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

[CrownySuccubus]

In the end, I was just disappointed that you couldn't tell Venat, "No. What you're saying sounds like a terrible idea. I don't care if Fandaniel played a crucial role in forestalling the Final Days on my timeline. In this timeline, you have a chance to do something about it. Tell the damn Convocation.

"As a friend of mine once said, 'This tragedy, greater than even the Seventh Umbral Calamity, must be undone. If history must be unwritten, let it be unwritten.'"

Honestly, the issue with the alternative approaches I've seen recommended is that they buy into the premise that the ancients had to be "scary" or needed to have some critical flaw.

My theory is that this (and many other problems of the EW plot) center on the fact that the writers wanted to assure the player that the current world is "stronger", with the implication that (like another poster here tried to argue) that "death is necessary" or that tragedy always preludes a brighter tomorrow. (The Ultima Thule song, "Close in the Distance" is all about that concept.) "Even in the face of despair, grow stronger and never stop hoping for a brighter tomorrow" is the story's answer to the question of inevitable oblivion.

However, that argument wouldn't work if what we knew about the Ancients as of ShB was true. They and their society were presented as objectively better than the modern day. They were wiser, more advanced, more powerful, more long-lived and seemingly (based on how they treat you in Amaurot as well as how Emet-Selch describes their willingness to sacrifice themselves for their brethren) more benevolent. If EW had kept that theme, then the argument of "tragedy leads to strength and a brighter tomorrow" would have fallen flat, because the modern races are flat out weaker and living in a worse world than the Ancients ever did. (Granted, it did anyway, but not for lack of the writers trying otherwise.)

So they decided to go with the argument that the Ancients were "decadent" and that they "had to die" so that the younger races would be stronger and be able to fight for the "brighter tomorrow". However, they also didn't want to commit too much to making the Ancients complete jerkwads, because then it would make their beloved Emet-Selch (who they now intend to milk for fanservice) retroactively seem like a deluded idiot in Shadowbringers. Imagine trying to replay Shadowbringers and listen to Emet-Selch talk about the utopia of Amaurot when we go there and they're, like, grinding screaming Lalafells into their coffee or something. Thus, they had to try to make the Ancients "bad...but not TOO bad" which results in the complete dumpster fire that was the Elpis storyline.

[SpectrePhantasia]

Thus, they had to try to make the Ancients "bad...but not TOO bad" which results in the complete dumpster fire that was the Elpis storyline.

I think you pretty much hit the nail on the head with it there, and I said something similar earlier. The Ancients were essentially rewritten to be something entirely different than how they were previously presented, to fit their EW theming of "Go humanity!" This was completely ignorant of the fact that making it that way turns a great deal of what made Shadowbringers a narrative with depth into something far lesser. I think this is a textbook example of how a bad ending can tarnish even the great writing that came before it.

Also, I know it was a while ago, but since I didn't see your direct comment on my last post until now I will say: I respect that desire to not have the "God" of a particular world be wrong or have some fundamental misunderstanding about the people they watch over, at least once. I will agree that JRPG's love to pull that "Man should govern their own fate" stuff, and while I personally enjoy it a good deal, (call it the Persona fan in me) I can see how that would try someone's patience in repeated occurrences. However, I feel that any hope of that being a reasonable conclusion to come to was removed in Shadowbringers, when we learn that Hydaelyn is a primal; not at god. Venat is just another person, no more predisposed to making the "right" choice than anyone else. I think that once that bombshell was dropped, the most fitting and narratively sincere thing to do would be to convey that she is, in essence, no more ascended in thought or ideals than any of her brethren.

[PawPaw]

Imagine trying to replay Shadowbringers and listen to Emet-Selch talk about the utopia of Amaurot when we go there and they're, like, grinding screaming Lalafells into their coffee or something.

It's always the Lalafells

In the end, I was just disappointed that you couldn't tell Venat, "No. What you're saying sounds like a terrible idea. I don't care if Fandaniel played a crucial role in forestalling the Final Days on my timeline. In this timeline, you have a chance to do something about it. Tell the damn Convocation.

"As a friend of mine once said, 'This tragedy, greater than even the Seventh Umbral Calamity, must be undone. If history must be unwritten, let it be unwritten.'"

And yes, this is probably the single most egregious issue for me with EW. I can accept a villain, ffs most of my favorite characters in this game are straight up baddies. What I could not stomach was being faced with someone who had committed the most heinous crime I had come up against in this game (Edit: actually the second most heinous, after Hermes), a crime that my character ultimately contributed to (which was INFURIATING), and then being told "Oh, this is fine though. Because she's on your side." NO! This is all kinds of wrong. She is not my best friend and why are you trying to make me feel as though she is when I can clearly use my brain and see that she has many, many things to explain and answer for? She used the information my character gave her not to save her world, but to destroy it, making me an unwitting accomplice. Why?! Why is my character not horrified? Questioning her motives and actions? I don't appreciate anyone trying to gaslight me in life and I certainly don't expect to run up against it when I play a game. Call a spade a spade and stop trying to force me to believe that she's something she is clearly not.

[Skyborne]

I think you pretty much hit the nail on the head with it there, and I said something similar earlier. The Ancients were essentially rewritten to be something entirely different than how they were previously presented, to fit their EW theming of "Go humanity!" This was completely ignorant of the fact that making it that way turns a great deal of what made Shadowbringers a narrative with depth into something far lesser. I think this is a textbook example of how a bad ending can tarnish even the great writing that came before it.

Also, I know it was a while ago, but since I didn't see your direct comment on my last post until now I will say: I respect that desire to not have the "God" of a particular world be wrong or have some fundamental misunderstanding about the people they watch over, at least once. I will agree that JRPG's love to pull that "Man should govern their own fate" stuff, and while I personally enjoy it a good deal, (call it the Persona fan in me) I can see how that would try someone's patience in repeated occurrences. However, I feel that any hope of that being a reasonable conclusion to come to was removed in Shadowbringers, when we learn that Hydaelyn is a primal; not at god. Venat is just another person, no more predisposed to making the "right" choice than anyone else. I think that once that bombshell was dropped, the most fitting and narratively sincere thing to do would be to convey that she is, in essence, no more ascended in thought or ideals than any of her brethren.

ShB Ancients: "The world we loved and lived for is dying beneath our feet... we must trust in the Convocation and summon Zodiark, even at a great cost! The end has been averted and we are grateful to him. Now let's pick up the pieces of our lives and restore some normalcy..."
EW Ancients, in Venat's manifesto messiah-o-vision: "hurr durr we are silly deluded boomers, WE WILL NOT ACCEPT IT WE WILL NOT ACCEPT IT HELP US ZODIARK AAAAAAAAAAH BRB KILLING MYSELF FOR LOLS MUH PARADISE"
Yoshida: "You guys actually believe Emet-Selch? He's biased, you know! (laughs)"

The worst part of that scene for me which lives rentfree in my head 4-5 months later, is that it implies Venat was sneering at the concept of Zodiark in the first place and saw it as an 'easy out'. Meanwhile in the last part of the Amaurot dungeon, you see the planet in flames and resembling the dead star in UT. Guys, you have to just willpower your way out of the planet going down the toilet! If you used Zodiark, you didn't REALLY beat Elden Ring -- I mean, uh, passed my/Hermes' test!

And yeah. Hydaelyn is not a traditional goddess, just a powerful being who is wearing a skin suit made out of dead people. Just like how Zodiark is a holding tank for souls with a skin made out of the dead. Pretty metal if you think about it like that.

[anhaato]

"As a friend of mine once said, 'This tragedy, greater than even the Seventh Umbral Calamity, must be undone. If history must be unwritten, let it be unwritten.'"

And that completely baffled me when I found out exactly what we were there to do. They literally kept Graha alive at the end of 5.0 to tell us all that IT IS POSSIBLE to go back into the past and change history without affecting YOUR timeline. All you would do is create a new one. So why were we not there to do exactly that? If we went back there to prevent the sundering, or the final days entirely, and then got a glimpse of how our timeline came about (in a way that made it CLEAR that the star was ACTUALLY about to cease to exist if Venat hadn't chosen the sundering), I would've been BESIDE MYSELF. Maybe then the expansion would've actually started earning its 9.0+ ratings on every game site!

So they decided to go with the argument that the Ancients were "decadent" and that they "had to die" so that the younger races would be stronger and be able to fight for the "brighter tomorrow". However, they also didn't want to commit too much to making the Ancients complete jerkwads, because then it would make their beloved Emet-Selch (who they now intend to milk for fanservice) retroactively seem like a deluded idiot in Shadowbringers. Imagine trying to replay Shadowbringers and listen to Emet-Selch talk about the utopia of Amaurot when we go there and they're, like, grinding screaming Lalafells into their coffee or something. Thus, they had to try to make the Ancients "bad...but not TOO bad" which results in the complete dumpster fire that was the Elpis storyline.

The thing is, that would've been completely fine and actually added a certain kind of depth to his character. I was initially expecting exactly that when we got to Elpis, only to see that... they were completely fine? And Hermes' angst about "who's allowed to live" is still very much an issue with humanity as it currently stands. If we went to Elpis and found a dystopian society instead of the paradise Emet claimed it was, it would've cast his actions in a whole new light. Sure it might have cheapened his arc in post, but I'd take that over us essentially becoming a villain while the game tries to pretend we aren't. But they wanted us to keep feeling bad for the Ancients, fine, then at the very least they could've made Hydaelyn not this abject good figure they try to paint her as. If we had come back with new horror at how dark she truly was, instead of acting like she was a hero through and through, that would've also made the story a fair bit better.

[Lauront]

ShB Ancients: "The world we loved and lived for is dying beneath our feet... we must trust in the Convocation and summon Zodiark, even at a great cost! The end has been averted and we are grateful to him. Now let's pick up the pieces of our lives and restore some normalcy..."
EW Ancients, in Venat's manifesto messiah-o-vision: "hurr durr we are silly deluded boomers, WE WILL NOT ACCEPT IT WE WILL NOT ACCEPT IT HELP US ZODIARK AAAAAAAAAAH BRB KILLING MYSELF FOR LOLS MUH PARADISE"

And yeah. Hydaelyn is not a traditional goddess, just a powerful being who is wearing a skin suit made out of dead people. Just like how Zodiark is a holding tank for souls with a skin made out of the dead. Pretty metal if you think about it like that.

I don't think there's a primal the game has bent over backwards as much for as her in trying to portray her, unlike all the others, as a deity. If they're going to do that, they may as well do it for the much more potent one...

[CrownySuccubus]

I respect that desire to not have the "God" of a particular world be wrong or have some fundamental misunderstanding about the people they watch over, at least once. I will agree that JRPG's love to pull that "Man should govern their own fate" stuff, and while I personally enjoy it a good deal, (call it the Persona fan in me) I can see how that would try someone's patience in repeated occurrences. However, I feel that any hope of that being a reasonable conclusion to come to was removed in Shadowbringers, when we learn that Hydaelyn is a primal; not at god. Venat is just another person, no more predisposed to making the "right" choice than anyone else.

Call it the optimist in me wanting to accept the story on the terms the writers wanted. As I've mentioned in the past, I liked Venat's character and charisma and found her standpoint interesting, but that's within the story's moral framework. Looking at the story from the lens of the real world, I'd slap her and say "What the fuck is wrong with you!?".

Also, I've mentioned before that I'm a skeptic, so I don't inherently believe in higher powers and whatnot, but I do find the idea fascinating. I don't like "Only man has the right to create destiny" stories because I don't deify humankind any more than fictitious beings. So again, for EW, I was able to (mostly) turn off my brain and just accept that the story portrayed Venat as "correctly knowing better".

[Misplaced_Marbles]

Forget mental hospital, that would straight up turned into horror game (ala dead space) XD

Lol, imagine a hallucination of Haurchefant with glowy eyes and mouth hauntig the WoL.

Also, eh...

[Lauront]

Also, I've mentioned before that I'm a skeptic, so I don't inherently believe in higher powers and whatnot, but I do find the idea fascinating. I don't like "Only man has the right to create destiny" stories because I don't deify humankind any more than fictitious beings.

Aye, personally I'm not a huge fan of the kill/punch god themes myself. It's one of those aspects of this series that has never resonated too much with me. I was glad that XII actually had the removal of the Occuria come with some significant consequences to it. XIV seems to take a different approach, with no gods that we know of as yet, but having a lot of the unsundered races be equivalent to demigods (dragons, ancients and probably some of the other alien races), and methods to construct god-like entities.

[Skyborne]

My question to them would be why even try aim for that? Maybe it's "scary" to a being which isn't immortal with creation magicks, but I find it weird to aim to portray it that way, as if they're wrong simply because they're a different type of being - perhaps you could convey that they're a bit strange or otherworldly by human standards, such that we'd struggle to live that way, but to me that's something different from setting out to make them scary. And frankly, that's how SHB dealt with it.

Also, they didn't aim to do this with the dragons which, sure, have some "scary" aspects to them - no one is sitting here saying because Nidhogg went off his rocker (for understandable reasons), that dragon society needs to be reshaped from inside out, and their kind wiped out to something less "scary". Also, there is a sidequest in Elpis that does ask you to opine on how you find the ancients, giving 1) as gods 2) not too dissimilar from us (sundered) and 3) inscrutable. So clearly it runs a gamut of options, all of which I'd argue are somewhat true.

Honestly, the issue with the alternative approaches I've seen recommended is that they buy into the premise that the ancients had to be "scary" or needed to have some critical flaw, when they could just as easily have had the Sundering result from an accident or (orchestrated?) misunderstanding, instead of fixating on justifying it. I think you came to a similar conclusion here.

Exactly. And to me, it's no less innate to them than a dragon's great powers are. People keep trying to frame this with us as humans as the gauge of what's "natural", but in the context of the setting, these powers are natural and innate to them. I'd speculated in the past that maybe her faction had misdiagnosed the origin of the crisis, which would be understandable if you just saw creation magicks run amok, which I think would've been a more plausible motive than what they went with.

Vehn Aht: "My fellow brothers and sisters, if draconity is to completely defeat the Omicron, you must lend me your souls so that I can remove your wings and cut out your vocal cords. Only with our claws and fangs alone will we find the eternal light! No flying or using fancy magicks! Walk! (shields her favorite chosen one dragon with her voice magicks)"