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

[Brinne]

Putting aside what I thought of the newest patch (spoilers: I have no thoughts because I was occupied trying desperately to not fall asleep through the whole thing) I did want to re-touch on what Mikko/Lunaxia were talking about re: not adjusting properly to how Shadowbringers sort of changed the calculus. I think how "they didn't anticipate Shadowbringers's impact" happened (which is obvious just from them admitting that the entire team was completely blindsided by Emet-Selch's popularity with the exception of possibly Ishikawa) and how what it was doing probably kinda, slipped under their radar until it was "too late" aside - I don't really have the proper brainpower right now to address it coherently - I think it can be sort of broken down into this?

The overarching "intent," probably from ARR, is now obviously that "Hydaelyn=Good." Therefore obviously, "HydaelynGood=Hydaelyn'sActions=Good." This is consistent with the tone and exposition of basically everything up until Shadowbringers, including her story from HW, which probably at the time it was written was intended to be accurate. But then Shadowbringers upended everything, instilling huge sympathy in the audience for what were now her "victims" (which didn't even exist at the initial conception of "Hydaelyn=Good") and putting forth that she had destroyed and then erased all evidence of a good, peaceful world, and the survivors of her actions were now demanding emotionally understandable justice for what she had done (even if via an approach that was unacceptable to the currently living.)

This could have been brushed aside if not for the fact that this change in calculus was also the most critically acclaimed, wildly praised story element the game has had thus far. So they had to tackle it one way or another, and there were a few approaches that were possible to do so. Hydaelyn=Good, was the intent. But now Hydaelyn's Actions = Bad. What is one to do?

Well, one viable approach would be to now compromise on Hydaelyn=Good. She's now firmly, at minimum, Grey - probably Dark Grey, given how the story has consistently handled actions and individuals like her up until this point. I think this would have been acceptable, though YMMV - the risk is that they hadn't written anything up until Shadowbringers with this intent, so it might have clashed with the buildup of the vibes. But for whatever reason, it's clear that the writers were ultimately not willing to compromise on this, one way or another, not even to the extent of the widely-speculated "Hydaelyn is just a robot on autopilot" after the Shadowbringers patches, which could have partially accounted for the weird lies.

In that case, there are a few ways to tackle the other aspect of the problem - Hydaelyn's Actions. Well, again, there are a few potential strategies here - maybe Hydaelyn's Actions are not Hydaelyn's Intended Actions, as has been floated often. Maybe the Sundering was just a tragic accident when all she intended to do was protect innocent lives from being sacrificed - in which case, it mostly does boil down to a simple tragedy, although you'd still have to address in some way the fact that her actions did still have victims, and that she obviously made the choice to lie about and cover up the unintended consequences of her actions, which would still be a little tricky, but I think possible. They did not choose to go this route.

Another possible route would be to completely erase them as "Hydaelyn's Actions". Something along the lines of, surprise! The Sundering wasn't Hydaelyn's fault, and the Ascians had misunderstood and misattributed the situation altogether. The risk here is making things feel contrived, cheap, and ruining the pathos behind the Ascians newly borne of Shadowbringers. And, of course, you still need to figure out a reason that she lied to us back in ARR and HW. So this approach would have been a bit risky, but not, I think, impossible to make work. But they chose not to go down this route either.

Instead, they tackled the problem in fiercely, fervently arguing that Hydaelyn=Good, therefore Hydaelyn's Actions = Good. Period. No matter what those actions were, even if they were ones the narrative had wholeheartedly condemned up until this point. And thus, mind made up, the writing then worked backwards to find some way, any way, to rationalize that Hydaelyn's Actions = Good, did not do it coherently or well - if anything, just feeling sort of desperate in its vagueness and "and because biological dynamis unfitness (hoo boy) and because terrible dead-end culture (which we will also fail to do the work of backing up sufficiently, and risks compromising Shadowbringers's impact and message besides) and because the timeline and maintaining the time loop (which we will not explicitly delve into or detail, and say outright we're 'leaving it up to interpretation' actually) and--" and thus, we are where we are now.

So it's possible there are differing preferences on the route they should have taken - Mikko seems to think it would have been a mistake to betray the pre-Shadowbringers buildup of Hydaelyn's status as Good, which is probably valid, though I don't think I fully agree. I probably would have preferred just going in on Hydaelyn=Dark Grey, among the options I can think of. But either way, the decision to commit to changing what should be the obvious model, given what they are, of Hydaelyn's Actions = Bad into No, Hydaelyn's Actions = Good, Dammit! was... not the greatest decision they could have made. They probably didn't think of, or realize fully, that going that route essentially does boil down to fishing for justifications for the actions committed by a long history of prior antagonists and villains, and putting forth that those actions are justifable Under The Right Conditions Or By The Right People, Actually. (Genocide isn't necessarily evil if it works! Genocide isn't necessarily evil if it benefits us! Genocide isn't necessarily evil if the person committing it really believes it's for the greater good! Yeah, I don't think they meant for that to be where we've ended up, but... here we are, unfortunately.)

(I also, personally, don't think that the discomfort is helped any by the deeply insecure-feeling insistence that these actions not only aren't necessarily evil, sometimes they are in fact committed out of love. Love that we must appreciate and continue to bask in and feel good about on multiple fronts in continuing side quests. Hoo boy 2.0. Or hoo boy 6.x, maybe, I should say.)

I'm not sure this was understandable or made any sense, so apologies if not. I'm suffering a bit of medication loopiness at the moment. But it's part of what I was kind of considering after the shortly-before-the-patch discussion.

[KageTokage]

I'm not sure this was understandable or made any sense, so apologies if not. I'm suffering a bit of medication loopiness at the moment. But it's part of what I was kind of considering after the shortly-before-the-patch discussion.

I think that pretty much sums up how I feel about this business.

That said, I'm feeling very...dubious about how both Pandaemonium and Myths are going to conclude because while both would be a good time to delve into the "gray" side of things, it feels more likely they're going to double down on the "Venat/Hydaelyn was unquestionably right" angle despite the Omega questline openly casting doubt on that.

Though particularly in the case of the latter,

where people have noticed some "too similar to be a coincidence" parallels between the Twelve and some of the Ancients from Elpis, which seems liable to push towards making some/all of the affable ones Venat sympathizers...

[Brinne]

I think that pretty much sums up how I feel about this business.

That said, I'm feeling very...dubious about how both Pandaemonium and Myths are going to conclude because while both would be a good time to delve into the "gray" side of things, it feels more likely they're going to double down on the "Venat/Hydaelyn was unquestionably right" angle despite the Omega questline openly casting doubt on that.

Though particularly in the case of the latter,

where people have noticed some "too similar to be a coincidence" parallels between the Twelve and some of the Ancients from Elpis, which seems liable to push towards making some/all of the affable ones Venat sympathizers...

Yeah, obviously it's impossible to say for certain where things are leading, so it's possible there'll be some kind of twist or unforeseen aspect, but the vibes aren't Great all-around this patch. (The vibes beyond Curing Insomnnia, at least.) But I get the feeling the Myths was always intended to be uncritical and celebratory re: acting as an "epilogue" to Endwalker, given the context it was announced and first described.

This is a hell of a euphemism for "Proceeded to annihilate entire worlds and slaughter living beings beyond counting with the ultimate intent of permanently enslaving mankind to a blood god."

Oof. And I was really trying as hard as possible to discuss in good faith and with nuance, but, well. At my own potential risk: yes, but enough about Hydaelyn!