Quote Originally Posted by Brinne View Post
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.