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

[Lauront]

Yeah, I thought it glossed over some key aspects a little too much for my liking. While she's popular, they should at least grapple with what she did and not mince words about what sundering means in this context. Not expecting them to say she's a terrible person, but this to me reads as a hagiography, and it moves a little too fast in taking possibilities or probabilities and treating them as inevitabilities. Reading between the lines, it is more or less saying she's using the calamities to test man, but it's so focused on inundating the reader with an account of her "love" that you could be forgiven for missing that. Certainly agree that the definition of love is a debatable one.

I also thought it was more than a smidgen unfair to Zodiark, to cast him off as the instantiation of some "ill-fated wish", as opposed to the being that the star and its inhabitants can thank for their continued existence. I think at this point I'm going to step back from the game and just take the stance of an observer with what each patch is bringing. If the short stories and future patches do show measurable improvement, great, but I'm not going in with the expectation of it.

[Brinne]

I also thought it was more than a smidgen unfair to Zodiark, to cast him off as the instantiation of some "ill-fated wish", as opposed to the being that the star and its inhabitants can thank for their continued existence. I think at this point I'm going to step back from the game and just take the stance of an observer with what each patch is bringing. If the short stories and future patches do show measurable improvement, great, but I'm not going in with the expectation of it.

Oh, yeah, that was by far the most egregious part of it, and a very fun rerun of "throw the Ancients under the bus to prop up Hydaelyn, because our primary aim is justifying her." Which, again, is pretty LMAO when out of the other side of the mouth they're going on about how selfless and good the Ancients were in a different codex entry. It's just repeating what EW already did - likewise with the hammering on and on about her love, how she meant well, she beat mankind into the ground because she BELIEVED in them, that they could TAKE it, etc, etc. Like I said to Rulakir a long time ago, I can't blame anyone for taking a step back or finding the writing choices around Hydaelyn and the Ancients basically unforgivable - they're really bad.