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!

[CrownySuccubus]

Mitron's quote isn't even from Endwalker. It's from the Eden raid series in Shadowbringers, which seems to have faded from memory around here. It's a commentary specifically about the Amaurotian Final Days.

Conflict arises from individuality and diversity. We all have different wants and needs. But diversity also confers a survival advantage. Omega's analysis of the Final Days was that there was no single unique trait that defined all the survivors. But because we don't all think the same way, our individual experiences with it were all different.

That's the central paradox with utopias. It's not that they're decadent and hedonistic; you can have that without an utopia. It's that the elimination of conflict requires you to stifle individuality. That's the common thread that you see in several of the fallen societies we encounter, be it the Ea, the Omicrons, and even the Amaurotians. A single stumbling block affected them universally.

Whether you agree with these themes is a personal choice, of course, but this entire concept has already been explored at length in Shadowbringers, right down to Mitron trying to create a timeless paradise free from suffering at the expense of the world's destruction.

That's kind of the issue. A "paradise" or "utopia" can have two different, paradoxical meanings.

Meaning 1: The best civilization that the specific society is capable of, regardless of any remaining "flaws".

Meaning 2: A truly perfect society, with no flaws.

The problem I have with Endwalker's take on "utopia" is that it argues that both of these things are the same, but that makes no sense, because the latter automatically disqualifies the former. Perfection, or lack of flaws, is inherently a value extrapolated to infinity. It means that no matter what resistance is brought against it, the value of "perfection" cannot be reduced or removed. But the story also argues that perfection itself is flawed, which means we're back to Meaning 1, and Meaning 2 is null. If the infinite value is impossible, then calling it imperfect is irrelevant.

[MikkoAkure]

That's kind of the issue. A "paradise" or "utopia" can have two different, paradoxical meanings.

I was under the impression that all the way back in Shadowbringers, they evoked the original use of the word “Utopia”, by pulling “Amaurot”, “Anyder”, and “Hythlodeus” from the 16th century book called “Utopia”, where that word was invented. The book was a satire on society and the author wrote about a people in a culture centered around the capital, Amaurot, that was logical to the extreme and all wore the same simple clothes. All of this is explained to the reader by a man name Hytholdeus. Sound familiar?

Funny enough, even to this day scholars debate whether or not the author was in support of such a society or was against it. It was a super idyllic society with democracy, equality (ish, get to that later), easy divorce, and logic and heaps of socialism, but it also had slaves, no lawyers, punished simple crimes with slavery, and had pagan beliefs. The writer was a devout Catholic who hated divorce and was a lawyer. He has since been made the patron saint of politicians.

[EaraGrace]

I'll probably regret asking, but I feel compelled to anyway. Are you trolling?

The point people are making is that her actions are already morally ambiguous. Asking the narrative to acknowledge that--as it already has in the questline under discussion--does not fundamentally change anything about Hydaelyn's motivations or what you like about her.

Unless the only thing you like about her is that the Scions are united in how much they like her.

What your asking for is different from what I was responding to and what many are arguing for in this thread. The problem is changing the narrative, not offering more perspectives on it. Making the Sundering anything but necessary makes it morally unjustifiable in every way. Changing the circumstances of the single most consequential act she ever committed would fundsmanetally change her place in the narrative you have to recognize that.

. 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.

It’s honestly an even less likely possibility when you consider you wouldn’t be making an Anti-Meteion, but an Anti-Every-Civilization-Meteion-Found. The being the Ancients would need to create would have to be able to manipulate Dynamis, be able to resist and overcome the feelings and emotions of innumerable dead worlds, all while not giving to despair themselves as they find out the truth of existence. Its a bar no other species met.

As with some lines pertaining to the Scions in Endwalker, that quote kind of bugged me because it's framing the sundered as being "better" then the Ancients when the individuals being tested were really not representative of mankind as a whole.

Both sundered and unsundered alike had droves of people who succumbed to the effects of dynamis, yet both also had those who managed to persevere and survive.

Which was, incidentally, Venats point. She had faith humanity could overcome despair, given they faced it. The problem is who the hell would want to? What parent wouldn’t surrender everything to bring back a child? What empathetic person would reject the chance to right a wrong? Unlike the Sundered, the Unsundered had the power to simply choose not to face those things. With Zodiark around you almost certainly never have to worry about losing a family member again. Or suffering from some horrific injury. He was made to answer their calls for salvation, and both the end scene of Elpis and the 5.3 story show he would respond to those desires.

So she forced the trial. “From that temptation, I sunder us.” And humanity found a way forward.

[Vyrerus]

(I gots ta get my Archfiend Attire before season's end in a few weeks, one rank a day oughta do it. Right?)

Lemme know, ayy!

(I'm not sure. I've never been invested in seasonal PVP for glams. I only occasionally PVP for standard Wolf Marks stuff that looks good in the moment. Godspeed, Cilia!)

Even within that selfsame cutscene we have Venat talking about

They had to give her some commentary of the truth of what she did, but it's all after her glorious speech to nameless Ancients. It would have been far better if they'd showed us everything as it actually happened, since you know, The Echo usually does just that, and up until then none of those Rift Memory crystals had shown metaphorical summarizations rather than actuality. I would have liked to see Hydaelyn's followers offer up their lives to imbue her with the power to contest Zodiark. I want to see it all. Not platitudes and half-hearted admittances of guilt.


As far as nobody being under illusions... it would have been so, so very nice if the cast had commented on her actions at all, ya know, to demonstrate what you said. They largely don't. Not after the WoL giving them the skinny on the Elpis arc, nor after the battle to the death with Hydaelyn. Just Y'shtola's scriptwriter driven stuff, almost as if it's an obligation rather than the most pivotal moment of the epic's history.

And a lot of physics were unknown to Einstein, but others improved upon his ideas or expanded them not too shortly after. It's also precisely because we know everything about Meteion that formulation of an anti-Meteion could be done. They even, at that point, had an "almighty" Zodiark who could help with the solution.

In the realm of concepts and ideas, one need not the power. They merely need provide the idea to those with the means. Mind over matter.

Um... after A Realm Reborn, all of the villains have been given sympathetic backstories

Mmmm, no.

Thordan in Heavensward is the stereotypical JRPG evil religious figurehead. His backstory is that he violated his vow of celibacy and had Aymeric with another unsighted mom(SHOW US THE MOMS SE!). Other than that he prolonged a war he could have actually ended at anytime in a bid for everlasting godhood and power. (SHOW US THE MOMS SE!) Behind him were the Ascians, who at the time were still moustache twirling Saturday morning cartoons.

Zenos in Stormblood doesn't have his backstory in game. And you can only be sympathetic to him in game if you're like him on some level, depressed thrillseeker/raider. Very largely an unsympathetic character. Some major characters hoping to be the ones who kill him(Hien, Raubahn). Literally a psychopath who butchered his own soldiers. Registered as much in Yotsuyu's mental trauma as her crappy family.

1.0 was a different beast altogether.

Ah, I'm reminded of that interviewing tactic, "So you're saying?" "But you're saying." "So you mean" While inserting something not said, only inferred. It's that people who enjoy Endwalker's story whole heartedly are invincibly ignorant (of course everyone in audience of our discussions are vincibly ignorant). Even if they did want to know the full gravity of the story, they would choose to shy away from the effort because it spoils their fun and good vibes.

If you wanna wax philosophical about the story, dive right in. I'm not sure you'll come up with any take I haven't already seen or thought of, but I'm game to have FFXIV compared to Borderlands 3. Or learn anything about Borderlands 3...

Ante up!

[SannaR]

Damn I knew I was braindead already. Didn't have to go pointing it out geeze. Let alone to so many other people. Like everything else just because someone says they liked X doesn't mean they liked all of it. Just that they're not going to stay hung up on it for months on end and come off as highly bitter that it didn't go in a direction they'd like or whatnot. For me even though I was enjoying myself and the story there were two parts which had pacing issues that were strong enough for me to try and vaguely complain about them to my FC. In a oh man I like this part, but I can definitely see how others might feel it drag on too long. Heck didn't even let my own agitation ruin my enjoyment when I felt the sorry but mom and baby are in another castle er swamp bit was starting to drag on. Only to get to them and have my heart ripped out. Guess I should start making threads complaining about it and derailing others just to go Oh but her ema.... the pacing.... if only the pacing in two spots didn't ruin my entire enjoyment.

Hammerlock's wedding was pretty good as a story. Well for a Hammerlock story. Isn't as great as the Heist.

[CrownySuccubus]

I was under the impression that all the way back in Shadowbringers, they evoked the original use of the word “Utopia”, by pulling “Amaurot”, “Anyder”, and “Hythlodeus” from the 16th century book called “Utopia”, where that word was invented. The book was a satire on society and the author wrote about a people in a culture centered around the capital, Amaurot, that was logical to the extreme and all wore the same simple clothes. All of this is explained to the reader by a man name Hytholdeus. Sound familiar?

Funny enough, even to this day scholars debate whether or not the author was in support of such a society or was against it. It was a super idyllic society with democracy, equality (ish, get to that later), easy divorce, and logic and heaps of socialism, but it also had slaves, no lawyers, punished simple crimes with slavery, and had pagan beliefs. The writer was a devout Catholic who hated divorce and was a lawyer. He has since been made the patron saint of politicians.

I was moreso talking about the abstract concept of "perfection", which is a recurring theme in Endwalker. I'll admitting to being only passingly familiar with "Utopia" (the book), so I don't comment much on those references. However, what draws my attention more (as someone who has put a lot of hours into studying Asian culture and religion) is the story's idea of "perfection" or "paradise", which is represented in three places: the Loporritz, the Ea, and Deka-hepta (aka "The Plenty"), all of which have themes which conclude that A) perfection is impossible and B) perfection is also hell.

[Lyth]

...

The flaw in your reasoning is that you're assuming the very thing that you've set out to prove. Sure, every one of these civilizations viewed themselves as having attained their own personal standards of perfection prior to their untimely collapse. But every historical empire invariably claims to be the greatest civilization that ever was. Who is to say that any of these are actually 'objectively perfect'? I certainly wouldn't want to live in any of them.

Different people have different values and ideas on what their 'ideal' society would look like. The paradox lies in achieving that consensus. That's why all these 'utopias' attain their 'perfection' at the expense of individuality.

[CrownySuccubus]

The flaw in your reasoning is that you're assuming the very thing that you've set out to prove. Sure, every one of these civilizations viewed themselves as having attained their own personal standards of perfection prior to their untimely collapse. But every historical empire invariably claims to be the greatest civilization that ever was. Who is to say that any of these are actually 'objectively perfect'? I certainly wouldn't want to live in any of them.

If each of these civilizations were isolated cases, then you would be valid. However, they are not The greater context of Endwalker posits that these civilizations (in particular, the Ea and the Plenty) were "perfect". When Meteion describes Deka-Hepta in both her report, and within The Plenty portion of The Dead Ends, she confirms that this race did indeed eliminate all forms of strife and sorrow. This is presented as being objectively true. The reason they killed themselves is because they had no sorrow or strife, which -- it's posited -- means that they can have no joy as well. But this very conclusion ignores that the elimination of joy is, itself, a form of strife and sorrow. Thus, we cannot be talking about Meaning 2.

The same is true of Cookingway within Labyrinthos, who concludes that perfection (not perfection in any specific definition, but the very concept of it) was inherently bad. Which means we're talking about a "non-infinite" form of "perfection", because an infinite form of it would perpetually eliminate flaws. Again, "no known way to improve" and "impossible to improve" are not the same thing. We can further tell this by what Cookingway himself says:

They learned all there is to learn about the nature of sentient life and the fates of the stars themselves.
Once a civilization has fulfilled the basic requirements for survival, it will inevitably seek to eliminate all forms of negativity and achieve perfection.
And therein lies its folly...and its downfall.
For perfection is an unattainable ideal. 'Tis the paradox of the immaculate carrot.
Yet civilizations since time immemorial have deemed the pursuit of perfection as “progress.” They pay no heed to the costs incurred in their futile quest, and all too often become the architects of their own demise, their dreams forever unfulfilled.
What, then, is the alternative? The answer lies in knowing that our existence can never be perfect. To be content with what we have and make the most of it.

Cookingway equates "progress" with "pursuit of perfection" and concludes that the solution is to "be content with what we have".

Again, the problem with Endwalker is that it wants to conclude that both Meaning 1 "Perfection is impossible" and Meaning 2 "Perfection is inherently bad" are the same thing. The theme of the game is a massive Perfect Solution Fallacy: "perfection is impossible, so don't bother".

[Iscah]

Again, the problem with Endwalker is that it wants to conclude that both Meaning 1 "Perfection is impossible" and Meaning 2 "Perfection is inherently bad" are the same thing.

More or less, though I think the problem is more that instead of taking the straightforward route of "perfection is impossible (but we should still try to make things as good as we can)" they went for the confusing logic of "perfection IS possible, or at least people can believe they've reached it, and that inherently results in disaster so we mustn't try to reach it".