Who knew the 6.15 Omega Quests… (Spoilers)

From one of the old live letters, I get the impression they are never going to tell us what that Azem was up to. They said they barely thought about and left it to head canons to decide. Probably to afraid after the backlash to answer the question for fear of our disappointment. To them, it's not an important question to answer either and I think they want us to move on from it.

I'm personally hoping that what it turns out to be is that yes Azem made that prediction... but it wasn't about us at all, and our rolling with what Themis says is just that, a massive coincidence.

I could see Azem sending someone in their stead (probably Emet :P) who didn't arrive before the WoL did. So, Themis just ran with it and afterwards maybe we find out who it was supposed to be has been waiting around in Elpis for Themis the whole time.

I am curious how many days it is between meeting Vanat and meeting Themis on Elpis

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Originally Posted by EaraGrace

Just gonna ignore the wizard threatening us with an interrogation I see.

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Would have been better, tbh. If Emet-Selch had gotten the info from us the Ancients would have gotten the full story with no embellishments or bias.

Also, they wouldn't be dead. That's usually a plus. Hooray for living!

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Originally Posted by Rulakir

One of my biggest gripes about EW, making the WoL an accomplice to it all.

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That's defs the worst case scenario for Panda's plot. They already tied Azem to Venat in the most intimate of ways via retcon, if our Azem is retconned into being a direct accomplice to the Sundering itself, or in agreement with it we Riot.

I mean, really. Who would willingly advocate for the deaths of their entire race for the benefit of a race they'll never be alive to meet, THAT DOESN'T EVEN BLOODY EXIST YET?! FFXIV's officially hit the gutter, rock-bloody-bottom if that comes to pass.

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Originally Posted by SentioftheHoukai

Would have been better, tbh. If Emet-Selch had gotten the info from us the Ancients would have gotten the full story with no embellishments or bias.

Also, they wouldn't be dead. That's usually a plus. Hooray for living!

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Good luck creating a being to control the celestial currents without the foremost expert in an incredibly specialized field. Not to mention he’s probably doing everything to actively mess that plan up to.

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Originally Posted by Tama-Kanzashi

I too remember clearly when Emet-Selch threatened to pull our fingernails out until we tell him whatever he wants to hear.

Which is a lie, I don't.

There is a difference between "questioning" and "interrogation", and you make it sound like he was planning to torture us.
And he has every right to question us - after all time travel was suddenly involved, a subject that was very outlandish even for the Ancients.

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From the “A Past, Not Yet Come to Pass” quest.

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Emet-Selch: Yes, this will be far more comfortable than interrogating you on the side of the road.

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I chose to use the word interrogation very specifically.

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Originally Posted by EaraGrace

From the “A Past, Not Yet Come to Pass” quest.



I chose to use the word interrogation very specifically.

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It's okay, dramatic snark is hard to understand if you lack the skill involved.

But sure, you are correct. He is ready to torture us because that's what Ancients do, I suppose. Especially when one is not guilty of any crime. Whatever fits your personal narrative about the mean wizard threatening us.

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Originally Posted by Tama-Kanzashi

It's okay, dramatic snark is hard to understand if you lack the skill involved.

But sure, you are correct. He is ready to torture us because that's what Ancients do, I suppose. Especially when one is not guilty of any crime. Whatever fits your personal narrative about the mean wizard threatening us.

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Why do you feel the need to insult me when I’m just showing why I said what I said? I said he threatened to interrogate us. He did. I didn’t say he was warming the car battery up. You don’t need to do that to interrogate someone.

I'm way late here to the point I'm not sure it's even worth bothering with, but I thought I'd chime in to say that I liked the Omega quest a lot, and I think some people are being excessively negative about the intentions of the writers, who probably didn't even mean for the uncomfortable elements of Endwalker's original story to be there - writing a big project like a 40+ hour, narrative heavy game is a messy process. Stuff gets cut or moved around for gameplay reasons and the intended tone or message gets distorted. Different members of the team are trying to say slightly different things, and those vibes clash and create dissonance. It's difficult.

One of my biggest specific complaints about Endwalker was the way that Venat was depicted as an unambiguously heroic figure despite killing so many people, with the player not really given any ability to voice how weird this is, and the scene at the end felt like a very deliberate attempt to engage with and offset that criticism. More importantly, I really appreciated how the narrative went out of its way to illustrate how people succumbing to despair is ultimately more often a product of luck and circumstance than any kind of special personal strength; you didn't survive because you were a hero, you survived because fate was kind to you, and that makes the responsibility on your shoulders all the greater. It's a pivot towards emphasizing empathy rather than emotionally strong vs. emotionally weak people, which it felt like Endwalker often flirted with the Ancients plotline and in the Thavnair segment - again, I doubt that was ever their intent, but it did come out that way at times.

While I anticipated fluffy additions to the plot that superficially address some of the criticism like the Ancients getting a happy timeline or w/e, I didn't expect any engagement with these more fundamental issues, and am very impressed by them doing it. I'd go as far as to say that the questline addresses most of the framing problems I had with the expansion, though of course you can't completely fix an already finished and released work without outright retconning it, which was never going to happen. There's still a bunch of more technical flaws with the story that I'd like to see addressed - especially surrounding the timeloop - and I would really like to see them leave Venat specifically is a less messy place, but I have a lot more faith they'll make an effort sooner or later after this.

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Originally Posted by Lurina

One of my biggest specific complaints about Endwalker was the way that Venat was depicted as an unambiguously heroic figure despite killing so many people, with the player not really given any ability to voice how weird this is, and the scene at the end felt like a very deliberate attempt to engage with and offset that criticism. More importantly, I really appreciated how the narrative went out of its way to illustrate how people succumbing to despair is ultimately more often a product of luck and circumstance than any kind of special personal strength; you didn't survive because you were a hero, you survived because fate was kind to you, and that makes the responsibility on your shoulders all the greater. It's a pivot towards emphasizing empathy rather than emotionally strong vs. emotionally weak people, which it felt like Endwalker often flirted with the Ancients plotline and in the Thavnair segment - again, I doubt that was ever their intent, but it did come out that way at times.

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Yes, the Thavnair segment and its ultimate conclusion regarding Despair honestly probably meant more to me than the backpedaling with Venat. In the end, Venat is a character - and there is almost no kind of character I can't enjoy, if presented thoughtfully. I think I've said a few times on the forum that, without changing a single thing she did or believed, I would have been more than capable of loving Venat if the story itself hadn't decided to throw its entire weight behind her actions in a very Weird way. More than anything she actually did, it was her being the vehicle of both a message and a narrative approach that I absolutely hated that made me frustrated with Endwalker and the direction of the game.

It's easy for me to see, though, how a writer immersed in such a massive, elaborate project could get "tunnel vision" focusing on the goals of "make Hydaelyn sympathetic" and "uplift and encourage the player" to genuinely miss how that wound up coming across in execution until after the fact. I'm really happy that there are a number of people that were able to identify "we're being uplifted, but it's at the expense of others, and that's not okay" happening in the story and call it out - and I'm also happy that the writers seem to be receptive to the feedback, which is a lot more than I can say for other instances I've seen of author response when having a disconnect with their audience. It's encouraging on many levels, and I think that is worth giving voice to!