Quote Originally Posted by Iscah View Post
The presentation we get of the Sundering is frustratingly non-literal and I don't know if we're supposed to take that as how the confrontation went or not. In the same sequence we see Hyth farewelling Hades, which can't be part of the same event as he must have been one of the first two successful sacrifices to Zodiark (since his soul is up there on the moon) some time before Venat/Hydaelyn prevented the third from taking place.

If nothing else, from the cave paintings in Qitana I was expecting to see more of an epic clash of goddess-Hydaelyn against Zodiark than "Venat walks in and stabs the ground".
It was presented in an 'artsy' manner, though the events happened as they were shown for the most part. Ultimately Venat murdered and betrayed her own people and the Ascians were simply always working to reverse that much in the same way as the Sundered were fighting to avoid being wiped out themselves.

Had the Sundering been an accident or something that happened because Venat, too, lost her memories during the confrontation with Hermes then she would have walked away from it all looking a lot better than she did.

Ultimately, though, Venat simply ended up being one of the main reasons for most of the conflicts within the setting and did very little to actively remedy the situation that came about.

I can only speculate, but I imagine that much like 5.3 the story was meant to go in a different direction only to be tweaked at the last minute. Maybe we'll get some hints at what the alternative was set to be in interviews or some such.