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

[Kyohei]

Zodiark was a bit more than a tool, they literally poured their tears and souls into him. Zodiark represented their hope in front of the final days.
Both Hydaelin and Zodiark are "Her" and "Him" with a capital H, but we have to remember the text is primarily wrote in Japanese which doesn't have such a thing. Although they do have honorifics.

I would add that, the plan has always been to summon Zodiark and then bring back the souls once saved. Letting the first step happen if she didn't want the second would obviously cause issues.

[Kyohei]

This all comes down to their sheer power, rather than tempering, per se. Lahabrea and Nabriales took it a step further with their zeal and that I believe is why they brought it up - Lahabrea in particular let his identity fade through extensive body-hopping, and so the idea seems to be he was changed by it unlike Hades. Elidibus sustained memory loss but his guiding duty, stemming from the Convocation, appeared to at least allow him to retain enough of his identity to avoid going the way Lahabrea did.

Not sure if it really was wise to depict them as tempered instead of just letting them have their very own different personalities without any influences other than their own convictions and duties. In a way it makes things less interesting.

[Ixon]

snip

Thanks for the details! Without more information, I would LIKE to think that our character perhaps leaned more towards the "morality" of treasuring all life outside of the Ancients and that's why they were not involved with the initial summoning of Zodiark, if they knew full well of the entire plan. Hopefully we get more those details before they completely remove themselves from this story line. Going back to the 5.2 cutscenes where we first see Venat, the conversations seem to lead that even with the summoning of Zodiark, they were still doomed. Now either the story was changed(possible) to fit in the new narrative, or they did not think the path with Zodiark was still doomed no matter what, or they were all referring to The Plenty as their impending doom as you mentioned. As for the "tempering" of the three Unsundered to the will of Zodiark, the language could be seen as you described, but I wonder why Elidibus has a sort of "snap back to reality" moment after we defeat his Warrior of Light form as if he had forgotten his path? Though as the heart of Zodiark he would probably suffer the most influence, that and perhaps his young age played into effect. Again, most of this can be explained by missing, conflicting, ill-translated writing, but it is fun to discuss(least for me).

[Kozh]

Honestly I'm not sure why they went with "venat sunder because dynamis" instead of "venat sunder because sacrificing new life is bad" (with the confirmation that, yes, the new life seeded by zodiark is indeed new Ancients). Imo, the second option is more grounded and better taken than the first one. Mainly because we never see her efforts on trying to prevent the final days besides preaching. Not only that, she also comply with hermes ridiculous test and rule, forcing a standard that goes against the nature of the Ancients (a peaceful immortal race who focuses on the betterment of the star).

Shouldn't made dynamis and meteion a thing imo.

[Theodric]

I think that the writers pushed themselves into a corner that they couldn't get out of because even if the 'new life' happened to be Ancients, sacrificing a portion of an unwilling population is still the better option when compared to killing every last man, woman and child present on Etheirys at the time of the Sundering. Furthermore, the only reason any of the three rounds of sacrifices had to be made in the first place is due to Venat allowing the Final Days to happen. It's the equivalent of someone knowing that a huge tsunami is about to hit, refusing to warn the people in its path and then blaming the survivors for seeking to rebuild and strive to return to their normal lives.

[KageTokage]

Honestly I'm not sure why they went with "venat sunder because dynamis" instead of "venat sunder because sacrificing new life is bad" (with the confirmation that, yes, the new life seeded by zodiark is indeed new Ancients). Imo, the second option is more grounded and better taken than the first one. Mainly because we never see her efforts on trying to prevent the final days besides preaching. Not only that, she also comply with hermes ridiculous test and rule, forcing a standard that goes against the nature of the Ancients (a peaceful immortal race who focuses on the betterment of the star).

Shouldn't made dynamis and meteion a thing imo.

I don't feel that the dynamis and Meteion were the issue so much as the time travel and resulting causal loop being decided upon as their method for providing the solution to the Final Days and the reasoning behind the Sundering.

They could've reasonably kept Elpis in the present day and conveyed the necessary information in other ways with some tweaking, like Fandaniel saying something that would implicate Hermes with having been tied to the Final Days all along, but Elidibus and the rest of Convocation not knowing due to him still having opted to erase his memories with Kairos, perhaps simply because he felt the truth of the universe was too ugly to bear. We could learned about the whole Meteion threat by finding a spare concept that Hermes had hidden away in Ktisis Hyperboreia (Given how many he had produced, he had to have had one somewhere), then having the thing go crazy the instant it's awakened.

That's only scratching the surface of the elements they'd need to change/re-contextualize but it hardly strikes me as impossible to pull off.

[Lauront]

Thanks for the details! Without more information, I would LIKE to think that our character perhaps leaned more towards the "morality" of treasuring all life outside of the Ancients and that's why they were not involved with the initial summoning of Zodiark, if they knew full well of the entire plan. Hopefully we get more those details before they completely remove themselves from this story line. Going back to the 5.2 cutscenes where we first see Venat, the conversations seem to lead that even with the summoning of Zodiark, they were still doomed. Now either the story was changed(possible) to fit in the new narrative, or they did not think the path with Zodiark was still doomed no matter what, or they were all referring to The Plenty as their impending doom as you mentioned. As for the "tempering" of the three Unsundered to the will of Zodiark, the language could be seen as you described, but I wonder why Elidibus has a sort of "snap back to reality" moment after we defeat his Warrior of Light form as if he had forgotten his path? Though as the heart of Zodiark he would probably suffer the most influence, that and perhaps his young age played into effect. Again, most of this can be explained by missing, conflicting, ill-translated writing, but it is fun to discuss(least for me).

They've basically left the ancient Azem's actions open to player interpretation for now at least and down to how their character would react, without committing to it. With that said, it'd sit ill at ease with me for my character to basically screw over their people for non-ancient life forms, if it amounted to that, which I'm not too convinced of for now, particularly because I believe they're trying to steer clear from that as the focal point given how polarising it could be. Having them be complicit in her actions would more or less be the final straw for me and I think they'd be wise to leave it as it is if that's where they're going with it. As for Elidibus, he is absolutely affected by it via the memory decay (which he allows to happen), but it's different in nature to Lahabrea because he keeps sight of his duty to his people as his ultimate motivator, while forgetting what set him on that path.

How much of it all is down to retrofitting the EW story to SHB is anyone's guess.

[Erendis]

More likely that the Sundered will go the way of the diseased ocean invaders or the friendly neighborhood Globalcitizen. Same dungeon but let's be honest, the Sundered could never be peaceful long enough to get bored to literal death of it.

Honestly, world can't perfect (for people) if people do not want to live in it. People of the Plenty seemed to think that lack of conflict caused their boredom but imo they just stopped caring about anything but themselves.

[Teraq]

Never mind the terrible time loop plot point or Venat taking a single line from Meteion about some distant alien civilisation and absolutely running with it like an olympic athlete because she found the WoL cool, I've got to give it to Kairos for not only being an awfully convenient memory wipe machine, but also possessing the power to make everyone in its vicinity a dumb-ass.



Are you going to tell me that literally nobody investigated an incident in which one of the most important people on the planet (as well as his also-kind-of-a-big-deal friend) got his memory wiped by a goddamned memory wipe machine? The memory wipe machine that he himself found dodgy as soon as he heard about it because this is apparently something restricted by law, as he mentions it potentially making Pashtarot jump out of his seat? Is... is everyone just going to roll with that??? Does nobody in Elpis find this fishy at all? I mean there was quite the commotion outside Ktsis Hyperboreia when we went in. Why did Emet-Selch not retract himself from evaluating Hermes right there and then? Why not postpone the process and assign another Convocation member to reevaluate Hermes once the situation has been fully investigated and figured out? IS ANYONE ON THIS CONVOCATION OKAY???

God damn it this plot you guys ffs

(I propose an AU where the Convocation raises the alarm about what happened, Pashtarot goes to investigate things in Elpis with Echo abilities and he discovers the truth with complete horror, asking Elidibus how to proceed and what, exactly, to do with Hermes... and Venat, due to the very dubious implications of her not telling anyone a peep about the whole deal.)

Not sure if it really was wise to depict them as tempered instead of just letting them have their very own different personalities without any influences other than their own convictions and duties. In a way it makes things less interesting.

Hard agree. Going further, if we were going with tempering anyway, then I would have liked Ascians, Unsundered and Sundered, to reflect on it and what it means to them, how they think it's affecting them or not, free will, etc. Sort of like the couple of other examples we have of unsundered beings getting tempered, i.e. Tiamat and Altima in their Convocation crystal.

[Caurcas]

I, for one, feel this whole thing could've been avoid if the player character or Venat treated the unsundered like 20th century political prisoners.