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

[Kozh]

Fanfest Q&A with Yoshida and battle designer Nakagawa.

Oh god, lol. "Accept different ways of thinking", unless it's the antagonist's way of thinking. Because god forbid the WoL or the Scions made "evil" decision. Seriously, I hate how the story and the lore seems to bend over backwards a lot of time to either justify our actions, or so that we don't have to take the "lesser evil" path. Just like how in 5.3 apparently all the WoLs we fight are only projection of their will, in an expansion sold as "we are the villain".

"B-but she didn't have access to enough dynamis yet to unmake them!" So she was still weak enough then? So send a space mission to beat her. If they had started on it right after leaving Ktisis she wouldn't have that much of a lead. Hell, why not make a Zodiark who would have traveled like Zenos did, beaten the hell outta her, come back and then restore the ancients from him? Zodiark's mission would be complete, he wouldn't be needed to remain like our shielding Zodiark did so they wouldn't need new life to take their place.

This is what I've been thinking too. If Zodiark is a dnd character, he would be one who put 9 stats into defense and 1 into offense, considering his main thing is making a planet-size barrier and replenish the land's aether. If the Ancients already knew about the root of their problem, they could have make Zodiark more focused on offense (like hydaelyn). He could fly fly into Ultima Thule and blast meteion with concentrated aether, since she won't be as strong as her current version we fought. Besides, as Lauront had mentioned before, the dynamis:aether ratio in space isn't like 99:1, but 2:1 (though technically it's 6:4). That means their fighting chance isn't 0%.

Sure, summoning Zodiark still requires massive sacrifice, but that's proof that they have the strength to resist despair.

[Lauront]

Fanfest Q&A with Yoshida and battle designer Nakagawa.

Oh god, lol. "Accept different ways of thinking", unless it's the antagonist's way of thinking. Because god forbid the WoL or the Scions made "evil" decision. Seriously, I hate how the story and the lore seems to bend over backwards a lot of time to either justify our actions, or so that we don't have to take the "lesser evil" path. Just like how in 5.3 apparently all the WoLs we fight are only projection of their will, in an expansion sold as "we are the villain".

It was very disappointing to me. And the linguistic tricks about becoming the WoD. Very meh. Not what I had hoped for.

This is what I've been thinking too. If Zodiark is a dnd character, he would be one who put 9 stats into defense and 1 into offense, considering his main thing is making a planet-size barrier and replenish the land's aether. If the Ancients already knew about the root of their problem, they could have make Zodiark more focused on offense (like hydaelyn). He could fly fly into Ultima Thule and blast meteion with concentrated aether, since she won't be as strong as her current version we fought. Besides, as Lauront had mentioned before, the dynamis:aether ratio in space isn't like 99:1, but 2:1 (though technically it's 6:4). That means their fighting chance isn't 0%.

Sure, summoning Zodiark still requires massive sacrifice, but that's proof that they have the strength to resist despair.

TBH, Zodiark is built to restore the laws of the star, so I suspect he can make very flexible use of his powers. A lot of it was channelled into providing a barrier to the star, that somehow remained even while he is imprisoned, suggesting his mere existence powered it. Whatever her focus, she could not defeat him without dragging the whole star into it (he stood in the way of her wiping out her people through sundering them), and this was without his heart even. Maybe she struggled with the platform mechanic, who knows. :`) We only got a glimpse of a weakened Zodiark driven by a suicidal lunatic. In any case, they had plenty of time to experiment with various techniques and methods (including selective and consensual sundering of a handful of their own) and in the end Venat did little to prepare the sundered to wield dynamis other than sundering way in excess what was needed to wield it. They didn't even know what it was until the last minute. So the idea that an ingenious civilisation that the ancients could not devise a method to deal with it, armed with the knowledge of what it was, is fanciful to me and the lore certainly hasn't even been written so as to close it off as possibilities, contrary to the protestations of some. It's probably why the time shenanigans were thrown in, to distract attention from that and remove those options in the story we got from consideration but without removing them outright as possibilities had things gone a bit differently.

But the option of creating purely offence focused primals, especially once the star was capable of producing aether once more, is there, and we saw the impressive use Elidibus could make of even a bit of primal/prayer power in SoS.