Who knew the 6.15 Omega Quests… (Spoilers)

[Cilia]

I've always had an incredible amount of time for my favorite pastime, video games, and in general I play the game almost everyday (though this has waned this summer between Elden Ring and patch lull). Forum perusal only takes a couple of hours. /shrug I often replay the story, sometimes for extra swag!

That wasn't aimed at anyone specific, you know, just like... people make such lengthy arguments over minutiae and cite single sentences as pivotal bits of evidence for a given interpretation, drag around interviews with Yoshi-P for easy citation, etc. I'm just not sure where some people find the time to play, considering. Keep it succinct, y'know? (I gots ta get my Archfiend Attire before season's end in a few weeks, one rank a day oughta do it. Right?)

Anyway...

Re: It wasn't portrayed as a noble act etc.

Like hell it wasn't! It was given an entire damn metaphor scene which dodged all of its immediate specifics, complete with rousing demagoguery. By a literal demagogue. Which went on to try and impart more of an importance on her suffering than those she assaulted. Which was then followed up by a literal Y'shtola quote being, "Far be it from me to refute Hydaelyn's own words... Yet even if her actions were neither kind nor just, we can give them a nobler meaning."

There isn't any speculation to be had in the contrary. Within story specifics(the, to get our current narrative, duh), sure, but the issue arises with the setting we were given for the Ancients. We were given a race of people who could create anything with a snap of their fingers. To think that another intellect the equal of Hermes could not arise from it to create an Anti-Meteion is like believing Einstein is the only intellect of note in our own history.

Even within that selfsame cutscene we have Venat talking about how horrible what she's done is ("I breathe fire and torment. I birth a world of suffering to mire and plague."), and ultimately what Y'shtola is saying there is that they should make her suffering and sacrifices (which include her innocence, life, and soul, as well as ~12,500 years of physical and emotional agony in solitude) meaningful. Once the truth is out nobody is under illusions that Venat's hands aren't stained with blood and sin, but it happened, they wouldn't exist otherwise, and all they can do is make the best of it.

Dynamis was a largely unknown force in the universe even amongst Hermes' closest colleagues. Even Venat, likely the most worldy of the Ancients, had heard little about it. Yes, theoretically they could have had some other supergenius researcher create an Anti-Meteion... somehow... I don't know how, given what we know about her, but sure let's go with that. It's just as conceivable they wouldn't though, particularly given no small number of them were offing themselves in Zodiark's name out of regressive nostalgia after the Final Days.

And not all of the Ancients were as powerful or talented as Emet-Selch, or the Convocation, etc. Erichthonios shows us that not all of the Ancients could "create anything with a snap of their fingers," and they still worked on equivalent exchange.

In other words, FFXIV had pretty cut and dry villains up until SHB. They then dipped their toe in the nuance water. People were like hell yeah, good story good! Then, came Endwalker. From how they wrote this narrative and its cast, it's clear they wanted to go back to cut and dry. Of course, there's no way for them to do that now, because they've soaked their narrative with nuance. In short, they committed to backpedaling to try and avoid a common trope with Hydaelyn(Great Good was Evil all along). As well as get their narrative back to villains are villains, heroes are heroes.

It works for most folks, because most of XIV's playerbase weren't here for the nuance. They were here for the music, feels, pretty characters, colors, and WoW replacement. Endwalker does all of that gloriously, but it is also the first time that XIV's narrative has actually combatted its own logical progression. It suffers so much for that, but people do not care. They consume.

Um... after A Realm Reborn, all of the villains have been given sympathetic backstories (except Thordan, maybe), even if it was acknowledged they ultimately needed to be put down. Conversely even before Legacy ended the protagonists were doing questionable things, like Louisoix summoning demi-primal incarnations of the Twelve in a desperate gamble to stop the Calamity. The antagonists having "good" reasons for their actions and the protagonists doing shady things is... absolutely not something new in Shadowbringers or Endwalker. At least not by my reckoning.

Also are you seriously saying people who liked Endwalker are braindead? That's kind of funny, because I've seen arguments that go in the complete opposite direction suggesting they're overthinking things (i.e. the philosophical underpinnings). So which is it? Cuz if it's the former just let me enjoy my mindless entertainment; if it's the latter I'll gladly elucidate the existentialist philosophy behind the story. Maybe even throw in character analysis of Moxxi's Heist of the Handsome Jackpot, the only piece of Borderlands 3 content worth a damn story-wise, just for fun.

Lemme know, ayy!