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

[Xirean]

You know one of the most annoying parts of the Venat situation? The story could have easily been told where events happened exactly as they did, but Venat ended up more of a tragic figure trying to fight for her people than an outright murderer who knowingly doomed them. Unfortunately the game decided to have a disconnect in what it showed versus what it told. There are many simple changes that could have made the narrative make more sense and made Venat somewhat sympathetic, but they went with none of them.

One I can think of off the top of my head is have it so that she was fighting Zodiark because she didn't believe in more sacrifices, and then when her attack broke him into pieces it had the unforeseen consequence of doing it to the whole planet. That lets her fight for her cause, and then actually be tragic because she didn't inflict the pain she caused on purpose. Her installing gods to guide us would have made more sense as she would have been trying to fix a situation she created accidentally, but now it just comes across as a fanatic who won and is now telling us all how we should live.

Agreed. Ironically a lot of the work to give her any room for a pass is easy if she also has no memory of the WoL in Elpis. Her knowing the whole time is the entire problem. Making her unaware instantly changes the perception of every action she took. Does it make it all ok? Of course not, but it removes a key part which is her negative intentions.

[Absimiliard]

To your first point all you're doing is strengthening my original argument which is that the onus isn't just on Venat. Other people could have done more.

To your second point, sundering is doing something imo.

I'm ar my post limit so i will summarize several points:

- It doesn't matter that the WoL doesn't have the memories to be gleaned. My point is that the experience happened in the past so artifacts, locations, observers, aether itself all act as sources to be drawn from. The end. Hyper focusing on the WoL is just a distraction.

- Regarding what Venat did prior to summoning, she had followers but its not covered a great deal because it doesn't matter. What matters is they failed and sundering was her big gamble in the face of panic and tempering. What's stupid is living in a mostly tempered world permanently.

- There's zero evidence that the Ancients were able to travel space as far as required, otherwise I'd imagine they have done it and Hermes never would have invented Meteion. In fact we have opposite evidence I've already cited. Simply knowing Meteion and Hermes are the villains isn't enough, period. While Venat telling people would've been cool, it doesn't prove any argument that the final days would have been averted.

Aether is consumed and renewed with time as part of the cycle of the world. Even if the old world still existed, which it doesn't, the aether wouldn't be the same. Moreover, it's confirmed by Venat herself you can only look so far back with the Echo. The further back you try to peer, the less reliable it becomes.

What matters is the direct implication they didn't actually try to prevent the summoning in the first place. We're told quite clearly Venat did not decide to take action until after Zodiark was already an element, despite having all that foreknowledge. We're also quite aware she was acting in full knowledge Zodiark would be an absolute necessity for the planet to have any future at all, let alone the one she'd been told of.

There's evidence the ancients were in the midst of developing space travel. The ancients kept their different sciences separate for the most part, meaning a group working on a project in one field would not necessarily know about projects in other fields, let alone about how progressed they are. Hermes had area of expertise, and in that he created the Meteia. Other ancients worked in their own areas.

Problems tend to be a lot easier to solve if you know the cause. This information is oft times vital not only in the process of resolving the issue but in the speed with which you do so as well as the efficacy of the solution chosen. Working in ignorance, on the other hand, often leads to temporary solutions with a number of negative side-effects. Frankly, the fact the ancients managed to come up with a solution at all under the circumstances is fairly impressive.

[Nayukhuut]

Agreed. Ironically a lot of the work to give her any room for a pass is easy if she also has no memory of the WoL in Elpis. Her knowing the whole time is the entire problem. Making her unaware instantly changes the perception of every action she took. Does it make it all ok? Of course not, but it removes a key part which is her negative intentions.

Exactly, they could have done so many things to make it make sense. Instead they show us this thriving world, have us bond with its people as we firsthand see their compassion and humanity, and then tell us they were beyond saving because reasons. Also apparently they are the only people beyond saving, because everyone else we meet is worth fighting for.

When I finished Shadowbringers I knew the Ascians had a negative view of Venat. She broke their world. I was skeptical of her going into Endwalker because I agreed that was terrible if it was true. I figured there had to be more to it. Obviously her actions resulted in the Sundering, but no one would murder their entire people on purpose, right? But nope, she passed judgement on an entire planet. Not only that, but as you pointed out she did it with knowledge of what would happen. Heck, in Elpis she is even shocked, saying she would fight for her people rather than do something like that. Then she just doesn't. She Sunders the world, saying mankind needs to stand on its own and not look to gods to fix everything, and then installs gods of her making so that we can look to them while they hold her broken world together. Guess Zodiark was just the wrong god, and Venat decided her creation was better.

The story does no legwork in actually showing me why I should feel sorry for her. In fact, it shows me the opposite. The disconnect comes from the fact that it is more than happy to tell me I should feel sorry for her, despite all the evidence to the contrary. It's like telling an abuse victim that it's okay that their abuser broke their jaw since they had their best intentions at heart. Doesn't sit right with me.

[Lunaxia]

Relating to "other directions they could have taken to make it work", I don't know what the purpose of dropping that the Ascians were tempered even was in hindsight. I assumed at the time it was going to play into the whole debate between the two sides and was obliquely slipped in to suggest it warped or altered the Convocation to some degree (bolstered by the dialogue we got from their individual constellation stones) and that played into Venat's decision with the Sundering, in order to "free" them/ the world from Zodiark's influence, but it literally amounted to nothing.

It could even have played into the whole "inability to deal with despair thing" by having the tempering have manifested in the first place as a result of their aversion to conflict/ differences and a desire for agreement and harmony running rampant, and overall actually supported the argument that they wouldn't have listened to anything else. Why add it in if it's only going to be dismissed with a flippant comment by a rabbit at the end of the entire story?

[Nayukhuut]

Yeh. It really feels like at times that they started with a different story and then decided to suddenly shift track halfway through. Then instead of changing the events to back up their new vision, they just sorta told us told us what they wanted us to think and to ignore anything we had seen before that.

[Atelier-Bagur]

Yeh. It really feels like at times that they started with a different story and then decided to suddenly shift track halfway through. Then instead of changing the events to back up their new vision, they just sorta told us told us what they wanted us to think and to ignore anything we had seen before that.

I believe its a mix of both of that and some people overthinking things. Although I dont want to outright dismiss those interpretations since honestly anyone can interpret a lot of things about the story and thats fine. I dont mind that people like Theodoric believe Venat is some twisted vile villian, I just dont necessarily believe that to be the absolute case. Especially when its clear thats not what the writers's intention was for the character (again, Venat's character is supposed to be a reference to Venat from FFXII where they also served a similar role as someone who rebelled in favor of mankind rather than the gods) I more so criticize in how they handled the story rather than debate on her character. Because if we're going to try to pull the "why didnt x do this" then ok, how about why didnt the Ascians just wiped us out at the Waking Sands if they knew we were a threat in ARR? We clearly were at our most vulnerable at the time. Considering they've done this song and dance numerous times with other shards and their WoLs, I find it stupid that Lahabrea or Elidibus wasted their time prolonging their plans inadvertently causing their own demise. We didnt criticize that because video game plot, just like with why are we trying to play the semantics game with Venat and the Sundering.

[TheMightyMollusk]

One of the big problems that shows up a lot in Endwalker is that, likely as a result of condensing two expansions' worth of story into one, they end up telling us a lot of things instead of showing them. Not only does it throw pacing and proper storytelling out the window, it also breaks a lot of the points they're trying to make, because we're not given the context to see how things ended up the way we're told they ended up.

For example, if they'd kept the point about the Convocation being tempered when they first summoned Zodiark, then it would've made more sense that Venat had been forced to go against them like that, because they would've been completely incapable of changing their course no matter what she said. They could've even made an argument about how many of those second set of sacrifices were actually voluntary versus tempered, if they wanted to keep the whole thing more morally gray. Still far from a perfect solution, but at least it would've had some sense of logic behind it.

[Nayukhuut]

I believe its a mix of both of that and some people overthinking things. Although I dont want to outright dismiss those interpretations since honestly anyone can interpret a lot of things about the story and thats fine. I dont mind that people like Theodoric believe Venat is some twisted vile villian, I just dont necessarily believe that to be the absolute case. Especially when its clear thats not what the writers's intention was for the character (again, Venat's character is supposed to be a reference to Venat from FFXII where they also served a similar role as someone who rebelled in favor of mankind rather than the gods) I more so criticize in how they handled the story rather than debate on her character. Because if we're going to try to pull the "why didnt x do this" then ok, how about why didnt the Ascians just wiped us out at the Waking Sands if they knew we were a threat in ARR? We clearly were at our most vulnerable at the time. Considering they've done this song and dance numerous times with other shards and their WoLs, I find it stupid that Lahabrea or Elidibus wasted their time prolonging their plans inadvertently causing their own demise. We didnt criticize that because video game plot, just like with why are we trying to play the semantics game with Venat and the Sundering.

I am sure that someone out there has a "wow, that person was a moron" moment for basically every character in the series. My problem with Venat specially though is that you are never really given the chance to call her out in the main story. She committed horrors worse than all of the people we have fought in the game so far, but the game treats her as a hero and expects us to do the same. It rightfully calls out the Ascians for the acts they committed even though they were trying to save their world, but it doesn't call out Venat. The theorycrafting on the Ancients is just a fun what if, but the story could have at least acknowledged that while this is the world we have now, and that there is a lot here worth protecting, Venat's actions were still not good.

And I don't mean she herself saying she wasn't kind and then having us make her feel better, like it currently does. I mean the Scions actually acknowledging the damage she did to the people and the planet, and the damage her actions continue to have. Instead the story gives us scenario after scenario were we are fighting for freedom and choice, and helping the people who seem hopeless, but then it turns around and says that in this one scenario that the destruction of an entire people is okay. It's a disconnect. It makes me feel like a hypocrite as I go through the story spouting morals and performing acts that quite clearly come with conditions on who is worth saving. It's just something that instantly brings me out of the tale, and sadly makes it much harder for me to enjoy it. I just end up wondering if the new people we meet will be considered one of the good ones by our team now. Makes me not what to get attached to any of them just in case they are not.

[Nayukhuut]

One of the big problems that shows up a lot in Endwalker is that, likely as a result of condensing two expansions' worth of story into one, they end up telling us a lot of things instead of showing them. Not only does it throw pacing and proper storytelling out the window, it also breaks a lot of the points they're trying to make, because we're not given the context to see how things ended up the way we're told they ended up.

For example, if they'd kept the point about the Convocation being tempered when they first summoned Zodiark, then it would've made more sense that Venat had been forced to go against them like that, because they would've been completely incapable of changing their course no matter what she said. They could've even made an argument about how many of those second set of sacrifices were actually voluntary versus tempered, if they wanted to keep the whole thing more morally gray. Still far from a perfect solution, but at least it would've had some sense of logic behind it.

Actually I would have been okay with that too. I come from a long history of liking the villains, and I do not mind a good tragic tale. If the story had shown us that the Ancients were actually beyond saving instead of showing us that they were reasonable, caring, and generally just like us, it would have been much easier to accept the way the story went. My main disconnect comes from so many of the quests and the scenes showing us one thing, but then the written part of the story telling us something different.

Edit: I still would have been irked that Venat didn't tell her people what was up and let it get to that point, mind you. However, if the actual people had been shown to be Tempered into a corrupted shadow of their former selves by the time the Sundering happened, it would have changed the story, and my response to it, quite a bit.

[Lunaxia]

Yeh. It really feels like at times that they started with a different story and then decided to suddenly shift track halfway through. Then instead of changing the events to back up their new vision, they just sorta told us told us what they wanted us to think and to ignore anything we had seen before that.

Until Yoshida descends from on high and tells me otherwise, I'll never not be convinced that something along those lines was their original course of action all along in regards to Zodiark and the tempering, but at the last second they went back on it when they made the decision to go through with the one expansion pack and suddenly decided they wanted to do something really "profound" and "uplifting" for the ending instead, and narrative coherency be damned. They were banking on the poignancy of the message to resound with the playerbase and compensate for the flimsy plot elements, but for people who were actually here for their ability to tell a decent story, it just wound up being incredibly disappointing.