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

[Kyohei]

This questline along with the siblings really put the main narrative in a bad spot by specifically showing how ancients were eager to learn and adopt new ways of thinking.
The sibling one showing as you said that they did have empathy toward creations contrary to what Hermes thought. Proving further he was so self absorbed he failed to see how others thought.

[Lauront]

Precisely! I would also say that this is empathy going above and beyond what I'd consider necessary given what these beings are at the end of the day, but all the same, they were shared sentiments to some degree. Obviously not all ancients shared such views, much as humans differ in how we view animal life, but it was clear that these sentiments were fairly normalised in their society, and that Hermes's specific issue was more to do with his inability to cope with death and where that left any sense of purpose in life. It doesn't take an awful lot to rekindle this in Amon. The judgement of his society, which he uses to excuse damning them, seems to be a sideshow.

Only half-jest, no less. I don't think I can stress enough how everything we've seen in Venat borders on resembling a clinical narcissist or, if I were to stay in my lane, a prodigal coward. This entire story was simply a fetishization of pain and suffering with someone mentioning an analogy I agree with in saying it's as if "An aristocrat listfully thinking about the charm of what a peasant endeavors." A story about pain by people who don't know what pain is. And I'm to understand the one who made themselves into the divine protector of a now-wartorn world rife with calamity and viciousness from what we know of how beast tribes are treated and things like the Dragonsong War is the ultimate do-gooder that simply wants people to feel pain because pain builds character. Also people call her the Mother Crystal?

I was already beaten enough by my real mother, thank you. I don't need a virtual one chipping in.

Harrowing look into my personal life aside, this really is all I extracted from the expansion and with pretty potent bile growing in me. To worship what's adjacent to abuse and is just flat out treason? Bah, I'll leave well enough alone. It's definitely something I could get carried away from. I'll maintain that EW simply feels like it was written by people who are completely disconnected with those who have truly felt what it's like to be trampled underfoot while.. well.. idealizing said trampling (but it's okay because if you kill everyone who thinks you're wrong or happen to be favored by the right people, you'll be justified and nothing can hurt you. Right, Heidi/Scions?). I really hope 6.1 onwards is better.

I agree with your analysis. Much as Yoshi tries to chalk it up to her being an ancient, it's not really consistent with what we see of the rest of them (and we see behaviour similar to this with some sundered antagonists and even protagonists), and he has to refer to an Emet-Selch very much changed after 12k years of gruesome toil to restore his people, to make the point, and Hermes, who by all accounts is an outlier. In comparison to everything else we see of them? It's a poor fit. I wanted to like her after Elpis, but unfortunately the way it all concluded leads me to think you're correct, and I'd add to this that she seemed to be a rather special case of Munchausen by proxy, along with a messianic complex. Coupled with the time travel and all its associated contrivances, yes, I caught the Meteion despair bug going around in the story - at least with respect to its possible future.

[KageTokage]

Honestly, there's so much that I liked about Endwalker that it makes the one part that bugged me stand out all the more.

I think I was genuinely more excited by the narrative possibilities offered by a present day Elpis then what it ended up being in reality. I had entertained the notion of it miraculously remaining untouched since the Final Days and the myriad calamities, with familiars and perhaps even sundered former Ancients who had been living up there for millenia as a small secretive society helping us to gain the knowledge we needed via records, Echo visions, and other less...intrusive plot devices.

[Brinne]

In Zenos's case, it's just a pity that his way of expressing that love left him more or less alienated by the end, but yes it was essentially a redemption arc of a sort that kept with his character, even if his philosophical outlook is one the Scions trenchantly reject.

I'm largely paraphrasing a friend here when we discussed this together, but Zenos, even after all is said and done, even after he he personally was able to evolve the expression and direction of his love in a way that frankly, considering Zenos, could be considered a miracle - and through that, finally achieving what he had been dreaming of since he came back to life in Stormblood - still being left at the edge of the universe, uncertain, questioning if it was all worth it - asking you if you felt it was all worth it - also felt like a poignant and vulnerable expression of the other half of Endwalker's themes: the blunt lack of certainty and lack of objective answers to meaning in the universe. There's no certainty or locked-down answer even after defeating the embodiment of despair with your giant theme music-bearing dragon friend. And how you felt about that is something largely left in your own hands, private and personal.

(And yet at the very, very end, the existence of that love was still re-asserted through the implication he may have been the one responsible to teleporting you back to the ship, too.)

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Zenos was hands down the best part of Endwalker and the most successful execution of its themes in all regards. Anyone who hated him after this expansion is wrong, objectively wrong!

[Lauront]

I was glad that they largely left it in your hands as to how to respond to him and his overtures. There's a lot of meta-narrative stuff going on with him, and I would say that how one receives that boils down to how much a person enjoys that sort of thing, but I will agree that he was probably handled the best of all the characters in EW in terms of the evolution of his character arc - and that he at least gained some appreciation of why his philosophical outlook would ultimately leave him empty inside, so he tried to channel it in the way he knew into an act of friendship, or as you say, love ("philia" if we want to get all SHB about it. )

[Skyborne]

Hard agree on the Zenos/Hermes stuff and the Elpis sidequests. What's a headscratcher to me is all the people who came out of that thinking "Wow! Hermes is literally the only person in the world who feels! Everyone else is a cold unfeeling robot!"

As an aside

The Unsundered struggling 12,000 years appreciating their lost home is proof Venat was right!

On the contrary I think they had that spark the whole time and didn't need a self-proclaimed supreme deity to take credit, especially in the aftermath of her despairing her people 'couldn't' change ever (as Unsundered)... especially with the Q&A emphasizing it was her opinion. What's also funny is, Hydaelyn let herself just poof out of existence with her soul consumed when she felt 'satisfied' that her purpose was done and that we were all big boys now or something. Very much an Amaurotine to the end. I guess it's fine because she had her unga bunga fighty time though? Apparently it's just not valid for people to put their passions in and burn their candles with non-unga things...

If some truly external force came along like say, the Omicron, I think the ancients would have survived that. Probably better, given it's not obscure feely energy from the edge of the universe and no one withholding vital info with everyone actually being on even footing. I also think the ancients succeeded the ridiculous 'test' via Zodiark's big darkness boner telling the Meteia "bullshit", playing Limp Bizkit on his phone, then walking off.

edit: Now that I think about it, Venat is basically a more static ancient Zenos with a thin layer of warm gooey sugary glitter. ohnononono I'm gonna laugh for 30 aeons now

[BrokentoothMarch]

Snip! 3000 Characters is entirely too short, I swear--

The worst part is, once again, played straight, this could have been an amazing character. To be revealed that Hydaelyn is little more than a fraud who committed an atrocious crime when given the opportunity to ascend to divinity in the face of lesser beings she was guaranteed would not know any better. A nigh-malevolent goddess who exists only to slake her own desires and ideals, playing into that long-memed dialogue of Gaius making a rather compelling case that any and all Gods are merely eikons looking out for their own interests. Despite it all, we would have to do as she says anyways, as rejecting her would presumably have us unable to reach the Endsinger and confront her.

I'm reminded of much a similar villain that was done rather well in Golden Sun. Alex is a Water Mage who betrayed his people and wishes to gain divine power by being at the top of a blessing-granting mountain at the moment all four magical lighthouses are lit, only to slake his own ego and desire for power. He manipulates the heroes into doing so and when the final scene enters, we're presented with a harrowing truth: To light all the lighthouses would make him god of the realm, but to abstain from doing so would have the oceans at the end of the earth eventually erode the world itself into nothingness comparable to a truly infinite void. And with him making sure the last lighthouse you light is the furthest away from the peak he awaits at, you can't go interrupt him and do this at the same time.

What was once a friendly face turns out to have used you from start to finish, mounting suspicions beginning when you visit his tribe and certain actions beginning to counter the image he presented himself as. It all comes crashing down when it's far too late to do anything about it. I can also attest the story would have been atrocious would have Alex been presented as a "For Your Own Good" kind of character.

And to top it all off, do you know what choice the protagonists of the story made? They light the lighthouse. Because a world where Alex is god is a world where humans have a chance to fight back. Because if they don't, there'll be no world to save in the first place, defeating the point of it all, even if it has to be done with a bitter condition. Hydaelyn chose the latter and I would have abhored that being the case in Golden Sun.

Regardless, I apologize for my tangent. I suppose it's just sort of what I thought was going to happen after ShB, so I feel a bit cheated.

[Lauront]

You can circumvent the 3k character limit by making an initial post and then editing it - anyway, excellent tangent!

[BrokentoothMarch]

You can circumvent the 3k character limit by making an initial post and then editing it - anyway, excellent tangent!

Thank you! I'll be using this trick a lot then, pft.

[Kolsykol]

Just, Venat and her albatross of "we must establish she is Likable and a Good Person at all costs." Oof. (Not going to lie, it's maybe a breath of fresh air to talk about the things I actually loved about Endwalker? Maybe the wrong thread, though, so excuse me for the weird tangent!)

They didn't really have much time to develop her, and ultimately they can't rly give all that much autonomy to the player in this regard ( what the WoL thinks of characters ).
Imo I think they did a great job with her, I don't necessarily agree with her methods but I mean ultimately they kinda have to take a stance and just go with it in an expansion like this.
It's not like with Emet where he's around for one and a half exp following you around etc.

SWTOR did a really good job at giving the player a ton of autonomy, to the point you can actually kill companions or have them abandon you and they're just gone and your choices actually do matter a fair bit ( dunno about recent expansions tho, this is my memory of the base game ).
But FFXIV is pretty on rails and the WoL has an established personality and view of the characters.
Your choices are mostly just fluff that doesn't change anything and tbh a lot of the dialogue choices simply don't make sense for who the WoL clearly is.
The douchebaggy ones in particular it's pretty clear that the WoL is basically a saint ( even tho we've done questionable things in the past ).

You did get some options to question Hydaelyn but in the end of the day I don't think this exp was the time to start getting too complicated with characters like Venat.
And on some level it also needs to make some sense why people would flock to her against the convocation.
I think they did a really good job with making her have a great presence, she kinda had this larger than life saintly presence and it made a lot of sense imo.