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

[Striker44]

As far as the mass sacrifice of lives to Zodiark goes, the game has been crystal-clear and unwavering on that it was an utterly heroic action that saved the world, and that Emet-Selch's point about it reflecting the benevolence and general goodness of the Ancients as a whole stands true.

Trying to undermine that has always struck me as pretty off-base and wildly cynical - if you're going to try to prop up the Sundered and frame the Ancients as less worthy, I don't know that I'd resort to pointing at their heroic self-sacrifice that enabled to Sundered to live at all, and continue living for thousands and thousands of years, not gonna lie.

ShB makes this quite the opposite. People seem to completely ignore "Steps 2 and 3" of the Convocation's plan when discussing things here, which Emet-Selch clearly explains in ShB. Step 1 was the "sacrifice" of about half the population to summon Zodiark. Step 2 was going to be the "sacrifice" of another half of the remaining population to bring about the creation of a myriad of new life. Step 3 was going to be the mass murder of that new life in order to restore the parts of the population that had previously "sacrificed" themselves.

There's two huge things there. One of them is factual - the new life that was going to be killed was not going to be any sort of "voluntary" act by that life. It was going to be mass murder by the Ancients of soul-filled life. THAT is presented in ShB at least as a key part of the reason why Venat chooses the path she does. EW adds the second motive of making the new life more susceptible to dynamis and thus potentially able to stop Meteion. But from the start another key motive was to prevent the Ancients themselves from creating life just to murder it.

The second huge thing is purely opinion, but I'll state mine. I have a lot of trouble calling something a "heroic self-sacrifice" when the plan all along was for those very people who "sacrificed" themselves to ultimately be brought back to life. I don't see it as some amazing, heroic action to "sacrifice" oneself if you do so fully expecting to just be brought back as if nothing happened later. (Side note - one of the things detractors of the EW story love to claim is that the Scions' "sacrifices" in Ultima Thule are "meaningless" for exactly that very reason: the existence of a plan/plot device to bring them back, anyway.)

[Lunaxia]

The second huge thing is purely opinion, but I'll state mine. I have a lot of trouble calling something a "heroic self-sacrifice" when the plan all along was for those very people who "sacrificed" themselves to ultimately be brought back to life. I don't see it as some amazing, heroic action to "sacrifice" oneself if you do so fully expecting to just be brought back as if nothing happened later. (Side note - one of the things detractors of the EW story love to claim is that the Scions' "sacrifices" in Ultima Thule are "meaningless" for exactly that very reason: the existence of a plan/plot device to bring them back, anyway.)

I've by and large left the game at this point, but my sub has a few more days until it runs dry so I feel obligated to interject that the Amaurotines did not sacrifice themselves believing they would be resurrected. Hythlodaeus tells us (once directly, another implied) that this was a plan later conceived of by the Convocation once stability and life had returned to the world:

The cycle of life had begun anew, and we reconsidered the means by which we might protect it.

The Convocation decided thus: we would nurture our world until it was bursting with vitality. Then, when the time was right, we would offer some portion of its living energy to Zodiark...

In return, He would restore to us those brethren whose souls had fed His strength, and together we would resume our role as stewards.

We remember in vivid detail the events leading to our purgatory...

The plans and plots for our resurrection, Hydaelyn's intervention, and Zodiark's - and the star's - final fate.

It doesn't exactly sound like they were in on these "plots" prior to Zodiark's summoning. I also highly doubt they would make a point of having Emet-Selch emphasise the selflessness and nobility of their sacrifice had it been done under the assumption it was temporary - given that it would completely undermine any and all emotional impact they clearly wanted the end of ShB to have on its audience.

But another day, another reason to drag the Ancients and strip them of any humanity that might make the arguments against them uncomfortably precarious and hypocritical.

[Brinne]

Sorry to see you go, Lunaxia, but of course, I understand.

As far as the sacrifices go, my genuine impression is that the intended "vibe" - once again, the game is, thus far, absolutely unwavering on this point - is that that self-sacrifice of the Amaurotines is meant to be understood as something absolutely noble, breathtakingly heroic, and as Alphinaud's stunned silence reflects, something we understand is a level of "goodness" beyond modern humanity. As far as the precise mechanics, if you want to shoot the breeze about that, I would guess - because this is another thing I don't think the writers actually sat down and mapped out concretely - that while there were probably some mutterings at the time of the sacrifice about maybe, hopefully, finding a way to save the sacrifices someday. It's clear that they were committed sorrowfully, understanding they were being sent to a horrible fate, and Zodiark was designed to keep their souls preserved, after all.

However, everything about this plan was also completely unprecedented, untested, and hypothetical to the Ancients, and they weren't even sure that the aether shield would work at all (since, again, they were completely flying blind about the nature of the Final Days) - so they had no idea of knowing if there actually would be a viable possibility of saving the sacrifices after the fact, and those people knew that at best they had a huge, guilt-ridden uncertainty about those chances when they marched to the gallows. From Shade Hythlodaeus's description, it sounds like once everything had settled down and the planet wasn't actively dying, they finally sat down and got their heads together to figure out how to move forward and what their options might actually be from there.

That would be my best guess on the general flow of things - and I don't think it in any way undermines the nobility of those sacrifices. As I said before, the attempts to do so seem at best, to me, extremely cynical and probably a bit mean-spirited. We're not gonna give the Ancients any credit for goodness, even in a breathtaking gesture of selfless benevolence that every living creature in the world owes their existence to, I say! None! They get nothing!

As an aside, I realize people in this thead are asking this mostly rhetorically, but the game does provide a real, concrete answer to "why didn't Venat say anything" beyond her unconvincing mumbling about Hermes: she says straight out after said mumbling that her chosen course is not to stop Hermes's test, but to see mankind confront and pass it, to "prove" the strength and worth of life. The writing wants us to understand this as a brave and noble course, not a callous one. Of course, as far as I personally view it, I think another poster a while back framed it best when they described it as her choosing to throw away and otherwise gamble millions and billions of unknowing, unwilling lives she had no right to in a "philosophical pissing contest" with Hermes.

Venat's love of Life is true, genuine and zealous. Even her short story makes sure to highlight this, in her sheer giddiness about her research thesis about the inevitability of Life, if Existence. She just views Life as a holistic and abstract thing, as she described in her changed worldview in her speech on the bridge, and as a "force of nature" (per our Azem) would - and Meteion's report suggesting that Life is worthless, that the universe was empty, that an outcome was possible that people stopped valuing it properly (this, I'd guess, if I was trying to actually make a good faith effort to make heads or tails of her character, is why the Nibirun upset her so much more than any other possible Dead End described) truly disturbed her. If billions of tiny individual lives must suffer, die (and know?) to prove the overall value of Life as a unit and a concept, prove Meteion wrong, then so be it.

EDIT: Again, I would presume this is where the disconnect between the writers and the players chiefly lies. From the writers' perspective, this was a well-intended and sweet, if somewhat naive, message to the players merely using the game, world, and characters as a vehicle to tell us: "Look! Life is worth it, even if things are hard! Don't believe someone if they tell you to just give up and die! Let's affirm that life is worth it together!" However, the second you move from "this is a message from the devs to the players" and into the actual in-universe setting and logic, what the characters themselves are doing to, from their perspective, other living and breathing people, it becomes absolutely horrifying on several levels and really difficult for me to not describe as basically flat-out evil, if I'm being blunt.

[Teraq]

Venat's faction was just a TINY MINORITY anyway. MILLIONS loved the third sacrifice idea! Why do these grains of sand matter when EVERYONE is unanimous on the subject? They just stayed in their meager little echo chamber parroting their ridiculous claims and headcanons over the Convocation and the third sacrifice ("they were going to keep sacrificing to bring back their paradise until the planet was devoid of life" lmao that's just your headcanon dude, maybe if you hadn't skipped the Convocation's cutscene you'd know). They don't even have debates, they're just edgelords who have zero empathy for the people who want their loved ones back and they just complain endlessly, and what precisely did bringing their opinion to the Convocation yield? Nothing, Venat, you little snowflake. Not even going to mention the Anamnesis Anyder dude who is such a massive giga simp I am suspecting him of just being one of her familiars.

(fantastic post that is really just a rather basic display of human empathy, but seemingly out of reach of a certain number of people)

For some reason, people love to overlook that Venat was seemingly into the idea of Hermes's unfair and spiteful "test" that he approved of with full knowledge of the disastrous consequences, because a time traveler literally just told him what would happen when we asked him his opinion of the involvement of Dynamis in the Final Days. We've just entered peak FAIR AND OBJECTIVE territory. Wow. I guess we'd better play Great Value Jigsaw's stupid game! ... Aaannnnnd humanity survived it and is healing the planet! Mission accompl– oh COME ON Venat, don't move the goalposts!


"To tell the truth, it's not that I don't want to tell the Convocation, but it would go against the "impartial evaluation" Hermes wanted, and I'm afraid of how he would react…"


"In any case, the only way out of this is to give a loud and clear answer to Hermes's question. In other words, proving humanity deserves to exist."

The entire thing is fallacious to begin with, of course. How would he react? He's supposed to have forgotten he even set it up as a "test" to begin with. Either tell the Convocation the whole truth and chuck him in prison as was intended, and his expertise in Dynamis wouldn't really matter because he isn't the sole expert on it and bringing awareness of Dynamis to scientists would kickstart research (not to mention using less savory methods on Hermes himself – we know mind control spells exist, there are laws regulating memory altering devices and Emet himself even says the Convocation have the means to know the truth???), or tell him what made Meteion blow up is some unknown space entity that corrupted her ("but he's going to have a melty!!!" Sigh. Yes, he might. Yet another one. God.) His input on celestial currents, which is the only thing he even contributed to Zodiark's creation as far as we know, would not be needed if Venat deigned tell the Convocation herself, because we told her that was Hermes's contribution in the first place!

Kairos? Oh sweet baby Zodiark, let's not go down the Kairos rabbit hole of complete and utter stupidity and plot contrivance again, but I'm just going to say that the memory wiping of one of the highest government officials on the planet involving a machine of dubious legality going awry to begin with ("Teraq is just spouting headcanon again!" look up why Emet drops a random mention of Pashtarot, I thought I was the one not paying attention to the story?), in the context of such a highly regulated society, should have resulted in an investigation and taking Kairos apart. Is the thing so badly done there is no log on it? Is the Sharlayan council composed of such geniuses that they would know how to undo a memory-blotting spell Ancients wouldn't? God. Kairos, dude. Can it ever be overstated how awful this plot device is?

People would panic? Well then, firstly, that's not what you were saying before entering Ktisis and learning about Ostrakon Strawmanos with zero context behind it; and secondly, maybe don't tell everyone and only inform the high-ranking politicians who are able to handle sensitive situations like Pandaemonium, as Elidibus himself even tells us he and Azem often encountered difficult situations like it. They're big boys, Venat. They're going to be fine.

People also love to bring up Emet not believing our tale, taking this as evidence that nobody ever would believe the very respected former Azem retelling it, seemingly forgetting that this is his immediate emotional reaction to us telling him he's going to become a genocidal villain over the course of twelve thousand years in the desperate hope of bringing his people back. He then proceeds to help us the whole way in Elpis like the grumpy tsundere he is, because it is his duty to do so as a protector of the planet. I guess the people arguing this skipped the cutscenes, sweatie.

(Also, the Echo. Literally just The Echo. This is it – this is my entire argument. The Echo, and broadcasting your memory as is shown twice in Pandaemonium. A dying, not-even-corporeal-anymore key warder did it, so I bet you could manage it, Venat, sis.)

Really, it does seem like Venat, consciously or not, set herself on the path of the time loop very early on by constructing such a house of cards of fallacious assumptions that it resulted in her doing seemingly very little to prevent the Final Days, in spite of her assuring us she would do everything in her power to change the course of time. Such is the power of Schrodinger's Venat: both trying to prevent the Final Days and preserve the timeline of her brave little spark, even though both are mutually exclusive – this way you can plausibly argue in her favor whatever you are arguing, and she ends up looking great! I love it.

[MikkoAkure]

They just stayed in their meager little echo chamber parroting their ridiculous claims and headcanons

Like your discord you're promoting? If you guys are so upset with the story because of how it treated the Ancients, to the point where you make a discord to talk about her in a safe space even after quitting from the game, then you guys must be real Warriors of Light because Hydaelyn is living rent-free in your head.



Anyhow, I'm not sure what multiple people making often unhinged tirades about how "Venat is actually evil" accomplishes at this point over a year later except to point out the clumsiness of the writing of Endwalker, which almost everyone agrees on anyway. This thread now just feels like a drawn-out episode of The Game Theorists.


I'm not going to argue that the writing isn't awkward because it is, but the whole "Hydaelyn is a genocidal maniac and is the most evil villain in Final Fantasy" angle is an alternative take and obviously not the writers' intention if in-game interactions with her don't end up reflecting that and they gave her her own image song. Despite the fact that we fight both her and Zodiark, Zodiark ended up getting represented as a grotesque tentacle monster with comedically-oversized demonic horns, which generally isn't an artistic choice you go for when you make a character that is supposed to be related to or on the side of "good". While Shadowbringers had a bunch of evil light and angelic imagery, we have no other context for something such as him being a good thing and it's definitely a questionable design choice for your world's god. I would've expected a dark, but equally beautiful Amano design comparable to Hydaelyn but wielding a giant shield. But it works in a meta-sense if you're trying to evoke certain feelings in the players and compare it to Hydaelyn later on.

The plot around Venat ended up being needlessly convoluted when all it required was for us to stay the same line of of events we thought we had in Shadowbringers, which would have had the exact same result at the end of Endwalker anyway. It's also full of confusing plot holes like her whole explanation of not telling the Convocation because "Hermes will go crazy and refuse to offer his insight into Dynamis for Zodiark, who's still needed anyway". And we're still missing swathes of information like the state of the world and the thoughts of the general populace right before the Sundering.

But with all the mess, I don't believe they were trying to make her something else. There's no conspiracy so I don't know what you're all going on about except for bad writing, which again, everyone already agrees with.

Such is the power of Schrodinger's Venat: both trying to prevent the Final Days and preserve the timeline of her brave little spark, even though both are mutually exclusive – this way you can plausibly argue in her favor whatever you are arguing, and she ends up looking great! I love it.

She did need to do both though and neither is mutually exclusive. If Zodiark didn't exist, neither would our timeline and Eitherys would've been destroyed by the Final Days. The splinter in Amaurotine society happened after the 2nd sacrifice. Zodiark is still needed to keep the Final Days at bay and to keep her precious life alive. What would you have expected her to do? And what would the Ancients have done even if they had known about Endsinger hanging out in space? It was already established that they couldn't accomplish much against dynamis and that Zodiark's protection was the extent of their capabilities so they couldn't have "gathered the team" and shot out into space to fight her. The reason is definitely flimsy and it would've been nice if they expanded upon it, but that's the reason the characters in-universe gave who know more about how their universe works than we do.

And if Venat was so wrong about everything and the Convocation/Ascians were right, then why did Emet-Selch rescue us against Elidibus, leading us to kill him and end all possible efforts for a Rejoining and the continuation of his people and society?


The writing for Endwalker and the journey from point A to point B was definitely clumsy at best but bad writing doesn't immediately mean that certain characters were designed to be bad. Or that the writers are purposefully wronging a fictitious group of people who they were responsible for anyway considering Emet-Selch, Venat, the Ancients, and all of their motivations and events came out of the same heads. If this were an actual historical story with real people, things would suspicious for Venat. But this is a fictional story with fictional characters and the most plausible reason for Venat's actions is that her story is full of plot holes while attempting to treat her as a fully sympathetic yet more complicated character and not that they intended on making her genocidal on purpose, so I'm more willing to read the intent of the character than the implications.

Everything felt very rushed and the finale to the decade-long story was quickly wrapped up in an x.0 patch when all other stories get extended to x.3 and don't have as many loose threads to tie up at once. The writers then decided to plunge into time travel, which NEVER EVER works for a story unless it was written specifically for that from the very beginning and all time travel rules are standardized and followed to the letter. The moon didn't get the utilization it deserved based on the hype on promotional material and half of the zone ended up being an oversized rabbit bunker. Some things ended up getting bad explanations like Hydaelyn's "travelers ward" or not getting explained at all like the aforementioned situation before the Sundering.

The Ancients didn't even exist in the original story and the whole game has been the writers trying to build the chocobo cart while they were driving it. They had to come up with a reason why the Ascians were doing what they were doing years after they had already been in the game doing bad things, and make it something people to empathize with to make a compelling villain. Then they had to rectify that with the secret villain they had apparently to have because they mentioned the last boss wasn't meant to be Hydaelyn or Zodiark and all of these moving pieces ended up being too much for them to put together a story that satisfied everyone and doesn't have gaping wide plot holes that we're "not supposed to think too hard about".

Basically everything around Venat and a lot around the events leading up to the Sundering should have been better explained, given better motivations, or should have been completely rewritten in order to have a fully cohesive story. As neat as Elpis was and seeing the big 3, the story around and in it was a complete mess and led to this thread getting as long as it has.


All that said, the expansion was still enjoyable enough. The mini-games at the very beginning and the end of the Garlemald arc were really fun. The characters were done really well. Parts of the story made me scratch my head, but it didn't meander around as much as some other expansions, mostly having 1 main story to tell while hitting Garlemald on the way that didn't feel out of the way.

If the playerbase at large agreed with you that EW was objectively bad and that Reddit and Twitter are outliers, why does the 3rd post in this thread have nearly double the amount of likes as the OP when it disagrees with the OP?

[Graeham]

I feel obligated to interject that the Amaurotines did not sacrifice themselves believing they would be resurrected.

All chara know it can be raising with the spell. Even leaf player is know this. Is weakness but go after the minute. Is why No Shadow God sac strat is work. If Zod eat the No Shadow God it can be using MP to be raising more time.

As far as the sacrifices go, my genuine impression is that the intended "vibe" - once again, the game is, thus far, absolutely unwavering on this point - is that that self-sacrifice of the Amaurotines is meant to be understood as something absolutely noble, breathtakingly heroic, and as Alphinaud's stunned silence reflects, something we understand is a level of "goodness" beyond modern humanity. As far as the precise mechanics, if you want to shoot the breeze about that, I would guess - because this is another thing I don't think the writers actually sat down and mapped out concretely - that while there were probably some mutterings at the time of the sacrifice about maybe, hopefully, finding a way to save the sacrifices someday. It's clear that they were committed sorrowfully, understanding they were being sent to a horrible fate, and Zodiark was designed to keep their souls preserved, after all.

Is good point. The No Shadow God it making smartest plan. Sac 5 No Shadow to making 1 million gil monies. Sac 5 No Shadow to make 10 No Shadow. Keep repeat sac to make profit of the gil monies and No Shadow. Would be most rich country with most people.

But Venar do the loprabbit revolution when No Shadow plan this. So the No Shadow is stuck and only has the 1 million gil monies and no Zod. Is not enough to fight war so is losing. Is like when try to make army to attack but enemy is in the base attack the miner drone and the pylon and the base and can not rebuild. Is force the Solus King to quitting with the gg. Is the cheesie strat like the 6 pool.

They don't even have debates, they're just edgelords who have zero empathy for the people who want their loved ones back and they just complain endlessly, and what precisely did bringing their opinion to the Convocation yield? Nothing, Venat, you little snowflake. Not even going to mention the Anamnesis Anyder dude who is such a massive giga simp I am suspecting him of just being one of her familiars.

The No Shadow God have many of the debate. There is quest about this in Atlantis City. Debate it is needing to make mind strong like the muscle fist. No Shadow God is country of the strong thinking. In the twitch is called the 3head because 3 is more than the 2. Is need to study hard if want to be guild thinker.

Is new mode call the NG+ to watch the questing scene if Tariq forget the Shadowbringing.

I'm not going to argue that the writing isn't awkward because it is, but the whole "Hydaelyn is a genocidal maniac and is the most evil villain in Final Fantasy" angle is an alternative take and obviously not the writers' intention

Main take is Venar is the evil. Original final fantasy story was write by the German writer Matsuo with Venar as badguy. Was inspire by Metal Gear story where big boss is herois turn into the badguy. He call you at start and say to snake to returning to waking sand but is plan world destruction.

But Yoshi had the jealous so change story and hire new writer to make the Venar good. Is why story course change from Shadowbringing to Endwalking. Is also translation problem is why must use Spanish script to know the real story. Tariq is posting this on earlier page. Chara is upset at the course correction and want to course correct the course correction to go to original story. Otherwise game it go down the hill.

If the playerbase at large agreed with you that EW was objectively bad and that Reddit and Twitter are outliers, why does the 3rd post in this thread have nearly double the amount of likes as the OP when it disagrees with the OP?

This is not true. We have not like OP because silent majority is silence by the forum paladin and twitter croud and pinterest army. We have add the like and will changing balance so guild win like and subscribe battle. Post 3 will be the losing.

[Kazhar]

Like your discord you're promoting? If you guys are so upset with the story because of how it treated the Ancients, to the point where you make a discord to talk about her in a safe space even after quitting from the game, then you guys must be real Warriors of Light because Hydaelyn is living rent-free in your head.

I hate to be the one to explain the joke, but that entire paragraph you're reacting to was most likely a parody of what another user (whose username starts with an S) usually says every single post.

[MikkoAkure]

I hate to be the one to explain the joke, but that entire paragraph you're reacting to was most likely a parody of what another user (whose username starts with an S) usually says every single post.

Buddy. I was singling out part of that to make a joke, not reacting to the whole paragraph. I could've said what I said without quoting him but I thought it was funny this way.,

[AwesomeJr44]

*16 page college essay*

[Brinne]

I'm not going to argue that the writing isn't awkward because it is, but the whole "Hydaelyn is a genocidal maniac and is the most evil villain in Final Fantasy" angle is an alternative take and obviously not the writers' intention if in-game interactions with her don't end up reflecting that and they gave her her own image song.

If all that mattered in storytelling was "intent," there's no point to any further flourish to telling a story beyond providing a bullet list outline of what the "intent" is and nothing to talk about. Hydaelyn is good because we're told she's good, the end. Look, I don't think anybody is questioning that the intent was that Hydaelyn be seen as a good person, and that the entire weight of the game is asking/expecting you to sympathize with her and be on her side. That's... kind of the whole problem. That's why a lot of people get so virulent and wordy about this, because they're aware they're arguing against the intentions of the text, but attempting to point out how it doesn't work regardless. But I can't really be on board with a line of thought that puts forth "ignore what she actually did, ignore her reasons, ignore everything you actually saw and experienced onscreen if you have to - because Word of God says it's good when Hydaelyn does it, she's good. Now stop talking about it."

Execution matters. What actually gets put down in writing, or on the screen, regardless of "intent," matters. Discerning for ourselves via discussion and critical analysis (well, at least that's what happens ideally) what a text is actually concretely saying by pointing out the reality of the picture it paints is not remotely an uncommon thing when discussing stories. I don't think there's a conspiracy happening about what the writers are trying to say, but I do think if one cares about a story, it can be worthwhile to examine what it does, how it does it, and how intention and execution don't necessarily match up. One hopes that the writer-audience feedback loop exists in part to indicate where a disconnect happens within those gaps, and enables a team of writers openly asking for constant feedback to keep it in mind going forward - which we've already seen to some extent with the development of the Omega quests, for instance. Otherwise, some people (weirdoes like me) like discussing and talking about nuances in writing and pinning down specific aspects that work and don't work for them for its own sake, because how storytelling works is interesting to us. You don't have to have the same interest, and that's okay! I have zero interest in tons of the topics discussing other aspects of the game, myself.

The plot around Venat ended up being needlessly convoluted when all it required was for us to stay the same line of of events we thought we had in Shadowbringers, which would have had the exact same result at the end of Endwalker anyway.

This, though, I would specifically disagree with - a framing of "the Ancients died because of a terrible, unplanned, unintentional tragedy" is very different from "the Ancients died because one person (righteously, the story argues) deliberately murdered them." Tragedy versus murder are not the same results to me. The story is not saying the same thing as far as the thematics of what it means to be "worthy to live" at the end of Shadowbringers versus the end of Endwalker - it rather ends up saying the opposite, in fact, because of that distinction between unintentional tragedy we universally have to make peace with the likes of, and a deliberate, narrative-justified murder for a believed greater good. "Bad things sometimes happen for no reason, even to good people" is not the same result to me as "some populations just need to die because they're not good enough."