VRYKERION

In case you’re not a Final Fantasy fan, there’s a bit of a hot topic spinning around in fan circles about the latest installment of the series, Final Fantasy XV.  It pertains to the bonus dungeon, Pitioss Ruins, that can be found after the game is complete by taking your flying car over the mountains and landing on a pain in the ass small strip of land.  From there you run up the hill and after the sun goes down you can enter the Ruins which has less to do with the rest of the game and more in common with games like VVVVVVVV or I Want To Be The Boshy joining forces with some insidious Little Big Planet levels.  Precision jumps, instant death spikes, tons of bottomless pits, and plenty of puzzles.  It’s a frustrating and yet suprisingly entertaining dungeon that had me less annoyed with each death and more so piecing together a solution or strategy.

However, the current “theory” or simply fan wank making the rounds right now is that this dungeon holds the key to understanding the entire game’s backstory and motivations for the villains.

Right…

To break it down simply, it posits that Ifrit, the second to last boss of the game, broke free of Titan’s imprisonment, ventured into the Underworld, traversed the Doomtrain to reach the afterlife, and freed the Goddess Eos who was locked away by the Astrals because she was pregnant with twin demi-god children (noted by the item the Genji Glove found in the statues belly button. Genji roughly translating to ‘Two Beginnings’.)  These twin children would be the founding members of the House of Lucis, possibly Ardyn and Izunia (The Izunia thing is a WHOLE other rant), and would eventually give rise to Noctis. (If you want more detail, there is a great video by Final Fantasy Peasant that breaks the whole thing down here. It’s also where I got the lovely image at the top.)

At first glance, it’s a great idea.  It explains why Ifrit turned against the other Astrals, Ardyn’s desire for revenge, why only the lineage of Lucis can use the Ring of the Lucii, and their connection to the Crystal.  Damn. What a great theory.  Boy is it clever.

I have a few problems with it though. (Shocker.)

A lot of the theory seems to be based heavily on Greek Mythology.  No surprise there. The game itself draws heavily on Greek Mythology to tell its story especially when it comes to names and themes.  However, the Pitioss Ruins theory goes beyond this and simply assumes at face value that if X happened with equivalent characters in the Greek myth, then the equivalent must be true in Final Fantasy XV.  So things like “Eos was imprisoned for loving a mortal and having half-god children” is based solely on the idea that “It’s how an Olympian God would react” with no basis whatsoever in the mythology or story of Final Fantasy XV.  There is zero evidence to back up the idea that the Astrals would be angry by this.  This is just slapping in frog DNA to fill in the holes of your dino DNA and saying that it was always intended to be like that.

Secondly, the theory throws in concepts that are wholly foreign to the game as if they were just matter of fact things.  For instance, the theory states quite plainly that Ifrit descended to the Underworld to find the Goddess Eos by riding Doomtrain.  Okay.  One, there is no “Underworld” ever mentioned in the game at any point as part of their mythology.  Two, no where is the contraption in the Ruins called Doomtrain nor is the concept of Doomtrain ever mentioned let alone as the ‘Sole means of reaching the afterlife’ in Final Fantasy XV.  This description from Doomtrain comes from other games, which is a bad practice since in no other Final Fantasy game is Bahamut a giant dude in a suit of dragon armor.

Finally, the Goddess Eos?  The Goddess that is central to this entire theory?  Not in the game.  She’s not.  Eos is the name of the world that the game takes place on.  Beyond that it’s even more fan theory based on random comments made by developers.  That the character in the logo is the ‘most important goddess’ despite never having a name and only appearing in the logo and one painting at the beginning (Oh, and after you beat the game it shows quite plainly who that sleeping figure is supposed to be, and she ain’t Eos.) So if there’s a super important goddess, and the world is called Eos, then that must be the goddess Eos right?  Sure, why not.  Except that nowhere is that backed up in the game.  We know who all six Astrals are.  We know that there were gods who left after creating the world and the Astrals but were never named.  So how do we know this is a goddess?  Well, mostly because this used to be based on the Fabula Nova Crystallis and in that there was a super important goddess named ‘Etro’ who was trapped in the ‘Unseen World’ (World of the Dead, Underworld.)  But all of that lore was scrapped and only used as a template for ideas (Bhunivelze = Unknown Creator, Fal’Cie = Astrals, l’Cie = Lucii.)

So this theory is built on another theory and uses more theories to fill in the gaps.  What’s actually canon to the game?  That there’s a dungeon called of the Pitioss Ruins and there’s some statues in it one of which looks like Ifrit. That’s about it.

But what’s the problem, Vry? I hear you ask.  It’s just a harmless fan theory, right?  Well, yea and no.  There are plenty of folks who are seeing this theory and turning around and shouting F#%& TABATA AND SQUARE ENIX FOR RUINING THIS GENIUS PLOT going along with the idea that if this had stayed Final Fantasy Versus XIII or that if Nomura had stayed on the project that this plot would have become fully fleshed out in the unknowable amount of time it would have taken to get finished (Don’t get me wrong, I like Nomura alright but the man is a hardcore creative and needs to some serious reining in if you want to put him in charge of a project or else he’ll just keep coming up with new ideas and trying to work them in).

So this theory is now being used as ‘Proof’ against the developers, and that’s where I felt like I should step up and use my corner of the web to try and remind folks that this is just a theory and one based on a LOT of conjecture.  It explains a lot, but that’s fairly easy to do when you construct the entire argument from random bits and pieces of unrelated material.  You can just as convincingly say that Eos was a Titan in Greek Mythology and Titan is an Astral, so Eos might be the mother of Titan as well. Which would make Noctis and Titan related, which would explain why they were mentally linked and the first Astral that Noctis forged a covenant with.  See! It all fits! It must be true!  Other than I pulled it out of my rump.

Fan Theories are great.  But they are theories.  They are not canon.  They are not backdoors into the game developers’ minds. Need I bring the Game Theorists’ “Sans is Ness” Undertale/Earthbound theory?  Great theory. So not canon.

But then why all the mysteries around the backstory of FFXV?  I don’t know.  Maybe because a lot of it wasn’t vitally important to the immediate situation.  My own theory on that (HA!) is that it might be a leftover concept from the Versus XIII days when the game was described as portrayed the affairs of gods through the eyes of a mortal.  Like war between the Astrals but only the given context of what a mere mortal would see or understand.  Do I know for certain?  Heck no.  But hey…  it fits, doesn’t it?