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

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Originally Posted by CrownySuccubus

When?

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I didn't choose a single positive option for Hermes, so it's based on what I recall from streamers. I know if you choose "Next time, we will find the answer together." at the end of the Aitiascope he says: "You have every right to hate me. For the fool I was, for the monster I became. But I will not beg forgiveness. The tale of Hermes - the man who knew so much, yet understood so little - ends here."

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If anything, the pre-Sundering cutscene showed that most Ancients had become horribly unhinged by the Final Days.

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That cutscene wasn't an accurate depiction of events and it was from Venat's biased POV. Even if we were to take it at face value, the Final Days was an apocalypse. Sauntering in and telling people they're not handling their trauma and grief the way you think they should is next levels of tone-deafness.

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Originally Posted by Rulakir

I didn't choose a single positive option for Hermes, so it's based on what I recall from streamers. I know if you choose "Next time, we will find the answer together." at the end of the Aitiascope he says: "You have every right to hate me. For the fool I was, for the monster I became. But I will not beg forgiveness. The tale of Hermes - the man who knew so much, yet understood so little - ends here."

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Yeah, that's not an apology. That's the OPPOSITE of an apology. That's "Okay, yeah, I fucked up, and I was way dumber than I thought. But I'm not gonna ask for forgiveness. YOLO, brah!"

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Originally Posted by Rulakir

That cutscene wasn't an accurate depiction of events and it was from Venat's biased POV. Even if we were to take it at face value, the Final Days was an apocalypse. Sauntering in and telling people they're not handling their trauma and grief the way you think they should is next levels of tone-deafness.

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Not sure where you're getting the "this was from Venat's POV" argument from. This was a vision of their own timeline's history given to the WOL -- we have no reason not to trust it as events that happened. And if we do, then that throws literally everything about it into question.

But yes, Venat's counterargument was stupid. But, assuming we're going to trust that this is what happened, the Ancients were too far gone. Again, if we're questioning the integrity of the scene, then literally none of it matters.

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Originally Posted by CrownySuccubus

Not sure where you're getting the "this was from Venat's POV" argument from. This was a vision of their own timeline's history given to the WOL -- we have no reason not to trust it as events that happened. And if we do, then that throws literally everything about it into question.

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Nothing about that scene follows events as we know them. There was no group of people who sacrificed themselves for Venat to become Hydaelyn and there was no grand battle between Hydaelyn and Zodiark. The sundering also happened after the world had been restored via the second sacrifice (which Venat made no attempt to stop), the Final Days is still occurring in the background when she approaches the group of strawmen who are begging Zodiark to restore their world.

I shouldn't even say it's Venat's POV beyond her low opinion of her brethren because none of that cutscene is accurate to history as we know it. I've heard it called a montage, an abridged version, etc. Whatever it is, it was not literal and certainly not meant to be taken as such.

That montage is why I'm sometimes willing to go as far as to use "propaganda" in regards to the apologism. A deliberately emotionally stirring, abstracted, "symbolic" version of events meant to justify a violent act where none of the events depicted actually happened as shown.

With that in mind, even putting aside "lol apologism propaganda" hot takes, I've always thought that presentation was at least "cowardly" on a narrative level by relying on faceless strawmen as Venat's opposition and what "forced" her to do the Sundering, making irrational arguments that none of the actual named Ancient characters we know would make. Can't believe these guys, representative of Ancients in general, were so far gone they just forced poor Venat's hand, etc, etc. Try to mentally replace Emet-Selch or Themis in that scene, debating Venat, and boy does it fall apart fast.

Yeah, Occam's Razor suggests that that scene was yet another retcon, along side Venat's "faction" sundering the world to keep Zodiark in check, and Tempering being an intentional defect of the Ascian's design instead of what primals inherently do.

Because if this was Venat's own self-propaganda, the "I did this with the blessings of other like-minded Ancients who believed their brothers had gone too far" would have helped her case.

But yeah, the entire scene was just stupid. Like you said, it throws the Ancients under the bus to make Venat "right". If Elpis had done its job properly and actually made the Ancients feel "scary", like intended, that scene wouldn't have been necessary. But no, they had to try one last time to drive in the "Ancients bad" nail and it "succeeded" only by way of character assassination.

Elpis in general was just a disaster of writing. All of the flaws that exist in EW can be traced back to the decision to go there and then come up with some sort of plot device (Memory-Wiping Tech that only Hermes knows about/can use! How convenient!) to justify why the rest of FFXIV still happens.

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Originally Posted by Brinne

Can't believe these guys, representative of Ancients in general, were so far gone they just forced poor Venat's hand, etc, etc. Try to mentally replace Emet-Selch or Themis in that scene, debating Venat, and boy does it fall apart fast.

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It completely ignores that "no small number" were against the 3rd sacrifice too. I can't help but be reminded of Sodom and Gomorrah where Lot pleaded with God if he could find just 10 righteous people would he spare destroying the cities. Venat apparently had a lot more than that and it wasn't enough for her.

Plus, the sundering happening after Elidibus had exited Zodiark to mediate is also a bad look. I can understand it from a strategic point, what better time to go after Zodiark than when he's sans pilot, but it's also implied they were in the middle of negotiations when she went on the attack. It lends further credence to the belief that it didn't matter what any of the Ancients did, she'd already determined they needed to be 'reset' for their own good.

It's also why The Plenty irritates me because it's based on the premise that the events at Elpis didn't happen. The Ancients were never going to be the same after the Final Days no matter how hard they tried and we'll likely never know what would have happened had Venat simply been honest with everyone. They built up Ancient society as one that thrived on debate, yet both Venat and Hermes make executive decisions for the whole race with the writers claiming it's just a very Ancient thing to do.

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Originally Posted by CrownySuccubus

Because if this was Venat's own self-propaganda, the "I did this with the blessings of other like-minded Ancients who believed their brothers had gone too far" would have helped her case.

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Ah, but if we had seen/been reminded that Venat had a number of supporters among the Ancients, that would have undermined her argument that the Ancients as a race were just incapable of change, all of them just too far gone. And it wouldn't have allowed us the tragic, powerful imagery of her standing all alone against the world and then wading by herself through its mire and plague.

It's less a retcon--the Q&A brought up Hydaelyn having a faction again, IIRC--but it is a very, very deliberately manipulative presentation. Hence, "propaganda" that I can't help but be, uh, pretty grossed out by.

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Originally Posted by Rulakir

Plus, the sundering happening after Elidibus had exited Zodiark to mediate is also a bad look. I can understand it from a strategic point, what better time to go after Zodiark than when he's sans pilot, but it's also implied they were in the middle of negotiations when she went on the attack.

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JUSTICE FOR TH--[gunshot]

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Originally Posted by Rulakir

It completely ignores that "no small number" were against the 3rd sacrifice too. I can't help but be reminded of Sodom and Gomorrah where Lot pleaded with God if he could find just 10 righteous people would he spare destroying the cities.

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To be fair, I find God's methodology there to be stupid, also, but I digress.

I think Venat's faction (if it can truly be called that) was in a pretty hefty minority that would not have been able to stop the third wave of sacrifices. Again, I wish the story had shown us that 1) Venat had told someone (ANYONE) about the truth but they simply ignored it and 2) the faction came to a consensus together rather than Venat making the decision all by herself. But as Brinne said, they declined doing that because the image wasn't emotional enough.

Just bad writing through and thorugh.

I would say I have two layers of objections to the writing approach to the Ancients in EW: the first is the very premise of "sometimes enacting the annihilation of an entire race of people is, in fact, justified and for the greater good!" is not where I wanted this to go to begin with. That is the biggest level of Do Not Want, Oh God, No Thank You, I Loved Shadowbringers For Specifically Not Doing This, Why.

But hell, if we're going there, the second layer on top of that that is: well, we sure went there, and the execution was terrible. "Unconvincing" would be a generous description of it on several levels. So between the two, the dissonance reaches critical mass, I lose my mind, start making awkward walls of text on forums I was certain I'd never post in, and meanwhile succumb to the wholesale yearning of narrative junk food for the very rare piece of lore worldbuilding I truly fell in love with, along with the characters within. We'd better be able to do something for poor Themis or I may actually evolve into a ravenous three-headed monster whose only purpose is chaos and destruction.

Story enjoyer here, take my like since i'm too lazy to make an appraisal topic :3

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Originally Posted by Brinne

That montage is why I'm sometimes willing to go as far as to use "propaganda" in regards to the apologism. A deliberately emotionally stirring, abstracted, "symbolic" version of events meant to justify a violent act where none of the events depicted actually happened as shown.

With that in mind, even putting aside "lol apologism propaganda" hot takes, I've always thought that presentation was at least "cowardly" on a narrative level by relying on faceless strawmen as Venat's opposition and what "forced" her to do the Sundering, making irrational arguments that none of the actual named Ancient characters we know would make. Can't believe these guys, representative of Ancients in general, were so far gone they just forced poor Venat's hand, etc, etc. Try to mentally replace Emet-Selch or Themis in that scene, debating Venat, and boy does it fall apart fast.

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For me it also fails to account for something we came to know, i.e. that the souls inside Zodiark were in a kind of limbo. The Anamnesis scenes, which as you say are referred back to in the Q&A and therefore cannot be discounted, had her acknowledge the good intentions of the Convocation. That montage basically seems to focus on the most grief-struck of the ancients during the world still being on fire, so it's no surprise how they react to her, assuming it's accurate to what happened, but it's certainly not all of what happened. Had they shown something like Elidibus emerging and conveying the state of the souls inside Zodiark to the divided ancients (a division which she thought was important to avoid), quelling opposition to that final plan, with her followers only in very vague terms stating that their doom would repeat but not explaining why... yes, I think it'd undermine the effectiveness of that scene quite a bit in trying to justify her, which even so, I think it does not succeed in doing.

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Originally Posted by CrownySuccubus

I don't think having different opinions is a bad thing, either. But I'm trying to explain why I personally cannot agree with the "Venat is worse than Hermes" argument. Hermes made selfish and stupid decisions that put entire ecosystems at best at risk, only to find out that OOPS, his incompetence actually puts the entire UNIVERSE at risk. Then, when confronted by how stupid his actions were and how dire the consequences might become, he decides to double down on this and ignore the very people telling him why what he's doing is stupid and apocalyptic. Then, when beaten, he decides to not only violate the minds and bodies of all those present that could stop him....not only to enable his own creation to murder countless people throughout a dozen millennia....but ALSO to erase his own memory so that he can just blend back in and live his life as if nothing happened.

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I think even in terms of the scope of it, he can't really be let off the hook, because the WoL had explained to them the events which would unfold, which by that point they'd realised would originate from outside Etheirys and which they concluded was dynamis-related. When Meteion reveals her "manifesto", it should be obvious that at a minimum that'd be the result. No matter how emotional his frame of mind, he still had agency at that point, although I think we're all agreed on that.

On whether Venat or Hermes is worse, I'd say it comes down to whether causing a problem or knowing about it but keeping it to yourself and unilaterally making a decision affecting all of mankind's ability to respond to that problem so that it adopts the "right" attitude to suffering is the worse of the two. They threw in the time loop to muddy the waters a bit with Venat, but it wasn't the reason she gave for constraining her actions the way she did, and if you read her actions through the lens Brinne pointed out (some romanticisation of the suffering she perceived in the sundered world), you can take issue with her for throwing the towel in for what were potentially ideological reasons. I'd still say he is the worse of the two for playing a causal role in it, but where I find her worse is less to do with her own actions and more to do with how the story essentially presents a character that is a fusion of Yunalesca from X and Venat from XII, but would have you think she's a Yuna, Aerith or Ashe. Even if the writers acknowledge that she's comparable to an Emet-Selch warped by a 12k year gruesome toil, the in-story representation of that is lacking, to say the least.

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Originally Posted by CrownySuccubus

To be fair, I find God's methodology there to be stupid, also, but I digress.

You and God have more in common then u might think, I'm sure after he read your comment he had the same thought about your methodology as well.
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Back on topic, I enjoyed EW but I wished the Garlemald section had alot more badassery fight scenes to it instead of it being a peace core mission, I mean it's Garlemald, not the salvation army.

But that guy blowing his brains out was pretty bad ass, he was a cool Legatus or whatever his title was, I would have liked to seen more of him, but overall I'm happy we got to finally go to Garlemald.

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Originally Posted by VictorTheed

Back on topic, I enjoyed EW but I wished the Garlemald section had alot more badassery fight scenes to it instead of it being a peace core mission, I mean it's Garlemald, not the salvation army.

But that guy blowing his brains out was pretty bad ass, he was a cool Legatus or whatever his title was, I would have liked to seen more of him, but overall I'm happy we got to finally go to Garlemald.

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As I've mentioned before, I don't believe in things like higher powers.

Besides that, even if God did exist, I think he'd be about as skeptical about how much the Bible misrepresents him as I am.

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Originally Posted by Brinne

We'd better be able to do something for poor Themis or I may actually evolve into a ravenous three-headed monster whose only purpose is chaos and destruction.

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100% this, also, I'm way ahead of you. Careful not to stand in the cone of my Phyrric Breath. And don't call me ugly, Venat!

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Originally Posted by VictorTheed

Back on topic, I enjoyed EW but I wished the Garlemald section had alot more badassery fight scenes to it instead of it being a peace core mission, I mean it's Garlemald, not the salvation army.

But that guy blowing his brains out was pretty bad ass, he was a cool Legatus or whatever his title was, I would have liked to seen more of him, but overall I'm happy we got to finally go to Garlemald.

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Quintus, yes. What a beautiful dream we all shared...

Also still baffling was Alphinaud's behavior in that Garlemald section, and what I saw was a backslide of his character development back into the super-naive 'peace and wuv!!!!! all together now!!!!' Alphinaud with only slightly less arrogance. Did he really think he and all of Eorzea could just waltz right in and have every half-starved Garlean in the frozen wastes just throw themselves at them for help and salvation? A big welcome party? Wasn't he around the area of Garlemald all throughout Shadowbringers and had some interaction? Wouldn't he have known their frosty, savage-untrusting outlook at least from Sharlayan textbooks?

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Originally Posted by CrownySuccubus

As I've mentioned before, I don't believe in things like higher powers.

Besides that, even if God did exist, I think he'd be about as skeptical about how much the Bible misrepresents him as I am.

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Please stay on topic, we don't need this to become reddit.

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Originally Posted by Brinne

We'd better be able to do something for poor Themis or I may actually evolve into a ravenous three-headed monster whose only purpose is chaos and destruction.

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At this point i've lost all hope for it. The final sign was the fact we learn that both him and Zodiark are the only reason the planet and us are around to this day and are still alive, yet not once do we ever thank either of them, and instead all of that praise is instead given to Venat. It makes it pretty clear where the devs bias stands, and i dont see how anyone could argue otherwise. Elidibus got the short end of the stick through and through and outside of garlemald i think he was the one of the biggest ones impacted by the change from 2-3 more expansions to only 1.

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Originally Posted by Skyborne

Also still baffling was Alphinaud's behavior in that Garlemald section, and what I saw was a backslide of his character development back into the super-naive 'peace and wuv!!!!! all together now!!!!' Alphinaud with only slightly less arrogance. Did he really think he and all of Eorzea could just waltz right in and have every half-starved Garlean in the frozen wastes just throw themselves at them for help and salvation? A big welcome party? Wasn't he around the area of Garlemald all throughout Shadowbringers and had some interaction? Wouldn't he have known their frosty, savage-untrusting outlook at least from Sharlayan textbooks?

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Overall, the Garlemald subplot was handled about as realistically as could be expected, considering. Nobody went into Garlemald expecting to be welcomed and hailed as saviors, and it's stated that the contingent was only the 10% of Alliance members who agreed to help Garlemald at all after what they'd done in the past.

I personally thought it was the most well-done plot thread in the expansion. One of the things I really liked about Final Fantasy VI was the fact that the first time you actually get to Vector (the Empire's capital), it's after the Espers have destroyed most of it. And then, after the apocalypse, the Empire is basically a distant memory. I liked the thought of how petty things like war seems in the face of true despair. And, since the Garlean Empire is almost a copy-past of the Gestahl Empire, I liked that call-back.

I can agree that the twins were annoyingly angsty about every little failure, though. Although I feel that the situation was handled realistically, their reactions were not. I really hate how the story loves to milk the emotional pathos out of every single minor tragedy / triumph, but at this point that's par for the course. Everybody has to explain all the feels they feel before we can move on to the next plot point.

Last few pages have been a good read, I had a lot to catch up on.

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Originally Posted by Brinne

We'd better be able to do something for poor Themis or I may actually evolve into a ravenous three-headed monster whose only purpose is chaos and destruction.

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I wish I could say that I have hope that there is a chance, but if EW has taught me anything it's that all Ancients deserve sad endings. Unless they confirm a split timeline/AU where things worked out differently, this whole thing with Themis/Eric/Laha will just end up being an attempt to humanize them more; which will then make you feel more terrible that you had a hand in their downfall. Rinse and repeat.

I'm kinda looking forward to reading the posts of a ravenous, three-headed, chaos monster though ;)

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Originally Posted by PawPaw

Last few pages have been a good read, I had a lot to catch up on.



I wish I could say that I have hope that there is a chance, but if EW has taught me anything it's that all Ancients deserve sad endings. Unless they confirm a split timeline/AU where things worked out differently, this whole thing with Themis/Eric/Laha will just end up being an attempt to humanize them more; which will then make you feel more terrible that you had a hand in their downfall. Rinse and repeat.

I'm kinda looking forward to reading the posts of a ravenous, three-headed, chaos monster though ;)

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At this point, I'll take humanizing them. If it ends up just being another shoddy attempt to vilify Laha, or that they were "doomed" in some other way, though... meh.

What will thoughts be if it turns out that Themis and Venat are related, as I have seen much speculation about?

People are basing it purely on their hair/eye coloring but by that reasoning we could also assume that Hesperos is related to Hades, so it probably amounts to nothing. But still...

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Originally Posted by PawPaw

What will thoughts be if it turns out that Themis and Venat are related, as I have seen much speculation about?

People are basing it purely on their hair/eye coloring but by that reasoning we could also assume that Hesperos is related to Hades, so it probably amounts to nothing. But still...

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A Greek tragedy by boring fantasy Greeks.

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Originally Posted by PawPaw

What will thoughts be if it turns out that Themis and Venat are related, as I have seen much speculation about?

People are basing it purely on their hair/eye coloring but by that reasoning we could also assume that Hesperos is related to Hades, so it probably amounts to nothing. But still...

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It'd just be extremely weird, because he's even discussed during the scene with her follower asking why it has to be her... plus he says nothing of it at all when he passes.

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Originally Posted by Lauront

It'd just be extremely weird, because he's even discussed during the scene with her follower asking why it has to be her... plus he says nothing of it at all when he passes.

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I agree completely, especially as it would mean that she knowingly and willingly allowed her son/brother/nephew whatever to become a sacrificial lamb instead of, you know, warning anyone. I think it's a wild theory but it is out there. I hope nothing comes of it.

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Originally Posted by Brinne

Ah, but if we had seen/been reminded that Venat had a number of supporters among the Ancients, that would have undermined her argument that the Ancients as a race were just incapable of change, all of them just too far gone. And it wouldn't have allowed us the tragic, powerful imagery of her standing all alone against the world and then wading by herself through its mire and plague.

It's less a retcon--the Q&A brought up Hydaelyn having a faction again, IIRC--but it is a very, very deliberately manipulative presentation. Hence, "propaganda" that I can't help but be, uh, pretty grossed out by.

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That's probably the main reason why the live letter Q&As and following interviews just soured my opinion of Elpis further.

As much as they explained in an attempt to make the whole situation seem gray, the in-game presentation is deliberately skewed to make you only put much thought into Venat's perspective on things; to make you feel bad for her specifically for making a "difficult" decision instead of her people and friends she condemned with extremely questionable reasoning/logic.

After seeing several opinions on the matter, it became pretty obvious that it did succeed at making the majority only follow her perspective on things which is pretty...disappointing compared to Emet-Selch's take on the Sundering that comparatively seemed to make many actually consider both sides of the argument.

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Originally Posted by PawPaw

I agree completely, especially as it would mean that she knowingly and willingly allowed her son/brother/nephew whatever to become a sacrificial lamb instead of, you know, warning anyone. I think it's a wild theory but it is out there. I hope nothing comes of it.

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I joked with a few friends about what if Azem is Themis’ parent. Mainly joked, but with all of the random and bad writing in EW, i wouldn’t put anything past them.

I really doubt Themis is related to Venat, but on the remote chance he is, my ascension to maniacal chaos demon with accelerate a thousandfold. If Themis is her son/brother/what have you and Venat still did what she did to him, and we were truly expected to sympathize and side with her, we have transcended from "kinda bitterly funny in an ironic way" to full Fandaniel-ization farce comedy mode. Soon my hold over Zodiark shall be complete! Mine, all mine! Ahahahaha!

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

As much as they explained in an attempt to make the whole situation seem gray, the in-game presentation is deliberately skewed to make you only put much thought into Venat's perspective on things; to make you feel bad for her specifically for making a "difficult" decision instead of her people and friends she condemned with extremely questionable reasoning/logic.

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I could write a lot of words about the narrative's choice to actually, in full sincerity, take the stance of "the real tragedy here is how much it hurts me to hurt you," but.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

That's probably the main reason why the live letter Q&As and following interviews just soured my opinion of Elpis further.

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Yeah, I feel this too. The answers they gave in the Q&As showed that they could've written a much more interesting and less tonally dissonant story instead of doubling down on mommy vibes that get weirder and more uncomfortable the more you think about it. Like I said earlier, it's like how they put most of the things that made Zenos such an amazing character in side materials. They'll probably retroactively improve Elpis a lot in further side materials, but the damage is already done. Most people aren't gonna read those and aren't gonna listen to "no, here's why it's good, actually!" if the reasons for it being good aren't in the main story itself, even if they fully redeem it.

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Originally Posted by Brinne

I really doubt Themis is related to Venat, but on the remote chance he is, my ascension to maniacal chaos demon with accelerate a thousandfold. If Themis is her son/brother/what have you and Venat still did what she did to him, and we were truly expected to sympathize and side with her, we have transcended from "kinda bitterly funny in an ironic way" to full Fandaniel-ization farce comedy mode. Soon my hold over Zodiark shall be complete! Mine, all mine! Ahahahaha!



I could write a lot of words about the narrative's choice to actually, in full sincerity, take the stance of "the real tragedy here is how much it hurts me to hurt you," but.

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That's Japanese philosophy 101. Japanese society emphasizes the suppression of self, whereupon one is not supposed to speak too much about how something makes themselves feel and instead, direct attention to how someone else feels. It's considered a taboo to even tell someone "No" outright; you always have to mince your words in phrases like "It would be difficult" or "I will put it under consideration" because telling someone "no" supposedly indicates how little you care that it hurts them.

Naturally, it's a system that is highly abusable, since Japan is also strictly hierarchical. Someone who is lower in social standing or in less of a unique position, always has to take the feelings of those above them in mind (and those equal to them, but that's a lesser concern). The constant emphasis on how Venat felt when she sundered the world and how Hermes felt when he...well, basically fisted the universe up its rectum...is a very Japanese thing. It's supposed to be like, "These were very respected and powerful people who held unique agency over every life on the star, so we should be respectful how difficult it must have been for them to do the very stupid things that they did."

I'm not really sure how comfortable I am filing it away under "it's a Japanese thing" in this case. I understand the importance of cultural context when judging work, but I'd also want to be careful about blanket statements or essentialization of their culture, too. I certainly won't pretend to be an expert in it - but I can say that, I know that there are at least some JP fans who object to Venat on similar grounds as us, and that over way too many years of enjoying Japanese media, the dissonance/potentially cultural disconnect in this specific regard has very rarely hit me as egregiously as it has here. And this particular form of, to be blunt, abuse apologism, is hardly unfamiliar to the West.

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Originally Posted by Brinne

I'm not really sure how comfortable I am filing it away under "it's a Japanese thing" in this case. I understand the importance of cultural context when judging work, but I'd also want to be careful about blanket statements or essentialization of their culture, too. I certainly won't pretend to be an expert in it - but I can say that, I know that there are at least some JP fans who object to Venat on similar grounds as us, at least, and over way too many years of enjoying Japanese media, the dissonance/potentially cultural disconnect in this specific regard has very rarely hit me as egregiously as it has here. And this particular form of, to be blunt, abuse apologism, is hardly unfamiliar to the West.

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But the thing is, every single aspect of Endwalker's story easily fits within the lens of Japanese values. The entire story is centered on "Mono no Aware" ("All things are impermanent"), which is a Japanese Zen Buddhist value which is central to much of its culture. Hermes' struggles with wondering why he doesn't fit in is also highly analogous to Japan's taboo about standing out or being too different. Venat's belief that life is about accepting suffering is analogous to the common Japanese mantra "It can't be helped", which is all about accepting that life sucks and is unfair, but it's "unfair for everybody", so you just learn to deal with it and not complain and just accept your lot in life. The Scions' constant speeches about learning to get through despair by forming "bonds with others" also conforms to Japan's communal culture.

In a vacuum, a lot of these things can definitely be found in other cultural mores (almost every society has some sort of lesson about family/community), but the cultural dissonance between what is often thought of as "good" in Japan versus the west is pretty noticeable by the number of people who are just outright confused by some of the logic posed in Endwalker's story.

Ok anyway so maybe let's stop with the "philosophical" antagonists based off whatever it was they were trying to do and get back to people who are actually interesting and entertaining. I found the militaristic dictators and scheming manipulators like Varis, Emet, and even Thordan a lot better than "oh, there are really no clear antagonists!" thing they did in Endwalker.

I mean, I'm not saying you're wrong, and that that isn't a valid lens from which to view the story that could help clarify a few points to people. I've seen discussion in other circles about the Buddhist angle in particular, and I think it can be interesting for media to be a platform to understand other perspectives on broad questions like "suffering." Particularly if it paves the way to a conversation - almost all of the points you outlined there, I can think of some angle in the Western culture I grew up in in that basically leads the same conclusion and ultimate goal, frankly, of abetting of existing power structures. But the specific problems I have with Endwalker are ones I have almost never encountered to this degree over decades' worth of slurping up Japanese media like the nerd that I am. You can say that certain forms of the abuse apologism can be contextualized to a certain extent by understanding the cultural history it originated from, but that doesn't make it a "fundamentally Japanese" approach to take by any means, or make it any less a baffling choice that it went as far and as grotesquely as it did. Even in FFXIV itself, I would argue that the approach to Venat and the Ancients stands out as strange and callous and mean in a way we haven't seen before - that the story seemed to be attempting to reject in most other instances, if anything.

I'm not saying you're doing this, but I'm just fundamentally uneasy with accepting a stance that hems pretty close to "the reason this story seemed morally repugnant and approving of an abusive attitude to you is because it's so Japanese." Alarms just begin instantly blaring in my head, particularly in this day and age.

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Originally Posted by aveyond-dreams

Ok anyway so maybe let's stop with the "philosophical" antagonists based off whatever it was they were trying to do and get back to people who are actually interesting and entertaining. I found the militaristic dictators and scheming manipulators like Varis, Emet, and even Thordan a lot better than "oh, there are really no clear antagonists!" thing they did in Endwalker.

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Emet was an example of "there are really no clear antagonists". The fact that he actually had a good point (before EW tried to erase most of it) was one of the reasons he was so popular.

Likewise, when discussing HW, the antagonist most people remember is Nidhogg who, again, was someone who wasn't a clear black-and-white antagonist. On the other hand, the Garlean villains like Gaius, Varis, and Zenos have at best met with lukewarm reception.

If anything, I think the misstep here was trying to maintain a "gray" morality while also trying to state that there is one, objective way to deal with oblivion. Those two things are not compatible, because by definition, oblivion is the blackest possible morality, and thus whatever defeats it is being called the "whitest".

I don't have high hopes for Pandemonium. I'm hoping Eric isn't 'our' Lahabrea (and that seems plausible given that Claudien looks like his sundered form) and so far I've found most of the story boring. Partly because I don't particularly care about this guy combined with wanting to have an Elidibus adventure that's just been a lot of long, drawn out dialog about things of no interest to me.

The purpose of the Ancients seems to be to break our hearts since the powers that be won't lay a finger on the Scions.

Elidibus' fate just confuses me. G'raha implies the process of the Crystal Tower cycling aether would've destroyed his soul. Elidibus himself says he's using the last of his "essence" to send us to the past, but then mentions seeing his loved ones again in the "promised land". I also don't know what the 'truth that warms his heart' is going to be since thanks to the time loop nothing we do in Pandemonium is going to spare him his fate.

As far as EW goes, the writing was annoying at times. Y'shtola outright states that Hydaelyn is the one who forestalled the Final Days by sundering Zodiark and I was like, WTF?! Elidibus says that the future we return to exists as a result of the Final Days when, no, actually it exists as a result of the sundering. It's little things like which add up to stacking the deck in Venat's favor that's infuriating. Like I've said, the gaslighting in EW is real.

To be fair, plenty of people liked the various Garleans. It just so happens that the FFXIV community has a very vocal portion of players who attacked and threatened anyone who spoke up in favour of them because a not insignificant amount of FFXIV players seem unable to grasp the idea that the Garleans were clearly inspired by Russians and Romans rather than a certain German organisation.

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Originally Posted by aveyond-dreams

Ok anyway so maybe let's stop with the "philosophical" antagonists based off whatever it was they were trying to do and get back to people who are actually interesting and entertaining. I found the militaristic dictators and scheming manipulators like Varis, Emet, and even Thordan a lot better than "oh, there are really no clear antagonists!" thing they did in Endwalker.

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Definitely on my list of 'things that Endwalker brings out in people' is the notion that liking the story or certain characters in EW makes you a super deep philosopher-king, and anyone who didn't like the story or whatever aspects of it is some knuckle-dragging trog pleb who just didn't understand it and never picked up a philosophy book in your life. Yeah, I get it, the "villain" was the abstract concept of despair. Amazing, clapclapclapclappityclap. If you liked it you liked it, no need to swaddle yourself in some sort of "I am very smart" security blanket. Might be rose-tinted glasses but I don't recall this sort of thing in HW or StB. A bit in ShB, but not at such a fever pitch.

Would've thought that the Q&A with the writers going "wow, I didn't think you guys would think about this so deeply" and admitting they often wrote stuff as they went along/improvised would've silenced a lot of it, but it continues. And then, on the other side, you have the extreme "don't think about the story of this story-driven game that gets endlessly praised for the story, okay, turn your brain off".

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Originally Posted by Brinne

I mean, I'm not saying you're wrong, and that that isn't a valid lens from which to view the story that could help clarify a few points to people. I've seen discussion in other circles about the Buddhist angle in particular, and I think it can be interesting for media to be a platform to understand other perspectives on broad questions like "suffering." Particularly if it paves the way to a conversation - almost all of the points you outlined there, I can think of some angle in the Western culture I grew up in in that basically leads the same conclusion and ultimate goal, frankly, of abetting of existing power structures. But the specific problems I have with Endwalker are ones I have almost never encountered to this degree over decades' worth of slurping up Japanese media like the nerd that I am. You can say that certain forms of the abuse apologism can be contextualized to a certain extent by understanding the cultural history it originated from, but that doesn't make it a "fundamentally Japanese" approach to take by any means, or make it any less a baffling choice that it went as far and as grotesquely as it did. Even in FFXIV itself, I would argue that the approach to Venat and the Ancients stands out as strange and callous and mean in a way we haven't seen before - that the story seemed to be attempting to reject in most other instances, if anything.

I'm not saying you're doing this, but I'm just fundamentally uneasy with accepting a stance that hems pretty close to "the reason this story seemed morally repugnant and approving of an abusive attitude to you is because it's so Japanese." Alarms just begin instantly blaring in my head, particularly in this day and age.

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I mean, I could also go on at length about how Western/American media gets its own cultural values wrong (for example, Detroit: Become Human is a master class in not understanding how civil rights movements work). Or that one issue of Batman where Tim Drake tries to tell off a teenager for smoking weed and accidentally proves why it's actually not that bad. Saying a work hamfists a cultural morality into its story badly isn't inherently criticizing the culture itself. For example, I can point to Persona 3 as much, much better game at tackling the concept of Mono no Aware or...hell, if we're looking within the same franchise, Final Fantasy VI.

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Originally Posted by CrownySuccubus

That's Japanese philosophy 101. Japanese society emphasizes the suppression of self, whereupon one is not supposed to speak too much about how something makes themselves feel and instead, direct attention to how someone else feels. It's considered a taboo to even tell someone "No" outright; you always have to mince your words in phrases like "It would be difficult" or "I will put it under consideration" because telling someone "no" supposedly indicates how little you care that it hurts them.

Naturally, it's a system that is highly abusable, since Japan is also strictly hierarchical. Someone who is lower in social standing or in less of a unique position, always has to take the feelings of those above them in mind (and those equal to them, but that's a lesser concern). The constant emphasis on how Venat felt when she sundered the world and how Hermes felt when he...well, basically fisted the universe up its rectum...is a very Japanese thing. It's supposed to be like, "These were very respected and powerful people who held unique agency over every life on the star, so we should be respectful how difficult it must have been for them to do the very stupid things that they did."

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Hear me out: Ancient society was heavily built around this idea and the first person we were shown who butted heads with it (Hermes) proceeded to go absolutely insane and doom their society and potentially the universe. I think part of the reason this flew over people's heads and/or fell flat is because we were never shown the true consequences of this outside of Hermes himself.

Instead, we were shown that it works, and were never even asked if we would want to live in a society like that because we were led to believe that the guy who had a problem with it was the crazy one and that everything was fine. Ancient society was too good for the story's own good.

Were we not shown that, it would've been easy to buy that the Ancients were supposed to be "scary." Literally all it would've taken is a few throwaway lines of dialogue at least, although it would've been preferable to spend more time showing us otherwise.

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Originally Posted by Rulakir

I don't have high hopes for Pandemonium. I'm hoping Eric isn't 'our' Lahabrea (and that seems plausible given that Claudien looks like his sundered form) and so far I've found most of the story boring. Partly because I don't particularly care about this guy combined with wanting to have an Elidibus adventure that's just been a lot of long, drawn out dialog about things of no interest to me.

The purpose of the Ancients seems to be to break our hearts since the powers that be won't lay a finger on the Scions.

Elidibus' fate just confuses me. G'raha implies the process of the Crystal Tower cycling aether would've destroyed his soul. Elidibus himself says he's using the last of his "essence" to send us to the past, but then mentions seeing his loved ones again in the "promised land". I also don't know what the 'truth that warms his heart' is going to be since thanks to the time loop nothing we do in Pandemonium is going to spare him his fate.

As far as EW goes, the writing was annoying at times. Y'shtola outright states that Hydaelyn is the one who forestalled the Final Days by sundering Zodiark and I was like, WTF?! Elidibus says that the future we return to exists as a result of the Final Days when, no, actually it exists as a result of the sundering. It's little things like which add up to stacking the deck in Venat's favor that's infuriating. Like I've said, the gaslighting in EW is real.

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This is also something that would've been easily resolved with a few lines of dialogue along the lines of "a full unsundered Zodiark could not sustain himself forever and would've eventually vanished and caused the Final Days to restart again," which is something that could've been sold by the internal logic of the story given how aether-hungry primals are. This would've left a plot hole over how Hyd didn't cause the same, but I think I'd take that over the tonal mishmash that we got.

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Originally Posted by CrownySuccubus

I mean, I could also go on at length about how Western/American media gets its own cultural values wrong (for example, Detroit: Become Human is a master class in not understanding how civil rights movements work). Or that one issue of Batman where Tim Drake tries to tell off a teenager for smoking weed and accidentally proves why it's actually not that bad. Saying a work hamfists a cultural morality into its story badly isn't inherently criticizing the culture itself. For example, I can point to Persona 3 as much, much better game at tackling the concept of Mono no Aware or...hell, if we're looking within the same franchise, Final Fantasy VI.

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Or Final Fantasy X, which was a masterful repudiation of the idea that life sucks and that we should learn how to cope with it instead of trying to solve the sources of our suffering.

(outside of that fucking audio drama lol)

I don't really look to video games for deep and meaningful takes on complicated moral and societal issues, personally. Of the games I have enjoyed that tackled heavy topics, they just so happened to allow people to come to their own conclusions about what was happening rather than forcing a particular reaction or opinion. In turn, that's why I consider Shadowbringers to be far superior to Endwalker. It clearly showcased Emet's position and point of view but it didn't force the player to agree with or go along with what he had in mind. Had Venat been given the same treatment, Endwalker would have been a lot more enjoyable to me.

I just want a cool story at the end of the day. I'm not interested in weird attempts at justifying genocide or eco-terrorism from what is meant to be a mature narrative.