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

[Kyohei]

Yeah it is, but irrationality is widespread and it does have consequences. Nonsense, sadly, can be realistic.

[Lauront]

It's still irrational to me. The sundered are no more equipped to not become The Plenty, in fact, one of the notes states that they started out similar to the sundered. Venat may have kicked the can down the road, but it's not as if her 'solution' is permanent.

I hesitate to mention Allag or Garlemald because people get hung up on them being Ascian constructs, but Allag was close to "perfection" and Garlemald was close to the second world in the Dead Ends. It doesn't take a lot to manipulate mankind into destroying themselves.

Totally, that is the biggest issue with it, and it sits ill at ease with the perfectionist tendencies which sundered man - again, most prominent in the Scions - still harbours. So the "test" can either be administered again by another supreme deity... or they can figure out ways not to kill themselves out of boredom should they achieve the extirpation of suffering. I know which I'd consider the better route. And at the end of the day, the stars are what maintain the cycles of rebirth...

[PawPaw]

It's still irrational to me. The sundered are no more equipped to not become The Plenty

More likely that the Sundered will go the way of the diseased ocean invaders or the friendly neighborhood Globalcitizen. Same dungeon but let's be honest, the Sundered could never be peaceful long enough to get bored to literal death of it.

[Erendis]

More likely that the Sundered will go the way of the diseased ocean invaders or the friendly neighborhood Globalcitizen. Same dungeon but let's be honest, the Sundered could never be peaceful long enough to get bored to literal death of it.

Honestly, world can't perfect (for people) if people do not want to live in it. People of the Plenty seemed to think that lack of conflict caused their boredom but imo they just stopped caring about anything but themselves.

[Kyohei]

Zodiark was a bit more than a tool, they literally poured their tears and souls into him. Zodiark represented their hope in front of the final days.
Both Hydaelin and Zodiark are "Her" and "Him" with a capital H, but we have to remember the text is primarily wrote in Japanese which doesn't have such a thing. Although they do have honorifics.

I would add that, the plan has always been to summon Zodiark and then bring back the souls once saved. Letting the first step happen if she didn't want the second would obviously cause issues.

[Kozh]

Honestly I'm not sure why they went with "venat sunder because dynamis" instead of "venat sunder because sacrificing new life is bad" (with the confirmation that, yes, the new life seeded by zodiark is indeed new Ancients). Imo, the second option is more grounded and better taken than the first one. Mainly because we never see her efforts on trying to prevent the final days besides preaching. Not only that, she also comply with hermes ridiculous test and rule, forcing a standard that goes against the nature of the Ancients (a peaceful immortal race who focuses on the betterment of the star).

Shouldn't made dynamis and meteion a thing imo.

[KageTokage]

Honestly I'm not sure why they went with "venat sunder because dynamis" instead of "venat sunder because sacrificing new life is bad" (with the confirmation that, yes, the new life seeded by zodiark is indeed new Ancients). Imo, the second option is more grounded and better taken than the first one. Mainly because we never see her efforts on trying to prevent the final days besides preaching. Not only that, she also comply with hermes ridiculous test and rule, forcing a standard that goes against the nature of the Ancients (a peaceful immortal race who focuses on the betterment of the star).

Shouldn't made dynamis and meteion a thing imo.

I don't feel that the dynamis and Meteion were the issue so much as the time travel and resulting causal loop being decided upon as their method for providing the solution to the Final Days and the reasoning behind the Sundering.

They could've reasonably kept Elpis in the present day and conveyed the necessary information in other ways with some tweaking, like Fandaniel saying something that would implicate Hermes with having been tied to the Final Days all along, but Elidibus and the rest of Convocation not knowing due to him still having opted to erase his memories with Kairos, perhaps simply because he felt the truth of the universe was too ugly to bear. We could learned about the whole Meteion threat by finding a spare concept that Hermes had hidden away in Ktisis Hyperboreia (Given how many he had produced, he had to have had one somewhere), then having the thing go crazy the instant it's awakened.

That's only scratching the surface of the elements they'd need to change/re-contextualize but it hardly strikes me as impossible to pull off.

[Theodric]

I think that the writers pushed themselves into a corner that they couldn't get out of because even if the 'new life' happened to be Ancients, sacrificing a portion of an unwilling population is still the better option when compared to killing every last man, woman and child present on Etheirys at the time of the Sundering. Furthermore, the only reason any of the three rounds of sacrifices had to be made in the first place is due to Venat allowing the Final Days to happen. It's the equivalent of someone knowing that a huge tsunami is about to hit, refusing to warn the people in its path and then blaming the survivors for seeking to rebuild and strive to return to their normal lives.

[Teraq]

Never mind the terrible time loop plot point or Venat taking a single line from Meteion about some distant alien civilisation and absolutely running with it like an olympic athlete because she found the WoL cool, I've got to give it to Kairos for not only being an awfully convenient memory wipe machine, but also possessing the power to make everyone in its vicinity a dumb-ass.



Are you going to tell me that literally nobody investigated an incident in which one of the most important people on the planet (as well as his also-kind-of-a-big-deal friend) got his memory wiped by a goddamned memory wipe machine? The memory wipe machine that he himself found dodgy as soon as he heard about it because this is apparently something restricted by law, as he mentions it potentially making Pashtarot jump out of his seat? Is... is everyone just going to roll with that??? Does nobody in Elpis find this fishy at all? I mean there was quite the commotion outside Ktsis Hyperboreia when we went in. Why did Emet-Selch not retract himself from evaluating Hermes right there and then? Why not postpone the process and assign another Convocation member to reevaluate Hermes once the situation has been fully investigated and figured out? IS ANYONE ON THIS CONVOCATION OKAY???

God damn it this plot you guys ffs

(I propose an AU where the Convocation raises the alarm about what happened, Pashtarot goes to investigate things in Elpis with Echo abilities and he discovers the truth with complete horror, asking Elidibus how to proceed and what, exactly, to do with Hermes... and Venat, due to the very dubious implications of her not telling anyone a peep about the whole deal.)

Not sure if it really was wise to depict them as tempered instead of just letting them have their very own different personalities without any influences other than their own convictions and duties. In a way it makes things less interesting.

Hard agree. Going further, if we were going with tempering anyway, then I would have liked Ascians, Unsundered and Sundered, to reflect on it and what it means to them, how they think it's affecting them or not, free will, etc. Sort of like the couple of other examples we have of unsundered beings getting tempered, i.e. Tiamat and Altima in their Convocation crystal.

[PawPaw]

Are you going to tell me that literally nobody investigated an incident in which one of the most important people on the planet (as well as his also-kind-of-a-big-deal friend) got his memory wiped by a goddamned memory wipe machine?

I will never stop laughing about this scene and the lack of any kind of logical followup. They all come out of Ktsis, Emet-Selch is mad as hell that their memories have been wiped, everyone around them is like "but where are the other two people who went in with you?" and "oh look! there's Venat's dog so she must be ok somewhere" and Hythlodaeus is all "a strange familiar? I'll have to ask about that" and then nothing comes of this?? Wouldn't any normal person want to know why five people went in and three came out? Emet-Selch just brushes off the memory wiping machine that was so shady prior to this that he mentions Pashtarot may have a mild coronary when they find out it exists, and gets back to Convocation business? No one wants to investigate exactly wtf this guy has been allowing to happen on his watch at the research facility before considering him for the Convocation? Or wtf Venat was doing after everyone mentions her being at the scene of the accident?