X-SOLDIER
Harbinger O Great Justice
- AKA
- X
So, I think that there's even more to all of that, too – especially when you start to look at who the other planned DLC chapters were about:
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Aranea, Luna, & Noctis.
Aranea is from the Empire, but she joins in Noctis' cause. One of the most important things is that she's not one of the people from the prophesy, but she represents a VERY specific thematic idea which is that the Empire & Insomnia don't need to be at war with one another. That there's another answer that isn't mutual self-destruction, and she changes sides.
That starts to be EXTRA important when you look at our modern-day parallel of this conflict:
Bahamut, Shiva, Ifrit
Somnus, Aera, Ardyn
Noctis, Luna, Ravus
Luna & Ravus are both from Tenebrae – on the continent where Shiva ended up. Ravus' love of his sister and hatred of Noctis is this same cycle repeating itself. We even see that thematically in Kingsglaive, when Ravus attempts to take the power of the Ring, but is found to be unworthy, burning his left arm away.
After that, he's forced to replace it with a demonically powered Magitek one. Given Episode Ardyn, the connection is even stronger given that Ifrit's left half that gets burned and demonified by Ardyn before they delve into creating the Magitek soldiers – which directly connects him to the two of them as well.
This is where Episode Ignis & Kingsglaive really starts to drive the parallels in more, but then actually gets to twist them a little bit.
The crystal is hung up by chains the exact same way that Ardyn was, when he was held in Angelgard for two millennia as Adagium. It's clear that Ardyn's hatred of the Crystal comes from what he learned in Episode Ardyn about his own fate, and the really fucked up doubts that it casts upon everyone involved – Astrals and Mortals alike.
Ardyn is focused on destroying his brother & Somnus who wants to take his brother's position – both believing that their's is the path to the greater good, and they need the throne to have the power to save it the right way. This is why the Founder King wasn't the One True King. It's not until the Empire seeks to revive Solheim that this conflict gets reignited, and all of these prophetic repetitions come about again, and it's not until Noctis both takes AND gives up both the throne and the power of the Ring to save all of them. The issue with that is that Noct is fated to put his own life to end both of the sides of the Lucii that worked against each other... and that that inescapable tragic fate is at the core of the story.
This is why Ardyn having two choices for his final actions, but zero ability to create a different "Verse" is important in that DLC.
This is why it's important that we understand how it's still possible to fight against fate. Nyx wants to safeguard the future but isn't interested in the ring for power, and whether or not he's worthy isn't a factor to him which is what broke Ravus and Ardyn (and likely Ifrit). But THEN, there's Ignis who doesn't believe that the ends justify the means when it comes to Noctis' life, and steps in himself explicitly to break that cycle himself and pays the price willingly going in, because he ultimately rejects the entire premise at a deeply fundamental level.
Ignis is like a brother to Noctis, and is in the position to be jealous as an outsider. The potential for the Somnus/Ardyn dynamic is there, but he genuinely loves and looks after Noct like brother. Additionally, he supports Noctis no matter what it takes as the One True King. However, in the Alternate Ending, he's also opposed to how Noctis is going have to go about saving the world, so he steps in. What's important here is that while he's using the Ring, he isn't taking the POWER from Noctis to achieve that goal, he's taking the CONSEQUENCES from Noctis to achieve that end.
What that ends up doing indirectly is saving Ravus: While Ravus always stands against the Empire (as a revived Solheim of Ifrit's) and sides with Noctis (Bahamut), Ardyn just murders him after killing Luna & takes the dynamic back to the two sides of the Lucii against each other. When Ignis removes himself, Ravus steps in to fill his place to assist the Chocobros. There's an opposition and sympathetic sacrifice that takes place that also ultimately keeps Ravus safe, allowing him to remain around until the very end for Noctis and hold on to Regis blade, while Ignis is free to make unified plans for moving against Ardyn.
This is where the original history of the gods and the Cosmogeny starts to get really interesting:
Ifrit falls, Shiva retreats, Bahamut disappears, Titan goes silent, Ramuh flees, and Leviathan goes to sleep.
Ultimately, this all comes down to Bahamut though, since he's the one who's locked people in to their roles. If I had to guess what it was going for, it's that it's learned that using the Ring of the Lucii to save people allows them to alter fate itself beyond the power offered by the gods, but at the cost of ones own life. Given that Ardyn only ever wanted to heal people and that's what his gift was, I think that the path would be that Noctis actually gets through to Ardyn. Ardyn takes the ring after it's absorbed the Astrals, and rather than using it for revenge, he remembers the experience of Aera's death, and uses the stronger-than-the-gods power of the fully charged Ring, and the fact that he's an immortal of royal blood also referred to in his and Ignis' DLC as, "The Chosen" and uses that power. He sacrifices his immortality to destroy the Starscourge, and sacrifices his own life, so that he can finally rest in peace with Area (like he is in the menu screen of his DLC), and that the life he took gets returned, so that Luna and Noctis get FINALLY to be together, and we get our happily ever after ending that they teased with the image:
So, loosely speaking, I think that those are the thematic elements that FFXV's story was going for with all of its "The Dawn of the Future" DLC, and why it chose the characters it chose, and why it was gonna release it all back-to-back-to-back-to-back. So, there's some classic "X's tl;dr as fuck theorycrafting" which can probably serve as headcanon for everyone that also touches on some of the tiny alterations made during the patches to the original game as well.
Now it's just waiting around to see if literally any of that is even remotely hinted at in the novella, or if this just gets to live as "preferred AU headcanon" instead.
(Oh, this is also a very long explanation about how a game like XV that is basically just a remixed Final Fantasy Greatest Hits album, can still be something unique and special all of its own when it's mostly made out of copies of things that we've been given time and again by the series)
Aranea is from the Empire, but she joins in Noctis' cause. One of the most important things is that she's not one of the people from the prophesy, but she represents a VERY specific thematic idea which is that the Empire & Insomnia don't need to be at war with one another. That there's another answer that isn't mutual self-destruction, and she changes sides.
That starts to be EXTRA important when you look at our modern-day parallel of this conflict:
Bahamut, Shiva, Ifrit
Somnus, Aera, Ardyn
Noctis, Luna, Ravus
Luna & Ravus are both from Tenebrae – on the continent where Shiva ended up. Ravus' love of his sister and hatred of Noctis is this same cycle repeating itself. We even see that thematically in Kingsglaive, when Ravus attempts to take the power of the Ring, but is found to be unworthy, burning his left arm away.
After that, he's forced to replace it with a demonically powered Magitek one. Given Episode Ardyn, the connection is even stronger given that Ifrit's left half that gets burned and demonified by Ardyn before they delve into creating the Magitek soldiers – which directly connects him to the two of them as well.
This is where Episode Ignis & Kingsglaive really starts to drive the parallels in more, but then actually gets to twist them a little bit.
The crystal is hung up by chains the exact same way that Ardyn was, when he was held in Angelgard for two millennia as Adagium. It's clear that Ardyn's hatred of the Crystal comes from what he learned in Episode Ardyn about his own fate, and the really fucked up doubts that it casts upon everyone involved – Astrals and Mortals alike.
Ardyn is focused on destroying his brother & Somnus who wants to take his brother's position – both believing that their's is the path to the greater good, and they need the throne to have the power to save it the right way. This is why the Founder King wasn't the One True King. It's not until the Empire seeks to revive Solheim that this conflict gets reignited, and all of these prophetic repetitions come about again, and it's not until Noctis both takes AND gives up both the throne and the power of the Ring to save all of them. The issue with that is that Noct is fated to put his own life to end both of the sides of the Lucii that worked against each other... and that that inescapable tragic fate is at the core of the story.
This is why Ardyn having two choices for his final actions, but zero ability to create a different "Verse" is important in that DLC.
This is why it's important that we understand how it's still possible to fight against fate. Nyx wants to safeguard the future but isn't interested in the ring for power, and whether or not he's worthy isn't a factor to him which is what broke Ravus and Ardyn (and likely Ifrit). But THEN, there's Ignis who doesn't believe that the ends justify the means when it comes to Noctis' life, and steps in himself explicitly to break that cycle himself and pays the price willingly going in, because he ultimately rejects the entire premise at a deeply fundamental level.
Ignis is like a brother to Noctis, and is in the position to be jealous as an outsider. The potential for the Somnus/Ardyn dynamic is there, but he genuinely loves and looks after Noct like brother. Additionally, he supports Noctis no matter what it takes as the One True King. However, in the Alternate Ending, he's also opposed to how Noctis is going have to go about saving the world, so he steps in. What's important here is that while he's using the Ring, he isn't taking the POWER from Noctis to achieve that goal, he's taking the CONSEQUENCES from Noctis to achieve that end.
What that ends up doing indirectly is saving Ravus: While Ravus always stands against the Empire (as a revived Solheim of Ifrit's) and sides with Noctis (Bahamut), Ardyn just murders him after killing Luna & takes the dynamic back to the two sides of the Lucii against each other. When Ignis removes himself, Ravus steps in to fill his place to assist the Chocobros. There's an opposition and sympathetic sacrifice that takes place that also ultimately keeps Ravus safe, allowing him to remain around until the very end for Noctis and hold on to Regis blade, while Ignis is free to make unified plans for moving against Ardyn.
This is where the original history of the gods and the Cosmogeny starts to get really interesting:
- Ifrit is interred on Ravatogh – matching Ardyn & Ravus' fates on Angelgard and Zegnautus Keep respectively.
- Shiva retreats – matching Aera & Luna removing themselves from their loved ones.
- Bahamut disappears and in the slide, he's shown with the Crystal. He seems to be the one connected to the Crystal's extradimensional space, and also the Ring with power of Blades being granted to the Lucii via the Crystal. – Additionally, this would match Noctis' own long disappearance within the Crystal
- Titan goes silent and bears a massive burden on his own. Conceivably you could draw parallels between Titan, Gilgamesh, & Gladio, since they all act as the guards. It's after failing to Ravus that Gladio goes off on his own quest, meeting Gilgamesh who we know from the anime prologue served as the King's Shield to Somnus. Whether there's more to it than that connection isn't clear.
- Ramuh hangs out on Angelgard until Luna goes there to forge a covenant with him for Noctis. That would suggest that there's a strong likelihood that Ramuh was a key factor of Luna's DLC storyline, as Angelgard and the judgement of sinners (something that Aera mentions directly to Ardyn) is centrally important to the themes that've been raised. Ramuh not being on Angelgard also connects to Comrades' storyline. He seems to take up Bahamut's role during the Dragonian's absence, which seems to draw some strong parallels between whatever Ramuh was doing, and the role that Ignis takes in Noctis' absence.
- Leviathan is off in a distant land and she's also definitively female. She's also seemingly less directly connected to the other Astrals in that she's the only non-human amongst them, and she's retreated off and following her own interests below Altissia – which is annexed by the Empire but politically autonomous. That pretty clearly outlines her mortal parallel as being Aranea. She's a mercenary with the Empire, so she's part of them but not, you meet her as an enemy, but then she joins you basically on her own terms.
Ultimately, this all comes down to Bahamut though, since he's the one who's locked people in to their roles. If I had to guess what it was going for, it's that it's learned that using the Ring of the Lucii to save people allows them to alter fate itself beyond the power offered by the gods, but at the cost of ones own life. Given that Ardyn only ever wanted to heal people and that's what his gift was, I think that the path would be that Noctis actually gets through to Ardyn. Ardyn takes the ring after it's absorbed the Astrals, and rather than using it for revenge, he remembers the experience of Aera's death, and uses the stronger-than-the-gods power of the fully charged Ring, and the fact that he's an immortal of royal blood also referred to in his and Ignis' DLC as, "The Chosen" and uses that power. He sacrifices his immortality to destroy the Starscourge, and sacrifices his own life, so that he can finally rest in peace with Area (like he is in the menu screen of his DLC), and that the life he took gets returned, so that Luna and Noctis get FINALLY to be together, and we get our happily ever after ending that they teased with the image:
So, loosely speaking, I think that those are the thematic elements that FFXV's story was going for with all of its "The Dawn of the Future" DLC, and why it chose the characters it chose, and why it was gonna release it all back-to-back-to-back-to-back. So, there's some classic "X's tl;dr as fuck theorycrafting" which can probably serve as headcanon for everyone that also touches on some of the tiny alterations made during the patches to the original game as well.
Now it's just waiting around to see if literally any of that is even remotely hinted at in the novella, or if this just gets to live as "preferred AU headcanon" instead.
(Oh, this is also a very long explanation about how a game like XV that is basically just a remixed Final Fantasy Greatest Hits album, can still be something unique and special all of its own when it's mostly made out of copies of things that we've been given time and again by the series)
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