*Spoilers* Anyone feel joining Emet would have been better

[MikkoAkure]

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised after the events of the past two years, but I never cease to be amazed how people when presented with the same information can arrive at different conclusions. I often think a study on the different perspectives of players would be fascinating. Does it come down to culture, values, personality type? I'm almost tempted to make a survey. :P

My angle is "making sense of the lore in a manner that supports the story that the writers are trying to tell".

This isn't a historical record of events, this is a video game. And as many on both sides have said, the video game is pretty heavy-handed in portraying Venat/Hydaelyn and her actions as benevolent regardless what the player thinks. That means that's the story the writers wanted to tell. I personally feel like it's an exercise in futility to try to poke the story in a way that makes the Ascians indisputably right when to me, the end result of the game is that the writers put Venat on a pedestal. That doesn't mean that I agree with how the story got there. There were more than a few headscratchers throughout EW especially, but it is what it is I guess.

Ultimately, the story the writers wanted to tell is that Hydaelyn was on our side and the Ascians were the force we were fighting in order to stay alive and protect people. The revelations of the Ascians in Shadowbringers gave much needed nuance and depth to the story, but I don't believe that the intention was for players to take that and immediately go "everything that we've done is bad and we need to kill Crystal Mom as well as the whole world in order to make sad grandpa's dream a reality".


I suppose if I were to make sense of my views in some sort of relation to my personality, I think "edgy" or "grimdark" stories are typically cringy and I really dislike the trope where a media (show, video game, book, etc.) starts off typical but then it turns out that the force of "good" was bad all along. I feel like that works better in stories like the Drakengard series where it doesn't take itself seriously at all without any attempt at a "moral dilemma".

[Nilroreo]

I actually really like these points and would agree. My response could only be that given the information we know Venat to have, plus the information we come to learn from the various major figures in the story, it is reasonable to believe that Venat was acting correctly contingent on the information she had. It is indeed true that we won’t know for certain. But, as is the case in our lives, we are not certain of anything and must make the best decisions possible regardless.

Thats fine. But what's "best" is ultimately up to the individual. Venat isn't perfect and isn't the arbiter of right and wrong. She made a decision that ultimately led to the ancients being driven into a corner and drove them to desperate measures. She did what she did for another era that was no closer to figuring out the truth of what the final days truly were. There are several instances where characters are shown committing questionable acts in pursuit of some goal they deemed necessary.

In another post, I brought up that G'raha and the ironworks of his timeline theorized that averting the 8UC in our timeline would've erased all inhabitants of his. This includes everyone on Etheirys, all its remaining sundered shards, and any aliens that still may exist across the universe at the time if there are any. Despite this, they still went along with this mission because to them, a world in which the WoL survives was preferable to their own broken world, and thus was worth the sacrifice.

Everyone is ultimately entitled to their opinion on what is right or wrong. If you deem the sacrifice of innocent lives to be an act of evil, then that's fine. I don't care and don't take it too personally when someone voices their opinion on a certain group and the atrocities they might have committed. I also don't care enough to take a hard stance on who's actions are more or less just. At the end of the day, they're just actions and I'm just here to see a story unfold.

What I do care about however is when the story itself is incapable of taking an unbiased stance and deeming the actions of our characters as more morally justifiable than the acts of the Ascians. The ancients determine that exchanging the lives of all life forms on their star for those initially devoured by Zodiark was worth it, and they're vilified for it. Fine, that's only fair. G'raha basically threatens to erase an entire timelines worth of people without consent, and unsurprisingly... nobody cares! But don't get me wrong, I get it lol! G'raha is our friend, and he did what he did to save us, so of course we let him off the hook. Why on earth would we ever vilify someone who was on our side, we're supposed to be the good guys! When Hydaelyn decided to cripple the world leading to untold suffering for 10K years, what she did was not a kindness and it pained her to have to go through with it. She feels bad about it so its ok guys, let's not give her a hard time.

[Lurina]

My angle is "making sense of the lore in a manner that supports the story that the writers are trying to tell".

This isn't a historical record of events, this is a video game. And as many on both sides have said, the video game is pretty heavy-handed in portraying Venat/Hydaelyn and her actions as benevolent regardless what the player thinks. That means that's the story the writers wanted to tell. I personally feel like it's an exercise in futility to try to poke the story in a way that makes the Ascians indisputably right when to me, the end result of the game is that the writers put Venat on a pedestal. That doesn't mean that I agree with how the story got there. There were more than a few headscratchers throughout EW especially, but it is what it is I guess.

Ultimately, the story the writers wanted to tell is that Hydaelyn was on our side and the Ascians were the force we were fighting in order to stay alive and protect people. The revelations of the Ascians in Shadowbringers gave much needed nuance and depth to the story, but I don't believe that the intention was for players to take that and immediately go "everything that we've done is bad and we need to kill Crystal Mom as well as the whole world in order to make sad grandpa's dream a reality".

Something you often see with long-running franchises, especially MMOs, is that people will express their reactions to what they see as bad writing not primarily as distaste for the writers, but instead towards specific characters or factions within the narrative. If you're married to a story in a long term way where you can't just say "lol, this was bad, goodbye" (such as it being part of an online game you play with all your friends for other reasons), the only way you can 'resolve' feelings of discomfort or disquiet with it is to redirect them towards something in-universe.

Like, take this whole Venat/Sundering thing. If you point your frustration where it belongs - towards the choices and beliefs of the Oda, Ishikawa and Yoshida, for whom the characters and setting elements are just devices - then the whole universe of FFXIV is fundamentally something you can't agree with, and the only way to express that disagreement is to quit the game. However, if you instead shift your perspective towards seeing Venat as an independent entity, and then judge her choices by taking the jank and vagueness of the story as literal in-setting facts, you can instead just see her as a bad person within an otherwise morally neutral setting, and continue enjoying the rest of the world without any cognitive dissonance.

People did this a lot in WoW.

[Denishia]

The game gives options for the player character to agree with Zenos. Despite some token words from Y'shtola about understanding the emotional reasoning behind the Ascians and that one of Emet and Elidibus's goals is 'convince the WoL to betray their world, the Scions, and Hydaelyn to swap to their side' - the dialogue options for the WoL do not waiver.

[Lyth]

At the risk of being facetious, would you murder a dolphin to save a loved one in an unrelated situation?

I would be sad to have lost a loved one, and happy to have gained the friendship of a beloved dolphin.

I do take your point. Most people choose whatever benefits themselves the most in a given situation, morality be damned. I think that most people would struggle to do this in practice, though. Not because it's the morally correct thing to do, but because most people have an instinctive, visceral aversion to killing, especially when they can perceive human characteristics in the creature involved. You can't deliberately harm something if you see yourself in it.

Likewise, the reason why Emet is able to act on this decision in the first place is by emotionally distancing himself from you and dismissing you as an inferior, sub-human creature. Even after millennia of living with humans, he still holds rigidly to this belief. Not because it's correct, but because he's incredibly stubborn. Not unlike a good portion of these forums.

[OhNooo]

...then the whole universe of FFXIV is fundamentally something you can't agree with, and the only way to express that disagreement is to quit the game...

Or you could stop paying attention to the story, skip all the cutscenes and just focus on gameplay. That's what I did all through Stormblood and had lots of fun.

[Rulakir]

This isn't a historical record of events, this is a video game. And as many on both sides have said, the video game is pretty heavy-handed in portraying Venat/Hydaelyn and her actions as benevolent regardless what the player thinks. That means that's the story the writers wanted to tell. I personally feel like it's an exercise in futility to try to poke the story in a way that makes the Ascians indisputably right when to me, the end result of the game is that the writers put Venat on a pedestal. That doesn't mean that I agree with how the story got there. There were more than a few headscratchers throughout EW especially, but it is what it is I guess.

The problem is the narrative is telling me what I should think and feel rather than my arriving at that conclusion myself through the story. It is what it is, sure, but that means it's poor writing from my perspective. I don't know if you've ever watched Critical Drinker on YouTube, but I'm reminded of whenever he's doing a review and asking questions regarding the plot when the answer to them is, "Don't know!"

Like, take this whole Venat/Sundering thing. If you point your frustration where it belongs - towards the choices and beliefs of the Oda, Ishikawa and Yoshida, for whom the characters and setting elements are just devices - then the whole universe of FFXIV is fundamentally something you can't agree with, and the only way to express that disagreement is to quit the game. However, if you instead shift your perspective towards seeing Venat as an independent entity, and then judge her choices by taking the jank and vagueness of the story as literal in-setting facts, you can instead just see her as a bad person within an otherwise morally neutral setting, and continue enjoying the rest of the world without any cognitive dissonance.

People did this a lot in WoW.

My anecdotal experience with WoW is people are painfully aware the issue is with the writers. Danuser, in particular, is frequently called out especially as it's implied Nathanos is his self-insert. People may hate Sylvanas, but they also recognize she got to where she is because it's her fans who are writing the story.

As for FFXIV, I didn't have a problem with it until EW. I've only been playing a few months, for what it's worth, so my POV is from having gone through all of the MSQ relatively recently. I don't know how much of a difference that makes since I know long time players who share my thoughts.

[MikkoAkure]

Something you often see with long-running franchises, especially MMOs, is that people will express their reactions to what they see as bad writing not primarily as distaste for the writers, but instead towards specific characters or factions within the narrative. If you're married to a story in a long term way where you can't just say "lol, this was bad, goodbye" (such as it being part of an online game you play with all your friends for other reasons), the only way you can 'resolve' feelings of discomfort or disquiet with it is to redirect them towards something in-universe.

Like, take this whole Venat/Sundering thing. If you point your frustration where it belongs - towards the choices and beliefs of the Oda, Ishikawa and Yoshida, for whom the characters and setting elements are just devices - then the whole universe of FFXIV is fundamentally something you can't agree with, and the only way to express that disagreement is to quit the game. However, if you instead shift your perspective towards seeing Venat as an independent entity, and then judge her choices by taking the jank and vagueness of the story as literal in-setting facts, you can instead just see her as a bad person within an otherwise morally neutral setting, and continue enjoying the rest of the world without any cognitive dissonance.

People did this a lot in WoW.

I actually didn't think about it that way and I really like the way you worded this. Funnily enough, one of the posters in this thread themselves said that they're letting their sub lapse as a result of the story and said that they don't like Ishikawa.

As for FFXIV, I didn't have a problem with it until EW. I've only been playing a few months, for what it's worth, so my POV is from having gone through all of the MSQ relatively recently. I don't know how much of a difference that makes since I know long time players who share my thoughts.

I've been playing since 1.0 where the Ascians from the very beginning have been portrayed as being floating, skeletal, shadow monsters. Having years since then while consistently seeing the Ascians portrayed as being bad and doing bad things and trying to kill you while being associated with the powers of darkness at the same time a soft-spoken power protects you who is associated with light ends up coloring your opinion a bit.

If this were a shorter-form story across a drastically reduced amount of real-world time, then I can see the possibility of a twist where our character gives serious thought to changing sides. But this is the narrative the writers have been pushing for over a decade and anyone who has played the game as long as I have but failed to see this outcome was distracted by their own opinions of the characters and how they themselves thought it should go rather than what the actual intention of the writers was. It gives a lot of credit to the writers that enough people were swayed by the characterization of the "enemy" in Shadowbringers that they start to take their side, but anyone taking a step back to look at the narrative as a whole could have seen "Hydaelyn is still the big good force at the end" from a mile away.

I do wish Endwalker's story had as much care as Shadowbringers though. It felt like they were in a rush to bring it all to a close and things happened too quickly or in a contrived manner that didn't feel as satisfying as it would if it were more detailed over a longer period of time.

[Lyth]

The game doesn't tell you what you should think, but the character that you're roleplaying will always tend to be at least partially on the same wavelength as the people they travel with. If you wanted a storyline where you team up with the Ascians to sacrifice the sundered peoples of the world and then subsequently sacrifice yourself because you're not worthy to serve as their footstools, you'd really need a different set of travelling companions. If you wanted to support Hermes on his nihilistic rants and help Meteion bring everything to a beautiful end, then you probably wouldn't be teaming up with the Scions to do so. That's a limitation of the medium. You have the freedom to interpret ideas and themes however you like, but you can't really march up to the writers and demand that they write the story that you want them to write.

[EaraGrace]

Thats fine. But…

Yes, moral disagreements are common. That does not change however, the fact that there are right and wrong actions. Unless you believe all actions morally equal?

In another post...

Let’s be forthright. That theory was the equivalent of an afterthought, happening only when they had completed their work and sent Graha on his way and now had a moment to ponder. It was not a serious concern, or something they actively debated, so to portray it as if their project was mired or at the very least asking that question all throughout feels a bit disingenuous.

Everyone is ultimately entitled to their opinion...

With you so far.

What I do care about however is when the story itself is incapable of taking an unbiased stance...

Once again, this feels like jury rigging a moral dilemma from an offhand comment said in supplementary material. Yes, the Ironworks and Graha have some parallels with the Ancients. This makes for an interesting moral quandary. How far are you willing to go to save your friends? Who are you willing to sacrifice? All very interesting questions that let’s be clear, G’raha never was asked nor even considered because to him that was never the question. It was do you want to save the WoL while we deal with our world. There’s no indication that he ever was told the possibility of their disappearance. So let that be clear.

On Venat, yes the story does make a statement on whether her actions were right or wrong. I can certainly understand why someone, who feels she was in the wrong, would be upset by the story taking sides. But that is indeed what the story did and it has done, in ARR, Heavensward, Stormblood, Shadowbringers and elsewhere again and again.

And it did so this time by not just saying she felt bad about it, but by making clear that the decision was necessary. If you think I defend Venat because I think she has a conscience, then I fear you’ve misunderstood by thoughts on the matter. I defend her because I think her actions were right, not good or kind, but right. And I do so because of what the story has told us and my own moral system. If you disagree, that’s fine. But where I have issue is in the numerous attempts to portray the situation as something other than it is, either by saying the facts in the story aren’t true or that she had secret reasons for acting as she did. That’s not a disagreement over the morals. That’s disagreement with the text itself.