On Venat's Role in the Story

[Cleretic]

Venat’s faction actually doesn’t discuss the sacrifices in the Anamnesis meeting at all. In fact, the only time they’re brought up as a primary motivation for Hydaelyn is from Shade Hythlodaeus’s (aka, Emet-Selch’s) POV, back when Yoshida directly stated after release that “we still didn’t know Hydaelyn’s side of the story.” Cohering the various aspects as they stand now, it seems Shade Hythlo’s explanation was basically Emet’s misunderstanding, more or less.

As Kage said, Venat actually turned out to be basically driven by pure ideology and a belief mankind as it was wasn’t good enough to pass muster for the test of existence for lack of suffering. YMMV on how you feel about that, regardless of what the game signals about it. Obviously, I personally am not a fan.

They're focused on stopping the unsustainable continued reliance on Zodiark. The sacrifices aren't stated explicitly, but are EXTREMELY strongly implied. I'd like to hear what you think they're objecting to and pleading to the Convocation about if not further sacrifices.

And... yeah. She's driven by ideology. That's not a sin. Thinking about all of Endwalker I think the only person who's not motivated primarily by ideology is, like... Nidhana, and maybe some Omicrons; ideology is a huge driving point of characters in this game. You could debatably make a case that the main complicating incident around Meteion is when she developed an ideology to be driven by, informed solely by negative input. And you can disagree with her ideology, just like how I vehemently disagree with Emet's, Amon's, Quintus', Meteion's (once she got one), and think Hythlodaeus should consider himself lucky he wasn't around for when his would've been tested.

You're allowed to disagree with her ideology. But I would also ask you to acknowledge her ENTIRE ideology, and not cherry-picked parts of it. Venat and her crew believed that mankind should not put themselves ahead of the planet they live on, and that problems should be akcnowledged, dealt with and learned from rather than ignored and acting like they never happened. And of course, they were willing to put everything on the line, including themselves, to stand by what that means--and weren't 'consequences and morality be damned' about it, Venat was rather clearly haunted by what she did, as was the Watcher as far as we can see. But that's true both in the negative (they did do the Sundering, that cannot be denied) and the positive (they did their utmost to both protect and aid the world that resulted, in keeping with their ideals). You can think one of those outweighs the other, but I would hope you consider the entirety of both when deciding where you stand, and know that whatever stance you land on is yours and not some universal truth.