Would Endwalker have been better if we never visited Elpis at all?

[EaraGrace]

Who is ignoring the fact that they can choose to return to the star when they feel they have completed their work? I think it's one of the parts of their society that is admirable. Unlike the denizens of the Plenty, the Ancients didn't try to eliminate all things that made them sad, they didn't try to escape death.The vast majority accepted life as finite and chose to start again when they felt they had done all that could be done to better their star. The people of the Plenty could not do this because they had eliminated death in their fear, and that is why Ra-La was created. The only thing that the Plenty and the Ancient world had in common was that they both wore robes and masks, one of the funnier attempts by the writers to draw some parallels.

That’s not what the souls on the moon said.

Temperamental Spirit:
The Final Days taught us to fear a death forced upon us.
The injustice of duties and dreams left unfulfilled. The grief of unexpected partings...
Swift as darkness, cold as ash.
Such tragedy, yet no catharsis! Such truth, yet no consolation...

None of the Thule races seemed to have had any effort put into making them, though the race on the plenty are odd as they were happy until Meition came and convinced them there was no point to anything so they embraced death...which doesn't tie that well with the ancients.

I don’t think that’s what the dialogue in Dead Ends was implying. Meteion asked what they lived for and they told her they had nothing to live for. They even seemed bemused by her repeated questions, as if what she was asking was childish.

[BubblyBoar]

Them returning to the star is something along the lines of assisted suicide, which is something I actually support wholeheartedly. What is wrong with refusing to linger once your work is done? What is wrong with not taking up space and resources when you decide you are done with life, as long as it is done at your own volition? I don't see a gods damn thing wrong with it personally.

The problem with it in the story was that it was hypocritical. They chose when to die, but other life did not. It was the crux of Hermes' plight. Personally, I see it as abandoning their duty. They created these lifeforms and this environment fuck off after it's done. It feels like "I had my fun and tinkered a bit, but I'm done now. Good luck with the world I left you in!" Seems kind of selfish to me. But that's just my personal opinion. Nothing to do with the point I was making in the part you quoted.

[jameseoakes]

Them returning to the star is something along the lines of assisted suicide, which is something I actually support wholeheartedly. What is wrong with refusing to linger once your work is done? What is wrong with not taking up space and resources when you decide you are done with life, as long as it is done at your own volition? I don't see a gods damn thing wrong with it personally.

They also have a solid working knowledge of what happens to there souls after they die and that death is not really the end and that they will be in some fashion reborn but with fresh ideas which makes the Ancients seem a pretty dynamic society all things considered which makes it feel very odd that then are pushing them as stagnant society. There writing often seems to mismatched in Endwalker with them showing different thing to what they are apparently saying

[jameseoakes]

I don’t think that’s what the dialogue in Dead Ends was implying. Meteion asked what they lived for and they told her they had nothing to live for. They even seemed bemused by her repeated questions, as if what she was asking was childish.

No it says they had no answer to her question and that she was unable to stop asking it and that drove them to there fate

[PawPaw]

That’s not what the souls on the moon said.

Ah yes, lamenting the deaths forced upon them by the advent of the Final Days as opposed to what they would normally be able to do which would be to have the freedom to choose their own end. That totally negates everything I said about them valuing their existences and understanding that life is finite. You got me.

Edit: Oh I see what you were trying to do! I generally don't bother looking at screenshots but you were attempting to say that the agonizings of the traumatized souls that had been trapped for 12k years were a very good and completely normal representation of the views of the Ancients before the Final Days and that they had always been aggressively seeking paradise. It wasn't because of the trauma they had been subjected to and possibly their desire for the nightmare to end.

[Striker44]

If the entirety of the storyline surrounding Venat and the events of Elpis had not been in-game, would the story seem better to you? Or was it essential for the successful conclusion of 6.0, despite the dislike of that storyline for a number of forum posters?

No, it would not have been better. I *loved* Elpis, as did many, many, many other players. The absurdly minuscule few that are the forum naysayers who badmouth anything and everything aren't even a drop in the bucket compared to the hundreds of thousands and possibly 1,000,000+ players, who overwhelmingly enjoyed the expansion and Elpis in particular.

[Aniya_Estlihn]

Sincerely, how should I frame it when Yoshi-P himself has referred to the rejoinings as "mass murder"? The Final Days and Sundering were worse, so... mass murder apologism? I actually hate using the word genocide, but it's the language of the playerbase.

I was not referring to the character's actions, but how individual posters and players are addressing one another mid-discussion. You can refer to the actions of the characters in such a way. The issue is that people have been referring to one another's opinions as "apologist" or "sympathetic" of said actions and lumping those they wish to debate with into the same umbrella as the characters who made those decisions. It's subtle, but does a number on the sub-conscious mind, which is where the problem lies.

Personally, I wouldn't use genocide to describe Venat's or any character's actions. Not at all.

As her actions very much fall in line with the star-centric dogma the ancients believed en masse: service to the star no matter the cost.

We are led to believe that by sundering their world, she did not "kill" anyone, there is no genocide here. Their beings were split and they retained their identities between shards at the start, at least.

Emet-Selch actually explains this quite well in Shadowbringers when he shows the example using Ryne. Upon the initial strike, she (Hydaelyn) sundered the world into 14 perfectly identical pieces, 13 reflections and 1 source. Stating that there were no differences other than the amount of aether each shard retained. This implies that no one died from the action until those who died properly, well, died.

In fact, I feel we can safely assume that this example of his is the justification they retroactively used for her actions in the sundering— to illustrate that she really only enforced the idea of one returning to the star upon death, by introducing actual 'death' to a society that saw death, in the form of returning to the star, as a conscious decision and not an ultimate fate.

It's ironic, really. They avert the death brought about by the final days and to prevent more death via people offering themselves to Zodiark, she introduced cyclical death into the world as a force of nature, removing their choice over the matter.

If anything, sundered Etheirys is a purgatory of incomplete beings having their souls scrubbed upon death and reborn into new beings that start to gradually differ from the original ad infinitum without their input or conscious choice in the matter, unlike the ancients who did so willingly because they were immortal.

Venat should be held accountable for that, and I'd argue she was. As her aether and soul dissipated. She does not exist anymore. For even though she forsook her duty to return to the star, forcing that fate upon all life upon Etheirys in an ironic twist, she ultimately suffers the most final fate of any character introduced in the narrative of simply fading to oblivion.

I also do not see the points on either side of people claiming rejoinings are genocide nor Venat allowing the Final Days to take place being genocide. Thats over-simplifying a very complex moral dilemma that really detracts from what was taking place in the narrative and the actions and decisions taken by their characters and their motivations behind such.

I agree with neither Venat, the Convocation or Emet-Selch's decisions, but I, at the very least, understand and respect their reasoning for making the decisions and taking the actions they did in the first place. They're flawed, they are meant to be flawed. In justifying/arguing against their flaws we encounter flaws and faults in our own beliefs and morals. It's elegant, really.

I will also state here that I am not trying to convince anyone of anything. This is my opinion, my interpretation and that is still evolving as I go back through the narrative and really absorb it piece by piece. My opinion is not infallible, and I will not presume to even make such a claim.

Regardless, I will return to my earlier statement that getting involved in this discussion any further would be a bad decision on my behalf and leave it here before I get ahead of myself. As I fear I've already involved myself far more than I initially intended to.

[hynaku]

No, they should never let us time travel back in time to Elpis. All I know is their better be time travel in 7.0.

[EaraGrace]

Ah yes, lamenting the deaths forced upon them by the advent of the Final Days as opposed to what they would normally be able to do which would be to have the freedom to choose their own end. That totally negates everything I said about them valuing their existences and understanding that life is finite. You got me.

It does completely contradict what you said here though.

Unlike the denizens of the Plenty, the Ancients didn't try to eliminate all things that made them sad, they didn't try to escape death.

They feared the very concept of an involuntary end (the Final Days just showed them that that was a possibility for them) and thus created Zodiark as a solution to that fear. The fact is that the Ancients and the denizens of the Plenty both sought to eliminate their fears, a clear parallel between the two. Combined with Hermes speech after the Lykaons are put down, where he says explicitly that they were heading towards mass suicide, it seems like we have enough reason to connect the two.

No it says they had no answer to her question and that she was unable to stop asking it and that drove them to there fate

That last bit is what I’m questioning. Where does it say that drove them to their fate? In top of that I have to say that if I asked someone what they lived for, and the question so shook them that they decided life wasn’t worth living, I’d struggle to hold myself responsible for that.

[redheadturk]

We are led to believe that by sundering their world, she did not "kill" anyone, there is no genocide here. Their beings were split and they retained their identities between shards at the start, at least.

Emet-Selch actually explains this quite well in Shadowbringers when he shows the example using Ryne. Upon the initial strike, she (Hydaelyn) sundered the world into 14 perfectly identical pieces, 13 reflections and 1 source. Stating that there were no differences other than the amount of aether each shard retained. This implies that no one died from the action until those who died properly, well, died.

You apparently missed the Neir crossover where it very clearly showed that it was far more than "their beings were split and they retained their identities" because that very clearly showed they didn't. The entire society on all 14 shards was rendered to the stone age, they did not even possess language for several hundred years after. It was, in all respects, a genocide. By the way, that crossover is considered canon.