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

[Quuoooote]

snip

Honestly, at this point, does it really matter who's right and who's wrong in this argument? There's no reason to nitpick every little post to death; this whole back and forth just comes across as petty arguing for the sake of arguing. It really detracts from the overall quality of the thread and has thoroughly derailed discussion multiple times already. The problem has only been exacerbated the further you wander down the rabbit hole into off-topic territory in further attempts to win an increasingly tangential argument. Even if you're hypothetically one-hundred percent correct, too... it's still making the thread more of an annoyance to read.

I prefer to lurk but I even I couldn't help but comment. I'll give my two cents on the story so I'm not a hypocrite propagating the derailment issue; hopefully I can bring something fresh to the table that you all haven't touched on already.

Dynamis to me feels written in to the story to justify the Sundering. The Ancient's plan to sacrifice wildlife in order to resurrect those that had been sacrificed to Zodiark feels completely reasonable, and that's ultimately the problem—the writers knew Hydaelyn would need a stronger justification to Sunder the star. Dynamis was the band-aid that was intended to make it the objectively morally correct choice, but then this leads to contradictions in Venat's motivations. We are presented with two reasons why Venat Sundered Etheirys: one being the need for Dynamis-sensitive beings, and the other being that she felt strongly opposed to the third sacrifice, but these don't quite mesh together well under scrutiny. If Venat intended to Sunder the star for the purposes of Dynamis, then why would she feel the need to wait until two sacrifices of her people had already taken place? Especially if the idea of a third is bad enough in her eyes to serve as a secondary motivator altogether. On the other hand, if Venat Sundered Etheirys primarily to prevent a third sacrifice and resist Zodiark then how does Dynamis factor in at all outside of convenient coincidence? And how, in her mind, does irreparably Sundering her entire race somehow seem like a better alternative to sacrificing just a fraction of them (and then some wildlife to restore the sacrificed)? The only scenario in which the two motivations can co-exist is one where Venat specifically waits for Zodiark to be summoned because of her knowledge of the future, knowing that he'll shield the planet for 12,000 years until her champion can be born, but then that raises problems of its own. Firstly, allowing a second sacrifice to Zodiark becomes unnecessary from Venat's point of view. Secondly, that would make Hydaelyn a sadistic, scheming psychopath that worked behind the scenes pulling strings and knowingly withholding information from the Ancients in order to inflict maximum suffering upon her own people to meet her own ends. How's that for despair, Emet?

[Lauront]

and the other being that she felt strongly opposed to the third sacrifice, but these don't quite mesh together well under scrutiny. If Venat intended to Sunder the star for the purposes of Dynamis, then why would she feel the need to wait until two sacrifices of her people had already taken place? Especially if the idea of a third is bad enough in her eyes to serve as a secondary motivator altogether.

Although I think you are probably getting at what I am about to say, just for clarity's sake: it's less that she's opposed to the sacrifices as such, and more that she's concerned that if they were to complete them and restore their world and return to things as they were, they'd reach the fate of the Plenty, i.e. the third of the Dead Ends... about which she hears a couple of lines in Meteion's report, and... that's it. Enough to confirm her fears/beliefs. Nonetheless, even with this qualification in mind, it does not resolve the tension you mentioned, in the sense that even if her people agreed to her "accept suffering" mantra, if dynamis is an overarching concern, wouldn't she want to sunder them anyway?

So, agreed, I don't think either of these two points stand on particularly strong footing (could they not figure out a way to manipulate dynamis, even if indirectly, and make changes if their path would potentially doom them/their star?) and I believe that is why they threw in the time loop, which can be interpreted as her favouring the WoL's timeline (the possibility of AUs in this setting throws a wrench into this but how well that is understood by the characters in question is another matter.) Yoshi's Q&A answers does offer her trying to preserve the timeline as a possible motive, and it is by design she tries to spare Emet, which is consistent with such an interpretation. All this complexity and opacity around her motives is there because they're not very good if scrutinised, so we get the final Yoshi line of defence "She's an ancient, huh, doing ancient things." A position I can only arrive at by completely ignoring 99% of what they showed us about them elsewhere.

Anyway, agree with both you and Cutes in how morally fraught this ends up being. It really needed more than the tack-on Omega quest dialogue options given the very strongly positive leaning narrative she benefits from in EW.

[Quuoooote]

It's less that she's opposed to the sacrifices, and more that she's concerned that if they were to complete them and restore their world and return to things as they were, they'd reach the fate of the Plenty

Oh don't worry, I'm painfully aware of that fact. I feel the same way about the Plenty as I do Dynamis: They are a plot contrivance written to justify to the player why the Ancients needed to be destroyed. Unfortunately I don't really buy the strawman the writers constructed with both the Plenty and the Ea (because one suicidal 'perfect' civilization just isn't enough to beat us over the head with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer); mostly because the concept is dumb, but also because the entire purpose of Zodiark in the first was to survive in the face of impossible, apocalyptic odds. He is literally mankind's final hope, a manifestation of the Ancients' desire to struggle and suffer in the pursuit of life, which is more than a little contradictory to the Plenty's endgame. Do the writers want us to believe that Emet-Selch struggled to resurrect his people for 12,000 years because the Ancients were ultimately apathetic to the point of self-destruction? I don't think so.

To elaborate on the 'dumb', I don't really think the Plenty were well thought-out on a sub-textual level. The messaging of perfection = bad—which is straight up bizarre when interpreted as a moral for real life—raises more questions, like where the line is drawn between acceptable advancement and dangerous perfection. Did the Ancients need to be Sundered because they were too close to said line? If so, how does Sundering them and wiping them out resolve this problem? Would sensitivity to Dynamis prevent this ultimate fate, or were the Ancients essentially dealt an impossible hand in life? Are the Sundered going to be at risk if they advance too far, or are they immune to such apathy and/or existential dread because they have Dynamis?

Not to mention the fact that the only Plenty-adjacent action taken by the Ancients that was shown to us was Hermes' predecessor choosing to return to the lifestream after having lived a fulfilling and complete life in service to Etheirys—something that hardly measures up to the apathy of the Plenty, and even becomes a bit ironic when considering the Ea. Since part of the Ea's despair stemmed from their formless and immortal bodies that forced them to simply exist until the heat death of the universe, they are meant to (I think) be an argument against the Ancients' immortality. If you take this into consideration you realize that the Ancients are in a lose-lose position: If they return to the lifestream, they're too much like the Plenty and need to be Sundered. On the other hand if they live forever they become too like the Ea, which would probably also mean they need to be Sundered. The Ancients are in a rigged, unwinnable situation because they're battling plot contrivances designed to kill them.

[Lauront]

excellent points about our straw-based broken aesop lifeforms

Totally agree with all the points you raise. The Plenty is just so basic that it passes as nothing other than a shallow visual parallel to the ancients attempting to cave our heads in with the "point", hopefully disabling any remaining cerebral functions with which to question it. I just can't take the Plenty seriously on any level, because what they are presenting me with shows a supposedly very sophisticated people, who just didn't plan ahead much and then were hit with a dread ennui. Doesn't really seem much like the ancients, and even after the Final Days, the Convocation's aim in realising the final sacrifice was for them to resume custody of their star. They were aware of the risks of becoming stagnant, as per one of the Amaurotine shades' dialogue. Given the lens through which they evaluate decisions, if they became apprised of either the fate of the Ea or the Plenty strawmen (did they suffer an existential crisis if they touched grass? too similar to what they're made of?), they were not compelling ultimate destinations for their society. After the Plenty, I pretty much exited the game and did not come back for two weeks or so, because it was so utterly contrived and stupid in what it tried to do.

Yoshi can even bring in an ultimate, with his self-insert's head floating around, telling us "NOOO! BAD! YOUR LUMINESCENT EYED HUSBANDOS ARE DOOMED! AND THEY'RE HAPPY ABOUT IT!" if we try save the ancients in it, and I'll still consider it to be contrived trash.

Also another chance to shill the discord Rulakir mentioned: https://discord.gg/FVph63yH

[Rulakir]

He is literally mankind's final hope, a manifestation of the Ancients' desire to struggle and suffer in the pursuit of life, which is more than a little contradictory to the Plenty's endgame. Do the writers want us to believe that Emet-Selch struggled to resurrect his people for 12,000 years because the Ancients were ultimately apathetic to the point of self-destruction?

Zodiark, relegated to an "ill-fated wish". :P The only explanation I can think of is that for some bizarre reason they didn't expect players to look into the story too deeply. Several people have wondered if Yoshi-P even played through the side quests in Elpis, which paint a different picture than what's presented in the MSQ (not coincidentally from the POV of two of the world's dissidents).

I've said many times EW didn't feel like the spiritual successor of ShB and that the story felt like it had been handed off to someone else. It's hard to tell if ShB was truly a fluke or if EW is the result of an overworked Ishikawa who didn't have the same level of creative freedom. I suppose we may never know, but there are so many inconsistencies and contradictions between the two for me that I couldn't arrive at the same conclusions EW demanded in order for the story to work.

Did the Ancients need to be Sundered because they were too close to said line? If so, how does Sundering them and wiping them out resolve this problem? Would sensitivity to Dynamis prevent this ultimate fate, or were the Ancients essentially dealt an impossible hand in life? Are the Sundered going to be at risk if they advance too far, or are they immune to such apathy and/or existential dread because they have Dynamis?

This is yet another timeline issue (and something else I suppose will never be clarified). While we don't know for sure, it seems like the length of time between the summoning of Zodiark and the sundering was a matter of months. It doesn't sound like Venat and her crew spent any significant amount of time trying to encourage change and, frankly, I don't believe that was realistic in what was essentially a post-apocalyptic world at that point. The cutscene that is so celebrated appeared to me as tone deaf since these people were still in the midst of trauma and grief having scarcely escaped an extinction level event.

Assuming they were going to go the way of The Plenty it likely would've taken a significant amount of time to do so. This makes Venat, Miss "Nothing Is Impossible", look like she's given up on them before they can even get back on their feet in order to pursue "perfection". I can't even solely attribute it to her lacking patience because it's that she wouldn't tell anyone the truth. I don't know how reasonable it was of her to believe she and her 12 followers could change society based on whatever platitude they were peddling.

Then you add dynamis into the mix, which causes one to question how earnest her attempts to change society were if she truly believed the Ancients incapable of defeating Meteion without being sundered. So, in order for her to have "tried" then you'd have to accept that they could have come up with a way to defeat Meteion and that's not what the game leads you believe (or, in fact, many of its fans will argue). Otherwise, everything she did was all for show (or possibly even a ruse to amass followers) and her intention always was to sunder everyone.

Not to mention her making Etheirys substantially more vulnerable to other 'dead end' fates they previously weren't at risk of falling to is conveniently never addressed.

The Ancients are in a rigged, unwinnable situation because they're battling plot contrivances designed to kill them.

Essentially, yes. Worse because EW took what was presented in ShB as a tragedy and spun it as them having deserved their fate one way or another. It felt gross and unsatisfying. Particularly so when the characters who are responsible for the Final Days and the Sundering are depicted as being sympathetic and overall correct (if you apply Ishikawa's statement regarding Hermes being the "first step" for mankind).