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

[DevonEllwood]

My expectations going from Shadowbringers to EW were pretty similar to what people posted a couple pages back. I honestly thought the Ancients were going to be portrayed as hard workers, working too hard (like Lahabrea) and dedicating themselves entirely to the star. Fandaniel would have still been involved in the "sound" provoking something or doing something he shouldn't have for the sake of tearing down society. Venat's concern was for the new life as she stated in Shadowbringers instead of it just being completely dropped. A statement that hey, let this new life take over, it's break time for us. The sundering would have been an accident.

Instead we get a Venat forcing her ideologies. But that by itself wasn't a good enough reason for the sundering to be purposeful. Yes it had to be purposeful because Venat had to be shown as great and amazing. Instead they came up with some crazy energy source that is somehow needed. Lets dump all her negative characteristics onto this new Hermes character and make sure everyone knows it's his fault everything is wrong. On top of that lets make sure the players know why the sundering had to happen and have a catgirl say it's because of dynamis.

Speaking of dynamis, Meteion was made to be able to interact with dynamis to travel to other stars and be able to communicate through her emotions. The whole being affected by emotions in turn and causing an overload was just overlooked. It is stated that dynamis is much weaker than aether....so where in the game does it say that dynamis is the only thing that can counteract dynamis? Where is it explicitly stated that the ancients can't use dynamis? All I remember is a line stating it's harder to use, and there is no practical use. Hermes states it's only known to a select few scholars, which in a world full of nothing but scholars, I feel you need to suspend your disbelief to make possible.

I feel all the Venat praise was not Ishikawa at all. There was an interview that Yoshida stated she was overworked and had to take over. Ishikawa steps down as lead writer, Yoshida cries over Hydaelyn scene. Ishikawa then goes to write the sundering in another game entirely. Yeah I can hazard a guess who was changing things to make Venat and Hydaelyn look like the perfect goddess.

I can't say I'm ever going to quit, I have an important house and I want to keep it. It was my old fc house and it's decorated by a friend. She plans on tweaking some things after decorating her new house, but feel free to visit

Lunaxia stated how I feel about Hythlodaeus. Both his and Hades's characterizations were fine and were the same in the side stories. It's just the dialogue that was mostly garbage.During the flying scene I honestly just wanted Hythlodaeus to stop talking. Show, don't tell and we are already being shown. He comes off as depressing. I really just wanted to give him a pep talk, but then I remembered that it doesn't matter, he just going to die. Out of all the character that they can work with the most I feel he's one of them. He has a lot of potential that will never see the light of day. Elpis was really one of the worst zones for me and I hate that it looks like a mini-golf course from the air now.

Forge ahead... but not too hard because we can't let life get too good. Forge ahead but when you've forged and you're ahead make sure not to do much.

Yeah, don't want to get to a point where we just want to die from boredom.

[Teraq]

Honestly, yes, the English localisation often ends up unnecessarily vague. As pointed out,

I just listened to the cutscene in Japanese, my Japanese isn't perfect but she seems to be saying that Hydaelyn was around to bind Zodiark when the Final Days were happening so she would know what to do.

(Or maybe she knows something because the Final Days remained forestalled even though she bound Zodiark, like I said. Not perfect.)

this is also what is said in French, in which Y'shtola specifies that she is referring to Venat being around when Zodiark was summoned to stop the Final Days (implying she would have more context than them) and "forestalling the (implicitly now-current) Final Days" by keeping him alive. I can't speak any German but I am willing to bet their version is also much closer to the Japanese, according to hearsay. It's mostly the English localisation going off.

There are... a lot of other examples like this, though not necessarily pro-Hydaelyn / anti-Zodiark. Some that come to mind due to my area of interest and shameless bias, though: the "patronising" Amaurotine that chides you on your extravagant outfit in Amaurot is "charitable" in French, the "bitter" Ancient in Venat's artistic license version of the Sundering is "bewildered" (presumably by having just witnessed a famous and respected person draw her weapon toward them – understandable, have a nice Final Day), Igeyorhm in Elidibus's second Echo flashback in 5.3 does not just say "some thought you would be unfit for the position" but actually specifies "some thought you would be too kind and indulgent", which is minor but I would argue the English ver diminishes characterisation; his Ancient self being specifically referred to as a young adult in every version but English that for some reason still plays coy with weasel words like "youth" and "boy", leading some unperceptive people to still think he was a child... and how could I forget, his not-so-final line of pure self-abnegation in which he says matter-of-factly that he had to be the last of his kind to go as he would have hated himself for leaving his surviving friends to fend alone... which, yes, the now-famous English version of this line is certainly beautiful and tear jerking because of the callback to the Echo line and posting it on any social media in summer 2020 would have gotten you all the updoots, but I feel it doesn't carry exactly the same explicit meaning.

I'm also low-key mad English Endwalker doesn't have him refer to Hydaelyn as "my dear Hydaelyn" while saddling her with the role of the last of "the authentic human race", as "a last revenge from Zodiark" in his parting lines. Take note, English team, that's what you may refer to as a bitter Ancient.

All in all, these little things can sum up and amount to a different interpretation of characters. Some differences are expected due to the difficulty of translating, but when it only happens with the English localisation I am side-eyeing pretty hard.