answers was specifically written for the reboot.
That first 'hit' when she's walking, where she drops the sword. That was her shielding us from Ultima..... The 2nd hit, was her keeping us from fracturing under all that light we had 'absorbed' in Shadowbringers before Ardbert joined with us to strengthen us without needing her help.
At least, that is my head-cannon.
She didn't help us any in Heavensward, as Grandpa-dragon severed our link to her and we had to re-forge it anew on our own. Post Heavensward, all the way up to Shadowbringers, we stood on our own (and got knocked down a few times). It wasnt till Emet swamped us with all that light, that she had to intercede again.
You know, I was thinking those were regular rejoinings but I like your head canon much better. thank you.
I generally consider the first hit to be the 7th Calamity ... the reason is that afterwards she withdrew as she had very little power to spare to keep the 8/14th of zodiark sealed ... - this is represented in her loosing her weapon ... the second I consider as Ultima ... this is represented in her being covered in black almost fully as Lahabrea says she exhausted what little power she had left ...
afterward even through could not help us directly she still walked forward like we did believing in us and doing what she could for us ...
@FerretSnot well the reason I don't feel those were rejoining because, in a way, the 'rejoinings' don't really impact hydaelyn directly.
It's shards rejoining and havoc for the star yes, and likely weaken her own power due to the loss of 'prayers' from an entire shards worth of life praying to "the crystal", but they are not a direct attack on her.
She's battered a bit at the start of her walk, likely from her fight with Zodiark and likely a few ascians, but the 2 "hits" she takes are likely her taking direct intervention on our behalf, which she only did twice.
Once with Ultima, then struggling to keep us from falling apart till Ardbert showed up.
Dont mean to be rude, but yall head-cannons are wrong. Sundering cutscene and the cutscene that follows that represent her walking amidst the despair of humanity she created are meant to be HYPER methaporical. The "hits" she are taking are meatn to represent the despair and sadness she is burdened with from sundering the whole humanity. The whole ""walking" cutscene shows how the choice she made weighs on her and as the humanity takes hits with sandess and despair (represented by death of some roegadyn there, argument betweeen two random npcs etc etc.) and isnt meant to be taken literal that its her taking hits during our encounters in Eorzea. AS someone mentioned rejioning dont make sense to hurt her and anyways, thats my take and pretty much most universal between the biggest fans of venat on various forums (especially people that waifu her on twitter having whole fucking fanpages dedicated to her). FUNFACT: ther whole dark "slimy" thingy that ecompases her being was meant to be blood in the first place but producers wanted it to be more PG and Symbolical so they made it "dark despair slime" or something (the blood would represnt her pretty much walking forward, butdened with all these accumulating pain of the mankind through all these 10k years, waiting for our WOL to come); imma look for source of this fast cuz i had it somewhere
Thinking these "hits" are rejoinings or her shielding WoL from the attacks dont make much sense, especially with whole thing shown as symbolical cutscene (the previous one where she sunders OFC didnt happen, where she approaches like 12 ppl and walks past hythlo/hernes/emet. You can clearly see it shows how everything played out in a brief/symbolical way and it follows for the second cutscene where she walks among the mankind)
Sorry for a mess of an essay but there are so many people who dont fully understand thisc cutscene and i dont blame them; its quite ambigious without thinking a lot about it,
Even the pararell that cutscene draws between venat walking foward, butdened with all the pain and suffering of the manking and weigh of her choice and our WoL walking towards Emet in his arguably WEAKEST and most desperate moment in pretty much whole adventure, is meant to just show how Venat and WoL are walking forward, no matter the costm the loss, the suffering. It wasnt meant to show she "guarded" us in this moment.
And dont get me wrong, the "guarding" thing MIGHT be included in these "hits", but they are showing a much BROADER thing, that shows her emotions and struggle inside, not some direct actions she did in the EORZEA in a span 2 years of our WoL existence in Eorzea.
Emet last words nefore his memory wipe brought me to tears. Its incredible of a character to be that good
Like I don’t know but maybe it’s just nostalgia since I started with endwalker, but I just don’t see how they can top this, a truly captivating story and beautifully constructed twist and turns that don’t leave you confused but in shock if it be for good and bad. Ugh I’m not crying!
This is my favorite part of Endwalker. Especially when it's revealed that Venat was the Jailer all along.
Can you believe they planned it all the way since ancient times?
Since WC(-3)
the jailer ?
@@holmesholmes.8784 yeah, he planned it all along. Incredibly foresight 👍
@@crimsonpotemkin is this a wow joke im too ff to figure out
@@holmesholmes.8784 pretty much, wow writers tried to pull a "it was this guy all along, planned from warcraft 3" kind of shtick and it went entirely tits up
This is one of the most well written stories considering they didn't actually have a plan, but what they did as they went along, was go back into their own story and do the best they could to make it all fit within the original lyrics of the song Answers... It's not perfect, there are clear points in the story where actual story-beats were left behind, probably because they couldn't make them work or they just decided on a different direction... but overall, I have to hand it to them, they really made that original song Answers really, really fit the arc of the entire story so far... and the end, while as I said earlier, not perfect (you can find a few holes, but not many) they sure do a pretty good job of wrapping things up in such a way as to finish the story but open new doors!
I know your probably still 'cooking' all the story ingredients together... but man, Venat walking with us every step of the way and taking crit damage to help protect us... Mommy!!!!!!!
I had a feeling and felt heart broken knowing Hydaelyn/Venat was there walking with us taking the blows we took in order to help us grow, live and overcome our trials up until that cutscene. On the other hand it felt good being right when a lot of ppl I knew had lost trust in her character and then saw that moment with me when we all played the expansion. One of the most satisfying "You were right," Moments I have ever experienced.
12000 years of mankind’s suffering she felt. 12000 years.
I can't believe Pint streamed twice in less than 15 days!
This story meant so much to me, makes you really appreciate life even when you've gone through so much shit and at least for me gave a new strength to carry on
I got to this point where he ended today & I couldn't stop, iI was a hooked, if it was a book I would have stayed up & read to the ending. I played from this point to the ending, only taking small breaks to let the dogs out in the backyard, feed them, & for me to grab another 16 oz Coca-Cola & another half a coffee cup of Jameson.
56:38, when they're talking about how someone is using Dynamis to send "bad vibes" to cause the apocalypse, someone in the chat said, "Bobby Kottick is willing FFXIV to die."
That legit left me in stitches. Not literal stitches, mind, but legitimate ones...if that makes sense.
That cutscene was sich a masterpiece. Left me speechless when I experienced it for the first time myself and keeps me tearing up each time i rewatch it. Especially when the music hits in at 3:13:48
ngl, it's kinda annoying when chat spams the smiley face when they don't have to because what pint was doing was reiterating previous information in a way it made sense to him and just needed confirmation on it. they really ought to figure out if it's spoiler or not. especially considering zodiark information is from way back when we were on the moon.
or they could be spamming because it was the turning point of the whole elpis arc
in thou must live die and know, theres a time jump, when you see hythlodaeus walking away from emet, hes going to become a sacrifice, when venat said "in covering the star in a shroud of aether, we forestalled the final days" which means, zodiark had been summoned, so between the summoning of zodiark and that line, the scene we saw at the end of anamnasis anyder happened, where venat and her fellows were talking about creating hydaelyn and how she had to serve as the heart
and in the scenes around 3:12:49 her being hurt is caused by the rejoininings
The funniest thing I've ever seen in this expansion how you drag poor Charmion everywhere.
Aye! I'm all caught up! Enjoyed this, thanks Pint. I would leave more to comment, but... seeing that again, always seems like it hits harder.
being relatively new to FFXIV I'm about at the same location... I get so much out of watching these reactions as in the moment I don't always make all the story connections.. also its just fun and rewarding to share in such a great experience... love it! thank you...
at about 25:00 - graha's doomed timeline is actually resolved in one of the Tales from the Shadows short stories which everyone should absolutely go read
"MSQ-wussy"
...
*immediately unsubscribes* (jkjk)
THE BIRD OF HERMES IS MY NAME.
"Come ! Hmn. Come ! Hmn." You're such a childe but I love you haha
Pint explanation: “Boop boop beep beep…”
Nailed it! Lol😂
Also, no, Hermes is there right from the beginning. You can run past every monster and talk to him right away without killing anything (as I did on my alt). Pint just ran everywhere except where he was for 10 minutes.
Daeus is a Bard! I knew there was a reason I connected with him on my playthrough. XD
Can't wait until you know the true meaning to Answers! It blew my mind that that song has existed since the very beginning of 2.0, and that we only truely understood it's meaning in Endwalker.
It's more likely Ishekawa give the song an entirely different meaning, writing and plotting endwalker since Shadowbringer. There is no way they planned for Answers to have this mwaning back in ARR. Back then it was Hydaelyn consoling her children after the 7th umbral calamity. Ishekawa probably added a second, much more powerful meaning when making Endwalker and tying up as much as she could from ARR-SHB in endwalker, leaving the 10 year story with a very satisfying conclusion while laying the groundwork for her next masterpiece.
He got Cadeusus FIRST TRY!?
Completely agree with the whole ending feeling like a sort of death thing, they did such a good job making you feel like this is going to be the end of the game even if you know there's more to come. I spent the entire last half of EW half-convinced they were somehow going to kill off the WoL at the end XD or else make it so that story-wise we technically have to leave Etherys and go somewhere else.
I agree about the chobobo. No matter what new toy i get i always go back to it eventually.
Ascian means "without a shadow," and specifically refers to those in Zodiark's thrall. The race are called Ancients.
The closest to real-life in the relationship between Dynamis and Aether are neutrinos, I think. They're very abundant particles but they're so small and light, they can't interact with basically anything. They do _basically_ nothing to us or our tech and are super hard to detect. Actual particle physicists are welcome to tell me I'm wrong or elaborate further, please!
That cutscene is the best. Just absolutely perfect.
I love how everyone is saying its the jailer, I was jsut thinking of him saying we're going back to torgahst.
That's because Venat isn't the Jailer, she's Sylvanas Windrunner. *METEION* is the Jailer.
I legit had to stop playing after that cutscene. I needed sleep and that was a LOT.
"Overwhelming'. If theres one word to describe Endwalker, it would be "Overwhelming". Overwhelming when the Garleans rather die in the cold wastes than receive your help, Overwhelming when you're fighting Zodiark at LEVEL 83. Overwhelming when the entire world is collapsing after "defeating the Big Bad". Overwhelming when you're forced to tell a beloved character about theirs and their entire civilization's Fall from Grace. Overwhelming when you learn the Truth of the world... And standing here, there's still more.
I've watched Endwalker cutscenes six times so far (my own, three strummers, and two friends), and every. single. time. it makes me cry.
In FFXI, Dynamis was basically dream energy or mental energy so that kinda tracks.
Venat's walk is the most gut-wrenching, heartbreaking scene of the entire franchise. She never left our side, she took all the hard blows, every Calamity, but never left her Warrior nor her children.
"Have to hold on... WoL is coming... just a little longer ... have to hold on..."
YAY genocide
but she sure as hell left her own people! i'm sure the act of killing all of them hurt her a whole lot though.
The whole scene is fake. It's meant to be emotionally manipulative, so you don't think about the fact she committed ideological genocide. The billions who died as a result of her actions don't care that she was always on the WoL's side either.
@@dullahandan4067 1- they all lived- they were just sundered. 2. As far as she could tell, if she didn't do something, it would mean the end of all life in the universe. And she did everything she could to find another way before going through with the Sundering.
2:47:00 he is so right! Rushing in week 1 did kind of ruin the story for me, which is why I'm so glad to be able to watch other people replay it more slowly and take time to savour the story beats.
Pint is somehow giga brain then 5 secs after he go absolute monke brain
now all the lyrics in anwsers make sense
1:04:00 how could anyone be mad at you speculating!? that's like the best part, seeing what you come up with, and how close (or far) you get!
Sad Pint hours time. I'm buckling in.
As fragmented, imperfect beings, yours is a never-ending quest.
"THOU MUST, LIVE DIE AND KNOW"
Who would've known that ANSWERS the song from all they from freaking 1.0 would actually tell us the overarching theme of the whole game
1:07:03 CANT STOP LAUGHING KEK
pints emet voice is perfect lol
This cutscene traumatized me
Omg your chat is ADORABLE!
1:07:08 pint gets the best stream snipers
"Stupid weeb game."
Going to eat kabab with the boys at the pub yeah /sniffling just manly things for me stupid weeb game
after giving us a pro genocide story? absolutely a stupid weeb game
@@NWGoldSilverMC splitting everyone into 14 people is actually the opposite of genocide, but whatever.
@@Keira_Blackstone Yup. Either she split them, or the Meteia came and stuffed every soul into her egg, unable to reincarnate then get destroyed by the heat death of the universe. Venat's choice is harsg but really necessary.
Natsuko Ishikawa is a femroe for sure. Badass big mommy writer.
pint is so real man
unironically peak fiction
just wanted to say that there might be another part you may want to do with trusts that i hope should be somewhere in your next stream, i wont say anything other then you'll know when you see it (i hope)
You aren't Azem. You are a reincarnation of a fraction of the last Azem's soul. You, however, don't have their memories or personality.
The soul crystals that the Unsundered used to raise mortals to a position in the ascians were created after the sundering, and are based on the Unsundereds' memories of the convocation members as they were before the world was sundered.
These crystals, to my knowledge, don't overwrite the mortal's personality, but instead kind of mix them together with what's inside the crystal. It's speculative on my part, but I think Hermes' anxiety and sorrow mixed with Amon's nihilism and misanthropy, turning them into the madman that was present day Fandaniel. I also think it has more to do with Amon's personality, as he wouldn't have any memories of Meteion's message.
Only part that generally confused me about this whole scene is the flash forward to when the WoL stumbles toward Emet and it flashes between them and Venat, was that supposed to be them telling that the shade Emet saw then was Venat? I always assumed it was Azem since, at that point, we didn't even know about Venat in the story.
No, it was Azem that Emet saw. The point of showing Venat stumbling forward then flashing to WoL stumbling towards Emet is to show that she's just like us, or more accurately we're just like her.
its to relate them both pushing themselves to their absolute limits while utterly beaten down to accomplish their duty
I’ve always interpreted that part as them showing that Venat has always been there, walking with us, as she promised. Even though you couldn’t hear her at all as Hydaelyn during the entirety of SB and ShB, it still shows that she’s still watching over us and mirroring our struggles with her own. It was actually this realization that drove the first tears from me while watching this cutscene. Especially since the game did a very good job at making you question her real intentions before the events of Endwalker. Even when we doubted her, she continued to believe in us and walked with us 'til the end.
But yeah. Emet saw Azem in us during that confrontation in ShB, but Venat was also there, unseen but present in a way.
It's to show that even though we didn't perceive her presence (since she had weakened), she was walking alongside us all along, trying to guide and help us.