Disappointed in one Endwalker Aspect [SPOILERS]

[RyuDragnier]

I'm not in the habit of giving much weight to the policing of personal tastes. Nobody is obligated to like or support any given character. I don't particularly consider Hermes and his excessive empathy to be especially sympathetic, either - though it is Venat, rather than Hermes, who is responsible for the Sundering.

Before I played FFXIV, I played WoW. Obviously that's a different game, though after seeing Sylvanas getting away with the near destruction of an entire race that I liked I don't feel I'm under any obligation to support a character in FFXIV who is responsible for the complete destruction of an entire race that I like.

Subversive characters generally don't elicit much support or sympathy from me in general, though. Especially if I don't find their reasons or goals to be compelling.

Except it was to save other races. Which is worse, destroying a single race, or destroying multiple? Both are horrible, even Venat acknowledges the horrors of what she did when we met with her inside the planet. Venat had a good reason to save the other races, just as how the Convocation had a good reason to save their own.

There is no clear cut villain here, just shades of gray everywhere. Even Meteion's evil through despair was caused by Hermes innocently wanting the answer to the meaning of life. All we're left with are souls who were so badly damaged by their own circumstances that it rippled and made things worse for others.

[KariTheFox]

Venat wasn't respoinsible for the complete destruction of the ancients though. Half thier number died to summon zodiark, another half died to restore the star. And that is after thier population was likely severely reduced by the sheer destructiveness of the final days.

She also wasn't acting alone, she had an entire faction of ancients who agreed with her and were willing to sacrifice themselves for the sake of an uncertain future.

[Garnetiferous]

Except it was to save other races. Which is worse, destroying a single race, or destroying multiple? Both are horrible, even Venat acknowledges the horrors of what she did when we met with her inside the planet. Venat had a good reason to save the other races, just as how the Convocation had a good reason to save their own.

There is no clear cut villain here, just shades of gray everywhere. Even Meteion's evil through despair was caused by Hermes innocently wanting the answer to the meaning of life. All we're left with are souls who were so badly damaged by their own circumstances that it rippled and made things worse for others.

We don't know what life they were planning to sacrifice for the 3rd one. It's never stated in-game or in any story. It's possible that it was the sapient races we know from the modern world but the point still stands that we don't actually know.

[RyuDragnier]

We don't know what life they were planning to sacrifice for the 3rd one. It's never stated in-game or in any story. It's possible that it was the sapient races we know from the modern world but the point still stands that we don't actually know.

Which adds to the gray. We have so much we do not know.

[Slatersev]

Honestly while we don't actually know I have no idea how anyone could actually think the third sacrifice would just be like, regular animals and such.

Like on a very basic narrative level making it the Convocation just wanting to use literal cattle undermines the themes of both ShB and EW massively. It doesn't give the story shades of gray or anything close to that.

The convocation wanting to sacrifice new sapient life because they want back what they lost vs Venat sundering her own people partly in defense of that new innocent life is a compelling and interesting narrative element.

Having her do it to protect literal chickens makes both her and Emet look like idiots. Like why the fuck would Emet beat around the bush so much with us if the original end goal was something that simple?

Regardless of who you like more making it literal animals would just make both sides look really dumb, not tragically compelling.

[QT_Melon]

LOL @ this thread proving me right, that at least some discontent around Endwalker is derived from how Hydaelyn wasn't vilified.

Having her turn out to be evil or misguided would be just as cliché, in my opinion.

I guess those that hated Minfilia can regard Hydaelyn as a hero since she outright had her killed to heed her call to lie to us about Zodiark and herself.

outside of development issues - that is probably one of the most screwed up things that came out of this story. It's really hard to get that out of my head even as stated prior I did not like Minfilia.

[Rulakir]

She also wasn't acting alone, she had an entire faction of ancients who agreed with her and were willing to sacrifice themselves for the sake of an uncertain future.

There's no evidence for this, in fact, the cutscene in Anyder implies they were not informed of the sundering.

I guess those that hated Minfilia can regard Hydaelyn as a hero since she outright had her kill to heed her call to lie to us about Zodiark and herself.

Hah! You'd think so. I couldn't stand any iteration of Minfilia. I did actually like Venat in Elpis, I just didn't like everything afterward.

[KizuyaKatogami]

Except it was to save other races. Which is worse, destroying a single race, or destroying multiple? Both are horrible, even Venat acknowledges the horrors of what she did when we met with her inside the planet. Venat had a good reason to save the other races, just as how the Convocation had a good reason to save their own.

There is no clear cut villain here, just shades of gray everywhere. Even Meteion's evil through despair was caused by Hermes innocently wanting the answer to the meaning of life. All we're left with are souls who were so badly damaged by their own circumstances that it rippled and made things worse for others.

And in “saving” the other races, beings were made susceptible to age,illness, what have you, multiplied across the shards. I truly do wonder how much death has been caused by illness and age in 14’s world which is all due to the sundering…

[Cleretic]

Honestly while we don't actually know I have no idea how anyone could actually think the third sacrifice would just be like, regular animals and such.

Like on a very basic narrative level making it the Convocation just wanting to use literal cattle undermines the themes of both ShB and EW massively. It doesn't give the story shades of gray or anything close to that.

The convocation wanting to sacrifice new sapient life because they want back what they lost vs Venat sundering her own people partly in defense of that new innocent life is a compelling and interesting narrative element.

Having her do it to protect literal chickens makes both her and Emet look like idiots. Like why the fuck would Emet beat around the bush so much with us if the original end goal was something that simple?

Regardless of who you like more making it literal animals would just make both sides look really dumb, not tragically compelling.

Yeah, as I've said before, the story just doesn't function if it's something small and fairly safe. Both on a narrative level and a logical one.

I'll point out, we learned in Mare Lamentorum that all the lives sacrificed to Zodiark are still in it. Which implicitly tells us that at least part of the third sacrifice would be to replace them; Zodiark still needs to be powered, they just want to replace the power source. There may be additional costs required, but that's the floor.

So if that's true, how much is in there that needs to be replaced? Oh, right, 75% of the planet's population. We don't have a statistic on that, but it's gotta be a big number. So then, to get a better idea of what is actually needed, we then have to ask another question: were they sacrificing to give Zodiark aether, or to give it souls? Honestly, neither of those give us a favorable result; if it's aether, the Ancients are notoriously aetherically dense, so the math isn't going to be '1 cow=1 Ancient'. And if it's souls, we're in with a bigger problem, because we know that souls aren't a reliably appearing resource. So either the Convocation were specifically picking out a whole lot of ensouled creatures to sacrifice, or a new population of reliably ensouled creatures turned up; and either way, they're about to sacrifice a hell of a lot of them.

The third sacrifice is an unknown, but there's no way that it wasn't significant. This is true both from a narrative perspective, and from a purely logical one with the pieces in play; there's no way to math out the size of the third sacrifice without ending up with a number in the 'dear god, NO' range.

[RyuDragnier]

And in “saving” the other races, beings were made susceptible to age,illness, what have you, multiplied across the shards. I truly do wonder how much death has been caused by illness and age in 14’s world which is all due to the sundering…

Better than the end of all existence frankly. Not saying it was a good move, but it was the lesser option of multiple evils there.