Endwalker was a great mess(SPOILERS)

[Semirhage]

Forget all the time travel stuff. Can anyone explain to me what Vanet's plan would've been if the ancients agreed and didn't offer more souls to Zodiark to bring life back to the planet? Like the ancients can't interact with dynamis to a meaningful degree so aside from sundering and splitting everyone up to make their aether thinner and thus easier to interact with dynamis, what was the plan? Could the ancients have learned to accept suffering enough to defeat dynamis? Seems to me that there was no reason to try and talk them down because there was always going to be the threat of emo bird lingering on the edge of space. Are they just going to live with it? Because present-time sundered people can't live with it. They went to the edge of the universe and beat Meteion to stop it. How were the ancients going to do that? COULD they have done that? If so, why would Vanet not offer that information rather than going on about how they have to live with suffering and then slice them up when they didn't agree?

To me it doesn't make much sense. Maybe I missed something. Their sacrificing seemed to have little to do with the threat at hand. Personally I think it would've made more sense if the aether/stream of the planet itself became damaged by all the God-playing the Ancients were doing and eventually it led to a breaking point that resulted in the end-days. Then the themes they set up in the story would've made a bit more sense for me.

That part of the story has less to do with whether everyone can live with the final days or not. Venat saw that her people were incredibly eager to pony up and sell their souls for anything that would make their lives comfortable again. Now, showing that alongside a literal apocalypse is a harder sell (since that's hardly "seeking easy lives") but that's what the story was going for. The Ancients were willing to create a monster to run away from their problem. Venat saw knee-jerking and shortsightedness and knew that the next time something horrible happened -and it would eventually- she might not be there to make running away no longer an option.

There's a message in there about growing up and facing your issues like an adult instead of putting them off in unhealthy ways like a child.

[Theodric]

That part of the story has less to do with whether everyone can live with the final days or not. Venat saw that her people were incredibly eager to pony up and sell their souls for anything that would make their lives comfortable again. Now, showing that alongside a literal apocalypse is a harder sell (since that's hardly "seeking easy lives") but that's what the story was going for. The Ancients were willing to create a monster to run away from their problem. Venat saw knee-jerking and shortsightedness and knew that the next time something horrible happened -and it would eventually- she might not be there to make running away no longer an option.

There's a message in there about growing up and facing your issues like an adult instead of putting them off in unhealthy ways like a child.

Venat had information relevant to the prevention of the Final Days and opted not to inform anyone of what was coming, then blamed others for daring to mourn the fallen and seek to restore what once was. She's the definition of an abusive mother figure, insisting on forcing hardship on others for no reason than to stroke her own ego.

I think the true message to ever watch out for subversive elements within one's society, which is ultimately what Hermes and Venat both ended up being.

She's also a complete hypocrite - not only was her backup option to flee the Star if things went south again, she actively gave the Warrior of Light the ability to bring back his dead companions...which is exactly what she was criticising her own people for. Though moving goalposts in such a manner is to be expected from such a spiteful, manipulative individual I suppose - especially one that fashioned herself as a goddess and shunned many opportunities to aid her 'children' more directly.

[Rulakir]

It's baffling to me that the game paints Hydaelyn as some sort of tragic hero. Consider this: Venat thought that the best chance of defeating Meteion was the WoL, 8x rejoined. So, why create more than double the amount of shards necessary? Fodder for the Ascians. The Ancients are consistently judged on their sacrifices to Zodiark when Hydaelyn literally created 8 additional stars' worth of beings to be sacrificed for a future that was not guaranteed, in fact, her contingency plan was to abandon the remaining shards to destruction.

I feel like the writers just did not think this through at all. One moment of clarity where Hydaelyn admits what she did wasn't a kindness doesn't even begin to address the atrocities she's responsible for nor the game's heavy handed narrative of forcing the player character into a 12k year bond with her complete with emotional cutscenes and only positive, reaffirming dialog, nothing remotely in the way of disapproval.

Edit: The icing on the cake is that the WoL gave Venat the playbook to follow thanks to the time loop. So, guess what? Your character is now an accessory to genocide. Have fun with that.

[Lauront]

It's baffling to me that the game paints Hydaelyn as some sort of tragic hero. Consider this: Venat thought that the best chance of defeating Meteion was the WoL, 8x rejoined. So, why create more than double the amount of shards necessary? Fodder for the Ascians. The Ancients are consistently judged on their sacrifices to Zodiark when Hydaelyn literally created 8 additional stars' worth of beings to be sacrificed for a future that was not guaranteed, in fact, her contingency plan was to abandon the remaining shards to destruction.

I feel like the writers just did not think this through at all. One moment of clarity where Hydaelyn admits what she did wasn't a kindness doesn't even begin to address the atrocities she's responsible for nor the game's heavy handed narrative of forcing the player character into a 12k year bond with her complete with emotional cutscenes and only positive, reaffirming dialog, nothing remotely in the way of disapproval.

Edit: The icing on the cake is that the WoL gave Venat the playbook to follow thanks to the time loop. So, guess what? Your character is now an accessory to genocide. Have fun with that.

Worst part is, the entire Ascian agenda is because their world is sundered out of the blue with no real explanation as to why, leaving them with what they see as fragments of their own people, more reminiscent to them of the familiars in Elpis than what they were like in their fullness. It's remarked in Ultima Thule by Y'shtola that how Emet-Selch set up Amaurot's shades suggested he moved away from seeing them that way, to closer to children - that softening in his stance plus recognising the WoL as Azem's soul probably swayed him quite a bit. While the actions of the Ascians are no doubt understandably cruel in the eyes of the sundered, she does not escape responsibility for it and the situation she left them in, IMO.

[Driavna]

Right until EW and the discovery of the cure for tempering to me the reason of sundering was simple: primals drain the land from aether, the more powerful the more aether to keep him around. If left uncheck a summon will create stuff like the burn unless is feed regulary (and, pretty much that was the plan of the Ancient after stopping the end of days Zodriak will again be boosted to bring everyone back. After that another excuse to summon him again will be bring to the table and blablablabla). Also, any tempered is bound to want to keep her god around or summoning it once more, and since there is no cure you can't reason with them, only to put them down.

It's not without reason, knowing that Hydaelyn was less powerful and could not confront Zodriak directly, that sundering the whole star was a last resort since I doubt they will want to kill their own kind, now out of control due tempering.

Anyway, at least to me, FFXIV always had a plot that the less you think about it the more you enjoy it. By ShB it went for cheap emotional moments and during EW got out of control (the whole Venat cutscene after Elpis is that. Amazing if you don't think about it but if you do is a big mess).

Oh, one last thing: according to the whole main point of EW the Ancients were doom and low key the last dungeon show us their ultimate fate even without the final days. They could have made a better job delivering Venat point, about learning that suffering is part of life and having to deal with it instead of using primal copium to fix any problem and eventually fall to nihilism (or just like: hey our mission is done everyone back to the star!)

[Semirhage]

Venat had information relevant to the prevention of the Final Days and opted not to inform anyone of what was coming, then blamed others for daring to mourn the fallen and seek to restore what once was. She's the definition of an abusive mother figure, insisting on forcing hardship on others for no reason than to stroke her own ego.

I think the true message to ever watch out for subversive elements within one's society, which is ultimately what Hermes and Venat both ended up being.

She's also a complete hypocrite - not only was her backup option to flee the Star if things went south again, she actively gave the Warrior of Light the ability to bring back his dead companions...which is exactly what she was criticising her own people for. Though moving goalposts in such a manner is to be expected from such a spiteful, manipulative individual I suppose - especially one that fashioned herself as a goddess and shunned many opportunities to aid her 'children' more directly.

That's a fair assessment, though not one I agree with. Two reasons mostly, and both of them are paths not taken so I suppose we'd never know how they'd turn out. One, the only reason Venat knew about the final days is because the main character set her on that path with time travel shenanigans. If she hadn't been in Ktisis on that day, or had been a touch slower escaping, *nobody* would know what happened. As far as she knows, preserving the current sequence of events is the only way someone knows something at all. Two, the Ancients weren't trying to bring their people back. They were selling their souls to a godlike creature that would require their sacrifice and worship in exchange for resurrecting their fallen; being willing to sign on the dotted line without reading the fine print in exchange for things you've lost has been a cautionary literary trope for thousands of years.

In the face of the trap the Ancients were throwing themselves into, it's easy to see Venat either as a selfish egotist bucking the system or a prescient idealist kicking her world's ass into the state it needs to be in to problem solve. But "abusive"? Yawn. Everything is "abuse" in the 21st century.

[Theodric]

Yawn. Everything is "abuse" in the 21st century.

If someone wiped out my family, friends, neighbours and homeland I'd consider such an individual to be abusive.

I'm not sure why such a stance would be considered to be unreasonable, in all honesty.

Let's not forget that Hydaelyn herself described the Sundering as an act that was cruel and without justice, so...

[Semirhage]

If someone wiped out my family, friends, neighbours and homeland I'd consider such an individual to be abusive.

I'm not sure why such a stance would be considered to be unreasonable, in all honesty.

Let's not forget that Hydaelyn herself described the Sundering as an act that was cruel and without justice, so...

I'm convinced that people don't actually read stories anymore, they just react to the moments in front of them entirely unmoored from their context.

The narrative function of utopias in stories is that they aren't possible. They're unsustainable. You can't live in paradise, because that's just not how life works. FFXIV constantly, constantly, constantly hammers and hammers this point at the player. The Ea had a "perfect" society. Didn't help. The people who summoned Ra La had a "perfect" society. It didn't work. The narrative purpose of Amaurot's flailing at armageddon was that they were trying to return to perfection at any cost, which again is impossible. Now, quibble with how muddled that portrayal gets in the story, sure. But pretending like Amaurot was a perfect society that was just murdering one subversive away from staying perfect, and you're the person for whom the point of utopian narratives goes whistling straight over your head. There's always juuuuuust one more adjustment to be made. Just one naysayer to murder. Just one policy to update. These stories have been with human society for thousands of years because they're telling you that thinking Utopia is just around the corner is nonsense. Stories are just as much theme as they are sequence of events, and modern fiction criticism fixates unhealthily on the What over the Why. It's not that the sequence of events is unimportant, it's that the story is trying to tell you something.

[Theodric]

I'm convinced that people don't actually read stories anymore, they just react to the moments in front of them entirely unmoored from their context.

The narrative function of utopias in stories is that they aren't possible. They're unsustainable. You can't live in paradise, because that's just not how life works. FFXIV constantly, constantly, constantly hammers and hammers this point at the player. The Ea had a "perfect" society. Didn't help. The people who summoned Ra La had a "perfect" society. It didn't work. The narrative purpose of Amaurot's flailing at armageddon was that they were trying to return to perfection at any cost, which again is impossible. Now, quibble with how muddled that portrayal gets in the story, sure. But pretending like Amaurot was a perfect society that was just murdering one subversive away from staying perfect, and you're the person for whom the point of utopian narratives goes whistling straight over your head. There's always juuuuuust one more adjustment to be made. Just one naysayer to murder. Just one policy to update. These stories have been with human society for thousands of years because they're telling you that thinking Utopia is just around the corner is nonsense. Stories are just as much theme as they are sequence of events, and modern fiction criticism fixates unhealthily on the What over the Why. It's not that the sequence of events is unimportant, it's that the story is trying to tell you something.

The 'narrative' can say what it likes, though the writers themselves are on record as stating that there's rarely a defined 'good' or 'evil' within the setting and merely matters of perspective.

Venat isn't some brave hero who saw what others did not. She's an individual who denied her people the opportunity to properly prepare themselves against the threat of the Final Days. The Plenty is a separate world to that of the Ancients and there's no established guarantee that the Ancients would have gone in the exact same direction. The Dragons, too, had a paradise but lost it to war through no fault of their own. Nor does it really align with what the Sundered are doing, given that the trend so far has been for the Scions to move from region to region and establish their own version of 'paradise' upon everybody else with the majority of grit within each nation eroded away or removed entirely in the search for a 'better tomorrow'.

The writing isn't particularly deep or consistent, either. If it's 'bad' for the Ancients to bring back their loved ones, then why is acceptable for the Scions to do the same? Using the power of the same entity who prevented the Ancients from doing it, mind you. If anything, that can be taken as Venat admitting that her methods were incorrect after all and that doing everything possible to preserve one's loved ones is the correct route to take.

Which it is - because there's no reason for anyone to just roll over and die and accept that their friends, family and neighbours 'need' to be wiped out to make way for someone else.

I don't think the story knew what it was doing in the finale and it certainly didn't commit to the 'themes' that it put front and centre. Having done many of the side quests, I noticed that many were about accepting death and moving on - which is all the stranger when that, conveniently, never applies to the Scions or City State leaders.

Each to their own, though, I suppose. Nobody is even obligated to agree with the 'themes' pushed by a story, at any rate. Different characters and factions resonate differently, after all.

[PaulH]

The 'narrative' can say what it likes, though the writers themselves are on record as stating that there's rarely a defined 'good' or 'evil' within the setting and merely matters of perspective.

Venat isn't some brave hero who saw what others did not. She's an individual who denied her people the opportunity to properly prepare themselves against the threat of the Final Days. The Plenty is a separate world to that of the Ancients and there's no established guarantee that the Ancients would have gone in the exact same direction. The Dragons, too, had a paradise but lost it to war through no fault of their own. Nor does it really align with what the Sundered are doing, given that the trend so far has been for the Scions to move from region to region and establish their own version of 'paradise' upon everybody else with the majority of grit within each nation eroded away or removed entirely in the search for a 'better tomorrow'.

The writing isn't particularly deep or consistent, either. If it's 'bad' for the Ancients to bring back their loved ones, then why is acceptable for the Scions to do the same? Using the power of the same entity who prevented the Ancients from doing it, mind you. If anything, that can be taken as Venat admitting that her methods were incorrect after all and that doing everything possible to preserve one's loved ones is the correct route to take.

Which it is - because there's no reason for anyone to just roll over and die and accept that their friends, family and neighbours 'need' to be wiped out to make way for someone else.

I don't think the story knew what it was doing in the finale and it certainly didn't commit to the 'themes' that it put front and centre. Having done many of the side quests, I noticed that many were about accepting death and moving on - which is all the stranger when that, conveniently, never applies to the Scions or City State leaders.

Each to their own, though, I suppose. Nobody is even obligated to agree with the 'themes' pushed by a story, at any rate. Different characters and factions resonate differently, after all.

@Theodric i really like your take on things and therefore always giving my thought provoking alternate insights and other angles to consider when reflecting on this. You contributions to this and the lore forum is always great. Thanks.