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

[Rulakir]

The irony being that EW actually makes sense if Hydaelyn tempers. Considering both Krile and the WoL go from being skeptical to enthralled in the blink of an eye it could be that those already tainted with her Blessing of Light were more vulnerable to her influence.

It would certainly explain Minfilia too who, despite acting like a brainwashed cultist, everyone treats as being perfectly normal. The rest of the Scions, particularly Thancred, also start acting in ways contrary to their values whenever it involves Hydaelyn too.

The idea that she had the ability to temper the entire world also plays nicely into her insistence that she's the Will of the Star. How handy that is when you usurp Zodiark, wipe out the civilization whose will he represented, and are left with significantly less intelligent beings with no memories to mould.

It's a shame they didn't go the antagonist* route with her because she makes a far more believable one than a heroine. EW really does feel like she is the villain (Hermes who?) where everyone has been tempered to think otherwise.

* Given how littered EW is with other tropes even more overused than 'evil goddess', such as progenitor race is responsible for their own destruction, I can't take any complaints that it would've been cliche seriously. I think it's much worse that she is an antagonist in every possible way except for how the characters treat her. It feels forced and like it was rewritten to subvert expectations, which is a particular pet peeve of mine.

[MikkoAkure]

It would certainly explain Minfilia too who, despite acting like a brainwashed cultist, everyone treats as being perfectly normal. The rest of the Scions, particularly Thancred, also start acting in ways contrary to their values whenever it involves Hydaelyn too.

Everyone treats Minfilia as normal because she's the first Echo bearer who decided to gather other Echo bearers, who up until joining the Path of Twelve were ostracized by the rest of society. Louisoix and the Circle of Knowing have been in contact with Minfilia since she was a child and helped her set everything up and Thancred sort of raised her so of course they'd be with her the whole step of the way.

Gonna need a source/example on Thancred suddenly acting in ways contrary to his values. Not sure wwhere that came from.

* Given how littered EW is with other tropes even more overused than 'evil goddess', such as progenitor race is responsible for their own destruction, I can't take any complaints that it would've been cliche seriously. I think it's much worse that she is an antagonist in every possible way except for how the characters treat her. It feels forced and like it was rewritten to subvert expectations, which is a particular pet peeve of mine.

It's less about tropes or being cliche and more about suddenly making the character who supports us and saves our life on multiple occasions over 10 years into a villain just because people caught the feels for the Ascians isn't great writing. Considering Venat was in 3rd place in popularity polls in Japan, I don't think she's the universally panned figure you think she is.

Ultimately the game isn't about the Ancients. Their world died 12,000 years ago, there's no saving them, and they don't show up fully realized until the 2nd to the last level of the entire game and we just go there to find out how to save our own world.

They didn't even exist in the minds of the writers or the lore team when 1.0 and ARR were written and were just added in after the fact, after the Ascians and Hydaelyn were already in the game. Further expansions (except Stormblood) added details and nuance to make it more interesting, but we were never going to end up subverting the whole Hydaelyn vs the Darkness completely. It was never meant to be that way from the beginning and it would completely invalidate large swaths of the game just for a cheap twist.

[aveyond-dreams]

A story where Hydaelyn was the villain and treated as such would likely not have garnered 667 pages of discussion. Making everything revolve around her like Endwalker tried to do didn't work.

[MikkoAkure]

A story where Hydaelyn was the villain and treated as such would likely not have garnered 667 pages of discussion. Making everything revolve around her like Endwalker tried to do didn't work.

The whole game from the beginning of ARR has revolved around Hydaelyn. The game's main theme song is her voice and point of view.

What is your objective measure for "didn't work" or is it "me and my friends don't like it and that's the only opinion that matters"?

[aveyond-dreams]

I'm not engaging in an argument over how I phrase things. I cannot recommend anyone in my age group of 20somethings a story that propped up Venat at the cost of everyone else and the other worldbuilding that was interesting in this game. A story where the main cast suffered very little in the way of consequences all because they were Hydaelyn's "chosen" made for an experience that was too average and nowhere near the level of maturity in terms of the storytelling I expected based off previous expansions.

[Lauront]

I'm not engaging in an argument over how I phrase things. I cannot recommend anyone in my age group of 20somethings a story that propped up Venat at the cost of everyone else and the other worldbuilding that was interesting in this game. A story where the main cast suffered very little in the way of consequences all because they were Hydaelyn's "chosen" made for an experience that was too average and nowhere near the level of maturity in terms of the storytelling I expected based off previous expansions.

You mean, one of these.

[Rulakir]

They did a shoddy job of writing Hydaelyn as a heroine. Even her staunchest supporters agree that if the sundering wasn't necessary then it's morally unjustifiable and the narrative no longer works. The problem is they left the door wide open to doubt that the sundering was necessary. Not only that, even if it were 100% guaranteed that the Ancients would eventually 'be their own undoing' that still in no way makes genocide an acceptable response. "I'll destroy you before you can destroy yourselves" is absolutely stupid.

Just because Hydaelyn "helps" the WoL doesn't make her not an antagonist either, especially considering she'd put all her eggs in the WoL's basket so it's in her own self interest to assure that her 'chosen champion' survives to carry out her will. However, objectively speaking from a world history POV, she is without question one of the two primary antagonists second only to Hermes.

[jameseoakes]

They did a shoddy job of writing Hydaelyn as a heroine. Even her staunchest supporters agree that if the sundering wasn't necessary then it's morally unjustifiable and the narrative no longer works. The problem is they left the door wide open to doubt that the sundering was necessary. Not only that, even if it were 100% guaranteed that the Ancients would eventually 'be their own undoing' that still in no way makes genocide an acceptable response. "I'll destroy you before you can destroy yourselves" is absolutely stupid.

Just because Hydaelyn "helps" the WoL doesn't make her not an antagonist either, especially considering she'd put all her eggs in the WoL's basket so it's in her own self interest to assure that her 'chosen champion' survives to carry out her will. However, objectively speaking from a world history POV, she is without question one of the two primary antagonists second only to Hermes.

I think a lot of the issue was making Hydaelyn just be Venat, Hydaelyn isn't really a thing it's just Venat gorged on sacrifices and they didn't really explain why Venat took so little action after she was made especially given just how awful the world she made really is it really doesn't match with how much the game hammered into us she loves everyone but then just watches for 12000 years of horror unfolds and then the actions with Minfillia feels really odd as there seems to be no reason she should need a herald she's the most powerful being in the world...

[Magikazam]

I'm just at the start of Endwalker and I already have an issue with it tbh, the first few quest where you investigate Sharlayan they try to do a classical ''you investigate and learn about the zone'' scenario they spam since Stormblood now... except this time it doesn't work cause you got 5 scions who are more than familiar with the place and could explain everything to you in like 10 min. So when the red-clothed Alphinaud acts smart cause she realized that maybe the publicly known gigantic subterranean living library, perfectly made to hide things, may be where we should look at, It kinda came out as bad writing.

[Rufalus]

I'm back for the patch... Really the way everything is centered on big scripted story events (more like a single-player game) makes it probably the most interesting MMO on patch week, but the weakest one down the stretch when there's no more story to do and everything about the world is static and dead. I think trying to adapt a typical single-player FF story into a never-ending MMO ends up hurting the story. Usually when the heroes save the world / worlds / universe, that is the end of their story. Here it just keeps looping back around to being an errand boy/girl for a while, then building back up to saving the universe from the new monster of the week.

The writers have a lot of restrictions in this format like knowing that the player character has to be immortal and unbeatable in an MMO because they're never going to kill you and force you to create a new one, or cripple you and leave you wheelchair bound, anything that would have a detrimental affect on gameplay. And they can't have a disaster destroy most of Ul'dah because we need that, players use that. They can't write in anything that would change the world, apart from hearing about major events at locations we can't access in gameplay yet. Once we get there ourselves it's a permanent time bubble, any threats by the big bad to wipe it off the map can't be taken seriously, we already know nothing can ever happen.