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

[Skyborne]

My question to them would be why even try aim for that? Maybe it's "scary" to a being which isn't immortal with creation magicks, but I find it weird to aim to portray it that way, as if they're wrong simply because they're a different type of being - perhaps you could convey that they're a bit strange or otherworldly by human standards, such that we'd struggle to live that way, but to me that's something different from setting out to make them scary. And frankly, that's how SHB dealt with it.

Also, they didn't aim to do this with the dragons which, sure, have some "scary" aspects to them - no one is sitting here saying because Nidhogg went off his rocker (for understandable reasons), that dragon society needs to be reshaped from inside out, and their kind wiped out to something less "scary". Also, there is a sidequest in Elpis that does ask you to opine on how you find the ancients, giving 1) as gods 2) not too dissimilar from us (sundered) and 3) inscrutable. So clearly it runs a gamut of options, all of which I'd argue are somewhat true.

Honestly, the issue with the alternative approaches I've seen recommended is that they buy into the premise that the ancients had to be "scary" or needed to have some critical flaw, when they could just as easily have had the Sundering result from an accident or (orchestrated?) misunderstanding, instead of fixating on justifying it. I think you came to a similar conclusion here.

Exactly. And to me, it's no less innate to them than a dragon's great powers are. People keep trying to frame this with us as humans as the gauge of what's "natural", but in the context of the setting, these powers are natural and innate to them. I'd speculated in the past that maybe her faction had misdiagnosed the origin of the crisis, which would be understandable if you just saw creation magicks run amok, which I think would've been a more plausible motive than what they went with.

Vehn Aht: "My fellow brothers and sisters, if draconity is to completely defeat the Omicron, you must lend me your souls so that I can remove your wings and cut out your vocal cords. Only with our claws and fangs alone will we find the eternal light! No flying or using fancy magicks! Walk! (shields her favorite chosen one dragon with her voice magicks)"

[Lauront]

Vehn Aht: "My fellow brothers and sisters, if draconity is to completely defeat the Omicron, you must lend me your souls so that I can remove your wings and cut out your vocal cords. Only with our claws and fangs alone will we find the eternal light! No flying or using fancy magicks! Walk! (shields her favorite chosen one dragon with her voice magicks)"

I found this pretty funny: flip the narrative here from "experience" to "avoid" (or "reduce") and change some of the names here, and what does this sound a bit like.

[anhaato]

Everything we did in the past completely flies in the face of everything G'raha did in Shadowbringers. He spent CENTURIES trying to keep a dying world alive in the hopes that he'd eventually reach us somehow and get us to save it once and for all, in order to prevent something bad that happened in his timeline. He did that under the assumption that his timeline, and he himself, would cease to exist should he successfully rewrite history. His own life, his reality, were the trade off for doing such a thing, and he chose a better future for everyone else on the First and the people of the source in the new timeline, rather than trying to simply fix his own. But surprise, he didn't cease to exist! Instead of erasing his timeline, we just created a new one!

So, given that, there should've been no negatives had we intervened and protect the Ancients from their demise, right? Because they weren't THAT bad, right? That's why we were supposed to sympathize with the Ascians, right? We'd have our timeline and go defeat Meteion, and the Ancients would get a timeline where they find a way to solve the problem by their own merit. That should make perfect sense given everything in Shadowbringers, but Elidibus just HAD to say "ur not allowed to change history!!!! changing the past is bad bad bad!!!!!" And, yknow, I really believed we were about to defy him when we were discovered by the Elpis gang, I really wanted to believe that we were about to be like "sorry Elidibus, sorry everyone, I know I was warned about changing the past but I have to do this," but instead we just created a paradox and let the destruction of their world carry out. Why did we do that? Are we, the player character, seriously so cold and uncaring about worlds that aren't ours that we let it happen to the Ancients and think it's fine just because it allowed US to live? When we got back to the gang on the source, how on earth did G'raha not go "YOU WHAT!?" when we told him what we did? We were handed the cheat code to do exactly what he did, and we did nothing.

(1/2)

[anhaato]

(1/2)

I know the answer is "because they were gonna die anyway," but in the writers' quest to make the Ancients jUsT LiKe uS in order to make us sympathize with the Ascians, they failed to give us the impression that they were a doomed society. They drove it in so hard that they made them look like a people who deserved and were denied a chance to survive. Listen, I spent several posts talking about how I know what the devs intended, so I'm not going to go as far as calling this purposeful genocide apologism, but by god, they're just SO BAD at writing gray morality. Everything has to be GOOD or BAD, and they're so stuck in this mindset that when it came time to actually flesh out Ancient society they had no idea how to make them look both good and bad. What we got was a society that just looked and interacted a lot like ours but with each person being more magically powerful, and some dude and his bird who got angsty and went school shooter on them. And then, when Venat made her decision, they had no idea how to portray it as the morally objectionable action it really was. Instead of focusing on the lives and societies SHE sacrificed in doing so, they made it look like all of the repercussions were solely on her own being. And let's not forget how many years they spent trying to set Hydaelyn up as a shady figure! Everything she had been doing up through Heavensward was starting to get darker and darker, down to literally stealing Minfilia from us and turning her into a mouthpiece. But when it came time to make Hydaelyn her own character, what did the devs do? Retcon EVERYTHING that had been setup and make her pure good. It just doesn't work.

Until we see how things actually happen, WITHOUT us being present, maybe then they'll be able to justify the sundering, but I highly doubt we'll ever get now that they're keen to move on from this storyline entirely. And you know what? I'm actually ok with that. I hope they never again approach this level of moral dilemma and this many lives hanging in the balance of whatever is going on. They've proven extensively that they can't handle it.

[KizuyaKatogami]

I used to be really interested in the Twelve and thought that surely there was some amazing backstory on them and their creation. I was excited when I heard that the Alliance Raid would tell us all about them. What I've taken away from that trailer though, is that they're just primals. Probably dreamed up by the early sundered as they crawled around with their stone tools trying to figure things like wheels and fire out.

I could be wrong, of course, and I'd be thrilled if there was actually an amazing twist behind their origin, but that was what my first impressions were and that made the prospect of them much less exciting for me. Guess we'll see why we actually need to kill the "gods".

I saw someone theorize recently that all the 12 are just previous iterations of Azem….and i swear to god if there is that level of Azem ego wanking in that raid it’s going to sour my mood the entire time.

[Lauront]

If, after the nuanced tragedy of Shadowbringers, it was retconned into "actually yes, they were terrible people and this wasn't a horrific competition of resources between two deserving groups where only one can win, we were truly righteous and better", I still would have been angry. Like, it's probably overwrought, but especially in this day and age, Shadowbringers's approach was important to me. The "we went wrong" decision for me wasn't refusing to make the Ancients Very Very Bad, but refusing to adjust their conception of Hydaelyn As Good as would fit the story in a more organic way as it played out. So they very doggedly are going to hammer that square peg into the round hole, and you will like it, dammit!

Exactly this. I'm resistant to the idea that they had to be dragged down or exposed to be some dystopia, because it's a common trope in a lot of fantasy games with (higher) beings, and it's not an approach I favour.

So basically, we were, uh, less xenophobic than they anticipated?

Well, for me it's less to do with anything relating to xenophobia and more that I can conceptualise that optimal social structures for species with entirely different innate traits to ours in some ways (longer lifespans, very potent innate magical abilities etc.) will differ to what works for us. Also, at the end of the day, it's a fantasy game, so the point to me is escapism rather than just earth 2.0.

Azeyma has been my character's deity since her first day of life but if Azeyma turns out to be some venerated version of Venat, then it's off to the Fantasia store I go. Immediately.

I already made the switch to Nald'thal. I think I only ever picked Azeyma because I played a sun cat the first time round...

[Lauront]

It's worth bearing in mind that there's a lot of people who weren't too bothered about the third batch of sacrifices but thought that she was right in her assessment that her people wouldn't change, plus given the time loop, think there's little she could've done otherwise, so it's less about them seeing the ancients as somehow bad, as it is that they think her actions were necessary to avoid the Plenty. I strongly disagree on that point, because she never shared the truth of the situation with her people, which I think given their love for the star would condition a change in stance, but putting that aside, I believe that's why one can both roll with the story as was written while also view the ancients as undeserving victims of necessity. I am glad though that they were moved to address the issue and concede that the audience reception to the ancients was different to what they (or more specifically, Yoshi) had envisioned it might be.

[Brinne]

It's worth bearing in mind that there's a lot of people who weren't too bothered about the third batch of sacrifices but thought that she was right in her assessment that her people wouldn't change, plus given the time loop, think there's little she could've done otherwise, so it's less about them seeing the ancients as somehow bad, as it is that they think her actions were necessary to avoid the Plenty. I strongly disagree on that point, because she never shared the truth of the situation with her people, which I think given their love for the star would condition a change in stance, but putting that aside, I believe that's why one can both roll with the story as was written while also view the ancients as undeserving victims of necessity.

Yeah, again, that common and well-worn rhetorical technique of "ah, it's so sad and awful, but unfortunately, we have no choice. Trust me bro. Single teardrop."

[Rulakir]

The majority of players just don't think about it. I've come across a lot of people, including streamers, who took the post-Elpis cutscene at face value and believed that's how events unfolded. Hell, yesterday on another forum someone essentially told me I didn't understand/had it wrong, that Venat had stopped the sacrifice to restore the world because she thought their people should learn to rebuild rather than wish everything back to the way it was. I didn't even know where to start. :P

If the sundered were forcefully subjected to this fate, I doubt they’d somehow just roll with it because it isn’t “really” genocide – yes, it is. It would wipe them out as species in their current form and result in something quite unrecognisable to them if done in the same way as it was done to the ancients.

Not that the Scions are any strangers to hypocrisy, but Alphinaud already made this statement in ShB:



So, no, they would not be okay with being sundered 'for their own good', they would've fought tooth and nail against it, which is (again) why it's so galling that not a one of them have any criticisms for Hydaelyn.

Until we see how things actually happen, WITHOUT us being present, maybe then they'll be able to justify the sundering, but I highly doubt we'll ever get now that they're keen to move on from this storyline entirely. And you know what? I'm actually ok with that. I hope they never again approach this level of moral dilemma and this many lives hanging in the balance of whatever is going on. They've proven extensively that they can't handle it.

I'm so torn on this because on one hand I want the fate of the Ancients 'fixed' somehow, but on the other I don't want them to touch it any further if they're just going to make it worse. All I wanted was an AU. -_-

Here's my dumb "theory": the Twelve are just toy puppet-constructs made by Hydaelyn based off the memories of the 12 who became her magical skinsuit in order to teach the cavemen sundered how to human.

I will be irritated beyond measure if they have anything to do with Venat. Enough is enough, the entirety of EW was practically one big Hydaelyn worshiping session. Like, seriously, who in corporate is sleeping with her body pillow and calling these shots? It reminds me of the burning of Teldrassil in WoW, that's what one person (Afrasiabi) wanted, the rest of the writing team didn't want to do it, but he got his way due to his seniority.

Fortunately, my main's deity is Halone due to Ishgard, so in that respect it doesn't matter what the 'truth' is about her as she's still the patron deity of what I consider my character's home. My alt's deity is Azeyma though, which I picked before I found out Venat was the former Azem.

Another friend and I were just discussing this yesterday, but she brought up what I thought was a really insightful point: the writers' perspective probably identified, correctly, that there would be a disconnect between the players and their worldview, and the Ancients' worldview. However, the assumption would be that the players' instinct would be to defend their world in the face of this gap and this discomfort, rather than confront the discomfort, consider it, and come to the conclusion: hey, you know what? The Ancients make sense. Their way is better. I'd rather live in this world than my own. So basically, we were, uh, less xenophobic than they anticipated?

My opinion is I think they underestimated how appealing the Ancient civilization appears compared to our own, especially since the pandemic. Maybe we're supposed to compare it to Eorzea (which I still don't think is that great), but after the divisiveness of the past couple of years seeing a society where everyone is kind, considerate, and respectful of one another and, as Emet said in ShB (paraphrased) where their differences paled in comparison to what they had in common, it felt like a dream. It was a nice escape and I think that's what most people want, especially from their entertainment.

[CrownySuccubus]

that Venat had stopped the sacrifice to restore the world because she thought their people should learn to rebuild rather than wish everything back to the way it was. I didn't even know where to start. :P

Er...well, that is basically what she said.

Venat: "Let us not seek to forget this tragedy. Let us carry it in our hearts, that we may grow stronger and know true happiness."

Venat: "In spite of...or perhaps because of this, I choose to believe. In [mankind's] ability to find a way forward."

Venat's frustration with the post-FD Ancients was that they wanted to outright pretend that the Final Days never happened to go back to days when they "knew aught but bliss". She, however, wanted people to learn to grow strong and "know true happiness".

Basically, both Venat and those random Ancient sound like crazy people.

The argument that Etheirys was a "perfect paradise" where they knew nothing but happiness and bliss is stupid. We are literally told that a volcano exploded and people would have died if not for Azem. (In fact, hell, Azem's entire purpose was to be a wandering troubleshooter.) People lamented the deaths of family and friends when they happened prematurely. People disagreed and debated all the time. Those Ancients (whom we're meant to believe represent most of the non-Convocation populace) were crazy strawmen who wanted to...I dunno, live in The Matrix or some'ish...to make Venat's actions justified.

Because words can't describe how much I despise the "you can only know true happiness after you've suffered" argument.