What's the point with that quite lackluster story in Endwalker?

[DevonEllwood]

I read the forums at work and post when I get home, so I'm not going to look for things to quote or respond to, just a stream of thoughts.

I appreciate the interview links that were provided of the interviews. I was looking for one that specifically mentioned re-writing parts of Endwalker, but it could be I got second hand information that suffered from interpretation issues. A few things stuck out to me though. I believe the developers take care of the story. I have to separate what I feel are continuity errors and poor writing from a writing style I just don't like. Yoshi P mentioned "Subverting expectations" and keeping everything fresh so no one gets bored. I feel there's subverting expectations and then there's jumping the shark which I feel Endwalker was.

So I'm going to break things down and try to look at the bigger problems I had with endwalker.

The entire last zone with the scions ignored the expansion themes for the sake of the protagonists ans well as "playing it safe". these are writing styles I don't like at all, but the same was seen in Shadowbringers with the same writer. The early death of zodiark would fall under "subverting expectations". I don't have any opinion on it, but a lot of people didn't like it. The final days being isolated is probably a product of a lack of time and mashing two expansions into one. Kind of lame, but it's whatever.

Now the boring stuff out of the way, I want to mention three things I had issues with that I have no answers to. A continuity error with the rabbits saying Zodiark couldn't temper anyone, and the what I felt was bad writing: Hermes's actions versus attitude and Hydaelyn and her entire plan.

I'm going to take as much as possible at face value and that no characters are lying. This is just going to be a bunch of hypothetical nonsense based on that I feel the developers couldn't made such massive mistakes. I'm trying to fill the gaps in with something.

The rabbits stating that Zodiark would only make a small "tug" and he couldn't temper anyone and tempering is an added effect. Hades said he was tempered. These two don't contradict each other, both can easily be true. Lahabrea was the designer of Zodiark and if both statements are true, then it's likely he introduced tempering to Zodiark. Why he would do it and how he got the idea I don't know, but maybe he was just a control freak. From the raids it's apparently he wore a metaphorical mask when dealing with people not his son. I don't believe Erich is "our" Lahabrea at all as people are suspecting, based on their capabilities alone.

Hermes has been argued to death that his actions don't match his words. The way he treated Metion does not match to what he preaches. It almost seems that Hermes himself doesn't even know what he's talking about. He's upset that his mentor would chose to retire, then changes his tune a bit saying "death is only beautiful for man". Metion can't eat, which shows he didn't intend for her to live her only life, only live for her purpose. His ending statement about how man judges all life, so he as the chief of Elpis, will judge man. Not all life was judged though, since it's presumed there was non created life that existed. Man can't be judged as a creation because they aren't a creation...or are they? I haven't done the side quests, but if the ancients could transform then they could easily alter anything they don't like about themselves. Could they have potentially over time, altered themselves and passed that on through generations? I'm wanting to sit down and do all the sidequests, so maybe this is already answered, but I find it strange be are presented more background information about the 5th zones races then we have with the ancients.

The one thing I really wanted to focus on was Hydaelyn's decision to sunder the world. I really payed attention to what she said this time around. Azem traveled the world to gain a better understanding of it and the people. She considered each person to be a miracle, said that anything is possible and there's always hope. I can't believe that this Venat and the person who gave up hope and sundered the world are the same person. It makes no sense and this glaring contradiction could not possibly be overlooked by the writers. My only answer is that there's missing information. There's a lot surrounding the sundering that doesn't make sense because of lack of information. Where did this spell come from initially? It took the entire convocation to put Zodiark to work with half of their people as sacrifice. Hydaelyn not only defeated Zodiark but completely sundered the world. What was sacrificed? Just the 12 people who were with her? Zodiark blanketed the world and Hydaelyn defeated him and made 13 copies of the world while doing it. One of these is a much bigger action than the other so how did she come to the conclusion that his is the only way and how was it possible? How did Lahabrea introduce tempering and where did this information come from? How did Hermes know enough about such an unknown energy source to make not just one being but a ton of them able to manipulate said energy source? Why was he so conflicted on his feelings and not even seems to agree with himself?

People mentioned there being a "third party" at the end of shadowbringers but this was in response to Fandaniel's actions. Another party being involved make a lot of sense for Venat's case, and kind of plays into the other two things I mentioned as well. We still don't know what Azem was doing at the time and he didn't want to have anything to do with the plans for Hydaelyn. There were multiple mentions of other people on the planet and we don't know if they're the same race or not. If they have have the same capabilities as the ancients we know, then it wouldn't be hard to just sneak in and be disguised ans something, like a fellow researcher, a shoebill, anything. A group of people who may have wanted to see them fail and set things up to get rid of them could happen. Yoshi P repeated that Endwalker will be the end of the Hydaelyn and Zodiark story, he said nothing about the ancients or the other people who lived at that time.

This was just a bunch of rambling to make sense of the story. Most of it can be explained as just writing I don't like, but the 180 that Venat did makes no sense at all. There's missing information and I hope we get to see what caused it.

[Rokke]

The rabbits stating that Zodiark would only make a small "tug" and he couldn't temper anyone and tempering is an added effect...

The loporrits saying Zodiark doesn't tempter is an English translation choice. In english the loporrits like to downplay things and then usually quickly follow with an explanation or a witty comment because they're predominantly our comic relief. In literally every other language (esp in JP) it is made clear that anything Zodiark tier will inherently drag people under because that powerlevel is incomprehensibly strong.

[Lauront]

The rabbits stating that Zodiark would only make a small "tug" and he couldn't temper anyone and tempering is an added effect. Hades said he was tempered. These two don't contradict each other, both can easily be true. Lahabrea was the designer of Zodiark and if both statements are true, then it's likely he introduced tempering to Zodiark. Why he would do it and how he got the idea I don't know, but maybe he was just a control freak. From the raids it's apparently he wore a metaphorical mask when dealing with people not his son. I don't believe Erich is "our" Lahabrea at all as people are suspecting, based on their capabilities alone.

Personally I'd consider that to be plastering on another badly written story aspect just for the sake of Lahabrea bad, which is well past boring at this point. Part of the issue here is all the things tempering can be. If we strip it down to its most basic, i.e. aligning the summoner to the primal's aether, Zodiark appears to have done that as a minimum, but by all appearances not much more beyond that. I suspect the reason they were tempered is because of the sheer amount of power that went into him. At the same time, its consequences appear to be limited to loss of identity and memory if the summoners don't make an effort to preserve these, as Emet did. But at the same time, he is not the type of primal with a will that compels their summoners to do anything, especially since Elidibus is in his driver seat and without him, he's more or less an automaton. For the sort of tempering we see with the beast tribes to manifest, it is not mere alignment to the primal's aether, but down to further elements: 1) flawed rites that instil in the summoners a desire to spread their zeal by tempering others and 2) the nature of the primal (=desire to compel servitude) and an associated desire to temper beyond the original summoners where the tempering is a mere side-effect of the summoning. Ramuh for example lacked aspect 2, but still exhibits 1, so his summoners still have that desire.

The point here is that there's many aspects to tempering, and not all forms of it are made equal, and none of it would specifically require a plot like the above. Zodiark's tempering primarily appears to be invoked to explain why Elidibus and Lahabrea suffered memory/identity decay over time, to explain dialogue from ARR and HW in all probability that needed to be re-purposed. Meanwhile, Emet-Selch is quite able to deviate from the original plan where he deems it necessary, because the plan was never formed out of servitude to Zodiark but in order to restore the broken star.

I don't think the explanation given with the Loporrit dialogue was the best, because it is clear that regular summonings also involve aetheric corruption and it's not just a matter of zeal, so we have to assume there's other aspects here as to why tempering is not an issue for these specific summonings (maybe the primals are not potent enough relative to summoners for it to matter, for whatever reason.) This is supported by what Rokke mentions, as in the Japanese version it is indeed Zodiark's power which the Loporrit mention would make the difference, so it'd suggest even if you use the correct rituals, if the entity is powerful enough it can affect the summoners' aether.

Hermes has been argued to death that his actions don't match his words. The way he treated Metion does not match to what he preaches. It almost seems that Hermes himself doesn't even know what he's talking about. He's upset that his mentor would chose to retire, then changes his tune a bit saying "death is only beautiful for man". Metion can't eat, which shows he didn't intend for her to live her only life, only live for her purpose. His ending statement about how man judges all life, so he as the chief of Elpis, will judge man. Not all life was judged though, since it's presumed there was non created life that existed. Man can't be judged as a creation because they aren't a creation...or are they? I haven't done the side quests, but if the ancients could transform then they could easily alter anything they don't like about themselves. Could they have potentially over time, altered themselves and passed that on through generations? I'm wanting to sit down and do all the sidequests, so maybe this is already answered, but I find it strange be are presented more background information about the 5th zones races then we have with the ancients.

Having done them, I can say that there is little suggesting it one way or another regarding their own origins. His "test" is formulated out of little more than spite, IMO, and he is quite happy to damn his supposedly beloved creations with the rest of the universe when it suits him.

Hydaelyn not only defeated Zodiark but completely sundered the world.

She implies during her dialogue that he was so much more potent that she had to do the latter in order to do the former. It fits rather poorly with the post-Elpis scene, because there you get the impression her ultimate goal was to sunder the ancients, one and all, either way, but I suppose in her original plan maybe she hoped to get away with not doing it to the star and being strong enough to defeat Zodiark without the need to do so... only he was much more powerful, even without a driver (the "wisdom" of her plan notwithstanding.) That cutscene is pretty awful because it glosses over key aspects of the conflict between her faction and the remaining ancients as originally detailed, and also makes her seem unreasonable in my eyes.

Anyway, all interesting questions, but I doubt we'll get answers to anything like a majority of those.

They didn’t have emotions beyond super basic interests. They were more focused on creations magicks. You’re also talking about a race that would just go and die once they contributed something useful to society. This is where Hermes whole story comes into play because he felt like existence should have more meaning.

No, they had emotions, and it's explored in quite a bit of depth in the sidequests. It's more that it took stronger emotions on their part to influence the entelechies because of their dense aether. But the idea that they lacked emotions is not supported by the lore, nor is the idea that they had "super basic" interests. As for Hermes, he could not understand the concept of life having meaning in the face of death, which remains a facet of his persona as Amon, a sundered being, which Xande's nihilism upon encountering death reawakens in him. Little did he expect that no other civilisation would provide this answer...