Disappointed in one Endwalker Aspect [SPOILERS]

[Veloran]

Neither side capitulated on their morals. Nor should they have; neither side was cleanly and definitively morally right, even if one side happened to be strategically right. That's the whole idea of that conflict, and why it is intentionally left an open question: even though her plan worked, it may not have been the morally right thing to do.

Yeah, not so sure that's how it's presented. I'm also not so sure that an argument of strategy can even be made when one side didn't even know they were in a war while the other was given a roadmap.

[Cleretic]

Yeah, not so sure that's how it's presented. I'm also not so sure that an argument of strategy can even be made when one side didn't even know they were in a war while the other was given a roadmap.

The roadmap we gave her sucked, and most of her actual plan was completely separate from it. As I've seen it explained, while we told her the plan as we understood it, we had no idea at the time that it was actually her Plan B.

But also, absolutely nothing says that she actually stuck to what we told her because it's what we told her. In fact it's mentioned several times, including by Venat/Hydaelyn herself, that she and her allies tried other ways. They just didn't work out.

There's also two different things that make the story seem tilted towards Hydaelyn's side:
A: We got a story tilted heavily towards Zodiark's side already, it was called Shadowbringers. (And I hated it as much then as you do this now.) So from the greater view, we have an equally-sided debate, it's just that it took a couple years to get the counterpoint, and people are very susceptible to recency bias.
B: While it's very much written and framed that we as external viewers can see the equality of the sides at the time, most of the characters in the story are not part of that debate; they're from ten thousand years after the ship sailed on Plan Hydaelyn, trying to come to terms with cosmic revelations and the goddamn apocalypse. They are having an entirely different conversation, and so learning the fact 'our god loves us and had a plan in motion' is FAR more important information than 'also it turns out our god was more secretive than people would have liked at the time'.

[Veloran]

The roadmap we gave her sucked, and most of her actual plan was completely separate from it. As I've seen it explained, while we told her the plan as we understood it, we had no idea at the time that it was actually her Plan B.

But also, absolutely nothing says that she actually stuck to what we told her because it's what we told her. In fact it's mentioned several times, including by Venat/Hydaelyn herself, that she and her allies tried other ways. They just didn't work out.

Just a coincidence that it all ended up exactly the same and resulted in her fulfilling a promise made to WoL.

There's also two different things that make the story seem tilted towards Hydaelyn's side:

In addition to a recency effect and the fact that the protagonists were already defacto agents of Hydaelyn, I would argue that the story goes out of it's way to paint Venat in a glowingly positive light every chance it can. The standout example being, of course, the sundering cutscene. Which is ultimately massively fraudulent to what actually happened and serves only to paint Venat as a wise moral crusader and anyone standing against her as petty, small-minded, and antagonistic fools who are willfully ignorant of her "well-reasoned" argument.

I would actually suggest that the reason this was the case is because they were gunning for the happiest and most straightforwardly-uplifting ending possible. And because people were already given to liking Emet-Selch and Elidibus from Shadowbringers, and they really wanted people to like Venat, actually having a scene pitting them against each other wasn't feasible. So instead of showing the actual sundering, which would either paint one side worse than the other or at least leave both very morally ambiguous, they just show Venat versus thirteen strawmen.

[Cleretic]

Which is ultimately massively fraudulent to what actually happened

How? How is it fraudulent, as opposed to just dramatic?

[Veloran]

How? How is it fraudulent, as opposed to just dramatic?

Everything that occurred in the cutscene is untrue and did not happen...? It doesn't reflect reality.

[RyuDragnier]

Everything that occurred in the cutscene is untrue and did not happen...? It doesn't reflect reality.

Final Days started? Happened.
Hythlodaeus sacrificing himself? Happened.
Venat trying to convince people to come to terms with the sadness and move on? Happened.
People ignoring her words and going for another sacrifice? Happened.
Venat finally deciding to become Hydaelyn and Sunder the world? Happened.

I do not see anything untrue, and I'm wondering what exactly you're looking at that is untrue.

[Ryaz]

Final Days started? Happened.
Hythlodaeus sacrificing himself? Happened.
Venat trying to convince people to come to terms with the sadness and move on? Happened.
People ignoring her words and going for another sacrifice? Happened.
Venat finally deciding to become Hydaelyn and Sunder the world? Happened.

I do not see anything untrue, and I'm wondering what exactly you're looking at that is untrue.

The story didn't go in a direction he wanted, so he's attacking it. Which is fine that he didn't like. Myself and many others loved it and that scene.

What helped me is that I didn't go into EW with any preconceived notions. Speculations? Yes. But I had no beliefs about Hydalaen and Zodiark being good or evil. I didn't go in expecting a bunch if characters to die. So for me, I just got to enjoy the story without it going against my pre-established head canon, which helped immensely.

I just got to spend a lot of fun times with characters I've loved from 2.0 and new characters I met in this expac. That's all that mattered to me.

[Veloran]

Final Days started? Happened.
Hythlodaeus sacrificing himself? Happened.
Venat trying to convince people to come to terms with the sadness and move on? Happened.
People ignoring her words and going for another sacrifice? Happened.
Venat finally deciding to become Hydaelyn and Sunder the world? Happened.

I do not see anything untrue, and I'm wondering what exactly you're looking at that is untrue.

Do I really need to explain to you why a sparknotes montage metaphor version of several different events happening at different times isn't reflective of the truth? Final Days happened? Yes, and then ended. Hythlodaeus sacrificing himself? Yes, not in that scene. Venat trying to convince people to her cause? Yes, not during the Final Days and not with the dialog we're actually delivered. Venat becoming Hydaelyn? Yes, not then and not after her speech there to those people.

To say that scene is true is to say that this scene is true to the fallout of the Thirty Years War - Which is to say yes, but also absolutely not at all.

[OhNooo]

In addition to a recency effect and the fact that the protagonists were already defacto agents of Hydaelyn, I would argue that the story goes out of it's way to paint Venat in a glowingly positive light every chance it can. The standout example being, of course, the sundering cutscene. Which is ultimately massively fraudulent to what actually happened and serves only to paint Venat as a wise moral crusader and anyone standing against her as petty, small-minded, and antagonistic fools who are willfully ignorant of her "well-reasoned" argument.

I agree. From the very beginning of the game when you log in she’s already recruiting you. Throughout the whole game you’re referred to as one of her children, her champion, told “may you ever walk in the light of the crystal…” And I’m sitting here like I’m not your child or representative, I’m just defending myself from people attacking me. Never wanted to join anything. It’s obvious that the Scions are devoted to her the whole time. Both sides look like a cult for their god, but there was an obvious bias toward the Hydaelyn cult imo.

That metaphorical cutscene just made Venat look self-righteous and lowered the opinion I had of her after getting to know her in Elpis.

It looks like I’m just not a fan of the storytelling in EW at all. With HW being my favorite storyline, I probably prefer when they stick to more local stories instead of having us fight literal concepts. At this point I’ve let my sub run out and I’m thinking of keeping an eye on the direction SE goes by occasionally watching streamers.

[Lauront]

Just a coincidence that it all ended up exactly the same and resulted in her fulfilling a promise made to WoL.


In addition to a recency effect and the fact that the protagonists were already defacto agents of Hydaelyn, I would argue that the story goes out of it's way to paint Venat in a glowingly positive light every chance it can. The standout example being, of course, the sundering cutscene. Which is ultimately massively fraudulent to what actually happened and serves only to paint Venat as a wise moral crusader and anyone standing against her as petty, small-minded, and antagonistic fools who are willfully ignorant of her "well-reasoned" argument.

I would actually suggest that the reason this was the case is because they were gunning for the happiest and most straightforwardly-uplifting ending possible. And because people were already given to liking Emet-Selch and Elidibus from Shadowbringers, and they really wanted people to like Venat, actually having a scene pitting them against each other wasn't feasible. So instead of showing the actual sundering, which would either paint one side worse than the other or at least leave both very morally ambiguous, they just show Venat versus thirteen strawmen.

Have to agree with this. I think some people are missing the point here. It is a dramatic retelling that is only true to a limited degree and omits several major details, to the point that some people took away from it that it altered the original sequence of events, which is outlined here; we can surmise it did not do this but I can see why people get this impression. The scene amounts to a fast-forward rendition of everything that happened without really giving an accurate depiction of the debate that ensued amongst the ancients following Zodiark stabilising the world, and appears to be intended to bring the audience up to speed on events detailed in text up to that point, sometimes in sidequests or short stories, with the goal you mentioned in mind - I'm of the same view as why they did it this way, i.e. the bolded. Although I'd say that the scene shown made her look utterly unreasonable to me. To approach a bunch of people as their very star was dying and as they lost the majority of their kind and offer such platitudes? Can't see why anyone would have cause to take her seriously, and without offering a true account of what had occurred, they had no reason to. The only way to make her not look completely out of touch with reality in that scene is the requirement of abiding by the original timeline with the goal of defeating Meteion in mind, meaning she'd do what she did one way or another, and that more or less absolves her of anything she does in a very forced manner and leaves open a number of what-ifs.

A lot of bodies in the thread like, "Sacrifices bad. Wanting the zenith of the Past, bad!" Ignoring that everything that could possibly be sacrificed was also robbed of agency and killed by the Sundering all the same.

[...]

So no, Hydaelyn wasn't a good girl all along. She was a survivor, willing to be morally unsound to live at the expense of everyone she ever knew.

Good summary of the metaphysics involved - in the end it all hangs on the "stick to the original timeline" proviso, IMO.