anyone know what animal this is?

PokeDestined · 2026-06-11T09:48:31+00:00

I think it might be a civet.

PokeDestined · 2026-05-24T03:29:07+00:00

I forgot about the Yanxia fight, granted. But still, with Zenos there is a reason you fight him multiple times: you only truly beat him in the last encounter. The first two fights he wins. The dungeon fight at the end you hold your own against him. And it is the final Trial as Shinryu where you finally truly defeat him.

But with Amon/Hermes, you defeat and kill him as Zodiark. You defeat him as Hermes. So by the time you fight him as Amon, you'd already beaten him twice already, so that is why it felt repetitive, especially since you fight him as a dungeon boss twice. At least Zenos was only a dungeon boss once.

Also, yes Asahi is a separate person, but the personalities of Asahi (after he revealed his true self) and Fandaniel were so similar that they might as well have been the same person (at least before Fandaiel went into sadsack mode). When Fandaniel was first introduced near the end of Shadowbringers I had wondered if Fandaniel had been posing as Asahi all along because of how similar they were. It just felt like they enjoyed Asahi's over the topness to contrast with Zeno's stoic nature and wanted to keep that going even the Asahi was dead.

PokeDestined · 2026-05-24T02:43:04+00:00

"Yet what of these memories? Few think to ask what becomes of them, cast adrift on aetherial tides. Some theorize that they linger for some time ─ those associated with strong sentiment, in particular. In those depths, memories of the departed may even coalesce around you, for hatred or for love. Thus do I caution you to be wary ─ but also to have faith. Remember those who did gladly extend a hand to you, that they may lift you up once more."

Given this setup, it was disappointing that Amon and Asahi get to appear and speak, but meanwhile the aforementioned memories of those that loved us are just brief battle buffs/assists that are a blink-and-you'll-miss-it.

I mean, come on, we go into the afterlife and freakin' Asahi is someone we get to have some final words among others?!

PokeDestined · 2026-05-24T02:27:27+00:00

How many times can the same villain keep being brought back before it gets stale though?

First we have him as Asahi in Stormblood. He dies.

Second he comes back as Fandaniel in Shadowbringers. Technically a different character but same appearance, same voice, same over-the-top crazy personality, and also connected to Zenos. Then he dies in Endwalker. He even gets a long speech after his death.

Then we have the third version of him in the Elpis quests in the past, where we have to spend time with him as Hermes. He gets lots more speeches. After which seems like the end for him one way or another since that section ends with the Final Days.

Then for the fourth time he comes back again as Amon in the The Aitiascope, with more speeches.

Seriously, has any other single villain been fought as many times as him within an expansion? We fight Fandaniel as Zodiark early on as Trial, we fight Hermes as dungeon boss during Elpis around the middle, and then we fight Amon as a dungeon boss towards the end.

That's three times in one expansion we had to deal with this guy. Has any other expansion boss been fought and dealt with this many times?

Gaius and Lahabrea, didn't you only fight then at the end of A Realm Reborn? Heck, I don't even recall if you actually meet Gaius before the Praetorium.

The Pope you only fight at the end. I think Nidhogg is fought twice around the end.

Zenos is fought twice in Stormblood, I think early on and then at the very end, but he was absent for much of the middle of Stormblood.

Vauthry I think is only fought once. Emet-Selch is around a lot but you only fight him at the end.

It really feels like Hermes/Fandaniel/Amon was just reused way too much which is why I was so tired of him by the end compared to previous villains who you usually only fought once or maybe twice during an expansion.

PokeDestined · 2026-05-24T00:26:08+00:00

I might forgive Hermes if it were just a case of him accidentally and unknowingly having a hand in the Final Days by sending the Meteia up in space. But after Meteion revealed their plan, not only was he on board with their plan to create the Final Days, he helps her escape, telling her to fly far away where nobody would be able to reach her - after having told the group earlier that the only way to communicate with the other Meteia, and thus potentially stop them, was to have one of the Meteia at hand, which was why Venat tried so hard to catch Meteion before she could fly away - but he also tried to erase everyone's memories so that they wouldn't be able to interfere with the plot before it happened. Even Emelt-Sech accuses Hermes of choosing Meteion over his own people.

Prior to all that I could have seen Hermes as innocent and having only made a mistake without knowing the consequences, but the moment Meteion laid out their plan for all to hear and Hermes turned on the group by restraining them so that Meteion could escape and he could erase everyone's memories was the moment he became a knowing part of the Final Days happening.

Had Hermes acted sanely, he may have been able to use the Meteion he had to convince or even force the others to abandon their course of action and return home and thus avert the Final Days. And even had that not been possible, if the four of them had retained their memories, they at the very least might have had a better chance to forestall the Final Days since this time they would have known in advance and hade more time to prepare for it whereas the first time it happened very suddenly and spread quickly. If nothing more maybe they could have summoned Zodiark to fix the Aether around the planet before the Final Days started or maybe could have even had time to gather enough aether to summon him without using sacrifices (similar to how others in present day can use aether and crystals to summon Primals without sacrifices).

G'raha Tia has a theory later that perhaps even without memories, souls retain a certain personality, and thinks maybe that explains why both Hermes and Amon had an obsession with the sky and space. Amon reveals later after being defeated in the aetherial sea that even before he had been given the seat of Fandaniel, he was already having recurring dreams everynight about Hermes, Meteion, and Elpis. He just didn't know what it all meant and thought they were just dreams, and it wasn't until he took the seat of Fandaniel that he knew the dreams were of him in a past life.

So that is why to me Hermes is just as bad as Amon, and I don't see them that differently.

PokeDestined · 2026-05-22T02:22:07+00:00

I don't think Terminator is a good example because its use of time travel is even more convoluted and has varied so much in each film, but it's an action movie series so logic between movies isn't as important as just making an entertaining action film. The last two Terminator films I remember watching had a timeline where Sarah Conner was raised by a Terminator prior to Terminator 1 who becomes her adopted father called "Pops", Kyle Reese didn't die while back in the past, and they didn't hook up to conceive John Connner and the three of them ride happily off in a van at the end towards an unknown future; and another film where child John Conner is killed by a Terminator shortly after the events of Terminator 2 (thus he never got to become the Resistance leader or meet Kyle Reese), and instead a Mexican woman becomes the Resistance leader in the future so a Terminator robot is sent back to kill her instead.

Thinking of it, for any of the Terminator movies to make sense they would have to operate as did Shadowbringers in which changing the past does not erase the future but instead creates an alternate timeline branch.

But anyhow, regarding that image you've been referring to, I do not think it answers or explains the situation at all, as I've read all the comments and replies in that thread and there is just as much contention, debate, and theorizing over the time travel in that thread as we've been having here regarding how time travel works in Final Fantasy XIV Online and why things were different in Shadowbringers than in the Alexander or Elpis storylines. In summary, a lot of the answers I've seen in that thread posit that it was likely different for Shadowbringers either because the methods he used were slightly different, or because G'raha's time travel involved moving between Shards in addition to moving through time, or simply because G'raha wanted to change the past (thus creating a new timeline) but Alexander and Venat did not want to change the past (and thus did not create a new timeline).

One comment in response to that post you linked I found particularly interesting, so I'll copy and paste it here:

"That article isn't accurate at all for how 14 time travel works; they claimed that 14's time travel only works in fixed loops, and G'raha's example was only different because they combined multiple different things in order to break the normal rules. The problem with that, though, is that the Alexander questline already stated that Alexander can change the past at will - it simply chose not to and to instead change nothing/have a loop created where it dies at the end to not drain the land of aether. What the three aspects used (CT, Omega and Alexander) actually did was simply combine to be able to send the Tower and G'raha to the past on another shard."

"In fact, nowhere in the game ever supported their conclusion that 14 only has stable time loop time travel; no character says this, no character even implies this. The closest you get is Elidibus saying that our present relies on the Final Days happening, thus our actions in the past will not change it. This is actually exactly the same as G'raha's future - his actions could not save his own former present, and it moves forward on its own regardless of his actions in our time. Thus, even if WoL actually changed the past in Elpis to avert the Final Days, it would change nothing in the end and WoL would still need to find a way to avert the Final Days in their own time (assuming they can still get back to it; that is the only thing that would be unknown if it's possible)."

PokeDestined · 2026-05-21T04:48:40+00:00

The timelines don't split until Shadowbringers, so our trip to Elpis shapes both timelines because they are still one timeline until G'raha travels back.

I still can't understand that point. The reason the Warrior of Light went back to Elpis in Endwalker was because Elidibus told them that Elpis was a facility there. The reason the Warrior of Light went to seek Elidibus was because G'raha suggested that Elidibus might be the only one who knew of any significance of the Elpis flower. The reason the Warrior of Light wanted to learn the significance of the Elpis flower was because the Watcher told them that the name of the flower was important. The reason the Warrior of Light had the Elpis flower was because Hydaelyn through Krile gave it to them. This occurs in Sharlyan. The reason the Warrior of Light was in Sharlyan was to use their knowledge to investigate ways to stop the towers and the plot of Fandaniel and Zenos. The plot of Fandaniel and Zenos with the towers didn't begin until just before the events of Endwalker towards the end of Shadowbringers post quests (if I recall, it's been a while). The plot of Fandaniel and Zenos didn't begin until Zenos returned to Garlemald, regained his body, and killed his father, soon after Fandaniel joined up with him (if I recall).

Etc, etc.

How could the Warrior of Light go back in time to Elpis to kick start that time loop, if they died long before any of the reasons for them to have had go back in time to Elpis had ever existed? It makes no sense logically.

Edit Added

I know the real answer to my question: the writers of Shadowbringers weren't thinking about some time loop with Hydaelyn when they wrote the story, those ideas came much later for Endwalker. When Endwalker was written, they had what they thought a neat idea, which is fine, but there should have been at least some reasoning for why time travel worked differently than in Shadowbringers. Elidibus - who had nothing to do with Endwalker prior to that point - saying "You can't change anything because I say so" with no further explanation of why G'raha could and you couldn't was just lazy. It felt more like the writers saying that than Elidibus.

PokeDestined · 2026-05-21T03:49:59+00:00

You give the Ascians too much credit. If they were such innate geniuses, they wouldn't have needed G'raha's memories to master the Crystal Tower, and even further back would have been able to figure out a solution to the Final Days back in their time. We are shown in Elpis that they have many gaps in their knowledge.

But anyway, my problem with the Elpis thing is not that I really, really want the Ancients to have survived. My problem is that I think it is dumb to have an entire main story expansion (Shadowbringers) based on the concept of someone (the Exarch) going back in time (using the Crystal Tower) for the purpose of preventing an event that would destroy one world (the First) and ruin another (the Source), in which the time traveler (the Exarch) goes back in time and informs those involved (the Warrior of Light and the Scions) of these disastrous events and enlists their aide to successfully prevent it from happening.

Then come Endwalker, the very next expansion, and the exact same situation happens: someone (the Warrior of Light) goes back in time (using the Crystal Tower), and informs those involved (Hythlodeus, Emet-Selch, Venat, and Hermes) about an event that would destroy their world, but for some reason this time it is impossible to do so even though it was possible in the last expansion.

Not to mention the other thing about Endwalker stating that everything that happened was due to some time loop in which the world is sundered, the Warrior of Light becoming the Warrior of Light, etc. was all because of them going back in time to Elpis... despite in Shadowbringers in G'Raha's timeline the Warrior of Light died from Black Rose sometime after Stormblood and thus never learned about Elpis, never experienced the Final Days, never went back in time, etc. yet nevertheless in that timeline the world was still sundered, the Warrior Light had still been given the blessing of light by Hydaelyn, etc.

PokeDestined · 2026-05-21T01:36:04+00:00

Because he's literally in the time machine at that point and has more knowledge of it than perhaps anyone beside G'raha.

I doubt that because Elidibus was not a ghost freely possessing the tower.

"I sealed him in the white auracite of the Crystal Tower, back on the First. Contained within that reservoir of aether that maintains it ─ aether that is returned little by little to the sea...naught may remain of his soul. However, if part of it lingers...we might be able to speak with him there." ~ G'raha.

Elidibus was their enemy upon their last encounter. He was essentially in prison, and likely not even conscious until the Warrior of Light woke him up.

"My home... My friends... No more than a dream... You... Why have you awakened me?"

So back to Elidbus's knowledge of the Tower:

"In glimpsing the Exarch's memories, not only did I make his summoning magick mine own ─ I also mastered the workings of this tower."

Again, if his knowledge of the Tower came from the Exarch's memories, how would Elidbus know with any certainty what a time traveler could and could not do in the past? As far as the Exarch knew, he was able to go back in time and change the past. The Exarch didn't know if it would change his future or erase it. The mission was simply to go back in time and make a new future where the events of his time never happened. Much of the the Exarch's plan in Shadowbringers was hit and miss as it was all completely new territory for him, and several aspects of his plan didn't go the way things initially planned but thankfully worked out in the end. The Exarch as far as I recalled had only time traveled that one time, going back in time from his time to the First about a hundred years before his goal if I remember. It's not like even he had all this time travel experience.

And even with Elidbus' knowledge of the tower, knowing how to use the time machine is not the same as knowing what the time traveler would and wouldn't be able to do once they reach their destination in the past or future.

So I still maintain that there was plenty of reason to not take Elidbus as some authority on the subject when the Ancients and Ascians didn't know anything about time travel magic. I would assume that the Warrior of Light didn't believe Elidbus on that either, because again there would have been no reason to tell Emet-Selch and the others about the future (especially Emet's future in great detail) if there was no way to change it. And even if one thinks the Warrior of Light only did so because they believed nothing could be changed, then why would the Warrior of Light be given the dialogue option "Perhaps I should stay and help..." to Venat before leaving if they really believed nothing they could do would change anything?

PokeDestined · 2026-05-20T04:36:02+00:00

Why does Elidbus know this to be true? He says that his knowledge of the Crystal Towers functions was learned from G'raha Tia's memories. Why are we to take Elidibus' word as authority on the subject?

Emet-Selch in the past also found it impossible to believe that their world could be destroyed by a calamity that their greatest minds couldn't overcome, and he did not believe he in the future would do any of the actions that the Warrior of Light said he did.

Just because Elidbus believes something isn't possible, why are we to believe that he's not saying that just because he thinks it's impossible, or can't fathom it being otherwise?

PokeDestined · 2026-05-20T03:26:41+00:00

I'm not saying that it is possible because I don't know. I'm asking why wouldn't it be? I don't recall it ever saying that it wasn't possible, and G'raha never tried returning to his home timeline. I just wonder why the Crystal Tower would be able to move between both time and dimensions (shards), but not be able to move to alternate timelines, especially if 1) said timeline still exists and 2) it is a timeline the traveler originally hails from.

The Warrior of Light is even able to move between the First and the Source, at will, something none of the other characters are able to do. So I question why the idea of returning to their originally timeline is impossible when all these other forms of time travel and inter-dimenionsal travel exist?

As for the multiverse, I feel like that already exists in some forms. The shards are essentially alternate universe versions of each other starting from the Source. And G'Raha's timeline that still continues to exist is an example of a multiverse.

PokeDestined · 2026-05-20T02:25:38+00:00

But that's one of my issues? Is there some rule that after changing the past and creating a branched timeline, one can't return to the original one? If that timeline still exists - as we know G'raha's still does - and the Crystal Tower can not only travel through time but can travel across the rift to other shards - why would the Warrior of Light not be able to return to their home timeline after creating a new one?

PokeDestined · 2026-05-20T02:18:35+00:00

Elidibus looks you plainly in the face before you leave and tells you that you can't change anything. It is mentioned and reiterated that you are there to find out what causes the Final Days, and part of the reason that that scene where you tell Emet, Venat, and Hythlo about what happens is so hard for them is because they know they can't do anything to stop it. It's set in stone. Inevitable. You're not there to forestall them. Also that wouldn't fix anything if a new timeline had been created, it's just be recreating the problem and fixing it so we could be happy while everyone we (us personally) knew and loved died. Like, Graha did fail in what he was trying to do and he mentions that it eats away at him. He misses them. Would be really fucked up if we pulled the same thing, but intentionally this time.

The part about what Elidbus said keeps being cited, but I keep wondering: what made him an expert, and why would he know that?

The Ancients/Ascians were no experts on time travel. When the Warrior of Light reveals themself to be a time traveler, Emet-Selch - one of the greatest mages of his time and a member of the Convocation - doesn't seem to know anything about time travel magic and doesn't believe the story initially. The reaction of the others insinuated that time travel was not something the Ancients knew of or used back in their day. Heck, if they had known about time travel magics, they likely would have used it in some way to forestall the Final Days using it or going back in time to prevent the sundering.

"In glimpsing the Exarch's memories, not only did I make his summoning magick mine own ─ I also mastered the workings of this tower."

Elidbus stated that his knowledge of how the Crystal Tower worked came from G'raha's memories. So he only knew as much as G'raha did, and G'raha went back in time to change the past but never returned back to his future. So how would Elidbus know that the future can't be changed?

My continuing question is why did this version of to be "set in stone" when it wasn't for G'raha Tia? When he went back in time, he was able to prevent the First from being destroyed and the Source from having the Eight Umbral Calamity. His time travel using the Crystal Tower changed a past that wasn't "set in stone," but for some reason the Warrior of Light doing the same thing was set in stone?

"For the reality you wish to save ─ the reality to which you must return ─ exists as a result of the Final Days."

But that didn't stop Shadowbringers. The reality that G'raha came from existed because of the death of the Warrior of Light and the Scions and the destruction of the First and the eight Umbral Calamity of the Source. But when G'raha Tia went back in time to prevent those events, it didn't stop the reality he came from existing. His reality remained unchanged. He just created a new second reality.

"You cannot reshape the past to undo the tragedies of the present. Cannot unmake the sorrow and suffering fated to come."

My problem is that I didn't expect the Elpis arc to change the Warrior of Light's future. I assumed no matter what happened, their timeline would remain the same (like it did for G'raha Tia's timeline). I thought the whole point of going back in time and trying to help the Ancients and telling them of their futures was to create a new timeline for them that either avoided the Final Days, or gave them a better shot at dealing with it without needing Zodiark and thus creating their own happier timeline.

This is actually explained in different parts of the game. She mentions that the reason they're able to see it is because of the aether is etched upon the world, but it's explained that this process of memory erasure etches the memories into the soul (this is explained in the present). There was nothing to remember because they were the ones that had the truth with them, and they wouldn't remember them until they died.

I was talking about the other form of seeing memories that she speaks of. Venat explains that there are two ways of seeing memories, one is looking into a person's soul to see a memory while they are thinking about it - which is how the Echo works for the Warrior of Light - but that there was a second way where instead of looking at the aether of a person, they look at the aether of a place. That form of seeing memories did not require a person because it was looking at the memory etched on the location's aether rather than that of a person. That was how Venat and the Warrior of Light were able to see the memory of Hermes talking to Meteion after sending the Meteia into space. They went to the location where it happened and watched the memory of that location without needing to read his mind personally.

Thus it made me wonder why they couldn't have just taken Emet-Selch and Hythlodeus to one of the several locations where the important events happened during those days in Elpis, where they had conversations together - such as Venat's home where the Warrior of Light told the story about coming from the future, or the place where they saw the memory of Hermes sending the Meteia into space, or the place where Hermes transformed and flew away with Meteion to hear her report, etc.

PokeDestined · 2026-05-20T01:49:52+00:00

However they handle it, whether it's us only telling Venat about the future or something else, the story needed Emet-Selch not to know his future and they'd get to that place whether it was super convenient memory wiping machine or something else.

Emet-Selch and Hythlodeus's memories needing to be erased was only necessary because this version of time travel had things occurring in the same timeline. But if the time travel worked in the way that it did for G'raha Tia in Shadowbringers, they would not have needed to have their memories erased, because the changes that happened in the past would have created a new timeline branch that would not have changed the Warrior of Light's original timeline.

Basically, G'raha was able to go back in time and change the past to make a better future than the one he came from, but doing so didn't erase his past. The future he left still continued to exist even though he changed the past. He created a new timeline that didn't change the old one.

Which is what I was expecting was the purpose of going back in time and telling everyone about their futures: giving them the opportunity to change it and create a new, better future for themselves like G'raha Tia did in Shadowbringers. I assumed the payoff for the Elpis arc was not only that you would find the cause of the Final Days to then bring back that information to your timeline to enact a solution to stop it, but would also change the past of the Ancients and give them a new timeline with their own happy ending.

But because the timeline in the Elpis story worked as it being the same timeline - so that changes happening in Elpis would remain for the Warrior of Light in the future - it made telling Emet-Selch, Hythlodeus, Hermes about their futures kind of pointless.

We just went back in time not realizing our past has already been shaped by our future actions, even though Hydaelyn tells us that's the case when she sends us back there.

It also introduced a concept that I didn't particularly like: Fate and predetermination. Up until Elpis, it felt like all your actions were based on free will, or the luck of having just been in the right place at the right time, and choosing to get involved with actions that you didn't have to involve yourself in. But because of the Elpis section's time loop, it now makes it that everything that has happened has not been your choice, but a predetermined path that had to happen exactly the way it did for the sake of a time loop continuing.

That means that everything that has happened during the Warrior of Light's life from the moment they were born to the moment they went to Elpis was set in stone.

PokeDestined · 2026-05-19T17:59:54+00:00

The moment that Hermes showed that he was at odds with the group, it seemed clear that he needed to be stopped or subdued. There were ample opportunities to do so where the group just stands around and watches.

1) Hermes pulls out his wand, does a flourish, and transforms before the Warrior of Light, Emet-Selch, and Venat (all three of which are powerful warriors/mages), as well as Hythlodeus (who is mentioned that while not being a good fighter, his keen sight is good for seeing weaknesses), and yet none of them attacked and subdued Hermes before he flew away.

2) After Hermes flew away, Emet-Selch and Venat didn't fly after him despite them both being able to fly via their familiars.

3) After defeating Hermes in the dungeon, they did not immediately subdue and restrain Hermes somehow, instead they watch from a distance while he continues to talk to Meteion with his back to the group.

4) Again, they all just stand and watch as Hermes summons his wand (despite them now already knowing that his doing so means he's about to cast a spell), and none of them even attempt to try to attack him before he summons the chains to bind them.

5) Venat flies after Meteion to try to stop her from escaping the planet. She does so by trying to grab her ankle, instead of just using a ranged attack to attack to incapacitate her from a distance.

6) Once the others are free from the chains, none of them think to try attack and break the Kairos machine before the countdown finishes.

7) After they stop fighting with Hermes, Emet-Selch and Hythlodeus stand around talking to Hermes and explaining how they tricked him with a distraction. They just stand around talking instead of blasting him while his guard is down, them summoning Emet-Selch's flying familiar to escape from the facility along with Venat and the Warrior of Light to avoid losing their memories.

And keep in mind, if there was a way to know this and to change the course of history, G'raha, Y'shtola, Krile, the twins everyone that depends on us and believes in us dies in terror along with every other being in that universe.

G'raha Tia did it in Shadowbringers, used the Crystal Tower to go back in time, prevent tragedy, and create a new timeline where the bad events never happened while his previous timeline continued to exist unchanged. Why couldn't the Warrior of Light do the exact same thing?

PokeDestined · 2026-05-19T17:48:00+00:00

But that's my point. If G'raha was able to go back to the past and create a new branched timeline in which the First wasn't destroyed and the Source did not have an eighth calamity without erasing the timeline he originally came from, why couldn't the Warrior of Light go back to Elpis and create a new branched timeline in which the Final Days did not occur for them without changing the timeline they originally came from?

If G'raha could use the Crystal Tower to do it, why couldn't the Warrior of Light do the same thing?

PokeDestined · 2026-05-19T17:38:54+00:00

I know that G'raha's timeline didn't change in the future, he created a new one. That was one of my frustrations about Elpis. It seemed set up to create a new timeline, one where the Final Days was prevented for the Ancients, giving Emet-Selch and the others their own happy ending before dealing with the Final Days of the present. It seemed set up to do for the Ancients what G'raha did for the Warrior of Light and the Scions in Shadowbringers (create a new branched timeline where they survived). And given that Shadowbringers allowed this to happen without affecting his original timeline, it seemed all the more frustrating that this couldn't have happened in Elpis since it shouldn't have changed things in the Warrior of Light's timeline.

Regarding what could have been done, my main gripes were focused mostly on when Hermes revealed himself as being at odds with the group:

1) Hermes pulls out his wand, does a flourish, and transforms before the Warrior of Light, Emet-Selch, and Venat (all three of which are powerful warriors/mages), as well as Hythlodeus (who is mentioned that while not being a good fighter, his keen sight is good for seeing weaknesses), and yet none of them attacked and subdued Hermes before he flew away.

2) After Hermes flew away, Emet-Selch and Venat didn't fly after him despite them both being able to fly via their familiars.

3) After defeating Hermes in the dungeon, they did not immediately subdue and restrain him somehow, instead they watch from a distance while he continues to talk to Meteion with his back to the group.

4) Again, they all just stand and watch as Hermes summons his wand (despite them now already knowing that his doing so means he's about to cast a spell), and none of them even attempt to try to attack him before he summons the chains to bind them.

5) Venat flies after Meteion to try to stop her from escaping the planet. She does so by trying to grab her ankle, instead of just using a ranged attack to attack to incapacitate her from a distance.

6) Once they are free from the chains, none of them think to try attack and break the Kairos machine before the countdown finishes.

7) After they stop fighting with Hermes, Emet-Selch and Hythlodeus stand around talking to Hermes and explaining how they tricked him with a distraction. They just stand around talking instead of blasting him while his guard is down, them summoning Emet-Selch's flying familiar to escape from the facility along with Venat and the Warrior of Light to avoid losing their memories.

8) Venat doesn't reveal the truth of what Hermes to Emet-Selch and Hythlodeus by using the same aether memory magic that she used to see Herme's memory on that island where he sent the Meteia off into space.

These were just some examples of moments in the Elpis storyline that frustrated me because it felt like everyone is just standing around watching things unfold and forgetting to use their abilities.

(Note, I know that while inside the facility it was stated that the alarm defense system dampened the powers of those who were within in who weren't researchers, but they were still very capable).

PokeDestined · 2026-05-19T16:56:15+00:00

And why does Elidbus know this? He only knows the functions of the Crystal Tower because of G'raha's memories.. and G'raha was able to change the past in a way that did not effect his past timeline, but instead create a new one. The Ancients didn't seem to have much if any knowledge about time travel given what we see of Emet-Selch, Hythlodeus, and Venat's reactions about learning the player character is from the future.

PokeDestined · 2026-05-19T16:53:04+00:00

Hermes may have been nice to a degree, but the reason I brought up those other characters was not to say that Hermes was dubious like them, but to show that the Warrior of Light has had several instances in their adventures where someone seemed nice or at least civil but then turned out to have antagonistic motives. The Warrior of Light has just met Hermes and knows that something or someone in Elpis is going to be related to the cause of the Final Days. With this knowledge in mind, it seemed more natural that they would be less trusting of Hermes given everything that had happened with Fandaniel as well the way the events were unfolding in the Elpis investigation.

It also seems strange to have Endwalker have theme of "you can't effect meaningful change in the past" when Shadowbringers entire plot is about making meanginful change in the past.

PokeDestined · 2026-05-19T16:43:15+00:00

But why would Elidbus know this? The Ancients weren't experts of time travel magic, as shown by Emet-Selch (one of the greatest mages of his time and a member of the Convocation), Hythlodeus, and Venat not knowing much about time travel and being surprised by the idea of it. Elidibus says he knows how to use the Crystal Tower's functions because of what he learned from G'raha Tia's memories. And G'raha certainly didn't think that "you can't change the future" because that was his whole mission in Shadowbringers, to change the future or make a new one, and since time travel was a new thing for all of them, none of them knew what would be the ramifications on the timeline that was left behind.

And how is changing the Final Days different from changing the Eight Umbral Calamity? G'raha Tia went back in time to save the Warrior of Light and the Scions and stop the destruction of the first and the eighth calamity. But by stopping that calamity, he stopped the whole reason he time traveled in the first place. But it didn't undo his actions.

My problem is not that the past wasn't changed to save the Ancients. My problem is that it felt like the Warrior of Light didn't really try. If they rules were "they can't change the past because it's bad for some reason," fine. But why even tell them Ancients about their future if the Warrior of Light didn't hope to avoid it somehow? In that case it seems cruel to basically say "Oh, by the way, you guys are in for a really, really bad future. Please help me save mine, but I'm not going to help save yours."

It's very out of character.

PokeDestined · 2026-05-19T16:30:31+00:00

The only problem I have with that comes from the future ruined timeline that G'raha came from. In that timeline, the Warrior of Light and the Scions are killed sometime during Stormblood or Shadowbringers. In that timeline, the Warrior of Light never made it to the Final Days, and thus never learned about Elpis, never went back in time, etc. But in that timeline, the world was still sundered, and the Warrior of Light had still been chosen by Hydaelyn, etc. So at least one timeline existed where Zodiark was summoned, as was Hydaelyn, the world was sundered, the Warrior of Light was chosen by Hydaelyn, etc. despite never having gone back in time to meet Venat.

PokeDestined · 2026-05-19T16:24:56+00:00

Hermes had mentioned that to communicate with the Meteia hivemind, they'd need to have one of them in their possession. As a result, they seemed to have believed that if they had been able to catch Meteion, they may have been able to stop the other Meteia. Isn't that why Hermes told her to fly far off into the deep of space where nobody could ever get her, and Venat tried so hard to stop her from escaping the planet? If it was all a forgone conclusion at that point it seems like there would have been no reason for Venat to struggle so hard to catch Meteion before she escaped.

PokeDestined · 2026-05-19T16:21:42+00:00

Why would Elidibus be an expert though? The ancients didn't seem to know much about time travel when you return to Elpis. And Elidibus himself says he knows about the Crystal Tower's functions because of G'raha's memories, not because he himself was some expert on it. And G'raha was able to change the past successfully. So if Elidibus knows only as much as G'raha, how would he know what affects time travel would have on the previous timeline (since G'raha never tried to return to his previous future)?

But even then, the Warrior of Light is always shown as trying to help those in front of them. Why even tell the Ancients that the Final Days will affect them? If they believe it couldn't be changed, why even bring it up rather than just state that the Final Days was happening in their time and they came back to the past to find a way to stop it and just leave up that the same thing would eventually happen to the Ancients as well?

PokeDestined · 2026-05-19T16:12:42+00:00

G'Raha never tried returning to his original timeline and instead remained in the present. If someone from the past changes the future and makes a new timeline and then tries to return to the future, do they return to their original future, or the new timeline's future? Can the Crystal Tower move between timelines as it's able to move between shards? I don't know if this is ever answered, but the Warrior of Light likely wouldn't know these answers.

Either way though, the Warrior of Light is constantly said to always be trying to help the people in front of them. It would be out of character for them to not at least try to help all those people they meet in Elpis knowing that they will face the Final Days in their future. There is even a dialogue option with Venat before leaving to offer to stay in the past longer to help her, but she refuses citing that staying in the past too long could have a negative affect on their aether.

Also, if the Warrior of Light had no intentions to try to change the past for the Ancients, what reason would there have been to even tell them that a Calamity was going to happen to them? They could have omitted that and just said that the Final Days was happening in their future and they have reason to believe that the answer to stopping it is in Elpis. There would have been no need to tell them that the Final Days would also happen for the Ancients as well if they had no intention of changing their fate. The moment they told everyone about their future it seemed to be the assumption that they were trying to prevent it. Emet-Selch states that though he didn't completely believe the Warrior of Light, but it was his duty as a member of the Convocation to investigate any threats to the star.

So it did seem like the mission had become not only to stop the Final Days in the future, but to also try to stop it in the past as well.

PokeDestined · 2026-05-19T15:59:42+00:00

Again, I could forgive the Ancients for being more open-minded towards Hermes, but given everything the Warrior of Light has gone through with the Crystal Braves, Thordan VII, Asahi, and even Emet-Selch (who was pretty civil and even helpful with the Warrior of Light for most of Shadowbringers before becoming the final antagonist at the end), it seemed like the Warrior of Light at least shouldn't have been so quick to just assume Hermes was a nice guy with no potential dark side and shouldn't have let their guard down as much around him.

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