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

[Aline_D]

[QUOTE=Millybonk;5802432]

• The mighty Zodiark, which has been build up as this mighty(evil) entity over several expansions, turns out to be nothing but filler trash for the first Endwalker trial
  
  
  The Zodiark we fight is less than half unsundered, and its core (Elidibus) has been destroyed. The new core, Fandaniel, doesn't care to fight that hard since even if he loses he wins.
  
  
• The true cause of the Final Days is a pet-project from an ancient which goes mad after observing countless dead world and possibly causing the death of several world by projecting negative emotions unto them, and is thus dead-set on bringing despair to every world, upon which said ancient goes mad and is now letting her run her course to test humanity if they can withstand/fight despair
  
  This makes perfect sense because the Ancients were absolutely insanely cavalier with creation magic, they were playing with fire, as we see with both the Elpis storyline with the wolf monsters getting out of control and with Ashodelos. It wasn't a question if something would go wrong with a project, but of how bad the catastrophe would be.
  
  
• Venat, who hasn't had her memory wiped + still remembers you from being in Elpis, quite apparently doesn't lift a finger to learn about Dynamis herself or to mobilize the other ancients to end Meteion then and there, and instead chooses to turn herself into Hydaelyn, sunder the world and the inhabitants, thereby forcing them to live with and face despair and gambling that their resilience against despair might be enough to face Meteion one day

The Ancients would never manage to fight Meteion because they were so powerful and full in Ether that they would not be able to manipulate (or be manipulated by) Dynamis.
It's why the Scions had the perfect balance to both manipulate Dynamis by using their ether to create the various places in Ultima Thule.
That inherent weakness was one of the reasons of why Venat chose to sunder everyone.
The second reason was also to make humanity weaker, so they would never be able to achieve perfection, which could also be destructive as we see from the Ea and other races that simply lost the will to live after reaching Utopia.

Her actions are not presented 100% in the right btw, and this is commented on both by the story and by her when she asks for forgiveness. But it was the best she could do, if the Ancients continued their ways they would simply all die either by Meteion or the other dangers I stated.

[KageTokage]

The Ancients would never manage to fight Meteion because they were so powerful and full in Ether that they would not be able to manipulate (or be manipulated by) Dynamis.
It's why the Scions had the perfect balance to both manipulate Dynamis by using their ether to create the various places in Ultima Thule.
That inherent weakness was one of the reasons of why Venat chose to sunder everyone.
The second reason was also to make humanity weaker, so they would never be able to achieve perfection, which could also be destructive as we see from the Ea and other races that simply lost the will to live after reaching Utopia.

Her actions are not presented 100% in the right btw, and this is commented on both by the story and by her when she asks for forgiveness. But it was the best she could do, if the Ancients continued their ways they would simply all die either by Meteion or the other dangers I stated.

People have already argued and debated at length about how flimsy Venat's stated reasons for carrying out the Sundering were to them (Hence why this topic has bloated to hundreds of pages among other causes) but...I'll bite.


Dynamis

She admits to having only a "basic" understanding of dynamis back in Elpis, and she tells literally nobody the whole truth of the Final Days, not even her own followers so unless she somehow determined for herself off-screen that there was absolutely no way the Ancients could've solved their whole dynamis debacle (Which was started by an Ancient's creation in the first place), it feels rather poorly reasoned to me, particularly when she's only educated about the negative effects it can have on people. Any positive uses for the stuff would've been strictly hypothetical.

Death by perfection

Seeking perfection in itself is not dangerous. It is the reckless pursuit of perfection that is cited as being problematic. The Nibirun sought perfection through elimination of strife and cast off so much in the process that by the time they reached that ideal, it was so hollow that Meteion's simple question was enough to convince them to give up on life. The Grebuloffs desired more and more and followed the path of conquest only to destroy their ecosystem in the process. The Karellians simply got into a prolonged war that kept escalating further and further until both sides ended up destroying one another with WMDs. The Ea...didn't really do anything wrong at all, they just couldn't handle the "ultimate truth" of existence; that all is seemingly destined to eventually end due to the heat death of universe.

The Ancients were not a reckless people. They spent an extremely lengthy period of time debating about the morality/necessity of the third sacrifice, and it got to the point where Elidibus had to force himself out of Zodiark to enact his role as a mediator just to help them to finalize that decision. The notion of them simply choosing to collectively off themselves if they ever somehow managed to truly achieve "perfection" feels a bit...preposterous with how meticulously they'd consider any decision that would affect their society on a larger scale, coupled with the fact that they sought perfection through addition, not elimination like the Nibirun did. While they did intend to sacrifice surplus life to free the souls within Zodiark, it was something that the Conovocation had deemed would be for the greater good, and rather logically so considering that 75% of what little population that had survived the Final Days was now trapped in purgatory.

Weakening humanity and inviting strife and conflict into the world has opened them up to far, far more "dead ends" then they were vulnerable to pre-Sundering, and Meteion was never going to be an issue as long as Zodiark was intact considering he was still doing his job for 12,000+ years after being sundered.


As far as her actions not being presented as entirely in the right goes...it's literally only called out by the Ascians and herself due to the admittance of there being "no justice or kindness" in it, and it's one of the chief things that bugged me about Endwalker. We're allowed to express doubt towards her when we meet her on the way to Old Sharlayan and question the morality of sealing Zodiark in Mare Lamentorum after seeing the Ancient souls mourning and suffering within him, yet when we finally meet her in person as Hydaelyn, there's nothing but unanimous positivity. It's only in the Omega quest post-MSQ that we're allowed to actually inject our own feelings on the matter, but it felt a bit...hollow versus telling it to her personally.

I can agree that her methods did work, but being able to at least question her about it truly being the only/best option available would've at least left me feeling less emotionally dissonant without having to drastically change the story.

I was really expecting the Sundering to be extremely well-reasoned, like as an act to prevent the immediate end of humanity, not to spare them from some hypothetical "death by perfection" some point in the very distant future.

[Rolder50]

The Ancients would never manage to fight Meteion because they were so powerful and full in Ether that they would not be able to manipulate (or be manipulated by) Dynamis.
It's why the Scions had the perfect balance to both manipulate Dynamis by using their ether to create the various places in Ultima Thule.
That inherent weakness was one of the reasons of why Venat chose to sunder everyone.
The second reason was also to make humanity weaker, so they would never be able to achieve perfection, which could also be destructive as we see from the Ea and other races that simply lost the will to live after reaching Utopia.

If the Ancients have the ability to create Meteion, a hivemind that can manipulate Dynamis, they should have the ability to create other things that can fight against her with Dynamis. Especially if all of the ancients are working together to, you know, not die.

[Aline_D]

If the Ancients have the ability to create Meteion, a hivemind that can manipulate Dynamis, they should have the ability to create other things that can fight against her with Dynamis. Especially if all of the ancients are working together to, you know, not die.

The only one who knew about Dynamis, much less use it, was Hermes, which is a terrible warning as he ended up doing a "universe"-ending mistake as he didn't realize how strong Dynamis can be.

And it is irrelevant since if he knew what was really going on, he would try to sabotage any attempt to stop Meteion as he did before the memory wipe.

And "surely they would think of something" is meaningless, unless you have a specific example to give.


And finally even if they somehow managed to stop Meteion, we (and Venat) knows they were bound to be destroyed either by misuse of their power or by losing the will to live like all other civilisations.

[jameseoakes]

The only one who knew about Dynamis, much less use it, was Hermes, which ended up doing a universe-ending mistake as he did realize how strong Dynamis can be.

And it is irrelevant since if he knew what was really going on, he would try to sabotage any attempt to stop Meteion as he did before the memory wipe.

And "surely they would think of something" is meaningless, unless you have a specific example.

Given the ancients are a society of scientists it wouldn't take them long to get up to speed on it, the only reason they are pretty ignorant of it is generally been regarded as too weak to do anything with (as the sundered do as well) so it's regarded as nothing but a curiosity. Once the End of Days proves them wrong in that regard it stands to reason they'd investigate it and besides Venat seems pretty knowable on given how many assumptions she makes in her plans

[Aline_D]

Given the ancients are a society of scientists it wouldn't take them long to get up to speed on it, the only reason they are pretty ignorant of it is generally been regarded as too weak to do anything with (as the sundered do as well) so it's regarded as nothing but a curiosity. Once the End of Days proves them wrong in that regard it stands to reason they'd investigate it and besides Venat seems pretty knowable on given how many assumptions she makes in her plans

Again this is wishful thinking and you don't offer any alternative what could they possibly do except "a ~~wizard~~ scientist did it"

besides Venat seems pretty knowable on given how many assumptions she makes in her plans

No, Venat is not assuming, she follows a path she already knows where it leads because *we* told her the entire history. Deviating from that path means risking the entire universe for the small chance that they somehow defeat Meteion in another way, which would just buy a bit of time since their society would die no matter what.

[jameseoakes]

We must have been waiting for Galene for quite a while to have time to recite the entire history of the world post sundering—that isn't even known in universe—for her. Not to mention the shards, which funnily WoL doesn't know either.

beside with respect to Metion all Venat knows from us that Zodiark will block the Dynamis for at least 12000 years

[Rolder50]

No, Venat is not assuming, she follows a path she already knows where it leads because *we* told her the entire history. Deviating from that path means risking the entire universe for the small chance that they somehow defeat Meteion in another way, which would just buy a bit of time since their society would die no matter what.

We're getting into Time Paradox territory, which is a core flaw of time travel based stories, but how would venat know the entire history the *first* time she went through this? There had to be a timeline where we didn't interact with Hermes or Venat.

[RyuDragnier]

We're getting into Time Paradox territory, which is a core flaw of time travel based stories, but how would venat know the entire history the *first* time she went through this? There had to be a timeline where we didn't interact with Hermes or Venat.

At this point I assume that the original timeline didn't have us in Elpis, but Venat still went with Hermes and Emet, and she still managed to escape the mind wipe. So she knew what was going on the entire time with Meteion in the original timeline, and certain things like binding Zodiark and the Moon being a ship were originally there. So she walked down the same "path" without the foreknowledge of what she would do. All we did is basically tell her, "Yeah, you're going to walk down that path" in advance.