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

[AwesomeJr44]

Honestly this thread has done more to captivate me story wise than all of endwalker.

Sadly that's not a super high bar to meet, but it's been the same for me lol

[Graeham]

We agree with the tread. More of news at 11 of the clock. Bump.

[Absimiliard]

I have no clue how you guys even come up with such weird mental gymnastics of what was presented with the story. Is there just some extra dialogue or external lore that I missed regarding that Hydaelyn was a twisted power hungry maniac?

This isn't so much a comment on the rest of the conversation at hand, but I can think of one thing most people missed out on that kinda ties in a bit; the NieR side of ShB's crossover event. The FFXIV content over there covers from just before the sundering, through the sundering itself, and on into the post-sundering era. Some of what it shows is pretty damning insofar as the whole "Hydaelyn is a heroic figure without spot or blemish" thing some people want to push.

Turns out the sundering was way worse than what we were lead to believe initially. More damning still is how it's delivered; a narrator, and not the unreliable kind, commenting on things as they unfold while also elaborating on what Emet-Selch and the other unsundered see, feel, and think about it. Between the narration, the artwork, and the understanding everything on both sides of the crossover event would be canon, it becomes very difficult to simply dismiss the additional lore they slid into NieR Re[in]carnation. The artwork in particular is quite telling, as it clearly and cleanly illustrates the tattered state the bodies and souls of the sundered were left in.

tl;dr: the sundered were reduced to gibbering masses, incapable of communicating even with the unsundered, who we know can communicate with any creature capable of communicating, and left in a state of absolute agony. It took ages for them to stabilize, and ages beyond that for them to relearn language and begin building new civilizations.

[FirstGearFirstGear]

The "Venat allowed the Rejoinings to happen" doesn't really hold water. We know she actively worked to stop the First from being destroyed. We also know that she was creating Warriors of Light throughout the eons. If you want to criticize her for failing to stop them, that's fine, but this implication that she just sat around eating grapes until Rejoining #7 doesn't work.

[Absimiliard]

The "Venat allowed the Rejoinings to happen" doesn't really hold water. We know she actively worked to stop the First from being destroyed. We also know that she was creating Warriors of Light throughout the eons. If you want to criticize her for failing to stop them, that's fine, but this implication that she just sat around eating grapes until Rejoining #7 doesn't work.

Yeah... About that. They uh.. they kinda shot that one down the time they went into detail about Venat's actual motivations and intentions. One of her chief goals was indeed to seek out the one future she knew for a fact would be "successful." It's one of those things the devs maybe should've left unknown to players, given how they wanted Venat to be perceived.

At any rate, it's a little bit late now for people to be concerning themselves with it. People's opinions have had quite a while to become set in stone. No point in even discussing anymore.

[Atelier-Bagur]

Im gonna give you guys a much better example to the character youre actually talking about here.

Anyone ever played FFII Soul of Rebirth? Its a post-game additional scenario where the characters whom died in that game go through the afterlife and explore seemingly pandaemonium to only encounter a "good" light version of the evil emperor at the end. The game and dialogue starts to paint this light emperor as benevolent and regretful for the actions of his other self and asks the party directly for forgiveness, however after some inner encouragment they realize that they cant just easily accept him and it soon turns out the Light Emperor was just trying to manipulate them emotionally to get what he wanted and got angry at them. And this was all done in a cutscene via direct dialogue. This is the Venat you guys are talking about.

[FirstGearFirstGear]

Yeah... About that. They uh.. they kinda shot that one down the time they went into detail about Venat's actual motivations and intentions. One of her chief goals was indeed to seek out the one future she knew for a fact would be "successful." It's one of those things the devs maybe should've left unknown to players, given how they wanted Venat to be perceived.

At any rate, it's a little bit late now for people to be concerning themselves with it. People's opinions have had quite a while to become set in stone. No point in even discussing anymore.

Ah, so they did. Oh well.

[Absimiliard]

Im gonna give you guys a much better example to the character youre actually talking about here.

Anyone ever played FFII Soul of Rebirth? Its a post-game additional scenario where the characters whom died in that game go through the afterlife and explore seemingly pandaemonium to only encounter a "good" light version of the evil emperor at the end. The game and dialogue starts to paint this light emperor as benevolent and regretful for the actions of his other self and asks the party directly for forgiveness, however after some inner encouragment they realize that they cant just easily accept him and it soon turns out the Light Emperor was just trying to manipulate them emotionally to get what he wanted and got angry at them. And this was all done in a cutscene via direct dialogue. This is the Venat you guys are talking about.

It isn't necessarily Venat that's the problem to most of the character's detractors. Omnicide is a very common trope in video games, after all. The real issue is a combination of the narrative treating the act far too lightly and the characters within said narrative being perfectly fine with all of it. What we, the players, were expected to feel about that character does not, in the opinion of many, line up with what we were shown. The omnicide, all the deceptions, withholding so much key information from the Convocation, etc. would all be considered highly dubious actions individually, and she was written to have done all these things and more.

Venat is fine. The fact the character's rather horrendous actions are just hand waved... well, that's questionable at best. To top it off, there's a portion of the player-base that just wants to outright deny the character as having committed any wrongdoing. As you might imagine, these rather outspoken individuals have managed to rather thoroughly stoke the ire people that aren't so keen on calling Venat a hero. Tends to make the debates devolve into pointless arguments and wildly unfounded suppositions.

[Thaciscokidd]

The "Venat allowed the Rejoinings to happen" doesn't really hold water. We know she actively worked to stop the First from being destroyed. We also know that she was creating Warriors of Light throughout the eons. If you want to criticize her for failing to stop them, that's fine, but this implication that she just sat around eating grapes until Rejoining #7 doesn't work.

But that's exactly what had to happen though. We didn't get a Chrono Trigger style time travel where the future was better because we went to the past, or a "History of Trunks" style where us traveling back to the past had no effect on our timeline at all, but a Closed Loop where we were pre-destined to go back to Elpis.

The WoL lay's to bear everything that had happened up to that point to Venat and the others in attendance, for that we technically HAD to reach that point again or you run into the butterfly effect. One less rejoining would mean one less Umbral Era/Umbral Calamity and who knows what would have been different, what empires survived and which empires would fail to form or even more specific who wouldn't have been born comes into question.

Its not that she just let them happen, its the fact that for her to reach that point they had to happen or you risk the highly likely chance that her gaining knowledge of the future wouldn't happened at all.

[Rilifane]

It isn't necessarily Venat that's the problem to most of the character's detractors. Omnicide is a very common trope in video games, after all. The real issue is a combination of the narrative treating the act far too lightly and the characters within said narrative being perfectly fine with all of it. What we, the players, were expected to feel about that character does not, in the opinion of many, line up with what we were shown. The omnicide, all the deceptions, withholding so much key information from the Convocation, not bothering to tell the people she sacrificed to become Hydaelyn their souls would be consumed, etc. would all be considered highly dubious actions individually, but she was written to do all these things and more.

Venat is fine. The fact the character's rather horrendous actions are just hand waved... well, that's questionable at best. To top it off, there's a portion of the player-base that just wants to outright deny the character as having committed any wrongdoing. As you might imagine, these rather outspoken individuals have managed to rather thoroughly stoke the ire people that aren't so keen on calling Venat a hero. Tends to make the debates devolve into pointless arguments and wildly unfounded suppositions.

That's exactly my issue with it. It was handwaved away and the player was made to treat her as mummy dearest and expected to feel fine with it, same with other characters.

Omnicide is a trope I don't have a problem with. When Thanos did the snap, it was a good solution from a purely pragmatic point of view. Universe getting a bit stuffy? Delete half the population, make it random so everyone has an equal chance, the populations will rebuild to fit their decreased size - you even had some people stating how it was terrible but they can't deny the benefits, e.g. getting jobs and houses easier.
But it was an absolute shit solution from a moral standpoint, especially if you also want to factor in what would be justified for who gets chosen to get atomized. Nobody handwaved that away even if you are able to see the practical benefit of it and naturally, his opponents would've rather looked for better solutions (which many of them did on a small scale like Stark inventing clean, basically unlimited energy).

And if it had been treated more like this, I would've been fine with it.
You can see the benefit of something while simultaneously criticizing its flaws, be they of practical or moral nature.

Tl;dr: Omnicide in fiction is fine, just don't sugarcoat it.