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

[Cleretic]

I might be wrong but the way I saw it is that no one in game, as far as I know, knows about what happens really when you mess with the past. Sure, G'raha was surprised to still stand after saving the first from the Sin Eaters, but he wasn't 100% sure what happened to the future he came from. It was all speculative.
We only know about the branching timeline because it was given to us through the side stories, in a way that only we, the player and not the WoL or any of the NPC of the current time lines, knew about. So I never assumed our WoL would have that knowledge and act accordingly. For all I knew, as my character, changing the past could have grave consequences to the future I was trying to save (and g'raha would have the same assumption thus elidubus, having his memories, could have acted on said assumptions).

Ofc if we were presented through msq with the knowledge we were given on the side stories, my views on what happened on Elpis might have been different from what they are now.

Yeah, there were only three beings that actually understood the game world's mechanics of time travel to any appreciable degree, and two of them died.

The third trapped itself in a time bubble to ensure it wouldn't be misused.

[h-alpha]

I've said before – I think it was a huge mistake in the storytelling to have Venat keep her memories and act on them, carrying out her plan "because the time-traveller said so".

She should have been memory-wiped with the others and later objected to Zodiark for independent reasons, perceiving some kind of design flaw that called for the creation of Hydaelyn to address it.

If lost memories are regained upon death and return to the aetherial sea, then she could still regain those memories upon becoming Hydaelyn and retreating to the sea.

I think I have to agree with this... It would've made it all easier to process if she didn't remember until she became Hydaelyn and returned to the aetherial sea, and then remembered us and knew to lead us to becoming the WoL and doing what we did... The causal loop that we seem to be stuck in would've still been fulfilled, but there wouldn't be this question of if Venat could've done anything to change things, or why she didn't if she could have, or why she ultimately seemed convinced there was no other option when her entire character screams to me that she would not have simply accepted it.

[Kaurudim]

snip

I’m not so sure this would have worked, because Venat herself says she sees no reason to disagree with the Convocation and is at a complete loss as to why she was working against them in the future the WoL comes from. “Time traveler said so” was certainly part of her decision to create Hydaelyn, but the other part was specifically her knowledge of Dynamis - and not just that, but of Meteion’s active attempt to use Dynamis to incite the Final Days. Hermes’s memory rewrite put Meteion out of the picture in that very specific way in an attempt to create a fair battle to see if humanity has the right to live; this means that, for all his knowledge of the celestial currents, not even he would have been able to predict Dynamis as an active force, let alone anyone else, considering how specialized a discipline it apparently was.

Dynamis is a force that the Ancients cannot interact with in any meaningful way, and if Hermes’s misgivings about their blasé treatment of death is any indication, the negative effects of Dynamis are not ones the Ancients were in any capacity able to actually cope with. THAT is why they are so quick to surrender half their population in god-creation-by-suicide. Why they are just as quick to then surrender the remaining half to make Etheirys livable again, and plan to sacrifice all the new life to bring back those sacrificed before. They were happy to create a paradise on top of a mountain of dead because death to so many Ancients was this noble, peaceful, celebrated act. To presume Venat - an oddball given she chose to remain after stepping down, yes, but still deeply entrenched in this society - would have been able to come to the conclusion that Zodiark was a Bad Idea without her very unique knowledge is jumping to conclusions imo

It’s with that knowledge she’s able to shift her thinking of the gilded paradise they lived in. That these people were incapable of change, were clinging to phantoms of the past instead of confronting the negative emotions festering inside of them - emotions that she now knew could be used and manipulated by Meteion’s control of Dynamis. Seeing that the WoL’s naturally thinned aether meant they were able to more directly interact with (and, as a consequence, potentially directly confront) Dynamis was also a contributing factor in her deciding to sunder her world.

tl;dr so long as we have to deal with a time travel plot to the unsundered world, and so long as the unsundered world is portrayed as a (gilded) paradise, Venat needs unique knowledge to break her own view and see under the gold flaking. She needs those memories unaltered.

[Iscah]

I’m not so sure this would have worked, because Venat herself says she sees no reason to disagree with the Convocation and is at a complete loss as to why she was working against them in the future the WoL comes from.

I disagree that this means she can't have independently gone against them when the time came.

She's puzzled why she would go against them, but she (and they) have no idea of what the design or exact purpose of Zodiark is at this point so it's not really a relevant issue now.

Prior to Endwalker, when all we knew was that the Convocation created Zodiark and for some reason a second group felt it was necessary to create Hydaelyn to oppose him, I expected that the reason would be some kind of flaw in the design that the Convocation overlooked. Most likely that despite the logical reasons for creating a Dark-powered entity to encourage activity and growth, it would be dangerous to let it go unchecked and the design should have some balance of Light to rein it in when necessary. That's what we were told at the time: Zodiark was created first, and then Hydaelyn created to serve as his shackles.

I don't see why it would be impossible for Venat to come to some kind of conclusion regarding this on her own. We had no issue believing it when we didn't know there would be a time loop involved.

[Lauront]

Either such an approach, or a third party instigating conflict for their own gain (e.g. an alliance with a predatory higher power) could have worked. The time loop/dynamis plot is what they chose to go with in the end. Not a very cleanly written plot and it will forever invite questions on the topic, about what-if scenarios, rather than serving as closure. Perhaps their intention, but not one I particularly care for.

[Ceridwenae]

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

I've given birth (no pain relief). This tracks.

[h-alpha]

snip

I see where you're coming from on that, but I personally feel like her realizing all of that could have absolutely happened naturally. She wouldn't be the first to do it - Hermes also became disillusioned, perhaps in a different way, but he did. That happened even before any knowledge of what Meteion saw. He was a product of his world just as much as Venat.

I think the fact that it was the norm for those stepping down from their seats in the Convocation to "return to the star" and yet Venat was one of the rare exceptions. From that, we can maybe glean that while certain ideas and ways of thinking were definitely more normal and accepted, it wasn't unheard even in the time before the Final Days for people to have doubts about it all.

I don't remember if it was ever explained outright, but I do wonder if maybe part of the reason why Venat decided not to return to the star as was commonly done was because she was already having some of those doubts that would be then lead her to be so opposed to Zodiark later on... Or maybe her time as Azem gave her a respect of life that didn't quite align with the norm? I could definitely see it happening where she is initially on board with his summoning, but after losing so many people (for someone who loves the world as much as Venat, I can see that being devastating, especially if she'd already been doubting how society treated death) and realizing that it wasn't even fixing the problem, and that all it was serving to do at that point was to instigate more sacrifices, more loss of life, and drive her people into a panic that they couldn't see past... Then deciding that the only course of action would be to try and end the cycle before it could continue further.

[HReincarnate]

Honestly as far as I'm concerned, we did create a split timeline. One in which Venat succeeded in her mission to stop & delay the final days, and one in which she failed & had to resort to the sundering. Being of one timeline, we would not be aware of the other, just like G'raha is unaware of that other timeline.

[Kaurudim]

snip

I want to say her decision not to step down was less about any misgivings and more about a love for man and his infinite possibility, but I can definitely see how that could have led to misgivings, had they chosen to write it that way.

The problem is that, even if she had misgivings, I’m not sure it would have addressed the root cause of the Final Days or led to a way to challenge them. Even before Meteion and Dynamis were introduced into the story, I don’t think you could argue Zodiark or his followers were responsible for the Final Days, considering he had been explicitly created to avert them since ShB. I think painting Hydaelyn and her followers as evil and/or a cause of the Final Days would have caused just as many problems. So you’re stuck with a third cosmic force.

I have my own misgivings about Dynamis, to be fair. Especially since I’m big on mystery novels, so introducing a decisive element so late into the story has me feeling a kinda way. But so long as it’s written the way it is - and ESPECIALLY so long as it’s esoteric knowledge - they needed to pull some stunts to make it so that

1) The Convocation could not have come to the correct conclusion easily.
2) Venat needs to know the cause so her argument for the creation of Hydaelyn is compelling (to both the players and her inner circle) despite Zodiark otherwise working to address the problem.
3) Venat was unable to share this knowledge without creating further problems, hence her moving separately from the Convocation

I think this is why the time travel and memory manipulation came into play, especially if they wanted to throw fans a bone and have a play date with Emet-Selch, Hythlodaeus, and Venat. Us directly (our story) and indirectly (discovering Meteion’s report was largely our doing) providing her with information gives her creation of Hydaelyn a leg to stand on when it comes to the cause of the Final Days as written. I also admit, though, that I personally don’t find the time travel of FFXIV to be that confusing (and actually find it to be rather clean, coming from one of SquEnix’s other well-known franchises…), so this is very much affecting my own acceptance of this particular plot point.

[Alleo]

I don't see why it would be impossible for Venat to come to some kind of conclusion regarding this on her own. We had no issue believing it when we didn't know there would be a time loop involved.

Because (imo) one reason why she sundered Zodiark was because she knew about Dynamis and its effects and thus knew that the Ancients with their dense aether could not use it. Of course one could argue that the other reasons (like being weaker than him) could still count and that our ability to use Dynamis was a unintended side effect. But we also have to remember that she seemingly started planning after Elpis. We have no idea how long it took until the Final Days hit them but I believe she probably spent a huge amount of time until then to research stuff and gain allies. She after all created the moon, the rabbits and more. (All of this according to Livingway while she still was Venat) None of that would have been done prior to Zodiark if she had no knowledge, since she would have no reason to suspect that Dynamis was at play. And since she seemingly was also sundered as Hydealyn I doubt she would have been able to create the rabbits who can use creation magic.