《 Agᥒᥙs Dhᥱιr 》🇪🇸@MeowthTheStarry
Alright, summarized preliminary thoughts of what was shown to us of Evercold. :D
➤ It seems I speculated too ahead of time, again. Would you believe me it happened to me the same back in ShB into EnW, only to be validated in DT? Yoshi-P loves playing with my trust in myself. :'D
➤ With the knowledge that the Rejoinings were meant to mend the world, and the Sundering is the cause of the withering, I would say our purpose in the Fourth is to find a way to carry this out safely. Not that I think is going to work, for other reasons, but perhaps the initial motivation has to do with it.
➤ For now this is just the teaser trailer, but I find interesting that only Alphinaud and Estinien are shown to stand by the WoL's side. Yoshi-P already teased a 'schism' between the Scions before DT's release, so perhaps this is the origin of the fracture.
➤ Act I of FFXIV dealt with the Final Days at the end. Act II seems to be dealing with the Sundering, or rather, its consequences, as there were the two dooms that doomed the Ancients. If we are facing the echoes of these selfsame dooms, related to the point above, what followed after the Final Days was the rupture between brethren when Venat spearheaded the first (known) conflict between mankind.
➤ Norse mythology going strong! This expansion is clearly themed after the Fimbulvetr, the endless winter that precedes Ragnarök, the apocalypse. It is said that the Fimbulvetr is an age of moral and social decay, in which brothers betray and kill each other for greed, oaths are broken and there is no mercy toward even family.
➤ Related to the above, same as it was with DT and the theme of 'what lies beneath the glittering surface', it seems the architecture evokes this heavenly vibe, to potentially, brutally subvert it.
➤ As we are repeating the formula of ShB, we can even see it in how Ice is the element closest to the polarity of Light. However, in Act I we went to the First trying to stop the Rejoining—in Act II, it seems likely we will go there trying to cause it. Hence, the WoL taking on the job of the RPR, bringer of (merciful) Death.
➤ In the intro of the trailer, we see the auracite key glowing green as it charges. This selfsame green is the color associated with Zodiark—not the primal, but the real one, the Lucavi and Keeper of Precepts and guardian of cosmic law.
➤ Paired with this, there are snakes everywhere in the concept art. The serpent is the symbol of Zodiark, as the Zodiac sign of Ophiuchus. Will we learn more about him in passing?
➤ I find telling as well that the trailer begins with the recap of the Sundering—it is a very effective way of saying, "this is the cause of the ruin we face now".
➤ With the heavenly vibes of the architecture and such, the bridge we see the WoL crossing in 7.5 is clearly alluding to the Bifröst, the bridge between worlds, that leads to Asgard, the realm of the gods. I could make a comment on its guardian, Heimdall, but it would be a bit too tentative now.
➤ Yoshi-P and his team are known fans of Game of Thrones / A Song of Ice and Fire and it shows. But it is quite interesting that—ignoring the absolute disaster of the show's ending—this quite echoes the Long Night, and it is particularly interesting when knowing that the Night King's goal was to kill the Three-Eyed Raven (heh heh heh, third-eye, I wonder) because he held all the memory of existence and mankind within himself, and his death would cause a true endless winter without hope of rebirth, a fate much worse than death itself, because no one would ever remember.
➤ The inspirations for the expansion seem to be FFX and FFXII, in particular Revenant Wings with its focus on the floating landmasses of the Purvama. Tying with the 'cold' theme of the expansion, in RW, the winged race of the aegyl reside in the Purvama known as Lemurés, and because the auraliths (masses of auracite) they use to cast magic and summon Yarhi (espers) it consumes their anima and leaves them emotionless.
➤ If this expansion is themed after Ice and the Fimbulvetr, what comes after is Fire and the Ragnarök. (FFXIII, just a couple more years, I have waited so long I can keep waiting.)
➤ The Fimbulvetr is said to be three successive winters, but I doubt it is convenient narrative-wise to go to three different shards (because the only shards that we know still intact and we have not visited are the Fourth, the Eighth and the Eleventh) and because we have the auracite key, they might resolve the Eighth and the Eleventh the same way they did the Thirteenth and the Ninth.
➤ This is a bit of a lengthy explanation but as a summary, because the main entries of FF are themed after their corresponding Tarot arcana, having FFX and FFXII means we are dealing with the themes of the Wheel of Fortune and the Hanged Man. The former is related to cycles, and to how from the very top you can easily find yourself in rock bottom; the latter is about shifts of perspective and perception, and opening one's mind to new paths.
➤ Surely people have already pointed out that Halmarut seems to be the one in the logo. I will go further and say that because the people of the Fourth seem to largely be Xaela Au Ra, and we have the Auri girl with a grandma in it, we might be heading into finding more about Azem's truth in these people's tradition in the same way of the Azim Steppe, and who knows, maybe this girl and her grandma are shards of Cirina and her grandmother Temulun?
➤ The expansion continues dealing with the themes of Death, not just with the cold, but also related to how it is the Fourth—number four is the number of Death in Eastern tradition—and the WoL is represented as a RPR. This theme of Death seems to be related to the 'negative' version of it, related to nothingness and stagnation. In this sense it is less Death—which is transformation—and more stasis, which aligns with the 'non-life' of the First under the Light's influence.
➤ Last but not least—hello there, Hades. See you at the other end of the bridge... even if it is two more years of waiting. :)
(Below, the auracite glowing green, and Hades encouraging us again in taking up his legacy—clever man, he is, planning things always in advance.) :)
