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

[Teraq]

I can't believe we finally have a certain someone's biggest fan right here in our very own guild!

You know... Since they've had to spell out so many things in the Q&A session, I really wish Ishikawa would come out and clarify whether she absolutely 100% intended to write Hermes as mentally ill or not. Because while I subscribe to the headcanon myself (and then he is cared for, listened to, treated, finally opens up to people around him who, by the way, are fully human with a complete range of emotions including grief and he makes friends with the Convocation and him actually earnestly defending mankind against the Final Days finally makes some sense AND IT IS WHOLESOME OKAY), as far as I know right now it remains just that: headcanon.

Meanwhile, the sidequests are sidequests, and quite frankly, in the MSQ itself as well as Yoshida and Ishikawa interviews, I don't see many indications that we are not supposed to take Hermes at face value as a rational man of his time and culture, and his line about testing mankind just like they test creations as an OHHHHHHHH SICK BURRRNNNN (TIP: An entire established and complex civilisation is not comparable to constructs that were just made and unmade). I get it, I truly do – as an Ancient, Ascian and general villain enjoyer, I, too, want to twist Fandaniel's bizarrely written multiple characters past and present into a coherent, satisfying whole – but in the absence of evidence, I am going to consider Depressed Hermes as something of an excuse for the mess of a storyline we ended up getting, and a prop for Endwalker enjoyers to wield against the very bad, terrible, no-good detractors. In case of emergency, if "you clearly didn't pay attention to the plot" didn't work, press the "as someone who has been diagnosed with depression, Hermes was extremely relatable, not that you would know of course" button. (I do. He still isn't, to me.)

And as we saw from Elpis, most if not almost all ancients do not grieve. For all we know, Hermes was the first ancient to actually feel grief.

I believe this is what happens when you shove Endwalker into a mixer, add some Kool Aid and drink the resulting smoothie.

aS aN hEaLtHcArE wOrKeR, I wouldn't particularly recommend it, however. I would rather have Charmion's smoothies.


(Edit) btw, you guys hyped for having your expectations subverted in 6.2 and finding out Lahabrea isn't Hephaestus? And having Erich turn out to be actually Our Lahabrea? It's always tickled my funny bone that by far the most convincing argument for the "Erich really is Laha" theory, which I first bore witness to at the prestigious Reddit Academy of Clownship, is "Yeah, it doesn't make any sense considering the Tales From The Shadows backstory, but I mean have you seen the rest of Endwalker?". Truly a point to consider.

[Theodric]

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.

JRPG's have always been a mixed bag when it comes to that sort of thing but I don't think it's unfair to suggest that there was very much a bait and switch at play. A decent amount of us followed the story to see the progression and conclusion of various elements that ended up being mishandled - be it Ala Mhigo, Garlemald or the Ancients. I'd also note that having Matsuno work on FFXIV was a dream come true to me and yet he was forced to cut his storytelling short and finish it through field notes.

I'm a fan of consistent world building and I've already seen the slow fall into chaos that is World of Warcraft. I guess I just don't want this game to go down the same path where the development team just stop caring and change large swathes of the story on a whim and give us characters along the lines of Sylvanas Windrunner who do things that are extremely controversial and yet somehow manage to be portrayed as the victim.

I just hope the writers don't touch heavy issues such as genocide again, personally.

[leanansi]

I enjoyed endwalker. My only real complaint was that the lopporits plot dragged a bit, but I just wasn't that into the cute/comedic tone shift there at the same time as the big Zodiark reveal. It fell a little short for me, but overall I really enjoyed the whole expansion.

The parts in Garlemald and Thavnair were especially good, imo. I liked the society they created with Thavnair and Radz at Han. I was never a fan of Garlemald, but I felt what we saw of it was very emotionally raw and some of the more compelling scenes were there. I like Jullus quite a bit and would be happy to see more of him. I remember the scene where he was so happy to have warm soup with the Eorzeans after everything he'd been through and then the Garleans all immediately being tempered. It was one of the most intense moments of the expansion, for me, because I really wanted to save him and I was genuinely worried that was it for him.

It seems like the Ancients are where the most division stems in the community. Personally, I liked Venat the least of the group and Emet the most. I relate most to Emet. I can understand being willing to do anything to get back the people you loved and the world you knew, even if he did some very terrible things. I don't relate to Venat's choice to hide the truth from the others and her decision to undergo the sundering is honestly absurd to me. If everyone on the planet has to lose their individual sense of self and be ripped into parts, then honestly I don't feel it's even worth it. I would have rather kept working on a real solution until I died as myself than go along with her plan and lose everything, anyway. I don't relate to her choice at all and I also don't really relate to her belief that new life was worth more than saving their lost loved ones. At the same time, though, I don't actually hate her as a character or feel like the game was unfairly slanted towards her. I think both Venat and Emet are presented in a pretty sympathetic light considering all they'd both done and I can disagree with a character and still feel they're good for the story.

I don't really understand in what way some people were expecting a better end for the Ancients. The sundering had to have happened or the game just.. undoes itself? And even if I personally like Emet, it's pretty absurd to think the existing sapient beings across multiple worlds are all going to agree to give up their own personhood so he can have his friends back. Obviously the main character and crew were going to decline the rejoining. I would have been happy to have Emet renounce the rejoinings and become an ally, but I'm also not entirely surprised it didn't go that way. Emet and Venat are the type of characters that usually do die in mainstream media, because it's difficult to excuse the kind of choices they've made to a broad audience. "Death" in this game is pretty transient, though, so I wouldn't be surprised to see more of them. I also wouldn't be opposed to it.

[Striker44]

snip

The part that precedes your post is huge here, I believe. The Ancients' plan after the summoning of Zodiark was to create a huge amount of life purely to sacrifice it to Zodiark in order to bring back their initially sacrificed brethren. THAT would be genocide, and on a scale that makes the remaining half of the population post-Zodiark-summoning look like a grain of sand in comparison. The simple reality is that a lot of people were going to die no matter what happened. Venat chose to sacrifice the smaller number in order to save the significantly greater amount of life that would have been killed had she not done what she did.

It's the famous mine shaft philosophy question. A boulder is falling down a mine shaft about to crush 4 people. With the press of a button, you can send it down a different shaft where it will kill only 1 person. Do you press the button or not? Yes, technically pressing the button directly causes the death of 1 person, but not pressing the button likewise directly guarantees the death of 4 people. Do you call the person who presses the button a murderer because they moved the boulder to kill 1 person instead of 4? Or do you recognize that in doing so a greater number of lives were saved? Venat pressed the button. That's all.

By your logic there's no genocide in the real world. By your logic there are also no stories with morals (which is actually a large impetus for tons of stories).

And absolutist comments like this serve no useful purpose and reek of desperation by someone who realizes their arguments have been torn, dare I say, asunder.

[Theodric]

Refer to this and this on that topic. The sources are contained in the first link, and are all vague. It's not the second set of sacrifices and Azem was never intended to be a part of them - no source points to that, anyway. It is worth noting that even after the WoL re-tells their understanding of events in Elpis, she does not understand why she'd become Hydaelyn and oppose her people. It is only with the context of Meteion and the fate of the other worlds (especially, the Plenty) that this decision later makes sense to her. As per Vyrerus's post below, all indications suggest that to her faction, this was a pretext to buy her time/gain support, without truly spilling the beans, allusions to which exist in the Anamnesis scene.

Unfortunately that post-Elpis cutscene really muddies the waters. It makes it seem as though she enacted the Sundering during the second set of sacrifices, when they still hadn't been completed to restore the star to a functioning state. With that said, the scene is not literal in nature, and even during the Q&A Yoshi was referring players back to earlier scenes, like the Anamnesis Anyder one, and the totality of those sources do not point to plans for interminable sacrifices but one final set to restore/release those in Zodiark.

Nicely put. For those who struggle, the red words are links to actual sources.

[Teraq]

Oh boy, it's the famous mine shaft philosophy question in which Hermes sees a boulder fall down a mine shaft and goes "you know what? this boulder is EXACTLY what we deserve because we crush ants under rocks ALL THE TIME" and Venat, armed with all the knowledge to deviate the boulder entirely, replies "oh wow ur valid as heck, challenge accepted lmao" – like any sane person would. She was, after all, a wacky Ancient, who routinely carried out judgment on vast swathes of people with no prior concert or debate.

The part that precedes your post is huge here, I believe. The Ancients' plan after the summoning of Zodiark was to create a huge amount of life purely to sacrifice it to Zodiark in order to bring back their initially sacrificed brethren. THAT would be genocide, and on a scale that makes the remaining half of the population post-Zodiark-summoning look like a grain of sand in comparison.

What a very interesting claim. Can we see the source for the amount of sacrifices required and how it would "make the remaining half of the population post-Zodiark-summoning look like a grain of sand in comparison"?

In case you are going with "well Ancients obviously had a lot more aether than other animals and plants so they would have needed a lot!!!!!": as far as we know, beings in FFXIV are made of corporeal aether, soul aether and memory aether. As we now know as of Endwalker, Zodiark never consumed the souls and memories of the people inside him, else we wouldn't be having a little chat with Hythlodaeus, among others. This implies the aether that needs to be replaced here by the third sacrifice is just corporeal aether, to remake their bodies.

What proportion would corporeal aether be in an Ancient's total aether? How much would that equal in chicken and tree aether? I don't know. You don't know. None of us do.

The simple reality is that a lot of people were going to die no matter what happened.

People? In the third sacrifice? {Hmmm.}

I don't really understand in what way some people were expecting a better end for the Ancients.

Personally, I've never minded the fact that Ancients were dead. I do love my tragic villains. What I do resent though is the massive victim blaming going on in Endwalker, painting the Ancients as Honestly Kinda Dodgy Because What About Hermes's Little Hedgehogs? and kiiiiinnnda sorta deserving of their probably-avoidable fate because they would have totally wound up, in an indeterminate amount of years, centuries or millenia, like this distant alien civilisation we have zero context about (and neither did Venat as far as we know).

Meanwhile, Shadowbringers had a lot more nuance by not telling us what the source of the Final Days were, and making its antagonists relatable: i.e. wanting to bring their loved ones and society back, rather than lofty ideals about suffering and fauxlosophical musings about life and death.

Endwalker went and undid a lot of that: the Final Days couldn't merely have been an unspeakable, random tragedy that hit a perfectly good and normal people and drove them to desperate measures to cope, no – they low-key deserved it because muh playing god and dealing with grief the wrong way. Ascians, meanwhile, also took a big hit: their plea is no longer equivalent to the Sundered wanting to survive, because we now know their people was totally hubristic and wrong anyway because the plot outright tells you they couldn't have dealt with Meteion, or loss, or feelings. They can now safely be dismissed and we can all sleep soundly at night because their lost paradise totally wasn't worth it. The Sundered, though? Absolutely gucci! Only they could wield the Power Of Friendship required to resolve this convoluted scenario – but it turns out they needed assistance from at least three Ancients to result in the chain of events that brought them to the Endsinger, and without that timely assistance and information on the Final Days they would have succumbed to the apocalypse in even more horrifying circumstances than the Ancients did... so... I'm not sure what the point of it all is supposed to be about anymore, frankly.

The sundering had to have happened or the game just.. undoes itself?

Shadowbringers and its last Tales From The Shadow short story showed us changing the past is fully possible and would result in an alternate timeline.

[leanansi]

-snipped-

I think where we disagree is just how hard we read the narrative as pushing one ideology as correct. I just viewed Venat's version of what needed to happen as her opinion. They offered the background as to why she came to that conclusion, but I didn't feel like the story was trying to force me to agree with her. Your character has to amicably work with her and also with Emet and the others at different times, so it didn't really feel to me like that implied you absolutely had to agree with just her. You're even given the dialogue option in another quest to say you agreed more with Emet (or Hermes). Maybe they could have allowed you to openly show more disdain for either of your choosing through dialogue options with them. I wouldn't be against it as an option. I read the reaction of the main character to both Venat and Emet as pretty friendly by default, though. It seems like you liked all these people, even Hermes, and are sad to see what became of all of them. That's the only angle that seemed pushed, to me.

I think being an MMO and not a story/character centered game, like a Bioware RPG, does limit what they can do a bit. They can't really design working branching paths where some people can heavily work towards helping different causes towards different ends, which is probably why they took a pretty neutral stance towards everyone as the default. I think that what the writers probably actually believe is the "they were all justified in their own way" option you can choose to express. I think that's how the Ancients were meant to be written. This is all pretty subjective, though, and I can see a lot of people didn't get the same read.

[Rulakir]

I don't know how we're not supposed to have an overwhelmingly positive read of Venat/Hydaelyn. Literally the only negative dialog option you're given towards her is to say you can't trust her on the boat, which is long before you discover what all she's responsible for doing and why. When you are able to confront her again after Elpis, it's just a tearful gush fest no matter what dialog options you choose. This includes the Scions who, despite Hydaelyn being the embodiment of numerous antagonists they have stood against in the past, have nothing but adoration for her. (Going to note, again, that Hydaelyn tempering makes EW make sense.) Nobody but Venat herself speaks ill of what she's done and she has no regrets. Not to mention the her "Answers" music video, end of credits scene where she's the only one who turns back and smiles, the post credits art, the fact that you get a minion of her at the end named "herois", etc. Plus, in EN localization she's the one credited with forestalling the Final Days. They honestly couldn't have been any more overbearing about it without coming through the screen and beating you unconscious with a Hydaelyn body pillow.

The Omega quest chain is also a side quest locked behind a raid, so not everyone has done it or is even aware it exists. Those options were needed during the MSQ. Said quest also still paints Emet (suggested as your "worst enemy") and the Ascians as being wholly in the wrong, while still praising Venat (to the extent Omega says you speak of her in fond/friendly terms) and even suggesting Hermes' actions were for the betterment of mankind. It was a meager attempt to inject nuance after 6.0 was completely lacking in it. Personally speaking, I'd consider the person who tore my soul apart over their ideology to be the bigger enemy, but that's just me.

Also, I don't know why y'all are still discussing the 3rd sacrifice when that was a non-issue for Venat. She sundered the world because of The Plenty and dynamis. We've gone over this hundreds of times, but I guess "3rD sAcRiFiCe" is all some people have to fall back on.

[Teraq]

It was a meager attempt to inject nuance after 6.0 was completely lacking in it.

Emphasis on the fact that the Omega quest just came out now. I'm not sure we know when it was written, but the February Q&A made it quite obvious the devs had gotten significant pushback about Venat (and even came across as a little defensive...?). Might be an attempt to mend things. IMO it was good, but nowhere near enough.

And yeah good post, it was my reaction to everything during and after Elpis when I first went through the MSQ early December... Very real discomfort with what the plot was, to me, obviously trying to push about Venat (and Hermes). It isn't morally grey when Venat is the only one hosting her own pity party by her lonesome, telling you what she did was cruel – and even that could be interpreted as merely apologizing to the Sundered for the living conditions she inflicted on them, not to her own people for literally erasing their entire identity and culture – but have the rest of the characters pat her on the back and the plot very heavily imply her way was the only way out, by throwing at the wall everything that would stick: Ancients not being able to directly interact with Dynamis, Dynamis (and astronomy??) being an apparently very niche topic in a society of scholars, the Ancients-Plenty parallel that honestly makes me, queen of procrastination, jealous of how lazy it is, their inability to Forge Ahead™ and accept Suffering™, apparently nobody ever investigating the Elpis incident or Hermes's magical memory wiping device that affected one of the most important government officials on the entire planet, Venat's fear of nobody believing her, her fear of people panicking, her fear of Hermes blowing up, the implied justification of all those fears as Right because she was Azem and thus well traveled and experienced like no one else, the closed time loop justification (even though we just had a story that resulted in a separate timeline)...

It's just, wow. Please stop! PLEASE! I GET IT! I'M FORGING AHEAD AS WE SPEAK, PLEASE LEAVE ME ALONE!

[Rulakir]

her fear of nobody believing her, her fear of people panicking, her fear of Hermes blowing up

Seeing a lot of fear here, it's almost like that was her driving motivation!

I would pay to see Hermes blow up though, literally. Also, yeah, it's quite convenient that she only acknowledges her sins to the people that she made incapable of remembering them. She noped out before Emet could tear her a new one, not that the writers would actually have him act in character when it comes to her.