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

[anhaato]

I mean, then we're in absolute agreement. I don't think the writers intentionally set forth to specifically do a Genocide Apologism. However, in the actual story they wrote and published, the text does, in fact, contain a Genocide Apologism. My feeling is they were so laser-focused on making the playerbase love Hydaelyn and convey that she was Good that they were careless and didn't think things through - at least, that's my hope - and here we are.

That's a fair assessment, and again I said before that I know why people feel this way, but I'm choosing to look at what I believe to be their intent.

[Brinne]

That's a fair assessment, and again I said before that I know why people feel this way, but I'm choosing to look at what I believe to be their intent.

My personal feeling is that because I do believe/hope that it was basically unintentional, now that it's been pointed out and come to their attention, that I can get past it and basically forgive it if it is addressed in some way. Please, please do not double down on "Venat absolute good, those Ancients sadly just had to die," FFXIV team. I've loved your game for almost ten years, want to keep loving it, and I really wish I wasn't here, cringeposting all my dignity away. Woe.

[Lauront]

My personal feeling is that because I do believe/hope that it was basically unintentional, now that it's been pointed out and come to their attention, that I can get past it and basically forgive it if it is addressed in some way. Please, please do not double down on "Venat absolute good, those Ancients sadly just had to die," FFXIV team. I've loved your game for almost ten years, want to keep loving it, and I really wish I wasn't here, cringeposting all my dignity away. Woe.

^This. I'm on the fence about the game and willing to give it a chance, particularly now that they've had time to digest how the story was received vs what they intended, but if they do end up just doubling down on such themes, I think I'll take my leave.

I mean, yeah, that's exactly why they failed. In making us sympathize with the Ascians over Shadowbringers they made Zodiark into a Not Actually Evil god, thus writing themselves into a hole that made it hard to justify why what Venat did was good. When they made Zodiark neutral at worst, the introduction of "oh the world was gonna die anyway" didn't really stick. Instead of accepting that Hydaelyn is now a morally gray figure at best (allowing us to defeat an intergalactic world-ender, at the price of ending a civilization) they tried and failed to retcon that back to Hydey good Zodey bad world gonna die (I feel like YoshiP was partly responsible for this) and it fell apart. This is intent vs result, my point.

And most of us here would agree with that.