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

[MikkoAkure]

snip.

To me, the whole point of Azem was that they were special.

Like Hythlodeus, Emet-Selch, and Venat said, they’re meant to travel around and help people, which just happens to be what the WoL does too and doesn’t sound like something you’d normally expect from a member of a council ruling over an advanced civilization. As stated previously, Hythlodeus even pointed out that the others sit in Amaurot while Azem wanders around. Hermes, and Lahabrea may have ties to other places, but part of Hermes’ strife is that becoming Fandaniel would mean not being at Elpis anymore. Lahabrea himself wasn’t present at Pandæmonium and from what I remember, I don’t think it was meant to be his per se. His wife Athena watched over it until she died and her duties were passed on to her husband so I think he was double-dipping duties.

The seat of Azem also seemed to know more about the world at large than anyone else and it was described by Venat that a lot of the researchers at Elpis asked for her insights since she was able to witness the habitats of these creatures first hand, which also implies the researchers there don’t go either and again gives the opinion that traveling is strange for an Amaurotine Ancient.

As far as Azem and the rest of the Convocation go, except for Emet-Selch who was their friend before both were in the Convocation, I’m not sure the rest count as comrades. Ere Our Curtain Falls says that Azem has been censured in the past and Emet-Selch even says they’re lucky that the current emissary was a “kindly soul”. They also went straight to Hythlodeus to take one of Lahabrea’s concepts and not Lahabrea himself. And ultimately they were kicked from the Convocation when it became Zodiark time.

I’m pretty sure that Azem’s comrades are just Hythlodeus and Emet-Selch since they’ve been referred to as a friend trio since ShB. Before becoming Azem, our Azem was a student of Venat and it’s entirely likely that they used their friend-summoning magic to pull the other two in for help. It doesn’t make sense for Hythlodeus to describe them not going to the Convocation for help and summoning their comrades instead, if the Convocation were their comrades. He would have just said that they summon the Convocation.

Thank you for articulating in words my shared hatred of this headcanon.

You know, to me it feels like you and the rest have your own headcanon about how the world and the story should go and part of the reason you're upset is that your headcanon isn't meshing with the way the story actually went.

Was it always the intention for Hydaelyn's story to play out the way it did?

According to an interview, they started to formulate the rest of the story and roles and the background etc mid-HW. Before that, Yoshi-P or someone even said that the Ascians were just supposed to be there doing "bad things" until they could figure out why they were doing bad things. I think the whole greater cosmic backstory took a pause in Stormblood since we had a simple black and white plot with the Garleans with no Ascians to be found and then ShB introduced the Ancients and all that jazz. During an interview during ShB, Yoshi-P commented on people taking Emet-Selch's viewpoint and said that we've only seen his side and that Hydaelyn's was coming in the next expansion so I would imagine they had it mostly down during the time of the interview.

I think they fumbled her motivations in order to make her a "grey" character like Emet-Selch, but considering she gets her own image song and how the WoL and Venat/Hydaelyn interact the whole time, I don't think she was meant to be an unsympathetic character. Even in the recent Omega quests, no matter what we say after, Omega says that we talk about her fondly.

[Lauront]

My comments are about its future direction. The story as told remains bad for all the reasons many have articulated, so no, it isn't just that, but it's true, we won't ever really see eye to eye on what we want out of the story. Particularly when it comes to having any hand in what Venat did. It is a red line for me.

[MikkoAkure]

My comments are about it's future direction. The story as told remains bad for all the reasons many have articulated, so no, it isn't just that, but it's true, we won't ever really see eye to eye on what we want out of the story.

That's probably another thing then. I have nothing I want out of the story. I'm just here to have a good time and I don't really care where the story goes.

I went into EW head empty with no expectations. There certainly are things I didn't like but I didn't let that ruin everything.

I "support" Venat/Hydaelyn because to me it's been obvious from the very beginning that it was the director/writer's intention and any other interpretation is an edgy headcanon. You all seem to have been "wronged" by the story because you invested yourselves into the plot of characters who were meant to end up losing in the end and any step the story makes that seems to suggest their wrongness ends up rubbing you the wrong way. I guess the writers get some credit for the fact that adding nuance to the Ascians got a lot of people to take their side, but I don't think that was ever the intention and that's my point.

[Lauront]

I'm afraid you're now just veering into the usual "I got mine" protagonist-centric morality, and going further by conflating the Ascians with the ancients at large. It is not all clear to me why the ancients as a whole were "meant" to lose through being genocided, or that they would try and justify this act, albeit very clumsily and half-heartedly, in a way that led Yoshi to compare her to SHB Emet-Selch, whilst the story tries to hammer you over the head with how much she "loves" you. Bluntly inserted themes being wielded by the writers like a cudgel are not going to endear it to me any the more. This includes trying to paint the ancients as sCaRy, which really, the Elpis sidequests in combination with the Amaurotine lore we got from SHB did not succeed in - all I got out of it was a society comprised of individuals who bore many transcendent traits, and who nonetheless shared in some of the usual human pursuits, concerns and anxieties, but a society which was on balance idyllic in comparison to just about any other shown in the setting.

Great that it was so "obvious" to you, but if it had been "obvious" that they were going to take the ancient story in this direction after SHB portrayed what happened to them as a tragedy without any real justice in it (and it remains so), which led to an irreconcilable conflict between the Ascians - fighting on behalf of these, their people - and the Scions, rather than trying to declare either side is 'right', yeah, I'd have waved goodbye to the story there and then. To me, it sounds like you very much did go into it with some fixed expectations given what you claim is "obvious". At this point, I am offering my feedback on the story and waiting for 6.2 to see what the short stories do with the ancient backstory. If the direction is the same, I will have my answer.

[ReynTime]

I understand people (including myself) have issues with the game's narrative direction right now but let's not turn to games like Ashes of Creation as a serious alternative. A pvp mmo (that never works in the current age, see New World. Anyone serious about PvP is playing proper pvp games nowadays, not MMOs) that's made top to bottom to cater to streamers and their mindless followers (only a limited number of people can get flying in the game so streamers will 100% get them thanks to having the advantage of an army of simps who will farm and funnel all necessary resources to them before anyone else can), generic realistic artstyle, generic medieval fantasy, horrible animations, hideous character models, $500 beta access, already loaded with cash shop items despite not even being out. The absolutely embarressing updated combat video they just recently revealed really sealed any doubt the game is a dumpster fire waiting to happen on the off chance it ever comes out. And as far as I've seen the game doesn't even have a story or lore.

Or a game outright memed on for it's horrendous conclusion to a series like Mass Effect 3.

Like I get it, this game's story has problems right now. But if you're at the point where you're praising Mass Effect 3 you've veered straight into contrarianism.

Based on this thread, I think some of you would enjoy Witcher 3 or Pathologic 2, if none of you have played either (most people have played Witcher 3 by now). I have my issues with the former (mostly Blood and Wine's story but if I explain why I'll need at least 3 more entire posts), but otherwise thoroughly enjoyed it. And Pathologic 2 is one of the greatest written RPGs (and horror games) I've ever played. Both of which are, funnily enough, on sale on steam right now. Play some actual good RPGs.

ME3's ending while disappointing gets 'memed' for the same reason Lost's ending gets memed. Some people hate storytelling that doesn't chew the dish for them and that requires them to piece things together. They just want to sit down, watch stuff that doesn't require thinking and clap when their favorite character does funny things.

[MikkoAkure]

Great that it was so "obvious" to you, but if it had been "obvious" that they were going to take the ancient story in this direction after SHB portrayed what happened to them as a tragedy without any real justice in it (and it remains so), which led to an irreconcilable conflict between the Ascians - fighting on behalf of these, their people - and the Scions, rather than trying to declare either side is 'right', yeah, I'd have waved goodbye to the story there and then. To me, it sounds like you very much did go into it with some fixed expectations given what you claim is "obvious". At this point, I am offering my feedback on the story and waiting for 6.2 to see what the short stories do with the ancient backstory. If the direction is the same, I will have my answer.

I wasn’t 100% convinced Hydaelyn would end up being the character we were meant to side with so I didn’t go in thinking “oh yeah, this is totally how it’s going to be” but still wasn’t surprised by the fact it ended up that way anyway (minus Dynamis and the dumb motivations I still have a problem with). But neither would I have let it ruin the game for me if it didn’t go that way. I still think Stormblood was on the whole a giant garbage fire whose only redeeming qualities are the Azim Steppe and Hien but I’m still playing the game.

I think assuming a character who was meant to be portrayed as sympathetic since the beginning of the game and sings two of the game’s main theme songs is on a different level than fully investing yourself in a part of the story to the point where it not ending up the way you thought ruins your experience. People can have their own ways of having fun but jumping in way too deep into something and forming expectations on it is just setting yourself up for disappointment.

[aveyond-dreams]

Found this on reddit, it's so frustrating how this has all played out. We have a playerbase that chases out writers like Matsuno and Maehiro and the players they attract with their style of storytelling. And now here we are with no Corvosi weapons, no Lunar weapons, no Mt. Ordeals with a Mythgraven Blade waiting for us at the end, no, we get Manderville weapons instead.

Guess the song Kiss Me Goodbye that played at the end of FFXII works here too.

I also know that Covid/the global conflicts happening right now seem to keep having an impact on the way things are produced by CBU3. While their consideration is obviously coming from a place of good intention, in FFXIV's case it is compromising story content and in FFXVI's case delayed a trailer despite it focusing on anything but the political plotlines in that game aside from one line about the Empire. I'm not sure that continuing to do things this way is sustainable long term.

As someone who writes a lot there are times when I've had bouts of what can vaguely describe as subtle paranoia when it comes to what I'm willing to put my characters through depending on what is going on at the time. Sometimes something happens and I want to re-imagine the story in my head but feel guilt about not doing events justice. I fear writing things in distasteful ways, yet I also have to be aware that if I don't write something with actual substance then what I've written isn't worth reading, so I have to take those risks sometimes. Some of my major regrets when it comes to my previous writing is when I *didn't* take those risks, when I wasn't bold enough.

[Lauront]

Agreed, I for one wish they'd worry less about this and just deliver a product that stands on its own merits. There are ugly things happening in the world all the time, and have been for quite some time now. Where does it end? It doesn't influence my choice in the types of games, books or movies I choose to consume, and I very much hope it doesn't end up compromising XVI's story, beyond the trailer being shifted around. Otherwise I will simply look for such things in other games. There are plenty of games which are entirely devoid of darker themes that people can turn to if they don't like that kind of thing, so it makes little sense to take a game like XVI or even XIV, and strip that out of it.

[Raoabolic]

Found this on reddit, it's so frustrating how this has all played out. We have a playerbase that chases out writers like Matsuno and Maehiro and the players they attract with their style of storytelling. And now here we are with no Corvosi weapons, no Lunar weapons, no Mt. Ordeals with a Mythgraven Blade waiting for us at the end, no, we get Manderville weapons instead.

Don't remind me, at this point XIV seems less like a world and more like a dissidia MMO with a PSO2 tier cash shop. Just throw in housing and replace the lucky tickets with outright buying the big reward in the cash shop and both cash shops would be the same thing tbh.

[Rulakir]

I fully acknowledge what the writers wanted, I just don't believe they achieved it. I'm going to end up quoting a few posters here who've said it better than I could:

Lurina: The more controversial a plot element, the tighter the plot has to be to get people to accept it in good faith, and "cultural genocide was the right call to save the world" is about as close to maximum controversy as you can get. I think the fact that these forums, the comments on Venat's entry in the JP character poll, and pretty much everywhere else the story is being discussed are filled with people expressing discomfort or irritation with it self-evident proof that the writers didn't quite make it.

You're right that a lot of these arguments began in ShB, in that period more centered on Emet-Selch. And a lot of the argumentation made then about him is completely incompatible with the defenses of Venat now. In ShB, when Emet-Selch was derided, it was often under the logic that no matter how good the future he created or how bad the sundered might be, he simply didn't have the right to take others' lives for his own cause. At that time we weren't presented with any of this existentialist inevitable doom for the Ancients, or of some hanging threat that they couldn't deal with, the conflict was simply their world versus the current world, with the resolution that even if his actions ultimately created an eternal perfect paradise free of all the horrible things in the sundered world, it was still wrong because of how many lives he'd be destroying along the way. In other words, the ends don't justify the means.

But with Venat, all of those arguments flew out the window. Now, even though she genocided her own people, introduced millennia on untold suffering, and allowed for the destruction of multiple planets, all just to deal with a single threat, she is "at her core a good person, making the best of a bad situation", who did the only thing she could have to reach an end that was desirable.

The truth is that Venat is exactly the same as Emet-Selch. As the developers have directly stated, Venat is an embodiment of that same "Ancient way of thinking" that you yourself are decrying so much. And even though the MSQ didn't care to so much as question her (Perhaps in part because the conflict in this "conclusion to the Hydaelyn and Zodiark saga" was in fact only tangentially related to them), the Omega quests calls all of this, and her extreme similarity to the antagonists, out explicitly.

I think the real reason why there's so much vitriol on this topic is that Endwalker took a conflict that had already polarized people, and flipped the script and swapped the actor's roles into positions they'd previously been acting in opposition to. This creates so much cognitive dissonance and retroactive hypocrisy that any conversation is doomed to fail from the getgo. That's without even getting into the lore minutia or specific plot details.

(I thought about trimming that down, but Veloran's entire post is on point.)

While I can acknowledge the game wanted me to view Venat as sympathetic and ultimately having saved the world, fact of the matter is they did none of the leg work required for me to arrive at that conclusion myself. I was told what I should think and feel (and hear? :P), which is the #1 faux pas in writing. Show, don't tell. Even Venat's music video martyr montage (more quotes!): "was based around how it was contorting itself to uplift the struggles of Venat as a tragic individual, asking us to focus on her perspective and how much the Sundering was hurting her, and used everyone she had killed and subjected to suffering as narrative accessories for her noble torment."

As for Azem, everything we see of their soul is selfishness when it comes to those close to them. As much as it irks me, the WoL being willing to throw the unsundered world under the bus for their friends and their future is 100% in line with what we know of that soul. This is typical WoL and it was also typical Ardbert, willing to throw the Source under the bus to save his world. Therefore, I cannot accept that OG Azem would have thrown their own friends and world under the bus for some unknown future they have no reason to care about, it's completely antithetical to the persona they have established. It's why if they have Azem as having worked with Venat it will be utterly character breaking after coming off 6.0 which bent and broke other characters to uplift Venat. If the writers are willing to toss years of character development in the trash for the sake of making one character look good (after writing themselves into a corner with her) then I don't see how I can take the story or the characters in it seriously anymore.