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

[jameseoakes]

I didn't see his relationship to Meteion as abusive. I saw that he cares for her and wants her to be happy; tries to shield her from things that would upset her. He might not have done the right thing objectively, but not for lack of intention.

My impression as the Elpis arc played out is that we-the-player were being asked to make the same switch of perception of Hermes that we had previously been asked to make for the Ascians as a whole: that the once caricatured villains were in fact good people at their core who had some tragic reason to do the awful things they later did.

If I am expected to forgive the many monstrosities that Emet-Selch carried out in 12,000 years of rejoinings – and at a more personal level, the overtly abusive way he treats Varis in his early scenes – then it seems that Hermes is intended to be viewed with the same attitude of "he meant well, so we're supposed to like him now".

I don't agree with what Hermes did, but I see it as driven by good intentions turned sour – his search for meaning and his compassion for other creatures, and a desire to protect Meteion and keep her safe. His leap from there to "destroyer of worlds and eraser of memories" is rather too abrupt, but that's tangled up in a lot of the other narrative issues that the game has. The writers wanted him to be sympathetic while needing him to line up with the villain he becomes, and they needed the memory wipe to happen to preserve the existing narrative, and I think the characters got wrangled into the necessary events rather than having story written to fit the characters.

Basically, I think Hermes is intended by the writer(s) to be a sympathetic character, whether it was successfully conveyed or not, but it's the intent that determines he should appear among the "sympathetic characters of Elpis" group.

I don't see how he was suppose to have really been sympathetic with how he was written. He didn't try and keep keep Meteion or her sisters safe he sent them out in the universe with no thought or planning that is not a kind thing to do. He then keeps on around a massive empath who then has to endure and suffer through his mood swings and to be honest there realationship felt like abusive/controlling father and daughter than anything else to me. The man was nasty, I don't see how he was a good man, good people don't at a drop of a hat set about violating his 'apparent' friends minds and orcastrting the murder of his entire culture over nothing, he's a vile man.

Edit: I just don't see what was sympathetic about him, in the way other characters have been. I don't find what's tradgic about him or the good intentions he had behind the monstrous things he does.