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

[Lauront]

I think it would have better to tell it in another way, yeah. Maybe frame it as the Ancients struggling and ultimately failing to defeat Meteion despite the warning and their best efforts, which would have made her at least appear as more of a threat. And upon disagreeing with the thought of sacrificing themselves to summon a primal, Venat thought the best course of action would be to Sunder their world to give us a chance. Or something. Idk. lol I think they did Zodiark dirty too after a decade of build up. He had been framed as the big bad from the start, and he got possessed by some washed up Allagan-turned-Ascian resulting in a WoW Classic Ragnaros moment. "TOO SOON, FANDANIEL!"

IMO, my problem is their fixation on trying (rather poorly, at that) to justify the Sundering. Had they just let it remain an accident due to some game of telephone gone wrong, with a third party eager to devour the world taking advantage/instigating it, it would have worked better in my eyes. If the story continued to try justify removing the ancients or pushing the sundered at their expense, it'd be no better IMO. At least the comfort I have with what they did run with, in spite of how poorly executed it is, is that it does such a shoddy job of justifying Venat even as it trips over itself trying to do so. I'll definitely agree with you about Zodiark, but trying to force him into a trial, with those being watered down as they are now, was always going to have this issue... I'd have liked to see the two primals fuse together to end the Final Days's cause, tbh.

[Vahlnir]

IMO, my problem is their fixation on trying (rather poorly, at that) to justify the Sundering. Had they just let it remain an accident due to some game of telephone gone wrong, with a third party eager to devour the world taking advantage/instigating it, it would have worked better in my eyes. If the story continued to try justify removing the ancients or pushing the sundered at their expense, it'd be no better IMO. At least the comfort I have with what they did run with, in spite of how poorly executed it is, is that it does such a shoddy job of justifying Venat even as it trips over itself trying to do so. I'll definitely agree with you about Zodiark, but trying to force him into a trial, with those being watered down as they are now, was always going to have this issue... I'd have liked to see the two primals fuse together to end the Final Days's cause, tbh.

It could have been framed as a last ditch effort to defeat Meiteon as well instead of a "Wow, you guys are crazy, but not as crazy as I am!" by Venat. lol Perhaps they exhausted all possible options, and Zodiark wasn't doing it either. There's so many other ways they could have handled that part of the story.