The most common definition of life: a capacity for homeostasis, organisation, metabolism, growth, adaptation, response to stimuli, and reproduction. The endless, can not grow, adapt, or reproduce. They do have a sort of homeostasis, organisation, metabolism, and a response to stimuli.
The tour guide made me cry so much that I had to take a break from the game for several days. Something about how he loved his connection with people so much they he chose not to change anything about his afterlife. It made me think of my own life - if I had an afterlife, would I chose for it to be the same as my current life? He was happy in life and happy in death, choosing to spread only joy to everyone around him. I am glad he got to make his own wish in the end and I was proud to have been his final customer.
I was holding on my a thread, then she showed up and I was like "GOD DAMN IT", bent forward and sobbed. This entire zone was like a knife being twisted in your heart over and over.
Seeing the endless embrace their end, it puts some of the Endwalker content in a new light for me. Back then, we encounter the story of one star's civilization who ended themselves because their world was too tranquil and they had no hardship. It was rather unbelievable to me at the time, but you kind of see that here too, it expressed in person rather than a story of a dead world. Now, I can kind of see it. They are all so at peace that they don't mind not having more time.
I simply don't see how people can play Dawntrail and not have an enormous amount of hope for a future of more stories that have this sort of emotional weight and philosophical depth. A changing of the guard always involves an adjustment period, and they delivered some story beats that I'm still thinking about months later. The critique of rampant consumption is very welcome in its directness. No messing around, there.
Honestly this is my big takeaway. I understand that Dawntrail has flaws, many of them, so much so that I have my own ideas on how to tweak and change the story to be better. However, some of the hardcore negativity that came from this expansion is not warranted, especially when the future stories the devs presented us is very very intriguing and tantalizing to see one day. It just feels like some people didn't just throw the baby out with the bath water, but the entire bathroom out. If someone is mad because we paid 40-42USD for this expansion plus the subscription and they feel the story did not live up to the expectations and expected better writing, you won't get an argument from me about that. I'm giving the devs a bit more grace because they have the incredibly difficult job of restarting a new saga and story, and I'm willing to be more lenient to their failings because they have such a good track record.
@@acgearsandarms1343 Which is my big hope, I want to see DT be like Stormblood where the main .0 MSQ story was alright, but the patch story is just stellar.
Remember what the Yok Huy accounts about their dreams of the Golden City were? Admittedly I didn't reflect on this until I reached that part of your video in lv 93 and you were emphasising on this. But it's a strikingly spookily accurate description of this area...
I am not proud to say that this whole last map, the towers, everything, made me ugly cry and sob. I had the hiccups and everything. I was adopted and never knew my birth parents, have a strained relationship with my mother and I also lost my dad a while back and the wound is still fresher than I care for to this day. Since the days of 1.0, this game has helped me cope and move on from that and I will forever be thankful to Yoshi-P and his crew for helping me grow.
I thought that I had managed somehow to escape a complete breakdown in an ffxiv expansion, but his one did it more than any other zone in the whole game so far, I’m sure I’m not alone in thinking of the people who are no longer here. ❤
The living memory part helped me come to terms with the loss of my mother 15 years ago, time and time again this gods damned game breaks me and heals me at the same time. As a 37 year old man who didn't even cry at my own mother's funeral... allow yourselves to cry, I wish I did when it really mattered.
When you realize that some of those children in those zones may have been full grown adults, but the happiest they were in their lives were when they were children :(
No matter what anyone says. DT's final zone is almost up there with some of ShB & EW's best moments. It's so well done & heartbreaking. So real. And that OST...
It's been implied that Namikka suffers from a neurodegenerative disease like Alzheimers when she passes, but seeing her remember her beloved Lamaty'i before she's gone forever reminds me so much of my grandmother who passed a year ago. When she did, she was too far gone to recognise me, and I would have given everything to really tell her how much she meant to me one final time. Shit got too real with this cutscene.
YES. I was talking to someone else how a part of me wished we went through the rite with zoraal ja at least for a few quests to understand his character and the pressures he was facing a bit more before the end.
6:55 I see the FF16 choir got enlisted for some Dawntrail tracks as well. 18:25 Zoraal Ja really was the ever praised, hyped up gifted kid that never learned how to handle failing. No wonder his sanity unraveled after getting disqualified from the succession. 23:30 Two necks, but one head missing. All resolve, no reason. 29:17 Note how he calls her "Lamaty'i" at the very end. 38:07 "If bloodshed will save my subjects, then I will become history's most brutal queen" is a beautifully terrifying line. 49:07 As described by the Yok Huy: "Every building was a palace, and in their midst reigned a silent goddess. A statue so tall even my kin would need lift their gaze to behold its visage." A vision so accurate I'd almost suspect it an Echo, perhaps awakened by the sight of meteors falling into the jungles of Yak T'el... 1:19:40 "To have this chance to speak with you again and leave nothing unsaid..." IT'S SETO AND ARDBERT ALL OVER AGAIN, BUT IT'S EVEN HARDER THIS TIME SINCE IT'S PEOPLE! 😭
My husband, sibling, and I reached the scene with Namikka - quite by chance - on the one year anniversary of my grandma's passing. After that cutscene ended, we were VERY sniffly and decided to call it for the night there. This zone is so DIFFICULT but, in a strange way, it helps. Especially when someone tells you they WANT you to move forward where they cannot. Oh, also, all of the FF9 references absolutely emotionally wrecked me!! Otis, Sphene, the castle, the minigame kids, the music - if it's not one thing it's another! You're doing amazing, just a little more to go!!
Dawntrails story gets lots of mixed reviews and reactions from its community and streamers. I have been following you since Shadowbringers, and it is a delight to watch you enjoy every (most) part of all the things FF14's storytelling has to offer, good or bad... so thank you, thank you for letting me believe that not all of the community has completly soured because some parts are different or not up to their expectations... I hope to see you continue your path and stay true to yourself!
i like how the bosses from Origenics resemble the one we fought before like -First boss = Philia(Holminster Switch last boss) -Second boss = Scathach(Dun Scaith boss) -Last boss = Eden prime(E1)
6:55 This music is an absolute banger and I will never get tired of it. 10:30 I don't remember the name either, but it's the same model as the void queen who's the third boss of Dun Scaith that we kill and Diabolos eats. 12:00 Ambrose was the name of Nostalgia and her sister's father who disappeared after arguing with a guard. They turned him into this. 21:14 Those buggers still get me even though I know they go back out. 23:00 If you look at his model, it looks like he's half grown a second head. 29:17 I think this was the first time he ever called her Lamaty'i. 35:20 It's the Ascians all over again. I am sad. 40:35 What makes it worse if we went to Shaaloani to go reunite with her. To Erenville's knowledge she was alive before the 30 year jump. Which means if he'd just gotten onto that train he would've been united with her again. But since he didn't she died and he's been interacting with her Endless this whole time. 49:00 Remember the story the aggressive yok huy told us? In the middle of the city a goddess so tall even his people would have to crane their necks to look up at it? 54:10 Yeah, she said earlier that only life force aka aether from living beings, can sustain the Endless. Other sources, like harnessing the rampant lightning of the world using electrope, doesn't work. It's essentially Alexander all over again. It'll feed and feed until all reflections are dead and barren, then starve and die itself. 1:26:50 Yeah, the aether current quests hit just as hard. 1:27:40 His memories were saved here same as everyone, and was recreated as an Endless here without the system knowing his soul lived on in the robot body all this time.
Happy saturday sooo happy to see ya reach the final zone I cried sooo hard in that zone especially there was a blue aether quest in living memory that got me tooo! I loved the graha date gondola scene though my heart
IMHO, this is my speculation. The Living Ends - DeadneyLand... was originally exactly that. A theme park. It was meant as a Sepulcher, a way to remember the many, many Alexandrians they had been lost. Rather than just words, they took their memories and created simulations of them... holodeck characters. Not, in truth, the actual ones who had fallen, but a memory you could interact with. A way to hear the comforting words of a lost grandparent, give a lost child a hug and reaffirm that they endure in your heart, or even just ask the advice of a long lost friend. Like all tombstones, it was a place for the LIVING to remember the dead. But something went wrong. Someone along the way decided it truly was a resurrection, and gradually the Living began to be turned to service the needs of the dead. Not just manifest an Endless on request, but keep them running all the time through the NPC walk cycles, simulating lives. The memories of the Living were harvested and taken to protect the Endless, and their souls were removed from the cycle of rebirth so they could power the simulation. The Endless were never meant to be Endless. They were supposed to be memories the Living could touch and reaffirm, fleeting and momentary. But I suspect someone in their pain and grief could not accept that, and demanded they live again.
I'm in the camp that the endless aren't alive. As you say I've seen it done in other media, but those exercises always involve beigns that are much more forward moving than any of the Endless. As the description says the "relive" their past memories, they don't really seem to seek out new experiences. It could just be that Alexandria society has become utterly frozen, but to me the endless are just AI chatbots with really good data on how the person would have acted.
@@shoruubyrjun2004 For the quote yes I was refering to the zone intro, but it is a very apt description of what we see. Compare the endless to say Merlin and Nimue in the Safehold series by David Weber or even Data in Star Trek. They form deep relationships, even fall in love with new people, seek out new skills. They are dynamic characters. The endless just seem flat in comparison. They do the same things over and over. There is no research going on to solve the issues of Alexandria, Sphene died of the same disease as that kid we saw in Solution 9 and there has been no progress or even an attempt to really find a cure. If a disease killed you or your child and you had an eternity with no need to do other work to meet your survival needs, wouldn't you spend at least some of your time trying to eliminate it? We don't meet anyone who tells us they became an artist or a musician when they'd been blind or deaf in life. There is none of that in the Endless. They are Endlessly unchanging IMO. OTOH I did find emotional resonance in the zone, but it wasn't for the endless. I lost my mother suddenly as a young adult. And I can very much imagine how painful it would have been to have even a hyperrealistic chat bot of her while I was trying to grieve. Pretty hard to move from denial throught the rest of the stages of grief to acceptance with something like that in front of you. I definitely cried for both Wuk Lamat and Erenville.
This game deals with a lot of very heavy topics. I like how they addressed the pain and sorrow of death. It's not a bad thing, it's what comes naturally and we have to learn to move on from it. Lost dad about 2 years ago. Lost a cat a month ago (the one in my youtube pic). After enough death, you realize that the pain simply means that you loved and were loved in return. Those that leave us do live on in our memories so long as we take a moment to remember. FFXIV treats death so respectfully and with such dignity. It would be far worse to endure as a living memory.
I saw someone say early on how beautifully poetic it is that Zoraal Ja takes on a 2 headed form with only 1 head as it plainly shows that he's become the embodiment of Resolve without Reason. He's a being of pure ambition but with no wisdom or plan behind it, just a drive to be the strongest without even knowing why he wants it. As for the extreme version of the fight, yeah it's a lot at first but imo it's the more fun of the 2 currently available extremes. That being said, you play tank and Valigarmanda Ex has one of the best tank mechanics in the game so there's also that lol. Moving on to Living Memory and whether or not the Endless there are alive, I'm of a mind that they are. The way I see it the soul is what makes someone who they are, and if you were to take 2 people, swap their souls, but keep the memories where they are, person A would still be person A but they would have person B's body and memories. In that way, I regard the Endless as effectively completely different people from who they represent but with the memories of that previous person imprinted on them. I feel the same way about the living people that use regulators; that every time they die a completely new person is born in their body, which makes it all the more uncomfortable to me that they don't realize this and are so nonchalant about throwing away their life so shortly after being born. And then there's those times that Zoraal Ja and his army spawn camped people that make my stomach turn, since those people got to live for all of 10 seconds fully aware they were about to die.
I just wished we got to see more on how Zoraal Ja became the way he is. I think there was a fascinating story they could have told about Zoraal Ja, maybe something akin to having gifted child syndrome where they thought they would be handed the throne cause 'miracle birth + Dawnservant son = insta-success.' That's just one direction we could have gone. But generally, just wished we had seen more of Zoraal Ja. As for the Endless, in my head, by the things the game has shown us with Alpha, Omega, the Loporrits, Ultima Thule's denizens, and even the mammet in the Hildibrand story, we have been shown to treat non-conventional life (aka soulless/arcane entities) as worth respecting and preserving. So even if Living Memory is just full of recreations of dead people using their memories, by the logic the game has presented us, we should treat them just like we treat Alpha and the rest of them. Technically on the "are they people/alive list," Living Memory people are actually "more alive" than even the Loporrits and Ultima Thule people because they at least are made using their actual memories. Loporrits are purely arcane beings made by Venat to help with the evacuation of the star if the Final Days came, and Ultima Thule people were remade with Dynamis and from the memories of Meteion, not even their own individual memories. Alpha and Omega are implied to have "gained" their souls at the end of their respective stories, so they would rank "higher." So us turning off Living Memory, in-universe, we would be killing these people. But because the devs gave us many outs to make this palatable it's not an issue. It was on the request of Cahcuia, it was also a survival situation where if we didn't stop Sphene she would have killed us all, and the devs made it so that the Endless were not opposed to being turned off.
@@Deode-d4h The beings of Ultima Thule are interesting here. Meteion did what she did by hoarding the souls and memories of the dead to keep them from the Aethereal Sea and the Endsinger says things like "as we died" which makes me think it's more of a voidsent situation where all those souls and memories are still in there. All that to say, I wouldn't be surprised if the denizens there were more real and themselves than we realize. As for lopporits, we know that some creations did have souls and as far as I know we were never told if that includes them, but given how much personality they have I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if they did.
@@Deode-d4hRan’jit kind of suffered a similar problem, but we found out his backstory much later in the next expansion after his death. So don’t expect it to come so soon.
While its grey area, I feel the writers themselves want us to believe that, in this instance, the Endless are NOT alive. Even if they are "alive", they're not the same people if the soul is gone
Yeah I could understand that was their intention as they didn't really ask the question if they were alive or delve deeply into the topic. It still felt awful from my POV lol.
@@terabellum You're definitely not the only one. There are some players who really felt the events of the last zone were akin to the WoL doing the "genocide" word. I may not personally agree but just know you're absolutely not alone
And even if your personal belief is that they're alive how many dozens or even hundreds of people across each reflection would have to die to sustain each individual Endless before nobody is left anywhere and they fade away anyway. G'raha said it, it's not sustainable. It's Alexander on a multi world scale.
i personally think that they are alive people need body, soul, and memory to truly “exist”. the endless has memory, and fed aether to comprise their soul, which is needed because they are absent an anchoring body. guess who was like that? the scions in the first yes their existence is hollow and yes this “paradise” is a sham afterlife, more of a gilded cage than anything and yes, keeping it all up is wildly unsustainable, but if we go by the universe’s own definition, the Endless too, are “alive” what we did was unplug the life support machine of thousands of terminal consciousnesses. it is very much a necessary evil and you know you *have* to do it …so why can’t I stop crying…?
"Its kind of genocide a lil biiiiiit" when it comes to erasing the endless reminds me of this : Emet-Selch - "I do not consider you to be truly alive. Ergo, I will not be guilty of murder if I kill you." It becomes very important how one feels about the Endless, and what makes one alive/real.
The endless are more akin to the souls of the ancients who were sacrificed for Zodiark. Still held in a kind of limbo, and who Emet Selch sought to bring back. Ultimately we're still in the same fight, the living versus the dead.
That idea that Namikka might have been woken just to screw with Wuk Lamat... that would be crazy mean. She did have a nice happy age at the end, when her form changed. The age when she was proud to see Wuk Lamat succeed in the right, got the gift braclet she treasured, finally felt her furry child no longer needed her.
As twisted and irredeemable as Zoraal Ja got, his last words have a lot to say between the lines. “Nor do I desire anything of you” for Zoraal Ja his father and fatherhood only meant hopes and dreams put on your shoulders, he grew up being called a miracle and putting more and more pressure on him than he could never escape. In a way Zoraal Ja never stopped being that kid that was fed those goals that became his torment. He wanted none of that for his son Gulool Ja which ironically led to him abandoning him
Man I really wish I had any near the level of enjoyment out of this, I was basically on autopilot the entire last zone just waiting for it to end. This entire expansion was a huge miss for me, while I loved the patch content with zero leading up to dawntrail, and love love shb and ew. From zone 1 to the end I felt like i was pitched one thing going into dawntrail and got another. I think estinien got the adventure i was hoping for from dawntrail lol.
1st Origenics Boss uses the same Model as Phillia from Holminster Switch, 2nd Boss uses the same Model as Scathach from Dun Scaith, final Boss uses the same Model as Eden Prime from the 1st Eden Raid
The question Endwalker posed was "is life worth living?". I think Dawntrail asks "If life is worth living, why should we accept death as necessary? What about those we leave behind?" Living Memory is the only zone in the game where I won't taxi my friends around it until they finish the story. Being able to fly there comes with a burden, and I'm not going back through new game plus to change the place back after the message behind the zone.
Gods Living Memory is rough. I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were these people’s Meteon, ushering them to their ends “for their own good” when they didn’t ask for it… Then again (and maybe this is to protect myself from heartache) I kinda see the Endless like someone fed all of your conversations with a loved one into ChatGPT somehow. It might make a very convincing simulacrum to interact with, but the way the Endless seem mostly placid, or at least pre-disposed to see everything /including their own erasure/ in a positive light feels more like programming than personality. It’s good to get a chance to say a final goodbye, but then again grief is always for the living, not the dead.
The key is an Ascian relic that should have been destroyed for who's seat it belongs to aka the 14th seat the seat of Azem the Traveler, but Emet protected it from the other seat members
@@nekogamer2508 The Ascians as an organization only came about after the Sundering. Prior to that, they didn’t exist. We never got a name for their original race so everyone calls them Ancients. Ascian isn’t so much a race as it is a title of sorts. So that’s kind of why I don’t really see the key as an Ascian relic, but truth be told, we’ve yet to learn the specifics behind it. Not yet at least. Just that it responds to Azem’s magic. And is in all likelihood, to contain Azem’s magic to create gateways. Preservation was the one who augmented it with electrope, which is probably what gave it means to perform interdimensional fusion.
I felt like Terra did for sure. I get that Cahciua was all about being deleted and her personal feelings about the Endless, but I'm sure not everyone there felt the same. It did feel like genocide to me for sure. Which made for good story telling!
- Robo-Turtle is a mount you can get, just have to do hunts. It's purchasable with Sacks of Nuts. - If you want to see Living Memory in it's full form again, you can trigger New Game+. As long as you go back to some point before this in the MSQ, it will be back to this look.
He explains how he took pains to assimilate and pretend he was Viera rather than Shetona, which would have to include the accent as well. It's a retcon, but one that happens all the time with people who assimilate into local cultures for whatever reason.
The most common definition of life:
a capacity for homeostasis, organisation, metabolism, growth, adaptation, response to stimuli, and reproduction.
The endless, can not grow, adapt, or reproduce. They do have a sort of homeostasis, organisation, metabolism, and a response to stimuli.
The tour guide made me cry so much that I had to take a break from the game for several days. Something about how he loved his connection with people so much they he chose not to change anything about his afterlife. It made me think of my own life - if I had an afterlife, would I chose for it to be the same as my current life? He was happy in life and happy in death, choosing to spread only joy to everyone around him. I am glad he got to make his own wish in the end and I was proud to have been his final customer.
I LOVE Otis. So glad to see you swoon over him too
The namikka scene absolutely destroyed me when i reached it. Still does.
I was holding on my a thread, then she showed up and I was like "GOD DAMN IT", bent forward and sobbed.
This entire zone was like a knife being twisted in your heart over and over.
Seeing the endless embrace their end, it puts some of the Endwalker content in a new light for me. Back then, we encounter the story of one star's civilization who ended themselves because their world was too tranquil and they had no hardship. It was rather unbelievable to me at the time, but you kind of see that here too, it expressed in person rather than a story of a dead world. Now, I can kind of see it. They are all so at peace that they don't mind not having more time.
True. And those that linger have issues we can help them solve. They were for the most part at peace without regrets. That’s some comfort at least.
I simply don't see how people can play Dawntrail and not have an enormous amount of hope for a future of more stories that have this sort of emotional weight and philosophical depth. A changing of the guard always involves an adjustment period, and they delivered some story beats that I'm still thinking about months later.
The critique of rampant consumption is very welcome in its directness. No messing around, there.
Honestly this is my big takeaway. I understand that Dawntrail has flaws, many of them, so much so that I have my own ideas on how to tweak and change the story to be better. However, some of the hardcore negativity that came from this expansion is not warranted, especially when the future stories the devs presented us is very very intriguing and tantalizing to see one day. It just feels like some people didn't just throw the baby out with the bath water, but the entire bathroom out.
If someone is mad because we paid 40-42USD for this expansion plus the subscription and they feel the story did not live up to the expectations and expected better writing, you won't get an argument from me about that. I'm giving the devs a bit more grace because they have the incredibly difficult job of restarting a new saga and story, and I'm willing to be more lenient to their failings because they have such a good track record.
@@Deode-d4hAt the very least they can make a turnaround with the patches. They have been able to make a good story in the patches before.
@@acgearsandarms1343 Which is my big hope, I want to see DT be like Stormblood where the main .0 MSQ story was alright, but the patch story is just stellar.
Remember what the Yok Huy accounts about their dreams of the Golden City were? Admittedly I didn't reflect on this until I reached that part of your video in lv 93 and you were emphasising on this. But it's a strikingly spookily accurate description of this area...
I am not proud to say that this whole last map, the towers, everything, made me ugly cry and sob. I had the hiccups and everything. I was adopted and never knew my birth parents, have a strained relationship with my mother and I also lost my dad a while back and the wound is still fresher than I care for to this day. Since the days of 1.0, this game has helped me cope and move on from that and I will forever be thankful to Yoshi-P and his crew for helping me grow.
You felt your human emotions and that's beautiful, there's no shame in that.
I thought that I had managed somehow to escape a complete breakdown in an ffxiv expansion, but his one did it more than any other zone in the whole game so far, I’m sure I’m not alone in thinking of the people who are no longer here. ❤
The living memory part helped me come to terms with the loss of my mother 15 years ago, time and time again this gods damned game breaks me and heals me at the same time.
As a 37 year old man who didn't even cry at my own mother's funeral... allow yourselves to cry, I wish I did when it really mattered.
the edit for "and their happiness, is my happiness (dahhh duhhhh)" was so funny
The roller coaster of emotions from OMG GRAHA DATE to unspeakable grief in 2.5 seconds is insane
Goddamn it really is
THIS.
OH HO, YOU'RE NEARING MY FAVORITE PART (to cry at)
Lo-fi Alexandrian beats to chill/cry to. 😭
@@terabellum Lofi beats to remember that they once lived to
Lo-fi Alexandrian beats to delete a remembered civilization to
Your afterlife is real, and I'm shutting it down!
... I cried my eyes out at every terminal I shut down.
When you realize that some of those children in those zones may have been full grown adults, but the happiest they were in their lives were when they were children :(
Or even worse.... they never got to even become adults....
Erenville said as much later, yeah.
My hubby sat while I sobbed uncontrollably through this whole section - you are NOT alone in this. XD
My first thought seeing the final zone: "What in the Kingdom Hearts is going on here?"
Twilight Town, is that you?
@@TarundiMC So glad I'm not the only one who instantly got that vibe.
Between the lighting and the music I was immediately forcibly yanked back to Twilight Town! Talk about bittersweet nostalgia 😭
Absolutely Twilight Town energy. I'm sure that influenced my emotions a small bit, adding to the nostalgiac feeling of the zone. 😭
No matter what anyone says. DT's final zone is almost up there with some of ShB & EW's best moments. It's so well done & heartbreaking. So real. And that OST...
This last zone hit me hard to I lost both my parents by the time I was 25 I’m 30 now and all the mother parts had me in tears
"what a suspiciously trial shaped group of npcs"
It's been implied that Namikka suffers from a neurodegenerative disease like Alzheimers when she passes, but seeing her remember her beloved Lamaty'i before she's gone forever reminds me so much of my grandmother who passed a year ago. When she did, she was too far gone to recognise me, and I would have given everything to really tell her how much she meant to me one final time.
Shit got too real with this cutscene.
i think zoraal ja referring to wuk lamat as lamat'yi in his final moments is overlooked a lot
Absolutely! It makes me wish we’d gotten more from him. Some one on one time or and Echo flashback… anything!
YES. I was talking to someone else how a part of me wished we went through the rite with zoraal ja at least for a few quests to understand his character and the pressures he was facing a bit more before the end.
Did you catch that Ambrose was the twins from Oblivion's dad?
6:55 I see the FF16 choir got enlisted for some Dawntrail tracks as well.
18:25 Zoraal Ja really was the ever praised, hyped up gifted kid that never learned how to handle failing. No wonder his sanity unraveled after getting disqualified from the succession.
23:30 Two necks, but one head missing. All resolve, no reason.
29:17 Note how he calls her "Lamaty'i" at the very end.
38:07 "If bloodshed will save my subjects, then I will become history's most brutal queen" is a beautifully terrifying line.
49:07 As described by the Yok Huy: "Every building was a palace, and in their midst reigned a silent goddess. A statue so tall even my kin would need lift their gaze to behold its visage."
A vision so accurate I'd almost suspect it an Echo, perhaps awakened by the sight of meteors falling into the jungles of Yak T'el...
1:19:40 "To have this chance to speak with you again and leave nothing unsaid..." IT'S SETO AND ARDBERT ALL OVER AGAIN, BUT IT'S EVEN HARDER THIS TIME SINCE IT'S PEOPLE! 😭
My husband, sibling, and I reached the scene with Namikka - quite by chance - on the one year anniversary of my grandma's passing. After that cutscene ended, we were VERY sniffly and decided to call it for the night there. This zone is so DIFFICULT but, in a strange way, it helps. Especially when someone tells you they WANT you to move forward where they cannot.
Oh, also, all of the FF9 references absolutely emotionally wrecked me!! Otis, Sphene, the castle, the minigame kids, the music - if it's not one thing it's another!
You're doing amazing, just a little more to go!!
Dawntrails story gets lots of mixed reviews and reactions from its community and streamers. I have been following you since Shadowbringers, and it is a delight to watch you enjoy every (most) part of all the things FF14's storytelling has to offer, good or bad... so thank you, thank you for letting me believe that not all of the community has completly soured because some parts are different or not up to their expectations... I hope to see you continue your path and stay true to yourself!
First thought when seeing Cahciua. "Oh no, she's hot!"
i like how the bosses from Origenics resemble the one we fought before like
-First boss = Philia(Holminster Switch last boss)
-Second boss = Scathach(Dun Scaith boss)
-Last boss = Eden prime(E1)
I had to do this in multiple plays. I just couldn’t carry on through one sitting. It was too heavy for me. 😢
Anytime I was slumped in my chair was a moment that the emotions just got too physically heavy for me. I can fully understand taking breaks here. 😭
Was waiting for you to get to the final zone! Enjoy!
6:55 This music is an absolute banger and I will never get tired of it.
10:30 I don't remember the name either, but it's the same model as the void queen who's the third boss of Dun Scaith that we kill and Diabolos eats.
12:00 Ambrose was the name of Nostalgia and her sister's father who disappeared after arguing with a guard. They turned him into this.
21:14 Those buggers still get me even though I know they go back out.
23:00 If you look at his model, it looks like he's half grown a second head.
29:17 I think this was the first time he ever called her Lamaty'i.
35:20 It's the Ascians all over again. I am sad.
40:35 What makes it worse if we went to Shaaloani to go reunite with her. To Erenville's knowledge she was alive before the 30 year jump. Which means if he'd just gotten onto that train he would've been united with her again. But since he didn't she died and he's been interacting with her Endless this whole time.
49:00 Remember the story the aggressive yok huy told us? In the middle of the city a goddess so tall even his people would have to crane their necks to look up at it?
54:10 Yeah, she said earlier that only life force aka aether from living beings, can sustain the Endless. Other sources, like harnessing the rampant lightning of the world using electrope, doesn't work. It's essentially Alexander all over again. It'll feed and feed until all reflections are dead and barren, then starve and die itself.
1:26:50 Yeah, the aether current quests hit just as hard.
1:27:40 His memories were saved here same as everyone, and was recreated as an Endless here without the system knowing his soul lived on in the robot body all this time.
Happy saturday sooo happy to see ya reach the final zone I cried sooo hard in that zone especially there was a blue aether quest in living memory that got me tooo! I loved the graha date gondola scene though my heart
IMHO, this is my speculation.
The Living Ends - DeadneyLand... was originally exactly that. A theme park. It was meant as a Sepulcher, a way to remember the many, many Alexandrians they had been lost. Rather than just words, they took their memories and created simulations of them... holodeck characters. Not, in truth, the actual ones who had fallen, but a memory you could interact with. A way to hear the comforting words of a lost grandparent, give a lost child a hug and reaffirm that they endure in your heart, or even just ask the advice of a long lost friend. Like all tombstones, it was a place for the LIVING to remember the dead.
But something went wrong. Someone along the way decided it truly was a resurrection, and gradually the Living began to be turned to service the needs of the dead. Not just manifest an Endless on request, but keep them running all the time through the NPC walk cycles, simulating lives. The memories of the Living were harvested and taken to protect the Endless, and their souls were removed from the cycle of rebirth so they could power the simulation.
The Endless were never meant to be Endless. They were supposed to be memories the Living could touch and reaffirm, fleeting and momentary. But I suspect someone in their pain and grief could not accept that, and demanded they live again.
I really like this explanation, which aligns with the fact that the living USED to inhabit this place.
When Namiika shifted back to her old form she was still wearing the bracelet that Wuk Lamat gave her.
Broke my heart in two. It was such a sweet symbol.😭
Her new happiest moment: seeing her little girl become a proud and grown woman.
I'm in the camp that the endless aren't alive. As you say I've seen it done in other media, but those exercises always involve beigns that are much more forward moving than any of the Endless. As the description says the "relive" their past memories, they don't really seem to seek out new experiences. It could just be that Alexandria society has become utterly frozen, but to me the endless are just AI chatbots with really good data on how the person would have acted.
@@shoruubyrjun2004 For the quote yes I was refering to the zone intro, but it is a very apt description of what we see. Compare the endless to say Merlin and Nimue in the Safehold series by David Weber or even Data in Star Trek. They form deep relationships, even fall in love with new people, seek out new skills. They are dynamic characters. The endless just seem flat in comparison. They do the same things over and over. There is no research going on to solve the issues of Alexandria, Sphene died of the same disease as that kid we saw in Solution 9 and there has been no progress or even an attempt to really find a cure. If a disease killed you or your child and you had an eternity with no need to do other work to meet your survival needs, wouldn't you spend at least some of your time trying to eliminate it? We don't meet anyone who tells us they became an artist or a musician when they'd been blind or deaf in life. There is none of that in the Endless. They are Endlessly unchanging IMO.
OTOH I did find emotional resonance in the zone, but it wasn't for the endless. I lost my mother suddenly as a young adult. And I can very much imagine how painful it would have been to have even a hyperrealistic chat bot of her while I was trying to grieve. Pretty hard to move from denial throught the rest of the stages of grief to acceptance with something like that in front of you. I definitely cried for both Wuk Lamat and Erenville.
This game deals with a lot of very heavy topics. I like how they addressed the pain and sorrow of death. It's not a bad thing, it's what comes naturally and we have to learn to move on from it. Lost dad about 2 years ago. Lost a cat a month ago (the one in my youtube pic). After enough death, you realize that the pain simply means that you loved and were loved in return. Those that leave us do live on in our memories so long as we take a moment to remember. FFXIV treats death so respectfully and with such dignity. It would be far worse to endure as a living memory.
We can cry again 😭
I was a sobbing mess through this entire last world.
I saw someone say early on how beautifully poetic it is that Zoraal Ja takes on a 2 headed form with only 1 head as it plainly shows that he's become the embodiment of Resolve without Reason. He's a being of pure ambition but with no wisdom or plan behind it, just a drive to be the strongest without even knowing why he wants it. As for the extreme version of the fight, yeah it's a lot at first but imo it's the more fun of the 2 currently available extremes. That being said, you play tank and Valigarmanda Ex has one of the best tank mechanics in the game so there's also that lol.
Moving on to Living Memory and whether or not the Endless there are alive, I'm of a mind that they are. The way I see it the soul is what makes someone who they are, and if you were to take 2 people, swap their souls, but keep the memories where they are, person A would still be person A but they would have person B's body and memories. In that way, I regard the Endless as effectively completely different people from who they represent but with the memories of that previous person imprinted on them. I feel the same way about the living people that use regulators; that every time they die a completely new person is born in their body, which makes it all the more uncomfortable to me that they don't realize this and are so nonchalant about throwing away their life so shortly after being born. And then there's those times that Zoraal Ja and his army spawn camped people that make my stomach turn, since those people got to live for all of 10 seconds fully aware they were about to die.
I just wished we got to see more on how Zoraal Ja became the way he is. I think there was a fascinating story they could have told about Zoraal Ja, maybe something akin to having gifted child syndrome where they thought they would be handed the throne cause 'miracle birth + Dawnservant son = insta-success.' That's just one direction we could have gone. But generally, just wished we had seen more of Zoraal Ja.
As for the Endless, in my head, by the things the game has shown us with Alpha, Omega, the Loporrits, Ultima Thule's denizens, and even the mammet in the Hildibrand story, we have been shown to treat non-conventional life (aka soulless/arcane entities) as worth respecting and preserving. So even if Living Memory is just full of recreations of dead people using their memories, by the logic the game has presented us, we should treat them just like we treat Alpha and the rest of them. Technically on the "are they people/alive list," Living Memory people are actually "more alive" than even the Loporrits and Ultima Thule people because they at least are made using their actual memories. Loporrits are purely arcane beings made by Venat to help with the evacuation of the star if the Final Days came, and Ultima Thule people were remade with Dynamis and from the memories of Meteion, not even their own individual memories. Alpha and Omega are implied to have "gained" their souls at the end of their respective stories, so they would rank "higher."
So us turning off Living Memory, in-universe, we would be killing these people. But because the devs gave us many outs to make this palatable it's not an issue. It was on the request of Cahcuia, it was also a survival situation where if we didn't stop Sphene she would have killed us all, and the devs made it so that the Endless were not opposed to being turned off.
@@Deode-d4h The beings of Ultima Thule are interesting here. Meteion did what she did by hoarding the souls and memories of the dead to keep them from the Aethereal Sea and the Endsinger says things like "as we died" which makes me think it's more of a voidsent situation where all those souls and memories are still in there. All that to say, I wouldn't be surprised if the denizens there were more real and themselves than we realize.
As for lopporits, we know that some creations did have souls and as far as I know we were never told if that includes them, but given how much personality they have I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if they did.
@@Deode-d4hRan’jit kind of suffered a similar problem, but we found out his backstory much later in the next expansion after his death. So don’t expect it to come so soon.
48:25 - I could go take a quick hop to the first and see if Gaia knows.
As sad of a zone as it was, it was one of my favorites. Also all these zones/encounter music was hype.
Also EX2 is my favorite of the two this expac. The music really makes it.
The zone map of Living Memory is ff9 world map
Terra: Sphene we've come to bargain.
Me: 😂 instantly thinks of Doctor Strange
While its grey area, I feel the writers themselves want us to believe that, in this instance, the Endless are NOT alive.
Even if they are "alive", they're not the same people if the soul is gone
Yeah I could understand that was their intention as they didn't really ask the question if they were alive or delve deeply into the topic. It still felt awful from my POV lol.
@@terabellum You're definitely not the only one. There are some players who really felt the events of the last zone were akin to the WoL doing the "genocide" word. I may not personally agree but just know you're absolutely not alone
And even if your personal belief is that they're alive how many dozens or even hundreds of people across each reflection would have to die to sustain each individual Endless before nobody is left anywhere and they fade away anyway. G'raha said it, it's not sustainable. It's Alexander on a multi world scale.
i personally think that they are alive
people need body, soul, and memory to truly “exist”. the endless has memory, and fed aether to comprise their soul, which is needed because they are absent an anchoring body.
guess who was like that?
the scions in the first
yes their existence is hollow and yes this “paradise” is a sham afterlife, more of a gilded cage than anything and yes, keeping it all up is wildly unsustainable,
but if we go by the universe’s own definition, the Endless too, are “alive”
what we did was unplug the life support machine of thousands of terminal consciousnesses.
it is very much a necessary evil
and you know you *have* to do it
…so why can’t I stop crying…?
I freaked out when i saw the gondola date cutscene. In my head canon, G'raha and i are married.
Do tell me the AI who wants to be rid of their human side. I love that sort of thing
it seems that my summer vacation is over
first of all how dare you
STOP ✋️
"Its kind of genocide a lil biiiiiit" when it comes to erasing the endless reminds me of this : Emet-Selch - "I do not consider you to be truly alive. Ergo, I will not be guilty of murder if I kill you." It becomes very important how one feels about the Endless, and what makes one alive/real.
The endless are more akin to the souls of the ancients who were sacrificed for Zodiark. Still held in a kind of limbo, and who Emet Selch sought to bring back.
Ultimately we're still in the same fight, the living versus the dead.
That idea that Namikka might have been woken just to screw with Wuk Lamat... that would be crazy mean.
She did have a nice happy age at the end, when her form changed. The age when she was proud to see Wuk Lamat succeed in the right, got the gift braclet she treasured, finally felt her furry child no longer needed her.
Cahciua is so Azem-Coded it hurts
44:45 8th chevron locked.
I'm just a random WoL on the internet but I should say this, don't worry... at least you are loved
As twisted and irredeemable as Zoraal Ja got, his last words have a lot to say between the lines.
“Nor do I desire anything of you” for Zoraal Ja his father and fatherhood only meant hopes and dreams put on your shoulders, he grew up being called a miracle and putting more and more pressure on him than he could never escape. In a way Zoraal Ja never stopped being that kid that was fed those goals that became his torment.
He wanted none of that for his son Gulool Ja which ironically led to him abandoning him
Man I really wish I had any near the level of enjoyment out of this, I was basically on autopilot the entire last zone just waiting for it to end. This entire expansion was a huge miss for me, while I loved the patch content with zero leading up to dawntrail, and love love shb and ew. From zone 1 to the end I felt like i was pitched one thing going into dawntrail and got another. I think estinien got the adventure i was hoping for from dawntrail lol.
I swear, the entirety of Living Memory is just Angel Beats the game
1:09:49 A G'rahondala date?
1st Origenics Boss uses the same Model as Phillia from Holminster Switch, 2nd Boss uses the same Model as Scathach from Dun Scaith, final Boss uses the same Model as Eden Prime from the 1st Eden Raid
Terra, when will you play Destiny 2 again?
Very soon! I have 2 more FFXIV uploads, and then I'll be covering Acts 2 and 3!
this zone was rough even as someone who describes to the "they aren't alive" school of thought
The question Endwalker posed was "is life worth living?". I think Dawntrail asks "If life is worth living, why should we accept death as necessary? What about those we leave behind?"
Living Memory is the only zone in the game where I won't taxi my friends around it until they finish the story. Being able to fly there comes with a burden, and I'm not going back through new game plus to change the place back after the message behind the zone.
The most somber part of the gondola ride conversation was that G'Raha was talking about you.
Gods Living Memory is rough. I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were these people’s Meteon, ushering them to their ends “for their own good” when they didn’t ask for it…
Then again (and maybe this is to protect myself from heartache) I kinda see the Endless like someone fed all of your conversations with a loved one into ChatGPT somehow. It might make a very convincing simulacrum to interact with, but the way the Endless seem mostly placid, or at least pre-disposed to see everything /including their own erasure/ in a positive light feels more like programming than personality.
It’s good to get a chance to say a final goodbye, but then again grief is always for the living, not the dead.
Other zones took me like 2 or 3 days to finish but the last zone took me a gaddam week cuz of the emotional heartbreak
The key is an Ascian relic that should have been destroyed for who's seat it belongs to aka the 14th seat the seat of Azem the Traveler, but Emet protected it from the other seat members
Azem was never an Ascian.
Probably should repost this on the next video.
@@acgearsandarms1343 isn't ascian the species of the ancients
@@nekogamer2508 The Ascians as an organization only came about after the Sundering. Prior to that, they didn’t exist. We never got a name for their original race so everyone calls them Ancients. Ascian isn’t so much a race as it is a title of sorts. So that’s kind of why I don’t really see the key as an Ascian relic, but truth be told, we’ve yet to learn the specifics behind it. Not yet at least. Just that it responds to Azem’s magic. And is in all likelihood, to contain Azem’s magic to create gateways. Preservation was the one who augmented it with electrope, which is probably what gave it means to perform interdimensional fusion.
I felt like Terra did for sure. I get that Cahciua was all about being deleted and her personal feelings about the Endless, but I'm sure not everyone there felt the same. It did feel like genocide to me for sure. Which made for good story telling!
- Robo-Turtle is a mount you can get, just have to do hunts. It's purchasable with Sacks of Nuts.
- If you want to see Living Memory in it's full form again, you can trigger New Game+. As long as you go back to some point before this in the MSQ, it will be back to this look.
It still makes me laugh how Erenville has such a THICK accent, and his mom... just doesn't
He explains how he took pains to assimilate and pretend he was Viera rather than Shetona, which would have to include the accent as well. It's a retcon, but one that happens all the time with people who assimilate into local cultures for whatever reason.
I have two theories. He either adopted an exaggerated Eorzean accent to fit in. Or his mom lost hers in the 30 years she's been Endless.
I have mixed feelings about parts of DT but this last zone is true kino. I cried a lot too.
Dude spoilers. I haven't even gotten to Dawntrail yet.