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

[Nayukhuut]

I will respond to the numbered posts, because well, I like structure.

~

1. She never gave the Convocation the facts. She went up and expected them to side with her, but never told them why things were happening the way they were.

2. Zodiark was not a genocide. The life sacrificed to him by the time he was sundered was willing. It was a sacrifice, yes, but a willing one. The best plan they could come up with since they had none of the facts.

3. They went along with it originally because they wanted to save their planet, and Zodiark was the last ditch best plan they had since they had no idea what was causing the problems. If your house burnt down wouldn't you want to rebuild?

4. Zodiark had brought the land back. That was done. He had given them the time they needed to breathe and allow the world to start healing and growing again. If they had gotten together and defeated Meteion, he wouldn't have been needed anymore

5. Emet's idea towards us was not the same as the Ancient's towards life. He considered us such directly because of the Sundering. Also, the life they wanted to let flourish to sacrifice towards Zodiark was never stated to be sentient or non sentient. It was just called new life. This could have been a combination of animals, plants, etc for all we knew. It might have been no different than the way we harvest crops and animals for sustenance, but on a much larger scale.

And the Ancients had great respect for life. Hermes just couldn't get out of his sad bubble to see it. Elpis was a lab where new subjects were tested. We do the same now with experiments we create. It was a control to make sure that new flora and fauna they literally brought to life would not hurt the greater world. The sidequests in Elpis absolutely showed they cared though. They honoured the dead, and took steps to exhaust every avenue before they had to put something down.

6. Yeh, she talked to them... and when the greater part of the population choose to ignore her she decided for an entire people what she was going to do.

7. Not everything. A portion of new life so that the people trapped inside Zodiark could be returned to the Star and allowed to die.

8. The Nibirun people were not beyond saving, the Tribal quest proved that. Beyond that, how are the Sundered any better. They could meet any of the fates the other people from Dead Ends saw too. If they had dealt with Meteion, the Song of Despair would have been moot.

9. They could refuse all they want. The Echo exists. They could have been shown. She put a tracker on Meteion. She had evidence.

10. I get that. I still think she was wrong. Or at the very least the story should stop propping her up as the loving hero and acknowledge the sheer amount of blood on her hands. Not in a passive way where she says she did bad but we all pat her on the back and make her feel better, but in an actual way that acknowledges the horrors she committed and paints her in the same light as any other villain we faced.

~

Oh, and one more thing... even if she didn't straight up destroy and reform the life, what she did still resulted in memory and identity death of an entire civilisation. Are you honestly telling me that if someone came along in the story now and said that they were going to wipe away everything we were, everything we loved, and everything we accomplished, that we wouldn't fight that tooth and nail? Because Venat did that, but we are expected to praise her for it.

[Volgia]

I feel like I need to play the 6.1 - 6.5 patches through and through without all this waiting to see how it feels. 5 months cliffhangers makes the story feel kind of slow, to the point I kind of forget what I liked or didn't like from the early patch 5 months ago.

[jameseoakes]

I will respond to the numbered posts, because Well, I like structure.

~

1. She never gave the Convocation the facts. She went up and expected them to side with her, but never told them why things were happening the way they were.

2. Zodiark was not a genocide. The life sacrificed to him by the time he was sundered was willing. It was a sacrifice, yes, but a willing one. The best plan they could come up with since they had none of the facts.

3. They went along with it originally because they wanted to save their planet, and Zodiark was the last ditch best plan they had since they had no idea what was causing the problems. If your house burnt down wouldn't you want to rebuild?

4. Zodiark had brought the land back. That was done. He had given them the time they needed to breathe and allow the world to start healing and growing again. If they had gotten together and defeated Meteion, he wouldn't have been needed anymore

I'm going to follow up on the first 4 points,

As far as we can tell Venat did nothing during the final days itself and did little to try and help and as far as the game shows had no plan to forestall the disaster itself, if I remember she even says she can't do anything to the sociopath that orgastrates it as he's needed as orginally he figures out the stuff about it hitting the areas with weaker atherial currents first. So there seems to have been no attempt by Venat to either mitagate the end of days or have a plan other than the Zodiark plan.

Summoning Zodiark had nothing to do with getting there old lives back, by the time he was summoned it was to prevent the complete annihilation of life on Etheris, by the time they do it the world is functionally already dead as the atherial currents that allowed life to propagate were dead, hence the second sacrifice which was needed to allow any kind of life on the planet

[Nayukhuut]

Yeh. Though the timeline of events we were given was fuzzy, it sounds like she let them summon Zodiark and then started lobbying her point. Zodiark was necessary for her plan too, after all. I always really did hate her logic of why she never told the Convocation what was up. She knew as much as Hermes what was happening. Hermes only knew more about Dynamis because no one else really cared. If she had gone up to the Convocation and told them what was up, perhaps they could have used that information to actually find a solution to the problem rather than just the stop gap they came up with. If they put their best minds on studying Dynamis, they prolly could have made quite a bit of progress.

Sadly we will never know.

[Xirean]

Yeh. Though the timeline of events we were given was fuzzy, it sounds like she let them summon Zodiark and then started lobbying her point. Zodiark was necessary for her plan too, after all. I always really did hate her logic of why she never told the Convocation what was up. She knew as much as Hermes what was happening. Hermes only knew more about Dynamis because no one else really cared. If she had gone up to the Convocation and told them what was up, perhaps they could have used that information to actually find a solution to the problem rather than just the stop gap they came up with. If they put their best minds on studying Dynamis, they prolly could have made quite a bit of progress.

Sadly we will never know.

I'm going to play devils advocate for a bit on this. (Note I still disagree with her) Perhaps her thoughts were that she needed Zodiark to be constructed without her interference because if she got involved it could influence the end result and make it less helpful. The WoL told her how long Zodiark had been around so that's a timeline of Zodiark working and working in pieces, but the WoL has no idea how Zodiark is actually constructed. By getting involved and changing the plan then her thoughts could be "maybe I could make things better, but I know this idea worked so I shouldn't risk that plan not working".

Still convoluted and idk if I'm even doing that logic train justice.

[Lunaxia]

As a random aside, am I crazy or did the writers at some point say that the concept of dynamis didn't actually exist when Shadowbringers was released and we first heard about the Final Days?

I swear they did, but I can't find the source anywhere.

[Theodric]

As a random aside, am I crazy or did the writers at some point say that the concept of dynamis didn't actually exist when Shadowbringers was released and we first heard about the Final Days?

I swear they did, but I can't find the source anywhere.

You're correct - here's the source: https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...alkers_2_week/

'They hadn’t come up with Dynamis as a concept yet when ShB was released.'

[Lunaxia]

You're correct - here's the source: https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...alkers_2_week/

'They hadn’t come up with Dynamis as a concept yet when ShB was released.'

Thanks! I was sure it was A Thing, but Google was letting me down.

It's still kind of crazy to me how adamant some people are that Endwalker wasn't at all rushed or affected by the decision to turn it into one expansion instead of two, or that any other rendition of the story existed prior to Shadowbringers being released when statements like that from the devs are right there.

[Theodric]

Thanks! I was sure it was A Thing, but Google was letting me down.

It's still kind of crazy to me how adamant some people are that Endwalker wasn't at all rushed or affected by the decision to turn it into one expansion instead of two, or that any other rendition of the story existed prior to Shadowbringers being released when statements like that from the devs are right there.

Yeah, it's really bizarre. I do hope some more snippets about what exactly went on behind the scenes come to light someday because the tonal whiplash from ShB to EW is honestly one of the most brazen and jarring things I've ever seen in a video game. Unfortunately it's also why I can't really bring myself to be excited about what comes next - because anything I do end up liking could very well find itself receiving similar treatment and just be hastily discarded and/or retconned on a whim.

[Vyrerus]

What's crazy to me is that they apparently wanted to rush it because they weren't sure if they'd get another expansion to tell it or whatever their excuse was.

Yet here we are with rumors that Yawntrail will be a filler expansion.

We wouldn't need filler expansion if you'd just done 6.0 as a real, not rushed, bridge the story properly expansion...