Cleyra: One Big Plot Hole? by Kigaeno Moondancer
This document is made for The Cleyran Tree and should thus remain there.

Cleyra was destroyed as a part of the game plot. In my opinion this wasn't necessary to destroy it as completely as they did to continue with the game plot. They could have even kept the same FMV and not made the tree completely gone afterwards. At any rate, this is why the destruction of Cleyra could not have occurred within the boundaries of game plot and simple logic:

- Odin supposably destroyed the entire Cleyran Tree in one hit. It was destroyed to the point that if you go there later there is nothing but a charred stump, not even rubble.

- Obviously, when a mountain size tree burns down, there would have been rubble.

- In game terms, the Bahumut summoning is much power powerful than the Odin summoning. Bahumut is called the greatest of the summonings (until he is outdone by Alexander and the Invincible). Still there is no argument that Bahumut is more powerful than Odin. Simply, if Bahumut could not damage the Lifa tree at all in half a dozen hits, and caused far less damage to Alexandria in multiple hits than was caused in Cleyra, Odin could not have destroyed a Lifa Tree sized Cleyran Tree in one hit. It doesn't follow.

- Cleyra exploded. That's not what Odin does. When you summon him later in the game as your own, he doesn't make an explosion. He does an instant kill attack that either kills an opponent instantly or doesn't. The Cleyran Tree would have died and withered, not exploded.

- Refer here and here. This clearly shows that the temple is not in the center of Cleyra, its on the very tip of one of the branches. Now this shows that Odin's attack hit the very center of the tree, but this shows that it hit the temple first. Well obviously that doesn't follow.

- Related to the above, if the temple was the first part to be hit, the explosion wouldn't have spread over and blown over the top as the FMV depicted. The explosion would have clipped off the tip of that branch and hit the desert beneath the tree.