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

[BaconBits]

Varis died just to be a dungeon boss instead of the penultimate boss of a potential Garlean themed expac.

This some bs.

[Fiel_Tana]

Looks like Hermes did manage to pass the idiot ball to Venat after all. Must've been from all the time she spent in elpis. Sadge

Edit: But yeah, this is certified idiot moment from her. Her main reason for not telling people are: 1) avoid mass panic and 2) so people won't get divided (conflict with each other).

And ironically to avoid 'dividing people in conflict' she instead chose to divide them physically into 14 pieces causing untold suffering for 12,000 years, much better than having people disagree. /eyeroll at Venat

No matter how I try to understand at her motives I can't come up with any logical reason for why she did what she did. The story sure doesn't show us her thoughts during it at all so we have people saying everything from "ancients can't interact with dynamis" (which is shown in the story multiple times to be untrue), "people need to grow strong through suffering" (universally, causing suffering is NOT seen as heroic), "eventually they would have become like the plenty so it had to be done"(?), "people needed to learn to not live in the past" (??!?), "Ancients are just like that!"(??!??) to "well our world wouldn't exist had she not done that so she made the right choice" (bad, bad take imo).

None of those truly make sense within the story. It feels like major questions of the arc were entirely ignored. Why did she not tell anyone? Had she tried to stop the end days, and if so, how? How, and at what point did she come to the decision that destroying, not only her entire race, the entire world was the best or only option?

As it stands it looks (to me) like she thought Hermes test was a great idea and watching from the sidelines as a "supreme deity" would be a grand adventure! That doesn't really match her character in Elpis however. So what happened? Why skip such an important part of the story yet expect us to admire and love her?

Re music:
I used to love answers but now my stomach clenches whenever I hear it. Flow just isn't my style at all so no matter the story, I'd probably not like it a lot.
Neath Dark Waters, Rak'tika night music, Garlemald radio music (perfect atmosphere for that part of the story *chefs kiss*), Invincible and a few others are my faves.

[Theodric]

Varis really was done dirty. I was never under the impression that every last little thing was planned out in advance but...can we get a shift in development so that someone who actually notes plot hooks like Regula's last words is in charge of writing the story? Please?

[Kyohei]

Eh, well the interview just confirms what I thought if anything. Having to rewrite it because no agreements were reached is precisely what I theorised happened when playing msq and seeing the many inconsistencies.

[PawPaw]

This is it this is my whole post

She really wants me to believe that it's the latter but I'm sorry, I clearly have a vastly different set of morals than this team does. At no point would my brain ever stop to ponder on the rights and wrongs of destroying a world and its people. Emet did it and it was wrong then also. I completely understand why he did it and feel terrible about what he's had to suffer through, and the fact that he was set up to become a murderer; but that doesn't make it not wrong. No, what Hermes did is not up for f*%!ing debate, it's wrong. And trying to pass it off as questionably correct because he's your FaVoRiTe is disingenuous.

And ironically to avoid 'dividing people in conflict' she instead chose to divide them physically into 14 pieces causing untold suffering for 12,000 years, much better than having people disagree. /eyeroll at Venat

No matter how I try to understand at her motives I can't come up with any logical reason for why she did what she did. The story sure doesn't show us her thoughts during it at all so we have people saying everything from "ancients can't interact with dynamis" (which is shown in the story multiple times to be untrue), "people need to grow strong through suffering" (universally, causing suffering is NOT seen as heroic), "eventually they would have become like the plenty so it had to be done"(?), "people needed to learn to not live in the past" (??!?), "Ancients are just like that!"(??!??) to "well our world wouldn't exist had she not done that so she made the right choice" (bad, bad take imo).

None of those truly make sense within the story. It feels like major questions of the arc were entirely ignored. Why did she not tell anyone? Had she tried to stop the end days, and if so, how? How, and at what point did she come to the decision that destroying, not only her entire race, the entire world was the best or only option?

As it stands it looks (to me) like she thought Hermes test was a great idea and watching from the sidelines as a "supreme deity" would be a grand adventure! That doesn't really match her character in Elpis however. So what happened? Why skip such an important part of the story yet expect us to admire and love her?

Re music:
I used to love answers but now my stomach clenches whenever I hear it. Flow just isn't my style at all so no matter the story, I'd probably not like it a lot.
Neath Dark Waters, Rak'tika night music, Garlemald radio music (perfect atmosphere for that part of the story *chefs kiss*), Invincible and a few others are my faves.

^ All of this x100000

[Kyohei]

And ironically to avoid 'dividing people in conflict' she instead chose to divide them physically into 14 pieces causing untold suffering for 12,000 years, much better than having people disagree. /eyeroll at Venat

Also urges to "Answer together" but proceeds to solo decides for everyone ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It's along the points we discussed didn't make sense, no other way but to accept it. We can at least now understand the reasons why it was messy with the interview.

[Teraq]

Also urges to "Answer together" but proceeds to solo decides for everyone ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

(Proceed to conjure up a gigantic Primal fuelled by hope for their planet because it was the solution she left them with)

"No not like that!"

My takeaway is that the FFXIV team had no idea what they were doing with their story until ShB, and it shows. Makes tons of sense and now I can stop listening to people gushing about how "they've been planning this for a decade".

Venat's obsession with an "answer" (AUDIENCE STANDS AND CLAPS) legitimately had me very worried an EW track title would have something to do with a "question"

[Yencat]

A FFX reference as the final boss of an expansion? Nah, I think they made the right call on that part at least.

Hopefully they'll still do something else with Garlemald though.

[PawPaw]

[I]Venat's obsession with an "answer" (AUDIENCE STANDS AND CLAPS) legitimately had me very worried an EW track title would have something to do with a "question"

With the number of times this song was directly quoted in EW, I think we can assume that they simply took the lyrics and made a story around it so that it would LOOK like they'd planned it that way all along.

[aveyond-dreams]

A FFX reference as the final boss of an expansion? Nah, I think they made the right call on that part at least.

Hopefully they'll still do something else with Garlemald though.

They literally had us fight the Knights of the Round from FFVII in Heavensward. The response was overwhelmingly positive at the time. Doubtless the same would have occurred if we fought Varis in the form of Anima, who was more respected as an antagonist than Thordan ever was.