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

[Rulakir]

Isn't the most prevalent fan theory that the spooky ghost from 6.1 is a corrupted/evil fragment of Azem? I don't know if that's better or worse than going through Emet's laundry list verbatim.

It's better if the WoL becomes 10/14, it's worse if not. :P

Did Venat want to protect mankind or all life? If she wanted to protect all life then why did she want to abandon the planet to its fate as her main plan? It was Sharlyan's idea to rescue as many species as possible, not hers. Her decisions make no sense if she wanted to protect all life.

She seems to have only cared about the sundered on the Source. We're told by Yoshi-P in the LL Q&A that she purposely left an opening in the sundering spell for Emet to escape, she knew that the shards were collateral damage. Add on the Watcher telling us that the shards share the fate of the Source and, yeah, her 'love of life' was extremely limited.

I honestly would love for a character in game to call Venat/hydaelen on her BS, but I honestly don't think that will ever happen.

We can only hope the writers/devs have seen enough divisiveness about her character that they quit pushing her as good. Unfortunately, a lot of people did love her so they're probably not going to retcon her as having done anything bad as opposed to just dropping the subject.

We now know that every day is out of touch Thursday for YoshiP so I bet he seriously thought we would've been upset with her turning out to be Not Good, and I don't mean evil, I mean anything less than lawful good.

This was the reasoning behind my belief that she would never be evil. I was shocked they wrote her actions to be significantly worse than I could've imagined, but apparently the copious amount of gaslighting to convince players she was well-intentioned and had no other choice worked for a lot of people. :\

I'd sooner take another JRPG cliche that keeps us morally consistent over a "twist" that's just kissing the ass of someone who killed others but spared us.

The ridiculous part is that on paper she's absolutely a villain, arguably the main one in the game, so they did still go that route. The only thing that 'subverted expectations' was their shoddy job of trying to portray everything she did as a good.

The continued emphasis on the future of story being "unpredictable" in the interviews concerns me because being predictable isn't necessarily a bad thing.

I have no faith after EW, especially when they went on about 'matter of perspective' and no one side is right or wrong only to give us Venat.

As for the shards, they're supposed to be reflections of the Source. How are they going to pull another Norvrandt where we can only go to one small area of an entire world unless they're going to write all the shards as being in bad shape? I'm not interested in saving every 'on the brink' shard. I'd rather move the survivors to the First or the Source and be done with this sundering nonsense.

[CrownySuccubus]

and anyone trying to pipe up about "but that would be so boooooring" can stay quiet because none of you complained about another rehash of Church Bad in Heavensward, I KNOW how low your standards are. I'd sooner take another JRPG cliche that keeps us morally consistent over a "twist" that's just kissing the ass of someone who killed others but spared us.

I wasn't here during HW, so no -- I can directly say that I complained about just that. I was also against Shadowbringers first introducing the "LIght and Darkness are equal and both are equally evil when there's too much" cliche, too.

If I have to pick between drinking rat poison and insecticide, my answer's going to be "Neither, thanks".

[Theodric]

Each to their own, though I wouldn't place establishing nuance on the same level as taking poison. Light isn't inherently good and Darkness isn't inherently bad. It was also established as far back as ARR that too much of any element served to cause problems for both the environment itself and living beings.

[CrownySuccubus]

Each to their own, though I wouldn't place establishing nuance on the same level as taking poison. Light isn't inherently good and Darkness isn't inherently bad.

When we're talking fictional metaphysics that do not exist in real life, coherent and original story themes take precedent, since writers can literally make these things mean whatever the writers want them to mean. Nuance and moral relativity done well are fine, but done poorly, it runs into false equivalence. Such as trying to tell us that it's really a good thing that the Ancients died because they killed butterflies.

The story literally suffered for trying to force "nuance" on the Ancients rather than simply sticking to the theme that they were better than modern mortals in pretty much every way and their deaths were an unjust tragedy.

[Theodric]

I'd say the Ancients were screwed over not because of the nuance that existed where Light and Dark are concerned but more so because of the agency of pretty much every character in the story being sacrificed in the name of trying to push the idea that Venat was 'right'. Well intentioned extremists have always been one of my favourite character tropes but FFXIV forgot about the 'extremist' part of the trope and decided to have absolutely nobody of note criticise the consequences of Venat's actions. Worse yet, they were pushed as a 'necessity' despite deciding to tie Venat herself to every sinister event that took place in the game's story on either a direct or indirect basis.

I agree that the Ancients should have continued to be portrayed as being above the petty squabbles of the mortal races - and their demise being an unjust tragedy rather than something that 'had' to happen. At the very least, I think Amaurot served as a better look into the Ancient world than Elpis. The writers would have done well to sit back and let the story 'rest' for a while before deciding to rush to the finale. 6.0 being another largely self contained expansion along the lines of Heavensward would have been wonderful.

[CrownySuccubus]

I'd say the Ancients were screwed over not because of the nuance that existed where Light and Dark are concerned but more so because of the agency of pretty much every character in the story being sacrificed in the name of trying to push the idea that Venat was 'right'.

This is us talking past each other.

"Venat was right" is today's "Emet-Selch was right", which was itself that day's "Nidhogg was right". It's an attempt to contextualize a new morality by adding quote-unquote "nuance" to previously-established morality. In order for Venat to be correct, the Ancients had to be thrown under the bus. "But mommy had a good reason for the genocide, and she felt really bad about it" is their attempt at creating a moral relativism.

[anhaato]

The problem with the light and dark cliches is that literally every dynamic between them has been done ad nauseam so every possible angle is a cliche. Personally I don’t know how anyone goes into this story NOT expecting to get rpg cliches up the ass. The premise doesn’t matter nearly as much as what they do with it, and they made good stories from those cliche foundations.

[CrownySuccubus]

My main issue with "Light/Dark are two sides of the same coin" stories is what I said before: it almost always leads to false equivocating, and also survivorship biasing. Sure, it's possible to avoid these pitfalls, but just like the narrative problems created by clones and time travel, that becomes harder to do the more your story relies on it. And Endwalker is the perfect demonstration of that.

False equivocating leads to apologism like "It's okay that this terrible thing happened, because it enabled this other good thing, despite being in no way necessary, equal or related". And survivorship bias leads to stuff like, "We're glad that the bad stuff happened, because the outcome benefitted everybody who survived it".

Both of these flaws are the basic root of almost everyone's problems with Endwalker's story.

[Rulakir]

Despite ShB showing that excess light can be bad and foes can come in the form of angelic beings, I still felt that Zodiark was undermined by having a 'demonic' appearance especially as we don't have much (if any) experience with dark beings who look monstrous but are good. Hydaelyn, by comparison, being a beautiful angel even if it fit the lore just felt like more visual manipulation compared to Zodiark looking like a Lovecraftian horror.

I was particularly bothered by Y'shtola in Thavnair claiming it was Hydaelyn who had forestalled the Final Days. Anyone who can stand it should NG+ EW to see how Hydaelyn is attributed with the good Zodiark did while the bad things she was responsible for get shouldered off to Hermes/Meteion. I'm not kidding when I say the gaslighting is real. It goes beyond the characters treating her as if she's great and wonderful.

[Lauront]

Perhaps not a dark being as such, but Vrtra is scarcely a runway model. I liked Zodiark's model, although the choice of tentacles, whatever their symbolism (some say sea), is one I find a bit peculiar and maybe ill-advised, if not an active part of the gaslighting.