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

[Conundrum]

She shared a disturbing amount of similarities to Hermes, IMO. Having recently played through ShB again, one of Alphinaud's lines about the rejoining struck me: "But what value is there in surviving when all our history, all our struggles will be erased? I cannot conscience such an act." Yet, this is exactly what the sundering did and Venat is shown to have made no effort in preserving any part of everything she supposedly held dear. Once again illustrating that if it's an Ascian responsible = bad, if it's Hydaelyn responsible = good.

She is at least some kind of Swiss Army Knife. She has a fraction of the power Zodiark does and, despite this, was able to defeat him as well as slice, dice, and julienne fry reality. Additionally, she created a moon and a race of sentient beings capable of engineering and piloting a spaceship for interstellar travel. She also has enough control over the afterlife to usher the souls of Minfilia and Emet from the First to the Source and give the WoL the ability to reconstitute the dead.

I'm sure there's a lot I'm forgetting to mention, but there doesn't seem to be much she can't do other than apparently (conveniently) prevent shards from being rejoined. Her greatest superpower may be that within the story she's above reproach with the added ability of making every character (including the player's, unfortunately) love or forgive her, even those she wronged the most, which I'd say is impressive but is likely more the result of her being the pet of the writing/dev team.

You hit on something that really annoys me, based on what we know Zodiark should be several orders of magnitude more powerful than Hydaelyn...he should have swatted her like a bug.

Hydaelyn is pretty much a textbook example of a Mary Sue character, always right, stronger than everyone...had to save the world from the stupid MEN.

P.S. Can someone remind me what Zodiark did that was so bad that he needed to be shackled? "We thought he might hypothetically do something bad at some point in the future" is some pretty crap tier reasoning for what she did. All of the bad stuff around Zodiark seems to have come from his fanclub and not him.

[KizuyaKatogami]

You hit on something that really annoys me, based on what we know Zodiark should be several orders of magnitude more powerful than Hydaelyn...he should have swatted her like a bug.

Hydaelyn is pretty much a textbook example of a Mary Sue character, always right, stronger than everyone...had to save the world from the stupid MEN.

P.S. Can someone remind me what Zodiark did that was so bad that he needed to be shackled? "We thought he might hypothetically do something bad at some point in the future" is some pretty crap tier reasoning for what she did. All of the bad stuff around Zodiark seems to have come from his fanclub and not him.

The same reason that, despite him being a primal born of Salvation by a mostly peaceful race, he somehow has a demonic appearance. Whereas the opposing primal whose purpose was eventually to shatter the entire world(and is portrayed as a hero) gets an angelic appearance. Bias at its finest ;^).

[Fayt1203]

P.S. Can someone remind me what Zodiark did that was so bad that he needed to be shackled? "We thought he might hypothetically do something bad at some point in the future" is some pretty crap tier reasoning for what she did. All of the bad stuff around Zodiark seems to have come from his fanclub and not him.

Think the problem was not technical Zodiark himself more so how the plan was.

Zodiark stalled the Calamity by creating a barrier to replenish Etheirys's aether, he and the Convocation were now driven by an obsessive need to restore the planet as it was before the Final Days. This resulted in a series of sacrifices, first by offering another half of their population to restore Etheirys to habitability, and the plan on harvesting the lives of the new races that would develop on the planet in the future to resurrect those they had sacrificed earlier. Venat, the only one to know the true cause of the Final Days as Meteion's doing, disapproved of the Convocation's resolve to offer the "lesser" lives they would develop to Zodiark to resurrect the ancients originally sacrificed in the primal's creation. So it more of disagreement between two factions how things should be handled even Elidibus sensed this conflict from within Zodiark and separated himself to resume his duties in the Convocation as a primal to peacefully resolve the issue between the two groups but was a bit late for that. Venat knew that killing Zodiark would only renew the Final Days, she sealed her counterpart on the moon after sundering both Zodiark and the world.

[Layte_Aeon]

You hit on something that really annoys me, based on what we know Zodiark should be several orders of magnitude more powerful than Hydaelyn...he should have swatted her like a bug.

Hydaelyn is pretty much a textbook example of a Mary Sue character, always right, stronger than everyone...had to save the world from the stupid MEN.

P.S. Can someone remind me what Zodiark did that was so bad that he needed to be shackled? "We thought he might hypothetically do something bad at some point in the future" is some pretty crap tier reasoning for what she did. All of the bad stuff around Zodiark seems to have come from his fanclub and not him.

At that point Zodiark was also like a machine without a driver, something that can be dealt with if one has the means to do so.

Zodiark himself did what was required of him yes, but at the accidental consequence of tempering his summoners, a side effect of creation that big performing feats of that scale. That, combined with his summoners desire to sacrifice other life, life that didn't volunteer to do so ultimately means he can't be left to be. After all when one tempers the actions of their resulting fanclub are rather intertwined with said being.

And as Hydaelyn herself admits her actions were neither kind or righteous, but at that point what would hating and blaming do? The sundering happened, tragic and horrific as it was, and now new life exists and thrives. The Ascians goals, for as understandable and relatable as their reasons are, will mean the end of the current world and everything upon it. Notably by the end not even they are hated by the main cast, they just accept that their goals are incompatable, while Hydaelyn's aren't.

[Lauront]

At that point Zodiark was also like a machine without a driver, something that can be dealt with if one has the means to do so.

Zodiark himself did what was required of him yes, but at the accidental consequence of tempering his summoners, a side effect of creation that big performing feats of that scale. That, combined with his summoners desire to sacrifice other life, life that didn't volunteer to do so ultimately means he can't be left to be. After all when one tempers the actions of their resulting fanclub are rather intertwined with said being.

Which, once more, is not why she did what she did. Her stated rationale is concern that they'd meet their doom, because she considered suffering to be necessary to avoid this and based on the strawmen she encountered, she thought her people had lost that appetite. If you want to provide evidence suggesting she took issue with the very act of the sacrifices, not what she saw as their ultimate consequence, then provide it. This will have to be more than pointing to their intention of handing over the star to the new lives, because that is ancillary to the aim involved here based on her beliefs, i.e. leave things as they are and embrace suffering to avoid succumbing to an eventual doom; something also stated in the Anamnesis scene. Moreover, that scene fits with the second set of sacrifices, when they were rehabilitating the star's regular functioning, seeing as the Final Days had nearly killed it, as per this:



Tempering is not even touched upon as an issue anywhere. This is player interpretation and is faulty for multiple reasons, a list which has only grown with EW. Not least of which the fact that even the Convocation was divided on this, in line with the sources I provided on the topic, and that this rift had divided their broader society, which was not tempered. Zodiark was the method to be used here, but he was not compelling it and it was not even in his interest, because it was simply an exchange of life for life, to release the souls within him; bearing in mind he had to be maintained at full power to remain an effective means of defence against a potential recurrence of the Final Days, so simply pulling them out was not an option.

The real answer here is simple: Zodiark got in the way of her plan. He was too powerful for her to defeat him, so she had to sunder him along with the entire star.

[KizuyaKatogami]

At that point Zodiark was also like a machine without a driver, something that can be dealt with if one has the means to do so.

Zodiark himself did what was required of him yes, but at the accidental consequence of tempering his summoners, a side effect of creation that big performing feats of that scale. That, combined with his summoners desire to sacrifice other life, life that didn't volunteer to do so ultimately means he can't be left to be. After all when one tempers the actions of their resulting fanclub are rather intertwined with said being.

And as Hydaelyn herself admits her actions were neither kind or righteous, but at that point what would hating and blaming do? The sundering happened, tragic and horrific as it was, and now new life exists and thrives. The Ascians goals, for as understandable and relatable as their reasons are, will mean the end of the current world and everything upon it. Notably by the end not even they are hated by the main cast, they just accept that their goals are incompatable, while Hydaelyn's aren't.

Hydaelyn sundering the ancient world though meant the end of the current world and everything upon it. Keep in mind as well, we don’t even know if her followers gave consent to be sacrificed for Hydaelyn. Based on the tidbit of dialogue we got from them in Anamnesis, they don’t seem to know about the sundering at all or that they’d be dying. They simply say they’ll miss Venat after she’s gone. If Hydaelyn needed sacrifice, it stands to reason she too, could be used to sacrifice things to. Maybe she should have sealed herself along with Zodiark on the moon lol