On Venat's Role in the Story

[KizuyaKatogami]

Maybe it'd be more clear that even when we re-reach the conclusion that most agree that her keeping quiet was one of the worst ideas ever that that would be it. But no we have to make quadruple-ie sure that we've counted all of the ways that it didn't sit well with some. It doesn't come off as there's any distinction between hating her actions and her as a character from some in this thread. It comes off as an oh hey did I not tell you how much I just hate her? Like I super hate her, her dumb face and her choice to keep quiet. Even when we say that we agree that her choice is dumb and that we'd love to have seen more could we please move on. We just get dragged back to the loop. So, sorry if it doesn't come off as a "We like her, but holy smokes her keeping mum about Herme's dumb blind scientific test was the worst." I mean heck I think most even at some point has said they'd of liked more information or to have seen more of what the bloody hell went on post Final Days up to the sundering. It'd be nice if we could move on or not have other discussions turn into round 574 of "But what about Venat staying silent?".

I don’t think people would be as upset if they didn’t paint her as some herois and benevolent. At least that’s my problem with it all. I wouldn’t have nearly as much of a problem with it if they actually described what she did as horrible. But instead we get things like the recent codex entry where she just suffered so much, she had to free us of the ill fated wish that is Zodiark(forgetting that her entire plan relied on him), and that she did it by herself. No mention of the ancients souls she consumed. No mention of how Elidibus and Zodiark are the true heroes of the story. It’s just hydaelyn venat hydaelyn venat.

[Brinne]

I do think the question of "are the Ancients humans or Gods?" fundamentally shifted in the story itself between Shadowbringers and Endwalker. Shadowbringers arguably revolved around the project of "humanizing" (Yoshida/Ishikawa's exact word) them, and building the player to the recognition that they are us in all the ways that matter. Good people, but also genuinely just people, whose deaths were a senseless tragedy, and the mourning of which you were asked to feel empathy for, even if you hated the actions that spun out of that mourning. All the pathos of its finale was built upon that specific understanding as its fundamental core.

Endwalker, of course, flipped that entirely, and ran to the exact opposite conclusion Shadowbringers had, in deliberately attempting to paint the Ancients as so Other and Alien that it's actually natural, okay, and for the greater good that they all died, so that Hydaelyn could be justified in murdering them. After all, if they're not truly "alive" or "people" in the way we are, then if she kills them, Hydaelyn is not guilty of murder!

Othering the opposition so you are okay killing them is a long-standing staple of the fantasy genre, and I've rolled with it myself a number of times. I'm a longtime fan of JRPGs, after all. But after Shadowbringers's incredibly poignant and effective project of "humanizing," Endwalker suddenly backing up and going "dehumanize! DEHUMANIZE!" to justify the protagonists' side feels incredibly - well, yeah, "gross" is the best way I can think of to describe it.

[Dikatis]

Endwalker, of course, flipped that entirely, and ran to the exact opposite conclusion Shadowbringers had, in deliberately attempting to paint the Ancients as so Other and Alien that it's actually natural, okay, and for the greater good that they all died, so that Hydaelyn could be justified in murdering them. After all, if they're not truly "alive" or "people" in the way we are, then if she kills them, Hydaelyn is not guilty of murder!

Othering the opposition so you are okay killing them is a long-standing staple of the fantasy genre, and I've rolled with it myself a number of times. I'm a longtime fan of JRPGs, after all. But after Shadowbringers's incredibly poignant and effective project of "humanizing," Endwalker suddenly backing up and going "dehumanize! DEHUMANIZE!" to justify the protagonists' side feels incredibly - well, yeah, "gross" is the best way I can think of to describe it.

I cannot fathom how you came to this conclusion from walking around Elpis. Their perspective on life was designed to be a little cold and alien, sure. The idea of making and unmaking life on a whim doesn't have the same shocking value it'd have to us as transient beings who'd be lucky to live to 100 when they could live for thousands of years. The Warrior of Light is visibly startled by Hythlodaeus' conversion of a petalouda into clothes on a whim, but that's because it could've belonged to someone else. But at no point are the ancients condemned as being "other" in the story.

But researchers of Elpis ARE human in all the way that matters. They're NOT the monolith of boundless compassion, wisdom, and benevolence that Emet-Selch made them out to be. They could be clumsy, forgetful, short-sighted, pompous, self-doubting, callous, compassionate, honorable, irritable, doting, vain and many many other things. They have many of the same virtues as well as the same foibles as we do. The sidequests and FATEs show this. The Warrior can even tell one of the researchers that, "I don't think we're so different."

At no point are the ancients dehumanized in the story. Venat's actions are self-righteous and at no point are they called "noble". It's only framed as a good thing because the alternative is the complete extinction of all life in the universe.

If anything, Elpis showed that the ancients are as human as we are. Maybe we don't see eye to eye on everything due to the vast differences in our lifespans, but if Endwalker did anything to the ancients, it humanized them and I appreciate it for that as it enhances the tragedy of the Final Days and adds additional moral complexity to the Sundering.

[Brinne]

I cannot fathom how you came to this conclusion from walking around Elpis. Their perspective on life was designed to be a little cold and alien, sure. The idea of making and unmaking life on a whim doesn't have the same shocking value it'd have to us as transient beings who'd be lucky to live to 100 when they could live for thousands of years. The Warrior of Light is visibly startled by Hythlodaeus' conversion of a petalouda into clothes on a whim, but that's because it could've belonged to someone else. But at no point are the ancients condemned as being "other" in the story.

But researchers of Elpis ARE human in all the way that matters. They're NOT the monolith of boundless compassion, wisdom, and benevolence that Emet-Selch made them out to be. They could be clumsy, forgetful, short-sighted, pompous, self-doubting, callous, compassionate, honorable, irritable, doting, vain and many many other things. They have many of the same virtues as well as the same foibles as we do. The sidequests and FATEs show this. The Warrior can even tell one of the researchers that, "I don't think we're so different."

At no point are the ancients dehumanized in the story. Venat's actions are self-righteous and at no point are they called "noble". It's only framed as a good thing because the alternative is the complete extinction of all life in the universe.

If anything, Elpis showed that the ancients are as human as we are. Maybe we don't see eye to eye on everything due to the vast differences in our lifespans, but if Endwalker did anything to the ancients, it humanized them and I appreciate it for that as it enhances the tragedy of the Final Days and adds additional moral complexity to the Sundering.

Oh, friend, I completely agree with you (the suggestion that "Venat had no choice" and "there was no alternative" aside, which I do strongly reject). I am actually directly quoting Yoshida from an interview in that he was "surprised" at how so many players played through Elpis and came to the conclusion that the Ancients were "good people," because he thought they were written in a way that people would come away thinking they were "scary" and "different from us." In practice? I loved Elpis and the people there for all the reasons you say. But the explicit intent was absolutely to dehumanize and Other them.

[Dikatis]

Oh, friend, I completely agree with you (the suggestion that "Venat had no choice" and "there was no alternative" aside, which I do strongly reject). I am actually directly quoting Yoshida from an interview in that he was "surprised" at how so many players played through Elpis and came to the conclusion that the Ancients were "good people," because he thought they were written in a way that people would come away thinking they were "scary" and "different from us." In practice? I loved Elpis and the people there for all the reasons you say. But the explicit intent was absolutely to dehumanize and Other them.

That's not what I took from that conversation though. In the interview, Yoshi-P said that the intent was to make the ancients a little scary with their mindset regarding life. According to him, the way they speak about life inspires a certain kneejerk "this is wrong" mindset with how quickly they make and undo life. Hermes' moral struggle is born from being seemingly the only one who takes an issue with this and the resulting isolation he feels because he can't fit into the conformist mold of Amaurotine society no matter how hard he tries. Yoshi-P said that he was surprised by how much more popular Emet-Selch was than Hermes given that Hermes' concerns come from a more moral place, but he and Ishikawa largely attribute that to the emotional core of Emet-Selch's motives outstripping Hermes' motives.

But the ancients are kind of scary when you think about them. There are creation trends where people carelessly bring things to life and then undo them just because it's popular at the time. Outside of the MSQ, you do see this with the other researchers. One researcher doesn't care about sending a familiar to their potential death, regarding it as the "honorable" thing to do between the death of a familiar versus the death of one of his own creations. Another researcher asks WoL to slaughter his creations repeatedly to help him come up with new ideas. In another questline, Kleon helps invent the behemoth species (with WoL causing a bootstrap paradox) as an apex predator with the abiltiy to rain the most powerful black magic spell from the skies repeatedly just because he can. The ancients also think it's weird that Venat doesn't want to commit suicide after fulfilling her purpose when she feels there's still more that she can do. From that standpoint, I think the writers succeeded in making the ancients a little alien and scary. But nowhere in that conversation does it say that the intent was to "dehumanize" them. The fact that WoL gets along so well with Emet, Hythlo, and Venat says the opposite.

Yoshi-P goes onto say that it's probably due to how well Emet-Selch, Venat, and Hythlodaeus are written and WoL's fun relationship with them that had them steal the show, drawing attention away from the creepier aspects of the ancients' society due to the camaraderie between them and the tragedy we know is about to unfold.

[redheadturk]

Here is our primary, overarcing reason for not liking EW, those of us who love the Ancients: I understand if you [SE] as a company must kill characters I love in order to complete a plot. What I do not understand, will never understand, is the choice to treat them and their characterizations disrespectfully in the doing. Like Yoshi calling them "scary". No, the Ancients were not scary to me. Their society modeled everything I believe a society, ours included, should strive for. No one starving, no war; if people had an issue with each other they talked it out rather than trying to genocide each other. How are any of those traits scary?

[Theodric]

The difference is that Venat actively inflicted genocide upon the survivors of the Final Days and actively sought to distort the truth surrounding Zodiark as well as striving to rid the world of all memory of the Ancients. I'd say there's a pretty big difference between that and the Sundered taking the time to respect and remember the fallen as well as striving to never give up on those who had given into despair.

To be clear, for it to be an equal situation we'd need the Scions to start slaughtering everyone and snuffing out all memory of their existence the moment they encountered a Garlean or a Thavarian that struggled in the face of despair.

[Rulakir]

Just going to leave this here.

[KageTokage]

To be clear, for it to be an equal situation we'd need the Scions to start slaughtering everyone and snuffing out all memory of their existence the moment they encountered a Garlean or a Thavarian that struggled in the face of despair.

This makes me all the more curious how the Garlean legions occupying the provinces responded to the Final Days, because I could totally see them resorting to drastic measures to curb the blasphemy threat if they didn't know what was actually causing it save for the "savages" they're lording over being the most prone to turning.

[Lyth]

You know what would be really interesting? I know some people here have been forever pushing for a 'What if...?' scenario in which we go back in time to save Amaurot. I think that there's a very simple way for the writers to explore the idea without unnecessarily sidetracking the main story back to a story arc that is done and dusted.

The Defense of Amaurot (Ultimate). Start out with an encounter where you fight Hermes again on top of Ktisis Hyperboreia, except this time, you manage to destroy Kairos in a dps check before it goes off. Cue a fight where you team up with the Convocation against Hermes/Amon, the Endsinger, and an unsundered Zodiark, empowered by dynamis, that's been summoned to temper everyone into submission. You could even have the Convocation summon Hydaelyn this time around, for the laugh.