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

[Teraq]

(snip)
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.

Fully agree that this was the writers' intent, and I'm not sure how well the lukewarm (as far as I know) reception to Hermes reflects on that. Like they tried to get lightning in a bottle a second time and it didn't land, and delightfully out of touch YoshiP proceeded to ask "but why didn't you guys like him like you did Emet-Selch?". Cringe. At least Ishikawa realized he wouldn't be popular, but I still find her taking his "judgment" of humanity seriously, going as far as to suggest it was the first step for humanity in a rhetorical question, very eyebrow-raising, to say the least.

As you pointed out, a lot of it can probably be blamed on the story issues in general. Endwalker had a lot on its plate, cramming what was seemingly two expansions worth of plot into one. Hermes went from 1 to 11 really fast, and the fact that I couldn't relate to or care about his motivations/existential crisis certainly didn't help.

If we had seen him in the course of the MSQ, he would almost certainly be there. But in the existing layout of the narrative, it is difficult.

And this is a particularly egregious fault of Endwalker, if you ask me. Not to get on my Elidibus soapbox again, but... boy it sure was unpredictable of them not to feature Literally Zodiark's Acting Consciousness that has been a lurking antagonist and slowly built up over 8 years as a main player in this finale of the Hydaelyn/Zodiark story arc that has Venat front and center! Consider my expectations well and truly subverted.

Why, yes, I enjoy this of course, anything else would have been predictable and that would have made the story bad! Hahaha... ha...

Don't remind me how we only had him in for 5 minutes in his little snuggie ghost man form as he kills himself to send us back to the past. brb hiding the pain... though honestly, I think it wouldn't have been too odd to feature him and his OG short self, just with the hood/mask on and looking away/down at some of the Convocation stones in his hand.

Hermes didn't have the same amount of time to think about what he was doing, he made a decision in the moment based on what he was currently feeling.
Emet had plenty of time over the years to consider it and he still kept going with it.
Even if Emet had a more understandable motive he wasn't acting impulsively like Hermes was.

I'm not sure if this was intended to be a positive point about Hermes's motivations or not, but personally I can't say this isn't doing him any favors in terms of relatability and understanding of the character.

I also don't think that a character like Hermes can be a likeable or sympathetic character if you hyperfocus on what he did and that's the only thing you really think about.

Considering his rather short screen time, I'm not sure what else to focus on. His shallow (due to time constraints I suppose) motivations? Didn't land for me, I found his obsession over death and overwhelming affection for barely sentient beings like sprites pretty annoying from the get-go, and that was before he got worse and went all preachy vegan on me. His looks, perhaps? I'll give him that, he absolutely got the best Elezen face, I like his hair and eye colors and his skin tone is a pleasing shade of not-completely-porcelain-white. (Twitter artists seem to suffer from a serious case of "I haven't played this game without high contrast shaders for a very long time" on this particular subject, though.)

Especially since some people for some bizarre reason are already set on hating basically anything the devs do and 99% of their presence on the forum is just that, if you set your mind to hating something then it's very easy to find reasons to do it.
(…) I don't think it's really about people just '' thinking about it '' it's about how they do it and the intent behind it.
If you go into something with the intent to find problems you're going to find it.

I can't speak for other people here, but this isn't my case. I still enjoy the gameplay and play weekly on various characters. I loved the story of Shadowbringers and I was super hyped for what was to come during 5.2–5.4. Granted, when Endwalker was first revealed, I was skeptical (the announcement that the plot would be wrapping up the cause of the Final Days in particular in 6.0 had me worried), and my skepticism kept growing throughout 2021, yet at the same time I had these flashes of hype. I still gave Endwalker a chance as I played it, and I can't lie, in spite of the disappointing 83 trial, I found myself on a serotonin high for most of the 85–early 86 part. Then it all came crashing down and I was just left with disappointment so massive it affected my RL mood god I am so cringe I'm sorry just telling the facts

[Lucida3b]

Honestly one issue is that hermes issues with how ancients treat creations falls a tad flat when you consider his almost near daughter relationship with metieon and how she was just made to satisfy his existential despair. If like he put more countermeasures or protections on her and the sisters or like the mind of metieon was a accident that he was reluctant to use it would work a bit better

His boss form was good though

[GrizzlyTank]

The Moon stuff outright made no sense, as I would assume the end of days would justed have started on the moon almost as soon as people got there and then it would just have been a charnel house.

Eh, the moon might be shielded too.

[Lucida3b]

And this is a particularly egregious fault of Endwalker, if you ask me. Not to get on my Elidibus soapbox again, but... boy it sure was unpredictable of them not to feature Literally Zodiark's Acting Consciousness that has been a lurking antagonist and slowly built up over 8 years as a main player in this finale of the Hydaelyn/Zodiark story arc that has Venat front and center! Consider my expectations well and truly subverted.

Why, yes, I enjoy this of course, anything else would have been predictable and that would have made the story bad! Hahaha... ha...
(
can't speak for other people here, but this isn't my case. I still enjoy the gameplay and play weekly on various characters. I loved the story of Shadowbringers and I was super hyped for what was to come during 5.2–5.4. Granted, when Endwalker was first revealed, I was skeptical (the announcement that the plot would be wrapping up the cause of the Final Days in particular in 6.0 had me worried), and my skepticism kept growing throughout 2021, yet at the same time I had these flashes of hype. I still gave Endwalker a chance as I played it, and I can't lie, in spite of the disappointing 83 trial, I found myself on a serotonin high for most of the 85–early 86 part. Then it all came crashing down and I was just left with disappointment so massive it affected my RL mood god I am so cringe I'm sorry just telling the facts

Don't cringe, People get emotionally invested into things! I nowadays find the whole 'just stop reading if you dont like it' or 'just dont play' a stupid thought process nowadays, People invest there time into this product, people like the product. We often use stories like this as a reprieve from the real world or as a way to see justice be done it least in a fantasy world.

Of course you would be upset at all of this, It's not wrong to be upset at a story.

[YukikoKurosawa]

"Haha wow can't believe I just killed Zodiark, whose been built up as our big bad since ARR, at only lvl 83! I wonder what they could POSSIBLY have in store to top this for our REAL final boss haha I'm so excited, I sure hope it's not something ridiculous like a little bird girl haha that'd be just be dissapointing I'm sure it'll be something really cool and even crazier than Zodiark, I can't wait to find out! Surely whatever it may be, it will for sure top a villain that's been built up for the past 10 years and not an asspull out of nowhere that's significantly more lame in comparison"

If only I knew.......

[Teraq]

"Haha wow can't believe I just killed Zodiark, whose been built up as our big bad since ARR, at only lvl 83! I wonder what they could POSSIBLY have in store to top this for our REAL final boss haha I'm so excited, I sure hope it's not something ridiculous like a little bird girl haha that'd be just be dissapointing I'm sure it'll be something really cool and even crazier than Zodiark, I can't wait to find out! Surely whatever it may be, it will for sure top a villain that's been built up for the past 10 years and not an asspull out of nowhere that's significantly more lame in conmparison"

If only I knew.......

That's the genius of it, you see! What a twist! I bet you only like boring things, like a nearly decade-long build-up having a satisfying pay-off, and a story arc climax that doesn't revolve around concepts literally just introduced.

One of my most immediate take-aways from Endwalker was that it felt so ... small. In spite of its literal scale – we're going to THE MOON! THE PAST!!!! THE EDGE OF THE UNIVERSE!!!! – it's all so self-contained compared to what we were promised. It's all about this unknown energy that was just introduced for this plot. The self-contained time loop. We expedited Empty Mech Suit Zodiark so we could get the real plot going: Venat, Hermes and Meteion. No real mention of any Ascians, our long-standing antagonists, besides, of course, Emet-Selch, the only Ascian you should care about – I'm barely even counting Fandaniel per se because Hermes largely feels like a completely different character. This is really just a small, little story about the Elpis gang. Elidibus is just a plot vehicle, Zodiark himself a non-entity, any remaining sundered Ascians non-existent and Ancients a bunch of strawmen to assure you that Venat very definitely made the right choice, no questions asked, please. She only allowed Emet-Selch to live because she needed him, and only him, to accomplish the damned time loop (I'm assuming Lahabrea and Elidibus's 12,000 years of suffering were collateral damage of the bootstrap paradox, lol RIP). Even in Ultima Thule it's just Meteion reflecting back on Hermes, Emet weirdly praising Venat, and Hyth – look, I like Hyth as much as any other Ancient enjoyer, but the focus on him in particular feels bizarrely myopic, much like the whole of Endwalker itself.

And so we get an ending artwork that features exactly these people, and it really drives home how small the scope of this story truly was. This wasn't the finale of a decade spanning arc, it was just its own little story. And had I been told exactly just that, instead of getting hyped for a satisfying resolution I would never get, I might have taken this better.

[YukikoKurosawa]

This might be an odd take but I would've preferred they DIDN'T reveal what the ancients actually looked like and just kept it a mystery. The hint of Hythlo right before Zodiark's battle showed a bit much but it was arguably not too much, all you could gather was they looked vaguely human. This maintained the mystery of what they looked like while giving a bit of a hint but not too much IMO. And we already saw enough of what their world may have looked like with Emet's recreation of Amaurot. Having this mysterious ancient race that was around and wiped out before the present day people, whom you only get a vague idea how they really appeared is something I find very interesting in fiction. I just don't think it was even necessarily narratively, even if they wanted us to see the past, could have just kept the amaurot-type shades representing them.

It would also keep Emet's original appearance a mystery. I assumed his original self looked very, very different to Solus.

But ah fuck it we'll just show you: turns out they were just big humans. And Emet looked exactly the same he just had different hair and no Garlean third eye. Ok whatever. Sure, that's fine I guess. There's nothing objectively wrong with this it just makes them less interesting with that mystery completley stripped away with the most banal answer possible. I would go as far as to argue that if they were just humans it wasn't even worth revealing. It's just not.....interesting. And Hythlo's appearance before Zodiark's trial already hinted at that enough you didn't really need to go all the way and just reveal it completely.

[Teraq]

(snip)

Never been much bothered by this, to be honest. If anything, I like that it drives home that they were indeed just human, with something more. Checks out with all Ascians being Hyurs, with the possible exception of current Fandaniel, and even that is just headcanon as far as we know Re: Amon probably being a Duskwight if we transpose his model to XIV context, and him choosing to look like his Amon self as an Ascian when he isn't LARPing.

I think I had seen enough fan art to be exposed to the concept of Ancient Emet being literally just Solus with all-white hair and no third eye.

[aveyond-dreams]

My only complaint about Emet's original appearance is that I imagined his hair would be far longer, but I have never pictured him with any face that wasn't like Solus, especially since he morphs people to resemble him more. Hythlodaeus has an appearance that suits his personality, a purple haired jokester with an elfish face. Venat despite the flaws in her writing is still one of the prettier women in game, though I would have preferred if there wasn't such a difference between her face and Hydaelyn's.

[YukikoKurosawa]

My only complaint about Emet's original appearance is that I imagined his hair would be far longer, but I have never pictured him with any face that wasn't like Solus, especially since he morphs people to resemble him more. Hythlodaeus has an appearance that suits his personality, a purple haired jokester with an elfish face. Venat despite the flaws in her writing is still one of the prettier women in game, though I would have preferred if there wasn't such a difference between her face and Hydaelyn's.

It just confuses me because the dude he possessed, Solus, was already somebody with a family and people who knew him. Obviously he didn't look like Emet before. So when Emet took him over and presumably altered his face to resemble his own original self, wouldn't people who knew Solus be like "Wtf" by his sudden change in appearance? Was there absolutely noone in Garlemald who knew Solus and asked the question "Why does Solus have a completely different face all of a sudden that's kinda wierd haha"?

Surely his family would be asking such a question.