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

[jameseoakes]

The only hope of survival, was an action that, through way of a causal time loop, was given to Venat as a sure-fire way to survive for at least another 18,000 years, and the only way to potentially survivor past that.

It was not a surefire way to survive, all Venat knows when she causes the sundering is Zodiark will keep the world safe and when his shield is removed all hell breaks lose. There is no way of know that would could get to her and stop her and no way to know the ancients couldn't either. The game couldn't be bothered and instead just othered the ancients which was some pretty vile writing and then crowns the monster that murdered them a god and spends nearly all of EW telling is how wonderful she is.

[Brinne]

I did joke a bit with friends about how, while there was some good stuff in the Omicron quests, there was also that uneasy feeling when built off of 6.0: "There's no correct or incorrect way to exist! Everyone can be saved! Everyone can rediscover hope and the will to survive! ...except Those Ancient Guys, there was no saving them, sorry, they just point blank had to die no matter what. answers.ogg"

[jameseoakes]

Poor story telling, that scene isn't literal. She didn't sunder the world on a whim after a conversation with half a dozen snivelling scared old men. We know she had at least 12 other companions, and it certainly took more than raising her sword in the air to sunder an entire world into 14 reflections.
The whole scene is metaphorical, due to time constraints because they crammed two expansions worth of story into one.

Honestly I think that's pretty damning, they couldn't be bothered to portry one of the most import events on Etheryis but instead gave us a scene where Venat literally pronounces her whole race unfit for existence with a big showy speech while it's been generally othering the victims

Edit

I did joke a bit with friends about how, while there was some good stuff in the Omicron quests, there was also that uneasy feeling when built off of 6.0: "There's no correct or incorrect way to exist! Everyone can be saved! Everyone can rediscover hope and the will to survive! ...except Those Ancient Guys, there was no saving them, sorry, they just point blank had to die no matter what. answers.ogg"

It's so odd, the story is all about hope other than that one group who don't deserve hope for some reason and can't be saved for some reason. (Even the murderer robots that glass planets deserve hope)

[MagiusNecros]

I think they really screwed up the core principle of what Hydaelyn was supposed to be and tried to pull a BERSERK on us but only the late Miura or Yoko Taro can feasibly pull it off. Venat ain't no Griffith that's for sure. Pulling an Eclipse might have been better if it was illustrated that Venat fought for the world and was left with no choice but to sacrifice it but the storytelling just isn't there.

But again I can see the intent of "You all must die so my ideals can live" schtick they had going.

[MikkoAkure]

"I automatically know what this story is doing with a concept because I've seen how completely different stories do it" is kind of a weird way to engage with a text.

The whole concept of “Utopia” from its original inception is that it’s a farce, that’s the way almost every single piece of media has played it to be, and the writers even connected it directly to that original concept with its naming of the main city the civilization centered around.


The way the story interacted with the Ancients was always awkward because it was very roughly tacked on with no foreshadowing and the concept didn’t even occur to the writers until halfway through the life of the game.

The Ancients were always going to die because otherwise our characters and world going back to the very beginning of the game wouldn’t exist. The writers stumbled when trying to make a pre-existing civilization in the middle of the story that’s somehow responsible for everything from the elementals to migrating birds, made them the civilization of our enemies that have caused every bad thing to happen, but also balance that out with being empathetic and the events around them being a tragedy caused by the entity that had been unquestionably good and supportive this whole time.

[Brinne]

The whole concept of “Utopia” from its original inception is that it’s a farce, that’s the way almost every single piece of media has played it to be, and the writers even connected it directly to that original concept with its naming of the main city the civilization centered around.

I mean, it might just be a different in reading styles, but I'm not really into "I instantly know what this is doing without needing to pay closer attention because of [references completely unrelated stories] [also possibly a TV Tropes list]" and "using this Very Symbolic name means I instantly know what this is about, no further observation required." It's a bit frustrating when people point to things like that instead of anything that actually concretely exists or is illustrated in the text or characterization itself. It kind of comes back to that whole "is this a story or a list of author's bullet points?" kind of thing.

I guess some people do approach stories like they're a matter of puzzle-solving author intentions above all else, and that can be fun and interesting sometimes, but it's not really relevant to me in this particular kind of discussion - back to evaluating whether or not the Ancients really just needed to die or if they proved themselves unworthy of existing, somehow, yet again.

The way the story interacted with the Ancients was always awkward because it was very roughly tacked on with no foreshadowing and the concept didn’t even occur to the writers until halfway through the life of the game.

I have a lot of praise to offer Ishikawa in Shadowbringers with how she utilized the pre-existing traits of the Ascians to spin into the Ancients and their culture, and how clever so many of the small touches there felt, but overall, yeah. They ultimately weren't willing to commit to Shadowbringers throwing in a swerve that nobody foresaw the impact of and the reception to. Lots of short-sighted writing blunders that has left us in a really weird, uncomfortable place regarding the most significant and foundational event in the entire lore.

IIRC, it always seemed a little bit interesting to me that Yoshida (?) named Ishikawa, specifically, who wanted to use Shadowbringers as a chance to "humanize" the Ascians, down to Ishikawa pushing for Emet becoming "a part of the party" in the way he did while he had reservations about it. I suppose you could speculate all day where the cracks formed between Ishikawa going hog wild with her vision for Shadowbringers without accounting for and baking in planning for what would inevitably follow, or possibly Yoshida/other writers for being inflexible and not quite seeing what was happening in their own story and being willing to bend to it organically, or everyone's fault for not properly planning things out until the last second across several expansions, or somewhere in between.

[Atelier-Bagur]

I think they really screwed up the core principle of what Hydaelyn was supposed to be and tried to pull a BERSERK on us but only the late Miura or Yoko Taro can feasibly pull it off. Venat ain't no Griffith that's for sure. Pulling an Eclipse might have been better if it was illustrated that Venat fought for the world and was left with no choice but to sacrifice it but the storytelling just isn't there.

But again I can see the intent of "You all must die so my ideals can live" schtick they had going.

Not really, gods are just gods. Theyre not the be all end all of what is ultimately good and evil especially with the writing of your typical fantasy jrpg. Its almost always written were the heroes forge their own path with whatever assistance a benevolent being provided with the end result being the dismantle of the established diety mythos in the world.

So Hydaelyn was written how she was supposed to be all along. Its just people over analyzing it and making these mental gymnastics over trying to give their reasons for meaning when the writers intent was already given clear as day. I dont understand the confusion here with you people.

[Xeronia]

Not really, gods are just gods. Theyre not the be all end all of what is ultimately good and evil especially with the writing of your typical fantasy jrpg. Its almost always written were the heroes forge their own path with whatever assistance a benevolent being provided with the end result being the dismantle of the established diety mythos in the world.

So Hydaelyn was written how she was supposed to be all along. Its just people over analyzing it and making these mental gymnastics over trying to give their reasons for meaning when the writers intent was already given clear as day. I dont understand the confusion here with you people.

I want to remind everyone the interviews/fanfests leading up to Endwalker Yoshi P was gladly telling people to examine everything and that you would never guess where Endwalker was going. I can't really fault people after that kind of build up for doing just that and analyzing the story as heavily as they did. I personally think the choice in the Omega quest of "Everyone was wrong" is the correct answer myself they elected to add that choice there for some reason instead of treating it like the MSQ and never letting me question Venat.

[Saraide]

What does this even mean...?

"I automatically know what this story is doing with a concept because I've seen how completely different stories do it" is kind of a weird way to engage with a text.

w-what does this even mean. what does it even meannnnnn

Did you not notice how hermes and eric were suffering? People like them existed back then but their suffering was ignored. No one tried to understand them.

To me it sounds like you argue under the idea that a perfect utopia is infact possible. I disagree and (caution: very judgemental statement following) and think you need to stop huffing lethal amounts of copium. The trope of the seemingly perfect but actually rotten utopia is a common one because fiction is generally written by humans. Many people in our world have declared themselves or their way of live perfect. Fiction authors want to convince you how foolish that is. However, while perfection is unattainable, improvement is attainable.

What it means is that instead of settling for nothing less than perfection (and growing more and more desperate in the search of it) you should strive for improvement. That striving is what is being celebrated in the game. This cannot make sense if you cling to the idea that a perfect utopia can exist (or worse if you think it already exists).


On the topic of 'was venat justified?':
I think we need to ask a different question first: Was she looking for justification? What kind of justification?
In the cutscene after her trial I think she said something like "there was no kindness in the destruction I wrought". I dont think she was looking for moral justification, ever. It was always my interpretation that she was acting out of desperation and this is supported imo by the completely doomed backup plan of using the moon as an escape vessel. Faced with the choice of letting the ancients work themselves to their unavoidable doom or shattering the world and having the remnants be inhabitated by living feeling beings that have a better chance of defeating the catastrophe unleashed on the universe, she made her choice.

I found the omega beyond the rift quest very interesting in that regard. It poses not only the question of 'do you think what she did was justified?' but also includes hermes into that. He was desperately looking for justification for his actions. A search that not only doomed the world on accident but a doom he, given knowledge of the consequences of his action, also embraced in his authority as judge over the rights to existence of living beings on etherys.

[Lurina]

The whole concept of “Utopia” from its original inception is that it’s a farce, that’s the way almost every single piece of media has played it to be, and the writers even connected it directly to that original concept with its naming of the main city the civilization centered around.

I feel like this fanbase has collectively absorbed the superficial detail that Thomas More's Utopia is a satire and assumed it's a satire of the concept of utopias, when that's not really the case at all.

Utopia is a satire of the early Humanist movement of 16th century European society, poking holes in the contradictions between the radical ideals it had on paper, and the structural issues it refused to challenge - such as the influence of religion on government and and the social problems caused by property ownership and the emerging proto-materialist culture of the time. The Utopia in the book isn't named "no-place" because More was arguing it was unachievable or undesirable (in fact, he was almost certainly advocating for a society like the one depicted, judging by the tone and how it mocks a bunch real countries via explicit contrast) but rather because it was so alien to renaissance-era Europe that it was beyond the scope of what most people were even willing to imagine.

His point was that to attain a perfect society where no one was treated unfairly, just about every cultural sacred cow would need to be slaughtered; money, aristocracy, self-expression, Christian morality, etc. Ironically, by positing that it's wrong for the Ancients to have social and ethical systems unlike our own through a largely emotional argument (see how the critique of their custom of voluntary death is framed wholly through Hermes' visceral discomfort, without even really trying to examine it on merit), the writing is proving his point: That we are too reactionary and defensive regarding our own customs and values to rationally envision a completely different kind of society from the ground up.