*Spoilers* Anyone feel joining Emet would have been better

[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.