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

[Lauront]

This just caught my eye, apologies. It's sort of odd when you consider "Flow," as described by Ishikawa, as a song about gently accepting death, and part of Meteion's answer as the song of hope to the universe. Endwalker is a very strange expansion, huh.

EDIT:



Well, if nothing else, again, he acknowledges outright in that interview that the audience had a very different reaction than the one he anticipated re: Hermes and ancient society, and the tone on Venat in the Q&A was very different from the one in the game. Mistakes of execution versus intent in writing happen - I think the question is how they adapt to that disconnect going forward.

It does have me wondering if there were potentially conflicting perspectives or sentiments that went into writing the ancients, in all honesty, particularly because the sidequests almost fill in a narrative gap which goes to some length to humanise them more, almost picking up where Amaurot and its shades left off. I have to wonder if there was a divergence here in Ishikawa's sentiments on the matter, and Yoshi's. Very much second your closing statement.

[CrownySuccubus]

Hold on a second. You mean to say your personal interpretation of the story's morality.

Jesus Christ. NO. I do not.

We literally just had someone spell out to you what the writer intended.

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:

What else do you NEED?!

[kpxmanifesto]

Well, first, I don't agree that working is inherently a human's "purpose". Especially not in a world like the one we live in at present.

You're free to believe whatever you like when it comes to this.

Secondly, I really don't see how you're unaware of the difference between dying of old age and natural causes, and willingly committing suicide after reaching some arbitrary "purpose".

There's a difference, but is it a moral issue to commit suicide when their lifespans are infinite? So they live as long as they like and then they end their lives when they want to live no more, or they just keep living. They have a choice. That seems completely sensible to me, and I don't see any moral issues with that. To me, if they didn't have a choice in that, then that would be encroaching on morally grey territory.

[Brinne]

Well, first, I don't agree that working is inherently a human's "purpose". Especially not in a world like the one we live in at present.

Secondly, I really don't see how you're unaware of the difference between dying of old age and natural causes, and willingly committing suicide after reaching some arbitrary "purpose". What you're suggesting is that if, say, Scarlet Johannsen decided she'd served her purpose in life, she should just jump off a bridge and that be considered perfectly normal. The Ancients weren't broken, withered old people. They literally killed themselves while in perfectly sound body and mind. And even if they were old, I don't see old people as having no more purpose in life. But hey, maybe that's just me.

I fully agree with you on not seeing working as a human's purpose (I'm disabled! I can't work! I spend my time making embarrassing cringeposts on forums discussing MMORPGs instead!), but I do think - and this probably comes down to a question of "intent versus execution" - you can't really apply the world we live in to the present to the Ancients' situation. They're immortal, know that reincarnation exists, and the process is fully consensual. That being said, of course there's room for cultural shifts in terms of broadening one's ideas of what one's "purpose" can be - just like, even though the Ancient society was far more humane in their treatment of animals than ours, of course there was still room for improvement there, too. But I can't correlate our hypothetical situation of "putting down people who can't work" to the Ancients' in this case, per se.

[kpxmanifesto]

We literally just had someone spell out to you what the writer intended.

It says in that interview that it was indeed intended, but they were unable to actually have that effect: "Most people came away with thinking they were just "good people" instead." And this is precisely why I don't see this morally grey area you keep bringing up.

[Rulakir]

I have to wonder if there was a divergence here in Ishikawa's sentiments on the matter, and Yoshi's.

I've said since the beginning that EW does not feel like the spiritual successor of ShB. It truly seems like someone told Ishikawa that Venat/Hydaelyn needed to be good and everything had to be rewritten to the extent of throwing Ancient society as a whole under the bus to make the her and the sundering seem more justifiable. There's also the issue that Ishikawa thought she'd have 1-2 more expansions to develop the story and instead was having to rewrite it up until 2 days before the deadline.

As far as I know, it's Ishikawa, Oda, and Yoshi-P who work on the story? I don't know enough about Oda. Yoshi-P's history of being confused by audience reaction isn't confidence building though.

Edit: I've never understood humanity's obsession with life. Natural selection doesn't exist for us, if someone born is capable of life then we will force them to live even if they will be unable of doing anything without assistance, if someone is dying they must be kept alive until they absolutely can't anymore even if they're barely functional and in indescribable amounts of pain. No other creature is treated this way. We euthanize animals for far less and consider it a kindness. Humans are expected to grab hold of and appreciate every second of life whether they want to or not and, if they don't want to, it must be because they're mentally ill.

[Skyborne]

Personally saw no real problem with the Ancients' arrangement on a more pragmatic level... given they are immortal and don't die of age or disease, only through violence. Considering they also had children and likely saw that as quite important, leaving meaningful roles to those children by your departure (knowing you will reincarnate anyway) doesn't seem like a bad idea. A bit like a forest, where having all the old trees smothers out all the light for all the saplings below unless they are cleared through some other means.

Otherwise, with no one really dying, Etheirys would eventually become quite overpopulated... then, I suppose, they'd be forced to look into space travel.

As an aside, soon this thread will be 300 pages. And it will be beautiful. (笑)

[tokinokanatae]

I think the Ancient’s could have very easily come across as creepy—which is why it’s so strange to me that they seemingly had difficulty writing them as such—but they pretty deftly avoided the two biggest pitfalls in Shadowbringers and Endwalker:

1. They made it clear that it was important to work on ways to lessen the gap between people’s innate aether disparities. (As seen in the Shadowbringers robe side quest) So it’s unlikely people with less than “prodigious snifters” of reserve aether were encouraged to “restart and reroll”, so to speak. Hythlodeaus speaks of himself as being limited in this respect, but he’s still in upper government. There doesn’t seem to be a ceiling there, from what little knowledge we have.

2. Choosing NOT to return to the planet is seen as eccentric at worst. Venat isn’t disrespected because of her choice to remain. Hades and Hythlodeaus are confused by Hermes’s anguish—and since Hades has a stronger than usual tie to the Underworld, he seems slightly offended—but they mostly seem bewildered by the idea that Hermes’s choice to take the seat of Fandaniel would mean he’s forcing his mentor to die.

[CrownySuccubus]

You're free to believe whatever you like when it comes to this.

There's a difference, but is it a moral issue to commit suicide when their lifespans are infinite? So they live as long as they like and then they end their lives when they want to live no more, or they just keep living. They have a choice. That seems completely sensible to me, and I don't see any moral issues with that. To me, if they didn't have a choice in that, then that would be encroaching on morally grey territory.

Yet again, I'm not here to debate with you on this. But it is a fact that the intention of END as a story to paint this logic as wrong, or, at the very least "scary".

It says in that interview that it was indeed intended, but they were unable to actually have that effect: "Most people came away with thinking they were just "good people" instead." And this is precisely why I don't see this morally grey area you keep bringing up.

My entire point, from the beginning was that this was the moral grey that the story intended, but failed to provide. They wanted the Ancients to become morally-grey, but their narrative choices did not convey that well. I don't know how many times I can tell you that this is NOT my interpretation NOR my moral standing. But it IS in the story, as per the writer's intention. Players, like you, me or anyone here, can decide that they failed.

Thank you for finally agreeing with what I've been trying to tell you from the beginning.

[Brinne]

Edit: I've never understood humanity's obsession with life. Natural selection doesn't exist for us, if someone born is capable of life then we will force them to live even if they will be unable of doing anything without assistance, if someone is dying they must be kept alive until they absolutely can't anymore even if they're barely functional and in indescribable amounts of pain. No other creature is treated this way. We euthanize animals for far less and consider it a kindness. Humans are expected to grab hold of and appreciate every second of life whether they want to or not and, if they don't want to, it must be because they're mentally ill.

I, for one, as someone unable to live and do many activities without assistance, fully intend to keep living and, furthermore, posting, until all are converted to the following of appreciating Zenos. \o/

(Zenos is not even my favorite character. Emet-Selch is. This is a meaningless joke. ...maybe it's a joke. Maybe.)