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

[MikkoAkure]

It's not want as much as expect. There was little reason to believe Hydaelyn was a "good guy" leading up to EW. Matter of fact, she looks even worse in retrospect not the least of which being it appears she purposely let the First fall to the Flood of Light because it needed to in order to produce the WoL. She's still ultimately an antagonist in the history of the world and its shards. The fact that she aids the WoL, which is only due to her betting it all on their success, doesn't change that.

I can understand feeling that way if you came into the game during Shadowbringers but it's different if you've been playing the game since the very beginning where it was much more black and white and the writers even said the Ascians had no further backstory other than "they do bad things and want to resurrect their bad god". Players from the beginning had years of "Hydaelyn good, Zodiark bad" sink in with nothing to make us think otherwise. Having a twist for the sake of a twist doesn't automatically make a story better or else people would still be watching M. Night Shyamalan movies.

The reason the Ascians are written as the bad guys is because they specifically are an existential threat to our character in a video game. The game cannot continue if the Ascians win. All the way from 1.0 they have been bad guys who were specifically created with skeletal imagery, wreathed in dark aether, and laughed maniacally while they caused chaos as narrative shorthand for "these are the bad guys". Starting from ARR, Hydaelyn was portrayed as the opposite and supported us with a calm voice against the people who tried to kill us over and over. You can't exactly walk that back after a decade.

This is exactly what Venat did though and for all we know it was much more than 12k years in terms of the Ancients' history. As others have said, we simply wanted consistency, but Venat is responsible for as much and more than the Ascians were yet neither she or the sundering are treated in the same way the Ascians and rejoinings are. This is true even in the Omega quest chain, which was my major gripe with it.

For me I feel like the Ancients stopped being the Ancients when the Final Days happened, their society collapsed, and they summoned two gods.

Every decision they made while the sky was falling was made in the context of a dying world. Zodiark's first two acts did save the world, but at a cost of a lot of the surviving population and the creation of a new god. To me, there is no chance at all that Ancient society would resume as normal in the presence of a physical god of their own creation who the leaders openly admit to being tempered by, even if just a nudge. Culling the planet's life would not have returned the souls of those who had died. While we don't know how many people were killed in the Final Days, it could be assumed that it was a fairly high number. Venat made her arrogant decision in the face of her opposition deciding to cull the life of the planet just for those who had already sacrificed their lives to save it.

We were given one chance at actual time travel and we didn't know we were going to be there at the creation of the Final Days and didn't even have the ability to do anything at all until we accidentally fumbled into it. The whole time travel story and the characters' reasonings for things was not written very well past the fan service, but Elidibus, leader of the Ancients, former heart of Zodiark, did say that we shouldn't and couldn't change anything. If he specifically says before we even leave that we can't save them, then I'm inclined to take his word for it.

The Ascians didn't have the ability to time travel. In order to get back what was lost, they committed themselves to destroying multiple worlds and decimating the main world 13 times. At a certain point you have to wonder how someone like Hythlodeus would feel about Emet-Selch slaughtering billions in order to undo the sacrifice he made to save the world. The Sundered aren't any less of people than the Unsundered are. Elpis showed us that they are just as prone to self-doubt, mistakes, and violence. They just happened to be a more evolved society and had an insane amount of aether. The Sundered have had 15,000 years since then. Who knows what they could have gotten up to if they didn't have the reset button hit on them every 1500 years or so? The Ascians could have even helped them get to a more enlightened point, but instead saw them as nothing but Rejoining fuel.

It would have been more interesting if the Ascians and Zodiark played the role of Prometheus and helped the Sundered, but that would have been basically repeating the story of FFXI.


All that said, I hope we get one or more Tales from the Dawn or whatever it will be called that goes over the period of time around the time when the Convocation were going to use Zodiark a third time so that we have more context for what was going on in a spot of the lore that deserves more explanation and ties everything together better than the MSQ did.

[Lauront]

Every decision they made while the sky was falling was made in the context of a dying world. Zodiark's first two acts did save the world, but at a cost of a lot of the surviving population and the creation of a new god. To me, there is no chance at all that Ancient society would resume as normal in the presence of a physical god of their own creation who the leaders openly admit to being tempered by, even if just a nudge. Culling the planet's life would not have returned the souls of those who had died. While we don't know how many people were killed in the Final Days, it could be assumed that it was a fairly high number. Venat made her arrogant decision in the face of her opposition deciding to cull the life of the planet just for those who had already sacrificed their lives to save it.

Are we forgetting that those souls were inside Zodiark this whole time, in a state of purgatory? And it was never framed as "the life of the planet", so much as a portion of the life Zodiark would seed. At this point I'm afraid I fail to see the relevance of tempering, either. Particularly when Emet-Selch could simply change course. It never is implied to have warped their decision making at the time.

The Ascians didn't have the ability to time travel. In order to get back what was lost, they committed themselves to destroying multiple worlds and decimating the main world 13 times. At a certain point you have to wonder how someone like Hythlodeus would feel about Emet-Selch slaughtering billions in order to undo the sacrifice he made to save the world. The Sundered aren't any less of people than the Unsundered are. Elpis showed us that they are just as prone to self-doubt, mistakes, and violence. They just happened to be a more evolved society and had an insane amount of aether. The Sundered have had 15,000 years since then.

I think if anything, Emet was more horrified by it than Hyth, but just because the sundered are a people in their own right, it does not mean that they are seen as equivalent to the ancients from their vantage point; they are materially different life forms, with their own foibles. The fact that the ancients share in some of these does not negate that they differ in traits. Even Emet-Selch, after 12k years of encounters with them, at best comes to see them as child-like beings. This is not how you see members of your own people. Of course because they are living, thinking creatures, this causes him some anguish and makes it harder for him, but as a member of the Convocation, he had a duty to his people and the star - it just comes at a great expense to the sundered. To me, a big part of the blame here goes to the lady that caused this unfortunate mess, no matter how much she may call the sundered her 'children'. While what the Ascians did to the sundered is obviously a bloodbath, she knew enough to know how he would react and most likely, what his sense of duty to his own people and the star itself would result in. The Ascians certainly knew of time travel, and it is clear the ancients had at the least a good theoretical understanding of it, but as we saw with G'raha, it is fraught with risk, because it carried with it the risk that changing time could erase their entire timeline. That alone would've dissuaded them from it. Now we know it can result in AUs, but hindsight is 20/20.

Who knows what they could have gotten up to if they didn't have the reset button hit on them every 1500 years or so? The Ascians could have even helped them get to a more enlightened point, but instead saw them as nothing but Rejoining fuel.

Dead Ends one, two or three according to the story - probably three. Maybe another. Take your pick.

It would have been more interesting if the Ascians and Zodiark played the role of Prometheus and helped the Sundered, but that would have been basically repeating the story of FFXI.

With their star inexplicably shattered (really, what was stopping Venat from explaining the situation and ending it all if she really did not see this as part of her plan?), and their people degraded into forms they could barely recognise as their own kind (Emet could even see this at the level of the soul), I can't say I entirely blame them for not doing this and instead focusing on restoring their own kind. Emet-Selch is implied to have tried to judge the worth of man repeatedly and found it wanting, and given his burden of duty to the star and his people as Emet-Selch, it is understandable why he would not relinquish his fight until he was certain enough of this to do so in SHB.

All that said, I hope we get one or more Tales from the Dawn or whatever it will be called that goes over the period of time around the time when the Convocation were going to use Zodiark a third time so that we have more context for what was going on in a spot of the lore that deserves more explanation and ties everything together better than the MSQ did.

Sure, it would be beneficial for them to fill in the gaps there, but if it turns into more attempts at "ancients bad" and "mommy loves you", I'm afraid I'm just going to wave bye bye.

[CrownySuccubus]

Particularly when Emet-Selch could simply change course. It never is implied to have warped their decision making at the time.

In ShB, Emet-Selch directly makes the case that since Zodiark tempered him, he cannot change course. He specifically used it in the context of the Ascians existing solely to obey Zodiark's will.



Like many things, EW changed or ignored this, and we're told Tempering was something that the Ascians deliberately created AFTER the Sundering.

We know that Emet tried to change course, but couldn't for what he felt were justified reasons. But did he come to that conclusion because (according to himself) he was tempered, or were those attempts to fight off the tempering that failed, and he simply justified them later?

It's a chicken-or-egg dilemma.

[Lunaxia]

I can understand feeling that way... [...]

I really wish they would stop openly admitting how much they make up and retcon things on the fly, as much I admire their honesty it doesn't really do much in terms of giving me faith in their writing.

But I disagree with your premise they couldn't "walk back on" the direction they've taken or that it would have had a negative impact, because they blatantly can and did to rapturous applause in Shadowbringers with the Ascians already. There, they planted the seed that Hydaelyn is a possibly unreliable narrator, and whichever avenue they might have taken with it, be it good, bad, or well-intentioned but misguided, they allowed adequate space for it without necessarily seeming like a last minute plot twist. Unless you think Shadowbringers itself felt that way, in which case that's fair enough, but you can't deny it certainly worked for them. Personally, though I enjoyed what Shadowbringers added to the story, and thought his final scene was beautifully done, I didn't take as readily to Elidibus' sudden transformation into a sympathetic hero. Two or so poorly paced patches didn't feel like enough breathing room for me to suddenly buy into it after the passive role he had taken since ARR, and though I didn't dislike it, I felt almost an expectation to feel similar emotions to what Emet invoked (where he had the benefit of being a much newer character) that I just didn't have. It made me glad we met him again in Endwalker and they subtly reinforced some of the defiance that always underlined the Ascians, particularly after making Emet suddenly rather at peace with the person who was the source of all the suffering inflicted upon him.

On the topic of Zodiark, I don't think it's said anywhere that the souls wouldn't have been returned to them. It doesn't change the fact that no, they could never have returned exactly to the world and the lives they once had, but that doesn't mean they don't deserve as much a chance as anyone else. I agree on the need for more details surrounding Zodiark and what happened post-Final Days, though, it's all very vague at the moment, and a lot of the for-and-against on this subject relies heavily on things we just don't know.

In ShB, Emet-Selch directly makes the case that since Zodiark tempered him, he cannot change course. He specifically used it in the context of the Ascians existing solely to obey Zodiark's will.

I wanted to talk about this, actually. At one point, I definitely believed this was what they were trying to imply, but it seems as if they discarded that thread and ended up handwaving tempering as a "minor tug" that would not have affected their actions and choices to any great degee and made it a matter of personal devotion to their world? I noticed a few potential plot points seem to have been set up and then later abandoned, perhaps when they decided to make one expansion over two.