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

[Lauront]

Given how discussions have been going in other threads, I think it illustrates why this one is so appreciated.

As for dynamis, I hope they drop it. Meteion is the only reason we needed it and she's gone. There doesn't appear to be any other benefit to it aside from 'pushing limits', which is frankly only necessary due to being sundered. 'Authentic' mankind would be objectively more powerful. I'm still hoping the next 10 year arc is the WoL becoming progressively more whole (I need to have an unsundered Azem reunite with Emet & Hyth at the end of all this). I also think it's fully in line with Venat's mentality for everything to rejoin once Meteion had been defeated and mankind forced into her ideology. We'll see if Oda sticks to what he said about the sundering being "unstable", which was while Hydaelyn was alive. The situation should start to fall apart now unless, of course, this is her once again not experiencing any of the drawbacks that others do. Zodiark's magic disappearing with his demise but Hydaelyn's not would sadly be consistent with EW's writing.

Yep and this is exactly why I am not overly enthusiastic about it, particularly if it gets re-casted as "and here's why we should be glad those ill-fated ancients are gone..." There are ways to avoid it, like I mentioned, but it requires careful writing and I am not optimistic on that front.

[CrownySuccubus]

You're literally stating things that support the viewpoint of "this person likes this evil empire, lo and behold the dawn! This person clearly supports bigoted ideology because of this!"

Did I?

I mean, liking Garlemald is one thing. They look cool, act tough, and have cool machines. That doesn't make anyone a Nazi.

I dunno sounds like you're making things up, honestly.

Frankly, I'm so very weary of you. Goodbye forever.

Oh no. How terrible.

Then we have Fandaniel's towers of the apocalypse, which... all disappeared as soon as we killed Anima? Crumbled? What about all the people inside? Was G'raha there to Break everyone's fall??

Yeah. That was my first question when they mentioned all the towers disappearing. I just presumed that all those various armies we shipped the scales to might have rescued them before that. But the game never outright explains or tells us anything either way.

[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?

[Quuoooote]

Despite Dynamis being the key that is allegedly everywhere, undetectable, and more abundant than the much-stronger Aether, we never actually really learn how to manipulate it. The Sundered never feel as though they're more equipped to deal with the issue of Meteion other than being told "you just are", and ironically they are presented as much weaker than their Unsundered counterparts. The aetherical density of the Ancients provides them innate resistance to the Dynamis / blasphemy-inducing effects of Meteion's song, but the Endsong easily smothers and snuffs out the aether of the Sundered, resulting in complete and total soul erasure. Go, suffering.

Side tangent—if Hermes was memory wiped and willing to help the Ancients from the seat of Fandaniel, he should have still known about his Meteions, unless he had come up with the concept during his lunch break while we were in Elpis and sent out a few thousand in that time alone. Additionally, as an expert in Dynamis, he probably could have, should have, would have been able to do something about the Endsong if he were sincerely trying to help. The story even explicitly states that he and Venat were the ones to deduce that the aetherically-weaker portions of Etheirys' atmosphere were what the Endsong 'broke through' to affect the Ancients, yet Hermes could neither identify it nor come up with a solution. This has the added benefit of making the Venat situation so much worse morally speaking, since she knows the Metia are singing the song of oblivion and knows about Dynamis, yet still says nothing and simply allows the Final Days to happen. Geez, there are really too many side-tangents to choose from when talking about Endwalker, doesn't that speak volumes about the quality of the story?

Ultimately the time loop causes all of this and ruins everything, especially Venat's character, because she must remain silent despite everything and have all agency stripped from her character in order to propagate causality. The WoL has no agency, because they must travel back in time to set the wheels in motion. Never endingly, with no true freedom of choice in sight: all roads lead to the time loop.

EDIT Because we fact check ourselves after posting: Venat isn't actually stated to have assisted Hermes with the whole atmosphere thing, but it doesn't change the fact that she knew all the information necessary to come to the same conclusion anyways. She knew it was Dynamis, she knew it was Meteion's song, she knows the Final Days are going to be an apocalypse level event, but still says nothing.

[Cutes]

Side tangent—if Hermes was memory wiped and willing to help the Ancients from the seat of Fandaniel, he should have still known about his Meteions, unless he had come up with the concept during his lunch break while we were in Elpis and sent out a few thousand in that time alone. Additionally, as an expert in Dynamis, he probably could have, should have, would have been able to do something about the Endsong if he were sincerely trying to help. The story even explicitly states that he and Venat were the ones to deduce that the aetherically-weaker portions of Etheirys' atmosphere were what the Endsong 'broke through' to affect the Ancients, yet Hermes could neither identify it nor come up with a solution. This has the added benefit of making the Venat situation so much worse morally speaking , since she knows the Metia are singing the song of oblivion and knows about Dynamis, yet still says nothing and simply allows the Final Days to happen. Geez, there are really too many side-tangents to choose from when talking about Endwalker, doesn't that speak volumes about the quality of the story?

Ultimately the time loop causes all of this and ruins everything, especially Venat's character, because she must remain silent despite everything and have all agency stripped from her character in order to propagate causality. The WoL has no agency, because they must travel back in time to set the wheels in motion. Never endingly, with no true freedom of choice in sight: all roads lead to the time loop.

While the game only explicitly states Hermes as the seat of Fandaniel deduced the cause of the localization of the Final Days was stagnant celestial aether (mentioned by Elidibus before we travel to Elpis), Venat didn’t work with him as far as I know. We learn during our time in Elpis that Venat does already have some knowledge of dynamis. She learns the true nature of Meteion and the song of oblivion and she has foreknowledge of the Final Days thanks to us telling her and her not having her memory wiped. Venat is not foolish and could put together the cause of the Final Days but does not impart this knowledge to anyone during that calamity in favor of relinquishing her agency for the causality loop. She even says herself she must have had a reason to take such measures, but is deference to a predetermined outcome truly so compelling? It’s morally troubling given the tremendous loss of life that followed it.

[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.

[Theodric]

I'd agree that Dynamis appears to have been written purely as a method to justify the Sundering which is pretty...questionable in itself. An excellent way to showcase whether something is or isn't acceptable would be to subject the protagonists to that very same scenario. If they seek to resist or do not enjoy it then that says it all.

How unfortunate, then, that they're never at risk of any harm befalling them in the majority of cases. A fact many of their fans know all too well, I suspect. So it's pretty easy for them to shrug in indifference because even when one of the allies to the protagonists such as Hydaelyn does something messed up it's never going to be aimed at the protagonists so in their eyes it doesn't matter.

[aveyond-dreams]

Bringing this up because I was reminded of it recently, I am going to quote Hythlodaeus’s statement from Ultima Thule, which in retrospect seems like such an unbelievable thing to say now:

“Oh, come now. It’s been a gripping tale. Unbreakable bonds and noble sacrifice, sprinkled with moments of levity to counterbalance the pathos. It’s got it all.”

First of all, are you kidding me? Second of all, this statement only makes sense if we ignore the fact that this just didn’t happen in Endwalker. Oh there was “levity” all right, far too much of it for a story set against the backdrop of an apocalypse. Noble sacrifices? That were completely undone not 30 seconds after he says these lines? What in the world is he talking about here besides the sacrifices made by mostly the antagonist factions and Ahewann? The only thing “unbreakable” here is the plot armor surrounding the scions, doesn’t make for a very gripping tale when it’s clear the stakes for the main cast aren’t higher than those in an episode of Blue’s Clues.

His statement can only apply to the expansions previous to this one, back when I wasn't nearly as concerned for this game's direction as I am now.

[jameseoakes]

Bringing this up because I was reminded of it recently, I am going to quote Hythlodaeus’s statement from Ultima Thule, which in retrospect seems like such an unbelievable thing to say now:



First of all, are you kidding me? Second of all, this statement only makes sense if we ignore the fact that this just didn’t happen in Endwalker. Oh there was “levity” all right, far too much of it for a story set against the backdrop of an apocalypse. Noble sacrifices? That were completely undone not 30 seconds after he says these lines? What in the world is he talking about here besides the sacrifices made by mostly the antagonist factions and Ahewann? The only thing “unbreakable” here is the plot armor surrounding the scions, doesn’t make for a very gripping tale when it’s clear the stakes for the main cast aren’t higher than those in an episode of Blue’s Clues.

His statement can only apply to the expansions previous to this one, back when I wasn't nearly as concerned for this game's direction as I am now.

It was so clear early on in UT that the characters were not going to stay dead that it really killed those parts for me and made most of the setup for each 'death' just feel so overdone and empty

Edit: not helped by the fact the game as really fallen in to a habit of doing these fake outs a lot

[Theodric]

A large part of the problem is that the likes of Moenbryda are pushed as much more important than they actually were. Moenbryda's demise didn't really have any huge consequences. The Scions were upset because she was a good friend of theirs and a colleague. Her parents were upset because they're family. Yet beyond that, there's no deeper consequences.

A good death is a death that has lasting impact beyond making a few characters 'sad'. We really need someone on the level of Aymeric or Nanamo to die. A leader figure perishing for one reason or another would plunge a nation into chaos and if written well that very same chaos could bring back some of the grit and intrigue that many of us wish to see. With so many nations already introduced into the game itself, it makes no sense to me for every single one to go in the same 'safe' direction with no meaningful instability to speak of. I would have liked Merlwyb to perish during the negotiations with the Beast Tribes which would not only cause relations with the Kobold and Sahagin to sour but allow a new leader figure to step up and push Limsa deeper into piracy. Maybe Sicard could have fulfilled that role - and given us a male leader figure to rule at least one of the three starter city states.