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

I'm fine with letting them wrap things up on the Ancients front. If they keep going with it then at best we'll get a bunch of cheap retcons. I'm happy they're reducing the scale of the story now because they've clearly proven that they can't handle anything greater than SHB.

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Originally Posted by Brinne

Once again, "I don't hate Endwalker, but I hate what Endwalker brings out in people."

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I find myself resisting the urge to facepalm at the sheer number of people who now parrot the nonsense of "The Ancients woud've died this way!" whenever a remotely popular streamer gets to the final section of the Dead Ends.

I have to give them credit, while the post-Elpis cutscene did nothing for me other than solidify my hatred of Venat it clearly achieved the goal of making others sympathize with her. I've watched at least 2-3 streamers now who echoed our points up until that scene and then did a complete U-turn on her character. Apparently the evocation of pity for someone is a powerful thing.

I mean, I guess it's a good reminder at how susceptible we as humans can be to textbook apologism rhetoric and propaganda, but, uh, I Hate It?

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Originally Posted by Rulakir

Re: Elpis time travel

Personally, I considered it the only morally correct choice for me to try to avert the Final Days for the Ancients.

The cost without an AU is a future that simply wouldn't come to be and I'm perfectly fine with that given the mess the sundering and rejoinings caused over the subsequent millennia.

As far as an AU, well, this just exemplifies how much of a failure Venat's plan was. No WoL = Meteion is never defeated and Etheirys is destroyed.

(I don't know how anyone rationalizes AU and time loops. More power to you if you can, but the mental gymnastics are too much for me.)

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To understand the impact of altering time in this story, you have to look at the one successful example in Shadowbringers. The time traveller who alters their own past is not erased from history, and the side story An Unpromised Future confirms that the other timeline continues to exist parallel to ours. (And yes, that timeline may need its own method of defeating Meteion if it ever reaches the same point of Zodiark being destroyed, but that is entirely the realm of speculation and fanfic.)

From that model we can deduce that even if we "change" the fate of the ancients, we are only creating a second branch of time. Our original timeline and all of the suffering within it will not be erased, but we may not be able to get back there to save it.

I'm a bit confused which scenario you're talking about where there is no WoL. There is no part of Venat's plan that will stop the WoL from coming into existence.

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Originally Posted by Rulakir

I have to give them credit, while the post-Elpis cutscene did nothing for me other than solidify my hatred of Venat it clearly achieved the goal of making others sympathize with her. I've watched at least 2-3 streamers now who echoed our points up until that scene and then did a complete U-turn on her character. Apparently the evocation of pity for someone is a powerful thing.

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It did work with Emet-Selch first. However, the game also made it clear he was not on Team-Sundered-Who-Are-Superior-Because-Of-An-Obscure-Energy-Source-Useful-Only-In-Space and a threat that flung himself at us in a duel to the death. There was no "Wind-Up Hero" plopped in our inventory, either. At most, he was called a hero... to his people, by the Minstrel. They wanted to capture ShB's lightning in a bottle again in EW... seems it worked, mostly. That said I have actually seen people who were turned off by the Q&A revelations...

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Originally Posted by Iscah

From that model we can deduce that even if we "change" the fate of the ancients, we are only creating a second branch of time. Our original timeline and all of the suffering within it will not be erased, but we may not be able to get back there to save it.

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I think I see what you're saying. Basically, the Elpis we visited could have branched into an alternate timeline we don't know about if that Venat had at any point changed her mind but, regardless, the Venat in our timeline ended up following the roadmap of the future we told her about to the letter?

The only problem is still the 8UC. Everything in that timeline happens the same as ours, however, the WoL is killed by Black Rose before they could journey to Elpis. Venat doing everything exactly the same regardless of the WoL's interference requires a substantial suspension of disbelief. The only work around I can think of is a future reincarnation of the WoL doing it and there are a lot of issues with that too.

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Originally Posted by Skyborne

It did work with Emet-Selch first.

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True. It's like Ishikawa said in the Famitsu interview, Emet's motives were more sympathetic. The unsundered were put in the position of victims, whereas both Hermes and Venat were always the aggressors.

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Originally Posted by Rulakir

The only problem is still the 8UC. Everything in that timeline happens the same as ours, however, the WoL is killed by Black Rose before they could journey to Elpis. Venat doing everything exactly the same regardless of the WoL's interference requires a substantial suspension of disbelief. The only work around I can think of is a future reincarnation of the WoL doing it and there are a lot of issues with that too.

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Our other self does not need to go back to Elpis.

The events of that timeline are not completely independent of ours, but split apart from our timeline due to the events of Shadowbringers. At absolute earliest, it happened some time after 3.4 which we can mark as the time when the Flood of Light happened.

Prior to that point, the two timelines share a past, and the events at Elpis (starring "good timeline WoL") happened in that shared past, therefore "bad timeline WoL" has no need to separately visit Elpis.

O.o Oh time travel talk *walks away*

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Originally Posted by Iscah

Prior to that point, the two timelines share a past, and the events at Elpis (starring "good timeline WoL") happened in that shared past, therefore "bad timeline WoL" has no need to separately visit Elpis.

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This is what I meant by the mental gymnastics needed for this to make sense. :P So, the loop is dependent on the 8UC timeline failing? Messy. Imagine being Hydaelyn in the 8UC and realizing you're in the failed/sacrificial timeline. It still doesn't explain the paradox surrounding the name "Hydaelyn" either.

Unfortunately, it doesn't make me feel any better how things played out as no matter what our WoL deciding to share the future in an attempt to avert it is ultimately what caused it, thus making us responsible for the sundering. It was a full on Greek tragedy. -_-