What lore do you ignore?

[Nayukhuut]

I'm not saying Venat made herself into a god for personal gain. I'm saying she's wrong. What she's doing is jaw-droppingly evil. And the most fitting punishment I can imagine for her multitude of crimes against humanity is tossing her back into the aetherial sea to be reborn into the world she made. Not as a supreme deity with a bird's eye view of what she wrought, but as a regular person, helpless and confused as her child dies in her arms of a disease with no cure. If the world she built is so much better, than she should have taken a tour to the facilities.

It's one thing for the horrors of life to happen by happenstance. It's another for them to happen by design. No good, loving being invents cancer. Especially not as a bloody character builder.

You know, up until now I had been holding on to comfort that Venat's punishment for her crimes was to be wasted away entirely, but I like your idea better. If her world was really that much better, then she should have been forced to live in it too. Even better if she kept her memories.

Ahh, and as for her making herself a goddess, I would like to point out that not only did she do that, she also created constructs to act as even more gods for us. Gods that we have to pray to lest the broken world destabilise, because shockingly, the Star doesn't seem to like being broken into pieces. And yes, I know they are gone, but they left a machine behind that prayers are being directed to. One wonders what would happen if the population of Etheirys ever took up atheism.

[Cleretic]

You really can't tell the difference between "all stories need happy endings" verses "I am disturbed what this story is trying to slip past as right and good is fascist propaganda." I'd be like making Zenos the hero of Stormblood and having all the Scions look at him adoringly as he murdered people for the sake of genetic superiority. That's be weird right? It'd be okay to point out that's maybe not a good thing, right?

I've made it blatantly clear me issue with Endwalker is to agree with Venat's actions, you have to agree with some pretty horrific concepts, like some lives aren't worth as much as others, like it's okay to take everything from a people if you believe you can make better use of it and these are the exact arguments I've been seeing trying to defend the mass murder of 10 worlds. Because even if you're willing to do all kinds of backflips to act like what she did to the Ancients wasn't genocide, she unquestionably set up several shards to be destroyed, on purpose. That's a lot of death for a loving mommy to cause.

Oh, I'm not even talking about you at this point, although you are the most recent person I've seen raise it. I've seen it a lot. And I think it betrays something under the surface; not one of the first complaints, but one underneath. I don't know what it could be, and I'm not about to speculate for anyone; I don't have enough of a hint to even begin to guess.

[Lady_Silvermoon]

Oh, I'm not even talking to you at this point, although you are the most recent person I've seen raise it. I've seen it a lot. And I think it betrays something under the surface; not one of the first complaints, but one underneath. I don't know what it could be, and I'm not about to speculate for anyone; I don't have enough of a hint to even begin to guess.

Because I assumed once the WoL was involved we'd save people. You know, like G'raha did one expansion earlier. But nope, we're just a useless pawn who stands there looking at their feet when kind, gentle people ask us about the danger coming for them. I was hoping for better because given the morals espoused even one expansion earlier, I wouldn't have imagined the necessity of culling the weak to be the next lesson for me to learn.

When Elidibus looks at us and says, "I know who you are. You are death." After Endwalker, I wanna be like, "Oh, so you do remember me?" Like you do get the WoL is now the direct cause for the Sundering? Had we not told Venat she did it, she'd likely have no motivation to do it. They put the death and suffering of millions, if not billions of people on our character...and I just wanted to fish, man.

For all this back and forth, I will admit, I envy those who can't see it. I wish I was oblivious to the many horrific implications of Endwalker. I could just fish, race my chocobo and wonder if my character would marry Aymeric or G'raha. Oh those halcyon days, I was so innocent.

[Cleretic]

Because I assumed once the WoL was involved we'd save people. You know, like G'raha did one expansion earlier. But nope, we're just a useless pawn who stands there looking at their feet when kind, gentle people ask us about the danger coming for them. I was hoping for better because given the morals espoused even one expansion earlier, I wouldn't have imagined the necessity of culling to weak to be the next lesson for me to learn.

When Elidibus looks at us and says, "I know who you are. You are death." After Endwalker, I wanna be like, "Oh, so you do remember me?" Like you do get the WoL is now the direct cause for the Sundering? Had we not told Venat she did it, she'd likely have no motivation to do it. They put the death and suffering of millions, if not billions of people on our character...and I just wanted to fish, man.

For all this back and forth, I will admit, I envy those who can't see it. I wish I was oblivious to the many horrific implications of Endwalker. I could just fish, race my chocobo and wonder if my character would marry Aymeric or G'raha. Oh those halcyon days, I was so innocent.

I see what you see, I just don't agree with your take on it.

And with this one, I feel like for a lot of people, the example may be the people we couldn't save--Haurchefant, Moenbryda, Minfilia, Papalymo, Ysayle. That we aren't Superman: that sometimes, it's impossible to save everybody. And I don't think that's an invalid read, it's one that I'd certainly hear out an exploration of. But for me, the interesting echo comes from somewhere else.

I think the partner to the tale of Amaurot is actually the game's stories about necromancy: Edda's story, Palace of the Dead, Endwalker Caster, Stormblood Dark Knight, a 'weird it happened twice' amount of Alchemist stories. Bozja, in a strange form. Because no matter how many different forms of necromancy we find, the message is always the same: that death is tragic, that wanting to find a way to circumvent it is understandable and sympathetic, and that even that journey to find a way to fix death might bear important fruit, either personal or material... but that, at the end of the day, you can't bring back what was lost. That what is dead must lie, and that you have to move on. And that the living shouldn't pay the price for the dead.

To the game's timeline and characters, Amaurot is not a living friend to save: it's already dead. It's been dead for twelve thousand years. In a very real sense, the Ascians are game's biggest story about necromancy, willing to sacrifice everything to bring back what's lost. And the greatest tragedy of all is that you just can't; Amaurot will always be a graveyard, no matter if your means of necromancy is to try to change the timeline, or to sacrifice entire planets.

I don't see us as a useless pawn in someone else's game for the Ancient world. Because to me, that 'game' ended so long ago that nobody needs care about the score. And trying to replay it for a different result is only going to cause pain.

[Lady_Silvermoon]

I see what you see, I just don't agree with your take on it.

And with this one, I feel like for a lot of people, the example may be the people we couldn't save--Haurchefant, Moenbryda, Minfilia, Papalymo, Ysayle. That we aren't Superman: that sometimes, it's impossible to save everybody. And I don't think that's an invalid read, it's one that I'd certainly hear out an exploration of. But for me, the interesting echo comes from somewhere else.

I think the partner to the tale of Amaurot is actually the game's stories about necromancy: Edda's story, Palace of the Dead, Endwalker Caster, Stormblood Dark Knight, a 'weird it happened twice' amount of Alchemist stories. Bozja, in a strange form. Because no matter how many different forms of necromancy we find, the message is always the same: that death is tragic, that wanting to find a way to circumvent it is understandable and sympathetic, and that even that journey to find a way to fix death might bear important fruit, either personal or material... but that, at the end of the day, you can't bring back what was lost. That what is dead must lie, and that you have to move on. And that the living shouldn't pay the price for the dead.

To the game's timeline and characters, Amaurot is not a living friend to save: it's already dead. It's been dead for twelve thousand years. In a very real sense, the Ascians are game's biggest story about necromancy, willing to sacrifice everything to bring back what's lost. And the greatest tragedy of all is that you just can't; Amaurot will always be a graveyard, no matter if your means of necromancy is to try to change the timeline, or to sacrifice entire planets.

I don't see us as a useless pawn in someone else's game for the Ancient world. Because to me, that 'game' ended so long ago that nobody needs care about the score. And trying to replay it for a different result is only going to cause pain.

There is a difference between the inability to stop a light spear and standing next to the member of a world's governing body and not warning him of an oncoming genocide because you're afraid it might be in conflict with you benefitting from the death of everything he cares about. One is an actual "couldn't be helped" the other is the kind of "can't be helped" that is the source of my displeasure with the direction they took it. That's the kind of "can't be helped" that ends in small pox blankets and people in cages. And the fact those two are being conflated is exactly what's bothering me.

Also, why is our time the "real time" in a world with time travel? Good thing Ironworks didn't hold that position or our character would be dead. If we don't go back and tell Venat about the Sundering, the Sundering doesn't happen. We're not just witnessing the past, we're the cause of the way events unfolded.

[Cleretic]

Also, why is our time the "real time" in a world with time travel?

Because we live there, obviously. In a story largely told within a specific time period, that time period defines what's dead and what's not. Sure, to Sokles in Elpis Amaurot isn't dead, but the story isn't about Sokles in Elpis.

It's also why G'raha's story doesn't function in the same ways as the necromancy stories: because to us, the person/places he's trying to save never died.

[Lady_Silvermoon]

Because we live there, obviously. In a story largely told within a specific time period, that time period defines what's dead and what's not. Sure, to Sokles in Elpis Amaurot isn't dead, but the story isn't about Sokles in Elpis.

It's also why G'raha's story doesn't function in the same ways as the necromancy stories: because to us, the person/places he's trying to save never died.

Oh god. You're literally saying all these people are less important because we're the main character. I give up. I have now accepted we will never see eye to eye.

[Denishia]

Also on the necromancy part of things- I find the Ancient society so ridiculously failed in presenting itself as a Utopia that I wanted to stay long in gameplaywise, for the skin crawling revulsion but also because it was boring and repetitive a location, without wanting to falciliate serious societal changes as we did so in Vauthry’s Eulmore, Thordan’s Ishgard, or everywhere under Garlean occupation. And one of those key powers was the fragile monolith of their society having no healthy framework to deal with disasters or negative mental health and trauma. Pretending that they were immune to it wasn’t true and denial wouldn’t work. And leaving aside the physical mechanical problems of the plans after the Second Sacrifice and the Ascians’ plans and the moral problems- it still was going to fail because of what we learned about trauma and memories latching onto the soul. Even mindwipes don’t remove it, and that trauma that the Ancient society didn’t know how to face and thus did not want to face or acknowledge, was now a part of not just the survivors but the souls that they were looking to release from Zodiark and the souls in the Lifestream dead before Amaurot decided to act that were now reborn or about to be. Ancient society was focused on using creation magic to alter the life upon their planet in ways that their government deemed improvements. But they thought themselves and their society perfect and thus had no reason to change - so much so that Hermes had to look to the vast unknown of outer space in secret in the hopes of finding an alternative viewpoint. What would have saved Ancient Society was to change it, by being able to accept that no it was not free from blemish or suffering (Hi Erichtonios and Lahabrea) and no amount of magical power would do so. The story is framed around that fatal flaw in the Ancients. The Sundering is the extreme and desperate correction to that, per the story that is being told.

[Eastwall]

The entire game? Cuz it is dumb to lock content behind story. I only started doing story recently with ng+ after playing it for few years. The story actually doesn't feel like a chore When l get to do it at my own pace.

[MikkoAkure]

Oh god. You're literally saying all these people are less important because we're the main character.

The game has been told from current time perspective this entire time. The Ancients had been dead for 12,000 years. Elidibus helped us go back in time in order to fix what was going on at our current time and considered it to be his duty to save our world from the Final Days. Elidibus tells us that we cannot make meaningful change because the reality we need to return to is a result of the end of their own. Our world and theirs cannot coexist.

The Ancients weren't even written into the story until a few years ago, this story isn't about them, they're the backstory for why things are the way they are now. Even Elidibus and Emet-Selch have accepted their fate with grace and assisted us. Elidibus' last words are telling Hydaelyn that it falls to Her and us to save "our star" as in both his and our own together. The Ancients are us. The Ascians have done what it seems like you cannot. The story and all of the characters have already moved on. I suggest you do the same.

I give up. I have now accepted we will never see eye to eye.

That's how I felt when you dropped this little gem:

Venat's fascist agenda