u/FortOfSnow

This is just a short post because I found it curious.

At the end of Pantalone and Dottore’s conversation I believe there’s a bit of visual foreshadowing going on. Remember, they don’t animate this stuff for nothing, it’s an entirely new animation that only happens here.

There’s a scale between Pantalone’s chair and Dottore’s intended, but empty chair. Now, obsession with fair exchange is notably Pantalone’s thing. Here, Pantalone places a single on the left scale, tipping it over to Pantalone’s side. This also happens when this is the thing he says:

”Isn’t it a bit early for goodbye?”

We know Dottore has worked hard to keep Pantalone alive for 400 years. We also learned during the quest that Pantalone is a confident and meticulous planner.

So, back to fair exchange. The scales suggest that Pantalone will have to do something for Dottore in order for it to once again balance out to equilibrium.

I assume most of us have been following the leaks quite closely, there have been speculation on memory and souls splitting and immortality and the like.

The cutscene feels like a gift from above, so much care has gone into it. And another interesting tidbit? I can see what Hoyo is doing, and they’re trying really hard to separate Zandik from the segments. That OG Zandik death? Horrifying. The segments are the ones being put in a bad light. Notice the dark lighting.

Notice instead what has warm and glowy lighting in the cutscene? The scene between Dottore and Pantalone, which brings me to my next point.

Don’t underestimate the yaoibait.

And I’m purely looking at it from a marketing perspective this time. It doesn’t matter what you personally feel about the ship. But the presentation of Dottore and Pantalone’s relationship during the course of the patch and the cutscene is insane.

See Hoyo for what it is: a company that wants to make money, where everything they do costs money.

Would they craft this much attention to these two, animate a whole segments cutscene and not expect to cash in on it on a later date? It sells itself.

I feel like I’m going a bit insane here, because you do not pay money for a 4 min cutscene of this quality and not expect to be rewarded for it in the long run. In this case: not discarding the characters you’re putting so much detail to.

Thoughts? Musings?

In have never felt this pain in my life and I can’t believe this happens the one time I forget to use the Modifier.

I’m becoming more and more convinced of the theory that has begun floating out there that the new weekly boss Dottore might be an imitation of the abyss, or forbidden knowledge. Remember, Dottore was looking into the possibility of weaponizing dreams and the withering.

Now, we know from leaks that this Dottore is going to have quite a bit of dialogue and I’m guessing that could be taken from any of the memories now existing in Irminsul, he certainly have quite a few of them floating in there from the death of the segments and I think this is partly why we see hints of Webtorre in the design. It’s part of the imitation.

This may also be why ALL language’s livestreams were so wishy-washy if what we were looking at was really Dottore.

But the blackened skin here and masked faces of both Dottore and Roland looks very similar, don’t they? Roland was also a manifestation of the abyss based on his memories.

That’s also why it seems regular (non-boss form) Dottore swoops in at the end of the quest. That’s the real one who set the plan in motion and observed the ”experiment” in action. Similar to the Dottore we saw observing the tree burning in Lazzo, and we’re already seeing in the trailer for 6.6 that they’re drawing heavy inspiration from the visuals of Lazzo.