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

[CrownySuccubus]

The impression I got was he was seeking confirmation bias in the cosmos. Particularly when you factor in that he was breaking all the rules because he knew this experiment of his would never pass the necessary protocols. His question of what gives their life meaning wasn't all Meteion was tasked with learning, though that's all he tells Emet who is able to point out the flaws based on that alone. Maybe it's too much time on the forums :P, but given his dissatisfaction with Ancient society I felt he was looking for evidence to show them that, "See? Other people aren't like this!"

Based on what the writers have said, this was meant to be an allegory for Twitter. They said something like "Hermes wasn't strong enough to come up with the answers for himself, so he resorted to relying on the answers of others".

So, one way of putting it is that Hermes was struggling with depression and disillusionment, invented Twitter to ask if other people felt the same way, and then literally the entirely of Twitter responded back to him with copy-pasted posts from r/Blackpill.

Apparently, the writers/devs aren't okay with civilizations being wiped out either - as long as they're sundered.

Hermes went from being presented as an antagonist to being the 'first step for mankind' and the Final Days somehow beneficial?!

See my earlier statement about Buddhist parallels and the notion that "gods" have to lose their divinity and learn to become enlightened through suffering.

I could even further elaborate with points about Japanese Zen Buddhism's particular views on death, impermanence and the end of eras....but that would be going way off the rails for the moment.

The more I think about it, the more I feel like the characters of Hermes and Venat are redundant. It makes me wonder if Brinne was onto something with her conspiracy theory that Meteion was originally going to be Venat's creation

Hydaelyn I highly suspect was meant to be the antagonist of EW, but either 1) they decided she had to be good, 2) they were subverting expectations, or 3) both.

That was almost certainly it. In ShB, you can see the seeds being set for a "Venat/Hyd was the bad guy all along" twist, but my guess is that some people (whether it was writers or fans who felt similarly to me) did NOT want to go down this well-worn cliche for the billionth time. Even most of EW starts with the Scions questioning Hydaelyn or saying that she can't be trusted, up until the moment you meet Venat in Elpis, after which, her morality is never questioned again.

[Rulakir]

See my earlier statement about Buddhist parallels and the notion that "gods" have to lose their divinity and learn to become enlightened through suffering.

I believe they focused too much on themes and not enough on whether or not the story was enjoyable. It's a video game, it's supposed to be entertaining. Regarding the time loop, did no one stop to think how unsatisfying it might feel to the player to be sent back in time and be unable to save the Ancients? Did they not think that people might not want to watch their favorite character(s) suffer and die a second time? Did they not think that making the WoL inadvertently responsible for some of these events (particularly giving Venat the idea for the sundering) would be problematic?

Elpis was basically just a snuff film. What's to like about that? It was cruel bait because up until Meteion starts giving her report you think you're going to be able to save them. (No, I don't care that Elidibus said we couldn't change anything. Not following an expansion where an AU was created to save the WoL's life.)

I honestly don't know how they could have written a more unsatisfying conclusion and while the Omega quest chain was an improvement, it still wasn't cathartic enough. This isn't even addressing the copious amount of lore that we were denied due to this rush job to be done with the Ancients. Weren't we supposed to have all our questions answered in EW? Instead, there's more than ever and there's only been one Q&A with Yoshi-P visibly disinterested in discussing the lore.

They can keep their themes. I wanted a good story and I didn't get one.

[CrownySuccubus]

snip

Yeah, when my friend (who had finished EW months before me) giddily asked me what I thought about Elpis (after I had heaped praise on every segment of the story before that), I just stoically said, "Yeah, I didn't like it." His giddiness immediately turned dour as he asked, "The heck didn't you like?" in an accusatory manner. I responded, "I felt like that was the most preventable apocalypse ever, and only happened because everybody -- including "me" -- suddenly decided to take Stupid Pills."

Like Lelila said, when I first got to Elpis, I was like "Oh okay, so we're going to be able to watch what happens, but not change anything. That's a clever twist."

When we talk to Emet and Hyth, I thought, "Oh okay, we're going to see what happened and maybe try to warn them, but nobody's going to believe us. Tragic, but still kinda cool."

But then when we Venat turns up and we just told them everything, red flags started going off in my head. "Oh my God. They're going to contrive some reason for Hermes to hit us with the mind-eraser ray, aren't they?"

And then when that happens, and Venat says, "Oh well, we COULD tell them, but blah blah blah we need Hermes and yadda yadda", my only thought was, "This can't actually be real. I'm watching an actor for a theatrical play who knows that everybody in the theater dies as soon as the play ends decide that playing the exact same role with the exact same script is somehow going to change things. She's deciding NOT to do the ONE THING that will instantly make the future I warned her about not happen."

Then, the rest of EW happened with the "Blah blah people need suffering", "Perfection is bad", "Struggle makes you strong" nonsense we've talked about here, and I was tuning out half the dialogue.

[Teraq]

His giddiness immediately turned dour as he asked, "The heck didn't you like?" in an accusatory manner.

The average EW non-enjoyer experience...

How exactly do I prepare for a world in which my relative, who has survived on insulin for 40 years, dies because the apocalypse made finding that medicine impossible? By not giving it to them?

have you tried telling their pancreas to forge ahead

[CrownySuccubus]

have you tried telling their pancreas to forge ahead

LOL

I'm going straight to Hell for how hard I laughed at that...

[Brinne]

have you tried telling their pancreas to forge ahead

oh shit i gotta get right on that, how did i never think of trying this

edit: as someone who has unironically looked up a number of "surviving the zombie apocalypse as an insulin-dependent diabetic" thinkpieces which all essentially have the conclusion as "you don't," can't believe they've all been debunked by this post's, and 6.0's, insightful genius