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

[Teraq]

Re: Wanting Hydaelyn to turn out to be an antagonist, I very much resent the assumption (not that anyone here has outright accused anyone of this, but I wanted to make this clear) that all of us who did wanted her to be a 100% cackling villain. Personally no, because that would come out of completely nowhere. I envisioned her as perfectly benevolent, in an overbearing mother kind of way, genuinely wanting the best for the planet and mankind according to her beliefs. She just, you know. Committed genocide for it then lied about it for 12,000 years – and perhaps she was not right to think it had been the only way in the first place. And we had just found that out, alongside the fact that she was a Primal, which was treated rather ominously – remember when it was the Wham Line of the ShB launch trailer?...

...only for the story to ultimately go "hah, nevermind", handwave... quite literally all of that, and revert back to making Hydaelyn an unbridled and questionable force of goodness and light, may you ever walk in the light of the crystal, my child, and so on and so on. Every single primal tempers and leaves lasting consequences in some form or another, except magically for Hydaelyn.

...and it had zero consequence on the plot at all. Hydaelyn tempering would have been very interesting to talk about and deal with, and the fact that it's handwaved away right at the end of 6.0 with no concern about it earlier rubbed me the wrong way.

Don't forget about ShivaRyne too: that was rather foreboding when it came to Light... Granted, Ryne did have the Echo, but she was only a 1/14 Sundered. That makes it very likely that the Light aether affected her mind with ease it wouldn't have with Venat. But still, though, we then have the Elidibus parallel. Why show us his degenerating into a Zodiark AI in 5.3 then pointedly not do the same with his literal counterpart? I had expected her to have somewhat lost sight of her original goals and reasons (as she didn't have the equivalents of Emet and Lahabrea to stimulate her memory) and have the Light gnaw at her mind. Having forgotten her true name. Wondering what her original self would think of her actions now – was this truly what she had in mind? With no one left anymore to remind her to remind her of who she was and what she wanted anymore, I could have seen this be quite a dark storyline.

But we get... none of this, seemingly? Hydaelyn is just Venat drawn by Amano, and that's it. There are just so many missed opportunities here I feel.

And yeah, how different Zodiark looks from the statue we had always seen of him is weird. The only in-universe explanation that makes sense IMO is that Dark aether naturally made him look more demon-like than they had planned for, just as Light-aspected beings look very angelic. He's very different and didn't have enough snake symbolism IMO. Patch 5.3 fully going with the Zodiac-Convocation stuff as canon had me hoping for that. But you know. That lion mask was definitely a goat and such. Expectations subverted.

(snip)

Agree with everything there. And I have to add to the last paragraph: more than Emet/Hythlo/Venat, to me it was the Ancients as a whole whom I have loved since 5.0, and it was always going to be an uphill battle for Endwalker to convince me to like its plot if it revolved around demonizing the Ancients and reducing them all to dumb strawmen. It's like they didn't realize that they really had something interesting in ShB. I'm pretty sure people weren't praising the plot of ShB because of Jeryk, Thaffe and their trolley.

Endwalker really makes it look like the nuanced conflict and grey morality presented in ShB were accidents.

I do believe you bring up very good points about buddhist mythology and how it likely colored the writing – even as someone raised in a secular family in a secular country myself I would probably employ Christian tropes in stories without even realizing it.
I just find it dissonant that we should regard them as gods who deserved the fall from grace and not feel much about it because That's Just How It Is™. The way I saw them in Shadowbringers – and still see them in Elpis, talking to the NPCs and doing random side quests – is that they were very much humans in nearly all aspects, it's just that their biology gave them unique powers that affected how their society and mindset evolved. Hell, personally I related to them as soon as I saw the skyscrapers in my mostly-medieval fantasy setting, and their emphasis on academia, knowledge, research and sharing of ideas just compounded that. One of the local dungeons is the university!

And then Endwalker would tell me these people all deserved to die because [INSERT CONVOLUTED PLOT HERE] and I should feel it was 100% justified and, wow, why are you feeling bad about this? You weren't supposed to like them OH MY GOD!


Addendum for certain people lurking on this topic: I personally don't give much of a shit about what Venat's GigaSimpeus told us in the Omega quest, nor do I care about the question of whether she intentionally omitted to tell her posse about what was going to happen to them. I will say though, that him saying "We are going to miss you" in Anamnesis does point to him thinking they would still be there in any shape while apparently believing Venat's persona would be gone, and um... the opposite ended up happening, basically.
And we still do not know if she ever cared to explain everything about the Final Days, because she only afforded him very select memories. And to be fair, I'm not sure why she would wipe his knowledge of the implications of Meteion and Dynamis if he had been aware of them. Wouldn't it have been beneficial for everyone if at least one creation of Hydaelyn – be it the Watcher or the Loporrits – knew about the source of the Final Days to help the Sundered out? Literally the only explanation I have for her wiping his possible knowledge of things is making shit as convoluted as possible to perpetuate the time loop of the WoL going back in time to seek answers.
And the time loop being an explanation for things is, as we all know, an objective proof of the plot sucking ass, and I will not hear any opposing views on this particular matter, thanks.