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

[Teraq]

Watching the stream I got the distinct impression Yoshida wanted to be done with this whole storyline, so maybe it's time to just drop it and move on too. Everyone responsible is dead (Venat's so dead there's nothing left to even reincarnate), so let's just wait and see what 6.1 teasers we'll get in 2 weeks...

Agreed, this is the feeling I get. I'm a partisan of the "this was supposed to be two expansions" theory (that might be baseless or not, to be fair I haven't really looked into this matter), and 6.0 felt a lot like "all right, let's wrap this up and move on".

[Lauront]

Agreed, this is the feeling I get. I'm a partisan of the "this was supposed to be two expansions" theory (that might be baseless or not, to be fair I haven't really looked into this matter), and 6.0 felt a lot like "all right, let's wrap this up and move on".

He reiterated that they could've done it over 7.0 and even 8.0, a claim Ishikawa has made before, so I think it's a reasonable claim.

On the topic of Zenos, funnily enough I'm unbothered one way or another if he's truly gone. He was perhaps the least of my issues with the story. I did not like him ever since he came back after SB but EW was riddled with so many other issues that he's barely in view, IMO.

I hadn't seen the big ol' answer on Venat. It's pretty telling he (explicitly says he) had to fetch Ishikawa for this long answer. The sole positive I'm taking from this is that her character seems indeed to be pretty hotly contested. That's a relief, at least. And he compares her to Emet-Selch, wringing his hands about "I knoowww you guys totally love him, BUT...", and yeah okay but here's the thing: Emet-Selch is quite explicitly an antagonist. As YoshiP even says, the protagonists challenge him over his claims. The lead-up to the fight is epic, well-written so you know exactly what his convictions are after 12,000 years of toiling in relative emotional isolation, and we very much kick his ass in a climactic moment because it was him or us.

Indeed, although I think viewed another way, it is a fairly major concession that in spite of what the game is trying to portray, she's far from unimpeachable in her conduct.

And then there's Venat. It's all well and good to explain at length she was conflicted and agonizing and wasn't a saint, but then why is she treated so well in-universe? Her claims and beliefs that led to her genociding her people are never challenged by anyone at any point. For Zodiark's sake, the game gave me her minion and her dog! I'm sorry, Emet, but if I had been you in Ultima Thule, I would have torn her an entirely new orifice rather than go "hah, oh you! I get it. gg tyfp". All the arguments we've offered in these hundred pages –– what if she had actually told them everything instead of being paralysed by her own lack of faith in her people, what if Hermes was treated for his goddamned depression and eventually cooperated, what if there had been other experts in Dynamis in this society of scholars and scientists (haha, jk, it can't be because we need this plot to be as contrived as possible for it to work) – maybe Hermes is just like me and writes papers he never submits out of sheer procrastination? #relatable – what if they had researched Dynamis familiars with the proper information, what if they actually seized the apparently illegal AMNESIA MACHINE and investigated events, what if they could use the Echo, as one does, to see what actually happened, what if she'd brought out the space-faring bunnies to make spaceships ("but they said it took them super long to craft!" yes, and Zodiark kept up his shield for 12,000 years while missing 3 arms, 2 wings, his entire abdomen and at least 6 crotch tentacles, I'm not too worried there), what if they could have researched "sundering"/depowering themselves selectively, what if she had given them time to heal from the trauma, what if she had told them exactly the outcome she feared re: Ra-La dudes (which she indeed knew a single line from Meteion about, lmao context doesn't matter have this strawman) in a way that wasn't just offering patronising platitudes at the worst time after unprecedented disaster by her own fault so they could reflect upon it as she has had the luxury to do, what if they had changed in spite of her arrested beliefs, what if Azem had been anywhere at all to do something, anything –– literally none of this is even suggested in-game. This is what feels wrong. The only counter-argument we're presented with is her own self-flagellation while the plot very much wants you to infer this was the only solution anyway because DYNAMIS! VERY SUBTLE RA-LA! As Kizuya brought up like a hundred pages earlier, there is no actual balance to be found in this narrative. It's one thing to say your character was meant to be interpreted this way, it's another to write the story in a way that enough people seriously question how we were meant to interpret them.
It doesn't help that we get to fight her but we never get to kick her ****ing ass like we did with Emet. This is quite the difference. I wasn't here to have a friendly little spar with you on your own terms, sis. I was here for the catharsis I never got outside of writing long-ass forum posts.

And even their comment on the Ra-la situation - it's framed as her believing her people wouldn't change. Yet she never offers them any basis to what she's saying to do so. So that entire thing is unresolved. At least it confirms that the thrust of her concerns is the Plenty and the repeat of their doom, and less so the morality of these vague third stage sacrifices. It's more that she lacked faith that her people would change. She should've reminded herself "nothing is impossible." So his answer does not address what could've happened if they were told the truth in explicit terms.

I mean, first of all, "that might be applicable to Venat"? Uh... yes, it unambiguously is (this might be an artefact of translating Japanese politeness?). And secondly, I'd say context matters and is very different in both cases, re: Emet being a 12,000+ year-old tired old queen of eld who's had just about enough with these very biologically-different people he couldn't relate to.

Even Hermes doesn't go down as smoothly as Emet even though he's very much an antagonist no matter how much of a depressed vegan he is, because the overarching narrative (and YoshiP here, tbh) absolutely tells you he's making a fair point about his people even though this man is burned out and absolutely not okay, with Ismene here stating he isn't really a people person (gee, thanks Ismene, I could tell), but no, his view isn't warped by bias or illness, he's so intent on fairness that he doesn't bother giving humanity a chance to fight back as, again, we are to understand he is a very unique boy with knowledge totally no one else had, so what fighting chance did they have, frankly? And Venat, too, is very keen on preserving the objectivity of his insane test and offering an answer she decided her people would never get right in any circumstances. Who CARES about the rules he set? We outright told you this is going to go to shit!! The world is going to end! Stop following the rules of his stupid game! Everyone and everything is going to DIE! She's walking along the streets of Amaurot with this sad look on her face like "oh no so much pain and suffering", like WOW, pity nobody could have ever done anything!

I have similar sentiments on the above. IMO he at least acknowledges she is controversial in a similar sense that SHB (i.e. 12k years post-Sundering) Emet is - a man changed by the factors you mentioned. And while he attributes this to a characteristic of the ancients, we can point to various other antagonists - sundered, no less - who act in a similar manner, so in my view that isn't a particularly compelling way of looking at it. However, I'm glad that they recognise this about her. I think you'd have to be attempting to gaslight not to do that, so there is that too.

Not entirely certain he is either tbh, he's only dead until they suddenly decide he's not anymore. But I was mostly going off this:



https://www.gamesradar.com/final-fan...ory-interview/

Nice one.

[KizuyaKatogami]

Personally i think “Yoshi being tired of this arc” isn’t a very good excuse for the mess of an expansion this was. At the very least, ending the arc should’ve had way more caution than there was. It’s pretty clear to me as well they let community intervention get in the way of a lot of writing decisions and that doesn’t help either. It’s hard to just drop it and act like nothing happened because everything they’ve shown here with this expansion is going to be what ends up shaping future expansions and how they write those, and from what i’ve seen it’s just going to be full of more asspulls and slice of life anime. Not to mention Hydaelyn’s blessing apparently isn’t even gone, so doesn’t seem like we can just go back to being normal.

[Skyborne]

I'm just glad the sundered ascians (and some black mask underlings) are ambiguously still around and outlived her, and may or may not make an appearance later on. Also, they did nothing wrong, they were merely players in keikaku-mom's great plan. :^)

[Teraq]

I have similar sentiments on the above. IMO he at least acknowledges she is controversial in a similar sense that SHB (i.e. 12k years post-Sundering) Emet is - a man changed by the factors you mentioned. And while he attributes this to a characteristic of the ancients, we can point to various other antagonists - sundered, no less - who act in a similar manner, so in my view that isn't a particularly compelling way of looking at it. However, I'm glad that they recognise this about her. I think you'd have to be attempting to gaslight not to do that, so there is that too.

Yeah, I wasn't sure what he was going on about with the comment on Ancients in general, here. Did he mean that taking measures like a little genociding and history-wiping here and there because humanity failed a test was something a single Ancient was just likely to do? Oh, those Ancients!

I mean, if anything, the other Ancients we do kind of know, in context of their world as it used to be, took important decisions as a group of fourteen, presumably diverse, representatives, who debated things, could agree or disagree and even had a dedicated mediator.

[Teraq]

At least it confirms that the thrust of her concerns is the Plenty and the repeat of their doom, and less so the morality of these vague third stage sacrifices.

By the way, I wish you the best of luck in repeating this exact same argument over and over again when people want to debate Ancient morality for the next 10 years to come. Now you've got a new source to quote from!

(And don't forget to mention YoshiP confirmed the mortal human races only started existing after the Sundering and we have no reason to believe there were any "lesser"/non-Ancient humans before the Sundering. Yes, they really did intend to sacrifice just chickens and trees lol, and perhaps they were divided over it BECAUSE THEY DID CARE ABOUT THE CHICKENS AND THE TREES! so much for that argument.)

[Lauront]

By the way, I wish you the best of luck in repeating this exact same argument over and over again when people want to debate Ancient morality for the next 10 years to come. Now you've got a new source to quote from!

Oh I doubt I even have the wherewithal to do it for that long. The only reason I am doing so now is because there's more interest in that aspect of the story and I'd rather nip any misapprehensions over that issue in the bud while it's still early. The amount of sources on this point is voluminous which is part of the problem and why the EW cutscene is inadequate on its own.

(And don't forget to mention YoshiP confirmed the mortal human races only started existing after the Sundering and we have no reason to believe there were any "lesser"/non-Ancient humans before the Sundering. Yes, they really did intend to sacrifice just chickens and trees lol, and perhaps they were divided over it BECAUSE THEY DID CARE ABOUT THE CHICKENS AND THE TREES! so much for that argument.)

I'd say that further attenuates the whole argument, yes, but it also stems from the fact that the JP version ties it back to the new life seeded by Zodiark - that strongly hints at creations (which we know he could realise quite readily from the fight), which generally speaking to qualify as life (=gain a soul), will be animals/plants. There may be exceptional familiars who her faction thought could potentially gain souls and thus be guided in such a manner, but admittedly that's speculation on my part.

[KageTokage]

By the way, I wish you the best of luck in repeating this exact same argument over and over again when people want to debate Ancient morality for the next 10 years to come. Now you've got a new source to quote from!

(And don't forget to mention YoshiP confirmed the mortal human races only started existing after the Sundering and we have no reason to believe there were any "lesser"/non-Ancient humans before the Sundering. Yes, they really did intend to sacrifice just chickens and trees lol, and perhaps they were divided over it BECAUSE THEY DID CARE ABOUT THE CHICKENS AND THE TREES! so much for that argument.)

It's strongly implied that the "beast" tribes were creations and existed during the time of the Ancients, so it could be that they were included within that new life.

Entrusting the future to non-sentient lifeforms sounds...strange in any case, though as with most of the elements surrounding the Sundering, it's just speculation and possibilities until further notice.

[Rulakir]

What's most disappointing is despite this being hyped as a decade long saga, fact of the matter is the Ascians (and Zodiark) had little development until ShB. Hydaelyn had some in HW, most of which was Minfilia related. Frankly, I didn't care about the Ascians until ShB. They seemed like generic villains in a mustache-twirling cult of chaos that worshipped a generic dark god. Then 5.0 happened and I was hooked only for Yoshi-P to decide that story's over next expansion. People just learned 2 - not 10 - 2 years ago that their WoL is a reincarnated Ancient, one of the Convocation of Fourteen, who happened to be BFFs with the best character in the entire game and we're just done with that?! (I'm factoring in the expansion timeline. As someone who recently started playing in September I found out about all this only months ago.)

By the way, I wish you the best of luck in repeating this exact same argument over and over again when people want to debate Ancient morality for the next 10 years to come. Now you've got a new source to quote from!

I already asked in lore if we could finally lay to rest that the sundering had anything to do with continued sacrifices to Zodiark and was responded to with a long-winded no. :P

[Teraq]

I already asked in lore if we could finally lay to rest that the sundering had anything to do with continued sacrifices to Zodiark and was responded to with a long-winded no. :P

You know, it's always something I've found bizarre... Does any character that isn't on Venat's side ever explicitly say the Convocation was planning more sacrifices after the third one that would bring back the people within Zodiark?
But I understand why people would cling to the argument of the morality of the third sacrifice. I mean, Venat's actual stated reason for opposing the Convocation, that their civilisation would eventually die out on their own accord based on an alien people she's barely heard of... perhaps doesn't resonate as much? I can picture Venat watching us go through the Dead Ends, MST3K-style, seeing the Plenty and going "oh, that must be them! They even have the hooded robes and masks, it's so heavy-handed, I love it! I WAS RIGHT (breathes a deep sigh of relief that she ended up justified for deleting her people and their entire history because they would have died at one point)"

I've been playing since 3.2 which, if memory serves, was the patch where Thancred decked Emmanellain, and wasn't too invested until the post-Stormblood / Shadowbringers ramp-up MSQ. I have a confession to make: I cared more for Stormblood than Heavensward, largely because the setting of HW didn't appeal to me at all, and this alongside always having been intrigued by the Ascian side of things and their plots probably lands me on a top 10 list of People With Objectively Horrible Taste In Final Fantasy XIV Online. The earliest character I latched onto was Nero in CT and post-HW, then Elidibus in post-HW and post-SB, and then I committed the cardinal sin of finding even pre-ShB Emet-Selch entertaining enough. But yeah I only started getting really invested during Shadowbringers, and I'll admit I was kind of positively vibrating on my seat during 5.2 and 5.3. Sure, the latter just kind of went and personally attacked and destroyed me, but I figured there was literally NO way it would be over for my favorite character now that it was revealed he was basically the consciousness of Zodiark. I mean why would you reveal that just a year and a half before the grand conclusion of the Hydaelyn-Zodiark saga and actually keep the character around if not to build up toward a satisfying conclusion for Zodiark, right? (You know, it's amusing, because the way I thought Zodiark would be handled wound up being how they did Vrtra, using an avatar to walk around, only in Elidibus's case his Zodiark self has been broken, lethargic and locked up for millenia so he didn't transfer his full consciousness back in there very often, but I pictured there would still be a tiny part of him left inside, just hanging on to a thread.) I was on such a high during the latter half of 2020, theorizing on what would happen next and the remaining Ascians getting involved... that the entirety of 2021 felt like a year-long car crash.

I've never talked about the fact that Nero did not get a single spoken line in an expansion that had us go to Garlemald, but, that too. That was a crime. In a better timeline, my favorite gay kooky engineer would have been leading the charge on the Tower of Babil riding on gigantic mechas blasting loud music from radios, while yelling "WITNESS ME, GARLOND!!!!", before becoming the first Garlean to step on the Moon. And then we would have launched him into deep space.

It would have been nice to be given a 'Blessing of Darkness' from Zodiark to balance things out. Perhaps as a last desperate act before he was taken over by Fandaniel.

I love this, by the way. Azem, who historically refused to side with either Zodiark or Hydaelyn to deal with the Final Days (as far as we can tell, anyway), now having the blessings of both to deal with the Final Days. I mean, it's true, the plot of Endwalker could have never been resolved without the Heart of Zodiark going "dude... what if time travel", but this little tidbit is hardly given any attention at all. I wanted this story to be about both Hearts.


As an aside, I've been talking with a real-life friend and colleague about our respective fandom grievances. She explained the entirety of Supernatural to me over lunch so she could properly convey how disappointed she was in the final episode, while I, of course, had to rant about Endwalker. I quickly realised how complicated it was to get across how disappointed I was without the set-up and context, so I drew this timeline.