On Venat's Role in the Story

[Lauront]

On the topic of LBs: https://imgur.com/a/9BdTSUp

[Cleretic]

On the topic of LBs: https://imgur.com/a/9BdTSUp

So in short, 'lore says no' on LBs being dynamis, it's more just the aether kicked up from the fight.

...that said, I did immediately see that apparently the Black Mage spell Manawall might be dyanmis?

[KizuyaKatogami]

Technically it would, but... personally that'd be too much Amaurot for me. We're supposed to be moving on from this part of the story, and yet we've still got Pandaemonium set there. Do we really need to park another branch of the endgame into the distant past?

Considering how many questions have been left unanswered….yes absolutely. Unless they just don’t want to acknowledge them at all in which case stunning writing lmao.

[EaraGrace]

Do we really need an in-depth explanation of Azems actions? A slight mention or a possible hint seems like more than enough, given the fact that Azem is clearly meant to resemble the player character. I don’t need them to have clear character traits, they’re meant to be fluid.

[Theodric]

Introducing plot elements, dangling them over player's heads and then not following through on them would be rather disappointing for many, I suspect.

Given the overwhelmingly positive reception to Elpis, I'm inclined to think that the development team aren't going to ignore the opportunity to further flesh out the Ancient world in future content patches. This is, after all, meant to be the expansion set to tie up as many loose ends as possible.

Whether such plot elements are handled well is another matter altogether, of course.

[Alleo]

No such thing as perfect story even my favorite novel has its share of issues.

And its perfectly fine that people discuss these points on a forum designed to discuss the game. Lets be real if we were all here discussing each single detail in a positive way you would surely not try to stop people from doing that, right? But negative opinions have a right to exist too. And as soon as someone writes a story and puts it out for everyone to experience, they also open themselves up to people jugding it.

As long as nobody goes around and attacks the devs and writers on a personal level I think its perfectly fine to discuss these things.

Edit: So for example I did enjoy Endwalker. I do think that its a good ending for that long story arc. I cried, I laughed and thus it was a success. But I still found story points that I really did not like at all. And they basically were the lows of the expansion for me, pulling it down behind Shadowbringers. But that my point of view. Others found it much better than the last one. Some others may like Stormblood the best.

[Loggos]

And its perfectly fine that people discuss these points on a forum designed to discuss the game. Lets be real if we were all here discussing each single detail in a positive way you would surely not try to stop people from doing that, right? But negative opinions have a right to exist too. And as soon as someone writes a story and puts it out for everyone to experience, they also open themselves up to people jugding it.

As long as nobody goes around and attacks the devs and writers on a personal level I think its perfectly fine to discuss these things.

This.

Edit: So for example I did enjoy Endwalker. I do think that its a good ending for that long story arc. I cried, I laughed and thus it was a success. But I still found story points that I really did not like at all. And they basically were the lows of the expansion for me, pulling it down behind Shadowbringers. But that my point of few. Others found it much better than the last one. Some others may like Stormblood the best.

This!²

[Denishia]

And one's lows can be different for other people- I for one immensely disliked Emet and Hytholadeus being summoned by the Azem stone at the end to bring back our friends and then summon the flowers- not so much in the thematic reasoning for it or the parallels to the Elidibus fight, but because the execution of it dragged on and they lingered for way too long for my limited tolerance of those two characters and sucked all the focus onto Emet's monologue instead of the WoL trying to reach out to Meteion, turning it into one of my least favorite scenes in EW's MSQ and one of the few cutscenes that I was clicking through and almost skipping. But I knew that for many people, this would be their favorite EW MSQ scene.

Overall Venat's character execution was beyond my expectations, and I loved how she was written more than I dared hoped. (And while I know they were going for a tsundere vibe with Emet, at no point did my feelings of disdain and wishing that he and his narration would remove themselves from the MSQ change in a positive or at least more tolerant direction. My negative enjoyment of Zenos however, improved.)

[Lyth]

...

Is that the edition of the Encyclopedia Eorzea which was sent up to the Loporrits from Sharlayan? The one that claims that Warriors can perform the intellectual gymnastics needed to crystallize Aether into a mountain with Land Waker? Because until recently, Sharlayan scholars believed that all natural phenomena were the byproduct of Aether. You'd have to check in with the Hannish scholars if you wanted to see an alternative theoretical framework that allows for analysis of these outlier cases, although it hasn't quite entered mainstream conciousness yet. Aether theory has its uses and its limitations, much like Newtonian physics does in our own world. One cannot be too dogmatic in one's thinking.

Yeah, that edition was probably in need of an update. It does, however, contain an excellent treatise on carrots.

[EaraGrace]

Introducing plot elements, dangling them over player's heads and then not following through on them would be rather disappointing for many, I suspect.

Given the overwhelmingly positive reception to Elpis, I'm inclined to think that the development team aren't going to ignore the opportunity to further flesh out the Ancient world in future content patches. This is, after all, meant to be the expansion set to tie up as many loose ends as possible.

Whether such plot elements are handled well is another matter altogether, of course.

We will almost certainly see some exploration into what Azem was up to, my point however is that 10 years of plot is going to leave loose threads. Claiming it to be bad writing or a failure of the writing strikes me as unfair, especially when you also consider the fact that they can’t write Azem as a clearly defined character due to the their nature in the story. I don’t think we absolutely need an explanation, unlike with other story beats.