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

[Denishia]

To be very honest about my emotional reaction: I went into Elpis already disliking the Ancient Amaroutine society as presented and severely doubting that it was a utopia or frankly a place I would want to live, and after not just the MSQ but the third side-quest with the microaggression dehumanization of my WoL (and almost every other character in this game) as a familiar, plus the questioning from Hermes, that feeling of dislike deepened.

The use of creation magics to create creatures out of desires to follow fads, personal amusement, and advancement and then dress it up as good for the planet (and that the vetting process of the Convocation struck me as something that their culture thought was objective and rational while in truth was not) while admitting that said creations would gain souls beyond their control not deterring the readiness to delete said 'playthings'... That their role as stewards of the planet and god-like framing came across as both self-appointed and arrogant. Their emphasis on their lives only being worthwhile to complete some purpose and then willingly die also rubbed me wrong.

The hypocrisy around their expression of conformity in attire to avoid jealousy and then manifesting those in their creations away struck me as hilariously realistic, not to mention the emphasis on hair - attend or teach at a school with a school uniform and the amount of focused expression on the few articles of clothing one is allowed to personalize makes the parallel obvious. And to be very very petty, I dislike their robes.

All and all I found that Elpis and the researchers there were a direct parallel to Azys Lla with a lesser degree but still present amount of the callousness out of privilege, boredom, and hedonism of the Late Allagans shown in Amon's flashback. Slightly less amoral but not as admirable as the writers wanted me to feel about them. I found the Ancient society inhuman and inhumane. And yes, I am judging them by my mortal standards, both in-game and out.

Their society wasn't the civilization that I disliked the most in XIV, I think (that title might go to the Garlean Empire, Allag, or Eulmore under Vauthry) but what was giving me bad vibes and a sense of unease were similar.

In short, my take away from the time in Elpis was that I wanted to Sunder them and would have done so if Venat didn't.

[KariTheFox]

I agree with you - though I don't think the writers wanted us to admire the ancients. Feel sympathy and pathos for them, sure. But the majority of our time in Elpis is spent connecting emotionally to first Hermes, and then Venat. Two characters who were very much outsiders who did not fit in to the "perfect" society of the ancients.

We are told by Emet-Selch that thier society was perfect, but shown a society that was anything but.

[Garnetiferous]

TBH I didn't see anything terribly wrong with the Ancients, especially when compared to several societies in the sundered world. They seemed like normal people who weren't perfect but who had a much different society than from the modern day which is to be expected when they apparently don't die of old age and have powerful creation magicks that they literally can do without thinking.

[KariTheFox]

I think that's the point. They were just a society, flawed an imperfect like any other. And it's a horrible tragedy that thier society ended - just like it is with any other.

[Alleo]

I'm going to pose a different question: Should the player character have been so closely involved with Venat/Hydaelyn, especially in a positive way, if her actions were morally questionable?

Well we needed the information we gathered in Elpis. I am quite sure that the WoL themselves had thought that they would just observe there and seeing our reactions to Venats question we were not really at ease about telling them the truth. Only after Venat herself said that we should only worry about our future and not their present did we tell them about it all.

What could we have done otherwise? Stumble around Elpis on our own in the hope of finding the answers? The deeper investigation about Hermes and Meteion only started after we told them about the future and that we somehow were send on Elpis.

And even when Venat said that she wont tell the others about it, I was still not sure if we did not create a whole timeline.

[Veloran]

Imagine it like a shoelace frayed on one end and held together by an aglet on the other. Though each strand branches off in its own direction, they gradually converge into a single thread the closer they are to the aglet.

Which is to say that our time in Elpis came to pass even though we weren't alive to go back there in the Eighth Era timeline, because we'd already done so in the New Dawn timeline, and the two share the same root of "every moment prior to the split". There is some degree of convolution to be had, of course: If you try to imagine them as wholly separate timelines, then they're codependent on each other. This is the kind of strangeness that happens when time travel keeps cropping up in a story.

If it makes you feel any better, the writers have probably had to sit down and figure all this out themselves, so any pain you might be feeling is something they've shared. Maybe.

I'm not so sure that makes sense, given our timeline is causally dependent on G'raha's timeline, and in that timeline Venat would now be extremely confused about why she has a bunch of memories that no longer align with reality and are causally impossible.

[Rosenstrauch]

I'm not so sure that makes sense, given our timeline is causally dependent on G'raha's timeline, and in that timeline Venat would now be extremely confused about why she has a bunch of memories that no longer align with reality and are causally impossible.

Pardon my bluntness, but... no shit. It's time travel. Being causally impossible in our own reality is its single most defining feature.

[Rulakir]

What could we have done otherwise? Stumble around Elpis on our own in the hope of finding the answers? The deeper investigation about Hermes and Meteion only started after we told them about the future and that we somehow were send on Elpis.

Yes, and this was a narrative decision on their part to have the WoL closely interact and become friends with the person who they knew was going to commit a controversial act. Hence my question. There were a dozen other ways to write Elpis that wouldn't have involved us becoming BFFs with Venat.

[Veloran]

Pardon my bluntness, but... no shit. It's time travel. Being causally impossible in our own reality is its single most defining feature.

G'raha's parallel worlds time travel wasn't causally impossible. Until Endwalker anyway.

[Rosenstrauch]

G'raha's parallel worlds time travel wasn't causally impossible. Until Endwalker anyway.

It was impossible from the very beginning. You can't travel back in time, period. The laws governing reality don't allow it. But fiction asks us to accept that that it's possible to travel back in time. In order to understand a story in which time travel is possible, we must first suspend our disbelief.

So, G'raha traveled back in time. He did so with the intent to change the past. This is impossible. You can't change what happened in the past, because the past is a fixed series of events leading to the present. But we've already accepted, by virtue of suspension of disbelief, that time travel is possible, so any rules about being able to change the past are entirely arbitrary. As such, instead of kicking our heels in and decrying the impossibility of such events, we must ask what would happen if you attempted to change the past. If you can't, it's a causal loop. If you can, we run into the Grandfather Paradox—see below.

Anyways, G'raha then proceeded to change the way events unfolded in such a manner that his own future could not have happened. This is impossible because of the Grandfather Paradox—if an event in the past is dependent on an event in the future, then it can not negate that future without also negating itself. But since we've already accepted that time travel is possible, then as a consequence we have to accept that running into the Grandfather Paradox is an inevitability and come up with a solution. The solution the writers went with is Multiverse Theory. Thus G'raha and the changes he made to the timeline are able to exist, even though they are dependent upon events in the future that are no longer possible.

But that leaves the question of what happens to the future G'raha departed from. Since the events leading to it are no longer possible, its continued existence should no longer be possible as well. But once more the writers ask us to look to Multiverse Theory, and have decided that instead of negating its own existence, the future G'raha came from is instead on the same timeline as the one he saved, but as a separate branch from the one he saved. Their pasts are identical, but their futures are different.

Now, having established that, we come to our trip to Elpis. We have already accepted that traveling to the past is possible. We have also accepted that the continued existence of the Eighth Era future is possible. Now we have a time travel event dependent on the existence of G'raha having traveled in time. Easy enough to accept. While we're in the past, we attempt to change the past, inadvertently causing a causal loop instead. This causal loop is dependent upon G'raha's future to exist, as a direct consequence of G'raha having arrived from it. But G'raha's future is also one in which the events in Elpis must have come to pass, because that was also part of its own past—they're the same timeline, just ending on different branches.

Now I know what you're thinking: How can that be, if we died in G'raha's future before traveling to the past? And the answer is that we already did so from our own branch of the timeline. It's the exact same past, after all.

Now, this is utter bollocks. But every single thing about time travel is utter bollocks. If you're willing to suspend your disbelief to accept everything up to that point, what makes that last bit unacceptable? It's built entirely on things the writers have already established, and in no way contradicts them.

And just so we're clear: I have no interest in continuing this conversation further. Talking about time travel gives me a headache—and it's not because time travel itself is hard to understand. It really isn't. No, it's explaining it that's the painful part. Makes me feel like I—an American mutt who only understand English—am trying to speak Indonesian to Martians. All of this is a spectacular waste of everyone's time if we have a communication breakdown.