Quote Originally Posted by dapperfaffer View Post
Its not a hypothetical anything. Its what the game presents as even you recognize. I don't disagree that it isn't consistent with what would thematically be a characteristically accurate portrayal of what the Ancients would have done, or even with other presentations in the story of the motives and actions that ancients were taking, or even the control of Zodiark and enthralling the ancients, or even that Emet says they knew they were enthralled to a degree and still able to exert some form of control on themselves.the writing is the writing and there's no discussion that changes that.
Indeed, we agree the writing of Endwalker is either an awkward retcon at best, or incompetent at worst. It took a reasonable, if debatable action, then shamelessly strawmanned it because uuhhhh what is nuance. Though I would like to say Zodiark did not temper Ancients in general, just the Convocation. Who were indeed respected world leaders, though in the context of a society based on debating, it's arguable how much sway they would have had on the overall population if the decisions they were making were obviously deranged.

You'll have to explain what this has to do with Hydealyns reason for the sundering. Because regardless of the mechanics behind how the sundering occured, or what powered it, or what powered anything, it doesn't change the motive. And what 8 guys you are referencing, because insofar as the story is in Lore, the WoL faced Metion alone as the WoL faces everything story based alone, with the exclusion of dragon form zenos.
One of the reasons for the Sundering, beside condemning humanity to a never ending cycle of short mortal lives full of hunger, disease and conflicts motivated by self-preservation, was that making humans (and everything else, oops) less aetherically dense would enable them to directly interact with Dynamis. Which... has the unfortunate side effect of transforming people into ravenous monsters (which she totally knew about, we told her (and Hermes) as much), but it also gives the protagonists untold powers on the very plot because they have the Power Of Friendship, as well as the Power of God And Anime on their side. We know this was part of her reasoning, because it's what Y'shtola says, and Y'shtola is literally just the author's mouthpiece.

Dynamis is the general argument for why Ancients Simply Never Had Any Hope Against Meteion So Please Stop Arguing, because even in the hypothetical scenario where they would figure everything out about the Final Days, space travel and Hermes being a spiteful idiot, you can argue that they simply weren't built for Dynamis, physiologically, and thus could never actually fight Meteion. (Never mind, of course, that Meteion herself was literally made by an Ancient, meaning that even if Ancients themselves could not directly influence Dynamis, they could have made familiars that could, given enough information about the Final Days to motivate research into Dynamis.)

Hence, the prospect of Hydaelyn, a being as aetherically dense as one could imagine, testing anyone for their capacity to fight off a Dynamis based apocalypse and/or a Dynamis capable entity, is... a nice gesture from her, I suppose, but logically I don't see how she could be testing us, beside the generic "TEST OF WILLPOWER" trope.