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

[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?

[PawPaw]

I'm leaning towards 6.1 being "confusing" by Yoshi's definition in that literally nothing bad is going to happen and we'll actually get to go do some casual adventuring without some kind of problem big or small warranting our presence...though it's probably going to end on an ominous cliffhanger regardless given suggestions that 6.x is going to have a proper Endwalker-related story arc of some sort, which I further suspect is going to involve a certain clingy individual who can't seem to stay out of our hair whether just in body alone or soul as well.

I am a little curious who our trusts are going to be if all the Scions are off doing their own thing, too.

I presume you're talking about a certain blondie? I feel as though we won't see him resurface for a good while. I doubt they'd bring him back as soon as 6.1 but hey, I'm happy to be proven wrong.

And that's a good question, assuming the Scions won't be with us (except for maybe G'raha?) maybe our Trust squads will be made up of those generic NPCs they were talking about for the lower level MSQ dungeons?

[Skyborne]

Fandaniel was the one who did it. More than likely WoL's side would've imprisoned Zodiark again.

Well, you're not wrong... Fandaniel, our hero...

UT

Pretty much the impression I got as well, as someone else mentioned, that the ancients and these alien races were just fodder thrown under a bus to make the Sundered seem amazing and smart and (ironically) perfect. Take that, anyone who thinks we aren't numbah wan! Shtola's in particular was the weakest of the speeches and I zoned out after and totally didn't even have any idea of the blobs of words the twins were throwing out at that point. I should probably rewatch them later. Maybe if I have enough booze.

[Ixon]

And that's a good question, assuming the Scions won't be with us (except for maybe G'raha?) maybe our Trust squads will be made up of those generic NPCs they were talking about for the lower level MSQ dungeons?

Honestly, that's what I was thinking reading this. I actually think it would be pretty cool and "adventure-like" if in following dungeons we were just with other "random travelers" to get us back to those roots. Like if everyone is off doing there own thing, we get word of something somewhere and go investigate, and bump into some other random adventurers to do the next dungeon. It would do it well to scale down both our character and the story for a bit before the next big thing. Have us go back to "The Thousand Maws of Toto-Rak"(one of the few dungeons without a hard mode) with some completely random travelers on word of a void-woken residing within and a wealthy person offering a bounty for "X" reason.

[Caurcas]

The Ea were dumb and frankly kind of bizarre. Heat Death of the Universe is strange thing to crowbar into your fantasy game.

[Kyohei]

PawPaw, I thought your post was great and I completely agreed with it. ;_; Of course the Ancients were doomed. So is the Sundered world. So are we. We're all doomed - if not the Plenty, something is going to get us sooner or later.

[...]

It's less the direct motive, and more the psychological process that led him to an ugly, ugly place, that I enjoy in him as a character. I have also been to ugly places that aren't completely dissimilar while in the throes of depression, but I would like to think I do my best to avoid spiraling as badly as Hermes does.

Don't know what PawPaw's post was, but if along those lines then it's an angle I saw too. It really add some inconsistence and a very self-serving view to the values thrown at your face throughout the story sadly.
Yes, something is undeniably going to end everything at some point. If not the sundered mankind destroying each other, ultimately the fate of the universe Ea civilisation talked about will do it.
On this subject as you also talked about it, I find the Ea's angered answer to Y'shtola was right. She certainly answers like one who can neither fully grasp the implications nor project herself like the immortal Ea could. She's limited in all aspect from intellect capacity to experience and physiology (immortality) compared to the Ea so of course she can't view the world like they do. Her answer sounded annoyingly immature and lacking any kind of empathy/understanding.
They could've exchange her dialogue for a teenager's "whatever, don't care" to shorten it. Her character was made pretty insufferable for me this expansion actually. When speaking with her during the dragon part of Ultima Thule, I recall she outright judged them for being tired to fight and deciding to stop.
If the Ascians decided so, would we have seen in it in the same ugly light or would we see praises? Why should stopping to struggle be seen as bad actually? Why are we making value judgements on civilisations?
It was very hard to go through this condescending and presumptuous last bit of story. When touching on such subjects a writer should not enforce one way as the absolute right but let every ways open and stick to offering perspectives.
Really, the way they pushed values down the player's throat in this expansion can't sit well with everyone and it certainly didn't.

That side note you added, completely agree for the same reasons. Which is why I believe not everyone, fortunately, can view Hermes' character as making sense and/or being very relevant. Psychological processes are not the exact same in each and every humans, and him being mostly fleshed out through this lens makes for a dividing character.

[Misplaced_Marbles]

And that's a good question, assuming the Scions won't be with us (except for maybe G'raha?)

I'm gonna be honest, I'd rather take all the same old faces with me again as long as that meant G'raha stays behind. Such egregious devolution I have never seen before. Instead of progressing with the character, they just doubled down on the worst parts. People may use "cringe" a little too often, but when one completely naturally does that when watching the same old wacky hijinks, I don't know what else I could say.

[Theodric]

I'm gonna be honest, I'd rather take all the same old faces with me again as long as that meant G'raha stays behind. Such egregious devolution I have never seen before. Instead of progressing with the character, they just doubled down on the worst parts. People may use "cringe" a little too often, but when one completely naturally does that when watching the same old wacky hijinks, I don't know what else I could say.

Yeah, it's pretty weird. Such characters work best when they're based around consent. If someone doesn't like Haurchefant or G'raha then having them fawn over their character at every possible turn becomes jarring and questionable. Most RPG's have the decency to give the player the opportunity to tell such characters to back off - yet we never get such a luxury in FFXIV.

Which, in itself, seems to be a major issue with the game's writing lately. It assumes that you like X, Y and Z and dislike A, B and C. Yet any reasonable person would come to the conclusion that personal tastes vary and certain characters can very quickly overstay their welcome if they're near constantly front and centre in the narrative.

That's probably why Heavensward was so loved - not only did it give us a break from the Scions for the most part, it was a largely coherent and self contained experience. It introduced new characters and allowed them to have their fair share of time in the spotlight and grow as characters.

[DevonEllwood]

I haven't caught up reading since Sunday, but I remember someone mentioning the Ra-la story and how humanity wanted to end itself and kind of said, so what? And after thinking about that, that's really how Venat and the rest of the Ancients differed. The Ancients were wholly in belief they were in service to the star down to re-cycling their souls and and Elidibus's case, completely destroying his soul for a chance to save the star. Some people see the "returning to the star" as them not valuing their own live, which I don't see as the case. They just value the star above their own existence. So would they go the way of Ra-la story? Maybe. They would have felt they did all they could for the star and returned to it, leaving the next set of lives to possibly take over, just like some were suggesting before the third Zodiark summon. Venat was just the opposite of the Ancients. She put so much value into mankind to the point where she was willing to leave the star and its reflections to its fate just to save a small portion of mankind. Is this an Azem thing? I personally don't care for humanity as a whole, I care about the individual. This may be why I can't relate to Venat at all and her being stuck on "humanity's potential" confuses me. There's probably some philosophical terms about this, someone will have to help me out.

I guess my questions are how did Venat's mentality come to be since it's pretty different than the rest of her people? Were there other like her? How did the Ancients come to feel so connected to their planet? Is it alive as some people have theorized? It seems like a very Final fantasy thing to do. Maybe the sound beneath the surface was just the planet reacting to Meteion's song.

There was a way Venat could have helped with her information, but she had no interest in it. The lines "don't want to cause a panic" and "don't want to make Hermes an enemy" were just excuses. She had already decided she wanted the Final days to happen. She wanted to take advantage of it to get the results she wanted for humanity. Unfortunately she doesn't have the Alpanaud genes in the ability to "rally the people".

[KageTokage]

Boy, does it feel awkward watching streamers finishing the Elpis segment then seeing their chats gushing about it after all the deep thinking and discussion I've done since I finished the MSQ.

I think I now relate to Hermes on a spiritual level in the sense of feeling alone and like an aberration for having different thoughts from the masses.

How did the Ancients come to feel so connected to their planet? Is it alive as some people have theorized? It seems like a very Final fantasy thing to do. Maybe the sound beneath the surface was just the planet reacting to Meteion's song.

The vague teasing about Lifestream-related shenanigans in the Studium quests and other places really makes me feel like the deeper truths about its nature and Etheriys itself are going to be a critical factor in the future of the MSQ.

I also noticed a Sharlayan scholar who mentions that his pursuit of "the truth that lies at the heart of the world" is his life's sole purpose. Hydaelyn was far from being located such, which makes me just what might be lurking in those dark, unknown depths.