Quote Originally Posted by Millybonk View Post
The mighty Zodiark, which has been build up as this mighty(evil) entity over several expansions, turns out to be nothing but filler trash for the first Endwalker trial
The Ascians have been trying to power up Zodiark by merging reflections with the source for a long time but we already stopped them. He's weak and the only reason we fight him is because Fandaniel wants him to die.

The true cause of the Final Days is a pet-project from an ancient which goes mad after observing countless dead world and possibly causing the death of several world by projecting negative emotions unto them, and is thus dead-set on bringing despair to every world, upon which said ancient goes mad and is now letting her run her course to test humanity if they can withstand/fight despair
Not quite. Hermes is shown to be overly sensitive for starters, he doesn't like the way things have been going on Etheirys so he sends familiars to other planets to find out other beings' reasons for living and such. Turns out they're all dead or dying or hopeless so he goes nuts because there's no meaning to anything and everything dies and yada yada.

So he decides he'll give humanity one last shot to prove their worth by letting Meteion & sisters bring about the Final Days. The way humanity's been going it was only a matter of time until they ended up like all the other dead civilizations in the universe so this actually ended up saving the planet in a way.

Venat, who hasn't had her memory wiped + still remembers you from being in Elpis, quite apparently doesn't lift a finger to learn about Dynamis herself or to mobilize the other ancients to end Meteion then and there, and instead chooses to turn herself into Hydaelyn, sunder the world and the inhabitants, thereby forcing them to live with and face despair and gambling that their resilience against despair might be enough to face Meteion one day
She tried to stop Meteion herself and couldn't, Meteion uses dynamis which makes up most of the universe and Venat uses aether of which there isn't much way out in space making Meteion more powerful out there. Also it wouldn't have mattered because Meteion has tons of sisters spread out across the universe.

The only way the ancients could figure out how to save their planet was by summoning Zodiark, which Venat was very much against because she had her memories and knew what was going to happen. That wasn't enough to change the course of things so she did all she could. Too little too late.


Most of the ancients never even heard about dynamis and couldn't use it due to having so much aether within themselves, it's explained that aether is far more potent and the only reason the WoL can harness dynamis is because we've been sundered thus lessening our aether.

Why (or how) she sundered everything idk. Zodiark's existence kept the planet alive but he needed sacrifices to keep going, Hydaelyn stuck 'em in the moon which apparently made it so sacrifices were no longer required but he still kept the planet alive somehow? Sundering the people set them on a new path - every other civilization fell apart while seeking perfection so she kinda made that impossible. Also by lessening the aether within the people they became more able to use dynamis and fight back against Meteion - limit breaks use dynamis and the tank LB3 is required in that trial.

Really?
This is the best SQ could do in terms of story after ShB?
It's pretty good imo, it just feels like a lot of it kinda came out of nowhere all at once - mostly dynamis, that would have been nice to see brought up in a previous expansion.