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

[MikkoAkure]

As for Dynamis, we have one line from Hermes that they had no practical use for it. Not that ancients can't use Dynamis, but they had no reason to use it. One line from Y'shtola theorizing that's why the sundering happened. We are given no information that states only Dynamis can beat a being made of Dynamis. If it was there, I missed it.

It was described a couple of times that the Ancients were unable to manipulate Dynamis due to the fact that they are incredibly suffused with aether. The reason why we and Meteion can is because our aether is much thinner. Aether easily cancels out Dynamis, which is why the Ancients had no use for it.


As for familiars, Y’shtola didn’t purposefully give them speech to make them suffer. If you didn’t skip the “Sailor Moon” cutscene, you would have seen that she had to follow the exact steps when she created them for the first time as a very young child. She was basically just doing a very limited summoning ritual to call forth an entity that already had a pattern than making something completely for scratch just for one mission.

If you did the Elpis side quests, you’d find that the Ancients don’t exactly treat their familiars better as a whole either. Some are kindly but others purposefully send you into combat expecting you to die and another even asking you to please die instead of killing creations you’re supposed to be capturing. Players who play summoner aren’t exactly better either. Carbuncle is a familiar like all of the others. Just the aether of a rock given a specific form and purpose like how nixies are aether manifested from water.


Segueing from there on why the Ancients were “othered”, the writers ultimately decided to follow the path many fantasy/sci-fi stories have taken before about a precursor race being full of hubris and ultimately responsible for their own destruction. They wanted to add nuance to the story so they made them more empathetic than most incarnations of this trope though and mostly ended up with just “clearly you don’t own an air fryer” levels of arrogance.

Would you have rather had the Ancients be completely irredeemably vile with Venat being the sole voice of reason? That would have barely changed the trajectory of the story.

[SentioftheHoukai]

It was described a couple of times that the Ancients were unable to manipulate Dynamis due to the fact that they are incredibly suffused with aether. The reason why we and Meteion can is because our aether is much thinner. Aether easily cancels out Dynamis, which is why the Ancients had no use for it.


As for familiars, Y’shtola didn’t purposefully give them speech to make them suffer. If you didn’t skip the “Sailor Moon” cutscene, you would have seen that she had to follow the exact steps when she created them for the first time as a very young child. She was basically just doing a very limited summoning ritual to call forth an entity that already had a pattern than making something completely for scratch just for one mission.

If you did the Elpis side quests, you’d find that the Ancients don’t exactly treat their familiars better as a whole either. Some are kindly but others purposefully send you into combat expecting you to die and another even asking you to please die instead of killing creations you’re supposed to be capturing. Players who play summoner aren’t exactly better either. Carbuncle is a familiar like all of the others. Just the aether of a rock given a specific form and purpose like how nixies are aether manifested from water.


Segueing from there on why the Ancients were “othered”, the writers ultimately decided to follow the path many fantasy/sci-fi stories have taken before about a precursor race being full of hubris and ultimately responsible for their own destruction. They wanted to add nuance to the story so they made them more empathetic than most incarnations of this trope though and mostly ended up with just “clearly you don’t own an air fryer” levels of arrogance.

Would you have rather had the Ancients be completely irredeemably vile with Venat being the sole voice of reason? That would have barely changed the trajectory of the story.

Yes, actually. If the end result of Endwalker ended up being the same, I'd rather they hadn't made me care about a race of beings that were always slated to be a big, fat cosmic sacrificial altar.

Endwalker gave most people hope, for me? It made my life-long chronic depression spiral out of control again. I was suicidal for a fair bit after it. Denigrate me for revealing this information if that's what you wish to do, Gods only know I'm already preparing for the "It's just a game, you don't need to be playing it if you get so depressed from it!" criticism as I type this. I empathize greatly with a fictional race that built a society upon the backs of a monolith of logic instead of emotion. It's like a society of Autistics, of which I am a sizeable and significant example of. Suppose I saw a little of myself in it. Then I watched "MY" people die to a crazy egotistic harpy that decided I should die because I wasn't born in tune with my emotions enough.

[DevonEllwood]

It was described a couple of times that the Ancients were unable to manipulate Dynamis due to the fact that they are incredibly suffused with aether. The reason why we and Meteion can is because our aether is much thinner. Aether easily cancels out Dynamis, which is why the Ancients had no use for it.

Would you mind pointing where? Because I don't remember these scenes, only the one with Y'shtola and Hermes.

As for familiars, Y’shtola didn’t purposefully give them speech to make them suffer. If you didn’t skip the “Sailor Moon” cutscene, you would have seen that she had to follow the exact steps when she created them for the first time as a very young child. She was basically just doing a very limited summoning ritual to call forth an entity that already had a pattern than making something completely for scratch just for one mission.

I never stated they had speech just for them to suffer. I'm sorry if it wasn't clear but my point it was completely awkward that they were standing around and the things were just talking about how much they were in pain. I was confused because I didn't know what I was supposed to feel, but Endwalker had a lot of these moments for me. The worst one was with Livingway stating that it's a shame the world is ending. Was it supposed to be funny? Was the dinner scene in In From the Cold supposed to be funny?

If you did the Elpis side quests, you’d find that the Ancients don’t exactly treat their familiars better as a whole either. Some are kindly but others purposefully send you into combat expecting you to die and another even asking you to please die instead of killing creations you’re supposed to be capturing. Players who play summoner aren’t exactly better either. Carbuncle is a familiar like all of the others. Just the aether of a rock given a specific form and purpose like how nixies are aether manifested from water.

I did the side quests. Most of them were nice or neutral with a few rude or mean people. Like humans are. They're scientists, they're not going to be all nice. One or two people would prefer you to die, and several went above and beyond for some random familiar that was not their responsibility.

Segueing from there on why the Ancients were “othered”, the writers ultimately decided to follow the path many fantasy/sci-fi stories have taken before about a precursor race being full of hubris and ultimately responsible for their own destruction. They wanted to add nuance to the story so they made them more empathetic than most incarnations of this trope though and mostly ended up with just “clearly you don’t own an air fryer” levels of arrogance.

Would you have rather had the Ancients be completely irredeemably vile with Venat being the sole voice of reason? That would have barely changed the trajectory of the story.

The ancients were humanize from what we originally knew them as the ascians. So they completely backpedaled in what they did. I would have preferred they remained consistent, because EW, especially Elpis, reeks of rewriting. Ishikawa stressed normalizing the ancients in Shadowbringers, even in interviews, for that to only be undone in EW. Why?

[Lauront]

Would you mind pointing where? Because I don't remember these scenes, only the one with Y'shtola and Hermes.

It is specifically those characters who mention it, and in Hermes's case he premises it as being unable to easily manipulate or be manipulated by it, hence why it's a "big thing" that Hermes is able to darken the elpis flower to the degree he does... he's the saddest boi ever, don't you know, the first step for mankind.

It's less so that a dynamis-formed being could not be destroyed by aether... though finding such a being could be trickier (albeit Hermes's staff is apparently able to commune with them); that is, if you don't already have the coordinates conveniently mapped onto a crystal. The rest of the struggle was reaching her, so I kind of liked how Zenos in primal form just flew up to her. But none of what is suggested in the plot would rule out the ancients finding work-arounds, especially since entelechies are their creations, after all. Given 12k or so years, I am sure they'd find a way...