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

[SentioftheHoukai]

I don't think people didn't believe the convocation, their decisions saved the remaining ancients and restored the planet albeit at a terrible cost and people had to volunteer for that even before the summoning ocurred after all. Your conclusion makes it sound like zodiark was manipulating the convocation, which in turn was manipulating the populace, prompting venat to perform a drastic act to save "life". I'm sure you'll agree that's not what happened or how it was portrayed in recent expansions.



I'm pretty sure we're supposed to accept that as full retcon. I may be wrong on this, but I don't remember ascians praising zodiark as a "true god" in a fanatical sense since they changed the writing around the ascians. What it felt to me is that from then on they treated zodiark as the embodiment of their hopes for a future where they could recover what they had lost.

In my mind this makes sense even in a logical society if you think about it. They were on the verge of extinction, everything they knew was being destroyed and people around them dying. All this happening without a cause or a reason (from their perspective). And then this all powerful being makes everything stop and is even able to restore the planet (to some extent) to what it once was. I think it should be doable to understand that a lot of people, specially those less versed in the sciences or creation magicks, would start to worship their "savior". Others, on the other hand, would be afraid of him given what they had (as a collective) to sacrifice, which would explain why they were so divided. The mental state of the ancient society must have been chaotic after dealing with such a catastrophe.

This scenario could've been explored way better to try and give more convincing explanations for the downfall of ancient society and Venat actions, but it's not how they went about it endwalker. It's not about Zodiark, it's about Hermes and Venat's beliefs.

Yeah, that ONE TRUE GOD nonsense literally happened ONE FRICKIN' TIME in the height of ARR foolishness in a single damn cutscene. Not exactly damning evidence as it is, and like others have said none of the moral nuance surrounding the Ascians and Ancients existed back then.

People vouching for Emet-Selch isn’t the same as a democratic election. That poster earlier was insinuating that Azem and Fandaniel snuck through the “regular” process via nepotism and the others were democratically voted in and this is not the case.

Ancients are not casting ballots for Convocation seats. If a seat is open, it looks like the sitting members will go around and look for recommendations.

In all honesty, I'll admit my info was slightly inaccurate but frankly that was hardly the point. The important part is all these fools thinking their a bunch of tyrants who make decisions for the entire populace with no checks or balances and there is plentiful evidence to suggest this is not the case. People just decide to ignore it in favor of their headcanons that unilaterally prove Venat morally upstanding without flaw.

[Lauront]

That, plus what's her excuse for calling herself a "supreme deity" or Y'shtola's for the "all-powerful being" tripe?

[Raoabolic]

That, plus what's her excuse for calling herself a "supreme deity" or Y'shtola's for the "all-powerful being" tripe?

To be fair, I assumed they meant it in a scale of power sort of way. Hey, not every deity can just oopsie a universe into 13 smaller ones, lol.

[SentioftheHoukai]

Since this thread is about story, can I just say how worried I am that two of the Four Fiends were offed in a single patch? I don't see how they're gonna do the Void storyline justice when we're barreling thru villains so quick.

At this rate, Golbez will be gone by 6.3 and a potential Zemus/Zeromus will have been ganked by 6.4.

[MikkoAkure]

Yeah, that ONE TRUE GOD nonsense literally happened ONE FRICKIN' TIME in the height of ARR foolishness in a single damn cutscene. Not exactly damning evidence as it is, and like others have said none of the moral nuance surrounding the Ascians and Ancients existed back then.

It happened multiple times in multiple cutscenes. There’s a video series on YouTube with all of the Ascian cutscenes in the game that I reference every now and then and they do a lot of that in ARR.

In all honesty, I'll admit my info was slightly inaccurate but frankly that was hardly the point. The important part is all these fools thinking their a bunch of tyrants who make decisions for the entire populace with no checks or balances and there is plentiful evidence to suggest this is not the case. People just decide to ignore it in favor of their headcanons that unilaterally prove Venat morally upstanding without flaw.

I think the idea and execution of the Convocation themselves is fine minus a few eccentric members, Venat and Azem included. The Convocation works perfectly with their society and I have no problems with that at all.

My original point was that I question whether their judgement is completely clear after being tempered and have reservations about a post-Summoning Ancient society. After Zodiark, the leaders of Amaurot now serve a god and I don’t know how that would affect their society and culture as a whole.

I REALLY wish we get a Tales from the Dawn entry that gives us insight in the period of time between Zodiark being summoned the first time and the Sundering because all we got was a brief, condensed version of events.

[myahele]

Since this thread is about story, can I just say how worried I am that two of the Four Fiends were offed in a single patch? I don't see how they're gonna do the Void storyline justice when we're barreling thru villains so quick.

At this rate, Golbez will be gone by 6.3 and a potential Zemus/Zeromus will have been ganked by 6.4.

Oh wow how disappointing. I was on the fence on whether or not to do the msq or just cutscene skip throughout and I guess I'll just skip this one too.

Looks like they really want to be done with things introduced since 1.0

I REALLY wish we get a Tales from the Dawn entry that gives us insight in the period of time between Zodiark being summoned the first time and the Sundering because all we got was a brief, condensed version of events.

Me too. I thought we'd get a rough idea of events between Zodiark summoning and the eventual Sundering, but we got that cutscene. I guess dining scenes with the Scions and other funny moments were more of a priority

[FlatLined]

I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought the pace was ridiculously fast this patch.

[KageTokage]

They could reasonably make the remaining fiends plus Golbez the other three trials for the 6.x cycle given that everything is tied to the MSQ now... or it could be one fiend as a dungeon boss, one as a trial, then Golbez and a surprise as the remaining two trials.

[Atelier-Bagur]

Since this thread is about story, can I just say how worried I am that two of the Four Fiends were offed in a single patch? I don't see how they're gonna do the Void storyline justice when we're barreling thru villains so quick.

At this rate, Golbez will be gone by 6.3 and a potential Zemus/Zeromus will have been ganked by 6.4.

I mean, if we compare this to how the four fiends were handled in FFIV, where they originally came from, this was also the case, where they showed up individually only once and have their moment before the party dispatches them.

At the very least, there's a bit more build up to each of them in FFXIV and in terms of pacing I think it would've been a terrible idea to prolong their presence longer than necessary; Im sure many of us expected or perhaps wanted each of the fiends to have their own trial but going with how the usual standard for FFXIV's content patches that wouldnt have been the case. I was happy with how they're handling them so far, and the pacing of post EW hasnt suffered yet at least in my opinion.

[ReynTime]

I'm not very surprised. They love not deviating from their rigid structure of update cycles.

There isn't anything deep or interesting to read on how this is being written. They weren't trying to intentionally make it 'just like how they were handled in FF4'.
Endwalker ended the saga in 6.0. So they tossed in the closest thing to an extension of the newest friendly nation in form of this rescue arc to last the usual post X.0 follow-up.
This is a very barebones plot to stall while they come up with whatever they want 7.0 to be, and therefore how it will be start being built up from 6.4.