Ultima Thule showed you a memory of civilizations long gone. Facsimiles of people in spirit, and just let you see what their cultures were like. You could even do your part to restore them in some sense (Omicron quests and allied tribe quest) Here, there is a civilization. It's alive in some sense. And it is up to you to end that, because its existence is untenable. You don't arrive in Living Memory with everyone already being long dead and just vestiges. There are people there that actually experience things in the present. And now they're gone. It's almost an inversion. Ultima Thule was long dead before we arrived, while Living Memory dies because of us.
Ultima Thule was all about building hope even in the worst of times, always pushing forwards. Why the music was building up with each race you encountered and each sacrifice of the Sions Living Memory is the opposite. Every zone you go through you take away those last memories of the dead. People who lived, and died, and maybe were unfulfilled until this shiny city of gold; but the cost was too much. The living of the Source and shards powered the dead. Each zone grows quiet and still with each tower you turn off until there is no music left
@@Zakjuh Not forgetting about Shadowbrings the Amaurot part of The Tempest was a Facsimiles of people Emet-Selch recreated from his memories. The theming of Loss is still present from ShadowBringers to Dawntrail.
@@Zakjuh that was exactly what I was thinking while going through the Golden City. But as crushing as it is to end this paradise, it's important to remember that it is a relic of a past its queen refuses to allow to die... even at the cost of the living in the present and the living in the future. But honestly... the only time I felt true sadness was when it was time to shut down the Aero Terminal... Erenville had come along to reunite with his mother Cahciua, only for it to end like this. The poor guy deserves some happiness and it was cut so tragically short. But it is what Cahciua wants... and her description of the Golden City as a 'twisted mausoleum' is definitely accurate.
Yup. Lost my mum to cancer as a kid. This place had me ugly crying the whole time. I'm a huge fan of 9 too so the sad nostalgia was just a kick in the face when you're down. Just finished the Alexandria dungeon n my face is sore and I'm emotionally drained. Wtf ff14...
My mother has cancer. She is still with us and all signs point to her recovering, but I would be lying if that experience didnt paint my reaction to this zone regardless. Wishing you all the best.
I lost my grandad to pancreatic cancer only a few months before Endwalker... So even after all this time I feel this comment so much. I cried and had so much heartbreak in this zone.
Sooooo many ugly tears and worse, it didn't end. Everytime I visit the zone, my heart breaks again.... You know what's even worse? The golden glow is no more. It's just a fucking dead city. Amarout was just a dream I know but I can pretend it's alive but this? It's just on my face.... :(
Same! I kept being reminded of the whole scene of Sora and the gang leaving Twilight Town with Sora saying "I'm sad" and how that felt the first time it
As someone who lost their mother, this was cruel to have to go through. It was emotional enough, but it certainly added an extra layer of pain, depth, and personal emotional connection. Gotta let go of the warm memories and the denial and accept the reality, cold and harsh as steel. It was a very painful yet comforting reminder.
This place got me with the double whammy on Namikka; as it really paralleled my own struggle to come to terms with my grandmother’s death. Both for the watching a loved one waste away when we meet up with Namikka as she’s dying in Heritage Found, and then meeting her here as an Endless, getting her proper goodbye really was cathartic, even if I was reduced to a crying heap for a few minutes afterward…
If "nostalgia" has a theme, this is it, capturing both the warm fuzzies you feel thinking about bygone times, underlined with the melancholy of knowing you can never really have it back.
There's a song in this expansion that plays during the emotional part of the story, and I have no idea what it's called. Would you have any idea what the song is called?
@@AshRabbit001 is it this one? i’m not sure whether there’s an orchestrion yet but it’s called ‘still hope’. th-cam.com/video/RnmVlgn4-OI/w-d-xo.htmlsi=iISXYVld2Uq29aJZ
I know right? It might be a stretch but it makes me feel like I lost you know... A dear family member, although they are *currently* still alive, it pains me to think that the inevitable will arrive someday and I will never see them or hear them again. And what terrifies me more is that I could actually forget their voices. That's when you know they are really gone, no matter what.
Felt like the vietnam 1000 yard stare meme while I was going through Yesterland, realizing why children would be there, and why a whole area was made for them. This zone was dark lol
When I was playing through this zone, every single time the piano bit came up I would break down and cry. I felt like I flooded with memories over and over again. I couldn't get over what we needed to do to progress. The weight of it all hit me so hard, over and over. I was here for a summer vacation, and instead felt the immeasurable weight of a human life. Hurt so good. Thank you Soken, and CBU3. Dawntrail was so much fun.
I too couldn’t help tearing up at this zone, especially on that boat ride with Graha. What a masterpiece the whole Alexandra part of the expansion was.
giving us a but thou must to kill a bunch of reunited lovers and kids who never got to live was legitimately pretty crushing and i'm kind of shocked the other characters aren't more visibly traumatized by all this... we get a whole lot of "it's sad, but..." and meanwhile i'm sobbing my eyes out. erenville and krile are kind of unreasonably stoic...
@@AmnesiacDoei think it’s a bit of a cultural issue translating from japan. If you played X, then they’re unsent. You have to send them on to the afterlife or bad things happen if they stick around too long. They sort of go over this with the post game dungeon. Without souls to eat to stabilize them, endless as memory entities can get corrupted. The aethercurrent quests are about us helping the last few souls that are stuck to move on properly. But the pain in the music is real, and the silence after the shutdown hurts so bad.
Best theme in recent memory. Invokes that feeling of loss and nostalgia I don't like going back to the final zone because I honestly feel sad in there. But those shared fates ain't gonna compelte themselves lol
I had to mute the BGM and put on different music for this for shared fates. I cannot properly kill monsters if they’re all blurry while I’m choke-sniffling over my keyboard.
Okay, yeah, this just confirms it for me that the dungeon for this zone, as well as the zone itself, uses "Fleeting Life"/"Unforgettable Sorrow" from Final Fantasy IX as its basis.
there it was the Golden City of Tural, but when I was there i felt more depressed than i am excited. interacting with the people there seemingly in eternal bliss, how heavy my heart feels when i think about what we were going to do. Final areas in this game always give me this feeling and i just cant get enough of it
Thank you for uploading this music. It makes me feel peaceful, but also nostalgic and lonely. After releasing Sphene from her spell, the BGM makes me feel more lonely.
Bruh I ugly cried so hard in some of the scenes during this section, especially in the water city. The fact the music turns off altogether for that part of the map after you kill off the terminal really drives home the emotional weight that you're ending what is essentially thousands of lives (even if they were just memories). It was for a short time, but I really loved Sphene, Otis, and the Endless, and I was really hoping there was some way we could save them all somehow.
The most painful sentence I've ever hear in awhile now. "Everything that lives must die." Such a simple line, yet it destroys you looking back at what you just walked through.
I remember feeling excited over the prospect of visiting a new reflection, even if it was just 1 zone. The amount of time i cried here makes me regret it, now i can't go to living memories without feeling sad
Glad im not the only one that have some strong Twilight Town Vibes.. my first reaction was literally "What in the Kingdom Hearts is that?!" (the fact that it was just a computer simulation dont help)
I was getting strong Kingdom Heart vibes from this zone and I realize that this theme (and the overall coloring of the zone) was very reminiscent of Twilight Town from Kingdom Hearts 2. The instrumentation selection is especially telling. Given the plot parallels it makes a lot of sense. I was crying the moment I heard this theme and now I know why. Fitting because Sora also cried without knowing why. Masterfully done.
I mean.... It's Alexandria from Final Fantasy IX 😅 (I just played thru FFIX for the first time myself a few weeks ago in preparation of Dawntrail... Definitely helped to appreciate the second half more)
All this area hited me like a truck. I'm still mourning my mother who died a few mounths ago. Just... it was so hard. Had to calm myself for 1h to finish it.
I did not expect the final zone to hit me this hard... I had lost my aunt 2 years ago and I miss her so much. This zone makes me wish I could still spend at least one more happy day with her.
Words fail to describe this. I couldnt speak when I first saw it, and I understood those who looked at true art and the feelings they felt, the splendor of true art. And thus, I also realize the gravity of what we are to do to this place.
This song and place reminds me of venice for some reason (even though ive never been there). Feels like a romantic and apocalyptic landscape with the flooded areas and all 😂
Reverse Ultima Thule theme Ever since I finished the MSQ I still find myself going there, it's so sad and eery, and the way there was no way for us to actually go back to what it looked before is such a good representation of what this area stood for.
bro coming back to this zone after the MSQ is over is so depressing. seeing all the blacked out regions empty makes me want to do what I came to do there and leave ASAP
I just wanted my fun little adventure about learning and understanding cultures and coming together. I did not need this area’s relentless assault on my emotions..
Emet-Selch was right; It's not murder if they weren't truly alive to begin with. ...Is what I keep trying to tell myself in the futile hope I can stop crying.
More likely 7.1 then, IIRC 6.0 got added to NG+ when 6.1 dropped. Though then you'll have to go through the entire later storyline to get to that section. But worth it for some I think. 🙂
It’s executed far better. From the moment Estonian “dies”, it’s clear the loss will be undone. The loss here, while less personal, is far weightier from its permanence.
@@MHMega I think emmdee means in terms of how it's presented with the civilizations. Ultima Thule's civilizations are long gone. Living Memory's are... alive, in a sense. They're not shades of the past, they're, well, living memories. Real people in their own way, and this time, you have the "pleasure" of ending that yourself. It'd be like if all the civilizations in Ultima Thule were actually still alive and you personally had to end them all to get to Meteion.
![Bygone Serenity [Living Memory] - FFXIV Dawntrail OST (Extended)](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/iLJ2tGts9cY/mqdefault.jpg)
![Bygone Serenity [Living Memory] - FFXIV Dawntrail OST (Extended)](/img/tr.png)
I never thought they'd have a zone more depressing than Ultima Thule but here we are
Ultima Thule showed you a memory of civilizations long gone. Facsimiles of people in spirit, and just let you see what their cultures were like. You could even do your part to restore them in some sense (Omicron quests and allied tribe quest)
Here, there is a civilization. It's alive in some sense. And it is up to you to end that, because its existence is untenable. You don't arrive in Living Memory with everyone already being long dead and just vestiges. There are people there that actually experience things in the present. And now they're gone. It's almost an inversion. Ultima Thule was long dead before we arrived, while Living Memory dies because of us.
@@Zakjuh I was telling my friends last night that it felt like the reverse of ultima thule.
Ultima Thule was all about building hope even in the worst of times, always pushing forwards. Why the music was building up with each race you encountered and each sacrifice of the Sions
Living Memory is the opposite. Every zone you go through you take away those last memories of the dead. People who lived, and died, and maybe were unfulfilled until this shiny city of gold; but the cost was too much. The living of the Source and shards powered the dead. Each zone grows quiet and still with each tower you turn off until there is no music left
@@Zakjuh Not forgetting about Shadowbrings the Amaurot part of The Tempest was a Facsimiles of people Emet-Selch recreated from his memories. The theming of Loss is still present from ShadowBringers to Dawntrail.
@@Zakjuh that was exactly what I was thinking while going through the Golden City.
But as crushing as it is to end this paradise, it's important to remember that it is a relic of a past its queen refuses to allow to die... even at the cost of the living in the present and the living in the future.
But honestly... the only time I felt true sadness was when it was time to shut down the Aero Terminal... Erenville had come along to reunite with his mother Cahciua, only for it to end like this. The poor guy deserves some happiness and it was cut so tragically short. But it is what Cahciua wants... and her description of the Golden City as a 'twisted mausoleum' is definitely accurate.
As someone who recently lost their dad to cancer a few months ago, this entire zone was absolute torture to get through..
All the best to you mate, he surely is at a better place now, waiting for you to join him again one day.
Ikr dude. I lost my dad when I was 12 and this zone’s story just keep on crushing my heart again and again 😢
Yup. Lost my mum to cancer as a kid. This place had me ugly crying the whole time. I'm a huge fan of 9 too so the sad nostalgia was just a kick in the face when you're down. Just finished the Alexandria dungeon n my face is sore and I'm emotionally drained. Wtf ff14...
My mother has cancer. She is still with us and all signs point to her recovering, but I would be lying if that experience didnt paint my reaction to this zone regardless. Wishing you all the best.
I lost my grandad to pancreatic cancer only a few months before Endwalker... So even after all this time I feel this comment so much. I cried and had so much heartbreak in this zone.
Entering the zone my thoughts were "Hey this kind of reminds me of Twilight Town!"
What followed were 5 ugly crying sessions.
Sooooo many ugly tears and worse, it didn't end. Everytime I visit the zone, my heart breaks again....
You know what's even worse? The golden glow is no more. It's just a fucking dead city. Amarout was just a dream I know but I can pretend it's alive but this? It's just on my face.... :(
Same here! Im watching my friend go through it now and its re breaking me lol
I literally thought the same thing! I even shouted it and several people agreed with me
Same! I kept being reminded of the whole scene of Sora and the gang leaving Twilight Town with Sora saying "I'm sad" and how that felt the first time it
I had the immediate same reaction hearing it!
The golden city, they said... where everyone is happy forever, and no one dies...
Tha same with sierra madre and look what we got, in the end it was a lie, a pretty lie but a lie nontheless
As someone who lost their mother, this was cruel to have to go through. It was emotional enough, but it certainly added an extra layer of pain, depth, and personal emotional connection.
Gotta let go of the warm memories and the denial and accept the reality, cold and harsh as steel. It was a very painful yet comforting reminder.
This place got me with the double whammy on Namikka; as it really paralleled my own struggle to come to terms with my grandmother’s death. Both for the watching a loved one waste away when we meet up with Namikka as she’s dying in Heritage Found, and then meeting her here as an Endless, getting her proper goodbye really was cathartic, even if I was reduced to a crying heap for a few minutes afterward…
@@zanaduz2018 I feel you
one of the most depressing and sad places in the game, its just really sad.
yup, I felt pretty empty after.
It's more depressing after MSQ, with the changes in the map
@@Skizzumexcept for the monsters there
If "nostalgia" has a theme, this is it, capturing both the warm fuzzies you feel thinking about bygone times, underlined with the melancholy of knowing you can never really have it back.
This was completely and utterly soul crushing, every second of it.
I was sobbing hard with every cutscene, it was horrid, i wanted to find a way to help them.
Brother I am crying so hard
yeah tbh i cried the most from this song because it reminded me of those i've lost
Theme's actual name is "Bygone Serenity" for anyone curious! It's also fitting for the zone It's played in imo
The lodestone doesnt say but everyone can imagine you get it through pristine gems / FATE map lvl 3
@@TheImaggine yup thats where it's from :)
There's a song in this expansion that plays during the emotional part of the story, and I have no idea what it's called. Would you have any idea what the song is called?
@@AshRabbit001 is it this one? i’m not sure whether there’s an orchestrion yet but it’s called ‘still hope’. th-cam.com/video/RnmVlgn4-OI/w-d-xo.htmlsi=iISXYVld2Uq29aJZ
@@AshRabbit001’still hope’ might be the song you’re looking for ^^
How can Soken make me feel nostalgic for something I haven’t even experienced yet…?
I’m not crying, you are 😢
I know right? It might be a stretch but it makes me feel like I lost you know... A dear family member, although they are *currently* still alive, it pains me to think that the inevitable will arrive someday and I will never see them or hear them again.
And what terrifies me more is that I could actually forget their voices. That's when you know they are really gone, no matter what.
I wonder how I s possible to put onions in songs... Well, seems I will be asking Soken.
@@TheImaggine
Felt like the vietnam 1000 yard stare meme while I was going through Yesterland, realizing why children would be there, and why a whole area was made for them. This zone was dark lol
What's even worse is that it could have been people who lived well past childhood, but their happiest moment was during childhood.
When I was playing through this zone, every single time the piano bit came up I would break down and cry. I felt like I flooded with memories over and over again. I couldn't get over what we needed to do to progress. The weight of it all hit me so hard, over and over. I was here for a summer vacation, and instead felt the immeasurable weight of a human life. Hurt so good. Thank you Soken, and CBU3. Dawntrail was so much fun.
I too couldn’t help tearing up at this zone, especially on that boat ride with Graha.
What a masterpiece the whole Alexandra part of the expansion was.
giving us a but thou must to kill a bunch of reunited lovers and kids who never got to live was legitimately pretty crushing and i'm kind of shocked the other characters aren't more visibly traumatized by all this... we get a whole lot of "it's sad, but..." and meanwhile i'm sobbing my eyes out. erenville and krile are kind of unreasonably stoic...
@@AmnesiacDoei think it’s a bit of a cultural issue translating from japan. If you played X, then they’re unsent. You have to send them on to the afterlife or bad things happen if they stick around too long.
They sort of go over this with the post game dungeon. Without souls to eat to stabilize them, endless as memory entities can get corrupted.
The aethercurrent quests are about us helping the last few souls that are stuck to move on properly.
But the pain in the music is real, and the silence after the shutdown hurts so bad.
@@AmnesiacDoe Erenvilles stoicism was a front for how badly it was affecting him
Honestly this was the part of the story that got a few tears out of me as well, just super good themes and music
Best theme in recent memory. Invokes that feeling of loss and nostalgia
I don't like going back to the final zone because I honestly feel sad in there. But those shared fates ain't gonna compelte themselves lol
This whenever I hear the empty echos of this song. It makes me incredibly sad
I had to mute the BGM and put on different music for this for shared fates. I cannot properly kill monsters if they’re all blurry while I’m choke-sniffling over my keyboard.
Me when it looks like my summer vacation is over
Roxas?
Okay, yeah, this just confirms it for me that the dungeon for this zone, as well as the zone itself, uses "Fleeting Life"/"Unforgettable Sorrow" from Final Fantasy IX as its basis.
The Twilight Town vibes are undeniable as well.
Weren't they both actually used in game as well during MSQ??
@Soooooooooooonicable that was my thought as well. I was like this is twilight town while I was frantically looking for the ff9 connection.
there it was the Golden City of Tural, but when I was there i felt more depressed than i am excited. interacting with the people there seemingly in eternal bliss, how heavy my heart feels when i think about what we were going to do. Final areas in this game always give me this feeling and i just cant get enough of it
As soon as I heard this theme playing, it felt like I was finding something I'd lost, but never knew I had.
Thank you for uploading this music. It makes me feel peaceful, but also nostalgic and lonely. After releasing Sphene from her spell, the BGM makes me feel more lonely.
Bruh I ugly cried so hard in some of the scenes during this section, especially in the water city. The fact the music turns off altogether for that part of the map after you kill off the terminal really drives home the emotional weight that you're ending what is essentially thousands of lives (even if they were just memories). It was for a short time, but I really loved Sphene, Otis, and the Endless, and I was really hoping there was some way we could save them all somehow.
It will kill the purpose of the story line if there was a revival of them. Let it where as it is because it was already good enough
The most painful sentence I've ever hear in awhile now.
"Everything that lives must die."
Such a simple line, yet it destroys you looking back at what you just walked through.
This was the best piece of the expac so far.
Yes, and the rest were snoozefest
Nah but sorry you felt that way
2:33 always gets me 😢
That’s the best part of the song
I remember feeling excited over the prospect of visiting a new reflection, even if it was just 1 zone. The amount of time i cried here makes me regret it, now i can't go to living memories without feeling sad
You can use the new game+ system if you want to see the city of gold again
thank you! didnt think of that
it’s so much work to get back to 😅I’ll definitely try
Omg Ty!
HAYNER, PENCE, OLETTE!!!!
Glad im not the only one that have some strong Twilight Town Vibes.. my first reaction was literally "What in the Kingdom Hearts is that?!" (the fact that it was just a computer simulation dont help)
😂
This is that song that just coaxes tears, you will connect something to this piece. I hope you're doing okay.
FF14 is just magical... I love the combination of oboe, piano and the flute. Just so beautiful and perfect for the location.
I was getting strong Kingdom Heart vibes from this zone and I realize that this theme (and the overall coloring of the zone) was very reminiscent of Twilight Town from Kingdom Hearts 2. The instrumentation selection is especially telling. Given the plot parallels it makes a lot of sense. I was crying the moment I heard this theme and now I know why. Fitting because Sora also cried without knowing why. Masterfully done.
I mean.... It's Alexandria from Final Fantasy IX 😅
(I just played thru FFIX for the first time myself a few weeks ago in preparation of Dawntrail... Definitely helped to appreciate the second half more)
All this area hited me like a truck. I'm still mourning my mother who died a few mounths ago. Just... it was so hard. Had to calm myself for 1h to finish it.
I did not expect the final zone to hit me this hard... I had lost my aunt 2 years ago and I miss her so much. This zone makes me wish I could still spend at least one more happy day with her.
This song makes me yearn for a different time. One where I still hadn't lost loved ones and when things were simpler.
I loved this song! I was crying whole time, i hope in the future recover the light in the city
You're lucky
Looks like my summer vacation is over-
...Err wait wrong game.
Words fail to describe this. I couldnt speak when I first saw it, and I understood those who looked at true art and the feelings they felt, the splendor of true art. And thus, I also realize the gravity of what we are to do to this place.
This area was really difficult. Not because of the gameplay - it was just very hard to play with tears covering my keyboard.
This song and place reminds me of venice for some reason (even though ive never been there). Feels like a romantic and apocalyptic landscape with the flooded areas and all 😂
Reverse Ultima Thule theme
Ever since I finished the MSQ I still find myself going there, it's so sad and eery, and the way there was no way for us to actually go back to what it looked before is such a good representation of what this area stood for.
2:33 😭
certain parts remind me of celes' theme from 6 a lot
I hear it too. My guess is that when FF9 was made, they looked back to FF6 for some of that Medieval feel theme-wise.
This music plays when I go to buy some Canoli's at the bakery and there's just an empty spot where they used to be, all sold out.
Depression, the zone.
Me halfway through the zone "I hate it here TwT"
bro coming back to this zone after the MSQ is over is so depressing. seeing all the blacked out regions empty makes me want to do what I came to do there and leave ASAP
Is there an orchestrion roll for this? I NEED this
Can i just say Canaland looks a lot like Traverse Town and the this song my God sounds a lot like Twilight Town
sounds like a slowed down version of Hildegard 3 sometimes.
Classic FF music
2:41 sends me on a high
I just wanted my fun little adventure about learning and understanding cultures and coming together. I did not need this area’s relentless assault on my emotions..
One of the only few good songs in this expansion and I do mean few.
Emet-Selch was right; It's not murder if they weren't truly alive to begin with.
...Is what I keep trying to tell myself in the futile hope I can stop crying.
Feel like pure shite just want old living memory back x
🤐🤐 7.4
@@realthetical7.4?
I think if you go into NG+ of any previous expansion it should be there? I know it works that way for the Everlasting Light in Shadowbringers....
More likely 7.1 then, IIRC 6.0 got added to NG+ when 6.1 dropped. Though then you'll have to go through the entire later storyline to get to that section. But worth it for some I think. 🙂
@@Sllandre Can confirm going into NG+ at any part will restore Living Memory to what it was before until you leave NG+ mode.
This has such Kingdom hearts vibes
I had to turn it off
Was too much
Like Aerith's theme
Living Memory is the exact opposite of Ultima Thule
I hate it
This was my exact sentiment...
It’s executed far better. From the moment Estonian “dies”, it’s clear the loss will be undone. The loss here, while less personal, is far weightier from its permanence.
@@MHMega I think emmdee means in terms of how it's presented with the civilizations. Ultima Thule's civilizations are long gone. Living Memory's are... alive, in a sense. They're not shades of the past, they're, well, living memories. Real people in their own way, and this time, you have the "pleasure" of ending that yourself. It'd be like if all the civilizations in Ultima Thule were actually still alive and you personally had to end them all to get to Meteion.
Thank you for this. This is twice now that SE has given us the worse theme of the two available for the final zone of an expansion 😭
That’s the point this time, though
So nice to have a theme with woodwinds at the forefront in FFXIV 🥹