[Spoilers] Venat's motive

[Lurina]

Okay, so! Forgive me for being a silly grognard and beating a dead horse here, but despite this forum now being flooded Venat takes, I feel like I want to get something technical about the narrative off my chest.

So, in Elpis, we travel to the past and tell Venat, in broad strokes, what happens to the Ancient world and everything she does up until the present day. Then, after we go back to the present, she ends up following the scenario we gave her to the letter, creating a closed time loop. After this, three explicit suggestions are given for her motivations in performing the Sundering over the course of the rest of the expansion.

1. She felt that humanity at the time was unable to cope with suffering and loss, and this was going to lead to Ancient culture down a path of immorality and self-destructive behavior which had to be stopped. (The story is not specific about whether this was just preventing the sacrifices, or whether it was about something more fundamental like leading their civilization down the path of the Ra-la and other dead civilizations; regardless, that isn't important for this post.) This is suggested in the monologue she gives at the end of Elpis.

2. From a purely pragmatic perspective, she realized that humanity would only be able to defeat Meteion and prevent the Final Days if they were better at controlling Dynamis. This is suggested in her death scene.

3. She wanted to close rather than branch the timeline, giving you a chance to save your future specifically, which required her to not deviate from the story you told her. This is suggested tangentially in the death scene and again in the final Emet Scene in Ultima Thule.

Now, 1 and 2 are already a little contradictory - if it was always a necessity to Sunder the Ancients no matter what to save the world, why bother trying to convince them to change their ways? Why lecture them in the way she did? - but if we interpret the plot point symbolically as a lack of control over Dynamis just being a literalized representation of the Ancient's emotional immaturity, we can sort of overlook it.

The real thing I'm still hung up on is the contradiction between 1+2 and 3.

There are two ways you can interpret the "Venat creates a closed time loop" plot point. The first is that she did it incidentally (what she thought was wise at any given time merely happened to line up with the story you'd told her, until she eventually just decided to go with it) and the second is that she did it intentionally (from the beginning, she gave up her own agency and just carried out the script you gave her, with the intention of ultimately saving your world).

Right?

(continued in first post.)

[Lurina]

...but, like. Neither of these work. In the former case, it makes her look like a doofus - if she's not explicitly trying to create a time loop but just the best possible world, why continue not to tell Emet and the rest of the Unsundered what's really going on after the Sundering, and Hermes is out of the picture? Why, despite knowing about the Rejoinings and the modus operandi of the Ascians, did she do nothing to stop them and save all those people at the height of her power? And what was the story even trying to suggest in her death scene when it implied she'd been planning for our reunion from the start?

And in the latter case, it's a far more extreme version of the contradiction between 1 and 2. If she was only acting from a script from the beginning, she is essentially a character bereft of any other motives; a slave to causality who by the very nature of her goal could never make any broad-strokes decisions at all. Why, in that case, is it suggested her actions were informed by any deeper feelings whatsoever? What was the point of her monologue?

And like, while we're on this point, where did the idea of the Sundering even come from? I know this is a time travel plot which are always a bit of a mess, but it's kinda egregious in this case. We know she gets the idea of Sundering the world from us - once someone hears a thought from an external source, they can't then develop it independently. But the only reason we had that information because she'd done it already in our past. So we have a situation where this setting-defining event basically originates from a writing futz that's like something out of a Rick and Morty episode.

I know this is being very picky, and normally I wouldn't normally be so fussy about a game story, but the problem is that this whole 8+ year plot relies on selling the idea of Hydaelyn having a justified reason for the Sundering, yet the writers feel anxious and contradictory about what that even is. I can't picture what was going through her head at all. I'm sure this doesn't bother people who weren't attached to the ancient world and the characters in it, but if you are, it makes its destruction and the consequence of human life becoming permanently much worse feel arbitrary and meaningless.

Like we're supposed to smile and accept it was necessary for all these people to die because the scenario team said so, but them "saying so" is a fuzzy mess of contradictory ideas.

[Veloran]

I get the sense that the writers just threw everything they could think of at the wall for Venat's motive and hoped one of them would stick. I mean creating Dynamis-capable beings is something Y'shtola postulates after the fact.

[Cleretic]

First of all: nix number three. Nothing Venat did was actually influenced by us time travelling, she was always going to do this whole plan. This is clear from the very first time we tell her anything; it's Emet-Selch that grapples with 'I would never do such a thing', Venat's challenge is more 'I trust that I would do such a thing if I had to, but will I truly have to'.

Her angle is more about 1 and 2, with an additional third of 'get Zodiark out of the picture'--he needs to remain alive because he's protecting the planet, but he can't stick around as an 'Undo Problems By Sacrificing Lives Here' button. Basically we can't be trusted not to use the thing, and fair enough. Something to also remember is that Zodiark did temper the Convocation--sure, it was light in comparison to what something like Ifrit would go on to do, but it was clear, and they'd become completely unwilling to consider alternatives even as far as with the intended third sacrifice. They're DEFINITELY not gonna listen after the Sundering, when the Ascians now have a very direct thing to point to and say 'screw you, we don't trust you'.

The question of where the Sundering plan came about is an interesting one, because we don't get an answer to that, but we know that by the time Hydaelyn is summoned, Venat has some allies and a fair amount of time. So it's reasonable to me that the Sundering was probably actively thought of rather than found as a magical solution; they considered their options, and for whatever reason, they landed on that.

[tokinokanatae]

It's honestly bewildering to me.

Going into this expac, I had some basic assumptions about how Hydaelyn's "arc" would play out. Since it was clear--based on the fan reaction to the Ancients--that making them completely complicit in their own undoing was a no go, my basic idea of what would be Venat's motivation was this:

1. There was something more deeply wrong with the Final Days than Zodiark addressed. Whether this was something more intrinsically wrong with the planet that He couldn't fix, or something had awoken from within the depths that needed to be addressed. Either way, it's a barbed wire and duct tape solution instead of dealing with the source of the problem.

2.Venat figured out what this issue was and brought it up the Convocation. However, at this point they had all been tempered to some degree. I even remember talking with friends about how horrifying it would be to be Venat, to go to your highest authority that you're used to being reasonable and transparent and they just completely shut you down. In a world where open debate is lauded, there can suddenly be no debate where Zodiark is concerned.

3. Desperate, Venat comes up with a plan to weaken whatever caused the Final Days through Sundering. Maybe she knew what would happen to the remaining Ancients and maybe she didn't, but ultimately she knows that even with Zodiark there, the entire planet is doomed unless she does something to make sure the Final Days can't happen again.

So then, it becomes almost very amusing to me how it ended up literally the opposite of what I assumed. In trying to make both sides sympathetic, Venat comes out wishy-washy at best or nearly psychotic at worst. Instead of the Ancients being unwilling to deal with a solution to the Final Days--they have no clue! Instead of Venat trying to work with the Convocation and being rebuffed, she doesn't even bother to try! Instead of the Sundering being a necessary evil (or mistake) to preserve life, Venat decides that she is the final judge, jury, and executioner of her own people because they didn't handle the literal apocalypse with as much pluck as she would have liked.

[Lurina]

First of all: nix number three. Nothing Venat did was actually influenced by us time travelling.

Yeah, it was. That's alluded to in both your final discussion with her, and especially in Emet's final scene, where he compliments her on resolving the time loop so elegantly.

And my point regarding the Sundering idea is that it's impossible for Venat and her followers to have developed the idea themselves. You already gave it to her by telling her it happens. Once someone has an idea in their head, they can't originate it, because it's already there.

So the idea of the Sundering comes from the Warrior of Light who then tells it to Venat who enacts it which then leads to the Warrior of Light learning about it, who then tells it to Venat who enacts it, which then leads to the Warrior of Light learning about it...

[Cleretic]

So then, it becomes almost very amusing to me how it ended up literally the opposite of what I assumed. In trying to make both sides sympathetic, Venat comes out wishy-washy at best or nearly psychotic at worst.

See, thinking about it... I think you've hit on something, but from the wrong direction. Remember that the writers did want to make this a bit of a debatable notion; in the time of the Ancients, neither side is explicitly in the right. Now, consider that we already had the opposing side to Hydaelyn: The Ascians, and specifically Emet-Selch. Who may have been sympathetic, but are extremely terrible people to us, just utter monsters.

So they want to make Hydaelyn an equal but opposing side to the Ascians and Zodiark. ...but you can't just make her a good, kind, loving and perfect person, because then it's not even a question; do you side with the horrible monsters, or the kindly motherly goddess figure?

It's not that they had to talk her up (although that was a separate need; justifying the Sundering was both needed and difficult), it's that they actually had to scuff her up and make her a clearly imperfect person on or near the Ascians' level.

[Veloran]

First of all: nix number three. Nothing Venat did was actually influenced by us time travelling, she was always going to do this whole plan.

She was always going to not tell anybody about Meteion, specifically sunder the world into fourteen pieces, and create the Mothercrystal while preserving a portion of power for the purposes of testing WoL in the future and providing a way to go challenge Meteion? When Emet says "So me being here now was all part of your 5D master plan huh Venat?" she was going to do that regardless of WoL never showing up in Elpis?

[h-alpha]

She was always going to not tell anybody about Meteion, specifically sunder the world into fourteen pieces, and create the Mothercrystal while preserving a portion of power for the purposes of testing WoL in the future and providing a way to go challenge Meteion? When Emet says "So me being here now was all part of your 5D master plan huh Venat?" she was going to do that regardless of WoL never showing up in Elpis?

Time travel hurts my brain. Others have probably explained this better elsewhere, but...

We are the Warrior of Light, Hydaelyn's chosen champion. For that to happen, we needed Venat to know who we were, awaken the Echo in us, and give us her Blessing of Light, alongside creating a race of rabbits with a spaceship that could eventually take us to Meteion. In order for Venat to know to do that, we needed to go back in time and tell her these things - the idea being that the events that led us to travel back in time to Elpis were only ever possible because we did go back in time. So nothing that we did in the past could have changed what Venat did - she was always going to do what she did, because it needed to be done so that the exact circumstances that allowed for us to go back in time to tell her could happen.

A similar causal loop theory of time travel was used in the Alexander raids as well, I believe.

[Cleretic]

She was always going to not tell anybody about Meteion, specifically sunder the world into fourteen pieces, and create the Mothercrystal while preserving a portion of power for the purposes of testing WoL in the future and providing a way to go challenge Meteion? When Emet says "So me being here now was all part of your 5D master plan huh Venat?" she was going to do that regardless of WoL never showing up in Elpis?

Yes. Yes, exactly, all of that.

In fact, you stated the biggest piece of evidence we have: the Mothercrystal. She can't have created the Mothercrystal as part of just following a script we gave her, because we didn't know she did that until later.