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

[PawPaw]

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No...I really don't care. In what headspace could I possibly justify my single life being more valuable than an entire planet's and generations of people yet to be born? Also, just to clarify, this is not real and is all make-believe. If this scenario happened in any form of media that I was consuming, I would laugh and shut the book, turn off the TV, leave the theatre, whatever. And then I'd leave a scathing review of the media. It's just that bad.

Guess we'll have to agree to disagree on Emet. I don't consider showing us his real self before he became the Emet-Selch of our time to be whitewashing as he had committed no crimes that needed to be glossed over. And I never felt before then that I was supposed to unilaterally agree and love him. It was a decision that I could come to on my own after hearing the entire story (at the time) for myself. Some people liked him, some didn't and that's fine. The game does not force the issue either way, unlike with Venat.

No, my issue is not that they didn't paint Venat as being an outright villain, my issue is that they paint her as objectively good instead of as what she is which is morally gray. Period. They tell me that she is good, that she is my mother, that she did this because she believed in me, that this was all for the best and what they accomplished was making my character an unwitting accomplice to her genocide. You keep trying to drive home this idea that "Emet killed so much more! he was responsible for more death!" as though that makes it alright and absolves Venat of her setting up all that death to begin with. Venat is responsible for death in masses, far more than the Ascians, and I would have liked for that to have been meaningfully reflected in the game. Not in some silly music video propaganda piece meant to make me feel sympathy for her while downplaying the atrocity of her acts, but plainly and honestly. And I would have liked for my character to be able to call her out on her actions and show their displeasure at allowing their actions to be the cause of death for their past self and all of their friends and loved ones, at the bare minimum. In the last expansion pack this game did a wonderful job of giving me the pieces and allowing me to come to my own conclusions, in this one, they took all that away and instead told me exactly what I believed and felt.

Yeah, she's deader than dead. At least I can take that small concession away from all of this.

On your last point, we can agree wholeheartedly. Time Travel is a damn menace and it was a mistake to use it at all. Without Elpis and the absolute mess it created, EW would actually have been a fun EP for me.