Endwalker Story sucked and it's time to admit it

[Lauront]

Just to add to what PawPaw said...

I don't get why people think it would stop at three sacrifices.

Consult the sources here.

That goes against two pieces of information, the first of which is that primals constantly need aether to sustain themselves.

Q: Venat said that not even her soul would remain but what does that mean? I’m very fond of her character and would like to see her again.
A: The answer is that souls are also made of Aether, and she gives up so much Aether that includes all of her soul as well. By contrast Zodiark was summoned using sacrifices of a lot of people, yes? But he was able to only use their Aether aside from their souls up because Zodiark was really strong and summoned by the Convocation of the Fourteen and so on. Hydaelyn had a much weaker summoning and because of that she didn’t have the option to leave the souls untouched, and that includes Venat she ended up using all of her Aether. In 5.2 there was some discussion of Venat’s group that assisted her in doing this and also how much of the Ancient people were sacrificed to create Zodiark so if you look back at that time it might be of your interest now. At the very end, Hydaelyn still had her own soul, which is Venat’s. That was the very power that she used to fight the Warrior of Light. When she tells you before the final bout she had saved enough Aether specifically to fight you, and that specifically points to Venat’s soul.

Neither her nor Zodiark are implied to require a constant source of power beyond what summoned them - only for specific acts.

The second is that the plan was ultimately to rejoin all the shards and then sacrifice everyone to Zodiark to remake the world as it once was. People seem determined to paint Hydaelyn as some villain and Zodiark as some savior.

Q: I am interested to know how unsundered Ascians such as Lahabrea, Elidibus and Emet-Selch avoided being kicked into 14 pieces by Hydaelyn.
A: As you think back to the text towards the end Emet-Selch did imply that Venat let him live unsundered. In fact Venat did intentionally leave a tiny floor in her Sundering attack - a crack that Emet-Selch can wiggle through. Sort of like…yes it was a powerful attack but intentionally chose to do it in this fashion. So we said this in the actual game as well which is when Hydaelyn did the attack, it was a really strong one. It was delivered at the limit of her power so she couldn’t really fine tune it. So as intentional as this was when she did that big massive light attack that sundered the world, she couldn’t guarantee that Emet-Selch would live and she was kind of making a gamble. In fact what happened was, at the time that Hydaelyn performed the sundering, Emet-Selch was with Lahabrea and Elidibus (the time he was already out of being Zodiark core so he’s a little bit different than his original but nevertheless he was there) so they ended up joining forces, and escaped to the rift without being Sundered. You may recall if you read Tales of the Shadows that Elidibus, when he came out of Zodiark he ended up losing some of his memories as well as some parts of himself and that’s sort of the point in Patch 5.3 and when he “dies” you sort of know that he lost a lot in the process as well just like Emet-Selch. So yeah, basically they worked together at that time and escaped being Sundered.

This is a jrpg and a Final Fantasy game, the heroes are the heroes, and the villains are the villains. They may be flawed with mitigating circumstances, but the claim that Hydaelyn is the villain goes against the entire narrative.

Yeah, unless the act is annihilation of a culture/people in an act of uh... "anti-apotheosis" or "mythopoesis". My brain is just blocked by considering it a genocide because there's no real life equivalent... but either way, as others pointed out, false dichotomy.

Faced with the absolute destruction, people aren't going to calmly sit down and listen, they're going to grab onto the first plan and go with it, which is to summon Zodiark.

https://youtu.be/EBfCrns8-9I?t=149

Doesn't appear to be their first resort.

[SannaR]

On your reasons why they wouldn’t stop:

1. There is nothing to suggest that Zodiark needs sacrifices to sustain himself. Neither the second or the third sacrifice have been done with the intent to sustain him, nor after the sundering, as has been mentioned above.

2. The “sacrificing everyone on the Source” bit is essentially the third sacrifice delayed by thousands of years. Giving away new life to bring back those who they have lost, it doesn’t have anything to do with sustaining Zodiark. Were they able to complete their plan and bring their people back, there would be little reason to continue.

I wouldn’t say people are eager to portray Hydaelyn as a villain, we’re pointing out her flaws which are much more grievous than what the game itself is trying to present.

Yes the plan was rejoin and then get the original sacrifice out by killing people I'm sure Emet would have a problem with doing so. Since his whole "Don't see you as a person and thus it's not murder" bit might have started out true. But I feel with each rejoining that was becoming harder and harder idea to swallow. At least with him and Lahabrea to a point the thing they're weighing as a sign of being a person and also being strong is how thick your aether is. Going by that Ardbert and friends shouldn't have been able to give us as much of a problem as they did. We also shouldn't have struggled from the start as we did against Ran'jit.

Then there is the fact that they themselves knowingly caused damage to the world itself. Most likely undoing some of the stuff Zodiark repaired. Would they just leave the damage they caused to the world? Or would they want to try and fix it? If they choose to fix it well that would require more sacrifices right? Also could they be fine with the realization if it ever sunk in with the fact the world they once knew and loved has been changed forever. Even if those stuck inside of Zodiark could forgive them for what they did in order to free them do you think those three wouldn't be made to retire?

[DPZ2]

Not necessarily. Nuance is a thing, so although I do dislike that Emet is so eager to commit genocides without any care for if he kills people, I find it to be

So, there are apparently varying 'degrees' of genocide now, right. And you liken the Ancients' attitude toward the New Life as justified in its genocide. In Real Life, genocide is always justified in that way.

We also have justification in destroying the remaining Ancients ... monkeys can retaliate. There is nothing morally wrong with the monkeys overwhelming and killing their hunters.

I now feel justified that the last of the conscious Ancients has been eradicated, Venat or not ...

[DPZ2]

1. There is nothing to suggest that Zodiark needs sacrifices to sustain himself. Neither the second or the third sacrifice have been done with the intent to sustain him, nor after the sundering, as has been mentioned above.

What do you use as an anchor to support the suggestion that Zodiark would ever release the souls whose Aether they have consumed already? Or that this was possible in the first place?

It's bandied about that the end game was to restore the Ancients, including their aether, to their former glory. What was the actual textual basis for this assumption?

I've seen this so often, but never actually read anything concrete to support this belief, other than some words of Emet-Selch, who has been tempered by Zodiark and, while he might believe what he says, there is no signed (or even verbal) contract I've found in-game to support that belief.

[DPZ2]

So what's your point exactly? That it's OK for us to kill to defend ourselves (against, say, rabid fire dogs who destroy ecosystems) and hunt animals for materials (like, when you need to make a robe) but it's definitely a sign of callousness when the Ancients do it?

Only if you consider "human" life to be the equivalent of rabid fire dogs ... which is what your question implies.

[PawPaw]

Only if you consider "human" life to be the equivalent of rabid fire dogs ... which is what your question implies.

Not quite, as we were discussing both the wholesale murder of men and animals. Claiming that killing animals in self defense or for materials is fine when we do it but heinous when an Ancient does for the same reasons is disingenuous.

[AwesomeJr44]

So, there are apparently varying 'degrees' of genocide now, right. And you liken the Ancients' attitude toward the New Life as justified in its genocide. In Real Life, genocide is always justified in that way.

I never said Emet's genocide was justified (although I didn't say it wasn't either), I said that it was slightly less bad than Venat's because he wasn't killing full people. In addition, contrary to real life examples, the ancients actually ARE superior beings compared to the sundered who are literally inferior by nature of being sundered, thus comparing the sundered to monkeys is an accurate comparison. The sundered are not complete people, they are only partially so. If you find offense to this, too bad. The story itself shows that the unsundered are superior beings. Facts don't care about your sundered feelings.

We also have justification in destroying the remaining Ancients ... monkeys can retaliate. There is nothing morally wrong with the monkeys overwhelming and killing their hunters.

I don't disagree. You're arguing with a strawman argument that I never made. If you try and kill a monkey, the monkey can retaliate. This is why I don't see a moral issue with the scions attempting to stop Emet in SHB. From an outside perspective as someone from neither race, the unsundered have more of a right to life (keep in mind the souls inside Zodiark were still there and intact meaning they had a chance to return) than the sundered do, but that doesn't mean the sundered have to just roll over and accept death quietly.

I've seen this so often, but never actually read anything concrete to support this belief, other than some words of Emet-Selch, who has been tempered by Zodiark and, while he might believe what he says, there is no signed (or even verbal) contract I've found in-game to support that belief.

The 'Emet was tempered' argument is thrown around quite a bit and I find it pretty stupid. It honestly seems less like a genuine attempt at understanding the lore and more of trying to discount parts of the story they don't like. The souls inside Zodiark were mostly intact when we arrived at the moon. There's no reason why the souls could not be exchanged, nor why Zodiark would have an issue with trading an Ancient soul for aether equivalent of said soul. Zodiark was made with the purpose of saving the ancients, betraying them and refusing to hand over the souls would be betraying his purpose for existence.

Using this logic, can we assume that anything Krile says in the future is bullcrap as she MIGHT be tempered by Hydaelyn due to her possession?

[Hurlstone]

Of course not, one infraction isn't enough to condemn a story to being bad

My question would then be how does one logically tally such infractions. It seems to me that everyone would have a diffrent... lets say tolerance for such things.

It is possible, but some find it much harder to do...

I appreciate you explaining it, that does helps understand your viewpoint a little better even if I very much do not land on the same target. As someone on the autistic spectrum, I can fully relate to haveing a brain that does not act atypical haha.

I'll give an example: The Final Steps of Faith.

Thats fair, and a very well put explanation why I adore that moment of the MSQ so much (Honestly Hevensword comes 4th in my Expansion favourites list... I feel its overrated, but the patch content is GOLDEN) but again I would say much of that conclusion comes more from opinion then logic.

This is mainly because unlike emotions, logic...

Thing is though you are making assumptions that do not seem to be born of logic. You seem to stand from the point that every pro-Venant is a hater of the Ancients or Emet. I think I have made it clear I stand in the pro-Venat camp, but Emet is my favourite character in the game and the best written one in FF history. I have seen many on the pro-side also claim similar things. Even if your opinion of Endwalker comes from logic, I do not think it can be said that emotion plays no part in how we all one-to-one forum debates and I certinly do not think it excuses the type of toxic behavior that can be seen.

My stance on the Ancients is -

I can see why you think that. I think they tried to go for a more thematic punch instead of indent debate, hence the abstract the Venant cut scene showing the Sundering. I liked it, but again I feel I gravitate more towards that type of storytelling.

I don't consider myself or my opinions superior to yours. I consider facts and logic superior to your subjective opinion (and my own opinion as well). When a story is logically unsound or tells but not shows, it is not good.

I feel this is just an issue that we will have to agree to disagree on, hopefully. I understand where you are coming from, but I simply do not think objectivity is something that can or should be used when discussing art. I do not think you yourself perhaps mean to come of as superior, but when you see one side of the debate almost demand that you must ‘accept’ a piece of fiction as objectively good or bad, it can come across that way. There is a gate keeping aspect to it that feels unwarranted. Like, neither of us should have to say “I like RWBY but have watched hbomberguy's “RWBY Is Disappointing, And Here's Why” video and agree its crap…” before one talks about it.

[Listrella]

I'm a total FF simp and i would even admit that Endwalker wasn't the best story around. The plot with Zenos was just something thrown in there, guy just wanted to spar while were trying to save the world. Why? because "our battle will live in the imprint of the cosmos" or something like that.

Also, the references to FF4 are getting old, i know it's a good FF game but jeeezz Yoshi P does every update have to make FF4 references....and now were fighting Golbez !

Where the story took a turn was after the Zodiark, rather quickly squash him...they should have him break from his prison and wreak havoc on Eorzea. Whereas the WOL has to eventually build up to put down that havoc. Instead they got rid of Zodiark and quickly went to the Meteion story arc

that would have been too predictable, and pretty dull to be honest, just some generic evil god causing havoc.

[Kozh]

But they're not monkeys, they are in fact, people.

Classifying a certain kind of person as "less than human" and going on say it's fine if you kill them en masse to make room for your own superior race is in fact, the rhetoric that every genocidal regime uses.

So I'm gonna say the one that resembles genocide is worse than a mythopoetic act of anti-apotheosis with no real life analogue.

Yet all the same, killing a group of people because of ideology is genocide too, probably even more despicable. Not to mention that now part of her genocide reason is also "your biology is wrong" (dynamis).