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

[Brinne]

Yeah this is exactly the bullshit I hate with Venat and Hermes, but also how can I blame them when it is what the plot apparently wants to present (but is terrible at presenting)? I mean, I don't actually hate Venat and Hermes as characters themselves. I low-key love the interpretation of Venat following the rules of Hermes's dumb test because she doesn't fundamentally disagree with him and the very experience of meeting a Future Human and finding them super cool and fun to hang out with for, like, a whole day has validated all her biases about her worldview. I am also totally fine with Hermes being a sad misanthropic asshole who wants to impose an Insane-Troll-Logic sadistic test on humanity because he is The Only Sad Person In The World Obviously, which is a great presentation of the cognitive bias of depression mixed with bitterness that has been festering for too long.

Except this isn't how the game seems to be presenting either.

In the case of Venat, that reading is mostly on the basis of "well, if you put the pieces together, this is the only thing that emerges to make sense as a coherent character (as opposed to a bunch of writing goals that just ended up a huge awkward mess of weird apologism.)" Even though she has a direct line where she says, point blank, that she thinks mankind must pass Hermes's test by confronting absolute despair and senseless death - and that fits perfectly with her apparent inaction re: the Final Days hitting the Ancients, the symbolism of her montage, and her subsequent disappointment with them - the tone is so bizarre with her that on some level, it's still hard to process the words meaning what the words point blank mean. Just like how Venat deliberately letting Emet remain Unsundered actually was strongly implied in the text, as Yoshida said, but it's so obviously awful and disparate with the tone surrounding the character it seems almost impossible to accept. She is truly a strange character, from a writing perspective.

I will speak up in defense of Hermes's writing, though. I think it's totally understandable and valid if it skewed more sympathetic to him than you wanted or thought was warranted (there are plenty of characters I feel that way about!), but his presentation is miles away from Venat's. I can only wish Venat had a scene where she adopts a slasher smile with scary music playing in the background, as a sympathetic/heroic character tells her to her face that her reasoning is total bullshit. (Although tragically, Emet did not think to pull out his phone and play Limp Bizkit.) I wish Venat had multiple characters commenting on what a fool she was, because the answers to her doubts about the world were right in front of her the whole time, so her drastic measures were needless. I wish Venat's final word on herself was that, also, that looking back, her solution to despair rings hollow, and that she was a moron (before getting beaten up by Asahi, I guess?)

The main reason Hermes gets talked up as a great person by those who know him is to create a gap - a characterization mystery - for you to puzzle out between he and Fandaniel as we knew him. One of the things that becomes clear about him during the Elpis investigation is that, for all they respect him, none of his coworkers really know him. He keeps them at bay and doesn't share his thoughts or his private research. He belabors on the specific point that, alas, he is the only one who is sad about the creations, about the death ritual, who has doubts about their processes, even though this is contradicted in two seconds by talking to the Ancients standing right outside of his door. He is isolated and he feels isolated. So the question becomes, well, is it him, or is it the Ancients?

In Hermes's case, I legitimately think the presented answer is "it's mostly him." Hermes is presented to us for the bulk of his screentime as Amon for a reason. He denies it for a long time, until the end where Amon does obviously speak as Hermes, and his Amon persona as a part of Hermes's story - but they are absolutely at core the same person, filled with bitterness and contempt at the society and people around them, and looking to the outside for an "answer" to his doubts he can shove in their faces. As Hermes, he latched onto the Meteia's answer of nihilism. As Amon, he latched onto Xande's nihilism - his big flashback as Amon was also him basically internally sneering at the shallow dummies he was surrounded by, who lacked Deep Thoughts like he had. Even seperated from Ancient society, he wound up in basically the same place.

So I think the aspect of his misanthropy and resentment of those around him was pretty clear. Again, he encourages the fire wolf to hate the Ancients for a reason - and asserting that they deserve it. He blows up at Emet, who is trying to help him. The way he treats Meteion on several levels is comically terrible, let alone contrasted with his protests against the treatment of other creations. And just like Venat got the significant reaction shot to "people got too happy and died," Hermes gets the reaction to "people stopped interacting with each other and died" (because he's a misanthrope.) The Ancients were thrown under a thematic bus to a large extent, but the core of Hermes's character as an individual, I think, has always amounted to "this is a man in pain whose pain has twisted him into a bitter hypocrite" and also "plus he is an idiot." I didn't feel the goal with him as a character was the same as Emet - "the hero of another story, fundamentally the same as you" - at all. Yes, people will take Hermes's issues as evidence that the Ancients were terrible, but people were looking for any excuse to say the Ancients were terrible and aren't worth mourning since the days of 5.0.

Hermes's pain was genuine, and deserved to be acknowledged and addressed, and I think that's important, and why there is a gentle touch to how the story treats him. Again, I think it's totally valid if that doesn't sit well with you. But I think there is a strong case in the text itself that he let that pain fester and twist within him needlessly, and the source of most of it was his own complexes regarding death and existence, moreso than his environment - and because it was something very recognizably human to me, how he ended up in that spiral, I appreciated his character a lot. He sucks. It's great.