What's the point with that quite lackluster story in Endwalker?

As an aside, the recent discussion reminded me of this thread:

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...ly-good-though

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Originally Posted by Brinne

There's a dark joke in here somewhere about how Venat and Ilberd, with their ideologies and methods, secured victory and achieved everything they wanted, whereas Emet-Selch's point of failure and his downfall is stated to be his "kindness," but I probably don't have the heart or the brainpower to properly formulate it at this moment.

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Nice guys finish last? :P

Emet was undone by the Azem soul. That was his Achilles' Heel and Venat knew it. I don't know how familiar you are with other language translations, but "matchmaker" is used in almost every (all?) other version except EN in his UT dialog. Purely speculation on my part, but I can't help but feel that Venat specifically used Emet's love for Azem against him. She'd thrown in her lot with the WoL and, aside from knowing the future, would've known that would be his weakness. I don't know if that was the intention, but if it was it makes her exponentially worse in my eyes because that's such a sadistic thing to do to someone. Every time I think Emet couldn't be any more tragic I learn that, yes, yes he can.

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Originally Posted by Brinne

If Hien had, as a diplomat, approached the Steppe leadership openly and proposed they join forces for mutual benefit against the Empire, that would be one thing. But instead he resorted to what amounts to a sneaky power play to force the issue, and no amount of hand-waving about "well actually the fantasy Mongols are conveniently totally cool with it because they love violence anyway and hey there's the Empire on their doorstep after us to piss them off" is going to mitigate that, for me.

Yeah, Hien found a great loophole in their cultural ritual and he exploited the hell out of it. Look, he's not participating in the Naadam as an agent of Doma, he's fighting on behalf of the Mol, who after their victory have agreed to let him call all the shots because of their superstitions and because Cirina has a crush on him! What Is The Point With That Quite Lackluster Story In Stormblood

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Originally Posted by tokinokanatae

So we told the other participants outside the Mol they would be expected to fight and die for another country if we won? I must have missed that scene.

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I'll be honest with you: I wouldn't know. As I've said Stormblood is... reaaally far in my memory, and I've tried to look up dialogue in my screenshots folder only to remember how little I cared about the story prior to 5.0. Oops. So the other tribes didn't know about Hien's intentions? Well then, that's pretty bad.

I still think that Sadu and Magnai giving their full approval after the fact and being so ridiculously enthusiastic about random bloodshed and one upping each other mitigates how I feel about it a lot. But I see what you mean in a more meta way about the writing making it pretty convenient, especially the Garlean attack right after the fight felt random from an in-universe standpoint, and not-so-random from an out-of-universe one.

In the end I'll admit to being biased in that I didn't care about StB at the time and turned my brain off. I have an alt that is going through Othard soon, I'll rewatch it all with a fresh look. Likewise for the Confederacy plot, I remember nothing about it beside feeling it was a little contrived even at the time, like well that one dude is Doman and he is certainly feeling some kind of way about imperial occupation... so I guess they're all on our side now!


(Edit) This has made me reflect on how people who aren't lore nerds likely feel about Endwalker... Basically, the way I viewed Stormblood may be how a fair number of people think of Endwalker, with the added fact that Endwalker had a lot of spectacle and superficially enjoyable sequences, so it would logically get a higher base rating. My brain was off for all of it, and bringing weaknesses and inconsistencies of the plot to my attention now is mildly interesting, but it doesn't impact too much how I feel about Stormblood – which was largely "cool zones, I liked seeing those places we've mentioned for so long. the plot happened I guess". You could take the average player and point out to them every single way in which the plot of Endwalker blows and I feel like at most you'd get a reaction that amounts to "huh, yeah, I guess you're right. Hm". You would like more introspection to happen, but the brain power simply isn't going there for whatever reason.

Sorry for the stream of consciousness cringe, carry on

Endwalker also smacks the player over the head with how much Venat loves you, throws in a time loop to make it seem like Venat's actions had to happen that way, has the fan faves all bend over backwards - sometimes in ways that don't fit them - to reinforce this, underplays the Sundering by not really showing it in game and uses the Plenty as a caricature to give the veneer of plausibility to Venat's fears (which would only potentially materialise if her people did not change, made worse by the fact that they did not get the information they needed or the chance to decide for themselves on this), and more besides. Because of the scale of the act EW was trying to justify, and all the foregoing narrative gaslighting, it's much harder to ignore or gloss over it, but yeah, if you don't look too hard at what's going on, you may think what Venat did was necessary and not that big a deal. Show that Nier crossover scene, maybe the debates that took place in Ere our curtain falls, and throw in some nuanced discussion over it as with the Omega quest line, and we might have seen a different impression being formed by those who pay less close attention to the lore. Either way, yes, the SB story on closer analysis does seem to have involved an awful lot of plot convenience for the protagonists.

Well, like I said, even if I squinted hard at these elements at the time, and can talk about them if prompted, it's not like I felt the need to throw a fit or post on the official forums or anything because of them, either. I mostly rolled my eyes and moved on, besides some private discussions purely for fun (some of us are weirdoes who actively enjoy dissecting writing elements that do and don't work for us.) I can rail on Hien all day, but Hydaelyn is obviously on another level, and fundamentally, Hien amounts to an arc character that I can mostly ignore in the bigger picture - Hydaelyn's actions form the foundational lore for this entire story and world, and had a direct, devastating impact on the storylines and characters that truly resonated with me.

But I think it's true you can sort of identify a similar emotional thread in terms of someone who generally enjoys an expansion, but isn't that invested in the plot specifically - and for whom pointing out the issues doesn't change their overall feelings that much, even if they acknowledge what you're saying.

Lackluster? It explained the story why the FD happened and the back story of Hydealyn along with other Ancients. It shows hope and light overcoming darkness and despair.

Yeah, I personally have a bone to pick with any "never strive for perfection -- appreciate the status quo" and "suffering is a part of life, so embrace it and grow stronger" narratives.

I grew up in what I thought was a privileged environment (until I grew up and learned what real privilege looked like), and later got a job that put me in direct contact with people who grew up in, or are perhaps even still trapped in, scenarios which can only be described as living nightmares. I've had to talk to and interview someone one step away from suicide one time too many (and one time is LITERALLY too many), so yeah....I have a helluva beef with any game that comes around and tries to peddle "Actually, it's a good thing for people to know suffering -- that way, they can grow strong". Yes, no. Just....eat my whole butt.

I would rather remove my own eye with a cheese grater than tell the people I've met that their suffering was "good". Yes, sometimes you have to tell someone whatever they need to hear to not let despair overwhelm them and force them to do something rash, but if there's one thing I've learned on this job:

"Copium is NOT the same as Happiness."

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Originally Posted by Krokov

Lackluster? It explained the story why the FD happened and the back story of Hydealyn along with other Ancients. It shows hope and light overcoming darkness and despair.

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Darkness isn’t always supposed to be bad though per shb, and light isn’t supposed to always be good. So why are we now reversing that and going back to the stereotype of “dark=bad, light=good?”

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Originally Posted by Lauront

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Originally Posted by Brinne

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Good point both; the sheer scale of Venat's actions and how central she is to the entire arc makes her play in a wholly different ball park.

I like that Hien is a very questionable "good guy" – probably the worst of the country leaders (and incidentally the one representing a fictional, ancient version of the writers' country). But he isn't questioned much by anyone that Matters™, is he?... Pft. His reaction to Yotsuyu's pimp is especially egregious... It's also interesting that of all the Scions, only Lyse (as far as I remember??) accompanies us in the Steppes. Of all Scions, I think she would be the one with the fewest qualms about Hien's actions, for a couple of reasons: she's the punch first ask questions later girl, likely not politically savvy, she is also in somewhat of a similar situation to Hien... By the time we meet back with other Scions, the deed has been done. Again, being able to express your own opinion via more critical dialogue choice would have made this more interesting.


(Edit)

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Originally Posted by KizuyaKatogami

Darkness isn’t always supposed to be bad though per shb, and light isn’t supposed to always be good. So why are we now reversing that and going back to the stereotype of “dark=bad, light=good?”

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It... just occurred to me that darkness was supposed to be energy, chaos and entropy while light represented stillness, quiet and stagnation... Yet Endwalker very obviously portrayed the elder primal of light as driven by the ideal of evolving and moving forward, while the elder primal of darkness was painted with the "ill-fated wish for a stagnant society" brush...

https://i.imgur.com/MTEMKZG.gif

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Originally Posted by CrownySuccubus

Yeah, I personally have a bone to pick with any "never strive for perfection -- appreciate the status quo" and "suffering is a part of life, so embrace it and grow stronger" narratives.

I grew up in what I thought was a privileged environment (until I grew up and learned what real privilege looked like), and later got a job that put me in direct contact with people who grew up in, or are perhaps even still trapped in, scenarios which can only be described as living nightmares. I've had to talk to and interview someone one step away from suicide one time too many (and one time is LITERALLY too many), so yeah....I have a helluva beef with any game that comes around and tries to peddle "Actually, it's a good thing for people to know suffering -- that way, they can grow strong". Yes, no. Just....eat my whole butt.

I would rather remove my own eye with a cheese grater than tell the people I've met that their suffering was "good". Yes, sometimes you have to tell someone whatever they need to hear to not let despair overwhelm them and force them to do something rash, but if there's one thing I've learned on this job:

"Copium is NOT the same as Happiness."

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I also have a personal, seething hatred for these kinds of messages (along with "just world fallacy"-type threads and "protagonist-centric morality," which I consider to be my Ultimate Mortal Nemesis in storytelling), as to me, they usually amount to being transparently self-serving and trying to throw a coat of pretty, manipulative rhetoric over enforcing existing power structures or justifying why it's okay that people other than us suffer. Why it's okay to leave them in a state of suffering and not extend what power we can, while pretending "well, actually, doing nothing for anyone else or ever going out of my way for anyone else is the morally correct thing, and for their own good, if you really think about it, trust me bro." One question I usually ask when it comes to this kind of heavy-handed theming is - okay, who is this message for? Who does this narrative serve?

In Endwalker, the answers to those questions are, viewed generously, well-meaning but misguided, and viewed less generously, incredibly ugly, in the context of the Player In-Group versus People Not In The Player In-Group (the Other, Not Like Us, So It's Less Sad When Bad Things Happen To Them Versus Them Happening To Us.)

And it is really tragic to me on a writing level that Endwalker came so close to hitting on a theme incredibly near and dear to my heart - the value of living even if the shape of that living is permanently imperfect or less than ideal. The idea that even if the overall status quo of your life isn't what you may have wished for, you can still help other people, still enrich others' lives - and you can still have good moments, even if at times they seem fleeting. It is beautiful to me - and I say this with the disclaimer that lack of judgment also being very important to me when it comes to people dealing with their own pain - when someone is still able to find or construct a quiet, imperfect meaning in their imperfect lives. As I've mentioned once, I'm disabled, and one part of that is that I would indeed die horribly in a zombie apocalypse (or a post-Sundering world, lol) where I had no access to insulin - so when done well, this theme can drive me to tears like nothing else.

Hell, this is part of why Shadowbringers resonated with me so much, as much as I loved and sympathized with the Ancients. It was also very important to me that the Scions were able to look at this conflict, have no logical arguments against Emet-Selch, be forced to concede his points - and assert that they still wanted to live and believe they had the right to live, questions of inferiority or superiority be damned.

And then Endwalker took such a wild swing at this ball that the bat spun around and smacked it in the back of the head, leading to bleeding, concussions, and probable brain damage.

See, the notion that "it's beautiful when someone, despite everything, is able to find meaning in a life of hardship" immediately becomes unspeakably evil, actually, and almost weirdly fetishistic, when taken a step further into "therefore I will attempt to manufacture as much of that beauty as possible by inflicting hardship on people." That it can be inspiring and admirable when someone is able to grasp a desire to live in spite of everything does not change the fact that they should not have had to struggle to do so to begin with, and the error in mistaking those two things is enormous. Going back to the question of "who is this story for?" - it comes down to the feeling that this story is pushing hard to celebrate our specific moment, our specific way of life, our specific conditions in our specific time, injustices and atrocities and all, and therefore, whoever benefits from all those things - at the expense of any other possibilities or ways of existing, and to the point of suggesting if we ever reach a state where things could be considered better, then they should actually be beaten back down to the state we're at Right Now, So Stop Asking. There's a myriad of reasons why that leaves a horrible taste in my mouth, personally. I prefer my stories to encourage compassion and understanding, not weird self-glorification.

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Originally Posted by Brinne

(damn great post)

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Cue Emet-Selch finally learning that neither the unspeakable extinction-level tragedy that engulfed the entire planet nor the Sundering that literally ended his entire race and culture and wiped its existence from history were random accidents, natural events or otherwise unplanned, but that both were, in fact, knowingly manufactured and inflicted upon humanity by two of his peers with full knowledge of the consequences... and he expresses nothing but faint grudging praise for Venat, and playfully chides Hermes in a single line for "making him forget" (ay lmao RIP one of the most impactful lines of the entire arc).

(While Omega does try to excuse Hermes in a way, that's a different context, as Omega was not personally impacted by his actions, and itself comes from a survival-of-the-fittest hellscape that would favor interpreting his actions the way it did.) (Meta-wise, however: Ishikawa please stop trying to push him being in any way justified please and thank you.)

GOD. That goddamned Ultima Thule scene. It's ––– I'm sorry it makes me so mad I'm not sure how to qualify it.

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Originally Posted by Brinne

I also have a personal, seething hatred for these kinds of messages (along with "just world fallacy"-type threads and "protagonist-centric morality," which I consider to be my Ultimate Mortal Nemesis in storytelling), as to me, they usually amount to being transparently self-serving and trying to throw a coat of pretty, manipulative rhetoric over enforcing existing power structures or justifying why it's okay that people other than us suffer. Why it's okay to leave them in a state of suffering and not extend what power we can, while pretending "well, actually, doing nothing for anyone else or ever going out of my way for anyone else is the morally correct thing, and for their own good, if you really think about it, trust me bro." One question I usually ask when it comes to this kind of heavy-handed theming is - okay, who is this message for? Who does this narrative serve?

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The thing this game tends to do, which drives me insane at times, is this "this looks like that, so it's the same" (coupled with the "it's ok when we do it", which 6.1 actually managed to whip out pretty fast...), where it will take two things that aren't really analogous (someone dying in the conventional sense vs the state of the ancients in the Zodiark purgatory, to use an example here), ignore that difference and try hit you over the head with the same thing over and over, with very cheesy dialogue at times. I wasn't familiar with the term "Broken Aesop" until Lurina brought it up, but when I read through its description, it hits on so many of the weird inconsistencies in EW (generally, 14's, but EW is by far the worst) messaging. It comes across as a very hypocritical form of preaching, and yeah the term you use, protagonist-centric morality, seems apt.

I've mentioned it before but a theme I tend to detest in RPGs is the notion that it's right and proper for what I'll term "elder races" to just accept dying out and fading from the world whilst trying to present attributes such as immortality/longevity as inherently bad somehow (again with the sundered being the Goldilocks golden mean here), and depending on how they handled the Sundering, I was concerned it'd cross into that territory, as opposed to framing it the way SHB did and you articulated. I'm glad the Omega quest refuted the whole notion that there is some proper response to despair, which these alien/ancient races, lacking, could do naught but crumble. I just hope they avoid trying to realise the crypto-dystopia Amaurot plotlines through some other area, like Pandaemonium, though I'm hoping they've properly imbibed their learnings now from EW.

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Originally Posted by Teraq

Cue Emet-Selch finally learning that neither the unspeakable extinction-level tragedy that engulfed the entire planet nor the Sundering that literally ended his entire race and wiped its existence from history were random accidents, natural events or otherwise unplanned, but that both were, in fact, knowingly manufactured and inflicted upon humanity by two of his peers with full knowledge of the consequences... and he expresses nothing but faint grudging praise for Venat.

(While Omega does so, in a way, for Hermes – but that's a different context, as Omega was not personally impacted by his actions, and itself comes from a survival-of-the-fittest hellscape that would favor interpreting his actions the way it did.)

GOD. That goddamned Ultima Thule scene. It's ––– I'm sorry it makes me so mad I'm not sure how to qualify it.

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But it's unquestionable proof that Venat's plan is Certifiably Ironclad, that the ancients had no other way of resolving the issue, and that no other outcome was conceivable. Yes, that's the power vested in that single line of his - whether this makes any sense in and of itself, given his subsequent words, or given the refinements to it in some of the other localisations.

There's also an unpleasant - and perhaps unintentional - habit of condemning desperate people for doing terrible things in situations where they are afforded no other choice. Nobody can be expected to simply just roll over and die when the alternative is harm befalling their loved ones.

That goes for the antagonists as well. I sympathise more with the Ancients and the Garleans purely on the basis that they didn't have a convenient 'I WIN' button to press whenever they needed to get out of a desperate corner that they were forced into by circumstances outside of their control.

The 'it looks like this, so it's that' has also frustrated me as well. It's something many players do in an effort to reach a specific conclusion that isn't necessarily present. I tend to switch off when people start pushing the idea that the Ancients were going to end up like the people of the Plenty because not only was that simply Venat's belief, the Ancients were never told of the threat that Meteion posed. It's the equivalent of someone knowing that a zombie virus is going to break out and spread across the globe only to keep that knowledge hidden and kill the survivors for trying to build an isolated community that tries to capture some of the comforts present pre-apocalypse.

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Originally Posted by Brinne

Going back to the question of "who is this story for?"

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A lot of people seemed to love it and I haven't been able to pinpoint the disconnect other than generally the people who did accepted the conclusions that were presented. Namely: 1) You cannot change the past, 2) The Ancients were 100% going to become The Plenty, and 3) The Ancients could never figure out a way to deal with a dynamis threat. This, by extension, led them to fully accept that the sundering was not only necessary, but the lesser of two evils. A such, yes, Venat is the tragic heroine as depicted, subjecting mankind to an unthinkable act but the only one which potentially ensured their survival.

Unfortunately, as has been hashed out repeatedly, this case simply wasn't made. Venat's excuses after Ktsis are all easily debunked with information we received starting from Elidibus in the CT to that point. Both Yoshi-P and Ishikawa refer to Venat's "beliefs". They weren't objective truths nor could they be as it would require her being able to predict with absolute certainty the future of the Ancients. She says herself she has a "basic understanding" of dynamis, but it's not her field of study, so she also lacked the knowledge to conclude the Ancients couldn't counteract Meteion. It also seemed ridiculous to me that Meteion is an Ancient created problem, but Ancients can't create a solution to it?

According to the internet :P, I'm exactly the type of person to whom Hermes should have resonated and I didn't understand him at all. I found him instead to be emotionally immature and illogical when it came to the subject of death, certainly not the "most human" of the Ancients (a descriptor I see frequently). His temper tantrum in Ktsis was at least consistent with this characterization. The problem is, again, they're trying to re-frame it as something else. Everything regarding the Ancients could be summed up with they show us one thing but tell us it's another. It's the gaslighting expansion.

Thematically, I can't figure that out either. There doesn't seem to be any consistency as I've seen many people with depression say it spoke to them and many people with depression (like myself) who found it full of platitudes. I absolutely hate the "forge ahead" message they keep pushing. I'm immediately reminded of the people who give unsolicited advice to someone who's suffering, usually without having any idea of what the person is going through. As if a supposedly uplifting quote can be blanket applied to everyone in every situation. Not to mention that this doesn't affect the WoL or Scions at all. None of whom lost anything, display any emotional or psychological damage, or (aside from the WoL in a quest chain that's locked behind a 2 expansion old raid) feel the need to reflect. It's just business as usual. The world itself outside of two zones barely experienced the Final Days, which I was hoping would cause the sundered to have more empathy for the Ancients. Instead, it just feels like a "We're #1!" situation despite their heavy reliance upon the unsundered to succeed.

All I know for sure is I was not the target audience for this expansion and this is the first time I've experienced this feeling in an RPG. As I said, I think they were focused more on themes and messages than telling a good and compelling story. There are other issues, of course, like being strong-armed through the narrative, my character being forced to react in ways contradictory to myself, and being expected to accept conclusions without the writing having taken the necessary steps for me to reach them.

This turned into a ramble. :P

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Originally Posted by Teraq

GOD. That goddamned Ultima Thule scene. It's ––– I'm sorry it makes me so mad I'm not sure how to qualify it.

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Same. Especially after the NieR crossover doubled down on Emet's 12k years of "hatred and heartbreak". I could accept what Brinne said about Emet not wanting to upset the WoL, but the leap to commending Venat was too much. I can't help but wonder if that was also Yoshi-P's doing because it was so character inconsistent and didn't match with the surrounding dialog. "We need to have fan favorite, Emet, praise Venat too to really sell her character!" Speaking of which, did anyone else notice his Elpis description of her essentially paints her as a Mary Sue? She's apparently the best there is at everything. :| This also seems in conflict with his other dialog that suggests he didn't like her even back then.

Depending on how literal you wanna take the nier crossover, either they literally stopped being people for a long time and were just mindless lumps of aether or they were rendered back to pre stoneage levels...

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Originally Posted by CrownySuccubus

Simple. They had an army. We had a WOL.

That said, Ishgard abandoning its isolationism made sense. That was imposed by a tyrannical theocracy to keep people ignorant and secure said religious dictator's power hold.

But now that you mention it, I can't help but notice that most cases of the WOL ending an isolationist society results from "They have X and we need X to save the world. Therefore, we have to force them to give us X", which basically comes across as a 15th-Century "How to Justify Colonial Expansion" manual. I mean, yeah, the fact that the player usually needs to upturn some society to get what they need to save the world is both true and not exactly new to RPGs, but it IS noticeable how often it happens to the Scions.

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No offense, but the WoL died from Black Rose. We're not some unfallible deity, if Garlemald in its prime threw the worst it had to offer at us and they all dogpiled us I'm rather certain we'd die. We're not a freaking Super Saiyan, or a character in a musou plowing through literal regiments of enemy soldiers simultaneously. The only reason the threat Garlemald proffered was defanged was because Zenos slaughtered them all offscreen so the Garlemald expansion didn't have to happen.

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Originally Posted by Rulakir

Same. Especially after the NieR crossover doubled down on Emet's 12k years of "hatred and heartbreak". I could accept what Brinne said about Emet not wanting to upset the WoL, but the leap to commending Venat was too much. I can't help but wonder if that was also Yoshi-P's doing because it was so character inconsistent and didn't match with the surrounding dialog. "We need to have fan favorite, Emet, praise Venat too to really sell her character!" Speaking of which, did anyone else notice his Elpis description of her essentially paints her as a Mary Sue? She's apparently the best there is at everything. :| This also seems in conflict with his other dialog that suggests he didn't like her even back then.

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This worries me, tbqh what with how Y'shtola seems to be leading the next patch cycle/possible expansion. Y'shtola feels like a developer's mouthpiece more than a character to me these days. Black Mage job switch, the most fanatically devoted to Hydaelyn of all the Scions, etc. Feels like we're gearing up to be smashed in the face with more faulty ideology with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer.

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Originally Posted by SentioftheHoukai

No offense, but the WoL died from Black Rose. We're not some unfallible deity, if Garlemald in its prime threw the worst it had to offer at us and they all dogpiled us I'm rather certain we'd die. We're not a freaking Super Saiyan, or a character in a musou plowing through literal regiments of enemy soldiers simultaneously. The only reason the threat Garlemald proffered was defanged was because Zenos slaughtered them all offscreen so the Garlemald expansion didn't have to happen.

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No offense, but you're overreacting to a single line that was meant as a joke.

No s--t the WOL isn't invincible. That doesn't change the fact that they have fought and/or defeated an impossible number of threats up to and including the literal embodiment of oblivion itself.

I'm really relieved to see other people taking issue with the perspective on suffering (outside of religious/ writing viewpoints.) It was possibly my biggest gripe with the game, but I felt reluctant to voice it because even in more critical circles it isn't touched upon and I was left wondering if I had read the game wrong. But I just couldn't help feeling like the game's overarching theme of "suffering is not only inevitable but something to appreciate because it makes the good times seem even better!" was an absolutely horrible message. More than anything, I felt angry; while I'd rather not touch on my personal experiences, suffice it to say it is incredibly patronising to say to someone going through the worst kind of pain that somehow their suffering is necessary or beneficial. It is not. Grief is not. Unrelenting physical pain, mental anguish, illness and traumatic events are not, and never will be. You endure and live through them because you have to, there is no reasoning or justification behind any of it, and I highly doubt if you offered to remove that pain from any given individual, anyone would actually refuse. It's the sort of meaningless platitude you give to someone going through a breakup or some sort of stressful period in their life - something you look back on and realise was a period of change, or learning about relationships, yourself, and so on (which the Ancients did!), not torment and suffering the likes of which Venat bestowed upon mankind with the sundering.

And on a similar note, while I don't have a problem with the notion of letting yourself depend on and seek help from others in times of difficulty, to me the game seemed to push this underlying message that your life is essentially meaningless and intolerable without people around you, which is… really, really awful, although they've been at this for a couple of expansions with their habit of turning isolated and tormented characters suicidal and/ or into irredeemable villains. Some people are unfortunate enough to go through painful and difficult periods of their life alone, or lacking a loving and supportive network around them, and there is something offensively tone deaf and potentially harmful about the way they write off such characters as doomed or hopeless. I think Krile alone had one line prior to UT about remembering/ holding onto your passions because they are what drive you, which for a moment was a breath of fresh air and seemed like a promising exploration of what other kinds of "meaning" life might hold for someone… only to add that it's because "you share them with others!" It was like G'raha in Garlemald during the Final Days section, where he gets angry about the future they fought for being jeopardised, and for all of 0.5 seconds behaves like a character with his history would. For a fleeting moment, I actually found him a promising character.

…and then in UT he's trailing around after the WoL with all our friends supposedly gone in the middle of a potential cataclysmic universal destruction event with no clear end in sight asking if he thinks he'll be in a song one day.

Utter confusion and bewilderment, followed by brief rays of hope… only to be even more disillusioned than before. It sums up my issues with Endwalker quite well, in all honesty. I'm glad to have found this thread and find some catharsis, at least.

It's exactly why I think that a broader variety of viewpoints need to be brought to the forefront and pushed as acceptable. I'm honestly getting pretty tired of reading things along the lines of 'Venat had no option but to...' in response to any suggestion that murdering her own people and then lying about it was a pretty messed up thing to do. I really don't understand what was so hard about having someone be disgusted with it all and very sternly call it out during the MSQ's.

That aside, the game has players from many different countries, backgrounds, belief systems and personal experiences. Trauma is regrettably not something few have dealt with though many players have experienced it and I'm pretty weary of it being pushed that Hermes was 'totes relatable111' when that simply isn't the case. At least Ishikawa acknowledged that most people would not agree with or like him.

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Originally Posted by Lunaxia

And on a similar note, while I don't have a problem with the notion of letting yourself depend on and seek help from others in times of difficulty, to me the game seemed to push this underlying message that your life is essentially meaningless and intolerable without people around you, which is… really, really awful, although they've been at this for a couple of expansions with their habit of turning isolated and tormented characters suicidal and/ or into irredeemable villains. Some people are unfortunate enough to go through painful and difficult periods of their life alone, or lacking a loving and supportive network around them, and there is something offensively tone deaf and potentially harmful about the way they write off such characters as doomed or hopeless. I think Krile alone had one line prior to UT about remembering/ holding onto your passions because they are what drive you, which for a moment was a breath of fresh air and seemed like a promising exploration of what other kinds of "meaning" life might hold for someone… only to add that it's because "you share them with others!"

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What you experienced in Endwalker is another example of this; you are correct in that Endwalker's ultimate "lesson"...the thing that the audience is supposed to take away from the story...is "life sucks but it sucks less when you're part of a collective, so make sure you're part of that collective at all costs". The "bonds you share with others" is repeated and touted over and over again as the key to everything..

Japan is an extremely collectivist society. How collectivist? Collectivist to the point that people are afraid that helping someone on the street would make them stand out too much. Japanese culture praises the value of the group over the individual. It's one of the reasons that social change is very difficult there; pointing out problems or stating that something isn't good for society is shunned because it's considered worse to introduce negative feelings.

For more on the subject, I have to recommend this video by "Let's ask Shogo", who is a Japanese man who explains it better than I do.

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Originally Posted by Theodric

It's exactly why I think that a broader variety of viewpoints need to be brought to the forefront and pushed as acceptable.

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This is not an issue that could be solved by a "broader variety of viewpoints", unfortunately. Subjects on matters of mental health, depression, suicide, etc. are, in fact, the opposite.

It's a subject that you should not be bringing up without listening to the experienced and trained professionals who handle it.

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Originally Posted by Rulakir

Thematically, I can't figure that out either. There doesn't seem to be any consistency as I've seen many people with depression say it spoke to them and many people with depression (like myself) who found it full of platitudes. I absolutely hate the "forge ahead" message they keep pushing. I'm immediately reminded of the people who give unsolicited advice to someone who's suffering, usually without having any idea of what the person is going through.

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There were moments in Endwalker that actually did resonate with me pretty strongly. The big one is the scene with G'raha in Thavnair, because learning when to throw a wrench in it has saved me many a spiral into a depression/anxiety-ridden mess. Seeing a literal manifestation of that was something I enjoyed a lot.

I also love works where life-affirmation is a central theme, no matter how shallow they might be. There are plenty of other stories where I felt it was executed better, but you could throw it in anything and it'll set off the happy brain chemicals. I didn't much appreciate the "just deal with it 5head" aspect of it but squaring up with the literal embodiment of despair was pretty cool because of the Gurren Lagann vibes it had. I can't say it "spoke to me" on any meaningful level aside from the aforementioned part, though. If I wanted Gurren Lagann I'd just watch Gurren Lagann, because nothing does TTGL like TTGL.

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Originally Posted by CrownySuccubus

No offense, but you're overreacting to a single line that was meant as a joke.

No s--t the WOL isn't invincible. That doesn't change the fact that they have fought and/or defeated an impossible number of threats up to and including the literal embodiment of oblivion itself.

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Outside of alternate timelines it's also worth mentioning the final fight against Zenos, or rather it's conclusion. That was certainly a reminder that, determination and Echo notwithstanding, the WoLs body is still mortal and it was pretty clear that the WoL would've died if the emergency teleportation device hadn't appeared.

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Originally Posted by Brinne

snip

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To reference current events, this smacks to me [the argument about "You must embrace suffering", that is] of the same rhetoric people arguing against gun control and social programs are using right now. "Pull yourself up by your bootstraps!" and "Murders are going to happen even if we ban semi automatic rifles, people will just use knives!" Yeah, so what? Our job on this planet is to minimize the suffering of other people to the best of our abilities. To do otherwise is to do a massive disservice to humanity. It's probably why the messages around Venat bother me as much as they do, it's the same rhetoric I hear in real life to justify injustices that utterly disgusts me.

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Originally Posted by SentioftheHoukai

Y'shtola feels like a developer's mouthpiece more than a character to me these days.

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Frankly, Yoshi-P has the polar opposite personality of mine. I already have issues with Azem being written as some kind of "chaos goblin", as I've seen on Reddit, and now my WoL is apparently a traveler at heart who is always in search of greater challenges. Since when? It feels like Yoshi-P has a certain idea about the typical gamer he wants to superimpose on the WoL that is just not me. I also don't care for Y'shtola, she's one of my least favorite Scions, so if she's going to become the developer mouthpiece it means I'll never have a moment's peace from her.

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Originally Posted by Lunaxia

But I just couldn't help feeling like the game's overarching theme of "suffering is not only inevitable but something to appreciate because it makes the good times seem even better!" was an absolutely horrible message.

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It is. I suspect that chronic health issues weren't a factor in the writing, which unfortunately makes the messaging come across as tone deaf. I especially hate the "forge ahead" nonsense, which is just another version of 'bootstrap'. At least the Social Darwinism was walked back in the Omega quest chain, although, it amusingly also made the sundering even less justified in the process. The way 6.0 made it appear, basically if you had mental health issues you were screwed.

I can't remember where I heard it, but something about studies showing that the people who suffer the least were the happiest overall and I couldn't help but laugh because the exact opposite is portrayed in EW. It's one of those r/im14andthisisdeep things that isn't rooted in reality.

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Originally Posted by AziraSyuren

I also love works where life-affirmation is a central theme, no matter how shallow they might be.

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I don't know that I look for themes. I'm more of a character person. As far as characters went, Emet is the one who spoke to me the most. His feeling compelled to continue even when he didn't want to, using sleep as an escape, being isolated with his feelings. All of that is what resonated with me. It's also why I wanted to see him get a happy (or at least happier) ending. Despite all the platitudes of EW, the characters I cared about the most had the worst outcomes so it certainly wasn't a feel good or uplifting story for me.

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Originally Posted by Rulakir

Frankly, Yoshi-P has the polar opposite personality of mine. I already have issues with Azem being written as some kind of "chaos goblin", as I've seen on Reddit, and now my WoL is apparently a traveler at heart who is always in search of greater challenges. Since when? It feels like Yoshi-P has a certain idea about the typical gamer he wants to superimpose on the WoL that is just not me. I also don't care for Y'shtola, she's one of my least favorite Scions, so if she's going to become the developer mouthpiece it means I'll never have a moment's peace from her.
.

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The story really seems to be trying to push a characterisation that's almost come out of nowhere on the player character and I find it really jarring as it just kills my immersion and I am finding the supporting cast friendships increasingly forced, I feel like I am being used by Y'stola and not that we are team mates

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Originally Posted by Rulakir

(HQ Hermesposting)

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Late to the party on this, but I've held off dunking on Hermes long enough (as in, it's been 3 days at least).

In a way you could say Venat is hogging the spotlight for Endwalker complaints because the discourse around her is very polarized, and the fact that the game heavily pushes her as a hero is suuuper egregious. Hermes, meanwhile, while I do think the game justifies him too much, it seems the playerbase's opinion of him is a lot more ambivalent. I found it's at least rather common to find people dunking on his dubious scientific methods and finding the writing around him weird/unrelatable. Of course, you then have the typical Twitter creature (or OF troll, god forbid) who thinks he was a soff boi and the only human Ancient and totally relatable and you don't understand depression, but I think this is a minority opinion.

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Originally Posted by Rulakir

1. I've not gotten the impression from anything I've seen that it was Ishikawa's intention to depict Hermes as mentally ill, autistic, or any other diagnosis I've seen applied to him. (Feel free to post information to the contrary.) He is spoken of as a rational individual with no disorders that would have led him to making the decisions he did. This is important because many of his thoughts and actions have been excused for these reasons.

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While I have myself thought of him as depressed or neurodivergent, I fully agree that this didn't seem to be the intention at all. Both YoshiP and Ishikawa are pushing him as judging humanity in a "fair" way which presumably implies rationality. The reason why I do headcanon him as depressed (as his Ancient self anyway) is so I can make sense of him, because I swear this character ping-pongs uncomfortably between extremes.

He cares a LOOOOOoooot (too much) about bad concepts like the unstable charybdis and the murder wolves, but he doesn't bother mourning the alkonosts they murdered? Meteion obviously wants to shield his fragile psyche from her sisters' report and is in extreme distress but he doesn't do anything to abort the entire thing?
He snaps (holes himself up into Ktisis), then he unsnaps (seems about ready to hand himself and Meteion in after the fight), then he snaps again (KAIROS), and then he... unsnaps again, as we are told he fought against the Final Days in earnest even though he resents humanity so much??? I'm sorry, but I don't believe wiping his memories of the last couple of days would suddenly not make him an edgy, resentful militant vegan. Am I supposed to believe his OMG-I-CANNOT-COPE-WITH-DEATH-IN-ANYWAY self would support the idea of Zodiark? The first, the second, and most egregiously of all, the infamous third sacrifice (which we have so little concrete information on, it regularly makes Venat supporters go on tangents even though it really is beside the point as far as her motivations go according to the most recent Q&A)? I suppose Hermes, of all people, going with the third sacrifice is like... the single strongest headcanon evidence for the stupid Zodiark tempering having any effect at all on a character lmao.

I can reason my Hermes-was-ill headcanon as such:
1. It serves to explain some inconsistencies in his writing when you can handily invoke cognitive bias.
2. Him eventually receiving appropriate care and treatment and eventually getting better and opening up would be a working explanation for his weird 180° turn on defending humanity, as well as justifying why they eventually accepted the guy to the Seat of Fandaniel, because holy expletive I cannot imagine this dude whom I have just watched have meltdowns every other scene in Elpis would actually seat on the highest council of mankind in any sane world. Hence I cope by imagining everyone really did notice that HERMES IS LITERALLY UNWELL.
3. It makes Ancients way more sympathetic.

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Originally Posted by Rulakir

4. The gaslighting with him is eerily similar to Venat. We're told he has a "pure" and "noble" soul, yet he acts in contradiction to this. He may have moments where he expresses a seemingly sincere desire to change society, but beneath that appears to be a deep seated resentment towards others not thinking and feeling the way he does. (This seems to be a theme of EW that if people aren't behaving the way you want it's okay to force that behavior through violence.)

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Honestly I kind of resent it when people say the game unambiguously presented him as wrong. No, the gaslight was fairly strong around him too. HERMES IS SAD HUMANS DO NOT RESPECT ANIMAL LIVES! CAMERA PANS TO A LITTLE FAMILY OF ADORABLE HEDGEHOGS. Oh this is definitely the sort of subtle storytelling I came here for! His reasoning for "testing humanity" and the whole thing about it being "fair" in any sort of way (see your 3rd point lmao) worked well enough on some people who fully bought into it, at least. Probably Ishikawa herself, to begin with.

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Originally Posted by Rulakir

5. Learning from Meteion's report that Etheirys is essentially the best place in the universe must have been particularly galling given his issues with his people. As Teraq said, he's a first world problem. :P

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Yes and it's unironically a far more understandable motivation for him snapping than his largely unrelatable existential quandary straight out of /r/im14andthisisdeep. WHAT DO YOU MEAN I'M ACTUALLY REALLY WELL-OFF METEION??? THEN WHY DO I FEEL SO SAD???????? TRULY NOBODY UNDERSTANDS ME!!!!!!!!!!

Special mention to his dumb lines about what if humanity ever reaches perfection, will they all die with a smile on their faces then? (INSERT NEON LIGHT ARROWS POINTING TO THE PLENTY IN THE DEAD ENDS HERE) What kind of abstract question is this, you smooth-brain? I am so disappointed Emet-Selch didn't bluntly reply "Yes" like the Chad gamer meme. Would you rather be hit with the horrific Grebulof pandemic that turns you into a walking boil? Or perhaps the planetwide world war? I'll take the peaceful suicide with a smile on my face dude tyvm.

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Originally Posted by Rulakir

I'd like to know if anyone else had an issue with how Hermes' character has been presented in interviews and this quest chain?

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Not so much an issue as a mitigating factor that IMO absolutely should be brought up whenever Omega's lines are referenced: Omega was a person, now machine, that lived in a constantly at-war culture and a survival-of-the-fittest hellscape, whose very design is to constantly evolve. I'm not exactly surprised then it would come up with "ackshually Hermes good because brutality results in evolution".

I'm more disturbed by Ishikawa herself asking whether he was the first step for mankind or not, and I am free to reject that, just like their shallow Plenty parallel. (Ra-la take me, though.)

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Originally Posted by jameseoakes

The story really seems to be trying to push a characterisation that's almost come out of nowhere on the player character and I find it really jarring as it just kills my immersion.

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EW is like the dark knight story in that regard.

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Originally Posted by Misplaced_Marbles

EW is like the dark knight story in that regard.

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Very good point, and it's a reason why I personally didn't care this much for the DRK quests.

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Originally Posted by Teraq

While I have myself thought of him as depressed or neurodivergent, I fully agree that this didn't seem to be the intention at all. Both YoshiP and Ishikawa are pushing him as judging humanity in a "fair" which presumably implies rationality. The reason why I do headcanon him as depressed (as his Ancient self anyway) is so I can make sense of him, because I swear this character ping-pongs uncomfortably between extremes.
He cares a LOOOOOoooot (too much) about bad concepts like the unstable charybdis and the murder wolves, but he doesn't bother mourning the alkonosts they murdered? Meteion obviously wants to shield his fragile psyche from her sisters' report and is in extreme distress but he doesn't do anything to abort the entire thing?
He snaps (holes himself up into Ktisis), then he unsnaps (seems about ready to hand himself and Meteion in after the fight), then he snaps again (KAIROS), and then he... unsnaps again, as we are told he fought against the Final Days in earnest even though he resents humanity so much??? I'm sorry, but I don't believe wiping his memories of the last couple of days would suddenly not make him an edgy, resentful militant vegan. Am I supposed to believe his OMG-I-CANNOT-COPE-WITH-DEATH-IN-ANYWAY self would support the idea of Zodiark? The first, the second, and most egregiously of all, the infamous third sacrifice (which we have so little concrete information on, it regularly makes Venat supporters go on tangents even though it really is beside the point as far as her motivations go). I suppose Hermes, of all people, going with the third sacrifice is like... the single strongest headcanon evidence for the stupid Zodiark tempering having any effect at all on a character lmao.

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I appreciate the titanium-laced reinforcement for my opinions on why I utterly despise Hermes as a character.

It reminds me of the time someone told me, "But in the end, he apologized for his actions!" and I replied "WHEN!? When he was gleefully still trying to murder me in the freaking AFTERLIFE while taunting the futility of my efforts?" or do you mean when the game tried to give me that stupid "Next time let's find the answers together" nonsense of a response after I kicked his butt a third time?"

And as I told that person...yes, I know that Amon and Hermes claim to be two different people, but the game makes it clear that two operate on "overlapping soul logic" and Amon clearly references Hermes' desire for answers as his motivation. So regardless of how "different" they claim to be, the Amon we fight in the Aitiascope and the Hermes we fight in Ktisis pretty much amount to "close enough".

Can I also mention how utterly lazy it is that we technically fought Hermes/Fandaniel three times in Endwalker?

1. Fandaniel piloting Zodiark.
2. Hermes in Ktisis.
3. Amon in the Atiascope.

Did the devs run out of ideas for bosses?

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Originally Posted by CrownySuccubus

And as I told that person...yes, I know that Amon and Hermes claim to be two different people, but the game makes it clear that two operate on "overlapping soul logic" and Amon clearly references Hermes' desire for answers as his motivation. So regardless of how "different" they claim to be, the Amon we fight in the Aitiascope and the Hermes we fight in Ktisis pretty much amount to "close enough".

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I considered addressing Amon in my post too, because it's yet another layer which makes the character of Fandaniel as a whole not make sense.

He insists he sees Hermes as nothing more than a memory/soul graft, and he makes at least a couple of comments on how much the man he used to be would hate what he's doing, and all I can think is... would he really? And then you have the obvious parallels with him always being a misanthropic scientist who's got something of a beef with death and the mEaNiNg oF LiFe, and even his death monologue inside Zodiark plays the Elpis night theme.

I want to say it's just him being in denial and honestly pretty cringe about it, but I'm not entirely comfortable with that conclusion either, because reuniting the two sides as one character works awkwardly at best IMO. But then maybe it's because Hermes himself is an awkward character in the first place, because the dude seriously went from "EVERY LIFE MATTERS AND IS EQUAL (EVEN THE SPRITES)" to "yeah I just pressed the doomsday button and I know what's gonna happen lmao (but I'll pretend not to)". I honestly much preferred Fandaniel as a chaotic evil gremlin with a penchant for body horror flesh towers with doors made of teeth and sphincter walls, who angrily snaps at people around him to JUST DIE ALREADY. At least that was consistent.

Again, I have sort of managed to reason this away with my headcanon of him being originally in mental distress then slowly rehabilitated: the Sundering literally broke his self into pieces, and it just so happens that his past trauma and alienation are much more salient in his sundered mind than whatever came after. This would integrate the fact that the Leo crystal we picked up in 5.3 was bizarrely faded/altered: as we know the crystals contain only memories from the persons' tenure as Convocation members, perhaps the fact that the memories of Fandaniel were so positive and incoherent with his own experience and instincts made him reject them (as it was implied could happen with G'raha and the Exarch's memories – but of course nothing of the sort happened with G'raha, because of course not), and that broke him even more.

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Originally Posted by AnaviAnael

Can I also mention how utterly lazy it is that we technically fought Hermes/Fandaniel three times in Endwalker?

1. Fandaniel piloting Zodiark.
2. Hermes in Ktisis.
3. Amon in the Atiascope.

Did the devs run out of ideas for bosses?

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I think they ran out of ideas from the minute we encountered Fandaniel. Seems like they wanted someone to kickstart the apocalypse and kind of make you think the ancients are 'scary' if you squint (only Elpis and Amaurot sidequests pour cold water on it) so that Venat was not cast in an antagonistic light. Whether this was the original intent or the result of squashing the plotline, I don't know, but other than brief clown moments in SHB and EW, I can't think of much I enjoyed about him.

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Originally Posted by Teraq

Not so much an issue as a mitigating factor that IMO absolutely should be brought up whenever Omega's lines are referenced: Omega was a person, now machine, that lived in a constantly at-war culture and a survival-of-the-fittest hellscape, whose very design is to constantly evolve. I'm not exactly surprised then it would come up with "ackshually Hermes good because brutality results in evolution".

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I believe they were using it as a further way to allow you cast doubt on Venat's reasoning, because the premise Omega is working with when he asks that is inherited from her own approach.

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Originally Posted by Teraq

I considered addressing Amon in my post too, because it's yet another layer which makes the character of Fandaniel as a whole not make sense.

He insists he sees Hermes as nothing more than a memory/soul graft, and he makes at least a couple of comments on how much the man he used to be would hate what he's doing, and all I can think is... would he really? But then you have the obvious parallels with him always being a misanthropic scientist who's got something of a beef with death and the mEaNiNg oF LiFe, and even his death monologue inside Zodiark plays the Elpis night theme.

I want to say it's just him being in denial and honestly pretty cringe about it, but I'm not entirely comfortable with that conclusion either, because reuniting the two sides as one character works awkwardly at best IMO. But then maybe it's because Hermes himself is an awkward character in the first place, because the dude seriously went from "EVERY LIFE MATTERS AND IS EQUAL (EVEN THE SPRITES)" to "yeah I just pressed the doomsday button and I know what's gonna happen lmao (but I'll pretend not to)". I honestly much preferred Fandaniel as a chaotic evil gremlin with a penchant for body horror flesh towers with doors made of teeth and sphincter walls, who angrily snaps at people around him to JUST DIE ALREADY. At least that was consistent.

Again, I have sort of managed to reason this away with my headcanon of him being originally in mental distress then slowly rehabilitated: the Sundering literally broke his self into pieces, and it just so happens that his past trauma and alienation are much more salient in his sundered mind than whatever came after. This would integrate the fact that the Leo crystal we picked up in 5.3 was bizarrely faded/altered: as we know the crystals contain only memories from the persons' tenure as Convocation members, perhaps the fact that the memories of Fandaniel were so positive and incoherent with his own experience and instincts that he rejected them (as it was implied could happen with G'raha and the Exarch's memories – but of course nothing of the sort happened with G'raha, because of course not), and that broke him even more.

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To be fair, at least G'raha does say (in one of the best speeches of the entire game, I might add) that the confusion over where his older and past self end and begin is something that has bothered him. I can totally believe that G'raha, being a more stable person, with a larger support network, and with the best interests of others truly at heart had a better time working that out than Hermes/Fandaniel/Amon/The RZA/The Undertaker/Dwayne "The Rock" Maivia Johnson and his misanthropic ennui.

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Originally Posted by AnaviAnael

Can I also mention how utterly lazy it is that we technically fought Hermes/Fandaniel three times in Endwalker?

1. Fandaniel piloting Zodiark.
2. Hermes in Ktisis.
3. Amon in the Atiascope.

Did the devs run out of ideas for bosses?

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I think it was more they wanted to get you to knock some sense into him. 3rd time was the charm, but by then we were all screaming, "HOW MANY TIMES DO WE NEED TO TEACH YOU THIS LESSON OLD MAN!?"

This turned into a very strange variety of Cringe Ramble, so I apologize beforehand.

As I've said a few times, I really like Hermes - but that's from the angle of understanding that he wasn't being Fair, or was The Most Human - he was a selfish hypocrite in denial of his own emotional reasons, and no matter what he claims, puts himself and his own pain far and beyond anybody else's. The primary reason he seems to feel so deeply for others is that he's very good at projecting his pain upon them in a form of fundamentally cowardly expression of himself, because he's too insecure and disdainful of others to express them directly and risk them challenging his worldview or self-perspective. From that viewpoint, I think he's a fun character who you can really sink your teeth into, and provides a lot of opportunities to explore interesting topics. As a "oh, well, Hermes's actions were Fair though," however, beyond being deeply skeptical of that premise, I immediately fall asleep.

(That my reading of Hermes in this way might not match up to Author Intention doesn't necessarily bother me, but I completely understand it being a hard line for others. This is not the first time I've more or less gone through the "hey, author, you wrote a super compelling character here and totally didn't realize it, lmao" rodeo.)

Like, "Hermes finds out that he is in fact living in the best place and the best conditions possible and is still miserable" is potentially extremely compelling and a Grade-A opportunity to exert some Compassion (tm). However, the narrative didn't go out of its way to explore that angle, and Hermes's reaction - violence and hatred and destruction - quickly undermines any chances of using that as a platform for Compassion and Actually Understanding How Depression Works.

But you could still see him as a potentially compelling character! Humans are irrational, and oftentimes those irrationalities can be very interesting. I'm not saying this is true of Hermes - I don't believe it of him, actually, once again I think he's a Huge Hypocritical Jerk - but I do think people truly hit real breaking points. Points in which they become incapable of acting rationally or seeing outside of themselves - no, this is not the same as excusing the actions of culpability or somesuch - at which case, generally, there's a more complex and far more interesting conversation to be had than "were they justified?"

My favorite character in all of fiction is a brutal mass-murderer who enacted an elaborate plan to slaughter their entire family. Obviously, there is no justifying this action, and they objectively "had other options". It's ridiculous to even debate within that framework. However, they are so psychologically compelling and their situation is constructed as such that I "buy into" the idea that they hit their breaking point of being genuinely incapable of seeing any other way out. You can trace exactly how their worldview was constructed, and how events impacted them, that it mounted to a desperation that their way (mass murder!) was really the best way for everyone and the kindest action possible for them in the long run.

(Obviously, there's more nuance, and some element of self-serving justification wrapped up in that, but that makes them all the more compelling to me.)

This is a distinction between the likes of Emet-Selch versus Venat I think doesn't really get touched on in the midst of "whose action was justified and whose wasn't" (neither were or both were, genocide is never justified, glad we got that out of the way) that's a huge factor in the differing response to the characters - and an aspect of why, while Venat is popular, Emet-Selch basically set the world on fire in a unique way.

The construction of Emet-Selch feeling he had no other option is more detailed and compelling than the one given for Venat. I can understand him hating what he had to do for the Rejoinings, but if he dared even considering to stop, then he would be betraying everyone he loved and everyone who was relying on him to save them. I get why while, objectively, simply stopping was an option for him, it was not emotionally plausible given his situation. This leads to a compelling character whose scenes you can watch on several levels, because he's at war with himself the entire time and this bears out in his behavior. You can see him, one second, trying to enforce to himself he has to carry on, the next, obviously looking for a way out, and the next, somehow doing both at the same time.

Venat, I think, is magnitudes harder to understand why she might have felt "she had no other options." She provides mostly logistical "explanations" (because we don't want to introduce the idea of Venat's personal responsibility in these decisions) that aren't compelling, and therefore, you're (general you) inclined to scrutinize those on a logistical level, rather than Emet's psychological one - and they don't hold up. The more you scrutinize, the more ridiculous it all seems. You're scared to tell Hermes? Things could turn out worse? How could they possibly be worse than the future I just described to you? You're self-admittedly not even a Dynamis expert? Oh no, if you went to Emet-Selch, there's a chance Hermes could find out, and we can't take that risk (better to go the route we're certain will end in the world being destroyed!)

And because Venat is written to be an admirable figure to the player first and foremost, there's no room to provide context as to why certain options are so terrifying to her as to be emotionally implausible to her as an action. She's terrified of the Plenty. Why? Why did this scare her so much more than the descriptions of the other Dead Ends? What has happened in her life to make her so utterly petrified of a destruction revolving around peaceful stagnation as opposed to causing the violent deaths of everyone around her? Because Venat has to be "right" and a "good person" first and foremost, such possible "human" aspects aren't explored - so we're left to conclude, she's terrified of the Plenty simply because, according to the story, She's Right. And that leads to a whole new special level of "that doesn't hold up under scrutiny."

I find a lot of discourse when trying to talk about stories really exasperating because it often coming down to shouting matches over "is [x] good or is [x] bad" and that is, like, the most boring way to dissect fiction ever. Venat is a bad person and the narrative is exasperating for trying to sell us on the opposite, but equally important: she's also not compelling. All of the emotion surrounding her is an attempt to get you to feel for her, pure uncritical reaction, without thinking about any actual depth or conflict to be had in her character in any meaningful way. That's not what she's there for.

It's one thing to say "well, they did this because they felt they had no other options." But from a writing perspective, that's not enough. The next question that needs to be asked is: "Why?"

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Originally Posted by Brinne

My favorite character in all of fiction is a brutal mass-murderer who enacted an elaborate plan to slaughter their entire family.

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Which character is this, by the by?

Incidentally, my favorite all-time villain (although Emet-Selch vies for the spot) is Kuja from FFIX -- who was a genocidal, racist narcissist who had such little empathy for the deaths of other people that he ordered his minions to painfully murder a child, tried to kill innocent people for no reason other than the fact that he found it funny, and then decided to obliterate all existence everywhere because he thought it was unfair for anything to exist after he died.

But Kuja was such an over-theatrical, card-carrying jerk that I couldn't help but feel entertained. Hell, I even thought his reasons (though still unsound and cruel) were at least valid; Kuja was fated to be born and die as a slave whose life didn't matter, so he jumped to the extreme opposite end and decided that ONLY he himself mattered.

Unlike Hermes, Kuja actually DID figure out why he was "wrong" just before he died, and though that in no way justifies or undoes his horrific actions, it was still interesting development and his selfish actions had the unintentional effect of teaching the rest of his race how to think for themselves.

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Originally Posted by CrownySuccubus

Which character is this, by the by?

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Ahahaha. I'm risking giving away my identity in Other Online Spaces here, but it's "Yasuda" from Umineko no Naku Koro ni. (If you have any interest in reading that title, do not look up anything about that character or that series. It's structured as a mystery story where you are supposed to work out the culprit and is one of those uniquely frustrating works where "you can't explain anything about why you love it without spoiling everything.")

Kuja was a great character and I would definitely agree the Final Fantasy franchise's most emotionally compelling antagonist before Emet pranced his way onstage.

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Originally Posted by Brinne

I find a lot of discourse when trying to talk about stories really exasperating because it often coming down to shouting matches over "is [x] good or is [x] bad" and that is, like, the most boring way to dissect fiction ever. Venat is a bad person and the narrative is exasperating for trying to sell us on the opposite, but equally important: she's also not compelling. All of the emotion surrounding her is an attempt to get you to feel for her, pure uncritical reaction, without thinking about any actual depth or conflict to be had in her character in any meaningful way. That's not what she's there for.

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It's why I wonder if the original intent was to have Venat come at the situation with Hermes's mindset. Emet-Selch had originally positioned her faction as somewhat frightened of Zodiark's power, and the factional conflict was over whether to sacrifice the "new life" (which now appears to be a red herring to mask her faction's true concerns) and restore the ancients sacrificed to resume stewardship of the star, or refrain from doing so and hand it over to that new life, and while with Hermes this emerges as a confused mess, to me this always allowed for the situation where whatever or whoever caused their original doom (you could even retain Fandaniel as the broker of it) seeking to exploit the paranoia of her group and the Convocation's desire to enact the will of the broader public in carrying out the decision it had come to, as a means of fomenting conflict that could remove the obstacle of Zodiark, only with it ending in a far messier way than originally envisioned, and her becoming altered as the primal's core, and more single-mindedly dedicated to her self-imposed mission with the passage of time. If you add in the facet of the Echo that can 'see' the future (thus, see their doom repeating), but not necessarily position this as accurate, particularly if some kind of time travel occurs that could mess with such predictive powers, I think she could've been an altogether more interesting character.

Although it wouldn't satisfy me hugely given the formation of an AU in the 8UC - a seemingly unnecessary at the time embellishment they nonetheless decided to include within the Tales from the Shadows - I don't really understand why they didn't more fully commit to the notion that she was desperately trying to constrain herself by bringing about the future the WoL had described, for fear e.g. of erasing the timeline. The approach they go with narratively seems to be the exact opposite - that she is actively conspiring to do this, for reasons which one can tie to a preference for the sundered, her brave little spark or the sundered world more generally, but nevertheless, it is not positioned as something her hands are bound by. It would work better than this idea that her way is objectively the best way, which ultimately is open to question, if not outright dubious.

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Originally Posted by jameseoakes

The story really seems to be trying to push a characterisation that's almost come out of nowhere on the player character and I find it really jarring as it just kills my immersion and I am finding the supporting cast friendships increasingly forced, I feel like I am being used by Y'stola and not that we are team mates

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Yep. It happens on two fronts as well.

On one hand, the story itself will insist that the player has to consider G'raha Tia to essentially be their best friend. On the other, there's a portion of vocal players who insist that the player is obligated to dislike certain characters and factions. If they don't? Then they're attacked and accused of all manner of horrid things. It's very bizarre to me.

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Originally Posted by Theodric

At least Ishikawa acknowledged that most people would not agree with or like him.

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Than why did she even write him?