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

[Tama-Kanzashi]

The goal of Venat was to prevent the extinction of humankind through meaningless sacrifices to Zodiark. She succeeded by sundering the world. The Sundering is not an act of genocide. A Genocide leads to the absolute death and end of a certain group. The Ancients, although fragmented, continued their existence. Indisputably, some of the decisions made conflict with the moral values of the consumers of the story. However, this does not make them irrational, nor immoral in the game world.

Except she deliberatley erased all traces of their former existence from the face of the world. Never told anyone. On purpose. Which does qualify as cultural genocide.

But since according to you sundering is just "existing in a different form", I say that Rejoining is the same. The Sundered will not disappear, they will just continue to live on in a different form, so we should definitely do it.

[Theodric]

and then the Ancients get wiped out by Meteion's Song of Oblivion million of years from now........hooray???

That simply would not happen if Venat had actually shared the knowledge of Meteion's existence with her people instead of coming up with excuses as to why she could not have a conversation with the Convocation. It was also simply outlined as her belief of what would happen to the Ancients based on a third party account of an event that happened on a distant planet. It was never declared to be a certainty - and with forewarning of the risks in mind, I have my doubts that someone such as Emet-Selch would allow such to occur if armed with that knowledge.

Who knows? Maybe if she bothered looking hard enough, Venat might have found a way to combat Meteion without inflicting genocide upon her own people. The game sure did seem fine with the idea of having her pick up a fancy 'never before seen power' in the form of the Sundering.

Even then, she couldn't even accomplish her goals without leaning heavily on Zodiark which makes her look even more petty and spiteful given her outright lies about the circumstances surrounding his summoning and nature.

[Sarkany]

They absolutely care about us! I don't think everyone thinks non-Ancients are as worthless as ShB-era Emet. But... they ultimately see the animals as animals. It's sad when an animal doesn't meet its metrics and has to be destroyed, but it's just how it is. (They also seem to have planned to destroy Meteion - thus why Hermes grabs her and runs into Ktisis Hyperboreia, and says at one point that he needs to get the information out of her "before they're erased from existence" - but I'm not sure about that. Hythlodaeus and Emet don't object that no one wants to erase her. It is, however, possible they didn't think it would help. He didn't seem to be entirely rational at that point.) The entire structure of Elpis shows that they don't think living things have an inherent right to keep living. I think the "you have to meet your performance metrics to justify your continued life" thing also explains why people keep asking Venat when she plans on dying when you're in Elpis. She's done with her job. She's not meeting her metrics because she doesn't even have them any more.

Hermes was applying that logic to a group that it wasn't meant to be applied to - obviously no one ever intended for the Ancients to be required to justify their own existence to some external force on pain of death. But the logic itself didn't entirely come out of nowhere. If Hermes believes that the animals he works with are on the same level as his own people (which he seems to - I'm not saying it's rational or correct, but I think that's where he's coming from), then establishing performance metrics, a "supervisor" who can decide whether we've met those metrics (Meteion), and the usual consequences for failure (destruction of the entire species) is a logical extension. It's not a good one, but it does follow a chain of logic.

[Atelier-Bagur]

Or alternatively given enough time as was afforded to them by Zodiark, they create concepts capable of being sent out to battle Meteion. Though to be honest, the introduction of both Dynamis and Meteion at the last minute was something that should not have happened, given all the problems it caused for the story.

Not really, I dont think concepts developed by people who were "perfect" and lacked meaningful growth would've been able to combat aeons of despair that Meteion and her sisters witnessed throughout the universe. This was a clear given to the mass panic and chaos of despair that happened with the ancients during the first Final Days.

I mean sure Meteion was of course a last minute thing but the idea of dynamis actually explains a lot of the things our character and others just so happen to have done throughout the course of the game and even the in the meta-sense in terms of gameplay.

[Theodric]

Given that it only took a handful of individuals to combat Meteion - one of which who was afforded every possible advantage and specifically groomed for the role in question - I don't think it'd be a stretch to believe that the Ancients would have been able to come up with a solution. Nor do I care much for the idea of having large swathes of the universe sacrificed in order to prop up some deluded narcissist who ended up being killed off anyway mere minutes after we met her face to face in the aetherial sea.

[Atelier-Bagur]

Given that it only took a handful of individuals to combat Meteion - one of which who was afforded every possible advantage and specifically groomed for the role in question - I don't think it'd be a stretch to believe that the Ancients would have been able to come up with a solution. Nor do I care much for the idea of having large swathes of the universe sacrificed in order to prop up some deluded narcissist who ended up being killed off anyway mere minutes after we met her face to face in the aetherial sea.

I'll admit it was kinda head scratching to believe out of the millions and millions of civilizations, it seemed ours was both the orchestrator for the universe's destruction and its salvation? I suppose the more you try to dissect a typical jrpg story about a rag tag group of adventurers fighting gods, demons and the physical manifestations of nihilism and despair, you're bound to have to swallow a few big pills. It comes with the territory.

At the very least, they expand a bit more with that not being the total case with the recent Omega Beyond the Rift as there were indeed other stars whom also held to the same hope and potential of combating despair rather than succumbing to it.

[Cach]

First of all... *snip*

It's always some flavor of "That's just like, your opinion, man".
I've watched too many debates before and I know that mudfighting over moral relativism mumbo-jumbo doesn't lead anywhere good.

[Katoar]

But since according to you sundering is just "existing in a different form", I say that Rejoining is the same. The Sundered will not disappear, they will just continue to live on in a different form, so we should definitely do it.

Yes, the Rejoining is the same. I would have liked it if it did come to pass since I like the Ancients and the unsundered world. I think it never happened because theoretically speaking our WoL should not be able to maintain their race through the Rejoining as they are a fragmented being. A miqo'te will no longer be a miqo'te and a lala - a lala.

[Atelier-Bagur]

Yes, the Rejoining is the same. I would have liked it if it did come to pass since I like the Ancients and the unsundered world. I think it never happened because theoretically speaking our WoL should not be able to maintain their race through the Rejoining as they are a fragmented being. A miqo'te will no longer be a miqo'te and a lala - a lala.

"...But I like me" D:

[Sarkany]

That's the point of the Rejoining, though. You're a failed lifeform who shouldn't exist as you are, and thinking you want to live is presumably one expression of that. Emet wants to fix you and make you into the corrected version of you.