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

[Brinne]

I mean, my fundamental objection would be the very premise, especially after Shadowbringers (not that it wouldn't be bad anywhere, but Shadowbringers explicitly went out of its way to humanize these people - they're hardly LotR orcs or such), of trying to "justify" the genocide to begin with. When you're asking "how do you justify this genocide?" in seriousness, I think it's likely you're already probably heading down the wrong path, as far as storytelling goes.

And of course, I'm sure we'd agree that the idea of "the Ancients can't accept death" gets very tripped up in the particulars of the storyline, such as their ritual ABOUT "accepting death" having the expectation of being met with horror from the audience, or Venat's motivation centering around her being unable to accept the possible end of her world, in the far future.

[linayar]

When you're asking "how do you justify this genocide?" in seriousness, I think it's likely you're already probably heading down the wrong path, as far as storytelling goes.

I don't think the story is trying to justify genocide.

Yoshida said that the current playable races are descendants of the Ancients, their current forms did not take shape until afterward, meaning the Ancients were not killed in the sundering.

That's why Venat speaks of mankind's future, meaning she sees both the unsundered Ancients and their sundered descendants as being the same people.

[Brinne]

I don't think the story is trying to justify genocide.

Yoshida said that the current playable races are descendants of the Ancients, their current forms did not take shape until afterward, meaning the Ancients were not killed in the sundering.

That's why Venat speaks of mankind's future, meaning she sees both the unsundered Ancients and their sundered descendants as being the same people.

I'm not really interested in rehashing this for about the millionth time in the thread, so all I will say is:

You can interpret things how you like, and the story is obviously consciously avoiding saying outright that Venat "killed" the Ancients to soften her actions, but it's probably going to be a long and difficult road to come anywhere close to convincing me that destroying an individual's body, soul, memories, history, culture, civilization, relationships, and reducing the lifespan of what is left to a tiny fraction of what it once was is meaningfully different from "killing."