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

[MagiusNecros]

Emet Selch did nothing wrong. Probably the biggest victim. Emet and the Convo offered at least the option for Sacrifice. And this is them working off of no info given putting in a memory wipe as the biggest ass pull in storytelling.

Venat just wanted to win her philosophical debate with Hermes and chose to kill everyone to do it. You kinda see the same mistakes being made with Minfilia #264 as well as the First Reflection.

Venat chose to keep silent to protect her own self image...even though the entirety of her society worships the ground she walks on and would believe anything she said.

Somehow I feel that Venat siphoning the lives of others(that she created) for 12,000 years so "her champion" can defeat Hatsune Miku left much to be desired and just proves that Lahabrea/Hephaestus was correct in her just being a parasite.

But I'm sure everything will make sense 3 expansions later and will perfectly explain why Venat was a not so distant copy of World of Warcraft's Azshara who caused a Sundering of the world out of selfishness and curiosity.

I'll always be so disappointed with Shadowbringers set up for something promising and how Endwalker just handed you a lackluster product.

It's like ordering a steak and get a undercooked burger.

I can't wait until the revelation that the true cause of the End of Days was ironically the Warrior of Light themselves by virtue of putting the thought into Venat's head.

As is the WoL is a paradox in history. And history abhors a paradox and must therefore be expunged.

[Xirean]

Honestly, a lot of what FirstGear has been saying is quite refreshing. I'm very firmly of the belief that what Venat did was by far the worse move. All actions the Ascians take is directly on her hands and she is complicit in the evil things they do, but that in no way resolves them of guilt for doing those horrible things. Regardless if the sundered started as malformed beings incapable of speech, they grew into fully formed and thinking beings who can build civilizations. Emet even calls their societies civilizations in Ultima Thule. Being able to empathize with Emet/Ascians plight does not mean you have to justify what they are doing and if you do then yeah it's intensely disturbing.

The Ascians destroyed 7 entire planets, several civilizations on The Source and an unknowable amount of civilizations on The Reflections. They also had a habit of finding and taking the reincarnated souls of the sundered Ancients and replacing the entire consciousness/memories of that new person with their long dead friend/coworker. Any one of those actions is enough for me to brand them as villains/monsters alongside Venat. What happened to them was horrible, but does not justify their later actions.

You are also not a fractured piece of a larger whole whose existence is mutually exclusive to yours.

Technically you don't know that for 100% certainty. If you were shown proof beyond any shadow of doubt or scrutiny that you were also a shard of some shattered person, would you then willingly set down your entire existence to become part of a long dead individual? If so, would you be in favor of forcing others to do the same?

[Seraphor]

Perhaps I should be clearer. FF14, like a lot of good fiction, use its setting and characters to explore ideas that relate to the real world. Ideas like colonialism, prejudice, camaraderie, and the meaning of suffering. These are ideas that, even if explored in a fantastical space, are quite relevant to the ourselves as human beings. A large part of the reason that FF14 has such a good story is that it handles and explores these themes in a mature way. Its not high literature but its pretty high-tier for the medium and especially this specific genre.

This matters because CBU3 is pretty clear that we as real world human beings are far closer to the sundered people of FF14 than the unsundered. No, you are not your character but you are still a flawed, imperfect being doomed to suffer and one day die. You have to find meaning in your life to get out of bed in the morning and a large part of what CBU3 argues is the meaning to life is the companionship that we form with others, not just of our kind but of everyone on the whole of the star.

It also matters because the logic used by the Ascians and by their defenders, that all non-Ancients are subhuman and not worth preserving, is the logic used by loads of real world perpetrators of genocide. You yourself literally equated people to monkeys and said that it would be better to kill all the monkeys in the world than the humans. Its a real short skip from there to some very, very bad ideas about the actual world.

Why aren't the sundered the rightful owners of their own souls? Why do they have to give them up for people who died twelve thousand years ago (incidentally those people can themselves only exist through even more mass genocide)? And if you're going to make the argument that the Ancients were there first therefore they own them in perpetuity, I have very bad news for you about what claim you or your home country have to the land you're standing on.

Well said, thank you.

I usually stay away form these discussions because it's tiring dealing with the same absolutist ideals every time from those who either fanatically worship or oppose the Ascians, and ignore the larger literary and philosophical concepts that are trying to be communicated, and the overall fiction of it.

The Unsundered world is Utopia, in every aspect, and by that I mean Utopia as written by Thomas Moore. Not the perfect existence we should be striving for, but a folly of unattainable and contradictory flawed perfection. This should be more than apparent simply from the names of Hythlodeus and Amaurot, if you're aware of the book.

What's more, is that the idea of suffering being a vital part of life, and being what gives meaning to joy, is not only blatantly spelled out by the game in the form of the fate of the dead worlds Meteion visited and the world of Ra-La. It is also a core tenement of Buddhism, Jainism, and even a bit of Hinduism.

These two combine into a clear narrative that justifies Venat's actions, within the limitations of the story that has been designed around it. To not do so would be to doom the Unsundered to repeating the same self-destructive fate of the Ra-La's.
This isn't a sycophantic worshiping of a fictional character, it's a sound philosophical and literary interpretation of a fictional story, which is designed to go the way the writer planned it to. It can't be held to the same standards of real life choices and actions, it's far too directed and focused.

Buddhism isn't a 'bad' philosophy, and Moore's Utopia isn't an invalid critique of the folly of perfectionism, Endwalker merely combines these in an admittedly flawed setting (time loops are always quirky like this), but the sources it draws upon are not evil just because you identify with Hades' character and wish you were an Ascian.

[jameseoakes]

Well said, thank you.

I usually stay away form these discussions because it's tiring dealing with the same absolutist ideals every time from those who either fanatically worship or oppose the Ascians, and ignore the larger literary and philosophical concepts that are trying to be communicated, and the overall fiction of it.

The Unsundered world is Utopia, in every aspect, and by that I mean Utopia as written by Thomas Moore. Not the perfect existence we should be striving for, but a folly of unattainable and contradictory flawed perfection. This should be more than apparent simply from the names of Hythlodeus and Amaurot, if you're aware of the book.

What's more, is that the idea of suffering being a vital part of life, and being what gives meaning to joy, is not only blatantly spelled out by the game in the form of the fate of the dead worlds Meteion visited and the world of Ra-La. It is also a core tenement of Buddhism, Jainism, and even a bit of Hinduism.

These two combine into a clear narrative that justifies Venat's actions, within the limitations of the story that has been designed around it. To not do so would be to doom the Unsundered to repeating the same self-destructive fate of the Ra-La's.
This isn't a sycophantic worshiping of a fictional character, it's a sound philosophical and literary interpretation of a fictional story, which is designed to go the way the writer planned it to. It can't be held to the same standards of real life choices and actions, it's far too directed and focused.

Buddhism isn't a 'bad' philosophy, and Moore's Utopia isn't an invalid critique of the folly of perfectionism, Endwalker merely combines these in an admittedly flawed setting (time loops are always quirky like this), but the sources it draws upon are not evil just because you identify with Hades' character and wish you were an Ascian.

I despise the frankly vile suffering fetish this game pushes, pushing that a world with out want is bad and then glorifying the societies that let children freeze to death it's disgusting

[Seraphor]

I despise the frankly vile suffering fetish this game pushes, pushing that a world with out want is bad and then glorifying the societies that let children freeze to death it's disgusting

Yes, please continue to completely miss the point.
Like I said, this is why I don't do this...

[jameseoakes]

Yes, please continue to completely miss the point.
Like I said, this is why I don't do this...

Don't patronise me, get the point your making It's just the ideas that underpin it are evil the whole comfort is bad and we need people to be starving for live to having meaning is evil and the game condrictis it by most the cast being so rich and privileged they unaffected by it.

[Seraphor]

Don't patronise me, get the point your making It's just the ideas that underpin it are evil the whole comfort is bad and we need people to be starving for live to having meaning is evil and the game condrictis it by most the cast being so rich and privileged they unaffected by it.

Ok.
I want you to go away and read the Tipitaka or the Zen Sutra's, and then come back and explain to me why Buddhism is evil.
Then go away and read Thomas Moore's Utopia, and tell me why his critique is wrong and why absolute perfection is both attainable and the only thing that matters.

If you can't do that, you're not disagreeing, you're missing the point.
I look forward to you calling an entire religion evil.

No one is glorifying freezing children or fetishizing suffering, and you are missing. the. point. No actually you're wilfully misrepresenting it, if you're claiming that's what is happening here.

[jameseoakes]

Ok.
I want you to go away and read the Tipitaka or the Zen Sutra's, and then come back and explain to me why Buddhism is evil.
Then go away and ready Thomas Moore's Utopia, and tell me why his critique is wrong and why absolute perfection is both attainable and the only thing that matters.

If you can't do that, you're not disagreeing, you're missing the point.
I look forward to you calling an entire religion evil.

I love the gatekeeping, this games amazing if you've read these very specific books and agree with there premise and if you don't read them you need to shut up. Honestly if I have to read classic works of literate or theology to understand a story then it's a a badly told story especially one meant for mass consumption. it if it can't make it's themes work with out that level of specific media literacy then you should use themes you can make work.

Edit
No one is glorifying freezing children or fetishizing suffering, and you are missing. the. point. No actually you're wilfully misrepresenting it, if you're claiming that's what is happening here.

I don't think the ancients are in any way perfect however they don't seem to have to worry about petty wants like where there next meal comes from or shelter, where as this game has story points about how the common populous struggle to live, Ishgard had whole narrative points about how children were freezing to death. That is the realty of the suffering Venat inflicted there's no glory in it it's just misery and a painful short life

[jameseoakes]

Yes. Maybe it is a badly told a story, I'm not disagreeing with that.
I'm disagreeing with the bold claim that fundamental tenements of real world religions are EVIL because you've misinterpreted a badly told story.
It is flat out not glorifying freezing children, or fetishizing suffering, just because these are thing that are necessary to happen in the world the story is set in.

You are falling for the very same folly Moore critiqued! There's a reason why he wrote Utopia, because people think like this. And that's why it relevant for you to read it and understand it.

The issue with the endwalker story is that it didn't need to happen Venat inflicted it on the world as there was hardship before it was just less petty and left people free to follow there interests and not have to constantly fear starvation and poverty oh and made everyones lives extremely short.

[MagiusNecros]

Chrono Trigger pulls off the Utopia that fell to ruin story so much better then how it was wrote here. Like I understand what they were going for but it wasn't well written at all. Might have been better if the characters introduced had a lot of development but they kinda were introduced and killed off in one patch cycle and that's pretty tiresome.

Really hope the scenario for 7.0 is much better and has good pacing.