There is an alternate timeline somewhere where the writers didn't take this convoluted route and wrote an Endwalker without any time travel or blue haired bird people, where both Zodiark and Hydaelyn were fleshed out and given enough depth and better rationales underscoring both of their chosen courses of actions.

Instead here we are, several months later after all the hype has worn off and still trying to process just how many ways Endwalker went wrong in terms of its writing. I'm not going to read through the bulk of the last few posts given their length so I'll summarize my thoughts below (again):

Venat / Hydaelyn is lying, hubristic, and manipulative individual who should not have been so readily "forgiven" by the game. She is a beautiful yet deeply flawed woman who I found likeable as a person, but felt betrayed by later on due to her lack of taking appropriate action and deliberate omission of key information that could have helped avert the coming catastrophe. This caused me to severely question and reassess my stance on her and ultimately I feel she was mismanaged.

She is a villainess. A vain, proud angel who challenged "God" and then quite literally spent the next several millennia in the frozen/crystallized centre of the world. From her actions, all malice and evil began to form in the hearts of humanity. Immortality was lost. Paradise was lost. Humanity was condemned to a lesser state, forced to survive in a broken world that was only made viable due to the actions of Zodiark, her opponent. This isn't a character who needs constant praise and repeated attempts from the game to forgive - I would rather the player be given more agency to make up their minds about her actions rather than being conditioned into a certain view of her.

Zodiark as a God even gave his people a "son" of sorts to help guide them in the form of the returned Elidibus, a messianic embodiment of hope for the Ancients. This Elidibus later went on to sacrifice himself in the name of his brothers, loyal and faithful to his duty until the end. Whether or not the original Elidibus remained within as the main puppeteer of the God is a question we likely won't get the chance to explore, but it is possible that his essence may have faded with time in the same way that the souls within Hydaelyn faded over time as well, or else was destroyed or "silenced" when Hermes took control.

We have one "supreme deity" whose actions resulted in mostly unspeakable cruelty and mass destruction. We have another whose actions were for the specific purpose of safeguarding his people's interests.