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

[Kozh]

I mean... excuse me? Who made you the will of the planet? You're the will of the planet now huh aren't you? Oh okay.

Damn, you beat me to it. I just rewatch the cutscene and have to do a double take when she said that.



Speaking of will of the planet, I have to wonder...

Is the mothercrystal we used as fuel, uh, made from living being souls (specifically the sundered)? That's why it can have a "will"? I guess I was just too emotionally drained that I missed this the first time I play.

[Teraq]

Yeah, I am not sure where this aether came from, technically. Maybe the planet naturally produces aether by itself and Hydaelyn just... skimmed some off the top over the millenia? I don't remember what the explanation is, or if there even is one that isn't just vague handwaving.

I can 100% relate to being too emotionally drained past Elpis. Then Labyrinthos, confusion at the rather random Aitiascope midbosses, everyone in Ultima Thule being a bit of a broken record (great visuals and BGM at least!) and seeing exactly who did or did not feature in the ending credits/artwork just kind of killed me, so I just skipped the Scions' dialogue in the Waking Stones, which I frankly don't do often. Honestly, I want to give the entire Labyrinthos part with inappropriate GET PUMPED UP BGM playing on loop a disproportionately large part of the blame.

[Kyohei]

I think it was her aether, ancients had incredibly lots of aether so it wouldn't be surprising if it was only her, and maybe partly her followers'.

[Kozh]

Yeah, I am not sure where this aether came from, technically. Maybe the planet naturally produces aether by itself and Hydaelyn just... skimmed some off the top over the millenia? I don't remember what the explanation is, or if there even is one that isn't just vague handwaving.

Her explanations:

Ever since I became the will of the star, the aether drawn here hath slowly crystallized. They who have answered my call know it well. While I have remain hidden, it hath become the embodiment of the planet's will in my place. A faceless, omnipotent force of nature.

Doesn't necessarily mean it's made from living being souls, but kinda suspicious ngl. And considering that aetherial sea is where all souls returned to and get recycled.

Honestly, I want to give the entire Labyrinthos part with inappropriate GET PUMPED UP BGM playing on loop a disproportionately large part of the blame.

Same. The very first time I had to turn off BGM and play Youtube on background instead. Damned music nearly melted my brain off, combined with the stupid "lopporit plays therapist".

[Caurcas]

If the Ancients were so great how come they couldn't stop two of their number from taking them to task? Memes aside, this thread has turned into nothing but a feedback loop sadly.

[PawPaw]

I associate "adventures" with having to check in with Momodi or the Levemete guy so they can tell me who needs a new chore completed. Hard to get hype for what gives me ARR 2.0 vibes but as so many have already said, we shall see.

Currently watching my favorite streamer who has just started EW and I'm genuinely curious what he'll think by the end. I've already seen him physically cringe at the idea of akasa and he thinks that there will be real repercussions for the decisions that are being made right now. I can see him preparing himself mentally for the losses that he's certain will have to happen and I am very much looking forward to seeing how he will ultimately react to absolutely nothing bad happening to anyone he knows and the game's resolution hinging on the very concept he found to be the height of cringe. Will he be swept away by the gaslighting and manipulation or will his initial wariness of "the feels" hold? Stay tuned.

[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.

[Rulakir]

I've just always been a villain fucenjoyer as far as I can remember; most of the characters I gravitate towards are horrible people but with such an angle that you can understand where they're coming from, and they are almost always antagonists in the story.

I don't always gravitate towards the antagonists. I've come across too many poorly written ones or ones I wasn't particularly moved by like Fordola. (I like her personality, but found her motives lacking.)
I didn't sympathize with Yotsuyu, but I enjoyed her character.

Emet and Ardyn (FFXV) are two of my all time favorites from video games. The Ascians are antagonists in terms of having clashing goals with the WoL, but I don't consider them villains.

I like plenty of protagonists in other series, just not so much FFXIV. The Scions are too homogenous and goody-goody with only a couple of exceptions. Urianger isn't even interesting with his repeated 'betrayals'.

I mean... excuse me? Who made you the will of the planet? You're the will of the planet now huh aren't you? Oh okay.

She's the will of the sundered (who conveniently don't know any different) so, as usual, it's self created. I still find it weird that nobody seems to care that their souls aren't whole or that they have fragments of themselves running around on other shards.

I mentioned in the lore forum I thought the Ascians could've established more of a following telling people the truth. Someone said those people would've been the black-masked Ascians, but when's the last time we saw them outside of ARR?

[KizuyaKatogami]

I don't always gravitate towards the antagonists. I've come across too many poorly written ones or ones I wasn't particularly moved by like Fordola. (I like her personality, but found her motives lacking.)
I didn't sympathize with Yotsuyu, but I enjoyed her character.

Emet and Ardyn (FFXV) are two of my all time favorites from video games. The Ascians are antagonists in terms of having clashing goals with the WoL, but I don't consider them villains.

I like plenty of protagonists in other series, just not so much FFXIV. The Scions are too homogenous and goody-goody with only a couple of exceptions. Urianger isn't even interesting with his repeated 'betrayals'.



She's the will of the sundered (who conveniently don't know any different) so, as usual, it's self created. I still find it weird that nobody seems to care that their souls aren't whole or that they have fragments of themselves running around on other shards.

I mentioned in the lore forum I thought the Ascians could've established more of a following telling people the truth. Someone said those people would've been the black-masked Ascians, but when's the last time we saw them outside of ARR?

I thought they were going to go with this in 5.3 with Elidibus showing the amaurot mirage and people starting to feel the sorrowful emotions and everything. Honestly with how mish mashed that patch was i wouldn’t be surprised if that was the original plan, especially since he said they had considered a partial rejoining plot for it.

[Teraq]

(snip)

I mean, I don't disagree with all that at all. My happy wholesome AU is one where Hermes gets proper medical attention rather than Emet's non-solution of figuratively kicking him upstairs to get him out of a job that emotionally destroyed him, and he slowly recovers and opens up, ending up cooperating against the whole Meteion business (this is also an AU where people are aware of Meteion and what happened, because goddamn that didn't make sense).

But yeah my main beef is that the main reaction I've seen to him is that he's a poor little baby who's the only person with feelings and Ancients totally sucked and were a bunch of meanies. We had a very particular person on this thread like 70 pages back, I still cringe thinking about their take.

...Okay so truth be told, I haven't interacted with the fandom outside of this very thread since like, mid December. I honestly just chose to filter out FFXIV social media then because the EW positivity seriously put a damper on my mood (oh no a feedback loop /echo chamber!). Maybe it's changed since then, but that particular reading of Hermes and Ancients really is not my jam.