Endwalker's story had me, but lost me. Ethical issues especially (spoilers)

[Rinoa]

This has been bothering me for a while. The seeming breakdown in ethics, and my character being complicit in them. It's resulted in the first time in over a decade that I've been disillusioned with the game. I'm not sure how to speak about it.



I enjoyed how we have so many things in Endwalker to draw comparisons between. Two synthetic habitats, one welcoming (Labrinthos), and the other cold and mechanical (Bestways Burrow), but both well-intentioned in their design. The way that, after a decade, the garleans are destroyed by their own avarice, not by our hand. I had no idea what the future held, despite being in that world since 1.0


I also enjoyed the ethical questions the Leveilleurs face within their family. I think every player who relates to their character will find their reasoning for why they do what they do as their WoL.



The happenings on the moon were another fascinating series of twists. Bestways Burrow made me think of how constructed top-down utopias are so sterile and cold. Even though I love that the Loporrits are trying their best. They can't expect themselves to get it perfect before people come, because a truly wonderful habitat takes effort from every inhabitant to add color, and make it unique.


I must admit, I had a bit of an unexpected sorta-spiritual moment in Elpis. Feels silly to say. Final Fantasy games tend to do that sometimes though. It tickled some very deep feelings within me. 1: It feels like an example of my dream that people would become wiser, and more peaceful, if most of us were centuries old. 2: It brought me back to the community I felt with my coworkers in R&D at my old job I miss (The Mourning Dew especially) 3: Coolest development environment i've dreamed of for new biotech, which tickles my interest in bioengineering 4: I really wasn't expecting to feel like my Elezen fit-in so darn well. That sure was lucky character creation.


Suffice to say, I didn't feel like leaving for a bit.



I really got my hopes up that the game would do something truly unexpected, and split the timeline to save both worlds. There still is hope for it, but the way the Elpis chapter came to a close just felt like such a cheap "holywood ending" to keep things from getting too complicated. It felt like it undermined the weight of us finally telling them about the future. At the end I hated how my character agreed to Venat's sophistic ramblings about needing suffering to make hope and happiness. Even the unsundered world had enough suffering to do that judging by speaking with others, we didn't need to let any more happen.


I felt a sense of guilt, like my character gave Venat the knowledge of that particular possible timeline, so venat took the safest choice and went for our future instead of trying another. I would have definitely been in our former-self's camp of trying to find a third way. But that's speaking as if it's in the past, I was there, I had that duty to save them along with the future. If I didn't fix it there to split the timeline, I'll come back after endwalker to do it... Or so I'd like to dream. The story doesn't seem to bother itself with causality, so neither shall I.



I came back and even Y'shtola had no comment about how amazing it was, it was all just a footnote in our current quest to us jaded Scions.


This is when the worst thing happened, I realized how it would unfold. The mystery died a good deal. I decided to stay in Elpis for a few weeks since it was a nice place to relax from earthly worries. I ended up seeing spoilers, but wasn't spoiled because It was precisely everything I expected. I had already spoiled myself by figuring it out.


It's been really difficult because my best friend won't speak to me about endwalker out of a misguided decision to not do spoilers, even when I already know them, and request them. So instead of having that agony of sitting silently while my friend reads the lore forums and exiles me from her thoughts on endwalker any more, I'm making myself finish endwalker. Boy am I not having fun. There's so much my Elezen would do differently, and I'm not sure exactly how to get back on the bandwagon now.


It's interesting that every former convocation member is in some way uses genocide as their method. The ascians decided upon it after their methods failed, Venat decided to sunder the entire world out of a fear that the persuit of perfection would bring genocide anyway, and our WoL has no small number of kills in her journey.


It comes back to the Leveilleur's good questions they asked each other over what is right. I had an explanation as for why my WoL has done the right thing, but not after we left Venat in Elpis to her views on what is right. I wouldn't want Venat to sunder the world for 12,000 years of suffering just to have my future. I would need a very good reason to let it all happen. I definitely didn't find it by the time I walked out of Elpis. My character was more confident than me.



My view is heavily biased because everybody else seems to have a normal time in the Elpis story, and everything else flows ok. Meanwhile for me it was a big rise and then crash. I am unsure how to unbias my view other than asking you your opinions.


In this instance, spoilers are welcome, since I'm now trying to find a reason to want to play again, but finishing these last quests has been rough. So speak openly.


Thank you

[KizuyaKatogami]

snip

I pretty much agree with most of your points. A lot of the Elpis and post elpis stuff felt like a fever dream, not a particularly good one at that. Hearing Venat have the audacity go on and on about hope and suffering but then didn’t have hope for her own people and instead chose to split them all apart and basically kill them all and not at the very least having some dialogue where i could call her out on it annoyed me extremely to say the least. As did when we bring up how she/hydaelyn had lied to us so long and it just gets handwaved by the Watcher. In the end 99% of the stuff post elpis just annoyed me and bored me to death and the ending was pretty predictable. If it makes you feel slightly better, maybe Pandaemonium will bring up a split timeline where the ancients continue to survive but eh, i won’t hold my breath. SE seems to have a weird obsession with the sundered needing to be perfect beings who can accomplish anything with the power of friendship which for some random reason the ancients couldn’t do.

[EdwinLi]

I pretty much agree with most of your points. A lot of the Elpis and post elpis stuff felt like a fever dream, not a particularly good one at that. Hearing Venat have the audacity go on and on about hope and suffering but then didn’t have hope for her own people and instead chose to split them all apart and basically kill them all and not at the very least having some dialogue where i could call her out on it annoyed me extremely to say the least. As did when we bring up how she/hydaelyn had lied to us so long and it just gets handwaved by the Watcher. In the end 99% of the stuff post elpis just annoyed me and bored me to death and the ending was pretty predictable. If it makes you feel slightly better, maybe Pandaemonium will bring up a split timeline where the ancients continue to survive but eh, i won’t hold my breath. SE seems to have a weird obsession with the sundered needing to be perfect beings who can accomplish anything with the power of friendship which for some random reason the ancients couldn’t do.

I believe the Venat part was just badly handled since we had a huge skip from Elpis to the moment she sunder the world.

By what we are shown, Venat could have Sundered the world at anytime as she had the power to do so at that moment but she lingered on because she wanted to find atleast a small speck of hope that the Ancients were worth saving and they had the ability to stop Meteion themselves. However, that final moment in Amaurot showed her all hope to save her people was lost and they have literally become the death cult that she feared they will become if the resort to Zodiark. SE will need a very large amount of MSQ to cover Venat's journey to that moment to understand why she had given up at that moment despite looking for a small speck of hope the Ancients can be saved before she sundered the world.

A very massive amount of plot is missing in Venat's story leading to that moment of Sundering the world. However, this is very common throughout FF14 storyline to only see a small piece of the picture rather than the entire story of that character leading up to a specific moment which is why people have a lot of moments in FF14 with hating a character at the start due to how they act in a small moment of their life that WoL see to liking and feeling sorry for the character later once we get a larger piece of their story we never saw that lead them to that moment where they are now.

Yet that is a reflection of life's stories as we may know a amount of certain people's stories which is why we are so fond or hateful of people we known for so long but at the sametime we know so little about other people's stories leading up to specific moments.

[Ryaz]

Elidibus said from the start that you can't change the past. You couldn't save Elpis and your world at the same time. If you did, you would have have doomed your own world to destruction by branching the timeline. You would have erased all your friends and loved ones from existence. Which is why a closed loop needed to happen.

The Ancients at that point when Hydalaen sundered them were beyond saving. She tried to convince them that they could move forward, that they could overcome despair. They instead turned their backs on her and the others, insistent on staying stuck in the past, and were willing to sacrifice more and more of their people in a misguided hope of getting back their old world because they couldn't move forward. They were in danger of becoming just like every other world that Meteion visited and destroying themselves. Venat made the choice she made to give humanity a fighting chance or they would have just kept sacrificing themselves until they went extinct.

[KizuyaKatogami]

I believe the Venat part was just badly handled since we had a huge skip from Elpis to the moment she sunder the world.

By what we are shown, Venat could have Sundered the world at anytime as she had the power to do so at that moment but she lingered on because she wanted to find atleast a small speck of hope that the Ancients were worth saving and they had the ability to stop Meteion themselves. However, that final moment in Amaurot showed her all hope to save her people was lost and they have literally become the death cult that she feared they will become if the resort to Zodiark. SE will need a very large amount of MSQ to cover Venat's journey to that moment to understand why she had given up at that moment despite looking for a small speck of hope the Ancients can be saved before she sundered the world.

A very massive amount of plot is missing in Venat's story leading to that moment of Sundering the world. However, this is very common throughout FF14 storyline to only see a small piece of the picture rather than the entire story of that character leading up to a specific moment which is why people have a lot of moments in FF14 with hating a character at the start due to how they act in a small moment of their life that WoL see to liking and feeling sorry for the character later once we get a larger piece of their story we never saw that lead them to that moment where they are now.

Yet that is a reflection of life's stories as we may know a lagre amount of certain people's stories which is why we are so fond or hateful of people we known for so long but at the sametime we know so little about other people's stories leading up to specific moments.

She only approached them after the final days occurred though and she had lost everything. After we go there, she has the knowledge the final days are going to happen, that’s what makes her so shitty. She didn’t get mind wiped. She could’ve told Emet and Hythlo. She chose to keep the secrets and lie and then sundered the world when in reality had she told them they together most likely could have done something about it. That’s the issue. If they had made it where she too got mind wiped and did the sundering out of desperation that no one knew wtf was going on then that’s more understandable. But they made it all even more convoluted by having her memory still intact so she just looks incredibly bad.

Venat made the choice she made to give humanity a fighting chance or they would have just kept sacrificing themselves until they went extinct.

Theres not much that supports this claim though, they had only planned 3 sacrifices, and two of those were to help save the world and keep it thriving. The only 'selfish" one was the one to bring back their loved ones from inside Zodiark. After that they would have 0 reason to continue to keep sacrificing. I keep seeing this claim but im not shown anything that actually supports this. It's just like all those claims in shb that Zodiark was some blood god demanding sacrifices.

[Anonymoose]

I am unsure how to unbias my view other than asking you your opinions.

I'm willing to take the characters at their word regarding their analysis of their own actions.
They took those actions in a plot written by the same people writing that exposition, after all.

Elidibus reflects in 5.3 on the mistake of thinking that giving himself over to Zodiark would lead to the nightmare ending. His reflection focuses on that it'd gone awry from the start; the suffering of his people grew worse before the sundering. Emet-Selch spends all of Endwalker highlighting that his Shadowbringers self may have self acted in consistency with his values, but pursued a plan that ultimately wouldn't have worked. Venat and Emet-Selch both verbalize that destruction by Meteion was the probable outcome of the other paths in motion. (Emet-Selch in Ultima Thule, Hydaelyn when she tries to convince her people to change their course and they refuse.)

And then nature of dynamis conveniently almost guarantees the validity of those assessments.

I put a lot of weight on that even with his full memory and no tempering, Emet-Selch says, "That's why I fought you. And why I lost."

Every one of the initial conditions in play took options off the table, and we made the most of what was left. Could it have played out differently? If Hermes had made different decisions. If mistakes hadn't been made in the creation of Zodiark. If one person could control the actions and beliefs of all. If everyone were psychic. If, if, if. But, but, but. Sure, maybe there could have been another way if unchangeable things had changed. But none of then NPCs are saying so. They all act like this was the last bastion of hope; a Hail Mary pulled off SOLELY because everything happened just so.

If Elidibus, Emet-Selch, and Venat can all be on the same page about that, who am I to not be? lol

[Bright-Flower]

I can't really fault anyone for not agreeing with Venat sundering or the scene leading up to it. Later on talking to y'sthola it's presented as the sundering thinning the aether and allowing interaction with dynamus was important and why she sundered yet the cutscene where we see it seems all about stopping people from trying to cling to the past. It's a bit muddled.

That said, I had absolutely 0 interest in a split timeline where 'both worlds are saved.' I have no interest in spinning off new timelines, and I'm glad Elpis was about finding out what happened in our past rather than making a new timeline. I'm not interested in "Age of Calamity: Ethairis Edition."

[Rinoa]

Elidibus said from the start that you can't change the past. You couldn't save Elpis and your world at the same time. If you did, you would have have doomed your own world to destruction by branching the timeline. You would have erased all your friends and loved ones from existence. Which is why a closed loop needed to happen.

The Ancients at that point when Hydalaen sundered them were beyond saving. She tried to convince them that they could move forward, that they could overcome despair. They instead turned their backs on her and the others, insistent on staying stuck in the past, and were willing to sacrifice more and more of their people in a misguided hope of getting back their old world because they couldn't move forward. They were in danger of becoming just like every other world that Meteion visited and destroying themselves. Venat made the choice she made to give humanity a fighting chance or they would have just kept sacrificing themselves until they went extinct.

Yes exactly, and my character would have been prepared to let go of her future so that this society could be given a real chance. The past was obviously changed, he meant it that you shouldn't, not that you can't. On a related note, Emet-Selch was ok with murdering everybody and causing suffering. Stopping somebody from existing isn't nearly the same. I like to think a reasonable analog is how you could have hundreds of children in your life, but if you decide to have none, you didn't wrong any of those possible people.



They were beyond saving because people like Venat must not have done a good enough job playing their part. If she did let things fall apart without giving her all, then she must admit she is part of the problem. Venat has this sense of self-importance as if she is a god, and that is precisely the issue with the other amaurotines. I would have talked her down a bit from her high horse if my character could say what I wish. A good friend doesn't let somebody go down a bad path. In many ways it feels like she had so little hope for her situation that her words about hope were meaningless. She murdered the good along with the bad, without any care for who deserved to live and who didn't.

I would not support the WoL damning all eorzeans to death so that a future race could survive. That is effectively what happened.

The best way to redeem this is if our WoL travels back in time to stop it with her, and learns the hard way why they couldn't be saved.

But again, my biggest issue is how my character just stood there and agreed to her nihilistic (can't find the right word, maybe self-destructive) sophistry without offering a more balanced view.... (I get the irony of me wearing Sophist's Robes while being there hehe)

[Bright-Flower]

The present day wasn't a hypothetical child you 'could have had' though. It exists, you came from it, those peole are there waiting for you to come back. Going back in time and changing the past to make them not exist is as good as killing them.

[Cilia]

The context we were given for the Sundering in Shadowbringers was that it was done to prevent incessant sacrifices to Zodiark, but this is limited by Emet-Selch's knowledge of the event (filtered through the Hythlodaeus shade). Endwalker changes this context to it being so the Ancients don't continue to commit suicide in Zodiark's name (having given up on the future and longing for the nostalgic past), and to create Dynamis-wielding people inured to the hardships of life the Ancients rejected in order to actually save Etheriys from Meteion's song of oblivion (instead of just shielding it for an indefinite length of time).

For what it's worth the story and characters both acknowledge it was an abominable but necessary evil.