Part 66: Bonus: Things You Missed The First Time: Part 4

Things You Missed The First Time: Part 4

This is the big one, the one I've been waiting for. This is perhaps the greatest deception that the game pulls off, and I only caught on to it two playthroughs ago. Normally in these I reveal all the evidence first and then reveal the big revelation, but because this is going to be such a complex update I'll start with the reveal first:

Simply put, there are a lot hints that point to the game having lied to us about the Score being off track. The Score may still be correct, even up to the current point of the game.

Let's take it from the top, eh?


The first major lie the game tells us is actually in the same scene where we first get an indication that the Score is supposedly going off track. Specifically, the characters listen to the prophecy and notice that Luke is seemingly never mentioned. It also states that Asch should have died at Akzeriuth. There are several things that point to this idea of replicas not being in the Score as false, but the big one is when we actually meet Lorelei in the core.


The thing you have to remember about the Score is that it is the memory of the world as dictated to Yulia by Lorelei. Lorelei knows the entire Score – as well as the history of the entire planet until the end of time – as a result. Yet here it is confronted with Luke, who according to the party does not exist in the Score. Lorelei apparently did not predict him.

And nothing. No shock, no surprise, not even an offhand comment. Lorelei is completely nonplussed by meeting this supposed deviation from the super prophecy. Moreover, he instantly accepts that Luke is a part of himself. He calls Luke and Asch you and the other you.

Why is this? Because Lorelei did predict Luke, and he is mentioned in the Score. Let me show you:

This is obviously Asch, given the birth year. At the time, he was indeed called Luke, 'the light of the sacred flame'. If you think about it, he also lead Kimlasca to new prosperity, though in an indirect way. He was the one who convinced Natalia to work towards bettering the country, and even after he was replaced with Luke she still continued to do so. It's kind of shortchanging Natalia to give credit to Asch, but we can say he was the one who gave the initial push.

The important bit here to note is that a specific range of time is given for the war: a full cycle of seasons, or one year. This is important very soon.

There are two ways to interpret this. The first is via Teodoro's comment in the last update, which said that the Tower of Rem was built in a mining town. The year is still 2018, and you could definitely say that the replicas are Luke's “people.” If we're going by this interpretation, then war will come soon after between Kimlasca and Malkuth, as per the next bit of the Score, so you could definitely also see the whole “power to calamity” bit playing out in that Luke's noble sacrifice in turn started a chain of events leading to war.

There is a second interpretation, however. In this one, the events at Akzeriuth did fulfill this piece of the Score. Luke did destroy the city, and in a way, he destroyed himself too. Not physically, but it did destroy him emotionally. Moreover, the event caused him to go through a transformation, changing him. He even vows to throw away his old self and start again.


Either of these interpretations work, though I prefer the second one, and it's the one I'll be using for the rest of this justification, since the events have already taken place in story. Also the second one has a bit more justification because of this tidbit:

This is Ion reading the Score for Luke. This Score was on the Seventh Fonstone, which means that it takes place after the events of the sixth, which includes Luke “destroying himself”. How can Luke search for anything if he's supposed to be dead? It must mean that even though Luke “destroys himself”, he's still alive.

But there's another component to this piece of the Score. Namely, that it seems to be referring to Asch, not Luke. Well, it does at first glance. Go back and read it again. “The Young Scion of Lorelei's power”, that's the phrase they use. Note that there is no name used. Asch is Asch and Luke is Luke, but both are scions of Lorelei's power. Second, Asch is 17. Almost 18, he's only a few months off from coming of age at the start of the game. It's odd then to refer to him as young. Luke, however? He's only 7, which is certainly young.

So what am I getting at here? That the Score uses the word 'young' to specifically denote Luke, not Asch. Luke is the younger scion, Asch is the older one. The Score is going out of its way to say that it's Luke who gets caught up in these events, not Asch.

Well, there was certainly a war.


We saw it. Moreover, note that unlike the first prediction, this one does not give any indication of the length of the war. It just says there is one. It could end, stop and start, or do backflips. It just says there will be a war, and there was.

Also, Malkuth did lose territory. You just don't think so because you assume the Score means to Kimlasca, or as a result of the war.

The Rugnican Plains were, however, Malkuth territory. A large chunk of that territory was lost when it fell into the Qliphoth. Sure it eventually got it back, but again the Score doesn't state any time. They did lose territory just as it said.

This happened, too. Mohs was outed as a total asshole, Natalia realized she needed to take a more active role in making sure the ruling class are helping the people, and Ingobert stopped following the Score blindly, which resulted in Kimlasca beginning to thrive. We see that in Part 3, when Kimlasca's commoners – people who hated the king enough in Part II to rebel to help Natalia – openly praise his stewardship of the land.


There's only one more part of the Score that's relevant to prove my point, which is this next bit:

Note the date of 2019. We're still only about halfway through ND2018, which means that if the original war we saw way back in Part 2 is what we're still talking about, it takes Kimlasca 300+ days at a minimum to reach Engeve, despite having been so close to it that we needed to evacuate it. This leads me to believe that this part of the Score is actually referring to a different conflict than the war mentioned above. The previous Rugnican War was progressing too fast for it to take that long for Kimlasca to advance north. So it makes sense that the war must stop and then pick up at a later date, with Kimlasca continuing what they started and pushing north.

Oh, and here's one last hint, though it's a bit of a stretch. When we first bust in on Mohs forcing Ion to read the Score, we hear a small fragment of the last part Ion was reading:

Again going by vague prophecy terms, this could very well be referring to the lowering of the Outer Lands, meaning that too was foretold in the Score.

So there you have it. I realize that was a lot to take in, and my explanation is a little fragmented, but this is the gist of the biggest lies the game tells us. The Score may very well never have gone off track: it's probably still going strong. We've spent some time laughing at the Score and those who still believed in it, but it looks like things are going to get more complicated from here on out. Buckle down, this is going to be a rough ride.