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

[KageTokage]

It is genuinely concerning if Yoshi's intent was seriously to paint the Ancient society as "scary" because that seems to have failed for virtually everyone, even the people who have no issues with Venat's portrayal.

I think they were expecting Hermes to be successful at convincing the audience that there was something horribly wrong with the world, but instead it just made everyone think there was something horribly wrong with him instead.

[PawPaw]

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.

Forgive me but I just had a mental image of Emet-Selch preparing rooms for a new arrival in the Underworld and leaving little chocolates on their pillows and being gutted when the occupant doesn't show. I'm so sorry.

[aveyond-dreams]

Zenos arguably had the chance to redeem himself in the eyes of many during Endwalker but instead the story got derailed due to Hermes and Meteion. Aspects of his earlier life and relatives could have been explored and seen in-game as opposed to hidden away in side stories. I generally dislike Zenos but I would rather put up with him than despair incarnate, despite both being relatively weakly-written antagonists.

The only instances where I can remember Zenos doing something remotely interesting was when he grabs Yotusuyu by the hair in Stormblood, and the reclamation of his body during Shadowbringers. Hermes and Meteion didn't even have cool moments like that, just nonsensical ramblings about despair and his "test."

[CrownySuccubus]

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.

Again, I'm NOT. The story (and writers) intends for us to find it scary, but I agree with you.

However, I will remind you I'm NOT the one who compared it to real life circumstances. Manifesto did, when they erroneously compared it to humans dying of old age.

Also, I want to point out that Venat was seen as weird for NOT choosing to do it. Emet-Selch makes a snide remark about the decision, and another Ancient at one point tells her how much she looks forward to when Venat goes back to the star, and Venat avoids the question. The way they framed the conversation was like someone asking a career woman when she's finally going to retire and have a baby, when said woman has expressed no desire to do it.

[tokinokanatae]

The most interesting thing about Zenos is how he views us, not his past. I think the time was better spent on Zenos crashing through Meteion’s nest and dunking on her than finding notes of Zenos’s childhood diary as we fought our way through Babil.

[Tarrinus]

By the way was Zenos meant to be a counterpart to Venat? In the sense that they are both high ranking oddities from highly collectivized societies they end up destroying because of the power they perceived the main character to have(remember Venat thinks our timeline is worth it because sundered humanity eventually ends up with our character)? Or am I thinking too hard about it? There's even Zenos's line asking if it would have made a difference if he had a "good reason" which I thought was referring back to Venat at the time.

[Brinne]

By the way was Zenos meant to be a counterpart to Venat? In the sense that they are both high ranking oddities from highly collectivized societies they end up destroying because of the power they perceived the main character to have(remember Venat thinks our timeline is worth it because sundered humanity eventually ends up with our character)? Or am I thinking too hard about it? There's even Zenos's line asking if it would have made a difference if he had a "good reason" which I thought was referring back to Venat at the time.

Mm, I think there are definitely parallels between Zenos and Venat in the text, but the degree to which they may be deliberate are sort of muddled. (Endwalker! It's a Very Confused Expansion!) If nothing else, they are both the ones who ask the significant question of "was your journey worth it?" and describe the WoL's existence in their lives specifically as a "spark."

I mean, I would also go on to joke that Zenos is clearly Venat's ideal form of humanity, as someone utterly immune to despair - the perfect counter to Meteion! - and who constantly seeks excitement and new challenges, and is willing to do whatever it takes and pile however many bodies it takes, to reach their "spark," but.

[kpxmanifesto]

My entire point, from the beginning was that this was the moral grey that the story intended, but failed to provide.

Lol no, just remember the first point I brought up was to discuss how "I don't think the writers were anywhere near the level of elaboration as you make it out to be." For you to say that this is what you've been trying to tell me from the beginning is a strawman.

[CrownySuccubus]

Lol no, just remember the first point I brought up was to discuss how "I don't think the writers were anywhere near the level of elaboration as you make it out to be." For you to say that this is what you've been trying to tell me from the beginning is a strawman.

What the hell are you talking about? I said from the beginning that the writers were trying to make the Ancients morally-grey. Not that they succeeded at doing it. Here, let me quote myself again:

I think they (the writers) had tunnel vision on adding "grey" morality to the original Ancients, in order to contrast what Emet-Selch told us in SHB. Because graying the morality of Hydaelyn and Zodiark worked extremely well to SHB's benefit, so they figured they'd do it again. No, see, the Ancients weren't actually so benevolent that they sacrificed themselves so half their number can live...they just had twisted views about death. Zodiark's summoning wasn't JUST an attempt to save their star, but also an attempt to reclaim the "paradise" they thought they deserved. Just like in SHB, we were supposed to see this as a "no one is right -- every sun has its shadow" theme of moral relativism.

The problem, however, was that in SHB the "true villain" of the entire piece was a nebulous natural disaster. The Final Days at that point could have been a tornado or an earthquake, or space radiation, which makes the gray morality work because it was simply a force beyond control. But EW then not only gave the disaster a name and a face, it then upped the ante by attaching it to mankind's final boss: oblivion. And by doing that, they undid the attempt to create moral gray; because, by definition, anything that fights oblivion is objectively good. There's no other way around it because if oblivion wins, the story is over. The Ancients, unlike Emet Selch, weren't simply "wrong from our protagonist's POV" -- as far as the narrative is concerned, they're just flat out wrong. And, by extension, Venat is narratively right. What she did may not have been pretty or fair, but as far as the story's concerned, it was objectively the correct thing.

This explains why a lot of people liked EW's story up until Elpis. That story thread was the exact moment that any sense of moral gray or relativism was thrown out of the window. After Elpis, you either agree with Venat and the Scions and take the plot's lesson as it was intended...or you disagree with them and the plot starts to make little sense the more you scrutinize it.

So, as we've established, the writers tried to portray Ancient civilization as "scary", thus providing a moral grey to their society. They did not truly succeed in this regard, and for people who did not agree with this philosophy, the story makes less sense the more they scrutinize it. As we now agree, the writers did INDEED do things with this intention, and they are confused about why players did not react the way they wanted.

So again: thanks for finally agreeing with the point I made from the beginning.

[kpxmanifesto]

What the hell are you talking about? I said from the beginning that the writers were trying to make the Ancients morally-grey.

In case you've forgotten, here was my original point for the conversation.

IMO, I don't think the writers were anywhere near the level of elaboration as you make it out to be. We can speculate about whether the writers truly sought to address things like morality, paradise, despair, etc., but to me, having all the events play out as they did despite the WoL traveling back in time and revealing the future to the ancients feels like the writers were just going through the motions and trying to complete the story without spending too much extra time on it. If the sundering didn't happen or the circumstances surrounding the sundering were changed somehow, the writers would have to deal with an altered timeline or a multi-verse timeline like MCU, and it would be significantly more work. To be completely honest, the fact that we have to speculate about different characters' intentions and the story on an internet forum is further testament that the writers did a poor job at explaining things. We're seeking to fill the story in with our own thoughts and ideas because the writers failed to do so.

Edit: Basically you answered my original point with a non-sequitur.