Tales from the Dawn

[Hurlstone]

I really liked that little story. Not much new info, but a neat look into an interesting character. It kinda make sense that this is a story about the Ancients, as this is really the last chance they will have to delve into said elements before we likely move on in 7.0. Anyway, looking foward to more! Also love that they have toggle to show if our WoL is male or female. Thats neat!

[Enkidoh]

I really liked that little story. Not much new info, but a neat look into an interesting character. It kinda make sense that this is a story about the Ancients, as this is really the last chance they will have to delve into said elements before we likely move on in 7.0. Anyway, looking foward to more! Also love that they have toggle to show if our WoL is male or female. Thats neat!

That decides the gender pronoun used for Azem in the story - Azem is canonically your character's gender so such a toggle is needed for consistancy's sake.

[Cilia]

7.8/10 too much fawning over Venat.

I like her as a character but... this is almost getting to Haurchefant levels of shilling.

[Rannie]

So honestly, for me, while the information about the customs for Masks of the ancients was interesting, I'd rather have read about it in an actual Encyclopedia Eorzea instead of a side story. It reads as if it was written by someone completely different from the others stories and lacked good substance.

I mean it was kinda a meh for writing to me... it also does read like the watcher was completely head over heels for Venat. While it can be interesting at times this complete lack of unbiased view points is getting rather bland and over played.

[TheSuperior]

7.8/10 too much fawning over Venat.

I like her as a character but... this is almost getting to Haurchefant levels of shilling.

Hades had like, 2 stories didn't he? Through His Eyes and I'm sure there was another. Not to mention him being our narrator for EW. I'd say that title goes to him and his new minion and portrait and ect, ect.

And can't forget him being in NieR Reincarnation.

[Lurina]

They basically had the power of a god in their hands, allowing them to rewrite the rules of reality, bring back the dead, etc etc. Makes it so they don't need to worry about future problems, their god will solve all of it, so they get complacent and basically go "God will fix it" every time something comes up. There's no learning in such a world, nothing to strive for, and as we know the Amaurotine society was basically built on learning and striving to make the world a better place. Zodiark was ironically the thing that would destroy their very way of life just by existing.

Okay, but again: Vibe-based mass murder. This is the story asking us to accept the Hydaelyn faction (assuming she did tell them what the Sundering was going to do) was okay with identity-deathing everyone on the planet and condemning the lives which would follow to millenia of hardship over what was essentially a cultural problem that is not explicitly defined as harming anyone. This makes them come across as bonkers ideologues, not heroes.

Like, imagine if in the real world, we discover some sort of technology - replicators or some junk, IDK - that makes us decadent and culturally stagnant. No one, or at least no one in their right mind, would say that an appropriate solution to this would be to nuke the planet and everyone on it back to the stone age. It's moon logic morality that the writers could have easily sidestepped.

[Cilia]

Hades had like, 2 stories didn't he? Through His Eyes and I'm sure there was another. Not to mention him being our narrator for EW. I'd say that title goes to him and his new minion and portrait and ect, ect.

And can't forget him being in NieR Reincarnation.

I meant just within the story itself.

[TheSuperior]

Okay, but again: Vibe-based mass murder. This is the story asking us to accept the Hydaelyn faction (assuming she did tell them what the Sundering was going to do) was okay with identity-deathing everyone on the planet and condemning the lives which would follow to millenia of hardship over what was essentially a cultural problem that is not explicitly defined as harming anyone. This makes them come across as bonkers ideologues, not heroes.

Like, imagine if in the real world, we discover some sort of technology - replicators or some junk, IDK - that makes us decadent and culturally stagnant. No one, or at least no one in their right mind, would say that an appropriate solution to this would be to nuke the planet and everyone on it back to the stone age. It's moon logic morality that the writers could have easily sidestepped.

That technology is called the internet and everything that makes up McDonalds and I fully support the total annihilation of one of them.

[Cleretic]

I meant just within the story itself.

The story is from the point of view of a guy who clearly had a MASSIVE crush on her, of course it's going to fawn. I agree with TheSuperior, this doesn't even come close to balancing the scales for how fondly the game treats Emet-Selch.


I think an important thing to take into account, and something that really adds a lot of context to the Ancients is that the big thing Venat became known for discovering is that the Ancients are the same as everything else. This makes the whole Zodiark/Hydaelyn conflict make a lot more sense, because it defines how each side is seeing it all; the notion that the Ancients aren't somehow different is clearly new, at least on an Ancient scale.

• To the people supporting the constant sacrifices to Zodiark, it's morally right because chances are a bunch of them still believe that they as Ancients are inherently better and more worthy of life. If everything else must die to prolong the lives of their people, then that's fine, because their people are inherently more worthy of life.
• But to Venat's supporters, that outlook is not only harmful for the greater progress of the planet, but also tantamount to blasphemy. If every living thing is composed of the same stuff on the physical, psychological and metaphysical levels, why suffocate the lives of everything else just because the Ancients want things back the way they were?

No, this does not make Venat an objectively morally correct superbeing who we are not meant to disagree with; she was never depicted as such, and the game never treated her as such. But she is the one in the right if you're someone who believes in the right of all lives to live.

Of course, this forum's never been great at grasping this part of the story.

[Lurina]

That technology is called the internet and everything that makes up McDonalds and I fully support the total annihilation of one of them.

While wanting to destroy the internet is absolutely valid and reasonable, my point is that someone wanted to do so by eradicating human civilization completely, you probably wouldn't think that was ethical.

No, this does not make Venat an objectively morally correct superbeing who we are not meant to disagree with; she was never depicted as such, and the game never treated her as such. But she is the one in the right if you're someone who believes in the right of all lives to live.

Of course, this forum's never been great at grasping this part of the story.

I really wish people on this forum would actually talk directly to the people they disagree with instead of passive-aggressively vagueposting, and I wish you specifically would stop doing this kind of thing, Cleretic. Just because someone doesn't think a part of the story came together well doesn't mean they don't get it.

Like, the story, regardless of the fact that it doesn't try to say anyone is objectively right, obviously does want you to sympathize with Venat's faction based on the tone. But the writers refusing to elaborate on circumstances which formed the moral basis for their decision to destroy the original world makes it hard to do so. All they're presented is an abstracted ideology of not living in the past, and a sort of militantly applied vegan viewpoint that you spell out here.

Now, I'm going to going to go out on a limb here and say the majority of people playing this game are not ideological vegans. Most players probably believe that the lives of humans matter more than those of, say, snails, and probably even more intelligent animals like dogs or pigs. This makes this motive alone pretty poor at its meta-narrative 'goal' of keeping the sympathetic tone undissonant, and more than that is just weird, because the rest of the game is overtly anti-vegan. It's so out of place it doesn't feel like the writers intend you to understand this as the Hydaelynites direct motive, but rather that they're just trying to encourage the reader to just coast on vibes because they're worried about creating plot holes by defining the scenario in any detail, which is a symptom of the self-confessed lack of pre-planning in their storytelling.

Or to put it another way, I am not disputing that the main scenario team is good at establishing and conveying themes like these (life good, living in the past bad) in a broad sense. I'm saying they're using it as a crutch.