The Ancients still deserved better, after everything

[Rulakir]

You never committed any genocide. You did, however, stop multiple genocides from happening.

No longer true thanks to the time travel paradox. The WoL is the one who tells Venat about Hydaelyn and gives her the idea for the sundering, thus making them an accomplice to what resulted in the aforementioned omnicide of Etheirys and every subsequent rejoining seeing as how she chose to spare Emet knowing what he would go on to do.

[Elspethine]

I agree, I wish they got better treatment.

[Jojoya]

You realize the rejoinings were a part of Venat’s plan yes? She let emet,lahabrea, and elidibus escape. They said this in a QnA

They said they she let Emet escape intentionally. Lahabrea and Elidibus only escaped because they turned out to be with Emet at the time.

At no point did they state that the rejoinings were part of her plan. Far more likely that if her intention was only for Emet to escape, she felt some other solution was still possible. She did warn us that just before we left Elpis that our timelines were separate and there was no guarantee they would converge. Perhaps another timeline formed that had a different outcome after our parting, just as another timeline formed after G'raha took the Crystal Tower to the First.

People are taking all this a bit to seriously. In the end, it's a work of fiction and what happens is what the writer wants to happen to tell the story they want to tell, even if we feel an emotional attachment because a character avatar we have created is given a role in that story. We may not like the writer's choices but in the end it is their story to tell.

No longer true thanks to the time travel paradox. The WoL is the one who tells Venat about Hydaelyn and gives her the idea for the sundering, thus making them an accomplice to what resulted in the aforementioned omnicide of Etheirys and every subsequent rejoining seeing as how she chose to spare Emet knowing what he would go on to do.

Incorrect. We still not responsible for the choices others make.

By your reasoning, everyone who has ever participated in the creation of a book, movie, TV show, song, or other work of art showcasing violence should be in prison for murder because they give others the idea that violence is a reasonable action.

[hagare]

it doesn't matter why they're broken. They're broken.
Best you can do is end their suffering

[Rulakir]

By your reasoning, everyone who has ever participated in the creation of a book, movie, TV show, song, or other work of art showcasing violence should be in prison for murder because they give others the idea that violence is a reasonable action.

This isn't random violence. This is someone we know is going to be opposed to Zodiark if he's created and who we know would've been unable to defeat him without the sundering. "Hydaelyn was created with the power to enervate Her foe", which the WoL is responsible for telling her to do. Specificity is important here.

As for the rest, it depends entirely on your interpretation. I've seen more than my fair share of people hand waving Venat's actions as her being bound by maintaining a time loop, in which case that does mean that she has to let events unfold as they do including sitting on her hands when the First nearly falls to the Flood of Light. Yoshi-P's take was that she even worked meticulously in the background to ensure a return to the WoL.

[EaraGrace]

Yoshi-P's take was that she even worked meticulously in the background to ensure a return to the WoL.

I am begging people not to misinterpret what he said. Here’s the summary of that answer from the Live Letter forum post

Q: I don’t really understand why the Warrior of Light messing around in Elpis didn’t create any alternate timelines. Can you explain what happened?

A: First of all, we’ve left that part up to interpretation.

With that said, my personal interpretation is that the past and present were always the part of the same timeline. Although there was still a possibility for the timelines to diverge, the Warrior of Light was unwittingly acting in accordance with Venat’s plans, which unified the past and present. Another interpretation might be that Venat worked really hard behind the scenes to ensure that the timeline wouldn’t go awry.

Seeing how Argos took to us on our first meeting, I’d say that proves that the past and present were already unified.

That is not his theory, that’s an alternative one.

[KizuyaKatogami]

They said they she let Emet escape intentionally. Lahabrea and Elidibus only escaped because they turned out to be with Emet at the time.

At no point did they state that the rejoinings were part of her plan. Far more likely that if her intention was only for Emet to escape, she felt some other solution was still possible. She did warn us that just before we left Elpis that our timelines were separate and there was no guarantee they would converge. Perhaps another timeline formed that had a different outcome after our parting, just as another timeline formed after G'raha took the Crystal Tower to the First.

People are taking all this a bit to seriously. In the end, it's a work of fiction and what happens is what the writer wants to happen to tell the story they want to tell, even if we feel an emotional attachment because a character avatar we have created is given a role in that story. We may not like the writer's choices but in the end it is their story to tell.


Incorrect. We still not responsible for the choices others make.

By your reasoning, everyone who has ever participated in the creation of a book, movie, TV show, song, or other work of art showcasing violence should be in prison for murder because they give others the idea that violence is a reasonable action.

..... We told her everything. She knows Lahabrea,Elidibus,and Emet are there in the future. I think shes smart enough to know if Emet is escaping so too are the other two.

[TaleraRistain]

They were traumatized. Expecting traumatized people to be reasonable when you're telling them "You have to leave your loved ones in limbo inside a giant primal and rebuild by hand instead of sacrificing non sapient creations because they may become sapient one day, sorry." is frickin' ridiculous. I for one agree with and support the third sacrifice.

Where has the game or other media stated the third sacrifice was going to be non sapient creations?

I posted a bit from one of the stories earlier. There was a contingent of their society that thought they should leave the world to the newly minted souls instead of trying to get those sacrificed back.

If these were no more than the creations their society made and unmade on a whim, then why would there be any dissent or a belief they should leave the world in the hands of this new life?

Unless it was sapient and it wasn't just plants or animals. That seems to me the sort of thing that could cause a schism in their remaining population.

[KurohNeko]

This is meant for both parts.

I agree the ancients may have responded to Meteion better then they would have not knowing, but I doubt they would have successfully defeated her. They were too susceptible to her call in the first place creating monsters everywhere with the world basically already destroyed when it happened. But let's ignore that, even if they defeated her they would have learned nothing as they were literal Gods who never experienced death or plague or famine or suffering. They would have met the same fate as the two worlds we saw that Meteion showed us that achived perfection. They were spiritually weak and when compared to the protagonist whose soul was weaker than the ancients and was only about 6 rejoining's strong, seven if you consider how Ardbert or whatever his name was fused with us, were still able to be Emet-Selch who was at full power and an ancient. At the end of shadow bringers Humanity surpassed the ancients in strength even without creation magic or immortality due to our use of Dynamis. It was also thanks to our use of Dynamis and our willpower forged over the constant calamites, strife, and suffering humanity faced which let us defeat Meteion to answer the question she asked.

As for your quip on morality, whole point of Shadowbringers was that there aren't always villain's even those who genocide thousands like Emet did with the calamites who are evil. True evil doesn't really exist. Just people following their own principles and morals trying to do what they think is right. Endwalker reinstalls this with the fact your morality is subjective. Not objective. This isn't some in game thing either but a fact of life that flies over many peoples heads who have issue with Endwalker. And love how you have a problem with this when you killed scores upon scores of Garlean soldiers, bandits, and many many other humans. If you were paying attention when we met the head of the first legion or whatever he mentioned to his men how we were the champion of Eorzea and they backed away in fear as we are spoken of as a bloodthirsty barbarian in Garelmald. And we are, the protagonists kill count is probably higher than Zenos's and while you can justify it as "empire bad resistence good" the entire game shows you that's not the case and that even people like Zenos, Emet-selch, Elidibus (Not Lahabrea as he is a dick even back then) Yotsuyu, Gaius, Omega, Hermes and even Meteion who brought hundreds if not thousands of worlds to ruin due to being overwhelmed by despair and nihilism, all of them are human.

Really this is the wrong game for you if you want some cookie-cutter slave morality of villians being just pure evil and the protagonist saving the world without anyone dying and not having to face real-life deep philosophical questions

[Rulakir]

I agree the ancients may have responded to Meteion better then they would have not knowing, but I doubt they would have successfully defeated her. They were too susceptible to her call in the first place creating monsters everywhere with the world basically already destroyed when it happened. But let's ignore that, even if they defeated her they would have learned nothing as they were literal Gods who never experienced death or plague or famine or suffering. They would have met the same fate as the two worlds we saw that Meteion showed us that achived perfection. They were spiritually weak and when compared to the protagonist whose soul was weaker than the ancients and was only about 6 rejoining's strong, seven if you consider how Ardbert or whatever his name was fused with us, were still able to be Emet-Selch who was at full power and an ancient. At the end of shadow bringers Humanity surpassed the ancients in strength even without creation magic or immortality due to our use of Dynamis. It was also thanks to our use of Dynamis and our willpower forged over the constant calamites, strife, and suffering humanity faced which let us defeat Meteion to answer the question she asked.

I wondered if I should even reply to this because so much of it is incorrect, but here we go. :P

The sundered were far more susceptible to the Song of Oblivion. It easily caused chain reactions that could spiral out of control and once a blasphemy their souls were destroyed. Living with 'death, plague, famine, and suffering' hadn't made them any stronger to it. The sundered as a whole don't end up defeating Meteion either, it's specifically the Azem-WoL. They also required extensive assistance from the unsundered as it's unlikely they would have made it to Ultima Thule let alone Meteion's nest without all of them, one of whom had a cheat sheet.

As for Emet, it took a rejoining to become 9/14 (or 64%), G'raha summoning in 7 additional WoLs, all of the Scions, white auracite, and the combined aether of 5 Lightwardens to bring down Emet, so I don't know where you're getting this bit of dynamis winning the day. Humanity also didn't surpass the strength of the Ancients either as the WoL would have 100% died to Elidibus had Emet not shown up mid-fight to save them.

I don't find the idea that the Ancients couldn't have defeated Meteion to have any merit, not when the sundered would've been unable to defeat her without substantial Ancient assistance combined with a near omniscient 'deity' who had the luxury of 12k years to plan for a showdown that still almost ended in failure. Fact of the matter is, the Ancients were never given a chance and we simply don't know what they could have accomplished with some forewarning and all of their greatest minds working on the issue for several millennia. Plus, considering the fates that befell the other worlds in Ultima Thule, Etheirys was extremely lucky. Avoiding The Plenty put the Source at risk of numerous other world ending threats that it wouldn't have been otherwise.