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

[EaraGrace]

Ok, back to this thread.

I saw this brought up, but the part where it's mentioned that Venat opposed Zodiark's creation is in the cutscene with the Scions and the Watcher, post-Zodiark Trial. It's a bit baffling, though, because the very same conversation confirms that Zodiark was a necessity, and that the process of coming up with his creation only began after the Final Days had started.

I want to say that Venat might have been unprepared for how severe the Final Days truly were, but that last part is a real deal breaker. And it's too hard to believe Venat could be actively witnessing the death of Etheirys and go "This is fine, we don't need Zodiark".

EDIT: It also occurs to me that the story never offers a reason why Venat opposed Zodiark's creation, only that she did. While, again, acknowledging that the Ancients would not have survived without his intervention. With that in mind, I suspect it's actually a plot hole.

I also want to clarify that I'm not saying this in condemnation of Venat. As far as I'm concerned, she is a flawed character who makes understandable mistakes despite having the best of intentions. Like underestimating the impact the Final Days would have, or shouting at the survivors to move on while they're struggling to process their grief. And so on. And I'm not terribly bothered by characters looking the other way when it comes to her, save for Y'shtola—the perennial author avatar standing on her soap box—and Emet-Selch, who comes across as out of character in Ultima Thule in the moment he starts praising her.

There’s also the simple fact that the Watcher knew what he knew of those events due to being given the memories of an “old acquaintance.” Exactly what interpretation that particular individual had of events is uncertain, but we know he was not party to knowledge about Meteion, and he wasn’t a member of Venats faction, so he wasn’t “in the know” so to speak.

Furthermore, Venat herself argues for Hermes continued presence on the Convocation precisely to ensure Zodiark succeeds in halting the Final Days, so she clearly didn’t oppose his creation out of principle. It’s possible she opposed aspects of His creation, and potentially argued for their to be specific limitations placed on him that were ignored, but opposed entirely to any being like Zodiark being created goes against both Venats words and the other descriptions we had of the event.

If you can't deal with this mindset, I suggest you turn away from biology major/works. Because that's literally how researchers work. You said it yourself. We don't take pleasure from it, yet it had to be done.

Speaking of hermes, his personality is believable, but what unbelievable is how this guy manage to become chief overseer of a research facility where you have to deal with creatures every day. If even Twitter can recognize how stupid the idea is and how weird no one said anything about meteion, then it's just bad writing.

Just gonna chime in to say this is not at all how people operate. Many people go into fields like biology or medicine, studies that inevitably expose them to seeing the suffering of people and animals, out of a love for those selfsame beings. It’s a simple fact that those with a deep emotional connection to natural life will inevitably incorporate that into their day to day. Some with professions, others with volunteer work or hobbies. Hermes was clearly the former.

[NanaWiloh]

lol Cant stay away so did some digging. As to why the ancients were sundered and their greatest flaw.

"One race had discarded all things that gave rise to sorrow, hoping to have only joy. They found joy lost its savor in the absence of sorrow, and lost their will to live." As stated by Meteon this is the fate ancients were doomed to meet as they could not cope with sorrow and suffering. They were weak had no clue how to handle such feelings.

Confirmed here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xh3sh5fTWGs&t=307s time index 4:11

The ancients were doomed cause of their desire for a blissful paradise and inability to cope with sorrow and suffering. Meteion just brought the problem to the surface and made it apparent to those who were not blinded by the bliss of their society. The whole point of the sundering was to force mankind to learn to accept sorrow and suffering as part of life and to learn from it or die in blissful ignorance. You got a society that's known only bliss and joy words alone stand very little chance of swaying them to accept the pain their feeling. This also paints Zodiark as double edge sword a Savior and a Devil, as they have little to no reason to learn how to move forward. With Zodiark present to prevent or undo anything that causes them sorrow and suffering.

[KizuyaKatogami]

lol Cant stay away so did some digging. As to why the ancients were sundered and their greatest flaw.

"One race had discarded all things that gave rise to sorrow, hoping to have only joy. They found joy lost its savor in the absence of sorrow, and lost their will to live." As stated by Meteon this is the fate ancients were doomed to meet as they could not cope with sorrow and suffering. They were weak had no clue how to handle such feelings.

Confirmed here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xh3sh5fTWGs&t=307s time index 4:11

The ancients were doomed cause of their desire for a blissful paradise and inability to cope with sorrow and suffering. Meteion just brought the problem to the surface and made it apparent to those who were not blinded by the bliss of their society. The whole point of the sundering was to force mankind to learn to accept sorrow and suffering as part of life and to learn from it or die in blissful ignorance. You got a society that's known only bliss and joy words alone stand very little chance of swaying them to accept the pain their feeling. This also paints Zodiark as double edge sword a Savior and a Devil, as they have little to no reason to learn how to move forward. With Zodiark present to prevent or undo anything that causes them sorrow and suffering.

Except this isn’t true, as has been stated again and again. They did know suffering. They knew of pain and sorrow. Do the Elpis side quests lol. Also lol, using her recollection of events as evidence when in the expansion prior we know such memories are easily malleable and changed. Just look at Cid with Bozja.

[Skyborne]

Major deja vu to the last hundred of so pages of people who are way more eloquent than me debating this. Still stand by no one 'deserving' anything or being 'doomed' (because the Sundered are just as vulnerable) and the writing around Venat being messed up.

e: actually I take it back, the world's 100% doomed to a superplague and pollution because the WoL spared the Namazu. Why, WoL, why?

[NanaWiloh]

Except this isn’t true, as has been stated again and again. They did know suffering. They knew of pain and sorrow. Do the Elpis side quests lol. Also lol, using her recollection of events as evidence when in the expansion prior we know such memories are easily malleable and changed. Just look at Cid with Bozja.

If this is true then all recollections and telling of the passed should be seen as not accurate. So telling of passed events by cut scenes or by character should be disavowed until proven otherwise.

[Seiori]

It seems like writers were not sharing notes with one another makes a lot of stuff sound contradictory, like Venat the reason I don't make a comment about this character is because I think they are a mess of characterization. Wasn't the reason for the delay to mostly touch up on the story? I think needed more time if that was it. They really should not bunch a lot of key story arcs together along with time travel that is just trouble. Still see this expansion as rushed and my opinion is they just wanted to move on new things. Hopefully they can learn from the criticism and mistakes to make a more structured story going forward, now that they have a clean slate.

[Lauront]

Except this isn’t true, as has been stated again and again. They did know suffering. They knew of pain and sorrow. Do the Elpis side quests lol. Also lol, using her recollection of events as evidence when in the expansion prior we know such memories are easily malleable and changed. Just look at Cid with Bozja.

Even Venat acknowledges that much, i.e. that they were only spared suffering for a time (implying it was there before, and yes they also shared in many of the same emotions as mortal humans, including some of the same insecurities.) What the scene is intended to show is her lecturing them in a rather tone-deaf manner as the star is still on fire. Even the Scions (Y'shtola in particular) could not believe what they'd witnessed in the Plenty (however plausible one considers that caricature to be.) Unsure why it would be seen as a reasonable endeavour to convince the ancients. She didn't share all the knowledge she had, because reasons. Zodiark would never have been a double-edged sword if they were aware of good reasons not to use him in their pursuit of perfection; but the only uses we know (from the sum total of source materials, not just the rather "stylised" EW scene) of were stopping the Final Days, restoring the star and then a proposed stage to release the souls inside him in an exchange of life (the ambiguous "new life", seeded by Zodiark.) Any insinuations that they'd never stop using him in such a way are, ultimately, little more than headcanon. And it's not like the Scions are dropping their own attempts to minimise suffering and spread peace and prosperity, so... better learn to deal with perfection when it's reached once more, however long that takes.

Meteion just brought the problem to the surface and made it apparent to those who were not blinded by the bliss of their society.

Meteion tried to destroy the entire universe because she was consumed by the despair of civilisations that had perished. Any society that still possessed a sense of purpose and wasn't ready to render itself up to her twisted fatalism would be "blinded" on such a definition, because it was all "futile" anyway.

[NanaWiloh]

It seems like writers were not sharing notes with one another makes a lot of stuff sound contradictory, like Venat the reason I don't make a comment about this character is because I think they are a mess of characterization. Wasn't the reason for the delay to mostly touch up on the story? I think needed more time if that was it. They really should not bunch a lot of key story arcs together along with time travel that is just trouble. Still see this expansion as rushed and my opinion is they just wanted to move on new things. Hopefully they can learn from the criticism and mistakes to make a more structured story going forward, now that they have a clean slate.

Seems to me that all recollections and telling of events that the WOL did not experience themselves are mere points of view. So unless to two or more characters agree on the recollection or telling of a event, then it stands that said recollection or memory is their point of view. Such a thing can make things sound contradictory look at Starwars and Obi-won's telling of Ankin and Vader in new hope. Threw Luke off about his father and Vader until Obi explained the truth and revealed his first telling was his point of view. KizuyaKatogami said the devs wanted people to debate who was right and who was wrong with Ancients and sundered, Good way to insight that point of views. Both sides were right and wrong in the end, one thing I don't see pointed out is. The Ancients were unified prior to the Final days and splintered during it. The sundered were already splintered but unified before it and stayed unified through it.

Reading this debate made me forget that both sides were striving for survival, which is why I enjoyed the story cause neither were the bad guys in the end. Despair itself was the real bad guy in the story.

[AnaviAnael]

I also agree with your take on Venat - my issue is more with a lot of the writing surrounding her, including them making use of time travel yet again right after SHB (in ways that IMO constrained her own agency), and the potential use of this to explain mysteries like why the three unsundered escaped the Sundering. I'm reserving judgement until I see if they have any commentary on it to see what to make of it but overall I wasn't very satisfied with it. I would've liked the ability for a dialogue option to at least have my character distance themselves from her actions and refuse to condone what she did to the ancients. Acknowledge they (the character) benefited as a result but at a terrible cost to the ancients. Something to convey mixed feelings. Overall, I get why people dislike her, but a lot would agree this is due to what they see post-Elpis, so how they wrote it seems to be a culprit - bending over backwards to try paint her in a good light when it's not that simple. I think this poster put it very well:

Agreed. I honestly feel that the use of time travel messed up Venat's characterization and stripped her of a lot of her agency. The implication I got was that she never mentioned Dynamis/Meteion because she couldn't. If she did, the future timeline may have been disrupted. She sundered the source the way she did (knowing full well about the rejoinings) because "gotta preserve WoL's future" rather than have her come to any natural conclusions of her own. It's just not satisfactory and feels contrived.

[NanaWiloh]

Agreed. I honestly feel that the use of time travel messed up Venat's characterization and stripped her of a lot of her agency. The implication I got was that she never mentioned Dynamis/Meteion because she couldn't. If she did, the future timeline may have been disrupted. She sundered the source the way she did (knowing full well about the rejoinings) because "gotta preserve WoL's future" rather than have her come to any natural conclusions of her own. It's just not satisfactory and feels contrived.

There are various principles involving time travel and its all about which ones you employ that can make or break its use in a story. In the case of EW it employs the known principle of the Past cant be altered and the events of the present effect the future. In reality its just a big headache that's best left alone..