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

[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.