*Spoilers* Anyone feel joining Emet would have been better

[Teraq]

It's a cycle. Several new(er) posters have found their way to this thread*, possibly because word has been getting around that if you didn't like EW the official forums are one of the few places you can discuss it. Reddit is still aggressively downvoting anyone who doesn't lavish it with praise. At any rate, they post, the usual defenders show up, then the usual detractors have to show up to counterbalance, and then we end up back at square one.

* It's a shame out of all of them this is the thread that persisted. Both "On Venat's Role in the Story" and "[Spoilers] Venat's motive" were much better.

Some of it is probably also a remaining need to rant about it. Personally, I was so disappointed with EW I considered for weeks whether or not I wanted to quit. It's not like venting about it once was enough to work through everything I was thinking and feeling. I think we can all relate to disliking something so much it feels good to ruminate with others who felt similarly. Due to how social media works, you can't post "I hate this" and only attract like-minded people, you will attract people who disagree and then proceed to detail every which way you are wrong and the cycle continues.

I feel like I am in the case you describe – I have mostly been a Reddit poster, up until Endwalker's release. I found MSQ to be such a disappointment I was flabbergasted to see the widely positive response, I entirely quit /r/ffxiv and now only sporadically posts in the "discussion" subreddit which, according to a comment I read, is more "contrarian" than the main sub. It was pretty hard to feel so isolated from a fandom I had loved so much after Shadowbringers, especially because, in retrospect, I had been way too invested in FFXIV to sort of escape from real life, and once my expectations came crumbling down I was honestly in a rather bad place mentally throughout the month of December. What brought me some solace was reading comments from other disappointed people I could relate to, however few we seemed to be (also – I got over some things in real life, so that got better as well). Now that some of my close friends have also finished MSQ, I can rant with them, and that is a real outlet too. I think I have a Discord discussion that has been pretty much nothing but complaining about EW for like, a month straight now.

This situation is reminding me of mid-10's Game of Thrones – before it became acceptable to say the story development was subpar and the entire thing ended in... a non-satisfactory way, to put it mildly. As a fan of the books who didn't care for the show earlier on, I loved lurking on westeros.org's "Rant and rave without repercussions" threads that popped up after every new episode. Just pure, distilled complaints and expressions of disappointment. It was (shamelessly so) an echo chamber, but one that I imagine was created to counter what felt like an opposite echo chamber.
This present thread here is drawing attention simply because of its number of pages. I feel like it's the place where I can pop my head in and timidly go "hello, is this the Rant and Rave Without Repercussions – Endwalker Edition thread?"... so it's just self-perpetrating.

Now, I think I could rant for several paragraphs about exactly how and why Endwalker let me down in myriad ways – and surprisingly enough, not all of them have to do with Venat – but I will try and make it short and actually relevant to this thread: I feel like Endwalker undid what I loved so much about Shadowbringers, the moral ambiguity of the two sides that each felt like they had their own valid points, by telling me that actually, one side had all the information and ended up factually correct and proven right by how the plot was written. Like some of you in this thread, I very much take issue with how the game feels like it's desperately trying to sell me on Venat while acting sort of coy about it: oh sure, she says herself the Sundering was bad, that it was the source of so much suffering, and oh my god look at her she's metaphorically covered in blood/muck/grime – yet it is presented as unequivocally the right thing to do and ultimately the only way to defeat Meteion, and even Emet, of all people, seems to tell me so in Ultima Thule. And oh, look! Those people in the Dead Ends! Obviously meant to be a parallel to the Ancients, am I right or am I right? Well now, I can sleep easy, knowing that the Ancients were doomed anyway because of their own frivolity/naivety/ignorance/nostalgia/inability to cope/hubris/callousness toward animal lives, because Crystal Mom knows best!

And I honestly do not agree with or believe any of this, both for in-universe reasons and out. According to Emet, which I equate to Word of God out-of-universe tbqh because this whole thing has made me cynical, mankind could have never set foot on Ultima Thule? How so, exactly? We are talking about the civilisation of erudites and scientists who have been shown to be able to create Aether-depleted, Dynamis-capable familiars, right? Familiars that could develop enough knowledge of space travel to guide us all the way to Ultima Thule, correct? Gods damn it, Emet, so maybe you have always been too grumpy to invent star-trekking bunnies and dark matter-powered cute bird lolis, but please do not project your lack of imagination onto everyone else!
The Ra-La strawmen? Yeah. Whatever. I'm sorry for them, and every other planet, but they were not the Ancients. If only because the Ancients were nowhere near as universally "positive" – we know for a fact the Ancients were human with human feelings, both positive and negative, and their society was not "perfect". (On this point, I will contend that Emet's argument of the Ancient world being "paradise" was made from the point of view of a man who spent literally twelve thousand years watching mortal societies live and die, fall prey to disease and wars, while actively trying to empathise by living out full mortal lives, and yet still he could not relate after all these years. A little hyperbole seems understandable, here.) Perhaps, after an untold number of centuries, the Ancients might have become them. Maybe. And so what? Are we going to condemn them for eventually dying out, just like everyone and everything else, including the universe itself?
The Ancients were never going to learn, or cope, or evolve past the trauma? Well, talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy here: not only did she never give them the knowledge to adequately prepare for the Final Days, but she never gave them the time to recover, either. Eventually, the Ancients would have had to deal with the loss of everyone who actually died during the Final Days – the third sacrifice was never going to fix this (nor was it ever intended to). Ah, this third sacrifice that was never really expanded upon in Endwalker. The only thing we do know about it is that it was going to involve only a portion of the new life. Listening to some people talk, you'd think the Ancients were going to make Etheirys some sort of dead planet for their Dark God...

...I, frankly, don't feel like I have the energy right now to spell out everything that bothered me and made me feel very uneasy in Endwalker, try to make sense and know that my post is inevitably going to get dissected to tell me how wrong I am and how dumb my reading of the story is.

tl;dr: Enjoyed ShB because it made the villains compelling and relatable. Sequel is telling me, in more or less subtle ways because it feels like it's trying not to say it outright but the writing is on the wall, that actually they were largely ignorant, their narrative was a dead end and they just, kinda sorta deserved it. It's okay, because we literally just punched Despair in the face at the end of the universe, and those dumb Ancients would have never been able to!

[KizuyaKatogami]

snip

Very well thought out post, and i agree with all of it, especially the need to vent. I understand the whole feeling down after finishing the story, especially after all of the promoting they did, the interviews of yoshi p teasing things, the constant delays. I thought it might all be worth it and it just wasn’t for me, and i think the rift it’s created is very telling. The many unanswered questions that are still left despite this being the end of the arc is pretty ridiculous. I agree with all of your points though and i’m happy we have an outlet we can express ourselves in freely without people trying to silence others.

[redheadturk]

snip

Every single bit of this sums up my disappointment with Venat and why I wrote an AU where we get to have our cake and eat it too. The Ancients deserved to have a split timeline where they got to live and have happiness too and I am absolutely disappointed, after my experiences in Elpis, that we did not get that outcome canonically. If G'raha could break time, why not us?

[Nilroreo]

Snip

Based

Every single bit of this sums up my disappointment with Venat and why I wrote an AU where we get to have our cake and eat it too. The Ancients deserved to have a split timeline where they got to live and have happiness too and I am absolutely disappointed, after my experiences in Elpis, that we did not get that outcome canonically. If G'raha could break time, why not us?

I don't mind that the Ascians/Ancients never got a happy ending, but rather, how they got to that point in the first place. It was more so the fact that they were basically retroactively set up to fail via the abrupt introduction of Dynamis and the expansions theme framing every aspect of their lives as habits that needed to be expunged that rubbed me the wrong way.

[Lauront]

Now, I think I could rant for several paragraphs about exactly how and why Endwalker let me down in myriad ways – and surprisingly enough, not all of them have to do with Venat – but I will try and make it short and actually relevant to this thread: I feel like Endwalker undid what I loved so much about Shadowbringers, the moral ambiguity of the two sides that each felt like they had their own valid points, by telling me that actually, one side had all the information and ended up factually correct and proven right by how the plot was written. Like some of you in this thread, I very much take issue with how the game feels like it's desperately trying to sell me on Venat while acting sort of coy about it: oh sure, she says herself the Sundering was bad, that it was the source of so much suffering, and oh my god look at her she's metaphorically covered in blood/muck/grime – yet it is presented as unequivocally the right thing to do and ultimately the only way to defeat Meteion, and even Emet, of all people, seems to tell me so in Ultima Thule. And oh, look! Those people in the Dead Ends! Obviously meant to be a parallel to the Ancients, am I right or am I right? Well now, I can sleep easy, knowing that the Ancients were doomed anyway because of their own frivolity/naivety/ignorance/nostalgia/inability to cope/hubris/callousness toward animal lives, because Crystal Mom knows best!

And I honestly do not agree with or believe any of this, both for in-universe reasons and out. According to Emet, which I equate to Word of God out-of-universe tbqh because this whole thing has made me cynical, mankind could have never set foot on Ultima Thule? How so, exactly? We are talking about the civilisation of erudites and scientists who have been shown to be able to create Aether-depleted, Dynamis-capable familiars, right? Familiars that could develop enough knowledge of space travel to guide us all the way to Ultima Thule, correct? Gods damn it, Emet, so maybe you have always been too grumpy to invent star-trekking bunnies and dark matter-powered cute bird lolis, but please do not project your lack of imagination onto everyone else!
The Ra-La strawmen? Yeah. Whatever. I'm sorry for them, and every other planet, but they were not the Ancients. If only because the Ancients were nowhere near as universally "positive" – we know for a fact the Ancients were human with human feelings, both positive and negative, and their society was not "perfect". (On this point, I will contend that Emet's argument of the Ancient world being "paradise" was made from the point of view of a man who spent literally twelve thousand years watching mortal societies live and die, fall prey to disease and wars, while actively trying to empathise by living out full mortal lives, and yet still he could not relate after all these years. A little hyperbole seems understandable, here.) Perhaps, after an untold number of centuries, the Ancients might have become them. Maybe. And so what? Are we going to condemn them for eventually dying out, just like everyone and everything else, including the universe itself?
The Ancients were never going to learn, or cope, or evolve past the trauma? Well, talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy here: not only did she never give them the knowledge to adequately prepare for the Final Days, but she never gave them the time to recover, either. Eventually, the Ancients would have had to deal with the loss of everyone who actually died during the Final Days – the third sacrifice was never going to fix this (nor was it ever intended to). Ah, this third sacrifice that was never really expanded upon in Endwalker. The only thing we do know about it is that it was going to involve only a portion of the new life. Listening to some people talk, you'd think the Ancients were going to make Etheirys some sort of dead planet for their Dark God...

...I, frankly, don't feel like I have the energy right now to spell out everything that bothered me and made me feel very uneasy in Endwalker, try to make sense and know that my post is inevitably going to get dissected to tell me how wrong I am and how dumb my reading of the story is.

tl;dr: Enjoyed ShB because it made the villains compelling and relatable. Sequel is telling me, in more or less subtle ways because it feels like it's trying not to say it outright but the writing is on the wall, that actually they were largely ignorant, their narrative was a dead end and they just, kinda sorta deserved it. It's okay, because we literally just punched Despair in the face at the end of the universe, and those dumb Ancients would have never been able to!

Very nice summary of what I thought were its weakest points too.

[EaraGrace]

I feel like I am in the case you describe – I have mostly been a Reddit poster, up until Endwalker's release. I found MSQ to be such a disappointment I was flabbergasted to see the widely positive response, I entirely quit /r/ffxiv and now only sporadically posts in the "discussion" subreddit which, according to a comment I read, is more "contrarian" than the main sub. It was pretty hard to feel so isolated from a fandom I had loved so much after Shadowbringers, especially because, in retrospect, I had been way too invested in FFXIV to sort of escape from real life, and once my expectations came crumbling down I was honestly in a rather bad place mentally throughout the month of December. What brought me some solace was reading comments from other disappointed people I could relate to, however few we seemed to be (also – I got over some things in real life, so that got better as well). Now that some of my close friends have also finished MSQ, I can rant with them, and that is a real outlet too. I think I have a Discord discussion that has been pretty much nothing but complaining about EW for like, a month straight now.

I’m sorry that you feel you. I can definitely relate to connecting with 14 and it’s community at such a deep level, and disillusionment when that comes up short.

On the matter of Endwalker, if I may, I’d like to offer my own point of view since we are ranting and raving. All of this is subjective, if one wants to argue it I’ll defend my points but I have no interest in telling anyone my feelings are right and everyone else’s wrong.

I will admit, our reactions couldn’t be more opposite.

Where Shadowbringers was definitely an incredible journey, Endwalker and it’s characters/themes/arcs spoke to me in a way few games or media, maybe even; no other piece of media, has before.

For me, what I find so fascinating and emotional are the exact things people find issue with, namely the Ancients and their world, Venat, Meteion, the journey through Ultima Thule, all of it I can genuinely say months later I still love it.

Where that love begins for me is in the stories foundational premise, namely that life, however advanced or beautiful or hated, is destined to end on terms not of its own making. It’s a truth that I find reflected in so much of our own lives. Often we never become what we wish to be, and have our ends come prematurely without reason or cause. The story reflects that, making it clear that even after all our efforts Etheirys is destined to be lifeless, that neither the Ancients nor the dragons nor the Ea nor the Sundered will escape it. As Meteion says:

Though worlds apart, these people shared a belief. The belief that they had tried their best.

So often in RPGs or stories there’s a third answer, another choice that achieves everything at little cost. Final Fantasy does this a lot. But here it doesn’t. It doesn’t say to Meteion that she’s wrong, it doesn’t ignore the question, it drives head on into it. Dead Ends works to me because it doesn’t offer a way out or a third option, death and suffering are not defeatable and will return. It’s such a novel concept, a story that says that outright and says it understands why some would give in to despair, to want the end, all without judgement and without portraying those who do as weak or helpless or broken. It looks at all of that and says, “yes that is all true.” And then says “if you want too keep looking however, there’s beauty to be found here.” To say so without patronizing the audience, without glossing over the ugly bits, I can’t help but fall in love.

On the question of moral ambiguity, I much preferred Endwalker to Shadowbringers. As human as Emet felt to me, as understandable as his desires were, at no point did I feel his actions engendered or deserved ambiguity. He was evil, his actions only defensible by denying the very humanity of those he was acting upon. There was no ambiguity to me, his desires were for his own benefit, at the cost of others, and thus at the end did I not feel sad for the man he became, only what he was and for the love he clearly had for his people. When I compare that to Venat, an altruistic hero acting for the right reasons, on a path limited only to horror and pain and suffering, I cannot help but find myself moved more by the latter. And, I mean, just look at this thread. I’ve argued up and down that Venat made the right choice, a position I believe in, but nearly 100 pages of discussion shows the issue is not one sided. Even if I hate to admit it this is indeed what moral ambiguity looks like. Strong feelings, diametrically opposed, with either side saying full throatedly that they are right. Despite my strong stance I still look for other options, try to consider what others are saying in finding another way, and yet my own, totally subjective viewpoint is that she was right. And many disagree. And that’s honestly amazing! Even as someone that thinks it was the right choice, I still don’t like that a character that I sobbed at meeting and getting to spar with was the one who had to do it. That to me is the moral ambiguity Endwalker brings. Painful, ugly, yet necessary decisions born from the best desire to love all. As Venat says:

They are my meaning, and my purpose. My love.

In spite of, or perhaps because of this, I choose to believe. In Mankind’s potential. In his ability to find a way forward.

Anyway, I just felt that this was the point where offering my own positive viewpoint on the story wouldn’t be too soapboxy. I completely respect the fact that you and others disagree, and I’m sorry that that disagreement has made you feel disconnected from the community.

[KariTheFox]

Snip.

I very much agree with all of this, and appreciate you bringing another well thought out perspective.

I do think it is odd to call Emet-Selch's role "ambiguous" in Shadowbringers. Sympathetic and understandable, certainly. I actually quite like Emet-Selch and the other ascians, and can sympathize with them, but at no point do I feel like there is any question that they should be stopped.

I will admit that in Elpis I was wondering at first if we could create some kind of split timeline, though the introduction of kairos dashed those hopes. It did make me sad, but it didn't kill my enjoyment of the story any. Especially when Venat explained that she intended to try to stop the final days to the best of her ability, in her own timeline. There's a sense that she tried her best and did what she thought she could to forestall things, but ultimately was led to the path of sundering. Rather than just doing it becausw the WoL said it would happen.

[Lurina]

On the question of moral ambiguity, I much preferred Endwalker to Shadowbringers. As human as Emet felt to me, as understandable as his desires were, at no point did I feel his actions engendered or deserved ambiguity. He was evil, his actions only defensible by denying the very humanity of those he was acting upon. There was no ambiguity to me, his desires were for his own benefit, at the cost of others, and thus at the end did I not feel sad for the man he became, only what he was and for the love he clearly had for his people. When I compare that to Venat, an altruistic hero acting for the right reasons, on a path limited only to horror and pain and suffering, I cannot help but find myself moved more by the latter. And, I mean, just look at this thread. I’ve argued up and down that Venat made the right choice, a position I believe in, but nearly 100 pages of discussion shows the issue is not one sided. Even if I hate to admit it this is indeed what moral ambiguity looks like. Strong feelings, diametrically opposed, with either side saying full throatedly that they are right. Despite my strong stance I still look for other options, try to consider what others are saying in finding another way, and yet my own, totally subjective viewpoint is that she was right. And many disagree. And that’s honestly amazing! Even as someone that thinks it was the right choice, I still don’t like that a character that I sobbed at meeting and getting to spar with was the one who had to do it. That to me is the moral ambiguity Endwalker brings. Painful, ugly, yet necessary decisions born from the best desire to love all.

I think a distinction needs to be drawn here between moral ambiguity as a narrative device, and moral ambiguity as experienced by the player. For me, many of my issues with Endwalker don't stem from the fact that Venat was a grey character - I'd have been fine with that - but that as many people on both sides have pointed out, we are clearly meant to view her unambiguously as right and good. A lot of keys have been tapped here about how no character given any credence really speaks against her and the framing during her scenes is relentlessly positive and affirming of her perspective, but a better example might be the description for her minion, which more or less just lavishes praise on her. Characters might be biased and framing can be argued, but when the narration of the game itself describes a character as a wonderful person, it's pretty clear you're meant to think of them as a wonderful person. When contrasted with her actions, this creates an uncomfortable dissonance that doesn't make the story more compelling, but less. Rather than having a sense that the story is giving me a choice of what to believe, it feels like the story is telling me to believe something - that a mass-murderer is a great person - I find kinda gross. It makes me want to quit the game because it feels like I'm not on the same page ethically as the writers.

Even though Emet-Selch is also a mass murderer, I never got that sense from Shadowbringers. Characters call him out, and the narrative voice about him swings from negative to neutral to positive depending on the context. Even if it produces less discourse (though certainly no shortage), I'd say that's a better example of moral ambiguity.

While the Ancients saw themselves as 'stewards of the star', we only have our own civilization and their nationalistic ideals taken at face value as a basis for this judgement. We know that there's at least one other advanced nation 'across the pond' that dates back to the same time period as the Ancients. The only surefire way to know is to travel to other places, see what's actually happening on other continents, and learn about their history. Perhaps Amaurot is merely Dollet to the New World's Esthar, and this is just Disc 1. The world is too big to simply assume that Amaurot is the beginning and end of it.

Honestly, the existence of other nations and cultures in the ancient world is one of the biggest bugbears I have about the Sundering. It's one thing to pass judgement on your own culture, and quite another to pass judgement on all cultures, or at least consider them reasonable collateral damage.

[Rulakir]

Now, I think I could rant for several paragraphs about exactly how and why Endwalker let me down in myriad ways – and surprisingly enough, not all of them have to do with Venat – but I will try and make it short and actually relevant to this thread:

I agree with everything you said and just wanted to add that all of my reasons don't have to do with Venat either. I disliked the theme and how it was handled.

I only remember Hermes being credited as the one who discovered the method by which the Final days was targeting them. I don't remember the conception of Zodiark being solely attributed to him, though I'm probably misremembering.

You're not misremembering. Hermes is only ever credited with discovering the connection between aether currents and the Final Days by Elidibus.

Rather than having a sense that the story is giving me a choice of what to believe, it feels like the story is telling me to believe something - that a mass-murderer is a great person - I find kinda gross. It makes me want to quit the game because it feels like I'm not on the same page ethically as the writers.

This is the main reason I considered quitting as well. (I'm waiting to see what they have planned for the future.) I had to ask myself if I wanted to continue role playing in a game both written and developed by people I seemingly fundamentally disagree with when it comes to values. I also found the narrative full of platitudes and I'm certainly not interested in a game that's going to preach at me.

[EaraGrace]

I think a distinction needs to be drawn here between moral ambiguity as a narrative device, and moral ambiguity as experienced by the player. For me, many of my issues with Endwalker don't stem from the fact that Venat was a grey character - I'd have been fine with that - but that as many people on both sides have pointed out, we are clearly meant to view her unambiguously as right and good. A lot of keys have been tapped here about how no character given any credence really speaks against her and the framing during her scenes is relentlessly positive and affirming of her perspective, but a better example might be the description for her minion, which more or less just lavishes praise on her.

Venats status as a hero in the story is firmly rooted in her intentions and the beliefs and values she holds. But that that isn’t saying Her actions cannot be grey. While the game doesn’t outright condemn her, it does give food for thought on the nature of her actions and the morality of it. She alone is held responsible for the Sundering. She herself states that the Her defining action in the narrative, was neither good nor just. Therein lies ambiguity, it’s just that unlike Emet and the Rejoinings, our presence was limited in the narrative when it came to Venat and the Sundering. If we were playing as an Ancient, I’d see the question of the Sundering and who side to take igniting an incredible amount of discussion. The Rejoinings meanwhile, aren’t ambiguous in the slightest.

Characters might be biased and framing can be argued, but when the narration of the game itself describes a character as a wonderful person, it's pretty clear you're meant to think of them as a wonderful person. When contrasted with her actions, this creates an uncomfortable dissonance that doesn't make the story more compelling, but less. Rather than having a sense that the story is giving me a choice of what to believe, it feels like the story is telling me to believe something - that a mass-murderer is a great person - I find kinda gross. It makes me want to quit the game because it feels like I'm not on the same page ethically as the writers.

But I don’t think the gross feeling is necessarily the result you think it is. You can hold that Venat had virtue while still believing the Sundering was beyond the pale. I felt gross when the game kept explaining how these mass murdering mad men were actually motivated by love, but I recognized that grossness wasn’t a result of the messaging, but rather the result of how that information makes the situation more complicated. I fail to see how the same can’t apply to Venat. In both cases the narrative gives ample reason to empathize, while still leaving the moral question up to the player. The only difference is we know now that Venats goals were predicated on information she and ourselves were left to keep to secret, and that ultimately Venat was playing the long game. None of this changes the moral questions of the actions involved. I think it perfectly consistent to have seen everything the narrative has to show, and still go ”that wasn’t right.” I think the writers would even be thrilled at that.

Even though Emet-Selch is also a mass murderer, I never got that sense from Shadowbringers. Characters call him out, and the narrative voice about him swings from negative to neutral to positive depending on the context. Even if it produces less discourse (though certainly no shortage), I'd say that's a better example of moral ambiguity.

But there’s no ambiguity. The moral question doesn’t exist here. He’s wrong, and that’s that. On this the narrative is even more clear than with Venat.

Honestly, the existence of other nations and cultures in the ancient world is one of the biggest bugbears I have about the Sundering. It's one thing to pass judgement on your own culture, and quite another to pass judgement on all cultures, or at least consider them reasonable collateral damage.

Amaurots influence was far reaching, and given the lack of organized conflict I think it reasonable to believe that differences between the cultures of Etheirys were not pronounced, as they wouldn’t be limited by time, location or resources. The world of Etheirys seems even more interconnected than our own.