Rewritten MSQ - Garlemald and EW

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Originally Posted by anhaato

Venat had a good option and a bad option. She chose the bad one, all because she was more enamored with the idea of mankind than the actual individuals that made it up, and because she took Meteion's report to heart in the end.

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What was the good option?

What was the guarantee that going with that option was going to create a better result?

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Originally Posted by Berteaux_Braumegain

I doubt my comment will sway the tide, but genuinely don't get this mentality.

The Sundering is a morally murky activity, fine. I doubt many people would contest that. Yoshi-P and the writers don't contest that. But I don't get the point of acting like Hydaelyn is a supervillain who only cares about herself and nothing else. For goodness' sake, Primals made from the Ascian's machinations (including Ramuh) talk about her as if she's a good person. Midgardsormr vouches for her acts of kidness. She saves the Warrior of Light from death at least twice in the opening arc of the game. And that's with the expectation that one day they are going to kill her for the sake of a better world once they're strong enough.

It's fine to not like her, especially for the Sundering, but at least dislike her as presented in the game, not based on some caricature that resulted from twisting the lore to fit fanfiction.

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Sundering was more than "morally murky". It was straight up genocide, there is no murky about that, it's immoral.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

What was the good option?

What was the guarantee that going with that option was going to create a better result?

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Tellin Emet wtf was going on so he could, ya know, create a better solution that addressed the Meteion problem?

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Originally Posted by redheadturk

Sundering was more than "morally murky". It was straight up genocide, there is no murky about that, it's immoral.

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Except we know not everyone died.

How is it genocide when there are survivors?

How would allowing the Ancients proceed to performing the third sacrifice not be equally reprehensible if not more so? They weren't going to just exterminate one new life form - they were intent on exterminating them all for the sake of people who were already dead and unable to return to life if what Sri Lakshmi said in Stormblood is true.

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Originally Posted by redheadturk

Tellin Emet wtf was going on so he could, ya know, create a better solution that addressed the Meteion problem?

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What makes you think Emet would have had a better solution when he admitted that the methods the Ancients used could not have defeated Meteion?

One survivor and two accidental ones mean it's not a genocide? What are you even smoking?

Furthermore, not once do the writers allude to the 3rd sacrifice as even registering on her radar as a motive. Not once does she do so, except when discussing them as the instrumental means to return to how things were, and there it is because she wants them to accept the 'necessity' of suffering. She does not even question the Convocation on the morality of this whole affair and states they sought to safeguard the best possible future for the star. Her concerns are solely presented as dynamis manipulation and their fate resembling the Plenty. If you want to bring in the supposed immorality of the very sketchy third round of sacrifices, which her people were already divided on, I am going to ask for sources - good luck, because I know these sources, and I can tell you, you and others are headcanoning this in to being her primary motive as well as liberally filling in details as to what they were, to try make it seem far more nefarious than we're told.

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How would allowing the Ancients proceed to performing the third sacrifice not be equally reprehensible if not more so? They weren't going to just exterminate one new life form - they were intent on exterminating them all for the sake of people who were already dead and unable to return to life if what Sri Lakshmi said in Stormblood is true.

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Their souls quite literally persist whole in Zodiark, and were cut off from the Underworld (return to which they valued as a species) as a result of the desperate measure they had to undertake to protect their star. So irrespective of what some amateurish, third-rate primal said, which has zero bearing on what Zodiark and his creators could do, they would still need to be freed from within him at some point to be released from that purgatory.

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Originally Posted by Rymi64

If one is gonna make a villain do something you give a reasoning for why they did it, thats simple story writing. Couldn't care less if it wasn't putting venat in a good light or not since this is a AU situation. Zenos does what he does because he wanted to feel something, Hades and the unsundered do what they do to bring back their lost civilization, Meteion does what she does because of all the sadness she absorbed from the countless lost stars they visited and the twisted answer she got from it.

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If Zenos and Hermes are the minimum threshold here, we should be good. ;)

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

Except we know not everyone died.

How is it genocide when there are survivors?

How would allowing the Ancients proceed to performing the third sacrifice not be equally reprehensible if not more so? They weren't going to just exterminate one new life form - they were intent on exterminating them all for the sake of people who were already dead and unable to return to life if what Sri Lakshmi said in Stormblood is true.


What makes you think Emet would have had a better solution when he admitted that the methods the Ancients used could not have defeated Meteion?

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English version was quite vague, the French and German versions are much clearer in that he meant that they could not have gotten to Ultima Thule in and of itself through their methods, which was true. Because they didn't, ya know, know what the true cause was, because Venat withheld that information from them which she should not have done.

As to the rest of your spew, 3 survivors does not make it "not a genocide" when the remainder of their culture was gone with no way to revive it with mankind as they were. That is the very definition of a genocide.

I feel some people are forgetting the whole "time aspect" when judging Venats actions. Because of our time traveling we basically created a time paradox.

The reason for us, the WoL, to appear at this moment was all because stuff happened exactly the way it was supposed to happen.
Also even Venat and WoL escaping from the memory wipe was all because of everything that happened before and led us to Elpis.
We don't know what would have happened if we weren't there. Meteion would have propably escaped and without our help the memory of all of them would have been wiped.
Maybe Venat wouldn't even have joined the group. The reason we appeared at this moment was BECAUSE all that terrible stuff after this happened.

This means that Venat HAD to ensure that everything has to happen the same way, so we end up in Elpis again.
Regarding to time travel, everything up to the moment where we travel back in time was already set in stone. Otherwise we wouldn't have got to Elpis in the first place.
Anything else might have led to a situation which changes the timelines in a way that we might not even appear in Elpis, which in the end would have led to a situation where Venats memory would have also been wiped for example.

I mean if I were in a situation where some time traveller warns me about terrible things happening in the past I propably would also ensure that everything happens the way it is supposed to happen.

But I also kind of understand why people might not like her reasoning.

@OP: You put a lot of effort into the story. I like it. On the other hand I am also not in favor of characterizing Venat as the villain. And there are some plot points I don't agree with.
But one can see how much effort you put into this.

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Originally Posted by TimotheusReed

I feel some people are forgetting the whole "time aspect" when judging Venats actions. Because of our time traveling we basically created a time paradox.

The reason for us, the WoL, to appear at this moment was all because stuff happened exactly the way it was supposed to happen.
Also even Venat and WoL escaping from the memory wipe was all because of everything that happened before and led us to Elpis.

This means that Venat HAD to ensure that everything will happen the same way, so we end up in Elpis again.
Anything else might have led to a situation which changes the timelines in a way that we might not even appear in Elpis, which in the end would have led to a situation where Venats memory would have also been wiped for example.

I mean if I were in a situation where some time traveller warns me about terrible things happening in the past I propably would also ensure that everything happens the way it is supposed to happen.

But I also kind of understand why people might not like her reasoning.

@OP: You put a lot of effort into the story. I like it. On the other hand I am also not in favor of characterizing Venat as the villain.

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I say bring on the split timeline, tbh. No, I do not care if it creates a paradox, it's already been shown that paradoxes lead to timeline splits in XIV, and that is what I want. A timeline in which the sundering never happens.

Can someone replace the writers with just OP please. That was a surprisingly captivating read, and also a sorta depressing one knowing we're left with actual endwalker. This is a fan script and the in game plot somehow has less depth lol

EW was written to justify the game’s existence more than anything else. If Venat had told the Convocation and they were able to stop Meteion, we would have no game. There’d be no Source, no First, no Varis, no WoL. They wrote themselves into an inescapable corner when they made the Ancients and allowed us to visit them instead of showing us a lengthy memory flashback. If they wanted Venat to still be any sort of decent, they could have had her split between Hydaelyn and herself where the former has all the ego of “suffer good” while the latter laments in solitude at how hard she screwed up. This separation would happen during the Sundering where Venat would be forced out and Hydaelyn would be in control. At this point I don’t care if I’m pulling from other games because other games did this so much better.

Emet would not have done the right thing if told, and we know that because there was a sequence of events wiped from his memory where he was told, and explicitly made things worse. Emet was going to stick to a process, because that is who he is, but said process would remove Hermes from the position he needs to be in to make Zodiark, who will then defend the world from the End of Days. However, as Zodiark tempered his summoners, even the plan of 'tell the Convocation after summoning Zodiark' wouldn't have worked.

Having to keep a big secret is sad, and probably weighed on her. But given that she's trying to avoid the literal thing we saw happen that led to the problem in the first place, I think it's far from the worst thing in the ledger of anyone involved.

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Originally Posted by AwesomeJr44

I've seen some of your YouTube videos and considering how hard you go on the Ascians, I don't think you should be acting as if you're the champion of fairness.

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Ah, good to hear from someone who watches my videos! And as someone who watches my videos, you would know that I only talked about the Ancients before the Sundering twice; once as a scene-setter to talk about the origins of the guys who'd go on to be the Ascians, and once in one of the two political breakdown videos talking about the politics of Amaurot, and how it's more or less a parable of a nation's fall to their own faults (and some professed in-bad-faith picking apart of their political system, which sounds iffy). Every other mention of the Ascians has been as the Ascians--that is to say, the villains and origins of most of the game world's problems: the whole Ascian video of course, as well as mentions in the other politics video in the context of Emet inventing the Garlean Empire and their political outlook, as the instigators of the video subject in the Voidsent and Illuminati/Alexander videos, as the proliferators and saboteurs both of the ritual to summon primals, and Loghrif and Mitron getting a whole section in the Eden video.

You would also know that I've only talked about Venat twice, in the Ascian video and the Amaurot section of the politics video, both times in passing, and I was not interested in adjudicating her choice. Hydaelyn came up in the Blessing of Light video, but without talk of Venat as we didn't know how important she was to it. (And that video has inaccuracies thanks to Endwalker, but that's a separate subject!)

As I said: to properly take a side on this view, we must accept the darkness of where we stand. For the side of Zodiark, a vast majority of that darkness comes after the Sundering, as their tale is one of supposedly good people who go on to unrepentantly perform horrible acts, snuffing out likely more lives than they're trying to save and creating evils like the Garlean Empire. For Hydaelyn, most of that darkness is concentrated in a single act, as she performs an act of... well, I wouldn't say textbook genocide mostly because that textbook would be insane, but definitely performing an act that ended countless lives for the sake of ensuring that more wouldn't die.

As someone who sides with Team Hydaelyn (although as my videos show, not someone who cares all too much, I have greater interests), I accept that she performed an act that ended lives in extreme circumstances where doing so was the only way to avoid even greater long-term loss; an act that may be heavy and regretful, but was not a mistake. I assume you, as someone who sides with Team Zodiark (I don't know how strongly), can recognize the evils they brought into the world in their efforts to do so?

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You say that like you know that for a fact. Are you reading my Oatmeal x Emet x Hythlodaeus fanfiction?

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Also we are literally in a thread, right now, that someone made because they wanted to write and share their Endwalker rewrite fanfic.

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Originally Posted by Rymi64

Could you elaborate what you mean by "kill magic"

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“Killing magic,” in my view, is when the major magical forces or entities of a game are eliminated by the story’s end. Depending on the game, the protagonist may or may not lose their powers and abilities as a result, but more often that not it comes along with not only that but also the disappearance of creatures like Espers/Aeons too. I feel that this quite literally saps the magic out of a game world, especially if it’s an MMORPG that is meant to continue onward. I think that eliminating both Hydaelyn and Zodiark without any entities to “inherit their will” was a poor choice that led to the Void being pushed on us so rapidly, instead of taking the time to ground Season’s 2 story with a Heavensward-type expansion. It also eliminates the possibility of using religion as an intriguing plotline in the MSQ, because we already know that the entities who were in charge are no more so there’s no mystery to that.

With two new entities slowly building up their strength over time, the WoL/Adventurer would be free to spend an expansion or two resolving local conflicts in a given region. Heavensward is the most brought up example of this because it is a lot more concise and less spread out in scope compared to Stormblood or Shadowbringers. People have expressed wanting to see places like former Imperial territories, Meracydia, etc. but there are also people who are understandably concerned that we’ll be shipped off to the Void as early as 7.0. A comparison is often drawn between that possibility and WoW because of that game’s trend in sending the player character into more and more alternate worlds and realities/dimensions, culminating in way too much cosmic-level storytelling to make any sense.

This was a really enjoyable read—a potential direction I found refreshingly interesting to consider. The paths you paved for Meteion and Hermes suited them instead of being rushed into villain roles. Those who gave their lives to help the WoL reach Hydaelyn were carefully considered: passing on meaningfully (Urianger) in ways that suited them (Sadu) and gave us further insight into who they were “behind the cutscenes” (Matoya). As for the Loporrits, I’d hope they’d choose to live on and discover a true sense of purpose (and pudding). Thank you for sharing.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

Emet would not have done the right thing if told, and we know that because there was a sequence of events wiped from his memory where he was told, and explicitly made things worse. Emet was going to stick to a process, because that is who he is, but said process would remove Hermes from the position he needs to be in to make Zodiark, who will then defend the world from the End of Days. However, as Zodiark tempered his summoners, even the plan of 'tell the Convocation after summoning Zodiark' wouldn't have worked.

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The bar here is so high that this just does not stack up. The alternative here is they get wiped out as a people. If she lacks the people skills to figure out how to get Emet or any other member of the Convocation, or even Hyth, in a position where she can calmly explain to them what happened, then how did she even act as Azem before then? You claim tempering meant this would not work, and take this as axiomatic, but Emet is able to change course in the test he puts forward to the WoL. There is absolutely nothing in the story to date suggesting this would prevent her over approaching her people on a topic they were already divided on to divulge the truth of the matter - and I mean the actual truth, not platitudes about 'suffering'. Moreover, Hermes is specifically credited with contributions to identifying the a pattern in the celestial currents that enabled them to deal with the issue, not for Zodiark in his entirety, which was research Akadaemia Anyder was focused on.

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Having to keep a big secret is sad, and probably weighed on her. But given that she's trying to avoid the literal thing we saw happen that led to the problem in the first place, I think it's far from the worst thing in the ledger of anyone involved.

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Hmm no I'd say it's pretty bad, especially if alternatives could be conceived. There may be reasons why she felt constrained in what she had to do, but they are nonetheless conscious decisions.

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As I said: to properly take a side on this view, we must accept the darkness of where we stand. For the side of Zodiark, a vast majority of that darkness comes after the Sundering, as their tale is one of supposedly good people who go on to unrepentantly perform horrible acts, snuffing out likely more lives than they're trying to save and creating evils like the Garlean Empire. For Hydaelyn, most of that darkness is concentrated in a single act, as she performs an act of... well, I wouldn't say textbook genocide mostly because that textbook would be insane, but definitely performing an act that ended countless lives for the sake of ensuring that more wouldn't die.

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Has the Q&A already slipped your mind?

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Q: I am interested to know how unsundered Ascians such as Lahabrea, Elidibus and Emet-Selch avoided being kicked into 14 pieces by Hydaelyn.
A: As you think back to the text towards the end Emet-Selch did imply that Venat let him live unsundered. In fact Venat did intentionally leave a tiny floor in her Sundering attack - a crack that Emet-Selch can wiggle through. Sort of like…yes it was a powerful attack but intentionally chose to do it in this fashion. So we said this in the actual game as well which is when Hydaelyn did the attack, it was a really strong one. It was delivered at the limit of her power so she couldn’t really fine tune it. So as intentional as this was when she did that big massive light attack that sundered the world, she couldn’t guarantee that Emet-Selch would live and she was kind of making a gamble. In fact what happened was, at the time that Hydaelyn performed the sundering, Emet-Selch was with Lahabrea and Elidibus (the time he was already out of being Zodiark core so he’s a little bit different than his original but nevertheless he was there) so they ended up joining forces, and escaped to the rift without being Sundered. You may recall if you read Tales of the Shadows that Elidibus, when he came out of Zodiark he ended up losing some of his memories as well as some parts of himself and that’s sort of the point in Patch 5.3 and when he “dies” you sort of know that he lost a lot in the process as well just like Emet-Selch. So yeah, basically they worked together at that time and escaped being Sundered.

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Q: I don’t really understand why the Warrior of Light messing around in Elpis didn’t create any alternate timelines. What happened?
A: Well, I think the most important thing is that you can come up with your own theories for this one. In my personal interpretation however is that the timelines were always the same. Another interpretation you can have is that maybe Venat worked really hard behind the scenes to ensure the timeline didn’t go awry. Therefore the Warrior of Light was always acting in accordance with this plan of Venat so the timeline that we are aware of didn’t change when we went back to the affected. I personally think that when we went to Mare Lamentorium and we first met Argos and Argos really took to us when we were able to ride it, that's basically the proof that at that point, the timeline is going accordingly. We are adding all these stuff to New Game+ in 6.1 so if you’re interested in this I suggest you replay it and think about these questions when you’re playing it.

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How are you divorcing the Ascians coming into existence from what she did so cleanly when she ensured Emet-Selch would escape under the guise of potentially aiming at preserving the timelines? She may not have a line by line explanation of what would follow, but she knows enough of the significant details based on the WoL's account to realise what was happening. The Ascians doing what they did is not some mere accident, it is integral for her plan to play out as it did, with all the risks it featured.

Her choosing to commit to the WoL's timeline is a decision with some heavy costs attached to it. And I am fine with people saying they accept these because they're perceived as necessary for the sundered not to poof out of existence (although the 8UC short story featuring an AU throws this into doubt), but equally I am not going to pretend this is the best possible plan in the absence of knowing what the alternatives actually were.

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As someone who sides with Team Hydaelyn (although as my videos show, not someone who cares all too much, I have greater interests), I accept that she performed an act that ended lives in extreme circumstances where doing so was the only way to avoid even greater long-term loss; an act that may be heavy and regretful, but was not a mistake. I assume you, as someone who sides with Team Zodiark (I don't know how strongly), can recognize the evils they brought into the world in their efforts to do so?

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Sorry but if your posts here are any indication, I am going to call into dispute how little you care about this or whether you're even approaching this in good faith. Nevermind how that entire post is laced in headcanon. Though by all means, if thinking I am just "ignorant" helps you cope, continue doing so. ;)


With that said, these discussions have been had multiple times now, none of us are anywhere near agreeing, the lore remains exactly as it was, and the OP is asking for feedback on this idea and not a replay of this debate.

My condolences, it seems like this thread got linked on some sort of discord. Man with pizza walking into a flaming room.gif moment.

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Originally Posted by aveyond-dreams

Thank you all for your comments! Though this thread has gone in...directions...I do still want to know what felt handled properly and what parts felt weak? Also to expand upon a previous critique:

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I haven't gotten around to reading the whole thing in detail and absorb it all, but it's already better thanks to being able to actually explore Ilsaberd. I also like the Svetlana idea, as I've found it kind of baffling at how the women of the Galvus family have been... nonexistent in the story.

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This would be a prime opportunity for Alphinaud to pitch the tired idea of a democracy again only for Al-Cid to laugh in his face and lambast him for trying to upend the political system the region has yearned for a return for the past several decades.

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I lolled.

Personally, and this is my own taste, I would've removed timetravel entirely and have had instead use our Echo to peer into the past to find out all of this. Also, having the sundered Ascians show up to help us out -- I wouldn't blame you if you forgot about them, it seems like the writers did too. Venat, I think, works plenty well as a 'villain with good intentions' in the game as is without the narrative propping her up, but her motivations could've been elaborated on instead of being a weird confused mess of a generic 'she loves you!' support blob.

Overall I like it more than what we got already, if only because it's trying to tell a fantasy/adventure story first and foremost with a message of hope, rather than insisting on cramming the themes down my gullet like a baby bird. While 13 was not my favorite FF, I liked the Nautilus segment and what the Revelgrounds is going for... it made for more natural tension-relief moments.

I'll edit in more as more comes to mind...

>Literally eradicates 7 and 90% of shards civilization to rejoin the Source

>OMG Emet Daddy never did anything wrong!!

:confused:

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Originally Posted by anhaato

Venat had a good option and a bad option. She chose the bad one, all because she was more enamored with the idea of mankind than the actual individuals that made it up, and because she took Meteion's report to heart in the end.

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I swear if the good option is by letting all Ancients sacrificed to Zodiark for a world like The Dead Ends's 3rd world, I'll leave any lore discussion in this forum because how dumb the Venat haters here.

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Originally Posted by Skyborne

I also like the Svetlana idea, as I've found it kind of baffling at how the women of the Galvus family have been... nonexistent in the story.

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Women in Garlean culture can't rise above a certain rank (wir) and aren't allowed to inherit the throne.

I don't know where the OP got the idea of "grand duchess" but that title doesn't exist in Garlemald and their idea of Svetlana would not be able to happen. I think I remember an interview where one of the lore guys said it was another reason why Garlemald was a bad country.


Some of the writing was alright but the bits with Svetlana and Venat were kinda cringe ngl.

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Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

Women in Garlean culture can't rise above a certain rank (wir) and aren't allowed to inherit the throne.

I don't know where the OP got the idea of "grand duchess" but that title doesn't exist in Garlemald and their idea of Svetlana would not be able to happen. I think I remember an interview where one of the lore guys said it was another reason why Garlemald was a bad country.


Some of the writing was alright but the bits with Svetlana and Venat were kinda cringe ngl.

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Thing is, was it a pre zenos or post zenos lore guy? This is an important question.

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Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

Women in Garlean culture can't rise above a certain rank (wir) and aren't allowed to inherit the throne.

I don't know where the OP got the idea of "grand duchess" but that title doesn't exist in Garlemald and their idea of Svetlana would not be able to happen. I think I remember an interview where one of the lore guys said it was another reason why Garlemald was a bad country.


Some of the writing was alright but the bits with Svetlana and Venat were kinda cringe ngl.

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Yep indeed, it's more that they just have... zero presence in the game and none are named at all is my beef (aside from Zenos' mother dying shortly after his birth iirc). I'm willing to handwave the "can't inherit the throne" part on account of Garlemald crumbling apart -- anyone who is backed with power (like having a one-man army demigod WoL in the pocket) could march in and stabilize things at this point. Her name and title could also stand to be changed to be more in line with the Roman naming scheme in the game.

It'd be pretty bizarre for Garlemald to be declared a 'bad country' for having few women in positions of power if the various matriarchal societies in game are not also declared as such.

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Originally Posted by aveyond-dreams

“Killing magic,” in my view, is when the major magical forces or entities of a game are eliminated by the story’s end. Depending on the game, the protagonist may or may not lose their powers and abilities as a result, but more often that not it comes along with not only that but also the disappearance of creatures like Espers/Aeons too. I feel that this quite literally saps the magic out of a game world, especially if it’s an MMORPG that is meant to continue onward. I think that eliminating both Hydaelyn and Zodiark without any entities to “inherit their will” was a poor choice that led to the Void being pushed on us so rapidly, instead of taking the time to ground Season’s 2 story with a Heavensward-type expansion. It also eliminates the possibility of using religion as an intriguing plotline in the MSQ, because we already know that the entities who were in charge are no more so there’s no mystery to that.

With two new entities slowly building up their strength over time, the WoL/Adventurer would be free to spend an expansion or two resolving local conflicts in a given region. Heavensward is the most brought up example of this because it is a lot more concise and less spread out in scope compared to Stormblood or Shadowbringers. People have expressed wanting to see places like former Imperial territories, Meracydia, etc. but there are also people who are understandably concerned that we’ll be shipped off to the Void as early as 7.0. A comparison is often drawn between that possibility and WoW because of that game’s trend in sending the player character into more and more alternate worlds and realities/dimensions, culminating in way too much cosmic-level storytelling to make any sense.

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With the death of Hydaelyn and Zodiark we literally lose nothing. We still have the travelers ward, people will still summon primals in desperate times, nothing really changes with their death other than the remaining ascians can do whatever they want to do but thats more from the death of the unsundered. The void wasn't really pushed on us rapidly since we've been dealing with it and it's denizens for years on the back burner in every expansion. We've only had 1 patch and we dont know if we're going to go into the void or somewhere else, could be we deal with the void by 6.5 (as side content or msq) or could be we completely go in 7.0 but one patch is not enough to even make such a guess. You can still use religion as a plot point since you don't have to narrow it down to just hydaelyn or zodiark. I wouldn't even consider hydaelyn central to any religion since she's not really worshiped, the twelve are but not her.

We don't need to have two new entities that are on the scale of H&Z to take their place to just go adventuring and its better not to since if you need a new overarching villain you can just make them fit anywhere in the world and be in the background and can stop using them at anytime without going to the same scale as endwalker. Shadowbringers isn't that spread out in scope compared to HW and ARR since its basically the arr map anyways, SB and EW are the most spread out expansions we have unless they're saying SHB is spread out because its on the first instead of the source which in that case still doesn't make it spread out. And unlike WoW the ff14 writing team is actually good at what they do.

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Originally Posted by Raoabolic

Thing is, was it a pre zenos or post zenos lore guy? This is an important question.

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Don't even know what this question means.

The lore people have been the same since mid-1.0 and are still on the production team.

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Originally Posted by Theodric

It'd be pretty bizarre for Garlemald to be declared a 'bad country' for having few women in positions of power if the various matriarchal societies in game are not also declared as such.

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It's not that they don't have many women in positions of highest political power, it's that they can't.

There have been male leaders of the Eorzean city-states before, they're not "matriarchal societies". That implies that only women can be in positions of power and that's not true. The only matriarchal societies I can think of are the Sahagin and the Ixal. What are you thinking of?

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Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

It's not that they don't have many women in positions of highest political power, it's that they can't.

There have been male leaders of the Eorzean city-states before, they're not "matriarchal societies". That implies that only women can be in positions of power and that's not true. The only matriarchal societies I can think of are the Sahagin and the Ixal. What are you thinking of?

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The Hrothgar are a prominent example when it comes to one of their clans. There's an all female tribe of Xaela as well, though equally there's an all male tribe to balance it out. Then there's the setup of Viera society where the men are made to fend for themselves in the wilds and only return when it's time to breed.

None of this bothers me. It makes for interesting flavour! Though if the writers are indeed attempting to portray Garlemald doing something similar as uniquely bad or worse then I would question how much attention they pay to their own world building.

Not that Endwalker itself was not already making me do as much, of course...

Either way, if it's not too much trouble a link to the source interview would be deeply appreciated!

I do have one or two clarifying questions to OP— namely about this Grand Duchess Svetlana you’ve created.

Is Svetlana Garlean? And more specifically a member of the Galvus family? Because I’m pretty sure every Garlean other than Cid (and Midas which is a Greek name) have Latin/Roman names. Svetlana is a Russian name, and while certain aesthetics of the Empire are Russian, wouldn’t it make more sense for her to have a Roman name, especially if she’s a member of the royal family.

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Originally Posted by Theodric

The Hrothgar are a prominent example when it comes to one of their clans. There's an all female tribe of Xaela as well, though equally there's an all male tribe to balance it out. Then there's the setup of Viera society where the men are made to fend for themselves in the wilds and only return when it's time to breed.

None of this bothers me. It makes for interesting flavour! Though if the writers are indeed attempting to portray Garlemald doing something similar as uniquely bad or worse then I would question how much attention they pay to their own world building.

Not that Endwalker itself was not already making me do as much, of course...

Either way, if it's not too much trouble a link to the source interview would be deeply appreciated!

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Ah, my bias against Hrothgar and Viera seems to have blocked that part of my brain. To be fair to the Hrothgar, only one of their clans revered the queen and that government was said to have been super corrupt and bad for the majority. Viera are just copy-pasted in from another FF universe and were just created as an excuse to have a single gender race of hot bunny girls.

I had tried to find that interview before I posted, but it was likely almost a decade ago and the closest I can find on a quick google search at work takes me to interviews where Koji says he's going to talk about it later. I don't know if anyone knows of a repository of Koji interviews?


Speaking of copy-paste from other FF Universes, Landis would have been a better use of another country in Ilsabard other than Rozzaria. We already have the names of several cities in Landis, which already makes it bigger than most countries in the game by virtue of having more than 1 city. We also have characters who were from there and with how much it was talked about in Bozja, it seemed to have been the preeminent power in Ilsabard before the Garleans took it over. One of it's cities, according to Bwagi's field notes, seemed to be happy or at least normal and at peace under Garlean rule. The problem with it in regards to the OP's story though is that it was a republic.

Yeah, no worries. I think some sites have made room for new stuff by getting rid of older interviews since there's a few I remember reading that I haven't been able to find despite knowing exactly what phrase to put into a search engine in order to get them to appear. I set out to bookmark some for a while but there's honestly so many that it became too much work. Especially when accounting for different language variants.

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Originally Posted by Knot_D

>Literally eradicates 7 and 90% of shards civilization to rejoin the Source

>OMG Emet Daddy never did anything wrong!!

:confused:

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So there's this little activity called reading, it's typically recommended before you respond to a written post. No matter which course of action he chose it was going to be bad.

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I swear if the good option is by letting all Ancients sacrificed to Zodiark for a world like The Dead Ends's 3rd world, I'll leave any lore discussion in this forum because how dumb the Venat haters here.

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Personally, and this is just me, just my honest opinion, I think the best option is preventing the sacrifices happening in the first place by telling the truth. Try calling me dumb after you've actually read my post, I know it might be hard for you but I promise it's possible.

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Originally Posted by TimotheusReed

I feel some people are forgetting the whole "time aspect" when judging Venats actions.

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I haven't forgotten, I think it's a terrible justification. "She had to commit genocide because time travel!" No, absolutely not. She's not going to be spared judgement due to a plot contrivance that, IMO, not only ruined EW but retroactively the rest of the game.

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Originally Posted by Skyborne

Personally, and this is my own taste, I would've removed timetravel entirely and have had instead use our Echo to peer into the past to find out all of this. Also, having the sundered Ascians show up to help us out -- I wouldn't blame you if you forgot about them, it seems like the writers did too. Venat, I think, works plenty well as a 'villain with good intentions' in the game as is without the narrative propping her up, but her motivations could've been elaborated on instead of being a weird confused mess of a generic 'she loves you!' support blob.

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This is essentially my critique too. The only issue with Venat is the game doesn't address her as the ideologue she is. Frankly, all things could remain the same if Hydaelyn tempered. EW actually makes a lot of sense if that's the case. Otherwise, you'd just need to have the characters act accordingly, especially as Venat embodies ideologies the Scions have fought against and condemned in the past. Conversely, you could lean into them being hypocrites and have it be called out that they don't have an issue with villainous actions when they benefit from them. It'd be nice to see the moral paragon Scions knocked down a peg or two and be forced to reflect upon their own cherished values.

Nice work. I think I would've enjoyed an expansion like this far more, especially as it deals with the matter of Garlemald's future, and as you probably know from other threads, I tend to share your views on the matter of what I'd prefer its successor regime to be and the approach to its provinces, with some staying, others leaving, and so on. I also liked the way Corvos becomes their version of a Costa del Sol, and the comparison to Insomnia for the Inner Capitol. This has far less pointless fluff and is more focused on the story elements I'd be interested in seeing.

I also enjoyed how you handled the Elpis parts, and shifted around the role Venat played by swapping this and through involving more of the ancients who were more or less relegated to side characters by EW, if that. Historia Crux also sounds like it'd be a fun time and I like your resolution for explaining the three unsundered far better. The Lunar Subterrain, with Zodiark projecting images of their forlorn civilisation is exactly what I'd hoped for in the past. I am also glad you included the souls inside Zodiark rebelling against Zenos as this is something I had wanted to see out of the Zodiark fight we actually got.

If there is one thing I'd like to have seen it would be Venat involving herself with some being like Lavos or Jenova (or in XIV terms, related to the High Seraph) - something eager to devour or end their star, capable of approaching her, whispering to her and perhaps acting as the catalyst for her behavioural changes and inducing her ideological predisposition. Maybe something like IV: The After Years's Creator, which instilled in her notions as to how things in the world must evolve in order to avoid the fates of other worlds, so working a bit with the theme of the Dead Ends but without trying to cast it as inevitable. You could tie into this the Echo powers of a seeress, where she has visions of possible futures, which this entity is capable of tapping into and manipulating, and layer on acting as the primal's heart as further warping her and committing her to her path, which is where I thought they were headed with the whole 'heart' thing. This sort of entity I mentioned could then set up a future antagonist/storyline, later on exploring the cosmic destruction it unleashed on multiple worlds but on a slower, more organic scale, and later in the story arc.

I'd echo Skyborne's point on the sundered Ascians, and I'd also liked to have seen both divinities preserved in some fashion in the being into which Meteion will form, and not just Hydaelyn, as a being incorporating both light and darkness, which could perhaps have been a lesson drawn from these thousands of years of experience and modified into the concept with the sanction and blessing of what remained of the Convocation and those ancients liberated from Zodiark.

All in all, well done.

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Originally Posted by aveyond-dreams

“Killing magic,” in my view, is when the major magical forces or entities of a game are eliminated by the story’s end. Depending on the game, the protagonist may or may not lose their powers and abilities as a result, but more often that not it comes along with not only that but also the disappearance of creatures like Espers/Aeons too. I feel that this quite literally saps the magic out of a game world, especially if it’s an MMORPG that is meant to continue onward.

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Yes, I agree heartily on this front and on the logic you provided for not doing that.

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Originally Posted by Rymi64

With the death of Hydaelyn and Zodiark we literally lose nothing. We still have the travelers ward, people will still summon primals in desperate times, nothing really changes with their death other than the remaining ascians can do whatever they want to do but thats more from the death of the unsundered. The void wasn't really pushed on us rapidly since we've been dealing with it and it's denizens for years on the back burner in every expansion. We've only had 1 patch and we dont know if we're going to go into the void or somewhere else, could be we deal with the void by 6.5 (as side content or msq) or could be we completely go in 7.0 but one patch is not enough to even make such a guess. You can still use religion as a plot point since you don't have to narrow it down to just hydaelyn or zodiark. I wouldn't even consider hydaelyn central to any religion since she's not really worshiped, the twelve are but not her.

We don't need to have two new entities that are on the scale of H&Z to take their place to just go adventuring and its better not to since if you need a new overarching villain you can just make them fit anywhere in the world and be in the background and can stop using them at anytime without going to the same scale as endwalker. Shadowbringers isn't that spread out in scope compared to HW and ARR since its basically the arr map anyways, SB and EW are the most spread out expansions we have unless they're saying SHB is spread out because its on the first instead of the source which in that case still doesn't make it spread out. And unlike WoW the ff14 writing team is actually good at what they do.

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I think we’ll just have to agree to disagree on this one, I fundamentally do not like the idea of a fantasy world left bereft of the forces that once dominated it. I do not think using religion as a plot point moving forward is worth the player’s time because at this point the player is aware of most in-game mysteries – except for whatever is going on with the Twelve.

All I know is that despite a large number of logically sound voices calling for a grounded, fresh new start to Season 2, this was not accomplished in patch 6.1. I have very little confidence in an arc that begins in the Void or worse yet with the scions – whose status as untouchable comfort characters is actively hindering how emotionally involved they can make this story.

The hard pivot away from the more mature style of writing this game enjoyed prior to Endwalker is something that I significantly struggle with. To repeat what I have expressed in other threads, it wasn’t slice of life and fluff that’s sold me this game and got me to fall in love with it long term, it was a combination of gameplay factors and more effective and cohesive storytelling. Endwalker at times felt more like a Persona game than a Final Fantasy game, and not even FFVIII with its Garden schools felt as bad as some of what I endured in Endwalker’s story.

I will address other comments in my next post to mark the start of a new page.

Thank you all for your input! I will address some of your comments in this post:

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Originally Posted by whitemoonflower

As for the Loporrits, I’d hope they’d choose to live on and discover a true sense of purpose (and pudding). Thank you for sharing.

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After rereading the ending that I gave to the Loporrits...I will agree with you in that I do hope that some chose to stay awake and not rejoin their new adopted mother, Meteion, so soon. When I was thinking of what to do with them, as obscure a reference as this might be, I was looking back to Buju from Dawn of Mana. In the ending of that game, Buju longingly looks at his owner, Ritzia, as she sinks into the depths of the Mana Tree before transforming into the Goddess of Mana. I think to myself, given the choice, wouldn’t a creature like this want to be reunited with his owner? Wouldn’t therefore the Loporrits, essentially children, want to be reunited with the figure that they have accepted as their mother?

Other inspiration for the way in which I wrote them includes the story of Hachiko – though the Loporrits in my rewrite were subjected to a far crueller fate. Hachiko’s owner did not abandon him deliberately, but the Hydaelyn of my rewrite did despite these creatures perpetually longing for her return. They would immediately believe Meteion to be the goddess having finally come back for them, and Meteion would be both enamoured by such cute creatures yet internally torn at the thought of deceiving them. Eventually, they would come to realize that Meteion had lied to them but because of how much love she showed them, they come to look at her as everything they wished Hydaelyn was.

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Originally Posted by Foxowl

Is Svetlana Garlean? And more specifically a member of the Galvus family? Because I’m pretty sure every Garlean other than Cid (and Midas which is a Greek name) have Latin/Roman names. Svetlana is a Russian name, and while certain aesthetics of the Empire are Russian, wouldn’t it make more sense for her to have a Roman name, especially if she’s a member of the royal family.

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When it comes to Svetlana, there was a lot of extra exposition that I refrained from including for the sake of brevity. In summary, she is the youngest daughter of one of Solus’s sons (though not the original crown prince, which was Varis’s father.) Her rank of “Grand Duchess” would be given to the daughters of a prince, but not those of the crown prince, otherwise she would be a princess. When it comes to her name, I admit that my preference for the Russian over the Roman aesthetic influenced my decision to name her Svetlana, along with my general interest in the history of figures like the Tsar’s family, and the families of those who went on to rule Russia afterwards.

She is in her early twenties, and by this point has received an extensive education and military training. During her early years, she watched as the Imperial Senate acted together in order to inflict great torment on already struggling provinces and how they “silenced” dissenting nobles, including her older siblings. In order to protect herself from such a perilous situation, she devised a plan to become so beloved amongst the Garlean people and the provinces that it would be unthinkable to harm her – anyone who did so would be branded a destroyer of the icon of beauty and mercy/charity. Similar to Garlemald’s cult of Emperor worship, people would also flock to her side for these reasons. Though admittedly feigning it at first, she came to grow closer to the people in the subjugated provinces and developed an interest in their wellbeing.

Svetlana would have acted as a war nurse and treated Al-Sid’s wounds despite his position as a rebel combatant – and internally she would wonder to herself whether she did such a thing out of kindness or calculating and manipulating potential enemies in order to turn them into allies. From there their relationship would develop romantically, and so on. Al-Sid’s hot blooded and impassioned temperament would contrast with Svetlana’s more shrewd and cooler demeanour, though they ultimately want what is best for the people under their care. Her pregnancy was an accident she did not account for, despite the measures she took to prevent one, but it ultimately worked out in her favor and in favor of a lasting peace between Rozarria and Garlemald.

In addition to Celes from FFVI, I suppose other figures that I drew inspiration from whether deliberately or subconsciously include: Duchess Georgiana of Devonshire (an ancestor of Princess Diana), Kaiserin Elizabeth/”Sisi”, Hildegard Mariendorf (Legend of the Galactic Heroes), and Svetlana Alliluyeva – whose life story I learned of in a documentary I watched earlier this year and felt great sorrow for all she endured. In retrospect, I feel remorse for having put a character of the same name through such an ordeal in my writing and wish that I could have done a better job. If nothing else, I would like to think that at the end of my rewrite that the new Empress Svetlana went on to rule for many years with Thancred to keep her company as her bodyguard, and were able to find lasting happiness together.

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Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

Speaking of copy-paste from other FF Universes, Landis would have been a better use of another country in Ilsabard other than Rozzaria. The problem with it in regards to the OP's story though is that it was a republic.

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I picked Rozarria because I thought Al-Cid was cool whenever he came on screen in FFXII. Contrasting inner Garlemald with the Mediterranean seemed like a good idea, and I like the name because it definitely rolls off the tongue better than...Landis. I wanted to see Spain/Italy in the game so I put it in, simple as that. Liberating yet another republic or turning another former monarchy into one seemed like a boring idea, and Al-Cid certainly wouldn’t be the type to just let the scions roll in and do whatever they want with his country.

I struggle to think of any relevant characters to draw from Landis besides Noah van Gabranth, which would have admittedly made for a very interesting dynamic should I have brought him back to rule as a military dictator over the region with the scions forced to accept his form of government or else be branded his enemies. However, I wouldn’t have been able to effectively tie a character like that up with Svetlana in the way that I did with Al-Cid because the whole, “Do I love this person or am I secretly manipulating them?” dilemma wouldn’t have played a factor in the storytelling. The Noah of FFXIV is too intelligent and would have seen through Svetlana’s machinations.

From his perspective, the Grand Duchess and her popularity would have been a serious problem...he may have pressed the issue of a marriage alliance with her but then subjected her to the same treatment as the Duchess Georgiana did in the movie, overpowering and manipulating her in turn to break her and bend her to his will. I’m not sure if I want this man to have the ending of becoming the emperor of Garlemald...The writing surrounding him would make him an unpopular if not downright hated character, ironically playing right into Svetlana’s hands in that no one who harms or moves against her will come away clean.

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Originally Posted by Lauront

If there is one thing I'd like to have seen it would be Venat involving herself with some being like Lavos or Jenova (or in XIV terms, related to the High Seraph) - something eager to devour or end their star, capable of approaching her, whispering to her and perhaps acting as the catalyst for her behavioural changes and inducing her ideological predisposition. Maybe something like IV: The After Years's Creator, which instilled in her notions as to how things in the world must evolve in order to avoid the fates of other worlds, so working a bit with the theme of the Dead Ends but without trying to cast it as inevitable. You could tie into this the Echo powers of a seeress, where she has visions of possible futures, which this entity is capable of tapping into and manipulating, and layer on acting as the primal's heart as further warping her and committing her to her path, which is where I thought they were headed with the whole 'heart' thing. This sort of entity I mentioned could then set up a future antagonist/storyline, later on exploring the cosmic destruction it unleashed on multiple worlds but on a slower, more organic scale, and later in the story arc.

I'd echo Skyborne's point on the sundered Ascians, and I'd also liked to have seen both divinities preserved in some fashion in the being into which Meteion will form, and not just Hydaelyn, as a being incorporating both light and darkness, which could perhaps have been a lesson drawn from these thousands of years of experience and modified into the concept with the sanction and blessing of what remained of the Convocation and those ancients liberated from Zodiark.

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Your post brings up a lot of interesting points, and I’d like to start with the Lavos/Jenova aspect. Admittedly this didn’t come across as well as I would have liked to in my post, but in riding Midgardsormr to beyond the stars and escape the WoL’s final blow...Hydaelyn would have gone on to another planet to re-establish herself as a “supreme goddess” and inflict widespread chaos again all for the sake her vanity. Effectively, she would have been Jenova. I will however concede that there is greater value in having the source of her personality change be an external force that could linger on after her defeat – paving the way for future storytelling. Perhaps in Venat’s case, it turned her into the fallen angel of FFXIV’s world, while if it affected a different person they would become a gluttonous space parasite that consumes whole worlds, etc.

In regards to the remaining Ascians, I must confess that I had completely forgotten them as I was writing and regret not having included them in the rewrite. There are a number of different ways to have gone about that, from having them be part of the Telophoroi to having them act as Zodiark’s last line of defense on the moon, before being cut down by Zenos...and forcefully possessing some of the remaining party members in order to assist in the fight against their former god. Another option would be for them to be absent from the story, in hiding, until they witness the last phase of the WoL’s battle against Hydaelyn on the moon. They would then ferry the WoL’s body back to Meteion, and impart onto her the last of their essences in order to give her dominion over darkness as well.

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Another option would be for them to be absent from the story, in hiding, until they witness the last phase of the WoL’s battle against Hydaelyn on the moon. They would then ferry the WoL’s body back to Meteion, and impart onto her the last of their essences in order to give her dominion over darkness as well.

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Yes, something like that is exactly what I have in mind.

Well, that made for an enjoyable read! I like pretty much everything that you proposed and I think such a direction would have truly done justice for the Ancients and the Garleans alike. It also captured a lot of what pulled me into the setting back in the days of ARR and HW.

My only suggestion would be to perhaps have Regula's blade play a part in the confrontation with Varis. Mostly to give some pay off to the scrapped thread that was Regula's dying words. Upon seeing the blade, the part of Varis that managed to resist would be emboldened or some such. A little cliche, perhaps, but it'd be a good way to tie off the loose end and maybe later have a follow up where it is revealed that Regula had a son who survived the chaos consuming Garlemald and vows to become a good soldier.

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Originally Posted by Theodric

Well, that made for an enjoyable read! I like pretty much everything that you proposed and I think such a direction would have truly done justice for the Ancients and the Garleans alike. It also captured a lot of what pulled me into the setting back in the days of ARR and HW.

My only suggestion would be to perhaps have Regula's blade play a part in the confrontation with Varis. Mostly to give some pay off to the scrapped thread that was Regula's dying words. Upon seeing the blade, the part of Varis that managed to resist would be emboldened or some such. A little cliche, perhaps, but it'd be a good way to tie off the loose end and maybe later have a follow up where it is revealed that Regula had a son who survived the chaos consuming Garlemald and vows to become a good soldier.

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Thank you! I would probably place a potential son of Regula’s on the city outskirts or somewhere in the inner city, probably trying to protect his own group of survivors. By some means, he would have obtained his father’s gunblade and potentially may have assisted in rescuing the recaptured Svetlana at this point in the rewrite. Since Regula and Varis are roughly the same age, I imagine his son would consequently be the same age as Zenos. However, the revelation of him being Regula’s son and the sword being Regula’s gunblade would be uncovered after the battle against Anima -

An alteration to account for all this would be Svetlana regaining her senses while unsupervised and laments her actions of killing both Gaius and Al-Cid. Having lost the love of her life and succumbing to thoughts of suicide, she steals the gunblade from Regula’s son in order to arm herself. She heads to the palace with one final mission in mind: aid the WoL in their fight against whatever horrors lie within and then leap.

She would navigate the tower using all the survival techniques she learned from Thancred up to that point and arrive with the gunblade during the battle against Anima. Using it against the transformed Varis restores a degree of his sentience, enough to project an image of his former self where he declares his resolve. The phantoms of former officials, Regula included, bear witness to the event and entrust the future to Svetlana as the primal shuts itself down.

Perhaps in spite of all this, she would still try to leap only to be stopped by Thancred. There, he would again promise to keep her safe if she accepts him into her service, which she does. In any case this would certainly give Thancred a more grounded and heroic role as well instead of...becoming atmosphere in Ultima Thule. In hindsight I still can’t believe that zone really happened. Regula’s son would follow soon afterwards and the other characters present would react with shock at the revelation of his parentage, and the true significance of the gunblade. Naturally Svetlana would return it to the son and assign him to work with Jullus on continued rescue efforts around the capitol.

Perhaps another way would have been to tie in the plot surrounding the gunblade and leave Jullus as is except for the surprise revelation of him being Regula’s son towards the end? Given Regula’s association with the Sapphire Weapon...his son having blue hair would not have been outside the realm of possibility.

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Originally Posted by Theodric

Yeah, no worries. I think some sites have made room for new stuff by getting rid of older interviews since there's a few I remember reading that I haven't been able to find despite knowing exactly what phrase to put into a search engine in order to get them to appear. I set out to bookmark some for a while but there's honestly so many that it became too much work. Especially when accounting for different language variants.

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I wasn't able to find the interview, but it does say in the EE that female heirs in the Imperial Court have no claim to the throne and are titled "wir". The emperor's mom and wife get to be "yae" but that's still on the same level as all male members of the royal family who are listed as being in the actual line of succession, which seems to imply male-only inheritance. So I don't believe Gaius would recommend Svetlana unless he were desperate or he happened to be very progressive. Then there the matter of the remaining legions. As we've seen multiple times, except for the 1st legion, the rest are more loyal to their legatus than to the throne.


On the topic of Svetlana, I just realized that would be a Hrothgar name. There's even a name example in the Hrothgar naming conventions thread that starts with "Svet", which is a pan-Slavic word for "light", which pulls from the cultural pool that Hrothgar use. And there's also her actions. It seems to be a bit out-of-character for the game's theme to have a "benevolent" Imperial character decide that the conquered territories are better off with the Garlean Empire considering a whole expansion was spent on their liberation. And then cartoonishly out-of-character to blame atrocities on the Senate just because OP doesn't like republics.

It also appears that the WoL basically does nothing in the first of the two expansions laid out. A story where we go back to being the mute do-nothing feels like a step back from Shadowbringers where a lot of the appeal was the fact that we were actually the main character. Instead, that spot has been replaced with yet another in the line of important MSQ blonde girls after Minfilia, Ysayle (ish), Lyse, and Minifilia, so yay for consistency at least?

That's changed in the 2nd half of the OP but the rest just feels like a rant post because they don't like Venat. We already see her at the very end of Shadowbringers and that characterization doesn't fit in with the post. Let alone our interactions with Hydaelyn elsewhere in the game.

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Originally Posted by anhaato

So there's this little activity called reading, it's typically recommended before you respond to a written post. No matter which course of action he chose it was going to be bad.



Personally, and this is just me, just my honest opinion, I think the best option is preventing the sacrifices happening in the first place by telling the truth. Try calling me dumb after you've actually read my post, I know it might be hard for you but I promise it's possible.

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You often speak as of you know her being fully open with everyone would just automatically fix the issue. NOBODY knows what would've happened if she did tell the Ancients. She already had apprehension about telling Hermes as she felt her may turn on them and not help them figure out that things were destabilizing. The story could go a 100 different ways there yet the one she choose resulted in us having a game to begin with. You don't have to like it, but it IS why the WoL is even a thing. Yall already got your option to say Venat wasnt justified in game. Is that not enough?

Also iirc wasn't it confirmed the Ancients would end up like the Final Dead Ends world if they did continue on their own path?

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Originally Posted by IkaraGreydancer

You often speak as of you know her being fully open with everyone would just automatically fix the issue. NOBODY knows what would've happened if she did tell the Ancients. She already had apprehension about telling Hermes as she felt her may turn on them and not help them figure out that things were destabilizing. The story could go a 100 different ways there yet the one she choose resulted in us having a game to begin with. You don't have to like it, but it IS why the WoL is even a thing. Yall already got your option to say Venat wasnt justified in game. Is that not enough?

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Nope! And fuck closed time loops!

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Originally Posted by anhaato

Nope! And fuck closed time loops!

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Like I and many others have said. You don't have to like it. Throwing tantrums and being dickish won't change nor "fix" that

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Originally Posted by IkaraGreydancer

Like I and many others have said. You don't have to like it. Throwing tantrums and being dickish won't change nor "fix" that

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I really don't care. I'm not going to behold myself to some made up standards until the end of time when I've spent as much time as I have being eloquent and succinct with my criticisms. Whether or not you think I've done enough of that is irrelevant to me.

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Originally Posted by IkaraGreydancer

Yall already got your option to say Venat wasnt justified in game. Is that not enough?

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As someone who has not completed the Omega raids, no, I did not get that option. Having nuance that was sorely needed throughout 6.0 locked behind side content from 2 expansions ago isn't my idea of addressing the issue. Nor is one dialog option adequate, especially not when her codex entry is a laughably glowing review that may as well have been written by one of the lopporits.

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Also iirc wasn't it confirmed the Ancients would end up like the Final Dead Ends world if they did continue on their own path?

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It was stated it was Venat's belief that was the future of the Ancients.