[6.0 - 6.4 Spoilers] An interesting video detailing Venat's polarizing reception

[Theodric]

A guy you still associate with openly outside of here, I know for a fact, and given the likes his posts were getting, it's safe to assume you all collectively approved of his actions. So.....yeah.

I'm genuinely confused. Who is 'you all' in this context and how do you 'know for a fact'?

That aside, the subject of this thread is the video which encompasses the answers that you seek. The game is a decade old at this point so any analysis of something deeply rooted in the overall story is naturally going to be rather meaty. It's already been pointed out multiple times throughout the thread, however, that the video itself is split into bite sized chapters to make it easier to digest.

If you have no interest in watching the video, that's absolutely fine - though to be perfectly honest, if that's the case then I'm not terribly certain why you're posting in a thread revolving around it. Especially when it wasn't even the creators of the video who posted it here in the first place.

[Absimiliard]

I figured it was strange you didn't answer my initial questions to you. Why are you assuming it's referring to her as a hero post sundering and not what she has already done for her people prior to all the final days stuff. It's rather a moot point seeing as the woman herself doesn't see herself that way nor do any of the character. You seem to act like the scions were ever called her a hero. If you can find that then by all means post it but barely a sentence from a minion, the game endorsing her as a hero. The three of you are really reaching.

I did answer your initial questions. Some of them, anyway. The rest had already been laid out earlier in the thread during a discussion with a different poster, which I (seemingly mistakenly) thought you'd already seen. I suppose that one's on me.

Now, to the rest of your post:
I'm not disputing she was a hero to her people, nor that the toy at least in part is referring to that. It's the last bit of the description that acts as a call forward to post-sundering. I've also never claimed the Scions directly referred to her as a hero. What I am saying, point blank, is that what I saw in the story - and I did thoroughly watch all cutscenes/read all text, including the side-stories and NieR Re[in]carnation, in both EN and JP, to be clear -- left me with the impression the intention was for us to view her in a heroic light. It's as simple as that. Put another way; I don't think the character was heroic save perhaps during the bygone age. I think she and the Ascians are birds of a feather in a fair number of ways. None of them were good, in my opinion. They're all different shades of grey.

As to the Scions; I just want consistency and for crap to make sense, man. Imagine if your entire belief system suddenly got uprooted, and on top of that you find out everything you thought you knew about the creation and early history of your world was wrong. This coming right before going to Ultima Thule and dying. Sure, they got better, but they friggin' died for a while there. There's a lot of crap they should've had a lot more of a reaction to. Like I said before, while I do think they should've at least questioned the moral implications of the sundering, that's all secondary to "huh, shouldn't these people be having a full blown existential crisis right now? Or at least, you know, be reacting in some way. At all."

You don't have to be directly told something to arrive at a conclusion. I played the same game you did. Your conclusions about the story don't line up with mine. That's all there is to it.

[Teraq]

Youtube comments show me this video series was needed. A cathartic read! I think I can already guess exactly what some people are going to make of these commenters crawling out of the woodwork to say thank you because they felt so alone in this fan base that really, truly isn't an echo chamber.

You say you don't agree 100% but appreciate that there's someone voicing a different opinion out there because it is healthy to question and criticise, random Youtube person?

Well well well!

Actually, people would have you know that this topic is dead. Dead, definitely dead and buried. You hook it up to a cardiac monitor and there's nothing but a loud continuous beep, in fact all of its graphs are flatter than a female Lalafell's chest slider. Everything that could be said on this topic has been said thousands of times and nobody needs to hear it, at all, because I, personally, am sick of hearing about it. (Please stop!)

Do you ever wonder if a subject is well and truly dead, or if it is actually you who wish it were?

Regardless, I am very sorry to make the announcement that concerns over the MSQ of patch 6.0 did not suddenly poof out of existence after Christmas 2021. The MSQ itself, even though it is a new chapter, can hardly go on without making any mention at all, whether positive, negative or neutral, of past events. The codex was a new feature introduced in 6.1, continuously updated in subsequent patches, and its contents… have at times generated discussion. The two raid storylines were explicitly stated to act as epilogues of sorts: one only recently concluded, and as for the other… it is with a very heavy heart that I must break the news to some of you: please look forward to the conclusion of Myths in patch 6.5. I have no doubt a story focused on what is shaping up to be Hydaelyn's creations for guiding Her Children, with signs pointing toward them being based on Ancients (I Mean The Good Ones), is going to go down really, really well and please everyone in this fandom. Ha. Hm.
As it happens, anything is susceptible to reignite discussion… and it is likely because we are all passionate about this. Unfortunately. Reports of this horse's death appear to be greatly exaggerated.





On "why do you hate Venat so much!!!! (and why is it because you're all misogynists?)", I feel the need to point out that this… isn't really about Venat, as such. There are actually a couple of other videos, on the mishandling of Zenos's character and on why Hermes is absolutely, literally, 100% The Worst.

There are a couple of reasons why a lot of the discussion revolves around Venat: not only do a lot of Endwalker's story and themes rest on her and her actions, but because of the time travel, it also retroactively affects how you view past events. I can only speak for myself here, but I find that new coat of paint… quite unwelcome and unnecessary. Simply put, you can't really go in-depth with why you found the story of Endwalker off-putting without breaching the Venat subject, and once you've opened this can of worms, there are a lot of points to address.

Part of it rests on player reception, of course. It wouldn't really be picking Venat's character and role in the story apart if it didn't aggro the fanbase, such as it is. I think just about everyone who has voiced disagreement or discomfort over Venat has been met with a degree of incredulity and accusations of Not Getting It, and then some. But we did in fact all watch the same story, and personally I think it is worth taking the time to analyse why opinions would be so polarised. Note that I am not talking about the frequency of said opinions here – yes, we know positive opinions are the majority because we, too, happen to have an internet connection and functional sensory perception – but the qualitatively large difference in opinion.

In contrast, Hermes doesn't get nearly the same amount of discourse even though he is the one setting all events in motion, and as I see it this is due to two significant differences: 1. he is unambiguously presented as an antagonist (just like Emet-Selch, by the way) (I just felt like saying that) and 2. going off Yoshida/Ishikawa interviews, a fair amount of people don't really care for the guy. Simply put, when I call Hermes a whiny vegan edgelord who lived in a society bottom text and whom I couldn't relate to, I don't have to justify my position nearly as much as when I say the way the story treated Venat really didn't sit well with me.
With Venat, it's a bit of an ordeal, and this is because so much of Endwalker rests on her reasoning and why it needs to be right.



On "clearly Venat tried her best and this in-game dialogue proves otherwise, you never addressed this!": Kozh, KizuyaKatogami, Eisi, Magikazam and Alenore (only the first two have been involved in these videos – I have no particular knowledge of the other three, and frankly I want to hear more of their takes) have addressed this. Well anyway, let me add my name to that list.

What we know about the contents of Venat's partisans' warning to the Convocation is vague at best: they would be doomed if they were to "continue down the same path". Is this the path of continued sacrifices? We have never heard the Convocation members themselves speak of sacrifices any further than the one that would replace the people within Zodiark with life that is never given qualification as sapient. This appears to be a slippery slope argument, frankly, but honestly there is one crucial thing that bothers me when bringing up Venat's faction and Venat sending a representative rather than speaking to the Convocation herself:

Unable to find the words, the archivist retreated into ritual. He held out a crystal—as he had countless times before—upon which was stored the last chapter of cosmological wisdom Venat had sought. Though she had spoken of its importance, he suspected she withheld the entire truth. Of her glimpse into the future, she had offered precious little.

They… are not operating with full information, here. This is the POV of the Watcher as a human being in the world unsundered. You will note that none of the three Ancients we speak to in the present allude to any knowledge of Meteion or Hermes's involvement in causing the Final Days at all.

Two of these have a somewhat plausible reason to have forgotten: The Watcher because his perfectly rounded gem saw fit to amputate his memory of "everything that came before and after the tragedy", and Elidibus because he has been steadily losing his identity. It should be noted however that once he grabs the memory crystals, he does get better, notably at remembering what led to his splitting from Zodiark, but also in parts of his life as Elidibus. Of interest here: he makes it clear our Level 86 knowledge of the Final Days (timing of areas hit correlated with celestial aether density)… which we learned from the Watcher himself… are consistent with the Convocation's. He is entirely unaware of Dynamis and the relevance of Elpis beyond Fandaniel's personal history and the fact that the current Fandaniel happens to be, ah, involved in matters at hand.

The most damning, though, is of course Emet-Selch. We are not given any indication Emet suffers from lapses in memory, other than the vague figure of the shades in Amaurot (which is honestly unsurprising for someone who belonged to a culture where physical appearance is outright stated in 6.0 to matter very little). In fact, Emet appears to be considered by the story like the "real" last Ancient: he is neither a primal nor the guy dismissed as having gone batty. He is the one who explicitly asks you to honour the memory of his people, and 'Ere Our Curtain Falls makes it clear he was keen on preserving his identity and memories. Emet never says anything that indicates the Convocation knew any more of the Final Days than what was stated by Elidibus and the Watcher, at any point in time. Yes, I know the Doylist explanation for this is "obviously, they hadn't written Endwalker yet". But operating purely from an in-universe POV, it is legitimate to wonder: what were the Convocation warned about? Is it just the slippery slope of Zodiark?

Venat's own words about the Convocation being unwilling to countenance a permanent solution: again, a permanent solution to what? The Final Days have been put on hold. The logical follow-up here is to rebuild society (which would be more logistically efficient with 75% of the surviving population of wizard scientists with crazy magic powers of creation), gather your thoughts and keep on safeguarding the star. This could very well involve investigating what was up with those celestial currents.

I am going, here, by Shade Hythlodaeus's words in 5.0 that never mention further sacrifices, in effect Emet's words put through a Hythlodaeus personality filter. Think of this what you will. Compare and contrast with Endwalker's insistence – coming from Venat's side – that sacrifices would be unending until they ended up like some distant alien civilisation. However, I will say that if you are going to dismiss Emet's words as motivated by bias and an agenda, then it follows that Venat's words would be equally biased in favour of her own agenda and dismissible, and this is especially because she has a known history of withholding information as discussed before, not to mention lying about everything for twelve thousand years. Call it a white lie for mankind's own good because mother knows best (of course she does, because how much she actually informed people is highly questionable), but it doesn't make for a good look when the subject matter happens to be whose version might be closer to the objective truth.

As for her words in the final scene of Elpis: they are words, not actions. I'm sorry. I know the story very much intends the viewer to take Venat at her word, and that the intended conclusion here most likely is that she tried her best to change the foretold history in the very difficult situation she was in but she tragically could not, and in her despair took the decision to follow our timeline in hopes of closing a causal loop. We both watched the same cutscene, and dissected the same lines (I mean… we did… right? chuckles nervously in French).

1. 'Fortifying defences and planning their escape': okay. Again, words, not actions. Anything she did objectively did not result in any significant divergence from the hell vision of the planet being literally on fire that we know of. Plans of escape are not mentioned in any testimony of the Ancient Final Days.

2. Obviously, she just can't tell anyone and everyone. Pandaemonium shows us that at least Elidibus is capable of handling secrecy and complicated hostage situations in complete earnest. The rest of the Convocation is comprised of experts and scientists that have been representatives of the planet for an untold number of years.

3. Of course, 'she can't tell the Convocation!'. This is never stated to be because of "standard procedure", which... appears to be interpretation…? (your dislike of Emet-Selch is … notorious, if I'm honest, and understandably none of us are free from bias) and this has been discussed by previous posts in this thread. Why not be entirely transparent and explicitly warn the Convocation they very much need to not apply this very much non-sensible-sounding standard procedure and they need to think this through?

4. Ah, because she reasons Hermes holds vital information, and needs not to be excluded or alienated. But there is no guarantee sharing full information would result in him being excluded or alienated. Are we assuming seasoned experts and intellectuals handling global matters have no idea how to sensibly handle an emotionally unstable person, especially if they are given all the information Venat has at her disposal concerning Hermes's personality and motivations? Has Pandaemonium shown us that the guy whose literal day job was to handle interpersonal conflicts had zero idea what he was doing? Not really, no. Maybe they don't need to tell Hermes himself the exact, full truth so he cooperates: considering how much he cares for life, I am unsure why he wouldn't help if they were to "break the news" to him that what he remembers of the events is, indeed, a big ol Kairos glitch, and that investigation into the incident and/or Venat being an unaffected witness have revealed that his creation has suffered catastrophic corruption of unknown origin in deep space and that this is going to have very, VERY dire consequences on everything he knows and loves, we SO need your expertise only you could ever bring us! Maybe they have the means to extract information without his consent at all, as Emet at one point threatens the WoL that the Convocation would know if they are being lied to.

You claim that Venat doesn't know how Hermes will be important, so she needs not to interfere with his nomination to the Seat of Fandaniel to naturally allow him to share his conclusion. This interpretation seems to entirely hinge on the vagueness surrounding what the WoL told her, because of the silent protagonist curse – specifically, you seem to assume that without Hermes, there would be no Zodiark to forestall the Final Days.
Now, on what the WoL said: It is stated by Emet that the WoL's story included the correlation of the Final Days with celestial aether.
Venat is standing right there when you then ask Hermes his opinion, with Emet explicitly asking the WoL to tell him the story as they told the three earlier.
The first thing our local expert on Dynamis says is that Dynamis indeed seems involved in both instances of the Final Days, confirming the WoL mentioned at the very least Dynamis.
Then he speaks of the celestial currents being hit first, deducing the malevolent source of Dynamis is coming from space.

This is the knowledge he brought to the table as Fandaniel.

Note that at no point is Dynamis itself ever mentioned by current Emet, Elidibus or the Watcher, only the correlation to celestial aether. So much for Fandaniel's area of expertise… But I digress. Venat knows what information Fandaniel gave the Convocation.

She is also aware of Zodiark's existence: the image of Zodiark being destroyed is shown while the WoL tells their story, Emet speaks of his brethren giving their lives to Zodiark for the good of the planet, and Venat admits she does not understand at this point why she would oppose the Convocation and the people by becoming Hydaelyn.
So, Venat knows that a. the cause of the Final Days is Dynamis, b. that the means to counter this was Zodiark, and c. that what brought the Convocation to this conclusion is solely the correlation to celestial aether without knowing the cause of the Final Days. This is assuming the WoL, for whatever reason, omitted from their tale that Zodiark was created for the explicit goal of strengthening celestial aether currents. Whether they did or not, claiming that she doesn't know how Hermes will be important to the fight against the Final Days is either stretching believability, or assuming she isn't very good at putting things together.

She was told of how utterly devastating the Final Days would be with history remaining the way it was in our timeline. At this point in time, she is committed to the idea of deviating from the established timeline and only fears the time loop as a consequence of the memory wipe. The argument is that, in possession of all this knowledge, the most obvious way to change history is to bypass this reasoning entirely: that the particular information on celestial currents needs to be organically brought by Hermes as Fandaniel – far too late, and in an incomplete fashion, because frankly the most crucial element here should have been getting every wizard scientist on this damned planet on board with kickstarting mass research on Dynamis ASAP –, and that Emet and Hyth for some reason can somehow never be told of what happened…? Maybe we should be putting more trust into these grown men who already deal with massive responsibilities as part of their day job, so long as full transparency and appropriate warnings on Hermes's potentially impulsive behaviour are involved.

4.5. I feel like it must be pointed out here that Hermes is not the sole scientist that studies the high atmosphere or is interested in Dynamis. The Convocation could feasibly call upon other people. It is said Dynamis in particular is a niche subject because of its very few practical applications on Etheirys, and it is true that Hermes is stated to be the first person to design an entelechy with a consciousness – intimate knowledge of which has not been wiped from his mind, as his designing Meteion happened much earlier than the events we witness. Well… I know of a good reason for everyone to suddenly start caring very very much about entelechies and practical applications of Dynamis, like right now. (Also should remind everyone here that we have no time frame for the span between the events in Elpis and the start of the Final Days. "They wouldn't have had the time" is conjecture.)

5. Indeed, we are in agreement here that everything she says in Elpis points towards not intentionally relying on the time loop at this point in time. My argument on Venat is that the limits she set upon herself in the preceding lines are flawed in their logic and reasoning, and my personal interpretation is that tragically this stems both from her own lack of faith in her people's ability to sensibly handle the situation, as well as her knowledge of future events resulting in bias over things she reasons cannot be changed… but… can't they? Really?…… To this, you might answer that Venat is very well-travelled and knowledgeable, and she is likely basing these fears and lack of faith of hers on something. Perhaps, yes. But perhaps she is not infallible, because she has not seated on the Convocation for an indeterminate amount of time, likely does not know what it is like to work with the younger and/or more recent members, and by her own admission she does not travel as much as she used to when she was Azem.



On "clearly you are just doing this for attention": I must admit I missed the part where this is bad, actually. Wanting to be heard is not mutually exclusive with having a point.
Yes, putting together videos to upload on the biggest video platform in the world is ultimately to reach an audience – one that might not be reached by ranting on a forum that is ignored by a portion of the fan base for various reasons.

The multiple mentions of not wanting to watch said videos is… in very bad faith, frankly, in a thread that was earnestly started to discuss said videos. It is said "the video" is too long: multiple posts have mentioned it was in fact posted in multiple parts of 10 minutes or less. If people in this particular thread do not want to engage with videos of 10 minutes or less, at all… well. I would question what the point of this discussion is anymore.



On making light of my call-out of propaganda and genocide by disingenuously saying "lol lmao check this crazy person out, ancients are not real XD": I was hoping not to have to explain myself that, yes, nobody here actually believes Final Fantasy characters and races are real. The purpose is to bluntly point out what Venat did and its consequences, and why people might take issue with the narrative of 6.0 justifying her and treating her as having ultimately done the right thing for mankind and the planet *.

To be blunt, certain posters replying to this thread spent years railing against even the most minor of Garlean or Ascian missteps and took the stance that no matter how sympathetic the reasoning, there was never a justification for acts of genocide. How interesting that upon the reveal that Venat deliberately inflicted genocide upon her own people suddenly such things were framed as 'not a big deal' or a 'grim and unfortunate necessity'.

And that is the thing. Certain people choose to deny the Sundering was technically genocide, because I suppose Venat didn't literally kill everyone dead with her own bare hands right there – though I think we have all seen and heard the word be thrown around to speak of societal changes that are far more indirect than outright murder and would realistically take far more time than the 0-100 years it likely took for the newly sundered humans to die of their newly introduced old age and diseases.

Others might say they don't find the concept of splitting souls across dimensions relatable, so I guess this excuses the intentionally inflicted identity death, loss of language, drastically shortened lifespan and erasing civilisation from history (as per both Elidibus in 5.0 and the Watcher in the Omega side quest, Ancient civilisation being wiped from memory aside from the PTSD resting in the collective unconscious of humanity appears to be a feature of Hydaelyn's design, not a bug).

Ancient culture does not exist anymore. Ancients as a race do not exist anymore; this has been made clear by the recent Korean Q&A that the Sundered evolved into biologically different people. They do not possess the biological characteristics such as immortality, natural aether sight, vast resources of aether and absence of scarcity that characterised what Ancient society and culture appear to have been based upon. All of this, the erasure and negation of what made Ancients Ancients, was by design, to allow for Suffering Makes You Stronger™. Genocide does not solely consist of directly murdering people – emphasis on directly, because the Sundering does in fact amount to drastically cutting down the lifespan of people who routinely lived for centuries to mere decades, not accounting for civilisation, technology and medicine also being reset.

The way the word and the subject seem to be treated with kiddie gloves only when it comes to Venat, the Ancients and the Sundering very much feels like deflecting from an uncomfortable subject with pure semantics.

This sort of rhetoric touches upon the underlying problem some people have with the story and how it appears to go against the values of the story as previously presented. Somehow, standards are only strictly applied to The Other Side™, because RIP to the others but we're different. That is why repeat mentions of Venat's crime are made – sometimes in jest, because this is fiction –, not because I think the Ancients are totally real and deep inside I wish I was just as perfect and beautiful as they are. (What even was that one bit of armchair psych, by the way?…)

If you are sick of hearing about it, or it actually makes you uncomfortable because you hadn't seen it that way initially and in retrospect it makes the story lean uncomfortably towards "actually genocide is okay when………", then good: it is having the intended effect. This is the cognitive dissonance people bring up in the comments on the videos.



* Speaking of narrative intent and character portrayal, if you somehow deny that "she had no choice, she truly wanted not to repeat history but her hands were tied and the very cruel and unfair act she decided to bloody them with was literally the only single way to save life not just on the planet but in the entirety of the universe" was not the intended way to read the narrative of Endwalker, when it happens to be complemented by the "Wind-Up Herois", the main protagonist cast not showing the least bit of hostility to her but even finding additional justification in the form of Dynamis, the arguable figurehead for the main antagonists of the arc figuratively bowing to her as a graceful loser and the persisting positive treatment of her in patch content… I… where to begin.

Venat is acknowledged, by the visual presentation of her decision to sunder her people and by her own words, to be a character that took a morally very-dark-gray decision. I think most everyone would agree to this. The issue here is with the story feeling like it's bending around her to tell you the ends justify the means this time, actually. Her logic for ending up never telling anyone we know of the full truth of what she has learned in Elpis is never given the scrutiny it might have received had we been in the Convocation's place and learning of everything after the fact. The Elpis incident itself is somehow never investigated, even though it involved some of the most important officials on the planet and we have been shown since their introduction in 5.0 that Ancients were kind of anal with due process and regulation of their magical abilities and creations.

Hydaelyn is met with remarkably little, if at all, resistance from the WoL and the Scions once the truth of her reasons are revealed. There is nobody left in 6.0 among the main cast expressing empathy for the fact that the Ancients were wiped out by one of their own because they weren't reacting the right way (according to standards she never bothered to detail the why's and how's of – see, again, the complete lack of information the modern-day Ancients we talk to had on Meteion and Dynamis) to a horrible tragedy she hopefully did not truly want to set them up for, though in the end that is exactly what her paralysing fears of people reacting to the truth and not straying too far from the established timeline resulted in.

The justification sometimes bandied about of the Scions not wanting to grill Hydaelyn on this because they owe everything to her and wouldn't exist without this terrible act… well, first off, that uncomfortably reminds me of abusive parent logic. Secondly, yes, selfish and hypocritical protagonists who look the other way when a crime happens to benefit them can be interesting, of course. Yet given the historical portrayal of the Scions standing up to injustice, I would say we are given little reason to think this would be the intended reading at all. There's nothing really pointing to them being, to put it bluntly, kind of ***holes, not when they were shown to be so sympathetic to Emet and Elidibus's plight in Shadowbringers. It cannot simply be ignored that at literally zero point in history after the Elpis incident were these men she knowingly condemned to the role of survivors driven to villainy out of desperation in possession of actual facts and truth on why she acted the way she did, at all. Their whole suffering, which was very plainly presented in Shadowbringers, amounted to them playing their roles of being cogs in Venat's time loop machine, because she wrote their people off after not really giving them a fair fighting chance. Look. This kinda sucks. I expected our heroes to reflect on this. Call me old-fashioned and boring I guess (or "morally-challenged").

(Similarly, the weirdly dismissive rhetoric of "well, it happened long ago / there's nothing that can be done to change anything about it now, why would they pester her with this now when she had good intentions?" feels like rather situational disregard of the concept of justice. Are the roads to hell paved with good intentions or not? Is there some sort of time limit on judging crime, especially when its consequences have been felt to the present day? When do reparations officially cross the line into "oh my god why don't you just get over it"? Even when the actual perpetrators or victims are not physically around anymore, there is symbolic meaning in upholding justice and values.)

Anyway, as for the sole survivors of the genocide in question – you know, the guys who had their whole world crumble for an unknown reason they probably assumed to be a natural catastrophe then stamped out by the person who withheld the truth – well, one of them had a whole scene where his tsundere self goes "I hate to say this out loud, but wow, bravo, queen, you showed me, (looks directly at camera) we could have never succeeded!", while the other just plain never finds out what this whole deal was actually about – I'm so sorry, Literally Zodiark In The Story Of Zodiark And Hydaelyn –, and anyway he's so polite he doesn't really want to bother you with irrelevant things like his own personal feelings over his defeat by your hands and failure to save everyone he loved. That would get in the way of his sweet, sweet duty to the star. As for the untold number of people comprising the rest of Zodiark (which, as a reminder, we were told yearns to be free), wow, they're mentally unwell, a fact their jailer finds to be frankly bothersome (glad we at least had the option to ever so slightly go "uuuUUUuuhhhhhh" at him, by the way). Hythlodaeus in particular, however, remains as Hythlodaeus as ever: irrelevant to the plot, really just Emet's proxy and good angel fluttering over his shoulder, so carefree he seemingly has nothing to say on his best friend's predicament the past dozen millennia, or on his own forced stay in purgatory, but wow, he certainly is very easy on the eyes, 10/10.


All in all, I struggle to understand how someone could genuinely come away from 6.0 with the impression that Venat was not intended to be the tragic heroine who took it upon herself to do this one terrible thing that would end up saving the universe, and while she might be judged by the harsh – including herself – for the sins she knowingly decided to saddle herself with, WE know the truth of her ultimate sacrifice for her love of mankind and life and respect the ideals she led us to victory with.

Only… well… I am not seeing much of this negative judgement in-universe, both by characters who know the entire story and those who don't.

(So maybe this got a little long. You guys… to tell you the truth… I think there's something about that story in Endwalker that kinda bugs me…)

[SannaR]

As to the Scions; I just want consistency and for crap to make sense, man. Imagine if your entire belief system suddenly got uprooted, and on top of that you find out everything you thought you knew about the creation and early history of your world was wrong. This coming right before going to Ultima Thule and dying. Sure, they got better, but they friggin' died for a while there. There's a lot of crap they should've had a lot more of a reaction to. Like I said before, while I do think they should've at least questioned the moral implications of the sundering, but that's all secondary to "huh, shouldn't these people be having a full blown existential crisis right now? Or at least, you know, reacting in some way. At all."

You don't have to be directly told something to arrive at a conclusion. I played the same game you did. Your conclusions about the story don't line up with mine. That's all there is to it.

I know I said I meant another post of mine to be my last, but I just wanted to address this part. I guess part of why I didn't bat an eye at the Scion's nonchalance to learning what they did in EW about the sundering didn't effect me or come off as odd is because they react fairly much the same way when Emet-Selch explains the cave paintings. Sure, they show some shock yet they then kind of just shrug it off. Or at least that's how it given (and I took/interpreted it that way) in the English version. Yet I don't remember that reaction having as much debate over or people at least being passionate about wondering why they didn't seem to be bothered from learning all of that.

That and as had been said by myself and others any time this topic comes up we're playing a game where the writers chose to have the world be sundered. So, even if we feel that what the sundering did and how it came about was bloody awful we only are accepting of it from a meta perspective. I'm sure I'm not alone when I also highly doubt that the 3rd EE will shed more light on the parts many wish would get more light. This isn't solely aimed at you, but people grow up, mature, change or what have you. And are fully capable of changing one's opinion depending a variety of factors.

[thegreatonemal]

I did answer your initial questions. Some of them, anyway. The rest had already been laid out earlier in the thread during a discussion with a different poster, which I (seemingly mistakenly) thought you'd already seen. I suppose that one's on me.

Now, to the rest of your post:
I'm not disputing she was a hero to her people, nor that the toy at least in part is referring to that. It's the last bit of the description that acts as a call forward to post-sundering. I've also never claimed the Scions directly referred to her as a hero. What I am saying, point blank, is that what I saw in the story - and I did thoroughly watch all cutscenes/read all text, including the side-stories and NieR Re[in]carnation, in both EN and JP, to be clear -- left me with the impression the intention was for us to view her in a heroic light. It's as simple as that. Put another way; I don't think the character was heroic save perhaps during the bygone age. I think she and the Ascians are birds of a feather in a fair number of ways. None of them were good, in my opinion. They're all different shades of grey.

As to the Scions; I just want consistency and for crap to make sense, man. Imagine if your entire belief system suddenly got uprooted, and on top of that you find out everything you thought you knew about the creation and early history of your world was wrong. This coming right before going to Ultima Thule and dying. Sure, they got better, but they friggin' died for a while there. There's a lot of crap they should've had a lot more of a reaction to. Like I said before, while I do think they should've at least questioned the moral implications of the sundering, but that's all secondary to "huh, shouldn't these people be having a full blown existential crisis right now? Or at least, you know, reacting in some way. At all."

You don't have to be directly told something to arrive at a conclusion. I played the same game you did. Your conclusions about the story don't line up with mine. That's all there is to it.

"Are you gonna pretend like what I quoted there doesn't exist and then proceed to speculate about what could have or should have happened and pass that off as canon? Or claim that the story views Venat as a hero and seems to give her a pass for what she did?" These are the two questions I asked you. you didn't answer either so before we go any further I'd like you to answer them.

You came to the wrong conclusion then. They clearly view her in shades of grey. The sunder was a tragedy but a necessary act. She took no joy in it. Admiring her strength of will to not falter or break at any point down the long road she traveled is admired but no one is calling her a hero. That was quite plain. to come to the conclusion you did you had to ignore certain things or refuse to see them in the light they were portrayed.

[SannaR]

Holy wall of text batman. How is anyone supposed to read all of that and not get as lost as I did a few times. And I worry about my posts not having enough paragraph separations.

[RaenMan]

snip

[jameseoakes]

It doesn't also the two sides had a fight. One side wanting to commit of genocide sacrificing the new souls to their shiny dark god and the other side rose up to defend those souls. She sundered mankind for two reasons, one to stop their god and defend those new souls the other to bring mankind to a form that could actually hope to fight Meteion, giving their aether dense bodies are useless against a foe like her. Unless you're gonna try and make an argument that you can't kill to save lives. Hell kill isn't even the right word, Emet decides her power in detail. He doesn't use the word kill.

Yeah my point of it being eugenics, replacing a whole race with a new version one that will lead markedly and intentionally short horrible lives of endless suffering is an act of evil and something at least as bad as anything to do with Zodiark and the fact that they had waved it with made up some magic force was just terrible writing.

[thegreatonemal]

I assume you mean the rejoinings? Part of the problem I have is that the game that it moralises hard on the evils of them which is something similar to the sundering then surely the sundering is as horrific a thing but the game bends over backwards to excuse it which leaves a deeply bad taste in my mouth.

I meant the third sacrifice the one that lead to the fight that led to the sundering.

[Magikazam]

To me it is simple, the story makes sure to point out that sacrificing innocent for a greater cause is bad. a bunch of characters did it and each time it made clear what they are trying to do is bad. When Venat does it, it showed as a good thing. The cinematic at the end of Elpis depicts her act as a heroic struggle (IMO).

That's kinda of an issue story-wise, cause it goes again a message the story keeps shoving up on us since ARR. EW made it bad cause we know Venat ain't affected by the memory-erasure and that means She knows what will happen, and she does it anyway. In SHB it was depicted in a more neutral view, life if the Ancients just split up into two factions and just escalated to extreme acts to prevent the end day.