Sounsyy Wrote:The Lifestream is, as Liadan said, an actual river of that courses through the planet on its way to Silvertear Lake. Lore on the Lifestream can be found at the following links:
That's why I said "As far corpses are concerned". I'm well aware that the Lifestream is an actual river of energy, a concept to Final Fantasy that I first saw in VII (Not sure if it was touched upon in earlier games, which I didn't play.) I was speaking of the term 'Lifestream' in relation towards physical bodies and the composition/decomposition cycle in regards to my belief that their body doesn't just break away into energy on death.
LiadansWhisper Wrote:While that is true, it also seems silly to try to hold a fantasy setting to the same standards that we hold the real world to. If a trusted NPC says, "This is a river of souls," then we have no reason to disbelieve them.
I kind of disagree there. For the purpose of writing, a character's dialogue can be often romanticized or written in such a way that it will hold an atmosphere of mystery and mystique. It's a means to draw the reader and immerse them into the world, as opposed to just flatly saying, in clear cut means, exactly what something is, which would make the whole thing sound--pardon the pun--soulless and uninteresting. So we can never take certain things at 100% face value, specially when it comes to potentially abstract concepts that are of fantastic nature and merely described one way or another to aid in their understanding.
That they are a 'Trusted NPC' doesn't matter either: I've seen people discuss lore as it develops, and specifically in the subject of Primals, the player is given information about what the Primals are through the Scions, but more and more Primals defied the Scion's explanations (Like the Great King Mog case), a fact noticed not only by players but also by characters themselves, leading many players to theorize that in many aspects, the characters are as clueless as the player and potentially entirely wrong. Ascians themselves happen to cast doubt on the player and character's knowledge of the power of the Echo, and although they're not 'Trusted', they displayed enough abnormalities through their power that I think its fairly obvious that there is more to it than what the player is just let on.
Whether that's intentional or not, I've no clue. For all I know this could simply be the writer's means to a retcom device, as time passes they will inevitably develop parts of the lore, and may simply use "This earlier explanation was incorrect and these character's simply didn't know better" to avoid the new conflicting with the old. Which ties in with the whole Nabriales case where he just conjured up a new body out of thin air, which as far we knew up until that point, was impossible.
Finally, why can't we hold fantasy to the same standards as real life? I see people say that all the time, but frankly to me it just sounds like one way of saying "Its fantasy, don't look too into it", while I happen to like looking into things
. Fantasy is always based on the real world to some degree or another. These ideas aren't thought out of thin air, with a lot of them having ties into real world mythology. And as far as non-fantastic lore concepts which are present in the real world, I see no problem in holding those to the same standards either. 'Figure of speech' exists in both real world and Final Fantasy.
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