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

[Rulakir]

Therefore, I can't yet discount the idea that the reason Azem never joined Venat's gang was that they knew the plan for for them to sacrifice themselves to turn her into the counterbalance she already knew she needed to become to lead the legacy of the Ancients towards their only means of defeating the Sound... and in that case...what was Azem's role in ensuring the plan worked out?

I'll be frank, in an expansion so dedicated to making Hydaelyn likeable and excusing the sundering, having Azem play any role in opposing it would be inconvenient.* So, I'm not surprised it wasn't addressed. I do think given the divisiveness over Venat's character and actions the writers would be smart to not have Azem on #TeamHydaelyn. It's bad enough they made her their mentor. I feel like fans of hers got to live out the ideal scenario in EW, the rest of us are now having to deal with the prospect that there isn't any version of our WoL, past or present, that wasn't opposed to her morally questionable act and that is a problem.

* Edit: I suspect this is also why we got the unfaithful retelling of events from Venat's POV as players probably would've had issue looking upon her favorably with an accurate portrayal.

As great as Azem and their reincarnations are, we should remember that there is a level of selfishness involved too. Ardbert did not care what it took to save the First. He did whatever Elidibus asked and was willing to kill the WoL to make it happen. Likewise, the WoL is repeatedly given dialog options to be against their friends making sacrifices even if that means not achieving their objective. It would be a difficult if not impossible sell that Azem would have given up on their world or its people, especially for an uncertain future.

[KizuyaKatogami]

About blanked Empathy and saving Ancients. We ARE saving them! Always and ever. Cause we ARE them, minus Creation magic and god complex.

And to drive point home with Garlean parallels. Saving Garleans doesn't mean that we will build an airship and go fly to bomb some beast tribes. "Cause it's The Garlean Way!". Saving the Garlean People does not mean that I'm fine with them rebuilding world conquering Empire.

Same thing with Ancients. It's their culture and creation magic that goes the way of Dodo. And about the culture if we can get our hands on records I'm all for preserving those. What else really was lost with Sundering? And culturally it appears Sundering was only positive. If one goes by Hythlos monologue about shark monsters Ancient society is bit Creatively taped out.

@LittleArrow
I'd add that Alpha is inheritor of Omega. Thus making that Omicrons dodged the Oblivion also for now. Thier form is completely different, but self-enchanting was always their thing.

We aren’t the ancients though. We’re broken fractions of them.Even Hydar=elyn herself doesnt consider the sundered the same. She uses the term "last of my kind." Culturally the sundering was good? The sundering wasn’t good in any way. Even the devs said this in ShB that the sundering was very much a bad thing. The sundering resulted in people being literally split apart from themselves, losing their memories, their loved ones, everything. As far as eventually killing themselves, for all we know, if they ever did reach perfection on the star, they could’ve eventually travelled to another one to repeat the same process and help that star thrive and prosper as well. There’s a whole lot of headcanon going on here, especially relating it to Meteion’s final dungeon. Like someone else mentioned it’s basically Minority Report.

[Slatersev]

We aren’t the ancients though. We’re broken fractions of them.Even Hydar=elyn herself doesnt consider the sundered the same. She uses the term "last of my kind." Culturally the sundering was good? The sundering wasn’t good in any way. Even the devs said this in ShB that the sundering was very much a bad thing. The sundering resulted in people being literally split apart from themselves, losing their memories, their loved ones, everything. As far as eventually killing themselves, for all we know, if they ever did reach perfection on the star, they could’ve eventually travelled to another one to repeat the same process and help that star thrive and prosper as well. There’s a whole lot of headcanon going on here, especially relating it to Meteion’s final dungeon. Like someone else mentioned it’s basically Minority Report.

That's even more of a headcanon then the original post.

[Anonymoose]

Ardbert did not care what it took to save the First. He did whatever Elidibus asked and was willing to kill the WoL to make it happen.

In my humble opinion, Venat and Ardbert did the same thing for the same reason. "I believe my people are on the brink of oblivion, and if I have to choose between oblivion and reincarnation in another form, it's gonna have to be the latter." It turned out that Ardbert was dead wrong about the necessity of trying to kill his entire planet... and yet most still think well of him. Meanwhile, even Hades says Venat was correct in her assessment... and she's still a monster.

It's a really interesting case study in narrative/audience interaction.

[Iscah]

My own thoughts in Elpis were based around my understanding of how time travel works in this game: it's a stable loop unless the traveller's actions break it. Breaking the loop locks the traveller into the new timeline they have created, while the old one remains in place – but they cannot return to it.

At least that was my understanding for G'raha's timeline-breaking trip, but then he has a time machine that moves permanently to a place in time, while Elidibus's time portal is perhaps more tethered in our specific timeline as a way back from wherever... not that I considered this at the time. So my line of thinking as I entered Elpis was "I'd better not break anything or I'll never be able to go back".

Either way, as shown by the side story confirming that the Eighth Calamity timeline does not unravel but continues to exist, all the talk in Shadowbringers about unwriting or overwriting the bad timeline was speculative. It does not cease to be. Creating a better alternative timeline does not undo the suffering of the bad one, just creates a second alternative alongside it.

We would doom our own timeline by never returning to it with the answer of how to halt the Final Days, and we would not actually save the ancient world from its suffering either. Our mere existence guarantees the reality of everything that happened in the timeline that leads to our life thus far.

And ultimately, the thing we would have to do to prevent the Final Days and create this hypothetical alternate timeline would be stopping Meteion from delivering her report and fleeing. If we didn't see that happen then we would not learn what we have to do to save the present. But until it happens in the past, we don't know that we need to stop it – and in fact had an inadvertent hand in causing it by tracking down Meteion when she was trying to hide.

And whether or not we'd return to our future is a tossup. Actually, I can't remember how we did that in the first place. All the technology needed to send us back in time... we didn't exactly stick it in our pocket and take it with us. How did we leave Elpis?

Seems to be some kind of magick by Elidibus – maybe using a different mechanism to the "time machine" even though it's still in the Crystal Tower? We're not travelling in the tower like G'raha did, but creating a portal through the mirror... which G'raha could do to send us across the rift, but not through time. Maybe Elidibus figured out a different way of configuring it?

Anyway, assuming it created a sort of fixed portal to that location, we apparently just returned to our entry point and went back through it.

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 Source and First are not branched timelines, even though they are two copies of the same original world. They are still physically linked, as seen in the other timeline where they were rejoined, destroying the First and severely damaging the Source by the effects of its stagnant aether.

The Source and First together (along with all of the other shards) are part of a single timeline. G'raha's actions in travelling back from future to present created a split in this whole timeline to create a version of events where the Source and First are both saved instead of both doomed.

On a related note, the Exarch is not "the First's counterpart" to the G'raha we woke up in the tower in 5.3, but from the other Source's future. His actual counterpart (as Ardbert was to us) will still be out there somewhere in the First, unknown and irrelevant to the story.

[KizuyaKatogami]

That's even more of a headcanon then the original post.

Well that’s my point. Headcanon wise we can guess they’d either continue moving on to helping other planets or somehow die off due to reaching perfection and self destruct. In the end it’s all just headcanon though.

[Denishia]

In my humble opinion, Venat and Ardbert did the same thing for the same reason. "I believe my people are on the brink of oblivion, and if I have to choose between oblivion and reincarnation in another form, it's gonna have to be the latter." It turned out that Ardbert was dead wrong about the necessity of trying to kill his entire planet... and yet most still think well of him. Meanwhile, even Hades says Venat was correct in her assessment... and she's still a monster.

It's a really interesting case study in narrative/audience interaction.

Ooh, directly comparing Venat/Hydaelyn to Ardbert just made me love her more. And aaugh, now that I'm thinking about it, there's probably a good parallel to Hydaelyn-Venat almost losing herself, her memories, and certainly her power until the WoL finds her, especially that last time, with how Ardbert's shade was fading away in oblivion over those hundred years until the WoL arrived.

[h-alpha]

I'll be frank, in an expansion so dedicated to making Hydaelyn likeable and excusing the sundering, having Azem play any role in opposing it would be inconvenient.* So, I'm not surprised it wasn't addressed. I do think given the divisiveness over Venat's character and actions the writers would be smart to not have Azem on #TeamHydaelyn. It's bad enough they made her their mentor. I feel like fans of hers got to live out the ideal scenario in EW, the rest of us are now having to deal with the prospect that there isn't any version of our WoL, past or present, that wasn't opposed to her morally questionable act and that is a problem.

If I can add in my two cents here, there was a bit of dialogue at some point in the game stating that our Azem had not only walked out on the Convocation when they decided to summon Zodiark, but had also refused to join Venat and her followers for the summoning of Hydaelyn. I don't know that they would have intentionally mentioned that if they wanted to us to be super duper on Hydaelyn's side.

But I mean, there's a history that we have with Hydaelyn that has been there for the entire game, pretty much. I'm kind of glad they didn't suddenly make her seem deranged and evil or unlikeable after we learned the truth about what happened. The fact that I had never doubted anything she told us for the entire time that I've been playing the game made it hurt that much worse (and better) when we found out she'd not only shattered all of the souls of her people - all of the families that would never be together again, all of the lovers destined to search for each other lifetime after lifetime, all of the hopes and dreams and experiences of every single person - not just that, but also that she'd lied to us about it.

Every interaction with her after that, every conversation about her, all under a new light of wondering whether she could be trusted, whether all of the good we'd done in her name had been genuine or a ploy to further her own intentions. After putting so much trust and faith in her for years. I really, really liked the unease of that.

That being said, it also warrants saying that liking a character doesn't necessarily equate agreeing with their actions, and vice versa. I liked Hydaelyn, and I liked Venat quite a bit. I cannot ever justify what she did, even if she did intend for it to maybe give us a fighting chance against Meteion. There could've been another path to go down but she, as well as the Convocation, were so wrapped up in their own convictions that they were blind to other possibilities. Had they truly exhausted all other options? Was that really the only thing left to do? Maybe, maybe not

I also never really felt like they were trying to convince otherwise? I felt like they were trying to make her actions sympathetic - whether you sympathize with her or not is up to you, for sure - but it never felt like they were saying "actually, this was an okay thing to do" to me?

Maybe Hydaelyn herself did try to say that... or at least that she knew how terrible it was but truly believes it was the only way

(Not to say that I don't understand and agree with a lot of peoples comments in this thread, because absolutely I do. There were a lot of things that I had and still have questions about, things that I wanted that never happened, things that I wished they had done differently or put more time into...)

[Anonymoose]

There could've been another path to go down but she, as well as the Convocation, were so wrapped up in their own convictions that they were blind to other possibilities. Which is sad and unspeakably awful, to me. I also never really felt like they were trying to convince otherwise? I felt like they were trying to make her actions sympathetic - whether you sympathize with her or not is up to you, for sure - but it never felt like they were saying "actually, this was an okay thing to do" to me?

Agreed; I was actually pretty surprised they didn't give her a weepy, sympathetic, "I have no choice!" scene, but had her go full conviction, pull out a sword, and sternly declare, essentially, "For the sake of the star, f[kupo]k all y'all." lol.

Did she have the Warrior of Lights back? Yes.
Did she believe she was doing what she did for the sake of the star? Yes.
Did crystal mom love you? Yes, yes, and more yes.

...But did they say she only did good, fluffy things and was a morally infallible person...?

"I BREATHE FIRE AND TORMENT. I BIRTH A WORLD OF SUFFERING TO MIRE AND PLAGUE."

[RoroCookies]

Snip

I think this kinda sums up how I feel to some degree. I liked Venat a lot of first when Elpis first started, but afterwards I grew to dislike her actions. I just personally wish the characters or our WoL questioned her more because there is a hole in the narrative regarding the fight between Hydaelyn vs Zodiark. I do have to agree with many people that if Venat also had her memory wiped I would honestly be more forgiving of her actions afterwards. Zodiark was made without the knowledge of Meteion therefore his execution is flawed but Hydaelyn. I also can't help but wonder how much suffering Venat knew prior before the Elpis situation occurred because I still do not enjoy her approach to just telling people that suffering is normal without even trying to calm them down from a potential manic phase due to the awful situation. The scions and WoL managed to calm people down from transforming, I can only assume if they approached people in a similar fashion to what Venat did to her people, things will become way worse very quickly. But that's just some speculation that just bothers me. I just personally don't like how the artsy cutscene went.