The time travel is irrelevant in the context of the discussion. Some posters are intentionally or unintentionally going out of their way to find reasons not to hold Venat accountable for her actions and to describe what she did as anything other than genocide - though the intent is there and that is what ultimately matters. Everything else is just window dressing.

Though as we've seen with G'raha and the situation surrounding him the game has established that multiple different forms of time travel exist. Yet judging by Myths of the Realm, the game now forgets about or retcons plot elements that were established only an expansion or a patch or two earlier.

It does beg the question as to who, exactly, the story is being written for if not those who pay attention to the world building and it doesn't bode well for the future chapters of the story as far as I'm concerned. Though I've made my peace with that and get my fix elsewhere these days.

I don't expect perfection and can sympathise with it being hard to connect everything perfectly - but nobody here is demanding that. They're simply expecting the game to be consistent in regards to calling out atrocities no matter who the character responsible for them happens to be. I think it's the least the game can do after forcing players to endure a decade of screeching and preaching from the likes of Alphinaud.

As for Hermes, he's ultimately to blame for everything that happened but he merely lit the match - Venat deliberately threw petrol on the flame and then bizarrely decided to entertain his 'test'. Essentially making the pair co-conspirators to a certain degree, even if unintentionally so.

The major difference, I suppose, is that the game doesn't go to the lengths it does with Hermes in an effort to try and praise and justify his actions in the same way as it does with Venat. Indeed, Ishikawa even acknowledged that Hermes was expected to be hated by many players for what he did.