Who knew the 6.15 Omega Quests… (Spoilers)

[KageTokage]

Up until the Omega quests, I had been operating under the assumption Venat's faction had formed after the Final Days were stopped in response to the whole issue of the third sacrifice to Zodiark, but now that it's been specified that it was before that, it just makes me wonder what the heck they were doing while the world burned.

Did they choose to simply keep their hands clean of the Zodiark business, or did they aid in finding that solution, knowing full well what it would eventually entail?

I don't think I'll ever really feel entirely at peace until we know precisely what details Venat did choose to disclose to her followers.

[Rulakir]

I don't think I'll ever really feel entirely at peace until we know precisely what details Venat did choose to disclose to her followers.

Unfortunately, it's unlikely we'll ever know, which is something I've been struggling with lately. They went all in on Venat being 'good' to the extent that they wouldn't show events accurately in EW likely because it would've made her look bad. I feel like the foundational lore of the game as a whole was undermined for the sake of this one character and the personification they committed to of her.

Also, I would find it deeply unsettling if we discover that her summoners knew everything. I've actually been giving them the benefit of the doubt that they did not know the truth in its entirety because 12 people on board with eradicating their race for a plan that was not even guaranteed to work is unfathomable to me.

[Iscah]

I feel like the foundational lore of the game as a whole was undermined for the sake of this one character and the personification they committed to of her.

Agreed on that exact wording, though perhaps not to the details – in my case, I regard the undermining to be trying that they invented this new narrative of why she caused the Sundering that doesn't line up with anything before it, and cast her in a new and unflattering light in the process.

I have to wonder if the scene at the Mothercrystal was written before all of the middle part of the story was in its current form, and Venat's motives and actions got more morally ambiguous afterwards and the writers sort of lost sight of the ending as they hammered out the middle.

It drifted into my mind last night that somewhere in all the interviews they said that they weren't settled on whether Venat directly became Hydaelyn until some way into the production? If that's correct then the Mothercrystal scene could have been written primarily with Hydaelyn the entity created to act as a mother-goddess, and not directly a continuation of Venat.

[Rulakir]

Agreed on that exact wording, though perhaps not to the details – in my case, I regard the undermining to be trying that they invented this new narrative of why she caused the Sundering that doesn't line up with anything before it, and cast her in a new and unflattering light in the process.

Justifying the sundering being intentional let alone with knowledge of the future was always going to be a hard sell. I'm frankly shocked they managed to pull it off in any capacity and it's mostly because people like an earlier poster fully bought into the premise that the Ancients were headed towards mass extinction anyway and she somehow did them a favor by genociding them before they could.

I've said before that I never got the impression Hydaelyn was 'good' in the first place. I didn't know quite what she was before ShB, but I figured she had ulterior motives and was using the WoL which is ultimately how it turned out even if they tried to frame it differently. It's weird because she ended up being worse than I thought she'd be, but the characters and narrative bend over backwards to portray her as the opposite. (I thought the sundering would be an unintended consequence of defeating Zodiark.)

I was reading through translations of the DE cutscenes and some of it was interesting. One of them is the Watcher saying: "Hydaelyn too is the product of the hopes and wishes of those who created her, so only the future matters to her. Not the past." It makes it sound like the conflict was ideological and I know Brinne has written thoughtful pieces here on Venat being an ideologue. This is more the direction I thought EW would go with Venat essentially being the Emet/Elidibus of 6.0. Unfortunately, we ended up with the 'othering' of the Ancients and excuses being made for a character that is essentially an amalgamation of other antagonists.

[jameseoakes]

Up until the Omega quests, I had been operating under the assumption Venat's faction had formed after the Final Days were stopped in response to the whole issue of the third sacrifice to Zodiark, but now that it's been specified that it was before that, it just makes me wonder what the heck they were doing while the world burned.

Did they choose to simply keep their hands clean of the Zodiark business, or did they aid in finding that solution, knowing full well what it would eventually entail?

I don't think I'll ever really feel entirely at peace until we know precisely what details Venat did choose to disclose to her followers.

I'm expecting some really cringe and desperate writing in a least one of the short stories that will come with the Rising event to try and address this

[EaraGrace]

Up until the Omega quests, I had been operating under the assumption Venat's faction had formed after the Final Days were stopped in response to the whole issue of the third sacrifice to Zodiark, but now that it's been specified that it was before that, it just makes me wonder what the heck they were doing while the world burned.

Did they choose to simply keep their hands clean of the Zodiark business, or did they aid in finding that solution, knowing full well what it would eventually entail?

I don't think I'll ever really feel entirely at peace until we know precisely what details Venat did choose to disclose to her followers.

We’ve known that her and her group were acting pre Final Days since EW, given she says that there is “much to be done” and that she will need to “carefully consider who can be trusted, and bring them into the fold.”

On the matter of how much her group knew, we have a couple of verified facts that we can use as a guide.

1. The Watcher suspects his Ancient counterpart to have known more of the Final Days than he does (Omega quest line)
2. Venats group knew her fate and were despondent over it (Omega)
3. Venat was intending to “bring others into the fold” (Endwalker)
4. The group at Anamnesis knew that Zodiark wasn’t enough and that the Convocation would not be able to address that fact (5.3)

I think we can conclude they knew quite a bit.