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

[Kaoru_Nagisa]

On today's episode of "Things I personally found bad or lazy in Endwalker": What the heck happened to Venat's group of followers?

We're told back in Shadowbringers that - just as the Convocation pushed for the creation of Zodiark, so they may rewrite the laws of the Star in order to protect them from the Final Days, and thereafter restore life to the scorched earth - there was supposedly an 'anti-Convocation' of sorts. People who disagreed with their desire to sacrifice new life on the Star for the sake of the lives that freely gave of themselves to Zodiark as fuel for his miracles. This group was headed by Venat, who would go on to become the heart of Hydaelyn, as Elidibus became the heart of Zodiark.

It was the efforts of the group which summoned Hydaelyn into being, so that she might fight against Zodiark and Sunder the world. That is what we learn - not even through Emet-Selch, who could be considered a biased party, but through records left in Anamnesis Anyder by (we can only assume) that very 'anti-Convocation' group.

Why, then, does Endwalker display to us Venat singlehandedly Sundering the world and becoming Hydaelyn? Why were we given information regarding this group of her and her fellows, and then those other people end up as only a brief, passing mention by Venat in Elpis, right before we leave back to our time?

An argument could be made that "they just condensed the events down for the sake of wrapping up the procession of the timeline", but that rings very hollow when it was made such a huge deal back in Shadowbringers. And also just comes across as incredibly lazy, badly-paced writing - to effectively ignore the group efforts towards summoning Hydaelyn, to ignore Hydaelyn doing battle with Zodiark for the fate of the Star and ultimately landing a blow which rends he and the very world asunder.

Visually, yes - that segment of her Sundering the world was stunning and emotional. But, like so much else in Endwalker, when it's viewed afterwards through the lens of everything that has come before it - all of the information we have access to thus far regarding the old world and the Sundering - it becomes all flair with no substance. Retcons for the sake of visual spectacle. Condensing for the sake of empty emotion, and desperately trying to tie it all together with ARR's beloved theme 'Answers'.

We would have benefitted so much more from getting to see more glimpses of those other people, those who opposed Zodiark's creation and the sacrifices that continued to be made in his name. Just as so much else in Elpis (which is where the story genuinely seems to begin falling apart at the seams, I think), such as Meteion and Hermes, this 'anti-Convocation' group suffers from poor pacing and a lack of narrative focus or care given to that portion of the story. The desire to condense down and wrap up a 10 year story arc in one expansion ruined so many plot points and pieces of information left to us in Shadowbringers - ones which seemed to be set up for being further expounded upon later.

We lost so much potential because of Yoshida's desire to speedrun through the capstone to this story, and I'll die mad about it.

[CrownySuccubus]

The general impression is that the writers had the whole "The deaths of the Ancients was an acceptable, natural consequence of the rules of suffering and existence" moral in their heads and everything in Endwalker was shoehorned into that lesson, even if it contradicted past information. I think it was Paw Paw who said it here first, but it seems like the writers were afraid of having some Ancients oppose the third sacrifice because it would demonstrate that there were, indeed, Ancients who weren't "deserving" of being Sundered. It would leave questions of why Venat didn't spare them.

We can't even go with a "The Sundering was indiscriminate and her allies were simply unfortunate" because the devs went on record and said Venat specifically spared Emet-Selch.

The whole thing comes across to me like writing yourself into a corner, and then making a dozen MORE mistakes trying to write yourself out of it.

[Skyborne]

...

It's just strange how the """"unbiased"""" (according to the playerbase) Unending Codex just straight up erases the twelve people who wanted to stop the sacrifice, in line with the solo Venat-wank cutscene post-Elpis. Do the developers know that people have a memory and know that 5.2 happened? It was just puzzling since I wanted to see the perspective of these individuals... maybe have them be actually named. I suppose there is still a slight chance for this in the 24man story as it is meant to be an "epilogue" but I just don't know... they couldn't even really give us info about the full Convocation, and left 5 or so of them in the dust.

The general impression is that the writers had the whole "The deaths of the Ancients was an acceptable, natural consequence of the rules of suffering and existence" moral in their heads and everything in Endwalker was shoehorned into that lesson, even if it contradicted past information. I think it was Paw Paw who said it here first, but it seems like the writers were afraid of having some Ancients oppose the third sacrifice because it would demonstrate that there were, indeed, Ancients who weren't "deserving" of being Sundered. It would leave questions of why Venat didn't spare them.

Even more strange since the Watcher, who was based off of a friend of Venat, says that there were Ancients who wanted to find the root cause of the Final Days, but it is left as one sentence. It's just annoying how we kept getting hints and snippets and fleeting fragments of a more complete story that isn't complete simpery, but is never delved into. Hey, maybe we can look forward to the next collab in some other game... or a side story tucked away somewhere. Somewhere next to the AU where our god-queen actually does the right thing and our friends can revel until dawn in peace and happiness again.

[RyuDragnier]

Even more strange since the Watcher, who was based off of a friend of Venat, says that there were Ancients who wanted to find the root cause of the Final Days, but it is left as one sentence. It's just annoying how we kept getting hints and snippets and fleeting fragments of a more complete story that isn't complete simpery, but is never delved into.

Perhaps this is more of a hint as to what Azem was doing during that time frame.

[Lauront]

It's just strange how the """"unbiased"""" (according to the playerbase) Unending Codex just straight up erases the twelve people who wanted to stop the sacrifice, in line with the solo Venat-wank cutscene post-Elpis. Do the developers know that people have a memory and know that 5.2 happened? It was just puzzling since I wanted to see the perspective of these individuals... maybe have them be actually named. I suppose there is still a slight chance for this in the 24man story as it is meant to be an "epilogue" but I just don't know... they couldn't even really give us info about the full Convocation, and left 5 or so of them in the dust.

Even that is something I dread, because it'd just become more word vomit about her "love". Still hope they tie it to man's memory of the Convocation in some capacity or other, and don't link it to her.

[YukikoKurosawa]

You know what I just realized? There is zero mystery after Elpis. The entire mystery of the plot is revealed in that zone. Halfway through the story we already have our big final reveal, so there is absolutely no mystery to carry the rest of the story. So not only is it an arguably underwhelming reveal, it happens halfway through the plot leaving us with absolute nothing to carry the remainder of the story. It's just "alright well I guess we just go and kill Meteion now". But first lemme go show these rabbits around on a tour for an hour because that's important. Riveting, truly.

Imagine if, for example, there was another big bad and it somehow hijacked Meteion from outerspace after the Meteia encountered it, that was actually behind all the extinction of all those worlds, who still wasn't revealed even in Elpis. So then we're left to wonder "what did Meteion really see? Who or what did she encounter that's now manipulating her? What's it's motive?". Even more, say Meteion leaves at the end of the dungeon to go join her new mysterious master, what happened to her? What happened to her sisters? Are they still alive? Can you just imagine. Something to you know carry the remaining 30 hours of plot. Something wasn't taking fucking bunnies on a tour.

[AnaviAnael]

Imagine if, for example, there was another big bad and it somehow hijacked Meteion from outerspace after the Meteia encountered it, that was actually behind all the extinction of all those worlds, who still wasn't revealed even in Elpis. So then we're left to wonder "what did Meteion really see? Who or what did she encounter that's now manipulating her? What's it's motive?". Even more, say Meteion leaves at the end of the dungeon to go join her new mysterious master, what happened to her? What happened to her sisters? Are they still alive? Can you just imagine. Something to you know carry the remaining 30 hours of plot. Something wasn't taking fucking bunnies on a tour.

I actually had a similar idea to this. Having an entity cause the despair of civilizations would have been a lot more compelling than "every civilization out there came to ruin because reasons and now Meteion is full of despair." (IMO of course.)

[Lucida3b]

I actually had a similar idea to this. Having an entity cause the despair of civilizations would have been a lot more compelling than "every civilization out there came to ruin because reasons and now Meteion is full of despair." (IMO of course.)

Honestly the dragons despair and the omicrons despair make sense, its the Ea where it gets pretentious.

[Xirean]

You know the WoL really shouldn't have brought their friends back. They died, don't try to undo that, forge ahead.

[PawPaw]

You know the WoL really shouldn't have brought their friends back. They died, don't try to undo that, forge ahead.

They gave their lives so that our character could live past the worst of it. Bringing them back would be an insult to their sacrifice, right? I'm pretty sure I've heard that argument before somewhere...

Good thing we had that Deus ex Machina to fix everything so that we wouldn't have to struggle to regain what we'd lost or make it difficult to "forge ahead" or anything crazy like that.