Sundering stuff established in the Q&A

[Rulakir]

I feel like there must be two factions at work in the writers' room and one wanted to maintain her being "all-loving mother Hydaelyn" and the other wanted to drag the story as far into edgy "no right answer" territory as possible, and we've ended up with fragments of both in a story that's trying to be too many things at once.

This has been my impression since the beginning as well. It seemed like Ishikawa was going in a different direction with Hydaelyn's character in ShB and it feels like maybe she was pressured internally to change course. Either that or the First was a massive case of sleight of hand meant to throw us off and this was always her intent, which frankly makes me dislike the storyline of EW even more.

I still think the main issue is her portrayal. Emet was called out multiple times for the deaths he caused and while the Scions may have come to have sympathy for him they were never warm towards him. The only person to call out Venat was herself and the Scions have a history of borderline zealotry towards Hydaelyn, including forgiveness of highly questionable acts. I suppose it could be argued that their blind spot towards her was consistent, but I don't find that acceptable. Not to mention that no one was unhappy when Emet died, in fact, the first NPC to speak is Alphinaud with a smile who elatedly says "Emet-Selch is no more." When Hydaelyn dies it's a boo-hoo fest with Alisaie saying, "This can't be happening."

As far as popularity, most of us actually did like Venat in Elpis. It was everything after that which ruined her character. EW was also missing a lot of context that we learned in the Q&A, although, I'm not sure how much difference it would've made because the game still portrayed her as a protagonist, certainly not morally grey.

[Absimiliard]

The Q&A really only served to intensify the debate, I think. It at least shot holes in various ideas about Venat's intentions and laid out the whys and hows of the three remaining Unsundered (or rather two Unsundered and a primal). Most of what Yoshi-P said definitely seems to contradict some of what the game tries to tell us, but not all of it. There's still a lot of missing or conflicting information.

[Iscah]

I still think the main issue is her portrayal. Emet was called out multiple times for the deaths he caused and while the Scions may have come to have sympathy for him they were never warm towards him. The only person to call out Venat was herself and the Scions have a history of borderline zealotry towards Hydaelyn, including forgiveness of highly questionable acts.

Certainly, there's a mismatch between the degree of reverence for Hydaelyn and her actions, but rather than wishing to see her equally admonished, I wish the reason for the admonishment never happened.

I don't find any joy at all in this "actually everyone was flawed and did terrible things by choice" revelation. I just wanted a story about likeable people doing their best to make the world better, even if (for the ancients) things went wrong in the end.