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

[Lauront]

Thought I’d post my impressions on the new stuff.

MSQ: It was alright. I’m just not feeling it yet. A bit too much exposition on things we already knew, some world-building aspects which I wasn't that impressed by and the Void felt altogether a little bit too orderly in spite of the fact that it's meant to have something of a Mad Max vibe to it.

Zero could be an intriguing character, but I feel the writing is in too much of a rush to get not from A to B but A to K (to pick an arbitrary letter), and it is introducing contrivances to hit upon this, starting with the way the crystal Hydaelyn (really, again?) left resonating with Zero to practically solve the issue of her corruption itself. Perhaps a function again of changing planned writing, but who can say for sure. We’ll see what they do with Golbez. He may have a deeper underlying motivation. I like Zero's colder, more utilitarian and to the point attitude, for now. I probably differ on this point to many here, but I enjoy her type of character.

It's interesting that the Echo can even peer into the minds of voidsent, warped through thousands of years of aetheric corruption and practices that warp their souls.

Panda: I’ll come back to this later.

Short story:

I admit, I needed something bitter like a strong, dark coffee (or some fish liver oil) while reading this due to the sheer saccharine overdose in reading how Venat’s as yet nameless arch-simp characterised her. To me, it seems like the approach they’re using to engender sympathy to Venat is, as before, praising her as the ultra-special crystal woowoo lady who is just so grounded unlike everyone else, right down to tying in the incident that led to her unspecified epiphany (saw it in the stars that she’d meet a brave little spark one day…? Less facetiously, I guess it’s her research on the “miracle” of their inevitable existence.) As Answers says, "so believe..."

Stuff like this:

Venat was cheerful, well spoken, and undeniably brilliant. Her carefully crafted arguments drew sighs of admiration from her audience and concessions from her opponents. A rounded gemstone, without edge or flaw─the refracted light rendered a soft glow.

Or…

Unadulterated, unabashed joy─a jubilance that sparkled in her ocean-hued eyes. I recall not when you removed your mask, but I am grateful that you did.

Or…

As she enthusiastically regaled him with her adventures, he was struck by how different this Venat was from the brilliant yet rather more subdued scholar he had met once upon a time. A crystal bathed in sunlight. So blinding in her delight she outshone the very stars.

Ok ok we get it, mommy travelled a bit, the first step for mankind, the most brilliant being to ever exist…

It just feels so needlessly OTT. They wrote this character to be besotted with her. I was trying not to laugh at the FR version, where it veered into even more over the top characterisations of his obsession with her. She’s so perfect she just relinquishes her seat to pass the opportunity to someone else to grow in it (FR adds this was upon meeting a fascinating individual). I am sorry but this almost reads like a parody character.

Another funny one (from FR):

"Don't you think you still have a lot to do as Azem?
- The world doesn't need me to turn, you know.”

Your codex in EN says otherwise.

It has decent little tidbits in it, like explaining the mask custom and when they would unmask. The FR version adds close relations as a scenario where this would be suitable. Sources of danger in the world that would warrant a seat of Azem (or indeed, Pashtarot), such as accidental acts of creation by children (FR: through a dream), which apparently could tower in size. This underscores how natural this power was to them.

The structure of the story seems to be to spend 2/3 of itself establishing why she’s so brilliant and respected and beloved etc., because in the final section, it really doesn’t add that much to what we already knew about the Final Days altercation between her faction and their broader society, other than on a few points, spoiler tagged to cut down length.

1) It further reiterates that their objection to the sacrifices was in the context of some ideological view of not hindering the progress of man through clinging to the past and that they saw Zodiark’s power as a risk in that sense. Again the exhortation to accept pain and loss comes up. I cross-checked with FR and it s very clearly laid out as a concern of trading the future for the past, rather than a focus on the things to be sacrificed.

2) On the point of the sacrifices EN says a bounty of souls to replace those within Zodiark – at the end it adds nothing to what we don’t already know from the JP version of the Hyth dialogue on the final stage of sacrifices, and clarifies little as living creations also gain souls.

There appears to be some confusion when checking the FR (and DE) localisations as to whether it is talking about the second voluntary stage (French even refers to the second stage and the translation I’ve seen of DE refers to some of mankind offering themselves up for life to blossom on the star, i.e. the second stage) or the ambiguous third one, which EN seems to be more directly referencing. As the second one would enable the third, my reading of this when taking in the other two localisations is that that it’s referring to the second stage as setting into motion her faction's manoeuvres… probably to help reconcile it with the Elpis “stylised” scene, which showed the world still on fire.

3) They seemed to know their souls would be wholly consumed, but apparently she kept the reasons for what she was doing (her glimpse of the future; FR narrows this to the space around the star, but says she’d not revealed the full picture) hidden from them. It does not seem like they knew she was going to sunder her own people. This was done on trust. The expectation on her faction’s part - certainly the Watcher and Venat - seems to be that if Zodiark was shackled, they’d “grow” like them.

On 1, sorry, but I will never be convinced by this presentation. Unless she gave her people the truth of the situation, their reaction (which had led to division amongst them) was natural. We know she didn’t even entrust her followers with the truth now, and really this all seems to have been driven by engendering a fear of Zodiark becoming an obstacle to progress (which again would tie into her fear of them ending up as the Plenty.) Fine – give them the truth. In reality, I suspect she didn’t want to level with her followers on the true intentions she had, which was to sunder her own people and ultimately, in order to be able to overcome Zodiark, the star. In the end, even if her people did change, she still harboured the belief that they wouldn’t be able to deal with Meteion due to their aetheric levels (again – an assumption.) She speaks of not what is anticipated and what comes to pass not needing to be the same, but from everything I see, she tried her damndest to ensure it did.

It was a nice touch to reconcile this with the Anamnesis dialogue, but I am afraid it still makes very little sense for them to speak of missing her given that their souls would be devoured by the summon.

Really, the entire dialogue struck me as hopelessly sycophantic, idealising her (and I guess whatever the Watcher saw in himself) above her own people as a form to which he aspired mankind would “grow” into. I guess the comparison Omega made between her and Hermes and their own kind wasn’t so flawed after all, and makes her faction that much less sympathetic to me… and no, sorry, you're not going to convince me this is a general ancient thing.

looks at the average Sundered…

Yeah they totally grew into a bunch of rounded gemstone Venats.

If I had felt a morsel of sympathy for the Watcher before this, I now feel none. The entire story reads as a rather crushing devotion to Hydaelyn and an utter lack of faith in their own people and ideological fixation with "change", that I simply cannot relate to on any level. Really it read as “YASSS KWEEN: The story”. Given that Yoshi had alluded to having to hold back tears or somesuch over her model design, I have to wonder if the Watcher is his self-insert.

Same. I actually need this to be able to continue with this game full stop. If Pandaemonium ends being just another way to say "And then the Ancients had to die because muh hubris, muh arrogance, muh scariness" then I am officially the hell out of here. I played the patch and while the MSQ did nothing for me, personally, Panda was incredible. It actually gave me a modicum of hope again. And maybe I'm a fool for having that hope, but it is feeling like a hopeful story and I can't help having the desire for there to be an ending for the Ancients that isn't wholly bad because Reasons.

I agree with all this and your remaining points. If any of the other short stories or future content seeks to walk back any of this and retreat back to trying to find ways to justify wiping the ancients out, I am done with it.