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

[Rulakir]

The fact that Meteion could commune with the dead was disturbing. I can't imagine why Hermes would give her the ability to do that, especially as he did not hold the belief that death was "beautiful" as the others did. Despite my hatred of his character, depending on the dialog options you choose, he does express regret and apologizes for his actions. Venat's not sorry for anything and would do it again, and did if you consider she changed nothing after hearing about the future.

I thought for sure the fact that they chose the name Venat for her spoke volumes based on the character of the same name from FFXII, who was only morally grey if you're feeling generous but definitely presented as an antagonist. It's another reason why I think the gaslighting surrounding her character came after the fact and likely due to someone's insistence that Hydaelyn had to be portrayed/viewed favorably.

As far as her being the main antagonist, it's because for all intents and purposes the Final Days was averted. Mankind had passed Hermes' test and were trying to get back to normal. Her belief that they needed to be able to interact with dynamis was only part of the equation. Mankind had failed her test. It was also premeditated. Not only did she know since Elpis that she was responsible for sundering the world, she gathered people to her cause possibly under false pretenses to help her become Hydaelyn as we saw in the Anyder cutscene in ShB. Everything that happened after that point was a result of the sundering, not the Final Days. I'm not saying that eventually the Ancients wouldn't have had to address Meteion, but they had at least 12k years to figure something out and that was with Zodiark at substantially diminished power.

[CrownySuccubus]

Despite my hatred of his character, depending on the dialog options you choose, he does express regret and apologizes for his actions.

When?

The guy literally continues trying to kill you and keeps mocking you about the coming apocalypse right until you kill him as Amon within the goddamn afterlife. Yeah, Amon didn't see himself as Hermes entirely, but he sure as hell saw himself as Hermes when he asked "Was this the answer I was searching for?" In the end, it was still all about himself.

Also, even if Hermes himself was sorry about his actions right at the end, this changes nothing because he still got to live with his erased memories and get everything he wanted.

As far as her being the main antagonist, it's because for all intents and purposes the Final Days was averted. Mankind had passed Hermes' test and were trying to get back to normal.

Not really. If anything, the pre-Sundering cutscene showed that most Ancients had become horribly unhinged by the Final Days. Sacrificing other lives to revive their people aside, they were now twice as determined to live their lives as a paradise, and their disregard for non-Ancient lives was more pronounced than ever.

Doesn't excuse what Venat did, but this "And then all was well" narrative just isn't true.

EDITING to reply to below so I don't use up my daily post allowances:

I think you can also understand how someone who has a history with certain forms of abuse would find Venat's approach to murder far more personally disturbing, and thus prompting more outrage, versus Hermes's. (Not that Hermes wasn't abusive to Meteion. Oh boy, is that a can of worms.)

By the same token, I hope you can understand how someone who has suffered at the hands of privileged idiots who ignored various rules and warnings that are put into place for a reason would not give a damn about how premeditated Hermes' actions were before Ktisis. And then, after Ktisis, how someone who may be the victim of gaslighting, assaulted in a manner that they can't remember said assault, or may have lost loved ones due to one person's selfishness (for example, the millions of people who have died from COVID because of other peoples' stupidity) can see how evil Hermes was.

[Rulakir]

When?

I didn't choose a single positive option for Hermes, so it's based on what I recall from streamers. I know if you choose "Next time, we will find the answer together." at the end of the Aitiascope he says: "You have every right to hate me. For the fool I was, for the monster I became. But I will not beg forgiveness. The tale of Hermes - the man who knew so much, yet understood so little - ends here."

If anything, the pre-Sundering cutscene showed that most Ancients had become horribly unhinged by the Final Days.

That cutscene wasn't an accurate depiction of events and it was from Venat's biased POV. Even if we were to take it at face value, the Final Days was an apocalypse. Sauntering in and telling people they're not handling their trauma and grief the way you think they should is next levels of tone-deafness.

[CrownySuccubus]

I didn't choose a single positive option for Hermes, so it's based on what I recall from streamers. I know if you choose "Next time, we will find the answer together." at the end of the Aitiascope he says: "You have every right to hate me. For the fool I was, for the monster I became. But I will not beg forgiveness. The tale of Hermes - the man who knew so much, yet understood so little - ends here."

Yeah, that's not an apology. That's the OPPOSITE of an apology. That's "Okay, yeah, I fucked up, and I was way dumber than I thought. But I'm not gonna ask for forgiveness. YOLO, brah!"

That cutscene wasn't an accurate depiction of events and it was from Venat's biased POV. Even if we were to take it at face value, the Final Days was an apocalypse. Sauntering in and telling people they're not handling their trauma and grief the way you think they should is next levels of tone-deafness.

Not sure where you're getting the "this was from Venat's POV" argument from. This was a vision of their own timeline's history given to the WOL -- we have no reason not to trust it as events that happened. And if we do, then that throws literally everything about it into question.

But yes, Venat's counterargument was stupid. But, assuming we're going to trust that this is what happened, the Ancients were too far gone. Again, if we're questioning the integrity of the scene, then literally none of it matters.

[Rulakir]

Not sure where you're getting the "this was from Venat's POV" argument from. This was a vision of their own timeline's history given to the WOL -- we have no reason not to trust it as events that happened. And if we do, then that throws literally everything about it into question.

Nothing about that scene follows events as we know them. There was no group of people who sacrificed themselves for Venat to become Hydaelyn and there was no grand battle between Hydaelyn and Zodiark. The sundering also happened after the world had been restored via the second sacrifice (which Venat made no attempt to stop), the Final Days is still occurring in the background when she approaches the group of strawmen who are begging Zodiark to restore their world.

I shouldn't even say it's Venat's POV beyond her low opinion of her brethren because none of that cutscene is accurate to history as we know it. I've heard it called a montage, an abridged version, etc. Whatever it is, it was not literal and certainly not meant to be taken as such.

[Brinne]

That montage is why I'm sometimes willing to go as far as to use "propaganda" in regards to the apologism. A deliberately emotionally stirring, abstracted, "symbolic" version of events meant to justify a violent act where none of the events depicted actually happened as shown.

With that in mind, even putting aside "lol apologism propaganda" hot takes, I've always thought that presentation was at least "cowardly" on a narrative level by relying on faceless strawmen as Venat's opposition and what "forced" her to do the Sundering, making irrational arguments that none of the actual named Ancient characters we know would make. Can't believe these guys, representative of Ancients in general, were so far gone they just forced poor Venat's hand, etc, etc. Try to mentally replace Emet-Selch or Themis in that scene, debating Venat, and boy does it fall apart fast.

[CrownySuccubus]

Yeah, Occam's Razor suggests that that scene was yet another retcon, along side Venat's "faction" sundering the world to keep Zodiark in check, and Tempering being an intentional defect of the Ascian's design instead of what primals inherently do.

Because if this was Venat's own self-propaganda, the "I did this with the blessings of other like-minded Ancients who believed their brothers had gone too far" would have helped her case.

But yeah, the entire scene was just stupid. Like you said, it throws the Ancients under the bus to make Venat "right". If Elpis had done its job properly and actually made the Ancients feel "scary", like intended, that scene wouldn't have been necessary. But no, they had to try one last time to drive in the "Ancients bad" nail and it "succeeded" only by way of character assassination.

Elpis in general was just a disaster of writing. All of the flaws that exist in EW can be traced back to the decision to go there and then come up with some sort of plot device (Memory-Wiping Tech that only Hermes knows about/can use! How convenient!) to justify why the rest of FFXIV still happens.

[Rulakir]

Can't believe these guys, representative of Ancients in general, were so far gone they just forced poor Venat's hand, etc, etc. Try to mentally replace Emet-Selch or Themis in that scene, debating Venat, and boy does it fall apart fast.

It completely ignores that "no small number" were against the 3rd sacrifice too. I can't help but be reminded of Sodom and Gomorrah where Lot pleaded with God if he could find just 10 righteous people would he spare destroying the cities. Venat apparently had a lot more than that and it wasn't enough for her.

Plus, the sundering happening after Elidibus had exited Zodiark to mediate is also a bad look. I can understand it from a strategic point, what better time to go after Zodiark than when he's sans pilot, but it's also implied they were in the middle of negotiations when she went on the attack. It lends further credence to the belief that it didn't matter what any of the Ancients did, she'd already determined they needed to be 'reset' for their own good.

It's also why The Plenty irritates me because it's based on the premise that the events at Elpis didn't happen. The Ancients were never going to be the same after the Final Days no matter how hard they tried and we'll likely never know what would have happened had Venat simply been honest with everyone. They built up Ancient society as one that thrived on debate, yet both Venat and Hermes make executive decisions for the whole race with the writers claiming it's just a very Ancient thing to do.

[Lauront]

That montage is why I'm sometimes willing to go as far as to use "propaganda" in regards to the apologism. A deliberately emotionally stirring, abstracted, "symbolic" version of events meant to justify a violent act where none of the events depicted actually happened as shown.

With that in mind, even putting aside "lol apologism propaganda" hot takes, I've always thought that presentation was at least "cowardly" on a narrative level by relying on faceless strawmen as Venat's opposition and what "forced" her to do the Sundering, making irrational arguments that none of the actual named Ancient characters we know would make. Can't believe these guys, representative of Ancients in general, were so far gone they just forced poor Venat's hand, etc, etc. Try to mentally replace Emet-Selch or Themis in that scene, debating Venat, and boy does it fall apart fast.

For me it also fails to account for something we came to know, i.e. that the souls inside Zodiark were in a kind of limbo. The Anamnesis scenes, which as you say are referred back to in the Q&A and therefore cannot be discounted, had her acknowledge the good intentions of the Convocation. That montage basically seems to focus on the most grief-struck of the ancients during the world still being on fire, so it's no surprise how they react to her, assuming it's accurate to what happened, but it's certainly not all of what happened. Had they shown something like Elidibus emerging and conveying the state of the souls inside Zodiark to the divided ancients (a division which she thought was important to avoid), quelling opposition to that final plan, with her followers only in very vague terms stating that their doom would repeat but not explaining why... yes, I think it'd undermine the effectiveness of that scene quite a bit in trying to justify her, which even so, I think it does not succeed in doing.

I don't think having different opinions is a bad thing, either. But I'm trying to explain why I personally cannot agree with the "Venat is worse than Hermes" argument. Hermes made selfish and stupid decisions that put entire ecosystems at best at risk, only to find out that OOPS, his incompetence actually puts the entire UNIVERSE at risk. Then, when confronted by how stupid his actions were and how dire the consequences might become, he decides to double down on this and ignore the very people telling him why what he's doing is stupid and apocalyptic. Then, when beaten, he decides to not only violate the minds and bodies of all those present that could stop him....not only to enable his own creation to murder countless people throughout a dozen millennia....but ALSO to erase his own memory so that he can just blend back in and live his life as if nothing happened.

I think even in terms of the scope of it, he can't really be let off the hook, because the WoL had explained to them the events which would unfold, which by that point they'd realised would originate from outside Etheirys and which they concluded was dynamis-related. When Meteion reveals her "manifesto", it should be obvious that at a minimum that'd be the result. No matter how emotional his frame of mind, he still had agency at that point, although I think we're all agreed on that.

On whether Venat or Hermes is worse, I'd say it comes down to whether causing a problem or knowing about it but keeping it to yourself and unilaterally making a decision affecting all of mankind's ability to respond to that problem so that it adopts the "right" attitude to suffering is the worse of the two. They threw in the time loop to muddy the waters a bit with Venat, but it wasn't the reason she gave for constraining her actions the way she did, and if you read her actions through the lens Brinne pointed out (some romanticisation of the suffering she perceived in the sundered world), you can take issue with her for throwing the towel in for what were potentially ideological reasons. I'd still say he is the worse of the two for playing a causal role in it, but where I find her worse is less to do with her own actions and more to do with how the story essentially presents a character that is a fusion of Yunalesca from X and Venat from XII, but would have you think she's a Yuna, Aerith or Ashe. Even if the writers acknowledge that she's comparable to an Emet-Selch warped by a 12k year gruesome toil, the in-story representation of that is lacking, to say the least.