On Venat's Role in the Story

[Rieze_Xeero]

There is definitely some plot holes. And what I don't like is we are supposed to accept that what happened in the flashback of the sundering is a "metaphor". I waited 11 years to see how it really went through but I got is, Venat is the all so powerful and summoned/became Hydaelyn on her own. If we are led to believe that "no there are also people who opposed Zodiark and pray for Hydaelyn etc etc" Why the hell did you not show that or at least add the line Venat: "me and my comrades call upon Hydaelyn etc" and then just show a bunch of random people. The whole Elpis story was great but the flashback of Venat didn't work for me.

Edit: I don't know what happened to Azem, why I am Azem or have his essence. Am I Azem and am I sundered? I was led to believe in ShB that I am part of him. A lot not explained and this one I'm looking forward for future patches/expansion to learn more.

[KageTokage]

I do feel like there's still too much we don't know about the specifics surrounding the events immediately before/after the Sundering; the method of how some of the Convocation escaped being one of them.

At this point, I'm not sure what purpose explaining those things would actually serve from a narrative perspective, though. As far as we're aware, the dreams of the Ascians died with their god...though we still have some sundered Paragons unaccounted for.

[Zoliru]

To be honest it is problematic when you introduce a group such as the ancients, you have people who are immortal, can see souls and the life stream and can literally create other beings as well as tools for any kind of situation.

That level of godmode power is problematic because with this, you have a race that can fix any kind of problem because infinite time+power to create solutions to problems=all problems are solveable, so the idea that they could not defeat meiteion is simply absurd, so the only way for the story to make even a bit of sense they had to give them a flaw, the flaw being that due to having an easy life without suffering, a simple tragedy out of their control broke them, but that again has major issues, because I can see many average citizens succumbing to despair and being paralyzed, but not the convocation.

Emet Selch and the ascians spend thousands of years surviving in order to unite the shards so the world is whole again, that shows an incredible amount of willpower and strength, which clearly suggests the convocation at least werent just people who couldnt handle the tragedy, they kept searching for ways to fix the problem so given enough time, which is what Zodiarc did, Zodiarc kept ethyris safe for thousands of years even when he was sundered so they would have had nigh infinite amount of time to understand meiteion.

It makes no sense that Venat suddenly show a lot of people being hopeless and decided to sunder everything, it makes even less sense for her to not reveal the truth to Emet and hythlodeus as well as give Hermes a slightly adjusted version of the story so he is kept by their side as an expert in dynamis and entelecheia.

It is why since Emet Selch revealed the truth I knew he was correct and if given the option I would have joined him, because the ancients were gods in comparison to the weak and sundered people of the shards, they were objectively superior, and the one flaw venat show, could have absolutely be something that is fixable and could even incorporate a degree of controlled suffering via a concept just so the flaw is fixed.


At the end of the day it is a fictional story, it is meant to make somewhat sense and be satisfying which I believe it achieved, but fictional stories can never fully make sense others the villains would win 99% of the time in such stories.

[Caurcas]

If the ancients were so good, how come they got their crap pushed in by a bird girl on a nihilism kick?

[Zoliru]

If the ancients were so good, how come they got their crap pushed in by a bird girl on a nihilism kick?

Because it is a fictional story that has to make the central to the story good guys win through any justification imaginable no matter how absurd while also having them keep the moral high ground.

[Slatersev]

If the ancients were so good, how come they got their crap pushed in by a bird girl on a nihilism kick?

Because the bird girl was using a power they had very little knowledge of. Something the game explicitly states multiple times.

[Caurcas]

Memes aside, I actually dig the philosophy behind Venat's actions. Sort of like a nicer version of Boethiah from ES. However, I do agree the pacing was not great in many places and how much got dumped on us tobparse through makes the story seemed rushed in places.

[Veloran]

The escape plan only worked due to deception. Hermes would have slowed them down if they all made a break for the exit, not to mention that opening required the total concentration of Emet-Selch to open, Hythlodaeus was utterly incapable of opening the way.

I wasn't implying Hythlodaeus opened it himself, merely that he aided the effort. And doing so clearly did not require Emet's "total concentration" given he was clashing wish Hermes at the same time. If we assume a timeline without WoL, at the very least both Venat and Hythlodaeus should have been able to escape, not in the least because Venat had at least two dogs ready to fly.

And then the Convocation would not know how to use Zodiark to hold back dynamis. Remember, the Final Days occurs due to the stagnation of aether currents, especially celestial ones, a topic that Hermes is expert in. As Venat notes, denying the convocation his aid would potentially lead to failure.

Just because Hermes is versed in the subject doesn't mean that nobody else is or that he was the one who was mainly behind Zodiark. At the time Elpis takes place the previous Fandaniel - Hermes mentor - Hadn't even stepped down yet, so for this purpose they likely could have turned to him assuming nobody else could possibly serve.

And was summarily kicked off it when they dissented.

To my recollection Azem left rather than be kicked off, but I may be wrong on that. But regardless, I hope you don't mean to imply that Azem dissented because Venat shared the truth with them? Even if she did, Azem later didn't join Venat, so it doesn't exactly speak to the veracity of her cause.

They couldn’t hear Meteion, nor change the Elpis flowers color.

Hermes at the very least could change the flower's color. If it's possible for him it should be possible for anybody. And I hardly care to hear the notion that he was some super special empath and the rest of the Ancients were near-emotionless, it's obvious they could partake in great joys and sorrows both.

You expect a world that repeatedly denigrates and devalues the lives of familiars and creations to be saved by a set of beings made for little more than to bear the weight for the Ancients?

Firstly, I dispute the idea that they "denigrate and devalue" life. Before the Final Days brutalized them they were clearly hesitant to kill anything that had gained a soul, and anything without one can be said to merely be an unliving arcane construct. They have no more reason to value the lives of such things than you should value the life of your car and object to the disassembly and reassembly of it's engine. And as I keep saying, this argument of the Ancients "disrespecting life", is frankly laughable in light of how modern people treat life. Even should they have been forced to create concepts with souls for the sole purpose of fighting Meteion, criticism of this is wildly hypocritical in light of the fact that WoL themselves assists in the creation of weapons with souls for their own use in battle.

The misuse was sacrificing new life simply to bring back those lost. It was an idea born of that unwillingness to accept death, a fact explicitly stated is the cutscene. They quite literally said they would not accept anything less than a “world free from sorrow.”

And yet nothing has changed on that front. Such a world is still one that people are working towards step-by-step, and even the Scions, some of the most heroic characters in the world, admit that faced with the same choices they would likely have made those same decisions. Actually that was more specifically about the much much worse idea of sacrificing countless innocent strangers to save their loved ones with the issue of the Calamities, so in comparison the Ancient's plan to sacrifice a bunch of farmed natural life like plants and animals to save those trapped in Zodiark is so comparably morally insignificant that it doesn't even bear questioning. Again, modern people "sacrifice life" as a daily routine.

It was purely a back up plan with the added benefit of further preparing for the journey should that path be followed. She did not want to leave humanity without every possible option thus the moon would be there. “Fly, my children, and never look back.”

You're missing my point here. The fact is that even as a "backup plan" it conflicts with Venat's own stated ideals. In fact nearly everything she does conflicts with her stated ideals.

So many of the arguments about why she had to do what she did center around the notion that all other alternatives were impossible. It was impossible to save the Ancient's society, it was impossible to work with the Convocation, it was impossible to reveal the truth, it was impossible to alter the timeline, it was impossible to allow the Ancients to choose their own fate, it was impossible not to lie to WoL in the future, it was impossible to solve the Final Days any other way, it was impossible to stop Meteion any other way. But according to what she says she thinks, none of these are excuses. So if they weren't necessary because alternatives were possible, that means that her actions were motivated by her own thinking and undertaken because she thought they were for the best - Either that, or she simply gave up on the idea of nothing being impossible, and resigned herself to not exploring every possible option in favor of following fate. Whatever her determination, it completely flew in the face of her wish of seeing man choose his own fate, as she instead chose it for them.

[Cleretic]

There is definitely some plot holes. And what I don't like is we are supposed to accept that what happened in the flashback of the sundering is a "metaphore". I waited 11 years to see how it really went through but I got is, Venat is the all so powerful and summoned/became Hydaelyn on her own. If we are led to believe that "no there are also people who opposed Zodiark and pray for Hydaelyn etc etc" Why the hell did you not show that or at least add the line Venat: "me and my comrades call upon Hydaelyn etc" and then just show a bunch of random people. The whole Elpis story was great but the flashback of Venat didn't work for me.

Edit: I don't know what happened to Azem, why I am Azem or have his essence. Am I Azem and am I sundered? I was led to believe in ShB that I am part of him. A lot not explained and this one I'm looking forward for future patches/expansion to learn more.

The post-Elpis cutscene isn't a metaphor (or at least, most of it isn't), it's compressed time. We see three, maybe four events that we do know didn't happen within a single ten minute chunk.

1. Actual events of the End of Days, before the first summoning of Zodiark (which takes Hythlodaeus from them).
2. Venat meets a desperate people in the wake of the destruction, after the summoning of Zodiark. Rather than listen to her plea that they need to accept the pain and move on, they take the easy way out and initiate the second summoning of Zodiark to undo the damage. This is the point where she realizes that Plan Hydaelyn is unavoidable; that if she doesn't stop them somehow, the Ancients will over time destroy their star in an effort to keep a blind comfort going.
(5.2's recording from Anamnesis Anyder goes here, somewhere between the second sacrifice and the summoning of Hydaelyn; she has assembled her group of loyalists, and they have their plan, although they wish they didn't have to do it)
2.5: The summoning of Hydaelyn. Actually kind of unclear on if what we see is this or some other show of defiance.
3. The actual metaphorical point, of Venat walking through the void after the Sundering, surrounded by sundered people. She regrets that she's given them a life of suffering that the Ancients didn't have, but is still bearing the burden of protecting them from Meteon and other evils.

And the Azem stuff is pretty clear: you are a sundered fragment of Azem's soul. Similar to how Amon was a sundered fragment of Fandaniel's, except you have no way of getting Azem's memories, and also no real need to, as while you have Azem's soul, you are not Azem, and have your own journey to take, separate from the past.

[Rieze_Xeero]

The post-Elpis cutscene isn't a metaphor (or at least, most of it isn't), it's compressed time. We see three, maybe four events that we do know didn't happen within a single ten minute chunk.

1. Actual events of the End of Days, before the first summoning of Zodiark (which takes Hythlodaeus from them).
2. Venat meets a desperate people in the wake of the destruction, after the summoning of Zodiark. Rather than listen to her plea that they need to accept the pain and move on, they take the easy way out and initiate the second summoning of Zodiark to undo the damage. This is the point where she realizes that Plan Hydaelyn is unavoidable; that if she doesn't stop them somehow, the Ancients will over time destroy their star in an effort to keep a blind comfort going.
(5.2's recording from Anamnesis Anyder goes here, somewhere between the second sacrifice and the summoning of Hydaelyn; she has assembled her group of loyalists, and they have their plan, although they wish they didn't have to do it)
2.5: The summoning of Hydaelyn. Actually kind of unclear on if what we see is this or some other show of defiance.
3. The actual metaphorical point, of Venat walking through the void after the Sundering, surrounded by sundered people. She regrets that she's given them a life of suffering that the Ancients didn't have, but is still bearing the burden of protecting them from Meteon and other evils.

And the Azem stuff is pretty clear: you are a sundered fragment of Azem's soul. Similar to how Amon was a sundered fragment of Fandaniel's, except you have no way of getting Azem's memories, and also no real need to, as while you have Azem's soul, you are not Azem, and have your own journey to take, separate from the past.

About Metaphor - Tell that to all the comments in a YouTube video about Venat. They all say the whole thing is a metaphor which does not make sense. :\
1 & 2) This one its clear how it has happened, what is not clear is the summoning. If we are to take what the game showed us, Venat became the heart of Hydealyn and with her sacrifice so pure and so heavy that her strong will manifest itself and became Hydealyn... To make it short "MCGUFFIN".
3) This one I agree, the metaphor is when she is walking down through void and time and getting the black impurities and getting weaker and weaker. But tell that to the YouTube comment as mentioned earlier haha.

4) Azem - Still unclear what happened to original Azem, He just somehow banished and gets sundered. How wasted potential for a part of the convocation. And Azem's soul crystal, became too much of a "MCGUFFIN"

I love the game's lore and the writers are amazing but they dropped the ball on some stuff in Endwalker. Wasted potential!