Who knew the 6.15 Omega Quests… (Spoilers)

[EaraGrace]

I disagree entirely on this interpretation of Endwalkers message, but this argument has been had again and again and there’s little point in rehashing it.

[Iscah]

I'm nervous the current direction of the story is that the Azem that is us is actually us further in the future and it's just one giant paradox waiting to happen

Basically the game is heading into Song of Storms paradox direction if anyone is familiar with where I'm pulling that from.

We're already in a "Song of Storms paradox" plot (causal loop or "bootstrap paradox") due to the events at Elpis.

If we turned out to be Azem, that would just be an extra layer of time loop in a universe that has already demonstrated it can support that kind of paradox.

I'm not saying I want it to happen, but it wouldn't introduce any new types of time travel logic if it did.

[Lurina]

I disagree entirely on this interpretation of Endwalkers message, but this argument has been had again and again and there’s little point in rehashing it.

It's a little dire that this thread opened with pretty much everyone agreeing that the quest was good, and then fighting for weeks about the context in which it exists.

Like I (and Raelle) said, I don't think the writers intended that to be the 'message', but just let the vibe slip into the script by accident - at the very least it's inarguable at this point that a fair number of people took that away from the experience. Regardless of how reasonable you feel that interpretation is, this quest seemed like a pretty thoughtful way to counter it. Can't we agree on that much, at least?

[EaraGrace]

Like I (and Raelle) said, I don't think the writers intended that to be the 'message', but just let the vibe slip into the script by accident - at the very least it's inarguable at this point that a fair number of people took that away from the experience. Regardless of how reasonable you feel that interpretation is, this quest seemed like a pretty thoughtful way to counter it. Can't we agree on that much, at least?

Sure, I can totally agree that I enjoyed the quest, and talked about incessantly with friends afterwards. I just disagree on how others have placed it in the wider context if EWs narrative.

But like Lyth says maybe agreeing to disagree on that is best.

Something to consider is that Endwalker is a deeply philosophical piece; it takes a lot of cues from Friedrich Nietzsche, specifically. Unless you engage with it on that level, it's hard to fully appreciate what the story is trying to tell you.

Shadowbringers blurred the line between good and evil; Endwalker straight up destroys it.

EW is full existentialist. Schopenhauer, Sartre, Camus all feel at home here. There’s a line in Tarkovskys Stalker that it reminds me of.

And if there were no sorrow in our lives, it wouldn’t be better.
It would be worse.
Because then there’d be no happiness, either.
And there’d be no hope.

[Rulakir]

Regardless of how reasonable you feel that interpretation is, this quest seemed like a pretty thoughtful way to counter it.

I've gone back and forth on this quest. Initially, I was perplexed by it (which I'll get into momentarily), then I was excited to have some form of nuance that was sorely lacking throughout 6.0, then upon further reflection I feel like it wasn't enough (or anywhere close to it) for many reasons.

First and foremost because, obviously, people interpreted those quests differently. Whereas some found Venat's comparison to Hermes as throwing shade on the sundering, I saw it as further reaffirming Hermes especially because 1) Ishikawa had already made the comment about him being a "first step" for mankind and 2) Omega ignores that the rejoinings also would've made mankind stronger. I don't see how you can imply (or interpret) the Final Days somehow 'toughened up' mankind and ignore that being unsundered (or close enough to it) would've made mankind more formidable against all threats save perhaps dynamis (which is another topic). Not to mention that, despite everything, Emet is still suggested to be our "worst enemy" while we speak in 'fond/friendly' terms about Venat. So, it still seemed like it was pushing Ascians = bad, Hydaelyn = good rather than both being morally grey.

Meanwhile, the Watcher, Venat's ultimate simp, is the capstone to the quest line and his only lamentation is that mankind had forgotten about the Ancients. Not that I expected anything more from him, but we're ending on a note of "the world mankind deserved". So, aside from her dynamis reasoning for sundering being completely undermined by doing away with the Social Darwinism aspect (which I'll agree was probably not the writer's intent), we still end up with Venat's ideological view of what mankind and the world should be is what we deserved in the end. Not to mention doubling down that Venat somehow loved mankind (in her own special, twisted way I suppose), especially considering I believe this quest coincided with Hydaelyn's codex entry which is... something.

I know some thought that Omega having the same dialog response regardless of which option you pick was genius, but I thought it was a cop out. It would've been nice to have some insightful dialog depending on your choice.

Overall, I can't say I'm optimistic about future storytelling at all, I've certainly lost all confidence they can appropriately handle a "conflict of values", but I always appreciate yours and Brinne's insight even if I don't entirely agree. I've cut Ishikawa a lot of slack for having been put in the position she was, but a side quest locked behind an old content raid rather than something in the MSQ isn't going to address all the issues of EW and I'd be genuinely surprised if any of it is touched upon further. This felt like a minimum effort olive branch before just dropping all these plot lines entirely, including the "forge ahead" message which is likely what they hope players who didn't like EW will do. :P

[Lurina]

I've gone back and forth on this quest. Initially, I was perplexed by it (which I'll get into momentarily), then I was excited to have some form of nuance that was sorely lacking throughout 6.0, then upon further reflection I feel like it wasn't enough (or anywhere close to it) for many reasons.

First and foremost because...

Sorry to be a weirdo and dig this up from a couple weeks ago, but I wanted to explain a little bit why I was so pleased by the Omega quest, Rulakir, since it feels like we're kinda on a fundamentally different page about it. I think you're more looking at it from the perspective of how much it changes the canon and the degree to which it "counterbalances" the strangeness of vanilla EW's narrative (admittedly not much; it is just a single optional quest), whereas I'm looking at it more as a pivot from the framing and thematic presentation of vanilla Endwalker, and what that represents.

I'll focus on the final Venat-related scene here since that seems to be what you're passionate about compared to the thematic undercurrent. In this post, it feels like you haven't really given much bearing to the actual way the scene is presented, just the individual beats in isolation; The Watcher being a Hydaelyn-simp, Omega being sort of reductive about the idea of 'strength', etc. But seems like sorta missing the forest from the trees. Like, to break the conversation down, it goes:

1) The Watcher monologues about how much he believed in Venat's mission, how guilty she felt about what she needed to do, how amazing the world she's created is, etc. Basically just echoing the tone of the rest of Endwalker.

2) Omega counters by pointing out that she made life much worse for people on an individual level, how you could just as easily argue that Hermes helped mankind by creating his test, and that she kinda completely screwed Emet and the other Unsundered over with her plan (while still reiterating that he did do a lot of murders). Basically, a quick rundown of a lot of the anti-Venat arguments that appeared here in the early response to EW.

3) After you give your opinion, The Watcher basically says that there is no objectively correct answer, and that his feelings are just that of one person. And that you should try to listen to and accept other people's feelings and grievances rather than simply dismissing them as invalid.

Setting aside the snarky callout of everyone involved in these arguments at the end there, what's important here is how it departs from the tone set by vanilla Endwalker. As has been pointed out repeatedly, Endwalker doesn't really allow narrative room for the suggestion that what Venat did might not have been justified; the Sundering is presented as a severe and destructive act, 'sinful' in a sense, but the framing nevertheless makes it absolutely clear that you're supposed to understand it as ultimately necessary and for the best. Every character and quest log entry reiterates this, and it's never questioned if it was 'worth it' on its own terms. But here, the story pivots, and allows it to be challenged by both an NPC and the player in a way where it's presented roughly equally to the alternative.

I think it's important to try to keep a sense of perspective here. This sort of thing rarely happens; writers are very stubborn people who pour a lot of themselves into their work. If there's a fan outcry over a story choice in a franchise, what usually happens is that it's either ignored, or addendums (or very occasionally, outright retcons) are made to the original story to address the issue without engaging with the criticism meaningfully, usually authored by someone different. This happens in WoW all the time-- When a plot point or framing of a character or event isn't popular, they awkwardly drop it like a hot rock, stop talking about it, and do something else instead. What's rare, and in my opinion makes this encouraging, is a direct concession to criticism within the text, where the writer looks directly at the complaints and acknowledges them as comparably valid to their own original thesis.

Like, I admit I was maybe being a little extreme in saying that it 'fixes' Endwalker's thematic and tonal problems, but it does feel like it at least legitimizes a negative response to it in-universe. It is now 'valid' for the WoL to think Venat was wrong; that ground has been conceded, even if it doesn't fix the sense of being railroaded into loving her in the original work. (And yeah, the codex entry does kinda contradict that, but it's worth remembering that it came out first and was probably written just after the release of the game, so...)

There are definitely ways it could have been better, but I really do wonder what some people's expectations are here, you know? From the beginning, it's been obvious that the main scenario team isn't going to go back and literally rewrite a finished game, or turn around and directly contradict it by making Venat an explicit villain in the post-expac content. That sort of thing just doesn't happen. It still bums me out when I think about the repercussions of Endwalker on the setting and what could've been, but what's done is done, and all one can reasonably hope for at this point is for the writers to say "I hear you and recognize there was an issue" and to make conciliatory gestures with the story going forward. And like, in that regard, I don't think it's wrong to take this quest as at least a potentially positive sign? Especially since we still have a fair bit of EW 'epilogue content' to get through.

For all their flaws, this is the same writing team that created Shadowbringers, the success of which was the reason I was so let down by Endwalker to begin with. I do feel like I owe them a little good faith in response to a step in the right direction. It does kinda feel like an increasing amount of people in these threads are completely despondent about the future of the story and only really here for the catharsis of complaining about EW, and though I obviously do get it, it doesn't really feel productive for me personally at this point.

[Lauront]

Like, I admit I was maybe being a little extreme in saying that it 'fixes' Endwalker's thematic and tonal problems, but it does feel like it at least legitimizes a negative response to it in-universe. It is now 'valid' for the WoL to think Venat was wrong; that ground has been conceded, even if it doesn't fix the sense of being railroaded into loving her in the original work. (And yeah, the codex entry does kinda contradict that, but it's worth remembering that it came out first and was probably written just after the release of the game, so...)

There are definitely ways it could have been better, but I really do wonder what some people's expectations are here, you know? From the beginning, it's been obvious that the main scenario team isn't going to go back and literally rewrite a finished game, or turn around and directly contradict it by making Venat an explicit villain in the post-expac content. That sort of thing just doesn't happen. It still bums me out when I think about the repercussions of Endwalker on the setting and what could've been, but what's done is done, and all one can reasonably hope for at this point is for the writers to say "I hear you and recognize there was an issue" and to make conciliatory gestures with the story going forward. And like, in that regard, I don't think it's wrong to take this quest as at least a potentially positive sign? Especially since we still have a fair bit of EW 'epilogue content' to get through.

For all their flaws, this is the same writing team that created Shadowbringers, the success of which was the reason I was so let down by Endwalker to begin with. I do feel like I owe them a little good faith in response to a step in the right direction. It does kinda feel like an increasing amount of people in these threads are completely despondent about the future of the story and only really here for the catharsis of complaining about EW, and though I obviously do get it, it doesn't really feel productive to me at this point.

For my part, I don't think it's at all necessary to try and turn her into an explicit villain at this point. I never wanted that out of her, it wasn't how I expected they'd deal with her, as they had plenty of scope to deal with her as a well-intentioned ideologue (e.g. Yunalesca), which is what I think we got in large part anyway, regardless of the narrative treatment surrounding her in 6.0.

My far greater issue with it was the way they attempted to legitimise the sundering. It had to happen for the story to take place as it did, which I accept. What I am far less fond of is the suggestion that, over and above this, it was either necessary (i.e. the ancients would not find a way to deal with it even if told the full truth; I don't think the story even managed to make this case) or the notion that it was the best possible outcome (the twaddle about "utopias", "perfection", strawmen to this effect, etc.), coupled with not really depicting what it entailed.

They somewhat walked back the former in the Q&A, by stipulating it was ultimately a function of her beliefs, and sort of ameliorated the latter by depicting it, albeit in another IP... but to be frank, I'd like to see something a bit firmer in-game, even if it amounts to a codex entry clearing it up a bit, or something along those lines. Something quite different to what we actually got in the entry about her, in the self-same codex (with the unfortunate insinuation it was authored by the MC), but I'll take your point that it was probably written just post-release. While I wouldn't mind an AU (especially as it'd be the only opportunity to see more of their world) it isn't essential to me as it is but one way of achieving the same thing.

More importantly, what I would like is for them to avoid utilising any remaining story arcs tangential to the ancients to try double down on their treatment as being doomed no matter what, or a continuation of the "aren't they a bit scary?" side glancing, and while the Omega quest certainly does suggest they've learnt from their mistakes (particularly in allowing for the character to have varied perspectives on a situation, even where they benefited), it remains to be seen how Pandaemonium and Aglaia conclude, as these are epilogues to the 6.0 story. For all my other issues with the game and wish that this wasn't the story we ended up getting, I am giving them the benefit of the doubt, but I won't lie - this is in a very tempered and muted sense.

[Packetdancer]

My far greater issue with it was the way they attempted to legitimise the sundering. It had to happen for the story to take place as it did, which I accept. What I am far less fond of is the suggestion that, over and above this, it was either necessary (i.e. the ancients would not find a way to deal with it even if told the full truth; I don't think the story even managed to make this case) or the notion that it was the best possible outcome (the twaddle about "utopias", "perfection", strawmen to this effect, etc.), coupled with not really depicting what it entailed.

I admit, I never read it as that the Sundering was in and of itself a legitimate choice -- or even a particularly good one -- but rather a move largely of desperation (at least in the original timeline). My understanding is basically:

1. World is ending. Half of the population of Eitherys is sacrificed to create Zodiark.
2. Zodiark saves Eitherys by holding the Final Days at bay, but the planet is barren.
3. Half the remaining population of Eitherys is sacrificed to give Zodiark enough juice to make the world verdant and filled with life once more.
4. As part of this, new 'lesser' races come into being. (E.g., the races we now see: Hyur, miqo'te, etc.)
5. The Convocation -- and presumably others -- go "Cool! Sentient living things! That's a bunch of juicy aether; we can sacrifice all of them to bring back the folks we killed off to create and empower Zodiark. Everybody wins!"
6. Some Ancients point out that no, not everybody wins, because they are kind of opposed to sacrificing other races. Races who may lack the means to fight back against the power of the Ancients -- much less Zodiark -- but demonstrably would prefer to, y'know, not be wiped out as a mass sacrifice. Those serving Zodiark do not care and are prepared to do so regardless, because Tempering.
7. Hydaelyn suplexes Zodiark in a last-ditch effort to try to stop him and his followers from killing off all the new 'lesser' non-Ancient races. The resulting bodyslam Sunders everything: Zodiark, Hydaelyn herself, and the entirety of Eitherys. That said, the fragmentary bits of Zodiark continue to hold their seal against the Final Days.
8. The 'lesser' races, being aetherically 'smaller', slip through the cracks as it were; some survive the Sundering, albeit are scattered across the shards. The Ancients, being far more aether-dense, also get Sundered along with the world. (Though the Sundered pieces of their souls begin to reincarnate in the surviving "lesser" races across the various shards.)
9. The three surviving members of the Convocation hatch a plan to smash all the shards back together and resume where they left off.
10. Lots of stuff happens for tens of thousands of years (if not longer).
11. Eventually, a reincarnated and semi-congealed fragment of Venat's protege and successor travels back in time to before all of this, telling Venat what has happened/will happen and basically locking the events into place as a loop; now Hydaelyn seemingly does this because it's "what has to happen".

I admit that last one is the part that rings "off" to me; yes, you could assume that changing the past might obliterate the future and thus prevent the WoL from going back and giving the information necessary to change the approach to the Final Days, causing paradox. Except that we know from Shadowbringers that things and memories from one timeline can survive a shift to another; the Eighth Umbral Calamity has not happened and -- presumably -- now never will, but the timeline in the wake of that Calamity sure had an impact on the First and the Source via Shadowbringers.

(Though admittedly, changing the past so far back, and causing the world to never be Sundered -- and thus many people we care about to potentially never exist in the first place -- definitely brings its own set of thorny moral questions. So perhaps Venat/Hydaelyn felt obligated to see the timeline through on the original path specifically to preserve those lives...?)

That said, I certainly don't disagree that they probably could've found a better solution in theory, but I suspect it would've required the Convocation not to get themselves Tempered by trying to make a god in the first place; once that had happened, they probably weren't inclined to listen to reason any longer, if said 'reason' went against what Zodiark perceived as 'the will of the people'.

[Rulakir]

Like, I admit I was maybe being a little extreme in saying that it 'fixes' Endwalker's thematic and tonal problems, but it does feel like it at least legitimizes a negative response to it in-universe. It is now 'valid' for the WoL to think Venat was wrong; that ground has been conceded, even if it doesn't fix the sense of being railroaded into loving her in the original work. (And yeah, the codex entry does kinda contradict that, but it's worth remembering that it came out first and was probably written just after the release of the game, so...)

Let me preface this by saying I realize I'm in the unfortunate position of being told, "You could've just not gotten anything." Which is true. However, it doesn't change the fact that this is specifically for the WoL tucked away in a side quest. (Friends had to rush me through the Omega raid series so I could even do it. Were it not for the fact that I'm involved on the forums I never would've even known it existed. I think the fact that this 'concession' is so easily missed cannot be overstated.) It changes nothing for our permanent, immortal friends, the Scions. It changes nothing for the MSQ. Ideally, I would've liked the protagonist cast at large to reflect upon it, particularly because Venat does embody ideologies they have opposed in the past, as recently as ShB no less.

There are definitely ways it could have been better, but I really do wonder what some people's expectations are here, you know? From the beginning, it's been obvious that the main scenario team isn't going to go back and literally rewrite a finished game, or turn around and directly contradict it by making Venat an explicit villain in the post-expac content.

Well, I feel like I have made my position clear about this ad nauseum. (Note: This isn't directed at you as much as the readers at large.) I never expected Venat to be the villain. (I feel like I need to hold a press conference. :P) What I did expect was the nuance of ShB to carry over to EW, for Venat to be the opposite side of the coin of Emet, a truly morally grey character who was still in ideological opposition to us and needed to be stopped. Instead, ironically, we almost got that except with the framing that "it's okay when she does it". All I wanted was consistency. It's not okay when she does it. Stop lauding this woman and stop 'othering' the Ancients.

For all their flaws, this is the same writing team that created Shadowbringers, the success of which was the reason I was so let down by Endwalker to begin with. I do feel like I owe them a little good faith in response to a step in the right direction. It does kinda feel like an increasing amount of people in these threads are completely despondent about the future of the story and only really here for the catharsis of complaining about EW, and though I obviously do get it, it doesn't really feel productive for me personally at this point.

I saved this quote from you, because it echoed how I felt about it:

I think a distinction needs to be drawn here between moral ambiguity as a narrative device, and moral ambiguity as experienced by the player. For me, many of my issues with Endwalker don't stem from the fact that Venat was a grey character - I'd have been fine with that - but that as many people on both sides have pointed out, we are clearly meant to view her unambiguously as right and good. A lot of keys have been tapped here about how no character given any credence really speaks against her and the framing during her scenes is relentlessly positive and affirming of her perspective, but a better example might be the description for her minion, which more or less just lavishes praise on her. Characters might be biased and framing can be argued, but when the narration of the game itself describes a character as a wonderful person, it's pretty clear you're meant to think of them as a wonderful person. When contrasted with her actions, this creates an uncomfortable dissonance that doesn't make the story more compelling, but less. Rather than having a sense that the story is giving me a choice of what to believe, it feels like the story is telling me to believe something - that a mass-murderer is a great person - I find kinda gross. It makes me want to quit the game because it feels like I'm not on the same page ethically as the writers.

Even though Emet-Selch is also a mass murderer, I never got that sense from Shadowbringers. Characters call him out, and the narrative voice about him swings from negative to neutral to positive depending on the context. Even if it produces less discourse (though certainly no shortage), I'd say that's a better example of moral ambiguity.

The Omega quest doesn't change this. Everything outside of it still frames Venat in exactly the same way as before and just because the writer(s) may have conceded the players who had issues with it have a point, it's not sufficient evidence yet to me that we're 'ethically on the same page' now, which is especially concerning going into a "conflict of values" arc.

I've spent months debating on whether or not I should quit. The main reason I haven't yet is because I do actually like the rest of the game. I only ever post regarding story and characters because I have no major gripes about anything else. Matter of fact, I really like future direction of the game. I can't with this story though. Some days I'm ready to pull the trigger, others I say, "Let's see what 6.2 brings (*copium*)."

Regardless, I didn't ask for or expect 6.0 to be rewritten, what's done is done. However, any reference to those events in the future ideally would be handled with the nuance they should've been handled with in EW.

[Lurina]

Well, I feel like I have made my position clear about this ad nauseum. (Note: This isn't directed at you as much as the readers at large.) I never expected Venat to be the villain. (I feel like I need to hold a press conference. :P) What I did expect was the nuance of ShB to carry over to EW, for Venat to be the opposite side of the coin of Emet, a truly morally grey character who was still in ideological opposition to us and needed to be stopped. Instead, ironically, we almost got that except with the framing that "it's okay when she does it". All I wanted was consistency. It's not okay when she does it. Stop lauding this woman and stop 'othering' the Ancients.

Sorry, I kept meaning to reply this, but I don't really seem to have the time for effortposts here that I used to lately.

I guess I was being a bit reductive when I said not to expect them to make Venat a villain; like you point out, I've said in the past the past that that's not even what I want, and just wanted her character to be portrayed as a morally grey figure. In this context, though, I was using 'villain' less as 'someone depicted as morally bad' and more as 'antagonist'. For all I disliked it, Endwalker went so hard on Hydaelyn being heroic and in the right that flipping the framing outright to the Scions all admitting her actions were kinda wrong and a better solution should have been found would create a dissonance in the script, where how the player was signaled to emotionally respond would flip sharply after a relatively short amount of gameplay. That kind of thing is something I'd assume game writers are eager to avoid, since most people have a fairly superficial investment in the plot, making consistency much more important than the actual message.

It's frustrating, but though it feels likely from the interviews and the Omega questline that the Venat arc came out a little strange and absolutist, the only real ways they can respond to that without making a mess of the story is to either 'phase out' the entire question by negating the tension between the canonical tone of the Sundering plot and the actual facts (either by making the Sundering less bad, which they seem averse to, or having the Ancients survive in some way) or to push it into side-content where it won't force established characters to contradict their own positions. I doubt they'll touch Amaurot in the MSQ again in the medium term; maybe eventually we can hope for a proper revisit to it, in the way that ultimately happened with a lot of the beastmen stuff.

It's painful to have to accept the disproportionate nature of the situation, where any addendums still have to exist in deference to the vibe of the major release that just happened. But for the time being, I'm reassured just by the fact that the writers are obviously not married to it.

But they did. Mide and her boyfriend ended up Grandfather Paradoxing themselves. They're the ones that started the whole myth about Alexander that they then learned of after a long enough time forgot the names of those who started the tale. So they knew about Alexander and how they thought he'd work once summoned. The only named, muddied history, ranking and non convocation member who was a dangling plot thread; that also happened to have a highly aether soaked horn (which was also a dangling plot thread) gave them it so they'd have enough power to summon Alexander. Who might have gone back to being a dangling plot thread as I don't remember him dying. Not that any of the Unsundered seemed to care if he had survived the 7th Umbral calamity or not since again black masked and sundered were seen as replaceable. Present day Mide didn't know about Alexander being able to do manipulate time until the story got to that point. The actual physical travel part comes from Omega's ability to travel the rift. Why you get parts of Escape playing in the dungeon and how some of the memories when fighting the Tycoon shows scenes from the Omega storyline instead of just Alexander and Gobbie fun.

Like I said, Mide and her boyfriend get the knowledge of Alexander from a time paradox; they don't come up with it themselves, they learn about it from ancient Hotgo lore that in turn comes from them that in turn comes from ancient Hotgo lore... Etc. It's an obnoxious way to do time travel writing, IMO; no better here than in EW's core plot.

You're right that they also get insight from Omega, but that also isn't technology they're coming up with themselves. So again, time travel can't really be framed as an instance of the Sundered being superior to the Unsundered, when what it really comes down to isn't just ingenuity, but knowledge from a specific group of aliens.