What's the point with that quite lackluster story in Endwalker?

[dapperfaffer]

The Echo is a fraction of the power of an ancient, a residual power that normally rests within all life in the Source and its reflections, there is a way to trigger awakening to the Echo which often lead to experience a vision of a star-shower falling from a burning sky. and seeing that we are sunderd we need blessing or the traveler's ward as Venat called it for protection.

Jandor has a simpler term,

So then:
Emet-Selch: Yes? Did my lesson provoke thought, giving rise to further questions?

>> Choice 1: Three of you escaped the sundering. But what of those who didn't...?
Emet-Selch: Why, their very beings were divided into fourteen, of course. Yet by our power, we unsundered Ascians may raise up one of their fragments to their original office.
Emet-Selch: Ah, but I suppose this in itself bears explaining. So... the names by which you know us are not, in fact, our names.
Emet-Selch: Be it Elidibus or Igeyorhm, all are titles of office. And when an office is vacated, it may be filled by another.
Emet-Selch: Over the eons, I have overseen several changings of the guard among our sundered brethren.
Emet-Selch: And in such instances, the vacant title ordinarily goes to another fragment of the selfsame soul.
Emet-Selch: While it is by no means impossible to raise up wholly unrelated individuals, 'tis we whose fervent entreaties brought forth Lord Zodiark--whose souls He claimed in the beginning--who make the truest servants.

So then, the WoL is Azem in the consideration that because we were able to merge with Ardbert which lead to clarifying the color of the soul that Emet could see, which is like Azems, that makes the WoL Azems sundered soul. Which is where we get the power of the Echo, and the increased version through the Blessing of Light.

[Divinemights]

Venat is not real and was written by modern people.

True, but it doesn't mean a character created can not have his/her own soul.
This is especially true with Japanese narration where a character usually have full background story, behave accordingly to the character setting and character setting fits to the civilization and ideology of the period.
In direct contrast, English Comics like Marvel is inferior , etc are weak in character setting and development and character often behave to the plot need instead of character setting
In her case, she is someone be from thousand of years ago and everything she has done fit her civilization and ideology

[EaraGrace]

The notes within the Dead Ends say otherwise. Meteion is credited with both triggering the world war that decimated world #2 as well as her incessant pestering having caused the existential crisis of world #3 leading to the creation of Ra-la.

World 2 had a preexisting conflict that used Meteions arrival as justification. Their World War was inevitable. And World 3’s people had already accepted they wanted to die before she came. The reason for her pestering was their answer that existence was pointless, and she hated that answer because of what it meant. If anything, it was Meteion who had the existential crisis, not those who created Ra-La, for them she was a pitiable creature who hadn’t accepted the truth yet.

The implication that "perfect is bad" is hard to shake off when they show different societies which reached different states of "fulfillment", "enlightenment", "perfection", "immortality", etc. and they all "reached" a catastrophic end (in some cases by nothing more than the power of the writer's pen imo and not a natural progression of events). Not a single one managed to keep living their lives. How can you shake off the implication that reaching such a state is indeed a bad thing with such representation?

The alternative explanation is that their societies weren’t perfect and instead simply traded one form of suffering for another. They achieved what they thought was perfection, worlds without sadness, pain or loss, when in reality they were just as plagued with suffering as “lesser” races. A perfect society would not kill itself after all. Perfection thus is bad, not because it’s a bad thing in itself, but because it’s an unobtainable goal that one will never achieve. And if one does think they have reached it, then they are wrong.

And this is the weird thing. The Ancients didn’t stop striving to do better. They got essentially detoured, but it’s as Hythlodaeus says. After all was said and done they planned to go back to their duties of being the stewards of the star and bettering it. So i’m curious what the message with them is.

What happens when there’s nothing left to create, nothing left to do to make the star “better”?

[KizuyaKatogami]

World 2 had a preexisting conflict that used Meteions arrival as justification. Their World War was inevitable. And World 3’s people had already accepted they wanted to die before she came. The reason for her pestering was their answer that existence was pointless, and she hated that answer because of what it meant. If anything, it was Meteion who had the existential crisis, not those who created Ra-La, for them she was a pitiable creature who hadn’t accepted the truth yet.



The alternative explanation is that their societies weren’t perfect and instead simply traded one form of suffering for another. They achieved what they thought was perfection, worlds without sadness, pain or loss, when in reality they were just as plagued with suffering as “lesser” races. A perfect society would not kill itself after all. Perfection thus is bad, not because it’s a bad thing in itself, but because it’s an unobtainable goal that one will never achieve. And if one does think they have reached it, then they are wrong.



What happens when there’s nothing left to create, nothing left to do to make the star “better”?

Who knows? If they even ever got to the point, maybe they go to a new planet and work towards bettering that one as well. Alas we’ll never know, because a devil sought it fit to end a civilization that had much room to grow and flourish. We could say the same for the sundered no? For all of their preaching of a better tomorrow, what happens when they reach it? Or are we going to say for them it’s an impossibility.

[TaleraRistain]

And this is the weird thing. The Ancients didn’t stop striving to do better. They got essentially detoured, but it’s as Hythlodaeus says. After all was said and done they planned to go back to their duties of being the stewards of the star and bettering it. So i’m curious what the message with them is.

But they did stop striving to do better. What are their metrics for what is good for the star? They were going to write off the serpent because it couldn't fly. Because it was not as it was planned to be. But sometimes the most worthwhile innovations and leaps forward come from accidents.

Then there's the situation with the creations that were killing other creations. They decided based on their own preset ideas of what was right that something like that wouldn't be of use to the star. But they didn't consider that may there was something that sort of danger could teach other creatures. We shouldn't be in conflict all the time, but we can grow from it.

They didn't show indication they could think outside the box like this. And so they stopped progressing as a species.

Also....why does everything have to have a use? Why doesn't something useless deserve to also exist?

[RoroCookies]

Who knows? If they even ever got to the point, maybe they go to a new planet and work towards bettering that one as well. Alas we’ll never know, because a devil sought it fit to end a civilization that had much room to grow and flourish. We could say the same for the sundered no? For all of their preaching of a better tomorrow, what happens when they reach it? Or are we going to say for them it’s an impossibility.

Well obviously once the sundered reaches perfection we’re gonna have to sunder everyone again!

[Vahlnir]

Well obviously once the sundered reaches perfection we’re gonna have to sunder everyone again!

And then it'll be revealed that Hydaelyn isn't actually dead. She faked it to motivate her WoL to go to space, obviously.

[Kozh]

Well obviously once the sundered reaches perfection we’re gonna have to sunder everyone again!

So that's what the next 10 year story gonna be.. Sundering 2.0, let's go.

[van_arn]

So that's what the next 10 year story gonna be.. Sundering 2.0, let's go.

We'll need more shards to visit eventually!

[Kozh]

If the sundering is splitting the world, when did she replace one race by another race? To me, it seems more likely that the sundering caused an "evolution" of the Ancients into the existing races, potentially with a mixing with the new life created by Zodiark.

Yeah, "evolution" but backwards. You seem to have very limited definition of what "killing" is. Let's see what the sundering did:

- shorten one lifespan to probably 1/10 of the original (and that's being generous)
- made them susceptible to diseases etc.
- strip them of creation magic (and magic in general until 3rd calamity)
- revert them back to caveman level of civilization
- probably even cause then to lose their memory of unsundered world and life

This is like cutting a person arms and legs, poison them, and when they died a month later, you still say "I didn't kill them".

And regarding the new life that you hinted as precursor of current races, there's zero evidence about it. The closest we get is mention of creation of lupin beast tribe (from memo in elpis), but considering the lupins are still very much unchanged after 12k years, it's doubtful there's a different races. There's only one race, the Ancients. The only one we know is they who live in Amaurot, but outside of that, it's still the Ancients who populate ethyris.

Again, because the story is told from our point of view, and she is all that to us. Just because she may have done something some people disagreed with in the past, it does not mean other people have to view her in that light.

If the game isn't that preoccupied in shoving the story's theme on our face all the time, they could have give us a couple npc to give musing or debate about Her actions. Heck, even the scions who usually have some different opinions than the general eorzean population doesn't have anything to say regarding hydaelyn, save for agreeing with Her (as far as I remember).