Another bit of Ifrit Risen's symbolism with Ifrit having the same form as the Infernal Eikons used by the Ultima collective seems to be intentionally in reference to "Angel Satan" which is a Biblical term used to refer the union between Lilith (Adam's first wife) and Samael (the Angel of Death) who play a big part in the role of the iconography of opposition of God during Revelation. A lot of King Barnabas' role is very much representative of the Christian Rapture and the creation of the Kingdom of Heaven, which Japanese adaptations of fantasy (most notably in
BERSERK) put a lot of emphasis into showing how from the opposite side of those that it's "saving" that just looks identical to genocide and giving up your free will forever to mindlessly follow God into paradise means to sacrifice the one thing that separates Humans from Angels – Free Will. Especially when it comes to representing the core beliefs of Satanism around the necessity to exercise one's own will even when it is in opposition to that of God, those are really critical depictions to how those get linked into the core division in Hinduism & Buddhism.
This links together with the themes from Hinduism with Indra as the ruler of the Devas and the King of Heaven being pitted into war against the Asuras who were deceived and cast into a life of suffering outside of heaven, similar to what happened with the Bearers who used to occupy a position of power before being Branded. It is through that suffering that Humans are able to experience self-actualization and understanding one another rather than focusing only on their own desires. Indra always fears that this will lead a truly benevolent human to rise above him and take his throne and so he sabotages their efforts and denies their will, since as the King of Heaven there is no being who is more wholly devoted to a life of pleasure than he is. This is functionally a glass ceiling on Indra holding the highest power in as the ruler of Heaven while also being trapped from ever experiencing full enlightenment that is a critical commentary on the flaw of a "Kingdom of Heaven" that the Biblical revelation and Arthurian Fantasy both bring about, emphasizing that Eternal Empires codify suffering eternally and offer no path to true salvation.
This is because at it's core the conflict conflates Good vs. Evil and the paradox of Tolerance. The Golden Rule & Paradox of Tolerance show that it is only possible to retain peace so long as Intolerance is never tolerated. This means that any side claiming to be Good rejects the opposition absolutely, but this also means that there is no expression of free will or room for flaws, but also one's personal desires and the duties of one's position as a ruler are two separate things. In the Deva-Asura conflict, King Asura eventually gets his revenge in the war and defeats Indra, taking over Heaven. By tradition, he grants the wish of anyone who asks for something afterwards in order to help alleviate the injustices of the previous kindgdom. Despite being warned that Brahman is going to deceive him and give the Devas back control of Heaven, when he takes the form of a small dwarf asks for 3 steps of land, King Asura does not deny his request, and the dwarf transforms into a giant stepping over all of heaven and gives it back to Indra. That selfless acts grants King Asura Brahmin's protection against any further wrath or retribution from the Devas, and also raises him to the level of enlightenment that Indra can never reach.
This is why multiple narratives also depict a different version where King Asura is instead forever banished to the deepest hell and guarded by Brahmin instead to ensure that his forces can and will never be able to seize control of the heaven and cause chaos and destruction against everyone below. This narrative change is when it's being emphasized that rule under King Asura would be unable to escape the Asura's history persecution and that kingdom would be doomed to become the same tyranny as the Devas inflicted upon them, but merely pointed in the opposite direction, the way that is shown in
Chrono Cross in the "Return of the Downtrodden" ending as a representation of the Dragonic forces winning. This is important to how
FFXVI ties those themes into the Aether & Bearers, especially in how the Executors were erasing the previous history of that with the intent of preventing that grudge from ever re-emerging in the future.
Japanese media utilizes the Indra-Asura struggle to represent the necessity in tearing down an established order of inequality and oppression, while also showing that the individual who destroys that system
CANNOT by the one to rule over it, unlike in Arthurian fiction which pulls from Christian mythology in the eradication of the old and supplanting a Kingdom of Heaven. You get this emphasized especially back in Hayao Miyazaki's ending to his manga version of
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind in the dichotomy between the fates of Nausicaä left as a ruler & saviour that she never wanted to be Vs. that of Princess Kushana who is the rightful heir who realizes that the only form of justice that won't reignite the division of historical persecution between her now-united people is to intentionally never take the throne herself. This ending was different from what he originally envisioned and how the film's story seems to present those themes, largely shaped by real world events of a long-fought peace rapidly devolve back into bloody civil war. His manga along with
Evangelion also helped to set up the color association with Indra as blue & Asura as red.
The eyes & blood of the Akashic in
FFXVI, the blood of the Angels in
Evangelion, and the blood of the Ohmu in
Nausicaä, and Griffith's motif in
BERSERK are all blue. It's a representation of a melancholic sadness of a saviour who is forced into a position where they have to kill those on the other side who often include those they care for. It is dampening emotionally-driven connections to one another, and you can see the same character traits with Yasha in
Asura's Wrath, Angeal in
Crisis Core, and a number of others. It's also why the primary color scheme of Ultima is always in hues of blue in
FFXVI as he's the one representing this Indra-like foil.
In contrast to that are the paths of those who are wronged by that system of rule, where the red of their blood shines in their eyes in the form of anger & rage. It is this righteous indignation that gives them the power to tear down that almighty ruler but it is that same desire to overcome the ultimate figure that their emotions have been traumatically shaped in opposition towards that clouds their vision to make them an inappropriate replacement as a ruler. That's used for Clive in
FFXVI, Guts in
BERSERK, Genesis in
Crisis Core, Asura in
Asura's Wrath, and the eyes of the
Ohmu in Nausicaä. This is also why, as time went on, there have been intentional nuance to the portayal of those details like in
Naruto with Sasuke having the Indra motif unfit to be Hokage as he cries tears of blood unable to see past that trauma, whereas Naruto has the red Asura themes often overtaken by that burning force, but always crying clear tears from his blue eyes and he's the one whose unwavering dedication to never allowing the pain he felt to reemerge and to embrace even that dark side of himself being why his desire to become Hokage is benevolent and just rather than selfish and flawed –
even if the world it results in is imperfect, it is one where everyone are equals and the lives of the children are important rather than means to an end.
FFXVI specifically also layers in Light & Dark into those opposing color motifs in how those passions or detachments can be lensed in different capacities and how those manifest in necessary reflections for the main Asura character of Clive to be supported by those themes, and the interconnection of how those layer together.
- – Ultima's design is primarily Blue & Black (especially in Necron) as his represents the oppressive system where the population of Humanity over which he rules are simply a means to an end and tools at his disposal.
- – Clive's outfit & color theme are overtly Red & Black as his theme revolves around the rage and passion focused on his inner darkness in order to facilitate an outcome that brings about an eventual justice even if it takes generations.
- – Joshua's outfit & color thenes are Red & White as he is the foil to Clive's desire to carry all of the burden of the pain, sins, and darkness of the others, so that they can't damage those he loves, and showing that there is an inherent necessity not to let go of your attachments to others and allow them to remain to assist you to give you the exact power that Ultima (or the Christian God) never has in operating only ever with one singular ultimate will.
- – Jill's Blue & White shows how her emotional disassociation from her own power came about as a result of how it was used, which is why it's also the foil of the element of Shiva's Ice to Ifrit's Fire (which is also a theme between the two lovers in FFXV). It's her ability to let go of Clive and trust him to use that power in the way that it needs to be used, rather than cling to her need for control given the trauma that she went through of others being in command of how her power was used.
- – King Barnabas's Darkness is overtly the elements of the Saviour when viewed from the outside. There are several fragmented pieces of that in the Lore & Mikkelburg side quest where the Children of Dzemekys and Circle of Malius don't view going Akashic as anything other than salvation, whereas from anyone who doesn't embrace that view (like a belief in the Christian God), the Saviour of those people is nothing more than a genocidal dictator wiping out anything that doesn't confirm to the rule of the god Ultima to whom they devote themselves completely, and Odin is disassociated from that connection entirely which allows him to not suffer the wills of his own people being erased.
- – Prince Dion's Light is the foil to that where he is singularly devoted only to the Empire as a tool that serves the people, not the other way around, and it's his inability to handle the suffering of losing those connections that breaks him and causes the destruction of Twinsides as Bahamut and is why he sees his duty as atonement that comes at the cost of his own life to allow Clive to save the world. He is the absolute opposite to Odin, and there's a balance between both that all rulers must manage in order to be just because there is no singular correct answer.
This brings to one of the larger themes that's continued to grow more nuanced over time in how Japanese adaptations of Western fantasy have a conclusive revelation that is different from the Christian-derived one in Tolkien & Arthurian fiction's "Victory over Darkness" ending. Instead of the destruction of evil being the establishment of the Return of the King presiding over a kingdom of good, it is the removal of BOTH corrupt systems like
FFXVI's fall of the Imperialists & Royalists over both Storm & Ash respectively. It is leaving things in a state of being near-blank-slate, much like how the end of
Princess Mononoke (which was the first thing Miyazaki wrote directly after finishing the manga of
Nausicaä) has the death of the Forest Spirit, the destruction of Iron Town, as well as preventing the Japanese Emperor from attaining immortality. The same theme is also largely present in the end of
Final Fantasy VII where it's neither Holy nor Meteor that achieves the end result and combining them together only makes things
even worse, but it's eschewing that system altogether and allowing both to fall by following the Lifestream that's what brings about the ending. However, even that's had to evolve in
Remake as following a pre-designated destiny of the original story is no different than succumbing to the injustices of ruling God, where the characters and their suffering are nothing but necessary predetermined means to an end, and they have no free will (and is why I've been writing and researching about this for the last several years, and am not going to be fully finishing that analysis until the
Remake project wraps up).
Similarly, we can see how this meticulously crafted lack of definitive answer in
FFXVI frees Valasthea from magic where Aether is no longer collected into the Mothercrystals and used for the purpose of bringing about a lost kingdom of the past, but rather what is left behind is a world where people command only their own power to bring about a world where there is equality for everyone regardless of ability. It shows us a small glimpse of a world where children grow up into that with the story itself as nothing but structural mythology to understand that, and how it's possible to see those things as a "Final Fantasy" to help everyone slowly go about realizing that vision in the real world that you & I all live in.
This is ultimately why these stories' Asura protagonist utilizes intentional symbolism that's an inversion of the Holy Saviour whilst taking the role of the saviour character.
Asura's Wrath is particularly poignant about this given how it's more closely about the mythology directly from Hinduism & Buddhism and rejecting that there should be gods who rule over the lives of humans, making the Asura character into a sort of deity of Atheism, where he defeats the Creator God, Chakravartin only to refuse to take their place. The act of victory typically results in their death (though not always), but always their removal from filling the role of Saviour as it is a shadow that they have to form themselves into to take it from the one who is in power because it is the "Intolerance of Intolerance" and the paradoxical necessity to restore a world free of persecution. This is why that ambiguity is intentional as it's a reflection of whether or not there's a way for someone who has held that type of power to ever be able to live at peace in the world after or fully depart from the shape of what that experience formed them into – which has to do with how you view escaping the cycle of suffering in Samsara. Since the world that they bring about often still has generations of struggle during the period where it's still recovering, that can look like it's not the escape from Samsara that death and being at peace would be. This is why Asura's Wrath has him die, but has all of them reincarnated into a modern world after 870 MILLION years, as those are time scales that cyclical systems of Buddhism address that are very different from a perspective of the near-apocalyptic Revelation in Christianity. That's important because of Japanese history.
The Sengoku period of Japan and more than half a millennium of the horrors of the unhealing psychological trauma that results from that are a core part of magical mysticism in Japanese fiction that are tied to and amplified again with pains around the end of WWII, where Imperial Japan fell, but just as the American occupation looked to replace that, it really just put something else in its place full of its own reflective flaws. This means that there is particular attention paid to the psychological state of the characters in the role of Asura in Japanese storytelling throughout a VERY long history leading into
Final Fantasy. The stories in Ashura Noh are of Samurai trapped and suffering in the Asura realm were explicity about the non-physical but the psychological strife of the Samurai who were in Civil War and unable to return to a life of peace. They achieve salvation in the moment of their death separating them from a world in which the conflict that created the force that drives them is finally left behind. It's why characters like Radahn in
Elden Ring are on the verge of total madness and holding on to the last shred of their humanity, and where the only justice is for them to be given the death of a true warrior, and lay them to rest while they still have the honor of who they were as a human and they had control of their free will, before they can fall to that trauma and who they were becomes nothing but a beast or monster. It is to lay them to rest by ensuring that they achieving an end that befits who they were in life, and gives the chance at a future to those they love even while they cannot join into that world.
There is an acute awareness that there are degrees of PTSD where the only peace is knowing that you'll never lose control of yourself and harm those closest to you. In
FFXVI, the Eikons are that inner power that the Dominants wield that triggers as the "other self" that they have to manage and you even see those neuron connections setting off to trigger both Self-Priming & Priming, and like with Dion & Bahamut or Ifrit at Phoenix Gate, those can rage out of control and will explicitly harm EXACTLY AND ONLY those people who you would normally protect – leaving you with an irreconcilable scar on the ideal you treasure most. (Psychologically this is because the berserk state in PTSD is an extension of the suffering of moral injury which is a betrayal of what's right by someone in legitimate authority, which means that the rage gets directed outwards in an inversion against people who are the closest and most trusted to that person. This is why a lot of veterans with PTSD can end up isolating themselves from being close to family & friends because they recognize that they are a legitimate danger to them when they lose a grip on themselves). In
FFXVI this catalyzing moral injury is Clive's mother betraying them to kill their father and give Rosaria to the Empire, where Joshua incinerates the people around him because Clive isn't there to keep him safe, and then Clive murders the very brother he's sworn to protect immediately afterwards. Like with the scar of hatred left behind on Prince Ashitaka's arm at the end of
Princess Mononoke, some of those traumatic wounds can and will never fully heal. Whether or not there is an ability to be at peace with that or if the toll comes at the cost of their own life is EXTREMELY contextual to who the character is and what they went through – as we see in
FFXVI with Dion willingly committing to take Clive & Joshua to origin at the cost of his own life being a price he's accepted and willing to pay, because as the heir to the Empire, he understands what that world will mean for his people and that it supercedes his own individual desires.
Most overtly this is why the Mothercrystals and their Eikons are a key elements in the game, and they're also a refection of the Goddess Greagor & the Dragon, which itself is a symbolic representation of the world of Valasthea & the magic of the Aether. When children are conceived they are LITERALLY an extension of their mother and while infants they don't even recognize themselves individually from their mother, and this is what forms the psychological basis of your brain's trust, survival response, and bonding mechanisms. This is why that's also a critical representation of the existential examination of the concepts of free will. When the Ultima Collective arrived on Origin, there were 16 of them, but they're all one will. 8 Became the Mothercrystals and seemingly the other 8 were the Eikons. While most of the Mothercrystals were named after the parts of that Dragon, the one destroyed by Ultima was named Dzemekys which seems to be how the game establishes the "main" Ultima who is organizing things especially as he is the one King Barnabas follows who takes the form of his own mother. She was a Child of Dzemekys, and Barnabas has a scar over his heart showing that severance and why as Odin he cuts others off from that, but still yearns for being connected to her, which is how Ultima soothes him by being the people he wants and he never feels that loss of severance. This is in a direct foil to Dion Lesage's relationship with his father the Emperor and the Clive's mother as his own step mother, where their son is also nothing but a puppet shell of Ultima – who is only wanting to cast a spell of Revive the world that existed before, but only to save the Ultima collective, not to save Humanity.
While parents create children to grow beyond them, this inversion is where parental authority is the power of creation to be wholly self-serving and treat one's creations as means to an end with no free will of their own because they ARE merely an extension of their creator. In
FFXVI it's stated that free will is only formed in the moments where the creator isn't there to explicitly guide them when Ultima, like the Christian God, rested after creation. While a true parent cannot reject their children's autonomy, the creator & creation with no free will is the relationship that the Christian God has to the Angels. This inversion is also how the
Alien series depicts the Xenomorphs creating an inversion of life by parasitically growing in and feeding on their hosts to create something neither natural nor artificial which is why the H.R. Giger-like biomechanical designs have remained such a popular expression of those themes, but especially in
BERSERK where the servants of the God Hand bringing about the new Kingdom ruled by the Saviour are an overlap of Giger & Angelic forms, and also why all of those are overtly present in the design of Ultima's body.
It's why Joshua & Clive point out the blatantly hypocritical perspective that Ultima has in rejecting the humans attempting to save themselves, because that's a perspective that Christian fiction about the slow twilight of the Gods coming under the rule of King Arthur, or the fall of Sauron and rise of Aragorn don't have the same level of critical perspective, as they are about a linear END not about the breaking free of a cycle. This is why it's also important that Empress Emeritus Annabella was consumed by that same selfish devotion to make a perfect child in her own image that was exactly what she wanted it to be and nothing else, and those human narcissistic traits were clearly laid out when Clive confronted her in Twinsides. Even moreso, after her child Olivier, a puppet shell being used by Ultima, was killed – she fundamentally rejected the collapse of the world she crafted where she didn't have a perfect child to bring about her vision. Even when Joshua offered her a path out, she refused anything where she wasn't in control, rejected the collapse of her world, and clung to that absolute control to the point of taking her own life rather than submit. Her intolerance was a weapon that was merely reflected upon itself, it was not a trait that was in any way passed on to her sons, but rather it was only the tolerance of others from their father that guided them DESPITE that existential pain & trauma.
Learning how to overcome the trauma of losing the connection to one's parents as the will that created you, and be able to take on their will as your own BY CHOICE is the key element in how Joshua & Clive both try to bring about the world that their father desired
RATHER than trying to oppose the one that their mother was attempting to create. While both were in opposition to the world that she envisioned, that's because they oppose that it follows the same path as what Ultima needs to achieve those ends. They don't bear her love nor malice, but they are necessarily intolerant of adapting her intolerant views & behaviour. This is why their emotions exist only in connection to who their father was and what he wanted to achieve in a world that treated men as equal, just like what Cid desired when Clive took on his name. There is a marked difference in the motive and ability to exercise one's one free will in achieving those ends in the legacy of one's predecessors where that legacy is a mantle that you wear IN ADDITION to who you are that is critical to how the story builds into its conclusion with the protagonist as Clive, and him passing that role of Cid on to Gav to oversee the literal birth of the new generation of a bearer whose lives are their own.
This gets made more apparent in
FFXVI with the ways in which it manifests in how Clive learns about his own trauma initially. Benedikta is a victim of horrible mistreatment and despite her preexisting relationship with Cid, she feels his desertion as Lord Commander was a betrayal and is incapable of forgiving. This is why no matter now much Cid is constantly trying to save her from Barnabas' lies as the king is only interested in using her for her Eikon, he genuinely loves her but cannot find a way to force her to join him that isn't just being exactly as manipulative as Odin is. The conflict wears him down because he won't ever kill her and he HAS to allow her to have what she chooses, even if he KNOWS it isn't what she actually wants. He's trying to find ways to help guide her to safety no matter what which is why he has Clive stand back when she tries to kill him, and always makes sure that she has to make her choice and he reacts to it.
Even after her Eikon was taken from her, that pain and being forcibly returned into a state of helplessness is an existence that she can no longer reconcile because of that exact trauma. So she brings back Garuda in an inconsolable rage drawing on defining herself AS that trauma which shatters her mind and leaves her hell bent on destroying the entire world because of how horrible & unjust it is – and she's not wring to feel that way. This is, at its core, no different from Clive's motivation as it's driven from hatred and the detachment of abandonment & betrayal. That's why after Ifrit kills her, Cid intervenes when he starts mutilating her body, and it isn't until Clive is helpless in a jail cell begging to die that Cid realizes he can save SOME of Clive in a way that he couldn't save Benedikta.
As the foil to that, Hugo loved Benedikta with all of his heart, but no matter how much devotion he pledged to her or how much power he had, she was never truly his, he wasn't able to keep her safe, and their dream of ruling the world as its Dominants would never come to be. That same hatred and rage is born of the exact same emotion as love, and it is singularly fueled into revenge which is why vengeance is a motive that needs to be disconnected from Clive as it would ruin him if he were to face Ultima for a reason that mirrored this, and Titan Lost shows that the trauma also represents the loss of their own will to that emotion rather than allowing that emotion to be controlled by their will. (From a more specific psychological perspective, this is the Amygdala's survival response to the body's sensory data creating an inhibition of the signals from the Prefrontal Cortex when controlling the body's actions as they have an inhibitory pathway to one another to regulate control in different circumstances). This is why trauma triggers will often come with hallucinations or triggers where their senses are forcing them to relive moments of their past of fears due to how their body reacts, and is why Titan Lost begins with him seeing Clive taking Benedikta from him at the Heart of the Mothercrystal.
This brings us to the one between both of them which is Cid. Cid gives his Eikon to Clive and dies even though Clive doesn't want that. This places it in a foil to when Jill will later trust Clive with Shiva. It's showing that you have to be willing to trust those who come after you to take your place and complete what you can't do on your own. It's why Joshua is always there to snap Clive out of the moments where Ultima is attempting to get Clive to release his own conscious control over himself by severing his connections to others, and why Ifrit Risen is the representation of that as an inseparable bond between the two of them. Clive even says that the world he sets in motion will stumble and likely take generations to come to peace, and unlike Ultima he intentionally isn't there to guid it into place,
but also his mere presence there will inevitably draw the attention of the people to see him as their saviour and expect that of him. Dion understands that as the Imperial Prince, which is a large part of why his own story ends in his death (as Joshua & Clive would have been able to sense if he survived). It's why Clive's death seems to be an accepted but not overtly focused part of his ending, and also why Joshua as the Phoenix is the author of the book "Final Fantasy" in the end – and the ending also shows the moment that Joshua appointed Clive as his Shield. That is the defining relationship that triggered Clive to reject his dark self initially and then accept it as a part of himself that needed to be under his own control. It was what gave him the role he needed to fulfil in order to find peace, which was to heal his brother even though Joshua willingly gave up his own life to allow his brother to overcome Ultima in a way he never could have done – because he wasn't Mythos. That's why the self-sacrifice of the Saviour figure in this portrayal of mythology also has the Logos intersection of the Christ-like martyr while COMPLETELY eschewing any ability for the public to be able to venerate that part of his character by making it an uncertain fate as that means he'll never be seen as the Returning King.
Ultimately, this is why the end of games like these come with the need to accept some form of irreversible tragedy and loss when it comes to existing in a world that's not able to have one side control those things. Like in
Princess Mononoke, the Forest Spirit dies as does Iron Town, and something new needs to come about – however in that story, Prince Ashitaka is stopping everyone but there is no ultimate evil he has to destroy. He doesn't kill the Emperor, he merely heals the Night Walker who dies to the dawn, which ensures that is is that same passage of time would mean that with the arrival of a new era, the mortal emperor would also pass away and allow for a new world to exist. Ashitaka is a character who exists with that trauma and is able to use it to withstand damage from that without fear or hatred, but he never gets placed into a position where he must use that intolerance as a tool to oppose another ultimate expression of that power in an inversion to his own.
FFXVI's story places its main character into that position as does other narratives like
Asura's Wrath where those are more important, and change what fate is possible for the protagonist in that conflict.
Thematically,
FFXVI has a love story where there is a DEEP desire for Clive to survive and have happiness with Jill... but the bigger picture of what Clive's survival would bring about
just because of who he is is something that the game's side quests seem to have been working towards, but not to have shown completely. I've said it before, but the manga
Fire Punch is the best look at why the "Fires of Destruction" Asura-type protagonist who gets circumstantially placed into the role of a hero who must also be able to be seen as a villain by those they oppose, is really important to understanding that the ambiguity of
FFXVI is more specific than it appears to be, because of the values that Clive represents both as Mythos, as Cid, in establishing what his father wanted, as his brother's Shield, and as the man who loved Jill. This is just like the people of Ash or even Hugo/Titan are inherently not able to exist in the world that their actions help to bring about, because their very existence is not a representation of that changed world, but it is a traumatic expression that reflects what came before, and will shape things around it back into a form the trauma that they're attempting to leave behind (hence the Executor's approach to history as well as the Undying helping the worshippers becoming Akashic in Mikkelburg).
We see Clive's body turning to stone just like that of a normal bearer – which shows that he's no longer in that exceptional position, and we know he used the last of that power to heal Joshua. This is much like how in
Asura's Wrath, Asura knows that killing Chakravartin will mean the end of the mana that allows him to be alive, and does it anyway because his daughter will live on. Whether or not Clive succumbs to that isn't overtly clear, but the theme music and Metia's light fading beside the Moon as a key symbol of Jill & Clive, but also showing that they're both looking at it together from different places also matches how Clive promised her that they'd watch the moon together and asks if she can see it as he's fading. It's a bittersweet ending, but there are just endless details of that where the narrative HAS to be extremely aware of how to portray that in a way that doesn't position Clive to be turned it into a glorification of something that is actually the total opposite of what the story is telling – something that I would say is more important for the "King Asura" type character than any other in all of mythology.
Those are a lot of nuances that, given VASTLY different foundations of religious & cultural background as well as a large difference in the culturally analytical Western vs. culturally holistic Eastern perspectives on storytelling, which means that those things that may not be as noticeable to most Western audiences in how the ending REALLY isn't as ambiguous as it seems for the fates of the cast. While it's specific, it's still a type of specificity where telling someone else the one and only possible interpretation of the story also is intentionally something it's
not meant to do. The whole narrative is crafted to force you to explore how you internalize those ideas and understand the characters to help lead in the existential exploration & personal understanding to how those systems are able to resolve themselves in any individual's mind. That's why there are lots of details where HOW they're shown being explicitly specific in ways that are typically are how more Western storytelling provides something that's meant to be openly-ended.
The key difference is that it's not an open ended story so that one day it's possible that Clive becomes the new dictator because he eventually succumbed to the trauma in the future, because he's the player. These are stories where the ambiguity is provided within understanding the framework of Clive NEEDING to be the heroic individual, and how understanding the concessions that that means for the ending are a part of learning how to accept things for oneself – and there IS no singular answer to that for the people playing as that character.
At any rate, hopefully that's some enjoyably introspective tl;dr on this form of storytelling and some cool design details to look at & consider.
X 
), so killing her would be against his plan.
