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

[Swordsman]

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.

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.

Yeah, this was one of the major gripes I had with the EW MSQ. I liked the original story in ShB where the sundering was a result of a war between Hydaelyn and Zodiark. But I guess the writers instead chose to go off on some different route that was more "philosophical" and "impressive" in their opinion.

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.

That's exactly what I think too. Couldn't have said it better myself.

[Atelier-Bagur]

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.

I still cant vibe with the "she committed horrors worse than all of the people" mentality.

So she's apparently worse than Valens who literally is a masochist and tortures civilians and children for his own personal gain?

I just dont understand where people are getting this hardcoded message where the game tries to deny the Ascians but Venat. The only thing we are against is them actively trying to kill us and causing all sorts of problems but none of the Scions ever condemn their reasons for doing so. Emet-Selch and Elidibus gets huge passes for this where the game still goes out of their way to paint them in a positive light of sorts and even then we have Y'shtola (in other languages) respecting Emet for his noble cause when she talks about their duty to save the star.

You do realize this game portrays the villians with so much sympathy that its kinda getting annoying?

The whole point of the narrative is to show that thanks to Venat's actions, we were able to save the universe. Trying to finger point her at this point would just be extremely petty on the Scions part.

[Xirean]

I still cant vibe with the "she committed horrors worse than all of the people" mentality.

So she's apparently worse than Valens who literally is a masochist and tortures civilians and children for his own personal gain?

I just dont understand where people are getting this hardcoded message where the game tries to deny the Ascians but Venat. The only thing we are against is them actively trying to kill us and causing all sorts of problems but none of the Scions ever condemn their reasons for doing so. Emet-Selch and Elidibus gets huge passes for this where the game still goes out of their way to paint them in a positive light of sorts and even then we have Y'shtola (in other languages) respecting Emet for his noble cause when she talks about their duty to save the star.

You do realize this game portrays the villians with so much sympathy that its kinda getting annoying?

The whole point of the narrative is to show that thanks to Venat's actions, we were able to save the universe. Trying to finger point her at this point would just be extremely petty on the Scions part.

I'll give my thoughts on the matter if you are looking for such interpretations.

I've said since the post EW Q&A that Venat is worse then the Ascians and I stand by it because it was revealed in that Q&A that she left a hole in the sundering for Emet, Elidibus, and Lahabrea. This combined with the story confirmed bit of her knowing how everything was going to go made it clear that she literally enabled them. Every destroyed civilization, every rejoining is equally at her hands as well as the Ascians because she knew it was going to happen and made it possible. You could even say she paved the way for it. Ever wonder why Ardbert didn't return to the Aetherial Sea when he died and just walked around as a ghost for a century? Because she knew we needed to join with him to succeed.

The line from Ardbert "We did everything right, everything that was asked of us and still...still it came to this!" sums up my frustration with her quite well. She pulled the strings from the shadows to make all of the good AND all of the bad happen.

As for the narrative showing the villains in a good light and constantly giving them passes; it still called them out as having done a bad thing, multiple times in fact. It does not do the same for her and that's the problem.

Edit: Also because she didn't change how things happened with the Ancients she allowed Meteion to sing her song for 12,000+ years and wiped out countless planets populations. I don't just want an alternate timeline for the Ancients to be alive, I want an alternate timeline so the universe can be alive.

[Nayukhuut]

I still cant vibe with the "she committed horrors worse than all of the people" mentality.

So she's apparently worse than Valens who literally is a masochist and tortures civilians and children for his own personal gain?

I just dont understand where people are getting this hardcoded message where the game tries to deny the Ascians but Venat. The only thing we are against is them actively trying to kill us and causing all sorts of problems but none of the Scions ever condemn their reasons for doing so. Emet-Selch and Elidibus gets huge passes for this where the game still goes out of their way to paint them in a positive light of sorts and even then we have Y'shtola (in other languages) respecting Emet for his noble cause when she talks about their duty to save the star.

You do realize this game portrays the villians with so much sympathy that its kinda getting annoying?

The whole point of the narrative is to show that thanks to Venat's actions, we were able to save the universe. Trying to finger point her at this point would just be extremely petty on the Scions part.

She split an entire planet and all life on it, all while knowing that other planets that were also full of life would be destroyed by the time we came around. She is directly responsible for the blood of the Sundering, and indirectly responsible for the blood the Ascians spilled. I will say it again. She destroyed her own people, and set up copies of the planet she knew would be wiped out well before the time where her plan might come to fruition. After that, her backup plan in case everything went pear shaped was to evacuate the people on the Source, and abandon all the Shards.

How do people NOT think she has a ton of blood on her hands? Oh right, because the story says she's good and she loves us.

And no, it would not be petty to hold her to her crimes. It would be reasonable. We can acknowledge where we are in history and past events without having to support each one of them. They should be able to say something like "this is the world we live in, and it is full of life and worth fighting for, but Venat dooming an entire species and multiple lives was still wrong."

Edit: Also because she didn't change how things happened with the Ancients she allowed Meteion to sing her song for 12,000+ years and wiped out countless planets populations. I don't just want an alternate timeline for the Ancients to be alive, I want an alternate timeline so the universe can be alive.

Oh good gosh yes, this too.

[TheMightyMollusk]

it was revealed in that Q&A that she left a hole in the sundering for Emet, Elidibus, and Lahabrea.

This honestly just felt like them saying "Yeah, we're not sure how they survived, either, so here's a handwave."

Which really could've been avoided for all but Emet. Elidibus's soul is part of Zodiark, so he managed to stay in one piece by splitting other souls off into the Shards, keeping his core together in Source Zodiark. And Lahabrea.....well, I was half expecting to find out that the original Lahabrea was actually sundered and long dead, and the cackling lunatic we knew back in ARR was actually Hephaestus, freed from Pandaemonium by the other Unsundered who didn't know his whole story and thought he actually was Lahabrea, and he went along with it because it's technically half true and he wanted to usurp Lahabrea's life anyway. That's not how Pandaemonium worked out, of course, but it would've been a neat twist, at least to me. Would've also explained why ARR Lahabrea just doesn't at all match how he acts during Pandaemonium other than just saying he went nuts over the eons.

Hell, maybe Emet could've been in Pandaemonium looking for Lahabrea when the Sundering hit, and they were unaffected because it's a pocket dimension out of sync with the rest of the world. Boom, we have a somewhat better explanation.

[Absimiliard]

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.

I think they intended for this to still be in play, but they wound up absolutely shooting it in the foot through Emet-Selch's activities. It's very difficult to sell the Convocation as properly tempered when you've got this dude over here making it abundantly clear he does whatever he wants, up to and including repeated attempts to discard his duty in favor of simply living with the sundered. Of the three unsundered, only Lahabrea really came off as tempered, but it turns out that had less to do with his tempering and more to do with the fact he'd have been out of his mind with or without Zodiark's influence.

If nothing else, we're shown any sundered they chose to elevate would become hopelessly tempered the instant they took on their original self's memories. So it's there, it's just... I guess the ancients kinda didn't give a good damn?

[TheMightyMollusk]

If nothing else, we're shown any sundered they chose to elevate would become hopelessly tempered the instant they took on their original self's memories. So it's there, it's just... I guess the ancients kinda didn't give a good damn?

Didn't work out that way for Fandaniel, though. (Or Gaia, but we could argue there that Mitron was half-mad from his time in Eden and screwed up the process.)

[Absimiliard]

Didn't work out that way for Fandaniel, though. (Or Gaia, but we could argue there that Mitron was half-mad from his time in Eden and screwed up the process.)

True, Fandaniel seems to have escaped that fate. Gaia at least had mitigating circumstances on her side. Both are yet more cases of the story telling us one thing but showing another entirely.

[Turtledeluxe]

Aether is consumed and renewed with time as part of the cycle of the world.

That's nice and all but the reason I even brought it up is because originally either you or someone else (probably both) were still in the "lol ancients casually do this" phase. The post a few pages back you all liked. Thr goalpost has moved since then and we now agree it's not so common. Aether changing up has nothing to do with it-- it didn't occur to Emet because the past viewing thing is particular to Venat and whoever she teaches it to. We have known this for several expansions yet I still see it commonly thrown around as though it is true. It's not. The Echo is a general gift with a diverse array of applications depending on the user and their interest /aptitude.

What matters is the direct implication they didn't actually try to prevent the summoning in the first place.

Venat telling us she isn't going to cause people to panic is not equivalent to being told she did nothing. Please stop trolling.

here'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.

Emet straight up says they didn't have the technology. I don't know what to tell you.

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. .

Except the cause is Hermes so telling Hermes doesn't seem helpful. Secondly dynamis was an emerging thing at the time. So they were handicapped on those two points alone really. Either way Venat telling everyone everything, even if she did, is not really an argument for fixing Endwalker or averting the final days. It may have changed slight details but the outcome would be the same.

[Absimiliard]

That's nice and all but the reason I even brought it up is because originally either you or someone else (probably both) were still in the "lol ancients casually do this" phase. The post a few pages back you all liked. Thr goalpost has moved since then and we now agree it's not so common. Aether changing up has nothing to do with it-- it didn't occur to Emet because the past viewing thing is particular to Venat and whoever she teaches it to. We have known this for several expansions yet I still see it commonly thrown around as though it is true. It's not. The Echo is a general gift with a diverse array of applications depending on the user and their interest /aptitude.

A good deal of what you've said here directly contradicts information put forward in the game and its peripheral materials. Firstly, being able to gaze into the past has at no point been associated solely with Venat, save perhaps early in ARR when it was still believed the Echo was something she gave people. What we have seen over the years is a number of characters - some associated with Venat, some not - utilizing this ability, some of them with far more control than the WoL or Krile have ever displayed. I might also note the subject of this ability is discussed by her in Elpis, and at no point does she remotely imply it's something unique to her. Furthermore, you are once again disregarding the fact ancients did not, unlike their modern fragments, suffer from involuntary activation of their powers. Any situation wherein Venat or any other ancient sought to look into the past was explicitly stated and even shown to be something they had to do willfully.

Oh, and no, I didn't claim every ancient could do it, although I did point out two things; most plot relevant characters with the Echo have at some point been shown into the past or otherwise reading aether in various ways, and the other being the fact the game rather strongly implies it's nothing special amongst the ancients.

Venat telling us she isn't going to cause people to panic is not equivalent to being told she did nothing. Please stop trolling.

We're told quite explicitly she didn't interfere with the summoning. Please stop trolling.

Emet straight up says they didn't have the technology. I don't know what to tell you.

Pretty sure I'm going to take the data stored in an ancient database over the word of a guy that didn't preside over the sciences.

Except the cause is Hermes so telling Hermes doesn't seem helpful. Secondly dynamis was an emerging thing at the time. So they were handicapped on those two points alone really. Either way Venat telling everyone everything, even if she did, is not really an argument for fixing Endwalker or averting the final days. It may have changed slight details but the outcome would be the same.

Hermes was not the entire Convocation of Fourteen. He was an individual member. What's more, he was far from the only person in their society studying dynamis. Similarly, he was far from his society's foremost expert on creation - that was Lahabrea. Both toiled to bring forth Zodiark, but their knowledge of the true source of the Final Days limited them to creating a temporary, albeit extremely long-lasting, solution. Plus it got them tempered. Y'know what might've been helpful? If Venat at least bothered to warn them about tempering, because they did not know it was coming.

The sundered Zodiark protected Etheirys and its shards for 12,000+ years and showed no signs of weakening in all that time. I don't know about you, but I find it unreasonable to just assume a society as enlightened as that of the ancients wouldn't have been able to develop a more permanent solution to their problem in that time if given information as to the actual cause of the Final Days. To make the assumption they were so incompetent is to disregard every shred of lore we have about them, their capabilities, their sciences, and their civilization as a whole.

And to your last point; Venat retained her agency in the paradox. The story makes it quite clear she was free to end it by simply choosing another path, but she elected not to. Rather than picking the unknown, she chose the one future she knew of where the world and its inhabitants still existed in some form. She took this course in large part because she lacked faith in her people.