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

[PawPaw]

If anything Venat is the person that refuses to help on the project and watches her teammates struggle to get the project done in enough time. Right as the project is turned in she emails the professor to say everyone else wasn’t doing their work and that’s been doing the entire project alone by herself. She even makes up some fake screenshots as proof to convince the professor that everyone else is failing. Venat then takes all the credits and gets an A.

Gods this is accurate. Thanks for the laugh!

[Teraq]

Haven't been here in a long while, and I have to admit I have just read only the past 10 pages or so. Agreed that real life politics should stay out of game discussion. Politics are like musical tastes: a fantastic way to make any polite discussion go south incredibly quickly.

6.1 MSQ was... not as bad as I had feared, but I'll admit I went in with expectations low enough. I feel like it could never be as bad as 6.0 was for me. I'm pleased our little "adventure" was little more than a thinly-veiled excuse for Void shenanigans, because I'll confess I have a very hard time getting excited for average treasure hunting adventurer stuff, so any talk of Shard travel can only be better. I don't care much for Vrtra or dragons in general, but hey... Void stuff! How long until they make the Warring Triad quests finally required for MSQ? Because if I go there I want to go with Unu.

Speaking of, naturally, I'm grateful for the single mention of Elidibus with regards to Unukalhai and Cylva. This is the villain fetishist in me speaking here, but I shamelessly love when the plot reminds me that my favorite characters are bastards who did bastard things. Elidibus is the Manipulate, Mansplain, Malewife to Venat's Gaslight, Gatekeep, Girlboss and I am here for it. With that said though, with the narrative's continued refusal to criticize Venat's actions, Y'shtola calling Elidibus out on his use of Unukalhai and Cylva feels pretty double-standard-ish, huh...

And, yeah. The codex entry. I liked it better when I hadn't read it and just thought "Hydaelyn" referred to the planet like the moron I am. idk how the English version goes, but the French entry says she did the Sundering "to stop those who would give all future lives in hopes of restoring days gone", and once again bashes us over the head with how much she loved the planet and its inhabitants over all. You know, it's... just... doubling down on this horribly disappointing story. Sigh. The very worst thing about this is how fantastic a villain she would have made. The under-your-skin toxic mother figure who simply knows what's best for you, sweetie. I mean, this is where I thought they were going with the Loporrits (and the hellscape that is Smileton), but then they didn't haha they're just super cute. Changing her into a villain would be excessively simple: literally just leave everything as is. You would only have to bring in someone calling her out. That her way might not have been the only one. That she gave up on them all and never gave them a chance. She allowed her people to drive straight off the edge, and then wagged her finger at them for not crashing down at the bottom of the ravine quite correctly enough.
I miss Shadowbringers when this had a semblance of greyness to it all.

Last thing: how long are we going to hang on every word Emet-Selch ever uttered before leaving? I feel like the plot has been (metaphorically – sit down, you!) fellating him for two and a half years after his actual death, though I suppose that's just the Lord of the Underworld for you. If I get another flashback of him listing off places to go, I might... idk, mildly sigh in resignation I suppose.

On a positive note though, great production values on the 24-man raid. Voice acting for all bosses and a song? Even the regular boss theme is decently epic. Very pleasantly surprised.

(snip)

Thank you for posting and echoing what many of us here felt. I have no idea why they decided to veer away from the "both sides had their points" greyness of Shadowbringers and replace it with "yeah, Venat knew everything and was right and her way was the only way forward (please don't look too closely)". It just diminishes everything.

Add me to the "I thought I was alone and going insane until I saw this thread" club.

Welcome to the club, we have Bird of Elpis tendies

And then Endwalker retroactively spat in it's face and worked to shatter everything its predecessor built up by going "actually the Sundered are just better" and trying to paint it like the original people were arrogant bliss-obsessed idiots instead of the scholarly gentle people we knew them to be, And of course, the person responsible for their eradication was the only one who knew the truth, and is just absolutely vindicated by being RIGHT.

It genuinely is so baffling that I almost refuse to believe they are written by the same person. I can only assume people higher up the food chain muddied these waters somehow, it's that insane to me.

Yyyyyup.

There is a reason why people loved the Heavensward light party of the WoL, Estinien, Ysayle, and Alphinaud so much, (Bear with me and try to remember the Alphinaud post ARR that had some true depth to him) and that's because it had conflict.

I recently played Heavensward again on alt #6, and I had this exact same reflexion – not just with Ysayle and Estinien, but also with my favorite non-Ascian, Nero. I loved rewatching the scenes with him interacting with the city state leaders, the Scions and his hubby. Not just because he's such a delight to watch and listen to (of course his pronoun would be ore-sama), but also because of the tension his presence creates. Endwalker direly lacked a morally ambiguous character or outright villain chatting with us, providing conflict within the main cast and a different point of view. In fact, considering the success of Shadowbringers largely rested on Emet-Selch's presence in the story, it is baffling the devs did not realize this.

The only character I actively hate is Venat/Hydaelyn. Even reprehensible figures like Valens I feel less vitriol for because he is never presented as anything other than what he is, a particularly nasty villain. And Hermes? He's an absolute donkey but in the end he wiped his own memory like a coward so that he had no idea what was coming. Venat retained hers and and remained nothing but calculating and manipulative to the last. She doesn't even have his pathetic excuse.

Thank you for putting words on something about Hermes that just peeved me and made me enjoy Fandaniel that much better. He doesn't even own up to his own acts. Just completely absolves himself from any responsibility under the guise of "objectivity" (I would argue any objectivity here was compromised by knowing the catastrophic results of his "test" BECAUSE A TIME TRAVELLER TOLD THEM). It's like the dude just pushed the doomsday button out of spite and then goes "uuhhh ha haha oops", whistling and pulling on his collar, just kinda pretending he wasn't there like a 5-year-old child. He had to be a coward about it, didn't he?

Edit: I repressed Hermes/Fandaniel from my memory.

Understandable, have a nice day.

[Skyborne]

Ilberd/Venat

She has the benefit of having gotten rid of those who were victimized by her, or conveniently wiping their memories... or being written out of the plot, in the case of the Ascians who are aware. Oh, and the best PR that anyone can buy. Avert your eyes, just look at the puppies and rainbows! (although it is funny that the WoL seemingly doesn't care about Emet's misdeeds now)

Not gonna lie, when I read the live letter when they said that Hermes and Meteion characters were based on "social media (like twitter)", that I began to.......question the integrity of the writing team, lets put it that way.

Wait, did I miss this or repress this from memory? Oh no... I need a source on this so I can laugh.

...

Welcome back, it hasn't changed much, and we still have plenty of copium tanks. I do think the devs did not quite understand why ShB was praised so hard. "Oh, they liked Emet? Well, let's just shove him in as much as possible! Remember, we planned this out the whole time and didn't base it off of fan reception! *wink*" IMO having a sundered Ascian who caught wind of Fandaniel's maniacal plan and sought to oppose him by joining up with us while still being spicy and disagreeing with us and adding a much-needed different perspective (and criticism of our sparkle-queen) would have certainly made me less rabid about the story. Just a bit.

As an aside it also still strikes me as funny that I see people acting as if the Sundered are all hurling themselves off of cliffs on a daily basis and complaining not enough of their bones are broken, while they wolf down cups of broken glass. Fundamentally the Sundered and Unsundered are same psychologically, wanting to avoid suffering (even if it causes more) and wanting a brighter, better future. It's just that the Sundered are weaker... and more prone to falling prey to their dark nature, which the Ascians used to their advantage, while the Unsundered were better at keeping it under wraps unless under extreme circumstances. Like the end of the world, for one.

[Rulakir]

The main reason I don't say Venat is because she was likeable at one point, Minfilia never was for me. I might not even feel as adverse towards Hermes if he'd kept Asahi's VA. It's not for lack of acting talent, I just find the new voice difficult on my ears.

I still think Venat is arguably the game's main antagonist simply because every issue we encounter is a direct result of the sundering not the Final Days. I'm also not convinced that the Final Days would've been as bad as they were had the Ancients been given the knowledge to prepare for them, which is also squarely on her. Had they not committed to subverting expectations by trying to portray her as a tragic heroine she might've made one Hell of a villain.

[Theodric]

Speaking of Valens, he was exactly what I was hoping that Zenos and Fandaniel would be. I couldn't help but feel disappointed that Endwalker had so many creepy aesthetics to call upon yet still managed to be fairly subdued when push came to shove. It's actually kind of weird. We explore a big fleshy tower and there's elephant people fused into the walls but somehow they all escape completely unscathed. We do get to see some grotesque looking blasphemies later on but by that point Fandaniel had already left the picture. I think it's a real shame he didn't go out with a bigger bang.

In the end, both Zenos and Fandaniel barely inflicted any real harm upon the protagonists and seemed to exist mainly to just rid the chess board of both the Ancients and the Garleans.

[KageTokage]

Honestly, I would love if the remaining Garlean legions decided to band together into a unified threat using all of the nastiest magitek available to them like synthetic auracite and the Resonant along with all the horror that might entail for the people of the provinces given their precedent for use of human resources/testing.

I think them finding some way to exploit dynamis and blasphemies would be an interesting follow-up to the potentially important detail from the role quests that there's still enough fallout from the Final Days to permit transformations.

[Palslow]

I did think about that so much can be done in the hundred or thousands of years by Venat.....she could have at least tell Emet-Selch and Hythlodaeus what happened and maybe save her world rather than just watch things progress like if the worrier of light never visited her....

I don't understand why she would wait for the worrier of light to do everything.....

[kyzy]

I don't understand why she would wait for the worrier of light to do everything.....

Because she was specifically waiting for a sundered being to rise to the occasion and prove that mankind has a reason to live. If noone arose, man would have failed in finding the answer to "the question", and their oblivion will have occurred. But that isn't Venats problem or something LOLOL

[YukikoKurosawa]

The terrible, nonsensical sentence structure of this thread's title irritates me to no end.

[Rulakir]

Got into a discussion in that thread about how every character's agency is ruined with the time loop as 'nobody could do anything differently' in order for the WoL to journey to Elpis. Then in an unrelated thread I saw someone quote Ardbert's "we did everything right" line and I thought, yeah, he did exactly what he was meant to do.

I genuinely don't understand what's satisfying about time loops and I've seen plenty of people say they prefer them to AUs. Near as I can tell, the one in EW completely undermined the agency of every major character in the foundation of the lore that establishes the world as we know it. Now that I think about it, had they gone the full Greek tragedy route similar to Oedipus where in trying to avoid an outcome it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, that might've made me like/sympathize with Venat. Instead, she chooses to follow the roadmap to the future the WoL gave her for nonsensical reasons.