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

[AziraSyuren]

Nah, Venat is still a very, very popular character in Japan, too. Again, there were two 2ch-based polls of "favorite Endwalker NPC" that were commonly cited before Famitsu's own poll--and Venat scored #3, and then #2, below Emet. Even in Famitsu, Endwalker was voted in as "favorite expansion." There are people who have criticisms and feel very strongly about them, same as here, of course. But it's probably best to not fall into the trap of "I bet those other people whose feedback I don't have direct access to hate it, though." Not that I don't understand, and not that Yoshi's attitude in the Q&A regarding her wasn't pretty curious.

I think the sentiments about Venat are relatively common but a lot of people don't feel as though it's a make or break thing, myself included. It's not impossible to like her a lot and think her actions were genocidal; just look at how much people liked Emet even before EW (although I personally like a lot of characters much more than her).

Even to those people, I imagine the tonal clash is enough to warrant further clarification.

[Brinne]

I think the sentiments about Venat are relatively common but a lot of people don't feel as though it's a make or break thing, myself included. It's not impossible to like her a lot and think her actions were genocidal; just look at how much people liked Emet even before EW (although I personally like a lot of characters much more than her).

I still think Venat, on her own, could legitimately be a really fun and interesting character; when I'm discussing her without the albatross of "why did the story handle her the way it did?", I actually find myself becoming strangely fond of her and her strange, strange thought processes, absolute self-assurance, and willingness to resort to extreme measures and pile up bodies in the name of her beliefs--to the point that if I had the choice, I probably wouldn't fundamentally change her, honestly. She's sort of fascinating.

The problem has always been the narrative's apologism, insisting we see her as good and benevolent, and therefore narratively minimizing the effects on her victims and the weight of her actions. Which is where we get the actually infuriating stuff, re: "alas, the Ancients were the architects of their own demise because they didn't suffer enough!" (They were murdered by your creator, actually, but, okay.)

If she was just left to be what she is, a painfully self-righteous, clever, and charismatic ideologue with torrents of blood on her hands, it'd be fine. But Hydaelyn has been so wrapped up in being a supportive figure to the WoL, I assume the devs were worried about doing that in fear of leaving a bad taste in players' mouths about being used as a tool in her plans for the past ten years.