ramblings of a crazed hyth

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As my warning said, this is about FF14: Endwalker. While I have not finished the game, I've come across a part of the story that is fundamentally broken and cannot work in any possible way. For how well crafted the story has been, it honestly saddens me that at the end of a long road, they drop the ball in such an awful way. it's my hope that by detailing this issue, they can write in a work-around to make things work as intended. With that, let me begin by describing the events that cause the problem.

Following a trip to the moon where Zodiark is destroyed and a second visit to Thavnair, the first place to fall victim to the new coming of the Final Days, the Warrior of Light is sent to the Crystal Tower in the First to speak with the soul of Elidibus, if it remains, after it's noted that emotions play a part in the transformation of people and how the Ancients called the flower that reflects emotions as "Elpis." This, in turn, leads to Elidibus using the Crystal Tower to throw you into the past to a place called Elpis, where the flowers grew, at a time before the world was sundered. Thanks to this, you meet with Emet-Selch, Hythlodaeus, and Hermes (who is soon to become Fandaniel), though you can't tell them why you're there. While there, you meet a creation of Hermes known as Meteion, a familiar who can fly and who intentionally has low aether (like you) so that she can be better attuned to an energy called dynamis (this is the same emotional feeling that Thavnair describes as akasa). Meteion, you later learn, is also not the only one of her. She has many sister whom Hermes has sent out into space to other worlds, to learn what living means to them, and that they have a shared consciousness they can connect to. Later on you, you meet Venat; the ancient who will become the heart of Hydaelyn. When you meet Venat, she can recognize the Blessing of Light on you as an enchantment she created. Given she doesn't know you, however, she immediately knows you're from the future. This, in turn, leads to you telling the whole tale to her as well as Emet-Selch, Hythlodaeus and Hermes, as they try to figure out how to deal with the catastrophe you're dealing with.

It turns out that it's Meteion who is to be the cause. What her sisters find and share through their shared consciousness is that... no other life exists. Everyone is either dead or kills themself. All knowledge they find leads to nothing but utter despair. This, in turn, warps Meteion into a being who seeks to give the same despair to this world as, to the Meteia, it's what clearly is all life has to offer. Hermes decides to let Meteion escape to flee to the edge of the universe with her sisters, where they'll begin to enact powerful waves of dynamis that will trigger the Final Days when the waves reach, with his intent being that if man is worthy of living then they must prove it. He also tries to use a memory wiping machine he has to wipe the memories of everyone else present: Emet-Selch, Hythlodaeus, Venat and the Warrior of Light. However, both Venat and the Warrior of Light escape.

With this knowledge of Meteion and what she will eventually cause, Venat heads down her path that will lead to her becoming Hydaelyn, while the Warrior of Light returns to their time. As for Emet-Selch, Hythlodaeus and Hermes, their memories are wiped in such a way that they KNOW they were wiped, but they think it was wiped in a different way. Venat, however, doesn't go back to them with the tale and instead lets events play out as they had been described by the Warrior of Light.

If you've been following, this means that the story creates a causal loop where the Warrior of Light has to go back in time for these events in order to ensure everything happens. However, there is a massive problem with this: the fact that the Warrior of Light goes to Elpis in an alternate timeline and NOT the main timeline. In the last expansion, Shadowbringers, we learn that an Eighth Umbral Calamity was supposed to happen. This calamity would be the result of the First, one of the Thirteen reflections of the Source, joining with the Source and would coincide with the Empire using a chemical weapon called Black Rose. In this calamity, the Warrior of Light dies. Some 200 years later, G'raha Tia would embark on a journey to stop the Eighth Umbral Calamity from happening. He uses the Crystal Tower and leaps back 200 years as well as across the Rift to the First. There, he would summon the Warrior of Light to the First to save it from destruction, though in the process he would also pull in the Scions. The ultimate end is that the First is saved and the Eighth Umbral Calamity is averted, creating an alternate timeline. However, G'raha doesn't vanish. He instead remains, a clear sign that the original timeline still exists.

So why is this a problem? Well, if the Warrior of Light needs to go to the past to Elpis to ensure Venat gets this information to set things in motion, how can they do so if they die in the main timeline before they would do that? Keep in mind, Shadowbringers is the ALTERNATE timeline. It's created due to a time traveller coming back and changing things. In that original timeline, the Warrior of Light would never go back to Elpis and thus would NEVER give this information to Venat. As such, Venat would not have the information needed to plan.

If I'm not making sense, here's a graphic I made quickly to try and explain.

Starting from Elpis, it's a straight line up until you get to The Bad Future, where G'raha Tia then time travels from. His actions create the alternate timeline. From here, Shadowbringers and Endwalker happen in an alternate timeline. In Endwalker, which again is an alternate timeline, the Warrior of Light goes back to Elpis. Things after this visit are marked as well. However, the devs are now trying to push a timeline where the ALTERNATE timeline is somehow the main one. This just doesn't work. If you're thinking "couldn't Venat still have made Hydaelyn regardless," you would be correct. Even without the Warrior of Light going back, things could still be the same. However, the devs ended up writing a single thing into the story that ultimately throws this out: Argos.

When you go to the moon, you meet this golden dog named Argos who is so happy to help you. Argos is a creation of Venat, which is why Argos is on the moon. When you go to Elpis and meet Venat, you also meet Argos again. However, unlike on the moon, Argos doesn't like you and doesn't want to help you at all despite his creator's orders. It's not until you prove yourself worthy to Argos that he helps because, as Venat puts it, Argos doesn't like strangers. This deliberate line, which is intended to explain why Argos doesn’t make copies for Hythlodaeus and Emet-Selch to escape from the memory wipe, ultimately causes all the problems. If Argos had simply helped you, it would've been fine. However, the fact that Argos will only help people he likes means that the Argos on the moon MUST know the Warrior of Light! This can only happen from travelling back in time! In short, Argos is the thing that creates the causal loop; for Argos to help you on the moon, you have to go back in time.. yet that is only in an alternate timeline.

On November 28th at 9 AM EST, I'll be finishing a live replay of the FF14 story in anticipation for Endwalker over on my Twitch channel!

As part of this stream, I’ll be doing a free-to-enter raffle. The raffle will start with a single prize but will increase as there are more viewers/entries for a total of 10. There are two areas of prizes: Online Store items and in-game items. In-game items can only be earned by those on the Aether datacentre, sadly, but Online Store items are fair game for all.

To enter, all you need to do is watch the stream long enough to use the channel points command !raffle, where you’ll enter your character name and server.

Here’s a list of prizes and how many viewers are needed to unlock them. Note that while this is the order of prizes becoming available, it is NOT the order prizes will be drawn.

In-Game Items

Gabriel A Mount + Bread Emote + Monkey King Minion + Jet Black/Pure White Dye - 4th Drawn

Jet Black or Pure White Dye - 3rd Drawn

Crafted Orchestrion Roll Set (Thunder Rolls, Fleeting Rays, Through the Maelstrom, Tumbling Down, Hubris, Blind to the Dark at minimum, may add Corpse Hall, Big Bridge and Oblivion) - 2nd Drawn

Bread Emote - 1st Drawn

Lesser Panda Minion + Fat Cat Minion - 5th Drawn

Fenrir Pup Minion - 6th Drawn

Dodo Horn, Eldthurs Horn or Eurekan Petrel Horn - Winner’s Choice, 7th Drawn

3 Orchestrion Rolls, or 1 Roll Set, on the Online Store - Winner’s Choice, 8th Drawn

Any Online Store mount up to $24 USD in prize and any orchestrion roll up to $5 USD - Winner’s Choice, 9th drawn

$50 USD worth of Online Store items - Winner’s Choice, 10th Drawn

Based on the numbers from the day I made this list, the value of the first 7 prizes is over 8.8 million gil, while the last three total $100 USD.

There is more I would like to do, but at this point I don’t think it realistic that we’ll even get 100 viewers, let alone the numbers we’d need for the other prizes I’d want to do. So for now, that’s it. If you’re interested, be sure to be at the stream. Oh, and if you could... please share this? That way, we will get enough viewers.

Oh hey, I remembered my log-in for Tumblr! What better way to celebrate than to talk about METROID DREAD!!! For anyone that doesn’t know, I love Metroid. I love the series, I love the games. I’m one of the few people who actually likes Other M and recognizes that some of the elements that people hate about it make sense. So it should be no surprise that I was excited for Metroid Dread, especially since we were told it was supposed to mark the end of the story that had been told since the first game, aka the X-Parasite story. Before I get into story, lemme just talk gameplay.

I was wholly surprised at how difficult this game was, both compared to previous titles and given it’s a Nintendo game! For context, to try to familiarize myself with the gameplay again I had been playing Metroid: Samus Returns on the 3DS where, on Fusion Mode, I hit my personal best in-game time of just over 3 hours just a few weeks ago. So the mechanics of countering and the aiming were all fresh in my head. However, this didn’t prepare me for the game’s difficulty. It took me hours of trying to get the final boss down because the controls for doing the fight were so precise. And there’s still a hard mode! Also, for the first time since Metroid Prime did they actually have it make sense that Samus got power reset. And now we can talk story. For the record, there WILL be spoilers so if you don’t want to be spoiled for important story elements, you should skip the rest of this post. Otherwise, continue at your own risk!!!

Ok, all good? Let’s begin. First, Raven Beak. I had originally made a prediction that the Metroid manga had made an allusion to Raven Beak in the form of Grey Voice, the Chozo who seems to side with Mother Brain but ultimately turns against her once the other Chozo are rescued. While I was wrong about this particular detail, it turned out that relating Grey Voice to Raven Beak was the right thing to do as Raven Beak provided one half of the Chozo DNA that Samus was infused with, the half from the Mawkin Tribe. It’s this half that is what gives Samus her amazing fighting prowess. In the Manga, it was said that Grey Voice was the one who provided the Chozo DNA for Samus! So hey, that was cool to find out! In addition, making a character like this be the final boss is very interesting. It basically sets Raven Beak up as the ultimate goal for Samus to surpass, the one who was responsible for her fighting prowess and in all regards should be the greater fighter as a result. And in all honesty? This is what the story does. At the very end of the fight, you think you’ve won only for Raven Beak to just... suddenly be way stronger; like he wasn’t trying his best. Of course, all of the events of the game end up being his undoing as Samus takes on her true state: a Metroid! There had been a theory going around that Samus was now a Metroid now that she had been given Metroid DNA, and... this is actually true. One of the key elements going around the game is a “physical change” in Samus. At the game’s end, it’s revealed that this change is that she’s now basically a Metroid, able to absorb energy through touch. When this power first begins its true manifestation, it takes all of Samus’ efforts to retain control of it. During the fight with Raven Beak, when it seems Samus has died, her Metroid DNA explodes out and makes her drain Raven Beak’s energy and even the energy of the ship they’re fighting in! When the ship crashes and the two are on the ground, Samus’ Power Suit looks like a Metroid version of her! During her escape from the planet, when she jumps into her ship and is about to take off, Adam has to stop her as without full control of these powers she’ll drain the ship’s energy. Of course, something happens which ultimately helps but I’ll get into that in a bit.

One thing this game also introduces, which is something that will be needed for the series going forward, is a explanation into the name “Metroid.” In the Chozo language, Metroid means ultimate warrior. As such, making it that Samus is now basically a Metroid - the last Metroid at that - and is the “ultimate warrior” given her victory over Raven Beak, she embodies the term Metroid in every way. SO congrats to Sakamoto for figuring out a way for the Metroid name to make sense going forward!

The next thing to look at is Adam Malkovich himself. I mentioned how I actually like Other M and I agreed with a lot of the things that story did. However, two things I never liked were why Samus continued to follow his orders after a point without any questioning, and why Adam seemed to let her suffer at times. A prime example for both of these is when she doesn’t use the Varia Suit until authorized, and yet he doesn’t authorize it until after she’s done a LOT of running around in a heated area that is causing her pain. These are two specific points that I do feel they need to address eventually, especially if Adam is going to be with her from now on. That said, the Adam we see in this game is different... mostly because we only see him twice: in the game’s beginning when Samus is flying to ZDR, and at the end when Samus is trying to escape ZDR. Every other “encounter” with Adam isn’t Adam, but rather Raven Beak. The two things we see Adam do? Note to Samus that the reward for the mission she’s taking doesn’t seem worth it (which she ignores and presses on with) and stops her from touching the ship’s controls when she’s in her Metroid suit. Overall, different from the Adam we had seen before.

Finally, this brings me to the last thing I want to talk about: the X-Parasite. More specifically, I want to talk about a scene at the game’s end. I mentioned how Adam stops Samus when she’s about to fly her ship, noting that her Metroid powers will drain the ship. As she’s trying to figure out what to do, a figure appears in the ship: It’s a Chozo of the Thoha tribe (This was the tribe that could control the Metroids) named Quiet Robe, who had aided Samus earlier before being killed. This Quiet Robe is actually an X-Parasite, yet unlike every other X Parasite, this one doesn’t attack her. It looks at her for a moment, smiles and nods at her as if acknowledging her, then reverts to its parasite form and lets itself be absorbed by Samus. The result of this is Samus reverts OUT of her Metroid suit and back to her Gravity suit. So what’s going on here? Well, I mentioned that the Thoha tribe could control Metroids, and Quiet Robe was one of those. In fact, the whole reason he’s alive and on ZDR is because Raven Beak needs him to control the Metroids that the latter wants to make using the DNA in Samus. Throughout the game, we actually see enemies called Control Units that look a lot like Mother Brain that Samus to defeat to gain a weapon to defeat the EMMI which pursue her! These Control units actually operate the EMMI, as if preparing to control Metroids. Since the ability to control Metroids lies with Quiet Robe, it stands to reason that an X-Parasite that infects him would have this power too. However, at the very end this last X-Parasite doesn’t decide to take control of Samus.... it decides to let her escape, implying that the memories and thoughts of whomever an X-Parasite infects live on in them. It creates a lot of questions into the nature of the X-Parasite, one that I hope they will explore even if the X no longer exist.

I’ve been sitting on this for a few years now, and after talks with a friend I’m making a project with I realized I really need to find an old friend of mine.

Years ago, I was friends with an artist by the name of Amanda (I know her last name am not sharing it for privacy reasons). She was a very cool artist who I wanted to work with, but things never aligned for her and I to work together (though she did draw some pieces for me). We chatted now and then and talked about comic making. Her art left a big impression on me. However, things were not great for her. She was dealing with a stalker and closed down her original deviantART page due to said stalker. I lost contact with her for a while. Eventually she came back under a new online alias, and this was how I spoke with her. However, some six months later or so she disappeared again and her new deviantART page was deactivated as well (which I suspect was related to this stalker). I would see her Skype account log in and out a few times after where I’d try to talk with her but got no reply.

At this point it’s been nearly three years since I last saw her account log on. I don’t know what happened to her and in the back of my head I’ve always been worried (she never told me what was going on with the stalker directly, but given how the first time she disappeared and came back she described that she was really shaken up from it and avoided getting online for a bit, I can make a guess of how bad it was), but I never knew if it would be possible to find her again. But I’ve also seen the internet do some incredible things. So I ask of you, the internet: help me find my old friend and make sure she’s okay. Here is some of the stuff I know about her that can help identify her: 1. She worked on a comic called Archon as a letterer.

2. She had her own project she wanted to take to Kickstarter (which I know the name of but for the purpose of confirmation, I’m withholding the name of).

3. She was from the US. I can’t recall what part of the US but I know she was from the US.

4. Her SECOND deviantART account, which is now deactivated, was Oria.

5. She drew this piece of artwork:

These are the main things I can go on.