Spoilers for the launch trailer if you haven’t seen it yet. Careful!
1. Why is everyone on social media so excited that Emet-Selch is the narrator? I’ve seen a whole bunch of people suggesting that he’ll for sure be coming back because of this, but... He recorded an entire verbal record of Azem’s story into the constellation stone that WoL is now using. We already heard the first part of this narration in 5.3 during SoS. I feel like the promo material has made it pretty clear that Endwalker is a mirror narrative where WoL will real-time live through a second coming of the Final Days while learning about the events of the original Final Days through Emet-Selch’s recounting. Emet-Selch just so happens to be the narrator because he was the only Convocation member who believed Azem’s story was worth preserving. (Not that I wouldn’t LOVE to see him back though, of course...)
1.5. Emet-Selch’s narration on beginnings and endings, love and loss, is a very strong allusion to Shakespeare (To the last syllable of recorded time;/ And all our yesterdays have lighted fools/ The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!/ Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,/ That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,/ And then is heard no more...)
2. Looks like we’re getting a classic hero’s journey--WoL is going to set off to stop the Final Days, “fail” like Azem did, die/enter the Underworld/Aetherial Sea, discover the “truth,” be reborn (probably via the power of the Echo), and then finally resolve the Hydaelyn-Zodiark conflict in the way that Azem was originally not able to do. Classic stuff, we love to see it.
3. Is that Sadu Heavenflame in Garlemald? I know they deserve what they have coming, but do even Garleans deserve that?
4. Also saw a boatload of people on social media saying the white flower the WoL is holding is an asphodel (presumably because Pandaemonium’s first tier is “Asphodelos”) but I feel like social media has probably never seen an actual asphodel flower in their life. Leaf and petal-wise, the white flower in the trailer looks closer to chrysanthemum japonense than asphodel... Maybe, maybe if you need some Persephone connection, you could stretch it and say the flower might be a really stylized Narcissus (daffodil) (modeled by someone who has never seen one before)? Asphodel flowers were sacred to Persephone, but the flower that was actually used to lure her to the gate of the Underworld was Narcissus, not asphodel.
4.5. The “bloom that guides and tests” its bearer calls to mind Kathasaritsagara; the flower that measures ones’ conviction is a recurring symbol in non-Western writing...
5. The jagged shape of Hydaelyn resembles exactly the jagged look given to the “Gears of Change” patch art from a million years ago. Damn, what a tidy call back.
6. Anima, Anima, Anima. Letsssss goooooo.
7. Mysterious childish/feminine voice. Don’t know who this is. This voice sounds really different in JP/GER. Someone in the comments suggested Krile? Or a new female character?
8. Mysterious Garlean. My guess is Nerva, but honestly I wish it would be Noah, so we could get an actual end to the Bozja plotline instead of the bullshit field notes sum-up they gave us. (Long shot this might be Nero in new armor but I feel like that would imply a bigger plot twist than I’d expect with his character after committing himself to a life of irritating Cid until they die of old age together seeming to settle in to his defection at last in the 5.x patch cycle.)
9. Ominous dark orbs in the background of the sky; the “threat from another world” or “threat from above” plot line continues to be linked back to at every turn. Also lots of emphases on the mouths of the monsters throughout this trailer--speech, voice, sound, all very important.
10. Completely conflicted on Fandaniel’s line in the trailer. Many ways this could go--could this actually be an early reveal of the fact that he’s not a batshit crazy death seeker and that he really is trying to “save” the world? Or is this a fake out, and we’re hearing the voice of the pre-Sundered Fandaniel trying to originally save his world? I don’t think the clip of Fandaniel actually seamlessly fits into the book-ended clips of WoL here; things might have been spliced to trick us viewers. ALSO, the JP version of these lines sounds SIGNIFICANTLY more distressed and strained. (And the GER line sounds like... they should maybe have gotten German!Dango a better voice actor. XD) Jury is still out on Fandaniel’s actual goals and personality but this is definitely food for thought.
11. All those masks, definitely a call back to Dying Gasp--they symbolize the weight of all the lives lost to the Final Days, the Amaurotines still waiting and deserving of resurrection. A heavy burden indeed.
12. The one who says “It will be ours again, a world free of sorrow” in English is not Emet-Selch, and I actually don’t think it’s Fandaniel or Elidibus. I can’t place the voice right now so hopefully someone else knows who it is, but I actually don’t think this line necessarily goes with the scene it is being played over. Feels deliberately misleading--my first assumption was that this was a new Ascian, but this could actually be just about anyone, since “a world without sorrow” would apply just as well to the current Hydaelyn (being ravaged by Final Days 2.0) as the pre-Sundered world.
13. I feel like Alphinaud’s last lines might be a fakeout, trying to get us to assume the worst and fear for him. The lines are noticeably different in German. Most characters who get “death flags” waved that hard in trailers typically turn out okay (IIRC, Aymeric getting stabbed lol). I wondering if this might actually be a really big fakeout, and instead of Alphinaud actually saying these things, he might be reading them, such as from a letter left behind by the WoL, who will decide to go off to stop the Final Days just as Azem once did. And then line “Tomorrow’s never promised” may serve as a uniting line, shared by both Azem and WoL as explanation for their constant drive to be the one on the frontlines fighting to save the world... Not me over here imagining Azem leaving Hades off with this line to go on another grand adventure far from Amaurot, returning every time except for the one time that truly mattered...
14. The dialogue overall is noticeably different in the German version of the trailer compared to the ENG/JP. @_@ Might have to make a comparison for myself...
15. I fully respect the delay but god, LET ME IN LET ME IN LET ME IN--
so they won’t kill alphinaud when they gave him the entire story for him to learn how to be a good leader right? i would think the good leader lessons he got from minfilia, aymeric, raubahn, both the ala mhigan and doman resistance cells, and his experiences in eulmore would ultimately culminate in him becoming a leader of a new nation, either reworking sharlayan or leading garlemald out of their current piss poor state and into something better for both garleans and eorzeans. besides, those death flags they put into launch trailers usually result in nothing (didn’t aymeric have a fucking knife sticking out of him in the 3.1 launch trailer?)
