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

[Xeronia]

If she tells them all that she knows about the Final Days and works with the Ancients to successfully avert the looming tragedy a time paradox is created. The Warrior of Light would have never existed. No one would have ever travelled back in time to inform her of the calamity that is yet to unfold. Venat 2.0 will not have been able to avert the Final Days because she doesn't know anything about them. And we are at the place where the Ancients never survived through the Final Days and everyone either died out or sacrificed themselves to Zodiark because Venat 2.0 didn't set the world asunder because she held to no hope for a brighter future since no Warrior of Light came from the future to her time to inform her of what lies ahead.

Venat having to stay silent and let the calamity unfold was the least illogical way of handling the Time Paradox created by our Time travel.

There is a timeline according to short story where the world persisted after Black Rose killed the WoL so it is clearly possible to have multiple timelines. There is also the issue of if she had full faith in the time loop what was the whole plan with the Lopporits about? She set them up to have a safe haven spaceship to flee but it would only save residents of the Source, she in that plan was willing to let the rest of the shards she created die which makes me really question why it was even a thing at all. She also could have told the WoL prior to this unfolding at any point she still had the ability to do so but she spent all her ARR time just telling you to kill Ascians and they are evil, even when speaking with her in the future expansions there is no mention of some greater threat which is kinda odd for a game that usually eludes to storyline expansions ahead of time.

[Jagick]

If she tells them all that she knows about the Final Days and works with the Ancients to successfully avert the looming tragedy a time paradox is created. The Warrior of Light would have never existed. No one would have ever travelled back in time to inform her of the calamity that is yet to unfold. Venat will not have been able to avert the Final Days because she doesn't know anything about them. And we are at the place where the Ancients never survived through the Final Days and everyone either died out or sacrificed themselves to Zodiark because Venat didn't set the world asunder because she held to no hope for a brighter future since no Warrior of Light came from the future to her time to inform her of what lies ahead.

Venat having to stay silent and let the calamity unfold was the least illogical way of preventing or handling the Time Paradox created by our Time travel.

This sort of thing in general is why time travel is bad writing and very difficult to pull off. Personally, I didn't like in Attack on Titan, and I didn't like it here. A character in the present goes into the past to engineer the situation that happens in the present that can't even exist without them existing in the future to return to the past from their present to resolve their future. I don't even know what I just said because it makes no sense. Time travel will never not be a paradox and cause you to write yourself into a corner.

The bottom line is that we never should have time traveled or had memory wipes in Endwalker to begin with.

[Misplaced_Marbles]

Writers, get your headcanon off my characters.

The thing is, in JRPGs you're always roleplaying the writers character. You never have any control on what the character does, why they do it nor what motivates them. It's never your character.

[Katoar]

snip

This is not a matter of multiple timelines but that of an impossible situation that cannot exist.

Past the point where we return back to the past, anything regarding the second Final Days is not connected to the time loop.

The Source was fragmented in order to bind Zodiark as he is tied to it.

The Final Days are an apocalyptic event caused by the negative emotions of people themselves. Venat's initial plan was to give the Star a second chance at preventing the Final Days, to put them in miserable conditions by sundering the Ancients. By doing so people may learn to overcome the feelings of hopelessness that brought the end of the fake utopia they lived in. The plan for the moon was a safety precaution in case humanity fails once again and succumbs to despair. Most of the people from The Source wouldn't have made it either.

For a character to be a villain their actions need to be motivated by evil intentions which Venat lacks.

[Theodric]

For a character to be a villain they need only engage in villainous acts. Deliberate acts of genocide qualifies as such and the only reason the game pretends otherwise is because the protagonists stand to benefit from the arrangement. However, if someone else with the same motivation were to target the Sundered with the exact same end result then by their own admission they would oppose it and consider it to be a villainous act.

It's also up to the player themselves to decide who is a villain and who is a hero. Especially when dealing with heavy issues - certainly, I find myself reluctant to believe that the typical MMO player or video game developer has the correct stance on exceedingly complex moral issues.

Though this thread is very long for a reason and many people have clearly outlined why they felt that the writing around Venat simply wasn't up to scratch and failed to make much sense/induce sympathy.

[Jagick]

This is not a matter of multiple timelines but that of an impossible situation that cannot exist.

Past the point where we return back to the past, anything regarding the second Final Days is not connected to the time loop.

The Source was fragmented in order to bind Zodiark as he is tied to it.

The Final Days are an apocalyptic event caused by the negative emotions of people themselves. Venat's initial plan was to give the Star a second chance at preventing the Final Days, to put them in miserable conditions by sundering the Ancients. By doing so people may learn to overcome the feelings of hopelessness that brought the end of the fake utopia they lived in. The plan for the moon was a safety precaution in case humanity fails once again and succumbs to despair. Most of the people from The Source wouldn't have made it either.

For a character to be a villain their actions need to be motivated by evil intentions which Venat lacks.

The bolded is a joke, right? That's an absolutely childish way of viewing the difference between good and evil, or are you seriously implying that Ozymandius from Watchmen (for example) is not a villain after he murdered several heroes, vaporized Moscow and Manhattan (killing millions in the process,) and then framed Dr. Manhattan because he thought it was the best way to avert nuclear war? Some of the worst real human beings in history thought they were doing the objectively right thing, morally, politically, and however else.

You can ABSOLUTELY be a heinous villain and have good intentions. It's not so black and white.

[Lauront]

This is not a matter of multiple timelines but that of an impossible situation that cannot exist.

When the writers can be bothered to provide a proper explanation of this, I'll take this more seriously. Until then, we know AUs can spawn in the setting based on what happened in the 8UC timeline, and they refuse to really be drawn out and say whether Venat's actions are constrained by the time loop (she herself claims she'll take nothing for granted and Yoshi advanced the point that she could be taken as actively striving to maintain it, supported by her decision to 'spare' Emet-Selch, knowing what he'd go on to do.) Yoshi's attempt at a defence of her is to compare her to SHB Emet, then claim she's not a bad guy (despite using the term villain when discussing Emet in interviews at the time), and throw in "lmao she's an ancient I guess." Not so much "if she didn't do all this, the current timeline would vanish and all existence would be doomed". People can invent whatever explanations they like for how this time loop works but the stark truth of it is, only the writers know this (one would hope, anyway) and they've yet to properly outline it.

[Tama-Kanzashi]

For a character to be a villain their actions need to be motivated by evil intentions which Venat lacks.

Of course she is evil. You can't look at a character killing a whole race of people and then say "oh that wasn't evil because she meant well". No matter how much media likes to push the approach of "the end justifies the means", no, it doesn't. It absolutely doesn't.

Otherwise that guy pushing the button in The Dead Ends to kill everyone on his planet also isn't evil because he meant well and ended the war. Sure he meant well, but it's still evil. And unlike Hydaelyn he still has his "I...killed everyone..." moment. How mysterious.

And even if you think murder isn't evil enough, she is pretty darn evil on a personal scale too. Sure, the WoL has devolved into a pretty mindless muppet at this point, but it's important to point out that we only got to that point because she manipulated, lied and tampered with them from the very start. But if that still isn't evil enough, how about deleting every trace of her own people's culture from the face of the planet? Every memory of them? Making a flesh puppet (forum alt, hydaelyn taught me to use one) to talk through by killing a girl and then discarding her once she is done? How about not being interested in all the shards and what happens to them unless provoked into action?
How about her own servants on the moon? The Watcher doesn't have memories of his past life as she intentionally didn't give him any, basically being a glorified familiar. And the loporrits, even if they are annoying as heck, never got any communication from her for 12k years while she was apparently able to talk to Sharlayan. Didn't even send them a message. I guess it was funnier to watch their rabbit hearts explode when they realized they built everything wrong.

But I guess that's all benevolent gentleness. After all she speaks with a soft and calm voice.

[SaberMaxwell]

Remember when we were just investigating crystal thefts on Highbridge? Now we're arguing over who's the worse genocider.

Wild.

[Kazemon15]

Of course she is evil. You can't look at a character killing a whole race of people and then say "oh that wasn't evil because she meant well". No matter how much media likes to push the approach of "the end justifies the means", no, it doesn't. It absolutely doesn't.

Otherwise that guy pushing the button in The Dead Ends to kill everyone on his planet also isn't evil because he meant well and ended the war. Sure he meant well, but it's still evil. And unlike Hydaelyn he still has his "I...killed everyone..." moment. How mysterious.

And even if you think murder isn't evil enough, she is pretty darn evil on a personal scale too. Sure, the WoL has devolved into a pretty mindless muppet at this point, but it's important to point out that we only got to that point because she manipulated, lied and tampered with them from the very start. But if that still isn't evil enough, how about deleting every trace of her own people's culture from the face of the planet? Making a flesh puppet (forum alt) to talk through by killing a girl and then discarding her once she is done? How about not being interested in all the shards and what happens to them unless provoked into action?
How about her own servants on the moon? The Watcher doesn't have memories of his past life as she intentionally didn't give him any, basically being a glorified familiar. And the loporrits, even if the are annoying as heck, never got any communication from her for 12k years while she was apparently able to talk to Sharlayan. Didn't even send them a message. I guess it was funnier to watch their rabbit hearts explode when they realized they built everything wrong.

But I guess that's all benevolent gentleness. After all she speaks with a soft and calm voice.

I was under the impression according to Shadowbringers and Emet-Selch's explanation is that people weren't killed when the sundering happened, just their souls were split. All the current shards that happened right after had all the remaining people were identical in appearance/intelligence/ect (when he demonstrated on Ryne) but had forgotten about being long lived beings or about their past and whatnot and then they just died due to the normal things like happenings of war, sickness or old age. I don't see how that is "killing everyone."

What Venat did was the same exact thing as what God did when he cast Adam and Eve out of paradise for not learning and heeding His lessons. She tried reasoning with them and making them learn, they refused, so they were cast out of paradise (Unsundered world). Minfilia is akin to what happened to Jesus. God also flooded the entire world in what He deemed to be a greater good for the world. Yet I don't see people ranting about how God is evil for doing that.