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

[Absimiliard]

Even if we assume her intentions and convictions were altruistic, the action taken as a result of those convictions should not, under any circumstances, be portrayed as heroic. Whether the character suffered as a result of those actions is also largely irrelevant, given the sheer scope of the crime committed. In this instance, even had the writers successfully conveyed what they intended, I don't think I would be onboard. There is never a justifiable reason for robbing people of their future.

Choosing not to share the information she had on Discount Lunatic Pandora is already a fairly egregious action unto itself. Adding the sundering to that, well.. You can probably see why I'm not the biggest fan of how things are handled. I don't really have a problem with the Venat character itself, only the way the narrative continuously tries to frame the numerous awful things she did as being "for the good of all." The Scions and their allies could at least have had a WTF moment when faced with the truth, but we didn't even get that. The scant few people in the know just let it slide.

[Eisi]

Even if we assume her intentions and convictions were altruistic, the action taken as a result of those convictions should not, under any circumstances, be portrayed as heroic. Whether the character suffered as a result of those actions is also largely irrelevant, given the sheer scope of the crime committed. In this instance, even had the writers successfully conveyed what they intended, I don't think I would be onboard. There is never a justifiable reason for robbing people of their future.

Choosing not to share the information she had on Discount Lunatic Pandora is already a fairly egregious action unto itself. Adding the sundering to that, well.. You can probably see why I'm not the biggest fan of how things are handled. I don't really have a problem with the Venat character itself, only the way the narrative continuously tries to frame the numerous awful things she did as being "for the good of all." The Scions and their allies could at least have had a WTF moment when faced with the truth, but we didn't even get that. The scant few people in the know just let it slide.

A question seeing how you focus on the portrayal of Venat:

Would you have preferred a story where the narrative wouldn't have been significantly altered but where Venat was unmistakably portrayed as a villain over one where the narrative would have been altered, written smarter and had her actually be a hero or tragic hero with understandable motivation? Let's say one where a time loop wouldn't have occured.

If you could take either or, why focus on Venat, not the narrative inadvertently making her a villain?

[Absimiliard]

A question seeing how you focus on the portrayal of Venat:

Would you have preferred a story where the narrative wouldn't have been significantly altered but where Venat was unmistakably portrayed as a villain over one where the narrative would have been altered, written smarter and had her actually be a hero or tragic hero with understandable motivation? Let's say one where a time loop wouldn't have occured.

If you could take either or, why focus on Venat, not the narrative inadvertently making her a villain?

In the case of a coherent narrative, I'd be fine with either/or.

As I said before, I don't have a problem with Venat as a character. For me, it's not really a moral issue or what have you. Omnicide in a video game is a pretty common trope, after all. I have a problem with the seeming inability of the writing team to reconcile A with B. Venat simply happens to be sitting right smack in the middle of a large part of what went wrong with Endwalker, making it far easier to communicate the issues I see by focusing on the one character they used as the linchpin for the entire train wreck.

The writing team has effectively tried to tell the player-base they should feel X about a character, when the reality is they mostly provided reasons to feel Y. Or, put another way, they portrayed the character's motivations and actions in a way that she comes off as an outright villain to many of us, but at the same time they had the rest of the cast behave as if she is the second coming of Christ. This is a level of narrative dissonance that I very much believe should be called out. The already dissonant storytelling only worsened once we began learning about the day to day lives of the ancients, the truth about the limitations of Zodiark's power and the intended third sacrifice, etc. The narrative destroyed the writing team's own argument about the validity of Venat's decisions fairly quickly.

[EgilTheStressedMage]

In the case of a coherent narrative, I'd be fine with either/or.

As I said before, I don't have a problem with Venat as a character. For me, it's not really a moral issue or what have you. Omnicide in a video game is a pretty common trope, after all. I have a problem with the seeming inability of the writing team to reconcile A with B. Venat simply happens to be sitting right smack in the middle of a large part of what went wrong with Endwalker, making it far easier to communicate the issues I see by focusing on the one character they used as the linchpin for the entire train wreck.

The writing team has effectively tried to tell the player-base they should feel X about a character, when the reality is they mostly provided reasons to feel Y. Or, put another way, they portrayed the character's motivations and actions in a way that she comes off as an outright villain to many of us, but at the same time they had the rest of the cast behave as if she is the second coming of Christ. This is a level of narrative dissonance that I very much believe should be called out.

They’re either trying to please everyone or are telling players from before ShB their money is no good anymore and they should shut up and leave because they’re no longer necessary. Basically how I think Paper Mario Sticker Star ended up the way it did.

[sagacious]

Nothing wrong with the story I love it.

[Eisi]

They’re either trying to please everyone or are telling players from before ShB their money is no good anymore and they should shut up and leave because they’re no longer necessary. Basically how I think Paper Mario Sticker Star ended up the way it did.

They had major issues writing the story of Endwalker.

When Yoshi P. mentioned how he didn't think that people would think about the story that deeply with regards to time travel, I was heartbroken. We do. And the writers should too, I think they do, they must know, maybe it was badly managed.

[Absimiliard]

They had major issues writing the story of Endwalker.

When Yoshi P. mentioned how he didn't think that people would think about the story that deeply with regards to time travel, I was heartbroken. We do. And the writers should too, I think they do, they must know, maybe it was badly managed.

Have you done the FFXIV content in NieR Re[in]carnation? It gives a look from just pre-sundering all the way through to the post-sundering world from the perspective of a third-party narrator, albeit one that occasionally tells us what Emet-Selch is thinking or feeling at a moment, or even what he and the other unsundered are seeing. The fact it's coming from the narrator - which I'll note NieR does not make use of the unreliable narrator - and backed up with accompanying by art, another thing NieR always presents at face value, only serves to further reinforce the narrative dissonance. The crossover content in both games is canon.

The scenes in Re[in]carnation tell the story of a people destroyed beyond the ability to even communicate. This is noteworthy because unsundered, like their echo-possessing sundered counterparts, are able to communicate with any living thing that is capable of communication at all. We're also given to understand they were reduced to little more than tattered (and tortured; the JP localization strongly alludes to all of them being in searing agony, though this is curiously absent from the EN version) blobs for a time before they took on their new forms and began rebuilding.

[Eisi]

Have you done the FFXIV content in NieR Re[in]carnation? It gives a look from just pre-sundering all the way through to the post-sundering world from the perspective of a third-party narrator, albeit one that occasionally tells us what Emet-Selch is thinking or feeling at a moment, or even what he and the other unsundered are seeing. The fact it's coming from the narrator - which I'll note NieR does not make use of the unreliable narrator - and backed up with accompanying by art, another thing NieR always presents at face value, only serves to further reinforce the narrative dissonance. The crossover content in both games is canon.

The scenes in Re[in]carnation tell the story of a people destroyed beyond the ability to even communicate. This is noteworthy because unsundered, like their echo-possessing sundered counterparts, are able to communicate with any living thing that is capable of communication at all. We're also given to understand they were reduced to little more than tattered (and tortured; the JP localization strongly alludes to all of them being in searing agony, though this is curiously absent from the EN version) blobs for a time before they took on their new forms and began rebuilding.

No I haven't! It didn't even know it was a thing. I will check it out though, it sounds interesting.