Endwalker's story had me, but lost me. Ethical issues especially (spoilers)

[Denishia]

Seeing as we destroyed the Tycoon, how did we even get there in the first place? Elidibus just says he "mastered the tower" and "stole G'raha's memories". I'm stuck forming my own head-canon that Wundercatte's super duper eidetic memory still held all the Wings of Time (/ Omega) computations to lower my blood pressure.

But it looks like the ocular's portal to Elpis is just...open. And then there's the FSH quests where the Sharlayans are like,
"Oh, yeah, we knew about time travel but you need authorization."

This was the price I paid for "Crystal Mom Loves You and Tried Her Best."

You could hear the monkey's paw curling behind me.

for my own sanity I want to rewrite all of Elpis as one of those extended Echo flashbacks with limited interactions that we are doing on Elidibus's memories- but that breaks the metaphysics even more-so. Or hey- maybe our presence there could have been a weird Echo flash-forward of Venat. But it's definitely messy and works on demands of fanservice and giving the players an entire zone instead of a long solo instance.

[Rulakir]

One of the things we rarely talk about since Endwalker threw us for so many unexpected loops:
Venat was the previous Azem and was very close to her successor. They could have been in on all of this.
We already know they have a hand in Pandaemonium...

Azem being in on Venat's plans is going to cause me to lose even more faith than I already have in the narrative going forward. What we know of Azem's shards, the WoL and Ardbert, they'd go above and beyond to save their world and they wouldn't give up on their friends. I could not accept Azem being an accessory to one best friend sacrificing himself to Zodiark and another spending 12k years on the frayed ends of sanity trying to put their world back together. I'm deeply concerned with Azem being involved with Pandemonium based on what I've seen in EW. The morality of the sundering is questionable enough on its own without having OG Azem act in a way that's inconsistent with their future counterparts. I sincerely hope they are not going in that direction.

[Rosenstrauch]

Seeing as we destroyed the Tycoon, how did we even get there in the first place? Elidibus just says he "mastered the tower" and "stole G'raha's memories". I'm stuck forming my own head-canon that Wundercatte's super duper eidetic memory still held all the Wings of Time (/ Omega) computations to lower my blood pressure.

But it looks like the ocular's portal to Elpis is just...open.

Well, if that's the case, then I'd say whether or not we could return to our timeline if we happened to cause a split is... entirely arbitrary, I guess?

And then there's the FSH quests where the Sharlayans are like,
"Oh, yeah, we knew about time travel but you need authorization."

This calls for more expletives than I'm comfortable with sharing on this forum. I... God. I think I need to stop.

[Brightamethyst]

Pandaemonium can explain the sounds underground and tell how Lahabrea, Elidibus, and Emet-Selch avoided the sundering.

I sure hope so. I couldn't believe it when the story ended without explaining the unsundered.

[Pofruin]

I am apparently on opposite spectrum from OP on this. You come to Elpis to learn the truth of Final Days. And that truth is its just despair born of Ancients inability to tell why they live. Huge society, awesome powers all undone by simply asking "Why Though?".

So when leaving it I didn't see Paradise Lost. I saw the pretty world of Empty people doing Empty busywork until it becomes too inconvenient and then they die. When we are there Ancients already lost the reason for living and just carry on on pure routine.

I have absolutely no Ethical qualms of Sundering them. Ancients I saw in Elpis where already gone, and almost no one noticed or cared. Why should I?

It also later appeared to me that this entire part was but Preview of Ultima Thule episode.

[Rinoa]

So when leaving it I didn't see Paradise Lost. I saw the pretty world of Empty people doing Empty busywork until it becomes too inconvenient and then they die. When we are there Ancients already lost the reason for living and just carry on on pure routine.

The NPCs in Elpis seemed to enjoy life a lot, and have at least something to live for. Something doesn't need a good reason to live in order for it to be justified. What you describe about them could describe many people. (Hope that was relevant, only had a moment to type this)

[Denishia]

I am apparently on opposite spectrum from OP on this. You come to Elpis to learn the truth of Final Days. And that truth is its just despair born of Ancients inability to tell why they live. Huge society, awesome powers all undone by simply asking "Why Though?".

So when leaving it I didn't see Paradise Lost. I saw the pretty world of Empty people doing Empty busywork until it becomes too inconvenient and then they die. When we are there Ancients already lost the reason for living and just carry on on pure routine.

I have absolutely no Ethical qualms of Sundering them. Ancients I saw in Elpis where already gone, and almost no one noticed or cared. Why should I?

It also later appeared to me that this entire part was but Preview of Ultima Thule episode.

Chuckling a little because while this also isn't my position, I feel that I am probably closer to you than OP in emotional reaction towards the characters and society as shown in Amaurot and Elpis, so my answer of 'why care about them?' is because of a blanket empathy of trying to care about all the fictional characters - which is exactly the impulse that made the Ancients/Elpis set my teeth on edge with undefined by unmistakably bad vibes to begin with. I want to save them if I can for the same reason I was trying to save those Garleans citizens brainwashed by their nationalist propaganda who were rejecting my help - they don't get priority over anyone else, but I will try.

But it goes back to ShB and Emet and the meta of the question: if he in-universe doesn't see the Sundered people as real characters (well, actually he does but he's lying to himself out of grief and suck-cost fallacy) and this reminds the player that all the characters on the computer/tv screen aren't real either, then the player character might feel sympathy towards Emet's pov - or decide that, well, Emet and his Unsundered people are no more real than the Sundered characters, and we as the player have spent all our time and emotional investment in this 'Sundered World' and these characters that this other character derides as not real (not to mention the ableism and echoes of fascist/imperialist dehumanization and it'll telling that societies that the MSQ deliberately or subtlety parallels the Ancient World to are the Allagans, Garlemald, and then the societies, especially the last, of Ultima Thule) so of course we reject the Ascians.

[Veloran]

His soul and memories came back with us to our timeline, he didn't end up back in the other branched path, so it does show that they can end up in a different timeline. Though I suppose that could be explained away due to him being in the crystal.

The First and the Source aren't different timelines, they're just two shards of the sundered world. The Eighth Umbral Calamity era is a different timeline, and a lot of people seem to be under the impression that G'raha going back in time destroyed that timeline, when in fact it only created a divergent timeline, ours.

A major issue I have with Elpis is that in theory, they could all be saved simply by creating another divergent timeline. Even if the Ancients failed to do so, WoL could simply go back and stop Meteion themselves. Implicitly, the only thing preventing this from happening is that unlike G'raha, WoL lacks the personal investment to expend the effort of trying to save them. Which would run contrary to WoL's character, practically making them a bad person by way of laziness.

[LittleArrow]

I don't know if anyone has mentioned this, but that's not the only reason why Venat sundered the world. She sundered it because this is the only way we could defeat Meteion. Y'shtola brings this up to her during her trial encounter as well. She states how Venat (just as Venat herself said before we left) played a long game in sundering our souls so that 1. we would be able to combat dispair, something seemingly the entire rest of the universe thus far hasn't been able to do... so thanks for that Venat, and 2. we would have a thinner Aether make up to combat Meteion and her dynamis powers (we have dynamis powers ourselves due to being of thinner aether makeup).

Venat also stated that these are their problems. They have to handle the final days on their own, it's not our fight. The final days would've happened with or without us due to Hermes and Meteion's interaction with the rest of the universe.

I totally get feeling so compelled by a broken connection to a game's story it can ruin the entire experience, and I hope this helps.

EDIT: I'd also like to add, with or without Meteion it seems heavily implied by the story the Ancients would have destroyed themselves eventually anyways. Every single cosmic race achieved paradise and ultimately destroyed themselves because they didn't have hope - the only exception being Midgardsormir. The Ancients likely would have came to this conclusion as well, seeing as how there was no sign that they knew hope as we do. Most likely they would've found they improved the star with their creation magics to the point there was no more improvement, and without any further goal they would've probably creationed themselves to death.

[Denishia]

Considering how we did try to help, like chasing down Meteion in the lvl 87 dungeon and telling Venat and the others about our future even though, for all we knew, that action of divulging info was damning our timeline to be overwritten, that we as the WoL were trying to save the Unsundered world- we did our part, and it was not our actions to do the memory wipe. When we reencounter Hydaelyn in the 89 trial, she points out that our timelines are the same- which was in question. Until that moment, we did not know if our actions and later those of both Venat and other Ancients in the past had created enough of a divergence to split the timelines or if we had just created a stable time-loop a la Alexander (We as the player know because the game wasn't going to throw out ten years worth of game and because as an MMO we have to be able to do past content and old zone side-quests and content, but the WoL doesn't).