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

[Teraq]

(HQ Hermesposting)

Late to the party on this, but I've held off dunking on Hermes long enough (as in, it's been 3 days at least).

In a way you could say Venat is hogging the spotlight for Endwalker complaints because the discourse around her is very polarized, and the fact that the game heavily pushes her as a hero is suuuper egregious. Hermes, meanwhile, while I do think the game justifies him too much, it seems the playerbase's opinion of him is a lot more ambivalent. I found it's at least rather common to find people dunking on his dubious scientific methods and finding the writing around him weird/unrelatable. Of course, you then have the typical Twitter creature (or OF troll, god forbid) who thinks he was a soff boi and the only human Ancient and totally relatable and you don't understand depression, but I think this is a minority opinion.

1. I've not gotten the impression from anything I've seen that it was Ishikawa's intention to depict Hermes as mentally ill, autistic, or any other diagnosis I've seen applied to him. (Feel free to post information to the contrary.) He is spoken of as a rational individual with no disorders that would have led him to making the decisions he did. This is important because many of his thoughts and actions have been excused for these reasons.

While I have myself thought of him as depressed or neurodivergent, I fully agree that this didn't seem to be the intention at all. Both YoshiP and Ishikawa are pushing him as judging humanity in a "fair" way which presumably implies rationality. The reason why I do headcanon him as depressed (as his Ancient self anyway) is so I can make sense of him, because I swear this character ping-pongs uncomfortably between extremes.

He cares a LOOOOOoooot (too much) about bad concepts like the unstable charybdis and the murder wolves, but he doesn't bother mourning the alkonosts they murdered? Meteion obviously wants to shield his fragile psyche from her sisters' report and is in extreme distress but he doesn't do anything to abort the entire thing?
He snaps (holes himself up into Ktisis), then he unsnaps (seems about ready to hand himself and Meteion in after the fight), then he snaps again (KAIROS), and then he... unsnaps again, as we are told he fought against the Final Days in earnest even though he resents humanity so much??? I'm sorry, but I don't believe wiping his memories of the last couple of days would suddenly not make him an edgy, resentful militant vegan. Am I supposed to believe his OMG-I-CANNOT-COPE-WITH-DEATH-IN-ANYWAY self would support the idea of Zodiark? The first, the second, and most egregiously of all, the infamous third sacrifice (which we have so little concrete information on, it regularly makes Venat supporters go on tangents even though it really is beside the point as far as her motivations go according to the most recent Q&A)? I suppose Hermes, of all people, going with the third sacrifice is like... the single strongest headcanon evidence for the stupid Zodiark tempering having any effect at all on a character lmao.

I can reason my Hermes-was-ill headcanon as such:
1. It serves to explain some inconsistencies in his writing when you can handily invoke cognitive bias.
2. Him eventually receiving appropriate care and treatment and eventually getting better and opening up would be a working explanation for his weird 180° turn on defending humanity, as well as justifying why they eventually accepted the guy to the Seat of Fandaniel, because holy expletive I cannot imagine this dude whom I have just watched have meltdowns every other scene in Elpis would actually seat on the highest council of mankind in any sane world. Hence I cope by imagining everyone really did notice that HERMES IS LITERALLY UNWELL.
3. It makes Ancients way more sympathetic.

4. The gaslighting with him is eerily similar to Venat. We're told he has a "pure" and "noble" soul, yet he acts in contradiction to this. He may have moments where he expresses a seemingly sincere desire to change society, but beneath that appears to be a deep seated resentment towards others not thinking and feeling the way he does. (This seems to be a theme of EW that if people aren't behaving the way you want it's okay to force that behavior through violence.)

Honestly I kind of resent it when people say the game unambiguously presented him as wrong. No, the gaslight was fairly strong around him too. HERMES IS SAD HUMANS DO NOT RESPECT ANIMAL LIVES! CAMERA PANS TO A LITTLE FAMILY OF ADORABLE HEDGEHOGS. Oh this is definitely the sort of subtle storytelling I came here for! His reasoning for "testing humanity" and the whole thing about it being "fair" in any sort of way (see your 3rd point lmao) worked well enough on some people who fully bought into it, at least. Probably Ishikawa herself, to begin with.

5. Learning from Meteion's report that Etheirys is essentially the best place in the universe must have been particularly galling given his issues with his people. As Teraq said, he's a first world problem. :P

Yes and it's unironically a far more understandable motivation for him snapping than his largely unrelatable existential quandary straight out of /r/im14andthisisdeep. WHAT DO YOU MEAN I'M ACTUALLY REALLY WELL-OFF METEION??? THEN WHY DO I FEEL SO SAD???????? TRULY NOBODY UNDERSTANDS ME!!!!!!!!!!

Special mention to his dumb lines about what if humanity ever reaches perfection, will they all die with a smile on their faces then? (INSERT NEON LIGHT ARROWS POINTING TO THE PLENTY IN THE DEAD ENDS HERE) What kind of abstract question is this, you smooth-brain? I am so disappointed Emet-Selch didn't bluntly reply "Yes" like the Chad gamer meme. Would you rather be hit with the horrific Grebulof pandemic that turns you into a walking boil? Or perhaps the planetwide world war? I'll take the peaceful suicide with a smile on my face dude tyvm.

I'd like to know if anyone else had an issue with how Hermes' character has been presented in interviews and this quest chain?

Not so much an issue as a mitigating factor that IMO absolutely should be brought up whenever Omega's lines are referenced: Omega was a person, now machine, that lived in a constantly at-war culture and a survival-of-the-fittest hellscape, whose very design is to constantly evolve. I'm not exactly surprised then it would come up with "ackshually Hermes good because brutality results in evolution".

I'm more disturbed by Ishikawa herself asking whether he was the first step for mankind or not, and I am free to reject that, just like their shallow Plenty parallel. (Ra-la take me, though.)

[CrownySuccubus]

While I have myself thought of him as depressed or neurodivergent, I fully agree that this didn't seem to be the intention at all. Both YoshiP and Ishikawa are pushing him as judging humanity in a "fair" which presumably implies rationality. The reason why I do headcanon him as depressed (as his Ancient self anyway) is so I can make sense of him, because I swear this character ping-pongs uncomfortably between extremes.
He cares a LOOOOOoooot (too much) about bad concepts like the unstable charybdis and the murder wolves, but he doesn't bother mourning the alkonosts they murdered? Meteion obviously wants to shield his fragile psyche from her sisters' report and is in extreme distress but he doesn't do anything to abort the entire thing?
He snaps (holes himself up into Ktisis), then he unsnaps (seems about ready to hand himself and Meteion in after the fight), then he snaps again (KAIROS), and then he... unsnaps again, as we are told he fought against the Final Days in earnest even though he resents humanity so much??? I'm sorry, but I don't believe wiping his memories of the last couple of days would suddenly not make him an edgy, resentful militant vegan. Am I supposed to believe his OMG-I-CANNOT-COPE-WITH-DEATH-IN-ANYWAY self would support the idea of Zodiark? The first, the second, and most egregiously of all, the infamous third sacrifice (which we have so little concrete information on, it regularly makes Venat supporters go on tangents even though it really is beside the point as far as her motivations go). I suppose Hermes, of all people, going with the third sacrifice is like... the single strongest headcanon evidence for the stupid Zodiark tempering having any effect at all on a character lmao.

I appreciate the titanium-laced reinforcement for my opinions on why I utterly despise Hermes as a character.

It reminds me of the time someone told me, "But in the end, he apologized for his actions!" and I replied "WHEN!? When he was gleefully still trying to murder me in the freaking AFTERLIFE while taunting the futility of my efforts?" or do you mean when the game tried to give me that stupid "Next time let's find the answers together" nonsense of a response after I kicked his butt a third time?"

And as I told that person...yes, I know that Amon and Hermes claim to be two different people, but the game makes it clear that two operate on "overlapping soul logic" and Amon clearly references Hermes' desire for answers as his motivation. So regardless of how "different" they claim to be, the Amon we fight in the Aitiascope and the Hermes we fight in Ktisis pretty much amount to "close enough".

[Teraq]

And as I told that person...yes, I know that Amon and Hermes claim to be two different people, but the game makes it clear that two operate on "overlapping soul logic" and Amon clearly references Hermes' desire for answers as his motivation. So regardless of how "different" they claim to be, the Amon we fight in the Aitiascope and the Hermes we fight in Ktisis pretty much amount to "close enough".

I considered addressing Amon in my post too, because it's yet another layer which makes the character of Fandaniel as a whole not make sense.

He insists he sees Hermes as nothing more than a memory/soul graft, and he makes at least a couple of comments on how much the man he used to be would hate what he's doing, and all I can think is... would he really? And then you have the obvious parallels with him always being a misanthropic scientist who's got something of a beef with death and the mEaNiNg oF LiFe, and even his death monologue inside Zodiark plays the Elpis night theme.

I want to say it's just him being in denial and honestly pretty cringe about it, but I'm not entirely comfortable with that conclusion either, because reuniting the two sides as one character works awkwardly at best IMO. But then maybe it's because Hermes himself is an awkward character in the first place, because the dude seriously went from "EVERY LIFE MATTERS AND IS EQUAL (EVEN THE SPRITES)" to "yeah I just pressed the doomsday button and I know what's gonna happen lmao (but I'll pretend not to)". I honestly much preferred Fandaniel as a chaotic evil gremlin with a penchant for body horror flesh towers with doors made of teeth and sphincter walls, who angrily snaps at people around him to JUST DIE ALREADY. At least that was consistent.

Again, I have sort of managed to reason this away with my headcanon of him being originally in mental distress then slowly rehabilitated: the Sundering literally broke his self into pieces, and it just so happens that his past trauma and alienation are much more salient in his sundered mind than whatever came after. This would integrate the fact that the Leo crystal we picked up in 5.3 was bizarrely faded/altered: as we know the crystals contain only memories from the persons' tenure as Convocation members, perhaps the fact that the memories of Fandaniel were so positive and incoherent with his own experience and instincts made him reject them (as it was implied could happen with G'raha and the Exarch's memories – but of course nothing of the sort happened with G'raha, because of course not), and that broke him even more.

[CrownySuccubus]

I considered addressing Amon in my post too, because it's yet another layer which makes the character of Fandaniel as a whole not make sense.

He insists he sees Hermes as nothing more than a memory/soul graft, and he makes at least a couple of comments on how much the man he used to be would hate what he's doing, and all I can think is... would he really? But then you have the obvious parallels with him always being a misanthropic scientist who's got something of a beef with death and the mEaNiNg oF LiFe, and even his death monologue inside Zodiark plays the Elpis night theme.

I want to say it's just him being in denial and honestly pretty cringe about it, but I'm not entirely comfortable with that conclusion either, because reuniting the two sides as one character works awkwardly at best IMO. But then maybe it's because Hermes himself is an awkward character in the first place, because the dude seriously went from "EVERY LIFE MATTERS AND IS EQUAL (EVEN THE SPRITES)" to "yeah I just pressed the doomsday button and I know what's gonna happen lmao (but I'll pretend not to)". I honestly much preferred Fandaniel as a chaotic evil gremlin with a penchant for body horror flesh towers with doors made of teeth and sphincter walls, who angrily snaps at people around him to JUST DIE ALREADY. At least that was consistent.

Again, I have sort of managed to reason this away with my headcanon of him being originally in mental distress then slowly rehabilitated: the Sundering literally broke his self into pieces, and it just so happens that his past trauma and alienation are much more salient in his sundered mind than whatever came after. This would integrate the fact that the Leo crystal we picked up in 5.3 was bizarrely faded/altered: as we know the crystals contain only memories from the persons' tenure as Convocation members, perhaps the fact that the memories of Fandaniel were so positive and incoherent with his own experience and instincts that he rejected them (as it was implied could happen with G'raha and the Exarch's memories – but of course nothing of the sort happened with G'raha, because of course not), and that broke him even more.

To be fair, at least G'raha does say (in one of the best speeches of the entire game, I might add) that the confusion over where his older and past self end and begin is something that has bothered him. I can totally believe that G'raha, being a more stable person, with a larger support network, and with the best interests of others truly at heart had a better time working that out than Hermes/Fandaniel/Amon/The RZA/The Undertaker/Dwayne "The Rock" Maivia Johnson and his misanthropic ennui.