Endwalker story doubt: spoiler alert

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

Actually I find people get, like... legitimately mad when I state my opinion on Haurchefant is that he's so forgettable that I did forget about him. [...]

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I couldn't agree more with this. Consequently, the most impactful part of Haurchefant's death was the sheer confusion I felt at how emotionally overwrought the scene was, in a way that seemed to me to be bafflingly left-field. Like, I believed he and the WoL were friendly, and he was a loyal supporter, and certainly it's sad and terrible to see someone die in that context. But the scene is staged in a way that I didn't feel the writing, or Haurchefant's general presence in the story up to that point, really supported. I remember messaging a friend of mine at the time, like, "Am I missing something??" lmao

Not unlike Denishia was saying, Edmont was the only way I was finally able to really connect emotionally with it.

Hythlodaeus, meanwhile... First of all, I don't think there's a world where the real thing wouldn't have compared poorly to the fake in ShB, if only because the fake itself is so intriguing partially because he was hardly a character to begin with. He's a concept, a memory, that tells us more about Emet than it could ever tell us about Hyth. (I don't personally care for Emet, or the Ancients, but those scenes were still vibey and pleasant for what they were.)

Even keeping that in mind, though, the two versions of the character still felt surprisingly dissonant to me. I don't care that he was pretty, but I probably could have guessed that he would be, just because... the medium is what it is. The bigger issue to me was just the general lack of overlap, even on a surface level, between the two characterizations. Of course context is important; we're meeting the real person under very different circumstances, and we aren't meeting the version of him that perhaps Emet knew privately, who might've been more in line with the figment that we met in ShB. Nevertheless, it struck me because... well, this is fiction, and one wonders why they'd reintroduce the character if he was going to feel so fundamentally different anyway. Just something familiar for familiarity's sake.

He serves his purpose as a world-building tool, leading us through Elpis, but returning to your bit about Haurchefant -- like him, the real Hythlodaeus simply didn't register for me beyond that. And when he kept reappearing in key scenes, I just kept wondering... why? Why does this person, who doesn't even really have any personal connection with the WoL -- apart from acting as their tour guide that one time -- keep popping in to say hi or whatever? Curiosity on his part, I guess, but what is that supposed to mean to the player at this point??

"Fanservice" is probably the answer, and unfortunately I wasn't the target demographic lol.

I liked the ancients more when I thought they were giant penguins. It was easier to believe in shadow bringers that hythlodaeus was an individual with motivations and goals independent to the player character than the elpis version. As annoying as it is, I got the impression that he was similar to dumbledore in the earlier harry potters - intelligent, unknowable, a touch mischievous and mainly there for his own amusement/curiosity. Not quite a deus ex machina, nor the narrator’s voice but inclined that way.
The whole elpis thing felt kind of like an in-universe play that was stumbled into if that makes sense. Too convenient, too many known characters, too much mystery removed. I did appreciate using him as one of zodiark’s 50%s though, much more interesting than having him as complete tataru, gaius or zenos.

I really liked Hyth in Shadowbringers. His intro scene, while likely intended as standalone, was memorable because of how it ties in to the showdown with Emet at the climax of 5.0. Hyth's character likely evolved through a series of bit parts both in-game and in the Tales from the Shadows short stories, the latter of which is an important transition point in the writing. There is a fair amount of flanderization at work here, similar to what you get with Emet continually facepalming over his friends' antics, but I think this is a natural consequence of playfully 'leaning' into a character trait in serial writing. It's not entirely a bad thing, but it's tricky to get the balance right between being rigidly faithful to the character and having a bit too much fun at the expense of staying 'true' to the character.

As for the plan with the moon, it's hard to say retrospectively what the 'intended' plan was. The Endsinger was a potentially universe-ending threat, so it wouldn't have really mattered where they ran to in the long run. Is the choice purely symbolic, allowing you the 'option' to run away from the problem in the hopes of living out your own lifespan in ignorant bliss? The 'bad ending' is a common enough JRPG trope.

Or is there a more elaborate reason for the Moon's existence, and was the choice of escaping on it was just a ruse? Part of the problem is that there's a lot of 4D chess that gets played by the Amaurotine characters, and any one of these seemingly innocent events could just be a clever gambit designed in preparation for an event thousands of years later in Pandaemonium or Myths. It's one of the reasons why I think it's hard to have a proper conversation about Endwalker's story until 6.5, because there's so much potential uncertainty here.

I always saw Real Hyth as someone who would have appeared fairly ordinary on the surface, save for perhaps his eyes, typically hidden beneath his mask, which would have been a subtle hint towards how I perceived him as a person: someone highly observant, intelligent and shrewd, and whose jovial, whimsical sort of nature and unremarkable appearance belied a capability possibly on par with or potentially even outstripping Emet's, or at least some of the more powerful Ancients, given he was the original choice for Emet-Selch. And the fact that he was, but turned it down, was always interesting to me, and I was very intrigued by the notion of here being someone equal to Emet, but possessing a drastically different worldview, and what that might have brought to the story. I'm still mad how they chose to backtrack on that entirely and make it as a result of him being more or less feeble outside of his soulseeing ability, and how it ended up watering down his character even further.

But it's funny that Fulminating mentions Dumledore, because that briefly came to my mind too; someone of a likewise seemingly placid personality, yet tinged with that sense of mystery and the inescapable feeling that they know and see far more than they let on. I never saw him as old or a mentor sort, though, and the age he was depicted was one of the few things that matched for me.

I think real Hyth knew more than he let on. Sure, he had a desk job. And yet you'd be surprised by how much you learn about people when you're in a customer service type position. That and it seemed he got out of Amaurot often enough for people to hint that Elpis isn't the only place he occasionally visits. To the point he jokes about how he can't possibly be that well known. I guess the reason why Haurchefant left a mark early on me is he came off as the first friendly face we met in Coerthas. Every time we'd need his assistance he'd welcome us with a smile and egar to help. That even by the time we are dealing with Yasale he cares so much about us he ends up having to settle on pacing. As his subordinates refused to let him go to our aid.

That and I probably had a different experience than most people who played solely with the English client. I have the English client, but when I go through the story with the Japanese voice lines. Which back then more so than now gave me the more animated version of cutscenes. Along with hearing a more passionate line delivery. What everyone else got vs the English client when it comes to how animated people are more so back then is mind boggling to me. As English Haurchefant might as well have been the physical embodiment of paint drying vs very excited child who is trying to tell you a story. Hand gestures and all.

Anyway I do wonder if the "doomed" timeline Hydaelyn would have tried to contact the unsundered and spill the tea. I'm not sure she had much faith in the escape plan. I do feel as though it was always meant to be a ruse or one more test. As of course more people would be less tempted to try and find another way to solve the problem if you were given the option of stay and fight or flee.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

I would overall say that in those situations I wasn't defending Venat so much as I was defending 'the story as it was given to us'; my view on a lot of critique and analysis is essentially that while I don't have any issue with how you feel about a story, we should discuss it on the story's terms, and not misrepresent it. And without wanting to revive, relitigate or psychoanalyze that argument, I feel like there was a lot of people who were grossly misrepresenting the argument solely to make Venat look bad, because they either disagreed with her or disliked Endwalker, and wanted to declare their stance to be objectively right instead of merely opinion. I know the feeling and I've fallen into it myself, but discussion doesn't get anywhere by letting that sort of misrepresentation stand.

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So tl;dr it's all in your head. You are afraid of the venat-hater boogeyman that you assume people are trying to make Venat looks bad, instead, you know, questioning the story?

You said about not wanting to misrepresent "the story given to us" but has it crossed your minds that sometimes the story just doesn't make sense? Or if it was cheap-written? If no one is allowed to say what a dumb plot it is, then movie/story critics wouldn't exist.

Edit: the lore forum has now become your paradise, free of the evil trancers, you don't need to play victim anymore Cleretic

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Originally Posted by Kozh

So tl;dr it's all in your head. You are afraid of the venat-hater boogeyman that you assume people are trying to make Venat looks bad, instead, you know, questioning the story?

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And you've suddenly made it very clear that you only care about specifically attacking me, not the actual subject of the thread. Otherwise you wouldn't have ignored:

A: Me directly addressing your points,

and B: The posts above you re-railing the topic back to the OP's questions.

It's especially noticeable that you don't even know--or more correctly, don't believe--enough about me to actually make a cogent point about me, because 'you don't want us criticizing the story' doesn't make any goddamn sense coming after two pages of several of us, including myself, criticizing part of the story.

I will happily dress down FFXIV's story for the parts I find that it actually fails at. ARR is overstuffed and underbaked. Stormblood attempting to tell the same story twice just leads to neither story getting the chance to get good. Shadowbringers suffers from the writers not wanting to kill characters as much as they used to (which is valid) but not knowing any way to up the stakes of a scene other than to threaten it. Endwalker has pacing problems that mostly stem from two decent-sized chunks of story where literally nothing happens. I've made two videos about issues that I find two prominent characters' stories face. I'm currently trying to figure out a proper way to discuss how FFXIV's interest in writing a story that caters to how much the general playerbase loves certain characters and playstyles leaves the people who don't share those interests weirdly alienated.

But all of those are parts where the game fails me are related to the story failing to deliver what it's trying to. I see what the game's wanting to do, and I see the things that cause it to not achieve that in the best way it can. That's rather different from arguing that a written-to-be-imperfect plan that didn't even get put into action in the first place would've failed according to information you learned later that the plan-maker and enactors wouldn't have known. That's not genuine and worthwhile criticism that resolving would make the story better; that's nitpicking that's beside the point of that story beat at best, and taking blatant potshots at the plan-maker at worst. And you don't strike me as a nitpicker.

If it's really what you're interested in: congratulations for coming up with a way that the plan that was explicitly described in the story as being flawed, imperfect and wouldn't have worked very well... wouldn't have worked very well. Not that any of that matters, because your real argument is to try to make ad hominem attacks against someone you don't actually understand.

EDIT: For what it's worth and to prevent it getting off scot-free, I don't have any big complaints about Heavensward's story, but think it was just boringly competent throughout. There's not any big problems that don't amount to entirely subjective 'I wish they didn't kill Ysayle', but at the same time, absolutely none of my highlights of the game's story come from Heavensward.

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Originally Posted by Cleretic

And you've suddenly made it very clear that you only care about specifically attacking me, not the actual subject of the thread.

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See? You saw me trying to correct you and you assume I was "attacking you". Please refer again to my first reply to you. I don't even attempt to address your point about venat because I don't care about it. I admit I'm just mildly curious of this thread and not gonna post here, until I saw your headcanon of meteion, which you put as the correct interpretation. I just so happen to disagree with it and feel like that's not how it works in canon.

On your next reply, you somehow snarked at me and accused me of wanting to make venat looks bad.

Have you ever not try to correct someone when they're wrong about ffxiv lore? Because that's what I was doing.

Also, very ironic of you saying I don't understand, when you done the same yourself.

>That's not genuine and worthwhile criticism that resolving would make the story better; that's nitpicking that's beside the point of that story beat at best, and taking blatant potshots at the plan-maker at worst.

And this? This is subjective. YOU might think it's nitpicking, others might not.

(I mean, hey, people do it all the time to make fun of how stupid zodiark plan is, so if people start questioning venat's back up plan, don't blame me. That's just how the community works)

To put context around how I look at the moon escape plan--and why I think poking holes into it is very much 'good job, not the point'--I think it's best to consider what the purpose of the plan is both in-universe and for the story.

They're somewhat connected in that purpose: to both the characters and the players, the moon escape plan exists as the first obvious option, but an imperfect one. But from there, how we see the plan differs from the characters.

To the characters, the plan first seems to be the best they've got, and as others pointed out is probably a beacon of hope in a situation where despair is the absolute worst thing. But on reflection the plan turns out to be unacceptable, largely because of the amount of loss it would require; it becomes the clear backup not just in Venat's mind (as it turns out she's been seeing it as the whole time), but also in the Scions, because to them they just can't accept that status without at least trying to do better. That part's where the secret requirements of the plan come in: the Loporrits, having been puzzling out how to do viable interstellar travel for the escape plan all this time, can redirect the Scions to the REAL Plan A.

For the players, it was never going to be the real solution; it wasn't even a red herring, everybody knew that's not what the game was going to do, an MMO just can't do that. All the reasons we learned afterwards were, to us, basically justification for what we already knew we were going to turn down. So since it never existed to us as that, we should instead ask what role it's performing structurally. And that's twofold: First, to bring in the Loporrits, and second, to confirm that yes, Hydaelyn did have a plan, imperfect as it is--and then, afterwards, to confirm that she planned even further than that, and that the escape plan was a contingency if things went really badly.

The reason why I think that poking further holes in the moon escape plan is either beside-the-point nitpicking or just excuses to attack Venat isn't just because it's dragging in information that Venat wouldn't have had, but because it doesn't alter any view of the plan. Both players and characters already had their own reasons to reject the plan, so what does further evidence in favor of that choice after the fact even do? The only end beyond self-amusement I can think of is just... attacking Venat for apparently not thinking harder about it. And does that even change anyone's view of Venat? I know it doesn't change mine; we already knew her plan wasn't perfect but was better than nothing if the Scions failed, further reasons it's not perfect doesn't actually change that; she did her best, sometimes there just isn't a perfect solution. I suspect Kozh didn't change his view either, and just treats it as more justification for how he already felt.


While I don't particularly like talk about the 8UC timeline, I do think it interesting to think about how Hydaelyn would've reacted to it, and this is exactly why: what does she do if her Plan A dies, but she doesn't? Personally, I suspect Hydaelyn would've starved to death after too long there anyway, she was very weak, but if she doesn't... yeah, what does she do there? Presumably she doesn't give up. Does she try to bolster the Plan B, try to repair the Plan A so it works without us? Do something entirely different?

Did you just choose to ignore everything I said? How many times should I repeat that my post has nothing to do with venat and everything to di with your "headcanon treated as canon" takes of meteion. Hell this Plan B (and A) could've been made by the ascian and I would still question the possibility of it successing. Unlike you cleretic, I know how to be fair towards character I dislike, and I don't tend to victim blaming like how you did to the sharlayan

By the way, do you know that a certain lore discord had discussed this Plan B? And nearly all of them like venat. Are you saying that their aim was to attack her?

Do you think it's impossible to just theorized about how such and such plot point gonna works or not?