Headscratchers / Final Fantasy XVI

Grand Duchy name

• So Rosaria is a Grand Duchy, yet its ruler's title is "Archduke"? Shouldn't he be called "Grand Duke" — or alternatively, shouldn't the territory be called an "Archduchy"?
  • Despite the fact that the English Language version is being recorded first, with the Japanese version being a dub, the story is still conceptualized from a Japanese cultural perspective, and Japanese historically didn't have equivalent titles to Grand Duke and Archduke.
  • "Archduke" has also historically been equivalent in rank to "Grand Duke" and both above a plain "Duke."

Identifying Dominants

• Clive was identified as not being the Phoenix's Dominant at a young age, while Joshua was identified as such, even though, by all appearances, he had never actually summoned the Eikon before. Likewise, Jill turns out to be Shiva's Dominant, but there's no sign anyone knew that before. So... how is this determined? It can't be that they just wait for someone to Prime, because then you wouldn't be able to prove an ordinary Bearer simply hadn't Primed yet.
  • As shown in the game, Dominants don't have to fully prime to show their powers. They can still partially transform into their Eikon forms while maintaining regular size.
  • That's not the point. The point is, if the only way to prove that someone is a Dominant is for them to transform, even partially, then that means there should be no way to prove someone isn't a Dominant. Clive obviously never tapped into any extra powers before the whole Ifrit situation, but why was his mother so sure that he wasn't the Dominant?
  • Because all of the Dominants were already accounted for. Most likely Clive's parents were waiting for him to prime until Joshua gained Phoenix.
  • Most likely, there are ways to identify a dominant, known to members of the royal family, to test if they're Phoenix's dominant. But these tests aren't universal.
  • Much like how even infants can be tested to determine if they're Bearers, Dominants may have their own tests as well. Joshua hailing from a clan from which the Phoenix always chooses its Dominant from probably helped in perfecting the test. If I recall, Jill didn't awaken as Shiva's Dominant herself until after the event at Phoenix Gate and an Eikon can sometimes go years until they decide to awaken within a new host. In Jill's case, the fact she was basically a slave to the Iron Kingdom probably broke her down emotionally and this was enough for Shiva to awaken within her.
  • Clive was known not to be the Dominant because he was born while his grandfather, the previous Dominant of Phoenix, was still alive. Since Joshua was the first child born in the ducal line after the previous Dominant died, they knew Joshua would be the new Dominant.

Easy evangelism

• Cid tells Clive and Jill that the Mothercrystals are the source of the Blight. They don't want to accept it, but soon admit the truth. Except... Cid didn't give them any proof. At all. He just gave them a meaningless comparison that crystal shards draw in ambient aether, so the Mothercrystals must do the same on a grand scale. Yes, he was right, but how did he convince them so easily?
  • The evidence was how. As he explained, the crystals chipped off the big ones work by drawing in ambient aether from the very air itself. The Blight is essentially the result of the land having been drained of Aether. He thus logically pointed out that the likeliest cause of this drain was the Crystals' source; The Mother Crystals. Add to that, Clive and Jill trust Cid. That’s all there is to it.

Torgal and aetherfloods

• So we learn that Torgal, being a frostwolf, is resistant to aetherfloods. That's fine, but how come the first time the characters go through an aetherflood, beneath Oriflamme, no one questions Torgal being there or even suggests it's a risk to bring him through it? They had no idea he was a special wolf at that time. The only guess I have is that they just assumed some animals, like wolves, are resistant to aetherfloods like chocobos are (which seems to be somewhat common knowledge), but no attention is drawn to it.
  • They probably didn't consider it, because Torgal himself didn't show any hesitation going in. Presumably after, they were like "wait, shouldn't he have had problems? Well, maybe he's resistant, that was pretty lucky."

Clive's status as a magic user

• Is Clive actually a bearer or is he just mistaken for one? There's a distinction between the people who can use magic depending on its source: Crystal magic users, Dominants, Bearers, and those "blessed" by a Dominant to have lesser versions of their powers. The problem is when it comes to Clive this gets hazy. For all intents and purposes for the sake of the story Clive is treated as "just" a bearer, despite clearly being a Dominant with Ifrit and having the blessing of the Phoenix (and probably partially absorbing some of its power 13 years ago during the fight). But the game never outright SAYS that Clive is a bearer as well. Every other Dominant we see, except for maybe Cid, aren't treated with the social stigma and ignorance that bearers have to deal with, even if they aren't directly affiliated with a kingdom. Is Clive also a bearer in addition to being a Dominant? Are all Dominants also technically bearers? Or is Clive just treated as if he is a bearer because of him not being associated with Rosaria anymore, being enslaved at a young age and escaping, and no one knowing about Ifrit being Clive's eikon?
  • First off, it seems that yes, all Dominants are Bearers. The Dominants, at least, treat themselves as if they are Bearers with an extra ability. Yes, Dominants are largely treated differently, but that's because they're unique and valuable. Of course, you can't identify a Dominant on sight; no one knows Jill is a Bearer or a Dominant because she doesn't have a brand and doesn't flaunt her powers. Likewise, seeing Clive with a brand would automatically identify him as no more than a Bearer, because no one would brand a Dominant. Other than that, it doesn't seem as though there's a difference. Clive is called "blessed by the Phoenix," but the fact that no one treats this as strange (impressive, yes, but not strange) implies that it's not unheard of for particularly strong Bearers to manifest portions of the Eikon matching their element.
  • In addition to the above, Bearers are seemingly not limited to a singular element, like Dominants and those they bless with their powers.
  • Dominants are essentially Bearers who also have the distinction of being host to an Eikon, so yes, Clive is technically a Bearer. It's important to note that save for the Iron Kingdom, most of Valisthea revere Dominants but as Clive's Dominant status remained dormant for years with no one realizing he's actually Ifrit, the Branded tattoo on the cheek is enough for everyone to identify him as a Bearer at 28. After all, only Bearers (not Dominants) are branded, rounded up, then either sold to non-Bearers or used as front-line soldiers by the nation armies.

Torgal's age

• By the time of the second time skip, Torgal is at least 18 years old and shows absolutely no signs of age or slowing down in battle. Given the reveal that he's a special kind of frost wolf, that makes sense, but what doesn't is that nobody ever comments on this before said reveal. Or are even regular wolves in Valisthea just much longer lived than real ones?
  • He's clearly not a normal dog from the start. Maybe they assumed he was some sort of monster (which he is, technically), with a longer lifespan.

The Emperor and Annabella

• By the time we meet Emperor Sylvestre, Annabella has been whispering in his ear for thirteen years, so he's already been well and truly corrupted. But how did she ever get his ear in the first place? How did she convince him to turn on his closest ally, let a woman murder her husband who happened to be a duke, and then marry that woman himself? Even if we assume she was offering Joshua as a prize (having an extra Dominant would be a huge deal), the fact that she failed to get him Phoenix's Dominant should have put her reputation with him in the gutter.
  • Considering her disdain for the people of Rosaria, who she sees as beneath her, ever since Clive's birth and failure to be the Phoenix dominant she could have had plans in the works for years before the events of the game to sow the seeds. Regarding their marriage it's easy to see the political benefit of one bloodline carrying both Phoenix and Bahamut.
  • Anabella also mentions that even if the Emperor doesn't necessarily trust her, he trusts his astrologers so all she needs to do is corrupt them.

The nature of Aether

• It is explicitly stated in the game that all life comes from aether. Lands beset by the blight are drained of aether and no magic works there. So with the destruction of all magic at the end of the game, all aether should be gone, and thereby all life? The planet turns into a blackened husk and their people into piles of rock and sand?
  • No, magic (and by extension the crystals) works by draining aether from the land causing the blight. Aether isn't gone by the end of the game but the means to drain it, allowing the world to recover. Magic isn't the source of aether, aether is the source of magic.

Why is Odin treated the same as the other Eikons?

• Ifrit is treated like a freak of nature and not one of the Eikon because it either has never been seen before, or first manifested before recorded history in Valisthea. Ok, that makes sense. But then why is ODIN treated like a normal eikon,and not anything out of the ordinary despite it explicitly being stated that Odin's recent manifestation in Barnabas is the first time that Odin has ever been seen in the entire recorded history of Valisthea? Shouldn't Odin be just as much of a one-off as Ifrit then? Why is he seen as "just' another Eikon? Is it because he's on the mural? Because Ifrit (well Ifrit Risen) is ALSO on that mural, and the game implies that not many people even know about the mural anyways, so that would mean that the common history and awareness of the Eikons in Valisthea comes from somewhere else. Unless this common knowledge of Eikons is just taught through unquestioned oral history from generation to generation, why is Odin left in and Ifrit is left out when Odin should be just as much of an unusual phoenomenon as Ifrit?
  • “And lo, the Creator did make of the Elements Eight Eikons to serve as Keepers of the One Law.” Even if Odin hasn’t manifested before Barnabas within recorded history, his existence, or the existence of an Eikon of Darkness, is mentioned in scripture. Given that there are seven other Eikons, one for each element, he was probably considered a “Lost” Eikon, like Leviathan in the present day.
  • Ifrit, on the other hand, is treated as a freak because he’s a second Eikon of Fire. Nowhere in historical record or scripture is the appearance of a second Eikon, of any element, something that is stated to be possible. Based on both history and scripture, Odin is an Eikon that is expected to exist even if no-one’s seen him, whereas Ifrit’s existence should, by all accounts, be impossible.

Keeping Ultima sealed

• Based off what little we knew of Ultima at the time, Joshua sealing Ultima within himself to prevent them from possessing Clive made sense. But following the final five-year time skip and the brothers' reunion, we still see Ultima roaming freely, casting Primogenesis to tamper with the flow of aether throughout Valisthea, and even attempting to possess Clive again within the Interdimensional Rift. It is explicitly stated at one point that maintaining the seal on Ultima is slowly killing Joshua, so why does Joshua continue to keep Ultima sealed even when doing so no longer serves any practical purpose? Joshua never questions how Ultima can still physically appear in and affect the world until right before the final battle, when it's revealed Ultima is actually a race of beings instead of a single entity and Joshua had only sealed one of them.
  • They didn’t know Ultima was a race of several (identical looking) beings until the endgame when they learned each time they shattered a mothercrystal they freed another Ultima. After Bahamut/Twinside, when Joshua’s wound that seals Ultima is revealed to the others at the Infirmary, Joshua expressly says he believes the Ultima they’re seeing is some incorporeal or magic form. He fully believes and tells the others he has the PHYSICAL Ultima sealed inside him, though Ultima still has some sort of reach from beyond as with the child emperor Olivier. They were wrong.

The reunion

• Joshua disappears once again after sealing Ultima within himself, presumably to keep Ultima away from Clive. So then why does he join Clive's party after the fight with Bahamut? He still has Ultima sealed inside him, and if his physical distance from Clive doesn't affect Ultima's likeliness to break out of the seal or their ability to possess Clive, then that begs the question of why Joshua ran off for another five years after sealing Ultima and didn't join Clive then and there. At the very least, he could have accompanied Clive, Jill, and Torgal back to Cid's hideout and possibly assisted in the relocation to the new hideout before going off to research Ultima again.

Hideaway, Massacres and Logistics

• So there are a few pretty big questions about the events that precede the first Hideaway being taken out, all orbiting around the nature of the deadlands.

The first is given the air, soil, and water are all void of aether and thus toxic to life, how do Hugo's troops walk all the way from the republic to the hideaway? It's in the middle of the Deadlands and quite a ways from the Republic on the map. They can bring rations but they can't exactly shield their water becoming unusable the moment they unseal it nor are they getting more due to the environment. Food has a similar issue given the deadlands have nothing alive to forage for.

The second question is how did the suspicious man manage to find the hideaway. The party being led by the usually competent scout leads back Hugo's spy/servant to the base. However, given the barren wasteland that the deadlands are, how did he manage to follow them without either being spotted given its a barren space with literally nothing alive or just losing track of them since he isn't a bearer who might have at least some resistance to the lack of aether.

Even if the party didn't spot anyone while being tracked, how was Hugo's army not spotted by the other people coming and going from the Hideaway? Lots of side chatter by characters show cursebreakers and supply runners going to and from the Hideaway quite often. So some spotters would presumably be expected to have seen Hugo's army on the march.

A final question more related to aether being used for magic. Hugo transforms into Titan in the deadlands, while Dominants and bearers use an internal store of aether they also still use aether in the air to use magic. Thus the residents of the hideaway not being able to use magic to heal the hurt and malnourished branded brought back to the hideaway. We see Dominants creating their elements and concentrating them to fully prime, with Garuda being noted to actively affect the aether when she Primed. How did Titan transform in an area with none? If priming doesn't need access to the Aether it would bring up more questions for later sections of the plot.

• It's stated in the Active Time Lore/Harpocrates Entries that Dominants maintain their priming by drawing on the aether within themselves, meaning they can stay primed within the deadlands. Hugo could've primed outside of them, then walked to the hideaway and attacked, which wouldn't have taken much effort given Titans sheer size.

Aruna and Gizamaluk inconsistent with Egi lore

• I don't really understand how the Notorious Marks Aruna and Gizamaluk are able to exist. Visually and mechanically they appear identical to Benedikta's Egis Chirada and Surparna. But Egis are tied to their Dominant and "will fade immediately should the Dominant who gave them being happen to be slain", according to The Thousand Tomes. We're first introduced to Marks and the Hunt Board after the second timeskip, 5 years after Benedikta is slain. Sleipnir's final entry also reinforces this fact about egis: "But an egi cannot exist without its Eikon, and when Barnabas died, so too did he". So....what gives? Anything summoned by Benedikta should long since have faded.

Why does no one use shields, or ranged weapons?

• No one uses a shield or a ranged weapon in the entire game. They have the concept, Clive is referred to as the shield of the phoenix or the phoenix's shield multiple times. We see that simple furniture can block magic attacks of a certain level. Your telling me no one has thought to use a shield/weapon combo so they can deflect a melee attack and then instantly counter? No one has thought about throwing a spear, axe, dagger, or even bows and arrows to hunt?
  • Axes do get thrown during the flashback scene where Benedikta is cornered by the bandits.

Bearers removing brands, in the second half of the game

Doesn't the scar left on the cheek after the surgery make it pretty obvious what was once there? If Bearers are unpersons to the majority of Valisthea, how come that scar isn't just as much proof as the brand itself?

• The brands themselves aren't just tattoos, they're specifically made to include lethal poison so that if one attempts to remove it, the branded will usually die. Even among the members of the hideout it's a serious event getting it removed as even though Tarja is a damn good healer, still doesn't have a 100% surviablity rate. Most regular people assume it can't be removed at all and assume a face scar is just that.

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