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

[redheadturk]

Personally? I would have preferred the paradox.

[PawPaw]

snip

I honestly do. not. care. about the idea that "if she hadn't committed all these crimes, you wouldn't exist!". We are talking about a relationship that lasted for maybe half a day, and in that half a day she somehow came to form the unshakeable belief that my single life was worth literally becoming a subversive agent, killing billions and sentencing endless more to suffering and misery? It's absurd. It's storytelling at its absolute nonsensical rock bottom. I have no doubt that the writers fully intend you to see that as a viable excuse and just nod and lap it up, but I'm sorry, I can't do that, it's an outright insult to intelligence.

And of course the writers intend for you to sympathize with Emet. He was our best friend a dozen millennia ago and the entire point of ShB was allowing us to see a different side, to understand that the story wasn't as straightforward as we had been previously led to believe. I was totally supposed to find Emet morally gray and I did. That's what made ShB so fantastic. But at the end of the day, the game never tries to tell me that simply making Emet and the Ascian plight relatable also made them "correct". I didn't get an Emet minion at the end of ShB proclaiming "HERO, HERE'S A BIG HERO HERE!". There was no belief forced upon me, it was up to me to decide how I felt about him and I APPRECIATED THAT. EW? The complete polar opposite somehow. Also, whitewashed? No, disagree. What we saw was an Emet-Selch the way he had been in his life, before he became the person we knew. There is no need to "whitewash" someone who has done nothing wrong at that point in time. And no one has ever tried to brush off or excuse the crimes committed by the Ascians after the Sundering, so that is incorrect.

I think it's funny that you are claiming that I had options to show empathy to Emet or to any Ascian at any point during the game. My options in dialogue are either "aggressive" or "more aggressive" because the game will never let me forget that this is, ultimately, a villain. Flip the script to Hydaelyn/Venat. Where is my option to be aggressive? Nowhere. All I can show is love, thankfulness and a bit more love. The bias and imbalance is quite plain if you care to see it. As for what do I want? I'll just give you the same response that everyone who asks that question in this thread gets: We can't change the story that has happened so far, but we can certainly make it known how we felt about the story for anyone who cares to find out and keep a place alive where others who feel like us but have been bullied out of other places can come and speak freely about what they liked and didn't like. Because that is definitely a thing that happens. That's all.

Also, sorry I missed this but Emet is now responsible for the deaths of Minfillia, Moenbryda and Paplymo? Have you forgotten that the Ascians are an organization of thirteen people? I love how everyone just dogpiles Emet-Selch with everyone's misdeeds when the guy has been asleep in the Rift since his death as the Emperor in 2.0.

[Theodric]

The writers were fully prepared to resort to memory wipes, the power of friendship, dead characters coming back to life and time travel. With that in mind, the idea that Venat could not do anything differently simply doesn't hold up under scrutiny. She was possessed of knowledge of the impending arrival of the Final Days. A literal apocalypse. Instead of using that knowledge to protect and preserve she stood by idly and allowed disaster to strike. Many of her people were wiped out by the Final Days, which in turn led to the planet itself being at risk of dying. Had it not been for Zodiark being summoned, Etheirys never would have recovered.

So we have a bunch of Ancients who lost loved ones to the Final Days that Venat is indirectly responsible for. Then we have many Ancients sacrificing themselves to Zodiark in order to protect and preserve what remains of their loved ones and the planet itself. Only for Venat to throw a petulant fit and inflict genocide upon the Ancients that remained based on a belief that they would, in the distant future, die out. This belief is never confirmed to be a certainty, either - and it was fed to her by a biased third party at that.

If that wasn't atrocious enough? Not only did Venat inflict genocide upon her own people, she lied about the nature of Zodiark and the Ascians and sought to eliminate all knowledge and memory of the Ancient world. Which in turn, is yet another trait and goal associated with genocide.

That the Sundered benefit from Venat's actions and Emet-Selch did questionable things is irrelevant in the context of the story. Especially a story that has proven to be more than willing to moralise elsewhere and show contempt for decisions made for the alleged 'greater good' if the cost is considered to be too high.

The story simply has an unpleasant habit of gifting the protagonists every possible advantage only to blame the antagonists for not just rolling over and allowing themselves to be wiped out.

It doesn't help, of course, that many Venat enthusiasts insisted that there was never a good excuse for genocide only to turn around and resort to moving the goalposts when it turned out that the Sundering was no accident and was, in fact, a deliberate act on Venat's part.

All in all, Endwalker was very much FFXIV's version of the 'Burning of Teldrassil' and 'Game of Thrones: Final Season' moment for many of us.

[SpectrePhantasia]

If you wanted an option to tell Venat to piss off, I don't see how you aren't clamoring for the same option towards Emet, especially when he said "Remember that we once lived". My entire point is you cannot be angry with Venat or how the arguable moral dissonance of how the writers handled her than be perfectly fine with Emet and how the writers handled him. Either way it just comes down to "character did a bad". And all I can think is "okay." They're both dead now. You killed both of them. One of them, the one you're angry with, is super dead. What else do you want?

I do actually agree with this; I think Emet too got some of the "EW writing woobification" treatment that kind of sidesteps the atrocities that he committed, even though you know exactly why he's doing it and you can find it sympathetic. I was more than happy in 5.0, where the respect and assurance you give him is to his history and loved ones that he fought to the point of orchestrating rejoinings to bring back. However, even I, a big fan of the Ancient society, found it going a bit far for the WoL to appear like they care that deeply for him as was shown in Elpis. Then again, I find this, in Emet's case to be a lot easier to justify. Firstly, he was one of your closest friends before the Sundering, meaning that part of that attachment can come from lingering remnants of Azem. And secondly, the Emet you encounter and treat as such is the one of the past, who has yet to do anything wrong. When you meet him again in Ultima Thule, he makes no excuses for himself and doesn't back down on why he fought you in the first place. No such distance is given to the present Venat of Hydaelyn, when you once again encounter her.

In a perfect world, I think the player should be able to distance themselves from both characters, as both are very morally dubious; but the fact of the matter is that one of them we fought as an actual antagonist final boss of an expansion, and the other is being regarded as a hero, with no opportunity to denounce or combat her ideals in the way Emet's were. I agree with the heart of what you're trying to say, but trying to argue that there isn't an incredible bias towards Venat in the writing is simply madness.

[DevonEllwood]

I had completely forgotten about this:

@Ayuhra

"Now two expansions of the story, where one ended in Anima with the post MSQ ending on the moon and the next started up with the world in flames would mean a whole lot of Fandaniel and Zenos which probably would upset people.... Fandaniel is my favorite character in the game but I know most people dislike him and his archetype."

More Fandaniel? I wish. He's my second favorite only because Beatin comes off more as a person and less of a "character" character. I see him in people I know and in myself and I am glad so many events happen in Gridania because that just means he has more chances to appear. I'm still miffed at all you people not voting for Bert. You denied the world more Beatin and that is a crime.

I used to hate Hermes though, I felt he was a complete letdown and he kinda still is. After several months though, I realized I agreed with a lot of what he had to say. His statements on souls was almost completely forgotten through the rest of endwalker and I really wish it had more focus, but, no one else agreed with them. Venat didn't care, and the sundered definitely don't care. I like that he never gives a direct answer of Meteion having a soul or not. Instead we get a long explanation and demonstration on it doesn't matter if she has one or not. It doesn't matter for anything because we all share the same basic needs and justify our existence. I really would like to see more on that in future expansions. Maybe we can have a character that is born like everyone else but doesn't have a soul. Make there be a reason, make it a mystery to figure out. How would the character feel being denied something that everyone else has? How would they feel knowing upon death their entire existence is null and void and this single life ticket is all they have?

Another thing I agreed with is that not everyone needs to have a purpose. Or really everyone has the same goal in life as everyone else: to be happy. I really wish Endwalker would have focused more on this than some more "concrete" concept of purpose. There could be a person who spends their entire life working as a grocery store clerk, never changing. They could die unhappy knowing they could have done more with their life, or die happy just vibing with whatever is thrown at them. The same for the scientist who works to better humanity; die happy knowing you did a good job, or die unhappy because you could have done more. This is just basic philosophy but Endwalker seemed to have favored the "concrete" niche approach. I just don't buy the "you need to find your place in the world/society" bs. This could be "oh, cultural differences" except this is prevalent in humanity everywhere.

I just really hate Hermes's whole " I feel I am the only one that suffers therefore everyone else needs to suffer" schtick. It just brings back bad memories.

If everything was taken away from the stories of the expansion, all the music, all the cinematography, all the voice acting, and just leave the "on paper" stories, I feel every expansion is roughly the same. Excluding Heavensward patches and some aspects of Shadowbringers ("And all the friends were actually okay!"), they're all just adequate. Except Endwalker. Endwalker, with the exception of a few instances, comes off as a confused collaboration between a teenager and a 9 year old. I'm not saying a 9 year old can't write a good story, but why is the moon a spaceship. Is this some other game reference I'm not understanding?

People have brought up "bringing characters back" and I am okay with the writers doing that. As long as they DO something with it. Should Gosetstu have died? Probably, but I really like the interaction between him and Tsuyu. Him seeing his dead daughter in her, her getting her memories back but hiding it because she was happy for once in her life. I love that she, found her own self irredeemable and would rather die with her happy memories with "grandpa". The scions all being alive for Shadowbringers actually brought something; further characterization and conclusions to their arcs. Them being alive for Endwalker brought almost nothing except for npcs to have to do stuff with.

@Skyborne

We had a character like that, not by your specific example, but that was literally Emet. He traveled the world and was willing to throw everything away after the birth of his son. The line people like to throw around is him relating the sundered to ants or something. I don't know who is weirder: The people who take him literally and say "he has a point", or the people who say "cool story, still genocide". It's a coping mechanism. If you are killing people you either accept it for what it is or you dehumanize the enemy. He took the second option and tried convincing himself even though deep down he knew it wasn't true. He saw the sundered as children, just like Hydaelyn. He was delusional and so was she, the difference being he cracked after 12k years of suffering and pressure, she was coo coo out of the gate.

Hydaelyn only acknowledged what she did once and that's because she realized the amount of suffering she caused was horrible, but it had already been done. She based her understanding of the sundered world on a single individual and a massive outlier. What story did we tell her on the bridge? You think we told her about the two sisters who got mauled to death in the snow? Maybe everyone getting massacred in the waking sands? The dragon who had to kill her own tempered children? The refugees starving in the streets? No we probably just told her about some arbitrary crap that wasn't scary and it probably involved moogles.

I was going to add on more stuff after work, but pawpaw beat me to it. I'll just put in Venat should have lost her memory too and the sundering should have been an accident. Problem solved.

[YukikoKurosawa]

snip

You....don't care that if she hadn't done what she did you and your ENTIRE reality would not exist? Are you actually being serious? Your entire reality would cease to exist along with you which would also have the added consequence of creating a time paradox. Even Eldibus tells you you cannot change the past no matter what you do. There was nothing else she could do other than what was destined to happen. And the writers never let you forget Emet is a villain? They could not be sublte in beating you over the head that he's really a good boy who just did bad things. Even Darth Vader was not this blatantly whitewashed and Darth Vader didn't even do as much evil. Vader only blew up one world. Emet blew up, what was it, 8?

Considering this and what you said above, sort of confirms that your issue is they didn't just blackwash her completely. Yes, she would've probably done the same thing even if you hadn't gone to the past and told her everything. She already has her own motivation (seeing what her people were resorting to to restore the world, taking what Meteion said about the fate of other worlds who led a similar fate, and deciding forcibly sundering the world and her people and confemning them to live with suffering so they can appreciate joy and have meaning rather than ignore suffering like they had always done), still either way she knew she had to do it for the sake of maintaining our future. But at no point did I think the writers were excusing her completely, they just weren't villifying her and obviously wanted you to sympathize with her, but that's not the same as totally absolving her. Your problem is you're mad that she wasn't just blatantly villified and treated as such by us. Zero moral ambiguity, just straight up "Hydaelin evil".

But Emet is fine. Okay. You literally kill her and destroy her soul. Emet doesn't even get such a horrible fate.

The bigger problem is the fact that they've, once again, used time travel as a literary crutch, creating more headaches and arguable plot holes in the process. I am still confused how ShB even makes any sense considering Alexander estalbished you cannot change the past, and then we do just that in ShB. Unless Exarch Graha was from an alternate timeline entirely......which just creates even bigger questions and is actualy worse because now we have to deal with the existence of alternative timelines. Like Did Venat still Sunder the world in Graha's timeline considering the 8th calamity happened, the WOL is dead, the Ascians were never stopped. EW made this problem orders of magnitude worse.

[Theodric]

As an addition to my previous post, though, I don't really care much about the 'misdeeds' of particular characters and factions themselves. I like a bit of edge and grit in the games that I play and I'm comfortable enough in my moral compass that I don't need fictional fantasy stories to conform precisely to modern day real world takes on 'good' and 'bad'.

It's entirely the double standard that bothers me. The lengthy string of 'it's okay when we do it' present throughout the story. The inability for the player to be left to come to their own conclusions and opinions. It'd be entirely possible to have more variety in terms of dialogue whilst still keeping the story entirely on rails. The game isn't shy about having a lot of dialogue in every patch and expansion.

We'd still have fought Hydaelyn no matter what, so it strikes me as odd that the player wasn't given access to more scathing dialogue options both before and after the battle against her. Certainly, there was never any shortage of blunt dialogue available for those who begrudged the necessity of having Emet along for the ride for portions of Shadowbringers.

[PawPaw]

snip

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.

[EagleDynamics]

You....don't care that if she hadn't done what she did you and your ENTIRE reality would not exist? Are you actually being serious? Your entire reality would cease to exist along with you which would also have the added consequence of creating a time paradox.

if me not existing means that millions would be spared then id choose that option too.

[Xirean]

@YukikoKurosawa

Just a quick note on the time paradox bit. We know for a fact that changes can be made to the timeline and things continue uninhibited. G'raha still exists. The crystal tower still exists. He time traveled to undo a tragedy and as far as we know, that timeline still exists. Buildings and a person from that timeline still exist. This is why that idea that we can't change things falls flat. I've been shown through Alexander that time loops are a thing. I've also been shown through ShB that timelines are a thing. I see no reason to commit atrocities in the name of a time loop. I've mentioned this much previously in this thread, but put simply, it's obvious they didn't want to deal with multiple timelines, which is fine. Just don't do time travel then. Do time viewing. Let us see what happened without being able to interact with it. The sundering is a horrible event that occurred and was somewhat implied to be an accident. Now with EW that event was given purpose and intention. All other issues with EW aside, this is the single biggest issue I take with the games story. Especially because it's so easily resolved even without deleting existing content.

She literally couldn't do anything but what she did because she knew doing anything else would mess up the timeline and you would cease to exist.

Sorry, can't resist.