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

[Turtledeluxe]

Adding onto this for clarity/fairness. I want people to understand that this applies to the Ascians as well. This is not about hating Venat or taking one side over the other. The Ascians are called out plenty in game and the simple desire is that the same be done with Hydaelyn or failing that, be able to recognize the similarity. The sundering is genocide as are the rejoinings. Both sides have their reasons for doing what they but that changes nothing. There is no asterisk for the definition. It's just genocide.

It's closer to genocide for some of the Ascians because said individuals are targeting humans and have contempt for humanity. Emet stands out here. For Ascians generally it's debatable as what they want is a rejoining to get back their world (so again its a case of targetting all living things) which has the effect of returning humans to Ancient form which is, again, effectively killing but is it bc FFXIV.

There could also be a case of genocide when it comes to who/what they're sacrificing to Zodiark to feed him post summoning (it isn't clear enough to make a definitive case).

I'm also not interested in defending Venat or the Ascians. I'm just pointing out there are better ways to describe their actions and motivations. There are genocidal characters in XIV but with the Ancients their motivations can be more complicated and "larger" than targeting people due to race or ethnicity. Yotsuyu targets people because she is cruel..Ancients are in a battle for what they believe leads to survival.

I'd also note anyone who says "dancing around it" or something similar is exposing themselves as contrarians. It's shock value because you're admitting you understand the very human and legal context of the word but you're applying it to an imaginary version of humans who are in a war for survival against a doom songstress (not downplaying EW I loved it). It screams edgelord and that's just how it seems, I'm sorry if that's insulting. I'm not implying anything about anyone's moral preferences or whatever. I find it odd people do that in relation to Venat, again it seems so specific bc no one will call me out for saying it's case by case with the Ascians and Ancients I am sure. As I've said earlier Venat not acting also destroys the future so it's a bit hypocritical as well bc if you think one thing is genocide so is her alternative. So there is no winning for Venat. I've called out some instances of it but I just don't think every single thing is up for the genocide label.

[Theodric]

Many cases of genocide have been framed as a matter of necessity and survival. It doesn't cease to be an act of genocide solely because there are those who stand to benefit from the atrocity in question. Given that the ancients no longer exist as a species it isn't really up for debate as to whether it qualifies as such because it fulfills the criteria of the definition.

Certainly, the Rejoinings are considered to be an act of genocide and those are a matter of reversing the consequences of Venat's actions. (Though I'd add that even the Rejoinings are something that Venat has an indirect hand in given that she knowingly left room for Emet-Selch to be spared despite being well aware of what that would result in...)

[Turtledeluxe]

Many cases of genocide have been framed as a matter of necessity and survival. It doesn't cease to be an act of genocide solely because there are those who stand to benefit from the atrocity in question. Given that the ancients no longer exist as a species it isn't really up for debate as to whether it qualifies as such because it fulfills the criteria of the definition.

Certainly, the Rejoinings are considered to be an act of genocide and those are a matter of reversing the consequences of Venat's actions. (Though I'd add that even the Rejoinings are something that Venat has an indirect hand in given that she knowingly left room for Emet-Selch to be spared despite being well aware of what that would result in...)

Uh this may be the case for fiction but I am not aware of any cases IRL as such. Although intent is considered that doesn't mean there have been cases where good intent has been found, it just means it's complicates proving it as intent can theoretically be hard to prove IRL.

And again what led us to this discussion is the nature of time in XIV and, although many of you are in denial the director's answer and game make it clear that the characters are locked into a timeline of their own making. Even if you're arguing over technical criteria of X and y being genocide, it's ultimately meaningless in the absence of choice..and again I think that is part of why a lot of what is discussed in game is conveyed in the tone that it is. Honestly the blame for most things is Hermes and then the player.

This is why the worst thing about EW is the time travel and imo, not the base story. Without the time travel the base story would not be as vilified as it is, we would just be taling about Primals fighting and deciding the fate of man. With the writers not being clear about the time travel it leaves the door open for you to interpret many things however you want.

[Xeronia]

Uh this may be the case for fiction but I am not aware of any cases IRL as such. Although intent is considered that doesn't mean there have been cases where good intent has been found, it just means it's complicates proving it as intent can theoretically be hard to prove IRL.

And again what led us to this discussion is the nature of time in XIV and, although many of you are in denial the director's answer and game make it clear that the characters are locked into a timeline of their own making. Even if you're arguing over technical criteria of X and y being genocide, it's ultimately meaningless in the absence of choice..and again I think that is part of why a lot of what is discussed in game is conveyed in the tone that it is. Honestly the blame for most things is Hermes and then the player.

This is why the worst thing about EW is the time travel and imo, not the base story. Without the time travel the base story would not be as vilified as it is, we would just be taling about Primals fighting and deciding the fate of man. With the writers not being clear about the time travel it leaves the door open for you to interpret many things however you want.

My apologies for interrupting but if the timeline is as you say it should be present in the game itself and not hidden away in some interview, I would also like a citation of this interview(apologies if you already posted it and I missed it) as the game and short stories on the site itself do not back your view of how the timeline is.

[Xirean]

Honestly the blame for most things is Hermes and then the player.

This is why the worst thing about EW is the time travel and imo, not the base story. Without the time travel the base story would not be as vilified as it is, we would just be taling about Primals fighting and deciding the fate of man.

Hey look, we agree on something!

[Theodric]

The time travel is irrelevant in the context of the discussion. Some posters are intentionally or unintentionally going out of their way to find reasons not to hold Venat accountable for her actions and to describe what she did as anything other than genocide - though the intent is there and that is what ultimately matters. Everything else is just window dressing.

Though as we've seen with G'raha and the situation surrounding him the game has established that multiple different forms of time travel exist. Yet judging by Myths of the Realm, the game now forgets about or retcons plot elements that were established only an expansion or a patch or two earlier.

It does beg the question as to who, exactly, the story is being written for if not those who pay attention to the world building and it doesn't bode well for the future chapters of the story as far as I'm concerned. Though I've made my peace with that and get my fix elsewhere these days.

I don't expect perfection and can sympathise with it being hard to connect everything perfectly - but nobody here is demanding that. They're simply expecting the game to be consistent in regards to calling out atrocities no matter who the character responsible for them happens to be. I think it's the least the game can do after forcing players to endure a decade of screeching and preaching from the likes of Alphinaud.

As for Hermes, he's ultimately to blame for everything that happened but he merely lit the match - Venat deliberately threw petrol on the flame and then bizarrely decided to entertain his 'test'. Essentially making the pair co-conspirators to a certain degree, even if unintentionally so.

The major difference, I suppose, is that the game doesn't go to the lengths it does with Hermes in an effort to try and praise and justify his actions in the same way as it does with Venat. Indeed, Ishikawa even acknowledged that Hermes was expected to be hated by many players for what he did.

[Turtledeluxe]

My apologies for interrupting but if the timeline is as you say it should be present in the game itself and not hidden away in some interview, I would also like a citation of this interview(apologies if you already posted it and I missed it) as the game and short stories on the site itself do not back your view of how the timeline is.

It was in a live letter. I wish I had noted the number. 58 perhaps?? I will edit when I find it. It's 68 during the portion when the translator is with him for fan q and a.

Also time travel is not irrelevant in any aspect of story discussion. As it turns out XIV is the story of a meddling time travel who instigates two Primals whose battle results in the sundering. If the major events don't occur in Elpis we don't exist. Let's say laws of causality collapse and its just whatever you want buffet of casuality (which is what people want with these 'give them a choice' takes). If Venat gets to the point of choosing sunder vs don't sunder, she has no way of knowing if another choice othrt than sunder wipes out the future or not.

So your choices are Venat (and everyone else) lacks agency because the loop is self-sustaining and the future must come to exist so we can play the game OR

Venat gives the Ancients more choice than we already know she does (as it is shown), finds an alternative, and the game collapses.

There's no magic situation where Venat finds a solution and the future still persists. None. Zero. So decide what you want, either way it's problematic for Venat whether by the players choice or your story take which leads her to kill off the reflections.

Also we know from the conversation in Elpis the Ancients had NO concept of the primals. We are the ones who brought it into their plane of thought. Saying "they could have chosen not to" just brings us back to the same loop. You cannot ignore it.

So no, her culpability doesn't matter. No one's does except Hermes and WoL. There could have been Athena with a gun to Venat's head saying "sunder them" or Venat blood faced and laughing as she drew her sword to sunder. Either way the result is the same and it must be the same for the future to occur.

And if you think Venat can just willy nilly the future with zero consequence, guess who has joined me on the train to alternate timelines? Because that's the only way she can change events with no effect on the MSq timeline.

[fulminating]

So your choices are Venat (and everyone else) lacks agency because the loop is self-sustaining and the future must come to exist so we can play the game OR

Venat gives the Ancients more choice than we already know she does (as it is shown), finds an alternative, and the game collapses.

There's no magic situation where Venat finds a solution and the future still persists. None. Zero. So decide what you want, either way it's problematic for Venat whether by the players choice or your story take which leads her to kill off the reflections.
.

The warrior of light dies to black rose, as the world collapses the ironworks free graham from the tower, combine the raid series and send him to the first. Crystal graham then pulls the warrior of light to the first, averting the 8th umbrella calamity with the defeat of hades. Yet crystal g’raha doesn’t die nor disappear from existence when that time line is dodged, rather surviving bodily until he turns himself into a statue, and spiritually by sticking his mind in a rock and being ferried to the source.

[Volgia]

It was in a live letter. I wish I had noted the number. 58 perhaps?? I will edit when I find it. It's 68 during the portion when the translator is with him for fan q and a.

Also time travel is not irrelevant in any aspect of story discussion. As it turns out XIV is the story of a meddling time travel who instigates two Primals whose battle results in the sundering. If the major events don't occur in Elpis we don't exist. Let's say laws of causality collapse and its just whatever you want buffet of casuality (which is what people want with these 'give them a choice' takes). If Venat gets to the point of choosing sunder vs don't sunder, she has no way of knowing if another choice othrt than sunder wipes out the future or not.

So your choices are Venat (and everyone else) lacks agency because the loop is self-sustaining and the future must come to exist so we can play the game OR

Venat gives the Ancients more choice than we already know she does (as it is shown), finds an alternative, and the game collapses.

There's no magic situation where Venat finds a solution and the future still persists. None. Zero. So decide what you want, either way it's problematic for Venat whether by the players choice or your story take which leads her to kill off the reflections.

Also we know from the conversation in Elpis the Ancients had NO concept of the primals. We are the ones who brought it into their plane of thought. Saying "they could have chosen not to" just brings us back to the same loop. You cannot ignore it.

So no, her culpability doesn't matter. No one's does except Hermes and WoL. There could have been Athena with a gun to Venat's head saying "sunder them" or Venat blood faced and laughing as she drew her sword to sunder. Either way the result is the same and it must be the same for the future to occur.

And if you think Venat can just willy nilly the future with zero consequence, guess who has joined me on the train to alternate timelines? Because that's the only way she can change events with no effect on the MSq timeline.

I often think about Elpis and try not to think too deeply about it before the plotholes of a messy, rushed time-travel episode in EW starts bringing so many plotholes it'll rot my brain. It was just SE wanting us to hang out with Venat, Hytho and Hades.
A lot in this thread talks about Venat being irresponsible or close to being an evil-doer. But now that she's perma-gone, there's no way to explore this other than saying that Venat had to do this because she had no choice and she's just a good aligned character.

[Theodric]

It was in a live letter. I wish I had noted the number. 58 perhaps?? I will edit when I find it. It's 68 during the portion when the translator is with him for fan q and a.

Here, I’ve posted the answer they put down on the official site after the Q&A, where they tidied up some of his trailing off:



Nowhere is Yoshi implying the timeline is fixed. He's even saying there's the possibility of the timeline diverging in his first scenario and discussing it in terms of Venat's plans.

And again what led us to this discussion is the nature of time in XIV and, although many of you are in denial the director's answer and game make it clear that the characters are locked into a timeline of their own making.

I think it is you who is in denial of his answer because he’s not saying what you’re saying at all. In fact, he continually discusses Venat in terms of actions she deliberately makes, much like when he discusses her decision to spare Emet as a deliberate course of action:



This is consistent with what he’s saying about her working behind the scenes to make sure the timeline doesn’t diverge, since the Ascians and the Rejoinings form an essential part of the timeline you told her about. G'raha and 8UC also pour cold water on the idea that time cannot be changed.

While you’re welcome to your opinion on this, what you’re saying we’re in denial of is not what is being said by Yoshi at all and in fact there’s other answers by him which contradict such an interpretation.

Also time travel is not irrelevant in any aspect of story discussion. As it turns out XIV is the story of a meddling time travel who instigates two Primals whose battle results in the sundering. If the major events don't occur in Elpis we don't exist.

With all due respect, what you’re asserting as fact is ultimately just one possible outcome. Whilst it is possible that the original timeline ceases to exist, it is also possible that instead an AU would form, as was the case with the 8UC timeline. And as an addendum, it’s even more unfortunate that, after Hydaelyn had stated that the timeline conjunction had taken place, while interacting with the ancients in Elpis in dealing with Pandaemonium, the WoL still did not provide them the information that could have resulted in an AU.

I refer you back to the answer given to you earlier about the nature of the time loop:

It's called a bootstrap paradox. For it to exist someone or something (it can even be raw information) must travel into the past and change things in a way that both leads to and requires the aforementioned time travel to occur in the first place. It has no defined beginning or end as a result. At a base level the key players in maintaining a bootstrap paradox operate in ignorance and therefore lack agency, but this can change when one or more parties are somehow made aware of what's happening. The paradox becomes consensual the moment even one of the participants necessary for its perpetuation is afforded knowledge and therefore agency, although the prospect of breaking one of these opens some very migraine-inducing cans of worms.

In this case, Venat is the party that has been provided and more importantly given Kairos, retains the knowledge he’s referring to.

Venat gives the Ancients more choice than we already know she does (as it is shown), finds an alternative, and the game collapses.

Or an AU spawns, much like it did in the 8UC timeline.

Also we know from the conversation in Elpis the Ancients had NO concept of the primals. We are the ones who brought it into their plane of thought. Saying "they could have chosen not to" just brings us back to the same loop. You cannot ignore it.

I can when it’s essentially just headcanon on your part.

And if you think Venat can just willy nilly the future with zero consequence, guess who has joined me on the train to alternate timelines? Because that's the only way she can change events with no effect on the MSq timeline.

Yeah, I think you will find most of us who are asking for her to bring about a better timeline are doing so under the assumption that if she made an attempt to, it would spawn an AU just like when G’raha made the decision to defy what would otherwise be the 8UC timeline’s fate. We don’t know for certain how this would work, because the writers have never elaborated on it, and even Yoshi’s answer states it is possible for the timeline to diverge.

As I said before, many of us were dissatisfied with the use of time travel in EW, have actively criticised it and would have preferred the story to be written without it, as it obfuscated more than it clarified and ended up becoming the “because a time traveller told me” explanation for so many major lore elements.

With that said, throughout the discussion you’ve been trying to categorically assert it’s not possible for time to change whereas it’s simply not what Yoshi is saying. If your case is that for the WoL’s timeline to exist it is necessary for her to go down the same course of action, and so the Venat we deal with would’ve always come to this decision, this is true – but it doesn’t follow from that that Venat in this timeline isn’t making the conscious choice towards this outcome, and so her actions can be evaluated accordingly.

The devs could very easily, in the Q&A, have simply said she lacked choice in the matter because of this being locked into the timeline. But they don’t and ask you to see her in a similar light to Emet-Selch in SHB. Likewise, this could very easily have been used as a defence for her in the belated addition of the Omega quest, but it isn’t. We are asked throughout to view her as someone with agency in the matter. You keep insisting that she says she will do certain things, but we lack even a shred of evidence for what most of this is, if anything at all. And she’s been generous with the truth on more than a few occasions.

What we definitely do know is she never told her people the full truth about Endsinger or what she heard of the Nibirun. What is shown of her relaying her concerns is presented in the most generic terms. You’re free to fill in the gaps and assume she did more, but there’s nothing obligating me to do so. This is why I say that time travel is irrelevant in the context of the discussion, and certainly the way you’re presenting it is not the only way to view the time loop, and certainly doesn’t follow from dev commentary or other plot elements.

Maybe you think time changing is something separate to an AU spawning, it’s hard to say, but an AU is ultimately what we are getting at. The decision of Venat in the timeline we’re familiar with not to provide the ancients the knowledge they’d need for an AU to potentially result is down to her own decision, much as it was with the Ironworks in the 8UC timeline to take the risk to try change fate even at the risk of erasing their timeline. You could say she didn’t want to take this risk but given the way Yoshi has worded his answers and how she’s presented in the story, she is never once implied to lack agency in this matter. If we’re presented with a Venat in an AU who made the effort, successful or not, I will commend that Venat for it. Much as you say fate is a theme in FF games, so is defying it.