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

[aveyond-dreams]

The confrontation against Hydaelyn was rather underwhelming in retrospect, from the leadup cutscene to the fight and the difficulty of the fight itself. In my earlier rewrite of Endwalker I had redesigned the meeting and fight against her as follows:

Here, rather than tender memories being projected onto the crystals like in the case of Zodiark, Hydaelyn’s Crystal Memoria showcases the bloodiest moments of human history while “proud angels” and sin eaters rampage through the zone. It is abundantly clear that Hydaelyn/Venat views these struggles as little more than entertainment and that she considers it a lot more “fun” compared to life in the Unsundered World despite the carnage. Her mental state is explored in that she feels that her hands are clean because she merely “guided” people into doing the things they did in these conflicts rather than taking on an active role, leading the party to question whether or not her behavior is all that different from Emet’s. They come to the conclusion that it is different, for while Emet was desperately trying to bring back his loved ones for thousands of years, Hydaelyn inflicted this torment onto humanity for her own vanity.

Eventually the party comes before the Mothercrystal and the WoL uses the blessing of darkness to shatter it, while the spirit of Emet-Selch looks on. The crystal disintegrates and Hydaelyn emerges from it, unfurling her wings and looking down at the WoL with cold eyes. She again remarks on their progress and how far they’ve come, and the party declares their resolve to fight against her and free the star from her influence. Hydaelyn attacks them without warning and Meteion leaps in front of the WoL to take the hit intended for them. This shocks and enrages the party, who immediately retaliate. Vrta reverts to dragon form and lunges at her only for Hydaelyn to encase him in a block of crystal, and casts down the remaining other party members before challenging “Azem” once more.

A 3 phase fight ensues, with the first phase taking place at the “Lake of Ice” as seen in the original Endwalker MSQ. The 2nd phase involves her subjugating and riding away on Midgardsormr in order to escape the WoL’s final blow and recover her health. By this point Vrtra breaks free of his crystal prison and lets the WoL on their back in order to pursue his father. They are accosted by the last of Hydaelyn’s sin eaters in this add phase before the dragons both release their riders from their backs and send them plummeting towards the surface of the moon. Hydaelyn’s wings are damaged by the fall and is thus forced to fight on land with no means of escape, and in her frenzy nearly overpowers the WoL. Themis and Hythlodaeus release themselves from crystal stasis in order to hold her back while the WoL deals damage to her, but both are ultimately sacrificed in order to render her vulnerable. With one final blow, the WoL slays Hydaelyn who disperses into light and moondust.

[Vyrerus]

For this part, I always felt Hydaelyn's "test" was just to see if we were strong enough to stand a chance against Meteion, not necessarily anything specific to dynamis. More along the lies of "if we're going with your plan, then we're sacrificing my plan to flee on the Moon, so let's make sure it's actually worth trying...because if you're simply not strong enough, then everyone on Etheriys is now doomed."

Thing is, ya know, why would it matter if we weren't strong enough to beat her in an aether contest? Meteion couldn't beat her or any other ancient in an aether invoking contest (Meteion couldn't even beat Sundered Zodiark in that regard). Hydaelyn says to us something along the lines of, "I saved just enough power at all times so we could have a true deathmatch whenever the destined day came. So it was a true test of your abilities!"

Like sure, it was a test of our abilities, but since there's no mention of it being our Dynamis abilities, then it's ultimately a fight for fight's sake(brought to you by Kratocrat Barbie!). To wit, pointless. The only thing productive from it is it changing Hydaelyn's Will. Which is necessary for the story, but if you know, it feels very contrived.

And that's further highlighted by Meteion almost instantly killing us all, because she's a practitioner of an art we aren't versed in, Dynamis. It then becomes pure chance that Thancred's will actually contests Meteion, and disrupted her nest enough to create Ultima Thule.

[Rulakir]

I don't believe it's discussed enough how Venat/Hydaelyn has no downsides.

We have the unsundered Ascians on one hand who are depicted as struggling emotionally and psychologically with everything from the end of their world to their laborious efforts to restore it over the course of several millennia. This eventually leads them to making missteps by the time the WoL encounters them resulting in their deaths and failure of duty.

Meanwhile, supposedly Venat had suffered for the same amount of time, but displays no ill effects from it. On the contrary, she is the picture of mental clarity and purpose. At most she says she had bouts of despair, but was able to overcome them thinking about the WoL.

She's also singularly the only primal to have no consequences of being one. She doesn't require aether beyond her original sacrifices and she doesn't temper. Conversely, even though the first part is also true for Zodiark, there are still numerous people who insist by nature of being a primal he was some sort of blood god who demanded endless sacrifices. This mentality is never applied to Hydaelyn who, as a primal, should be no different using that logic.

I suppose I should just chalk this up to the rules don't apply to the "protagonists" because that seems to be how the writing for this game has operated since HW.

[Layte_Aeon]

I don't believe it's discussed enough how Venat/Hydaelyn has no downsides.

We have the unsundered Ascians on one hand who are depicted as struggling emotionally and psychologically with everything from the end of their world to their laborious efforts to restore it over the course of several millennia. This eventually leads them to making missteps by the time the WoL encounters them resulting in their deaths and failure of duty.

Meanwhile, supposedly Venat had suffered for the same amount of time, but displays no ill effects from it. On the contrary, she is the picture of mental clarity and purpose. At most she says she had bouts of despair, but was able to overcome them thinking about the WoL.

She's also singularly the only primal to have no consequences of being one. She doesn't require aether beyond her original sacrifices and she doesn't temper. Conversely, even though the first part is also true for Zodiark, there are still numerous people who insist by nature of being a primal he was some sort of blood god who demanded endless sacrifices. This mentality is never applied to Hydaelyn who, as a primal, should be no different using that logic.

I suppose I should just chalk this up to the rules don't apply to the "protagonists" because that seems to be how the writing for this game has operated since HW.

I mean, they are different situations.

The unsundered struggled yes but all for different reasons: Lahabrea's fanatical devotion and going through other bodies at the pace he did wore his mind to the point that he seemed focused on the destruction caused by rejoinings more that their actual purpose. Emet fundamentally was tired and didn't entirely believe his own spiel about the sundered not being living (he thought them lesser sure, but that's different than not living), and Elidibus, due to not refreshing his memories entirely forgot why his duty may or may not have mattered, though his drawing on the hopes of sundered beings very much exacerbated this.

Venat/Hydaelyn however doesn't fall into these pits. She has no need to possess bodies, until canocially very recently and even then it's short enough that she wouldn't suffer ill effects, she doesn't have Emet's sense of exhaustion and need to rationalise her deeds, she knows exactly what she's done, and all the good and ill that's come of it and she never put herself in a situation where she'd lose sight of why she was doing what she was doing the same way Elidibus did.

Besides she and Zodiark while being, as Emet called them "the eldest primals" they are for the most part just powerful creations. Zodiark's tempering wasn't even intentional, it was a side effect of how big a creation he was and the large scale he was designed to act on. Venat meanwhile is noted to have been a smaller creation, so of course unintentional tempering wouldn't happen.

The rules apply, the parties are just different enough that they are affected differently.

[Rulakir]

I mean, they are different situations.

I'm not arguing that. Even among the unsundered Ascians there are differences in what affected one vs. another. My point is that Venat/Hydaelyn doesn't have any of those cracks. She should have suffered emotional and psychological consequences, but she doesn't in any meaningful way. She also doesn't experience any of the downsides of being a primal, as I said. I don't see how you can say the rules apply when she's clearly exempt from them.

[Causante]

I mean, they are different situations.

Venat/Hydaelyn however doesn't fall into these pits. She has no need to possess bodies, until canocially very recently and even then it's short enough that she wouldn't suffer ill effects, she doesn't have Emet's sense of exhaustion and need to rationalise her deeds, she knows exactly what she's done, and all the good and ill that's come of it and she never put herself in a situation where she'd lose sight of why she was doing what she was doing the same way Elidibus did.

Besides she and Zodiark while being, as Emet called them "the eldest primals" they are for the most part just powerful creations. Zodiark's tempering wasn't even intentional, it was a side effect of how big a creation he was and the large scale he was designed to act on. Venat meanwhile is noted to have been a smaller creation, so of course unintentional tempering wouldn't happen.

You do make resonable arguments, but I'm not sure if I agree. While she has no need to posses bodies and isn't afflicted with alzheimer's disease like Elidibus, she is still responsible, at least partially (~70% in my opinion) for the fall and erasure of her beloved civilization. And after that she has to witness 12k years of sundering life with great periods of war, disease, tragedy and death that didn't exist before and were direct results of her actions. That would require some rationalisations.

About her tempering capabilities, I do agree that Zodiark was the superior summon by far, but Hydaelyn still is an unsundered primal summoned by unconventional strengthening methods (soul sacrifice) so I still think it's very odd how most primal rules don't apply to her specially in regard to sundered life given the strong difference in aether.

[Yeastyloins]

Endwalker is rehashed the plot from Gurren Lagann, change my mind.

[MikkoAkure]

About her tempering capabilities, I do agree that Zodiark was the superior summon by far, but Hydaelyn still is an unsundered primal summoned by unconventional strengthening methods (soul sacrifice) so I still think it's very odd how most primal rules don't apply to her specially in regard to sundered life given the strong difference in aether.

It's much in the same way that the "fixed" primal summoning we do using up the Mothercrystal, aether that Hydaelyn has literally been sitting on for eons, and techniques untainted by Ascians don't temper anyone. The Lopporits say that the primal summoning we had seen up to that point were purposefully designed to temper people. Zodiark tempered because he was built on such a massive scale with his aether deeply aspected to darkness that he couldn't help but make the aether of those around him tip into darkness and thus be tempered. Hydaelyn wasn't on the same scale, though was built the same, and she also doesn't physically roam around the world greeting people in person so there's not really any point where she could have tempered people.

If she could temper people from the Mothercrystal, then literally the entire world is tempered because the lifestream all congregates around where she lives and everyone's aether would be marked with hers when they die and are eventually reincarnated.


Granted, a lot of the explanation of tempering and primals that was brought to light in EW sounded like the writers trying to write themselves out of a hole of their own making, but at least they tried explaining it and didn't leave it completely to wild interpretation.

[Rulakir]

The irony being that EW actually makes sense if Hydaelyn tempers. Considering both Krile and the WoL go from being skeptical to enthralled in the blink of an eye it could be that those already tainted with her Blessing of Light were more vulnerable to her influence.

It would certainly explain Minfilia too who, despite acting like a brainwashed cultist, everyone treats as being perfectly normal. The rest of the Scions, particularly Thancred, also start acting in ways contrary to their values whenever it involves Hydaelyn too.

The idea that she had the ability to temper the entire world also plays nicely into her insistence that she's the Will of the Star. How handy that is when you usurp Zodiark, wipe out the civilization whose will he represented, and are left with significantly less intelligent beings with no memories to mould.

It's a shame they didn't go the antagonist* route with her because she makes a far more believable one than a heroine. EW really does feel like she is the villain (Hermes who?) where everyone has been tempered to think otherwise.

* Given how littered EW is with other tropes even more overused than 'evil goddess', such as progenitor race is responsible for their own destruction, I can't take any complaints that it would've been cliche seriously. I think it's much worse that she is an antagonist in every possible way except for how the characters treat her. It feels forced and like it was rewritten to subvert expectations, which is a particular pet peeve of mine.

[MikkoAkure]

It would certainly explain Minfilia too who, despite acting like a brainwashed cultist, everyone treats as being perfectly normal. The rest of the Scions, particularly Thancred, also start acting in ways contrary to their values whenever it involves Hydaelyn too.

Everyone treats Minfilia as normal because she's the first Echo bearer who decided to gather other Echo bearers, who up until joining the Path of Twelve were ostracized by the rest of society. Louisoix and the Circle of Knowing have been in contact with Minfilia since she was a child and helped her set everything up and Thancred sort of raised her so of course they'd be with her the whole step of the way.

Gonna need a source/example on Thancred suddenly acting in ways contrary to his values. Not sure wwhere that came from.

* Given how littered EW is with other tropes even more overused than 'evil goddess', such as progenitor race is responsible for their own destruction, I can't take any complaints that it would've been cliche seriously. I think it's much worse that she is an antagonist in every possible way except for how the characters treat her. It feels forced and like it was rewritten to subvert expectations, which is a particular pet peeve of mine.

It's less about tropes or being cliche and more about suddenly making the character who supports us and saves our life on multiple occasions over 10 years into a villain just because people caught the feels for the Ascians isn't great writing. Considering Venat was in 3rd place in popularity polls in Japan, I don't think she's the universally panned figure you think she is.

Ultimately the game isn't about the Ancients. Their world died 12,000 years ago, there's no saving them, and they don't show up fully realized until the 2nd to the last level of the entire game and we just go there to find out how to save our own world.

They didn't even exist in the minds of the writers or the lore team when 1.0 and ARR were written and were just added in after the fact, after the Ascians and Hydaelyn were already in the game. Further expansions (except Stormblood) added details and nuance to make it more interesting, but we were never going to end up subverting the whole Hydaelyn vs the Darkness completely. It was never meant to be that way from the beginning and it would completely invalidate large swaths of the game just for a cheap twist.