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

[CrownySuccubus]

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.

Indeed. I'm curious to meet the Twelve, and hope they'll actually be benevolent deities. I know the term "god" is a loaded word, but I'm perfectly willing to call an immortal, clairvoyant and ultra-powerful being a god if its something worthy of respect. Likewise, I want to know if the new "Perfected Primals" are going to stick around. If so, it's gonna be hard for me to pick between Horse Daddy Ramuh and Lakshmi of the Divine Bosom.

[Lauront]

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)"

I found this pretty funny: flip the narrative here from "experience" to "avoid" (or "reduce") and change some of the names here, and what does this sound a bit like.

[anhaato]

Everything we did in the past completely flies in the face of everything G'raha did in Shadowbringers. He spent CENTURIES trying to keep a dying world alive in the hopes that he'd eventually reach us somehow and get us to save it once and for all, in order to prevent something bad that happened in his timeline. He did that under the assumption that his timeline, and he himself, would cease to exist should he successfully rewrite history. His own life, his reality, were the trade off for doing such a thing, and he chose a better future for everyone else on the First and the people of the source in the new timeline, rather than trying to simply fix his own. But surprise, he didn't cease to exist! Instead of erasing his timeline, we just created a new one!

So, given that, there should've been no negatives had we intervened and protect the Ancients from their demise, right? Because they weren't THAT bad, right? That's why we were supposed to sympathize with the Ascians, right? We'd have our timeline and go defeat Meteion, and the Ancients would get a timeline where they find a way to solve the problem by their own merit. That should make perfect sense given everything in Shadowbringers, but Elidibus just HAD to say "ur not allowed to change history!!!! changing the past is bad bad bad!!!!!" And, yknow, I really believed we were about to defy him when we were discovered by the Elpis gang, I really wanted to believe that we were about to be like "sorry Elidibus, sorry everyone, I know I was warned about changing the past but I have to do this," but instead we just created a paradox and let the destruction of their world carry out. Why did we do that? Are we, the player character, seriously so cold and uncaring about worlds that aren't ours that we let it happen to the Ancients and think it's fine just because it allowed US to live? When we got back to the gang on the source, how on earth did G'raha not go "YOU WHAT!?" when we told him what we did? We were handed the cheat code to do exactly what he did, and we did nothing.

(1/2)

[anhaato]

(1/2)

I know the answer is "because they were gonna die anyway," but in the writers' quest to make the Ancients jUsT LiKe uS in order to make us sympathize with the Ascians, they failed to give us the impression that they were a doomed society. They drove it in so hard that they made them look like a people who deserved and were denied a chance to survive. Listen, I spent several posts talking about how I know what the devs intended, so I'm not going to go as far as calling this purposeful genocide apologism, but by god, they're just SO BAD at writing gray morality. Everything has to be GOOD or BAD, and they're so stuck in this mindset that when it came time to actually flesh out Ancient society they had no idea how to make them look both good and bad. What we got was a society that just looked and interacted a lot like ours but with each person being more magically powerful, and some dude and his bird who got angsty and went school shooter on them. And then, when Venat made her decision, they had no idea how to portray it as the morally objectionable action it really was. Instead of focusing on the lives and societies SHE sacrificed in doing so, they made it look like all of the repercussions were solely on her own being. And let's not forget how many years they spent trying to set Hydaelyn up as a shady figure! Everything she had been doing up through Heavensward was starting to get darker and darker, down to literally stealing Minfilia from us and turning her into a mouthpiece. But when it came time to make Hydaelyn her own character, what did the devs do? Retcon EVERYTHING that had been setup and make her pure good. It just doesn't work.

Until we see how things actually happen, WITHOUT us being present, maybe then they'll be able to justify the sundering, but I highly doubt we'll ever get now that they're keen to move on from this storyline entirely. And you know what? I'm actually ok with that. I hope they never again approach this level of moral dilemma and this many lives hanging in the balance of whatever is going on. They've proven extensively that they can't handle it.

[PawPaw]

Indeed. I'm curious to meet the Twelve, and hope they'll actually be benevolent deities. I know the term "god" is a loaded word, but I'm perfectly willing to call an immortal, clairvoyant and ultra-powerful being a god if its something worthy of respect. Likewise, I want to know if the new "Perfected Primals" are going to stick around. If so, it's gonna be hard for me to pick between Horse Daddy Ramuh and Lakshmi of the Divine Bosom.

I used to be really interested in the Twelve and thought that surely there was some amazing backstory on them and their creation. I was excited when I heard that the Alliance Raid would tell us all about them. What I've taken away from that trailer though, is that they're just primals. Probably dreamed up by the early sundered as they crawled around with their stone tools trying to figure things like wheels and fire out.

I could be wrong, of course, and I'd be thrilled if there was actually an amazing twist behind their origin, but that was what my first impressions were and that made the prospect of them much less exciting for me. Guess we'll see soon why we actually need to kill the "gods".

[KizuyaKatogami]

I used to be really interested in the Twelve and thought that surely there was some amazing backstory on them and their creation. I was excited when I heard that the Alliance Raid would tell us all about them. What I've taken away from that trailer though, is that they're just primals. Probably dreamed up by the early sundered as they crawled around with their stone tools trying to figure things like wheels and fire out.

I could be wrong, of course, and I'd be thrilled if there was actually an amazing twist behind their origin, but that was what my first impressions were and that made the prospect of them much less exciting for me. Guess we'll see why we actually need to kill the "gods".

I saw someone theorize recently that all the 12 are just previous iterations of Azem….and i swear to god if there is that level of Azem ego wanking in that raid it’s going to sour my mood the entire time.

[Brinne]

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!

Lmao, to quote a friend of mine again: "Oh my god, she really just told the Ancients to just bootstrap."

If I was faced with an incomprehensible apocalypse that destroyed my world, I would simply hope my way out of it. RIP to the Ancients but I'm different.

[Skyborne]

I used to be really interested in the Twelve and thought that surely there was some amazing backstory on them and their creation. I was excited when I heard that the Alliance Raid would tell us all about them. What I've taken away from that trailer though, is that they're just primals. Probably dreamed up by the early sundered as they crawled around with their stone tools trying to figure things like wheels and fire out.

I could be wrong, of course, and I'd be thrilled if there was actually an amazing twist behind their origin, but that was what my first impressions were and that made the prospect of them much less exciting for me. Guess we'll see soon why we actually need to kill the "gods".

Here's my dumb "theory": the Twelve are just toy puppet-constructs made by Hydaelyn based off the memories of the 12 who became her magical skinsuit in order to teach the cavemen sundered how to human. They were placed back into their toybox soon after, but something went wrong and they are awake, I guess. There will probably be nothing about the Convocation's early attempts to work with humanity, as Emet said in 5.0. The 'epilogue of the Hydaelyn and Hydaelyn and Hydaelyn and also guest starring Zodiark from Devil May Cry I guess saga' part has me pessismistic, though I'm sure I will be wrong and I will consume my shortpants.

Anyway, while Nald'Thal's design looks super cool and I love how the god of crafting's halo is made of nails, I'm not a fan of the idea of just running through a gauntlet of the Eorzean pantheon that has been in the background of the lore for a decade and casually just slaughtering them one-by-one before heading back home for burgers and coffee.

[PawPaw]

Here's my dumb "theory": the Twelve are just toy puppet-constructs made by Hydaelyn based off the memories of the 12 who became her magical skinsuit in order to teach the cavemen sundered how to human. They were placed back into their toybox soon after, but something went wrong and they are awake, I guess. There will probably be nothing about the Convocation's early attempts to work with humanity, as Emet said in 5.0.

Anyway, while Nald'Thal's design looks super cool and I love how the god of crafting's halo is made of nails, I'm not a fan of the idea of just running through a gauntlet of the Eorzean pantheon that has been in the background of the lore for a decade and casually just slaughtering them one-by-one before heading back home for burgers and coffee.

That's a pretty good theory honestly. It would certainly be infinitely more interesting than simply having the sad droolers wandering around the ruins of the world imagining that a big man with a hammer gave them strength because they wanted to be strong enough to beat their neighbors up or someshit.

[Brinne]

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.

In terms of "what happened," this is basically exactly what I've been thinking as others have discussed aspects of this, but was having trouble cohering it into anything worth posting. Yes, a huge part of the problem from a writing perspective was essentially trying to have their cake and eat it too. The devs are hyper-aware of the fanbase's love of the Ancients and Emet-Selch; they've been feeding into it with things like the Fanfest concerts and such ever since it sunk in how breakout they really were. Yoshida's personal evolution on Emet-Selch was nearly a character arc in and of itself. In the midst of Elpis, one thing that also stood out to me was the hilarious degree to which it was hammering in, repeatedly, from several angles: "EMET-SELCH IS A GOOD PERSON. EMET-SELCH IS A GOOD PERSON. EMET-SELCH IS A GOOD PERSON!" (I admit, I really didn't mind this and enjoyed it a lot - it was consistent, given the context, with how I read the character in Shadowbringers. But wow, when you take a step back, is it insane when you consider the overall approach to the Ancients as a whole, playing out right alongside that.)

I will say that I'm reluctant to write off not demonizing the Ancients as just coming down to protecting Emet-Selch, though, in terms of value. (I'm speaking purely in terms of value within the text as it stands on its own, disconnected from writing intent.) I think Shadowbringers as a whole and its compassionate treatment of the Ancients was worth protecting. If, after the nuanced tragedy of Shadowbringers, it was retconned into "actually yes, they were terrible people and this wasn't a horrific competition of resources between two deserving groups where only one can win, we were truly righteous and better", I still would have been angry. Like, it's probably overwrought, but especially in this day and age, Shadowbringers's approach was important to me. The "we went wrong" decision for me wasn't refusing to make the Ancients Very Very Bad, but refusing to adjust their conception of Hydaelyn As Good as would fit the story in a more organic way as it played out. So they very doggedly are going to hammer that square peg into the round hole, and you will like it, dammit!

Another friend and I were just discussing this yesterday, but she brought up what I thought was a really insightful point: the writers' perspective probably identified, correctly, that there would be a disconnect between the players and their worldview, and the Ancients' worldview. However, the assumption would be that the players' instinct would be to defend their world in the face of this gap and this discomfort, rather than confront the discomfort, consider it, and come to the conclusion: hey, you know what? The Ancients make sense. Their way is better. I'd rather live in this world than my own. So basically, we were, uh, less xenophobic than they anticipated?