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

[Lauront]

Most of Ishikawa's responses seem based, she even says she wrote Hermes figuring 80% of people would hate him. It also confirmed whatever she wrote originally wasn't accepted by the others and she had to rewrite it barely making it under the deadline. Granted, no details were given, but I had a feeling that was the case all throughout EW.

The main thing that bothers me is acting like Hermes (and I assume Venat by extension) ended up being a boon to humanity. There just isn't any evidence of this at all. The sundered still couldn't handle the Final Days and we went from the Ancient society to one in which wars are frequent, there's sex trafficking, and a myriad of other ills that didn't exist before because the Ancients might have gone the way of The Plenty? This was an absolute regression by every metric possible.

It's not even plausible because he tries to hide the truth of it all in the process of administering his 'test' and actively thwarts knowledge of it. So whatever supposed side-benefit there is, it's no thanks to his own efforts.

[Teraq]

It's not even plausible because he tries to hide the truth of it all in the process of administering his 'test' and actively thwarts knowledge of it. So whatever supposed side-benefit there is, it's no thanks to his own efforts.

Not to mention... since we've told him about the Final Days in our timeline and the cataclysmic consequences it had, he absolutely knew how his little "test" was going to end. And in my interpretation of Hermes, that was exactly his point.

[Brinne]

While I can't say I really mourn the loss of a Garlemald expansion (Garlemald and its outcome as presented in the game basically worked perfectly for me), I do think it's kind of funny that amidst all this in-depth discussion about the story and Hermes in particular - his judgment of mankind, and how what he did was extremely horrible but ultimately did lead to the world where we are now, by introducing suffering - Venat doesn't come up in the conversation? W-which character were we talking about, again?

Yoshida's responses don't really surprise me. Immediately post-ShB, in interviews, he seemed pretty confused about why so many people adored ShB, too. I do think he's earnest in his attempts to understand, and when he recognizes the fanbase strongly responding to something he tries to roll with it - but that understanding is not something that really comes intuitively to him. He's a Matsuno fanboy, after all! (Hey, kinda same, friend.) And I do think you can see how that reflects in the way he sort of processes stories, versus someone like Ishikawa, who is a bit more honed in on emotional nuance.