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

[CrownySuccubus]

And how in the everliving hell are they supposed to know that you're a living breathing thinking "person" when you cannot even talk and look like a a miniature joke familiar resembling their prankster friend. After you get a big load of Emet's aether I'm pretty sure they stop referring to you as an it. Plus they never called Meteion an it either who is the closest to a "person", as far as I recall. As for the latter, it could be as simple as how you need a hunting license nowadays to hunt, so you cannot just "take" without permission.

Why are you arguing with me as if I'm the one who wrote the damn story?

My point was that, in writing, when an author wants to make a character seem dismissive of another life form, they will call them an "it". For example, in Terminator 2, there's an entire argument John (who sees the robot as a friend) and his mother (who does not) have over calling the machine "he" or "it". In Silence of the Lambs, Buffalo Bill constantly refers to the victims (who are human women) as "it" until the moment he kills them. Again, my point is that it's a common narrative trope to have characters refer to some form of life they do not respect as an "it".

I am not here to debate whether or not the Ancients were correct or right to refer to the WOL as an "it" when they first meet. I'm merely describing it as one of many ways in which the plot attempts to show the dismissive attitude that Ancients have for other species. This is one example, but the entire Elpis saga is full of other examples of the same thing. I fail to see how this is even worthy of debate.

I see. Yeah, I suppose that's an interesting analysis about how they could be seen as morally grey. Why is fulfilling one's purpose and returning to the star perceived as morally grey

I mean, it's literally the entire point of Endwalker.

What the Ancients were doing was dying, and the expansion's narrative theme was how precious it was to keep living, no matter what. The entire basis of that story thread was that the Ancients saw death (for themselves, but especially for non-Ancients) as no big deal, and Hermes (and later Venat) are the only ones who saw this attitude as a problem.

Once again, I am not agreeing with the story's morality, but that's what it is.

[Brinne]

There's a difference between intent to portray something as negative, from an author's perspective, versus the execution of that portrayal and whether it actually aligns with the manifested details within the writing. There is actually no question that the writers were hoping/anticipating we'd be disturbed by aspects of the Ancient society. We weren't, and many of us, for many reasons described, found the methods they used to achieve that either ineffective, unconvincing, or actually doing the opposite in making their society more appealing. So I feel like people are sort of having two different arguments here.

In that long Famitsu interview, there's a bit that wasn't translated directly where Yoshida actually goes into how he thought players would leave Elpis thinking the Ancient society was "scary" - listing all the reasons he figured they'd be a little disturbing - but that instead, most people came away with thinking they were just "good people" instead.

EDIT: Here's the relevant part of the interview, if anyone whose Japanese is better than mine wants to correct me:

[KageTokage]

Without further context, it's kind of difficult to view the Ancients as being in the wrong for wanting to sacrifice more lives to free those trapped within Zodiark when for all we know said lives were just ordinary beasts.

There's only a vague suggestion they might've been something more thanks to notion of Hydaelyn's followers wanting to "entrust the future to them" which doesn't really sound appropriate for non-sentient lifeforms.

[Lauront]

Potentially, but I think you could also have a midway scenario, where you have entities which could be guided in that direction amongst the more straightforward cases of fauna and flora, like the forebears of what are now the 'beast tribes'; bearing in mind we don't know what the WoL told her in precise terms, and some of the creations do exhibit some potential for sapience, even if the star generally does not deem them fit to stick a soul into in the case of familiars. Nonetheless, it seems like a plausible scenario to me.

Also, it really comes down to the degree to which that was just to get them to stop going down that route, to avoid her true concern, which was the Plenty, and to embrace "suffering". Again, all the language around those scenes is very pragmatic in nature, suggesting any division over the sacrifices connected more with whether they were in the best interest of the star. Given what Emet-Selch said in Elpis, I think their overarching concerns may have been whether those souls in Zodiark would've approved of them taking such an action, or whether they'd deem it insulting. There is also the question of could it be done? I'd suggest from there that Elidibus's return probably answered those questions.

There's a difference between intent to portray something as negatively, from an author's perspective, versus the execution of that portrayal and whether it actually aligns with the manifested details within the writing. There is actually no question that the writers were hoping/anticipating we'd be disturbed by aspects of the Ancient society. We weren't, and many of us, for many reasons described, found the methods they used to achieve that either ineffective, unconvincing, or actually doing the opposite in making their society more appealing. So I feel like people are sort of having two different arguments here.

In that long Famitsu interview, there's a bit that wasn't translated directly where Yoshida actually goes into how he thought players would leave Elpis thinking the Ancient society was "scary" - listing all the reasons he figured they'd be a little disturbing - but that instead, most people came away with thinking they were just "good people" instead.

I think it just goes to show he and I (and I suspect some others here too) are on entirely different wavelengths. Not to mention how the Elpis sidequests don't really seem geared to eliciting that kind of reaction.

[KizuyaKatogami]

There's a difference between intent to portray something as negatively, from an author's perspective, versus the execution of that portrayal and whether it actually aligns with the manifested details within the writing. There is actually no question that the writers were hoping/anticipating we'd be disturbed by aspects of the Ancient society. We weren't, and many of us, for many reasons described, found the methods they used to achieve that either ineffective, unconvincing, or actually doing the opposite in making their society more appealing. So I feel like people are sort of having two different arguments here.

In that long Famitsu interview, there's a bit that wasn't translated directly where Yoshida actually goes into how he thought players would leave Elpis thinking the Ancient society was "scary" - listing all the reasons he figured they'd be a little disturbing - but that instead, most people came away with thinking they were just "good people" instead.

This has me so curious on what exactly was supposed to be scary in regards to them. It cant be their treatment of creations because the sundered are far worse in that regard. Cant be the whole relinquishing their title and returning to the lifestream because they viewed short lived lives as sad and tragic.

[Brinne]

Roughly, from the interview (I want to emphasize again that my Japanese is not great, so please, anyone feel free to smack me if I'm getting something drastically wrong), what he lists is: seeing the "return to the star" as beautiful, taking it upon themselves to create beings even with souls, feeling it's better to erase creations that are slightly flawed. He thought all of these would paint a picture that was "very scary," but acknowledges that that isn't what happened among the playerbase.

[CrownySuccubus]

This has me so curious on what exactly was supposed to be scary in regards to them. It cant be their treatment of creations because the sundered are far worse in that regard. Cant be the whole relinquishing their title and returning to the lifestream because they viewed short lived lives as sad and tragic.

Again, given that the game has the WOL specifically question the Ancients on both of those points, I believe that those were exactly what we were supposed to find "scary". They went out of their way to have our PC react in a specific way, with no regard for how the player would actually react or whether the narrative leading up to it was cohesive.

As I said, the moment Hyth said my WOL was "shocked" by how he killed butterflies to make my robes, it brought me out of the story and made me wonder what the hell he was talking about. I've murdered hundreds of things just to sell their body parts.

[PawPaw]

In that long Famitsu interview, there's a bit that wasn't translated directly where Yoshida actually goes into how he thought players would leave Elpis thinking the Ancient society was "scary" - listing all the reasons he figured they'd be a little disturbing - but that instead, most people came away with thinking they were just "good people" instead.

I am just as baffled by this as I was at hearing that he was surprised at people liking Emet-Selch while not liking Hermes and that being something he couldn't wrap his head around.

taking it upon themselves to create beings even with souls, feeling it's better to erase creations that are slightly flawed.

Also..."slightly" flawed? Putting the Charybdis aside, because I could see the argument for not giving up on them, but was I supposed to feel terrible about their reverting the animals that were killing everything? If an animal in our world was doing this in a neighborhood, no one would hesitate to call in Animal Control to handle the threat. Why in the name of all the gods would I feel that it was scary and inhuman for people to protect others from a group of dangerous animals that have already been given chances and continue to be a threat to the environment?

[Theodric]

I'm just not sure what is meant to be 'scary' about the Ancients when compared to people canonically being at risk of being eaten by monsters the moment they leave the safety of a settlement. For slavers to be actively kidnapping people and selling them. For a race of people typically unable to wield aether being persecuted and forced out of fertile lands and forced to live in the bleak, frozen wastes to the north. For poachers to hunt species to actual or near extinction.

There's numerous examples of the Sundered being far crueller and more callous than the Ancients. I rather suspect that the original plan was to have Venat consider the Sundered to be a failed experiment and try to Sunder them again - because they in no way passed the ridiculous 'test' she sought to enforce on them. Nothing they achieved was done without significant outside aid and with that in mind...she could have just had a conversation with the Convocation back in the Ancient world to attempt to resolve the Meteion predicament.

I am just as baffled by this as I was at hearing that he was surprised at people liking Emet-Selch while not liking Hermes and that being something he couldn't wrap his head around.

Given that he was also confused by people wanting stubble for male characters...I honestly believe he isn't getting any meaningful feedback from the official forum.

[CrownySuccubus]

I am just as baffled by this as I was at hearing that he was surprised at people liking Emet-Selch while not liking Hermes and that being something he couldn't wrap his head around.

It's because of what I said here:

Yeah, that's definitely not the interpretation I got. It felt like Hermes' "care" for Meteion was merely a means to an end. As I've seen other people mention, despite his disdain for seeing living concepts as tools, Hermes did just that. Despite Meteion's clear suffering and fear of delivering it, Hermes decided he just had to hear it, no matter what. His own existential need was more important than her fear.

On a personal level, I personally just found Hermes to make too many bad/foolish decisions subsequently for me to have any sympathy for him. If he had JUST created Meteion and her abilities in secret, that would have been fine. If had JUST given her sisters their missions and sent them into space in secret, that would have been fine. If he had JUST ignored Venat, Hyth and Emet to hear Meteion's report, that would have been fine. If he had JUST erased everyone's memories, that would have been fine. If he had JUST issued his "challenge" to humanity as an impulsive decision, that would have been fine.

But Hermes doing ALL of these things, one after another, slowly made me lose any sympathy with his character. Whatever sympathetic character he may have once had before Elpis, by the end of Elpis, all I saw was an insane villain.

The writers thought that by having Hermes point out what made his society "scary" and then issuing a challenge to humanity to overcome their flaws, that Hermes would be seen as sympathetic.

But as I said before, by the time we got to Hermes erasing everyone's memories, I already saw him as an insane bastard. Sure, his motives may have ONCE been sympathetic, but he made so many selfish and irrational decisions, even after having explained to him that this would lead to trillions of deaths, that I had no sympathy left.

The memory erasure was the last straw for me. I saw that as a horrible violation of peoples' minds and bodies. And the fact that he erased his own memory so that he could just blend back in and act as if he did nothing was even more galling.