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

[Teraq]

Honestly anyone else ever read the mini area names around the zodiark seal? like things like

"The numbing brand"
"the crushing brand"
"The searing brand"

All very fucked up names..

The adjectives refer to the 6 elements. But yeah, it doesn't sound like this past dozen of millenia were a fun time for Zodiark.

(snip)

Agreed on all points here. IMO it's pretty silly to :
1. establish branching timelines are perfectly possible – although technically I suppose nobody in-universe knows that the 8th calamity timeline is still thriving in spite of the time meddling and hasn't just gone poof.
2. then you have the dude sending you back in time tell you "in all likelihood my guy you ain't getting out of this timeline" – which, mind you, he doesn't really know about, either, because why would he? In fact, he saw the Exarch's memories of the alt timeline, so he should know the opposite is possible (though not that it persisted).
3. then you get there and your local troublemaker drags his friend into materializing the space-time anomaly he sees with his super power. OH SHIT WE MIGHT BE ABLE TO AFFECT THE TIMELINE AND SAVE ALL THESE PEOPLE THAT DESERVED NONE OF WHAT IS COMING!!!!
4. no you don't lmao. All of this because Venat threw an Apple AirTag on Meteion and she just kinda decided the person she met for a day was super cool and much more worth saving than her entire people, whom we know she ended up only very half-assedly helping considering no other Ancient we've talked to / heard of knew about Meteion or the role of Dynamis in the Final Days. Guess they didn't pass the secret fair and objective test.

Yeah didn't care much for Ardbert personally. I'm also assuming his consciousness took some time to dissipate, akin to souls in the lifestream (I dislike this entire concept tbh, and everything in the Aitiascope, but that's just me. I'd rather have death be a brutal, permanent end to the character as we know them rather than all this lingering stuff).

I have no idea how anyone could think a storyline that involves a closed time loop that acts as its own justification for big character moments (the Unsundering?? omg I'm not getting over this particular bit of lazy plot handwaving), a memory wiping machine, a magical memory unwiping mechanism and The Power of Friendship™ that only some people are allowed to wield because plot said so, is a good storyline. Objectively speaking here. Like, anyone is free to like it, god knows I like some terrible stuff, but damn I'm not sure about this being the pinnacle of writing.

I want Ishikawa to spill the whole damn truth about the making of the story since late Stormblood.