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

[Theodric]

I'd say there's plenty of in universe reasons to believe that an alternative plan would have been viable by virtue of Venat deliberately going out of her way to avoid informing the Ancients of what was coming. Had they been made aware of the impending arrival of the Final Days as well as Meteion's existence then there's ample reason to believe that they would have fought tooth and nail in order to survive.

The game also makes it pretty clear that the Sundered aren't going to just roll over and die whenever they're faced with a seemingly unstoppable force so there's no reason to assume that the Ancients 'needed' to just allow themselves to be subjected to genocide at the behest of a pair of deluded nutters in the form of Hermes and Venat.

To say nothing of the simple fact that the writers themselves have remained cautious to word things in such a way as for Venat's belief of the Ancient's supposed 'dead end' to be just that - a belief rather than a certainty.

All of which has, of course, been outlined and pointed out a great many times throughout this thread by this point.

[EaraGrace]

I'd say there's plenty of in universe reasons to believe that an alternative plan would have been viable by virtue of Venat deliberately going out of her way to avoid informing the Ancients of what was coming. Had they been made aware of the impending arrival of the Final Days as well as Meteion's existence then there's ample reason to believe that they would have fought tooth and nail in order to survive.

I would like you or someone else to please give evidence of those reasons. The most I’ve seen in this thread and elsewhere is Elidibus’ LB usage, which i would hope we agree is not a confirmation of anything given both his unique status as a primal, and the uncertainty that LBs are always dynamis. Further, whether they would fight is not what I’m questioning, rather I’m disagreeing with the assertion that Emet and Hyths action in Ultima Thule constitutes proof of anything.

The game also makes it pretty clear that the Sundered aren't going to just roll over and die whenever they're faced with a seemingly unstoppable force so there's no reason to assume that the Ancients 'needed' to just allow themselves to be subjected to genocide at the behest of a pair of deluded nutters in the form of Hermes and Venat.

I’ll take Venat over a megalomaniacal madman, his primal friend and the deranged ranting psychopath.

To say nothing of the simple fact that the writers themselves have remained cautious to word things in such a way as for Venat's belief of the Ancient's supposed 'dead end' to be just that - a belief rather than a certainty.

All of which has, of course, been outlined and pointed out a great many times throughout this thread by this point.

To avoid the back and forth over language, can we at least agree that there’s good reason to think that’s where they would end up when we keep in mind both the text and the statements made by the devs? Can we at least agree that saying dead ends “is our vision of where the ancients probably would’ve ended up” lends credence to that idea?