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

[Krokov]

Lackluster? It explained the story why the FD happened and the back story of Hydealyn along with other Ancients. It shows hope and light overcoming darkness and despair.

[Teraq]

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Good point both; the sheer scale of Venat's actions and how central she is to the entire arc makes her play in a wholly different ball park.

I like that Hien is a very questionable "good guy" – probably the worst of the country leaders (and incidentally the one representing a fictional, ancient version of the writers' country). But he isn't questioned much by anyone that Matters™, is he?... Pft. His reaction to Yotsuyu's pimp is especially egregious... It's also interesting that of all the Scions, only Lyse (as far as I remember??) accompanies us in the Steppes. Of all Scions, I think she would be the one with the fewest qualms about Hien's actions, for a couple of reasons: she's the punch first ask questions later girl, likely not politically savvy, she is also in somewhat of a similar situation to Hien... By the time we meet back with other Scions, the deed has been done. Again, being able to express your own opinion via more critical dialogue choice would have made this more interesting.


(Edit)

Darkness isn’t always supposed to be bad though per shb, and light isn’t supposed to always be good. So why are we now reversing that and going back to the stereotype of “dark=bad, light=good?”

It... just occurred to me that darkness was supposed to be energy, chaos and entropy while light represented stillness, quiet and stagnation... Yet Endwalker very obviously portrayed the elder primal of light as driven by the ideal of evolving and moving forward, while the elder primal of darkness was painted with the "ill-fated wish for a stagnant society" brush...