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

[Teraq]

I'd go one step further and make Emet a woman, looking like Cruella de Vil in ShB and being absolutely Tsundere for Azem in EW. Now the Unsundered can be the Mean Girls I've always wanted them to be deep down. You can't hang out with us, Sundered.

But hey, at least we got to gasp and clap at the super cool Answers anime music video.

It had just occurred to me a couple of days ago that this was probably the reason why Venat was so obsessed with giving Hermes/Meteion humanity's "answer": so we could stand up and clap when the lyrics hit. Then I had this terrible feeling about the potential title of the final fight BGM, so I had to go check the OST tracklist and I'm pleased to report neither of them have anything to do with a question whatsoever. Whew. I might have died of cheese.

(I also found out the Elpis night theme, which tends to make me sad to begin with, is titled "Stars Long Dead". Oof ouch owie...)

(meanwhile we saw how Emet-Selch and Elidibus were capable of enduring for 12k years to pursue their goal so the idea that they lack resilience is just silly)

I really liked your previous signature quote, of bearing the burden and fighting on, kicking and screaming until your last breath is spent, as said by the Scions in Ultima Thule – wait... (checks notes) ...it's not the S– oh dear there's been a terrible mistake –

Furthermore, instead of letting the story play out XIV does have a bad habit of directly stating and restating its point and themes at the player. All the speeches wear thin, when I as the player feel more akin to a errand boy instead of this mythical hero of legend. Also the stakes never reach or feel epic. Nothing is really lost, and more is told than shown. It's tiresome.

By the time I unlocked the Endsinger I was ready for Ra-La to come and take me tbh

I wish the Final Days had been so much more. But Sundered stronk!

[Rulakir]

I know it's taboo within the FFXIV community, but when the director feels the need to "communicate she's not a bad guy" despite the gross amount of gaslighting that occurred and has to explain key character motivations and story elements, then the script didn't go into enough depth and the game didn't depict them sufficiently. I won't go as far as saying it's bad writing/directing, but they did not give these characters and storylines the attention they needed. Maybe I shouldn't be surprised when the Q&A made it clear that they don't consider the finer details of the lore that the fandom pores over excessively.

However, even then, I simply don't understand how Yoshi-P can compare Venat to Emet and Hermes, imply they're basically all the same and this is just an Ancient mentality, but the way Venat is portrayed is as a protagonist, not an antagonist like the others, and that's while being responsible for everything except the cause of the Final Days.

You know, it's always something I've found bizarre... Does any character that isn't on Venat's side ever explicitly say the Convocation was planning more sacrifices after the third one that would bring back the people within Zodiark?

As far as I know, not even people among Venat's group were concerned with 'endless' or 'continuous' sacrifices to Zodiark. It's always been player headcanon that somehow came to be accepted as fact.

I love this, by the way. Azem, who historically refused to side with either Zodiark or Hydaelyn to deal with the Final Days (as far as we can tell, anyway), now having the blessings of both to deal with the Final Days.

This is one of the (many) reasons the WoL being the champion of Hydaelyn irked me. Venat is someone who 1) your OG self didn't join, 2) condemned your two BFFs to fates worse than death, 2) sundered you and then groomed/manipulated your reincarnation. Why in TF would I ever view her favorably? I can concede to having to work with her due to the position she put us all in, essentially having to clean up her and Hermes' mess, but like she's some sort of good guy in all this? No.

You seem to be real hung on on Venat being a woman. Like.. You just can't let that one thing go, it comes across are rather crass honestly.

Baseless accusation, but I suppose that's the 2020s. Were roles reversed, I would feel contempt for Elidibus and heartbreak for Venat. It has nothing to do with gender and everything with character.

As for the "crystal mommy" bit, maybe had Hydaelyn ever been a likeable character I could've let it slide, but think of any character in the game you dislike constantly referring to you as their children (or "my" anything) and see if that doesn't start grating on your nerves.

[Lauront]

I just hope they don't sink low enough to implement the idea that the Azem of the ancient world is the player character now, having gone back in time...

I really liked your previous signature quote, of bearing the burden and fighting on, kicking and screaming until your last breath is spent, as said by the Scions in Ultima Thule – wait... (checks notes) ...it's not the S– oh dear there's been a terrible mistake –

It's a great quote, isn't it? He has many great ones. I also liked that one because it (along with Hades) is a corrosive against the idea I've seen floated around that the ancients couldn't relate to the idea of struggling to fight for their existences to the bitter end. To me he epitomises the notions of "nothing is impossible" and exceeding love for and allegiance to his people far better than a certain other character professing these notions.

[Rosenstrauch]

I just hope they don't sink low enough to implement the idea that the Azem of the ancient world is the player character now, having gone back in time...

I don't think they will.

There's no real benefit to telling that story if it leads to a foregone conclusion—the WoL sitting on the sidelines, abstaining from conflict altogether, then laying down and meekly accepting annihilation at Venat's hands.

There's also little benefit to telling the same story twice—we've already had our song and dance about stopping Meteion and the Final Days, so doing it a second time would have much less impact regardless of how it's handled. Even if they leaned into that by having her be, say, the boss of the level X5 dungeon, we'd have folks feeling it's underwhelming to take her out so easily when she was a nigh impossible hurdle to overcome in Endwalker.

And even then, we already have Meteion as the heretofore unknown third party who was actually responsible for the Final Days. There's not much room to inject an even more secret fourth party who needs to be dealt with, unless they pull something like the Infinite Dragonflight from World of Warcraft—and even then, the story would probably run into the same headache we have now regarding Venat's character, but with the player instead.

And finally, I doubt they will ever willingly undermine the legitimacy of Venat's actions. If the WoL went back in time and successfully did anything that Venat failed to do, it would only make her look worse by comparison. And even if we succeeded in stopping the Final Days, Venat would still be the woman who wants to end the Ancients' world because "What if they might die of apathy?".

[Colt47]

I think the story was okay, the only point I had an issue with was the time travel since it was ultimately unnecessary. The echo can show visions of a potential future, or show events that occurred in the past related to a foci (be it a person or object). Given that they can't have the WoL just warp reality by changing the past, it would have made more sense that Venat and the WoL communicated indirectly via the echo, since the sundering is a fixed and unavoidable event, so anything that happens after the sundering would be beyond the scope of the unsundered to impact. While normally it would be impossible for the echo to go that far back, there are relics on the first that would enable it such as the old ruins, so communicating via that means would have made a lot more sense.

[Theodric]

Can you explain why it is that you do find the mother goddess motif creepy? It's common symbolism in many religions, it's not unique or unusual.

I'm not religious myself and although this isn't the place for a deep debate on the subject, it could be proposed that a lot of real world religions strip away freedom and agency from believers who in turn then sometimes seek to spread teachings which do the same to other people.

Another factor, specifically for Venat is that her behaviour is very similar to munchausen by proxy. Yet in the case of the Sundered she isn't even their mother to begin with - only masquerading as such and declaring that everyone on Etheirys is now suddenly her 'children' based on a non-consensual act of forcing them to be more to her liking.

I don't necessarily have a problem with the 'mother goddess' motif in general, so much as in the context of Venat. As I mentioned in prior posts, I don't think her reasons for inflicting genocide upon her own people were particularly strong. She deduced, with no guarantee that it was the correct judgement, that the Ancients would eventually suffer a similar fate to the inhabitants of the planets mentioned in Meteion's report. However, even if we concede that such might have been true...she had information that allowed her to know of the impending approach of the Final Days as well as Meteion's existence. She insisted on withholding both pieces of key information from her people despite it clearly being something that would have helped the Ancients respond accordingly. They did, after all, have a society based around research and debate.

In terms of the player character, the lack of an ability to express our disagreement with what she did is also rather strange. That a significant chunk of the most recent Live Letter was focused on 'clarifying' elements of the story suggests to me that quite a lot of people found the premise of the expansion to be rather bizarre in places. I also get the impression that Venat wasn't nearly as universally loved as the development team were led to believe which likely caught them off guard.

If nothing else, I think the writers dropped the ball in regards to handling the controversial subject of genocide. I don't agree that there was a 'good reason' for the genocide of the Ancients and I thought it was pretty weird that the Scions are so lukewarm in their reactions to Venat. It's entirely possible for someone to directly or indirectly benefit from an act as horrific as the Sundering but still find the act to be utterly reprehensible. The story seems to pick and choose which morals and themes it wishes to embrace at any given time instead of maintaining a sense of consistency.

Ultimately I think Venat was done a major disservice. I found her to be likeable during the Elpis portion of the story - right up until the infamous 'thou shall walk' cutscene which, conveniently, involved exaggerated caricatures of the Ancients and reduced the complex reasoning outlined in Shadowbringers and Elpis to eyebrow raising parody. The other jarring element is making her responsible for sparing the three Unsundered and viewing the Rejoinings as a 'necessity' for her plan to work. I think it takes away the agency of many different characters and factions.

[Lauront]

involved exaggerated caricatures of the Ancients

This guy ended up being the unsung tragic martyr of the resistance against Venat's "grand plan":



Bizarrely enough, Yoshi's "she's an ancient huh" is applied to her (again, I'll reiterate how unconvincing I find this given that we see many sundered characters engaged in similar "for the greater good" and "the ends justify the means" reasoning, but whatever), but no such luck for the poor strawmen. No, they just have to react to immense grief and loss the right way, in the face of very weak reasoning. We can conveniently neglect that the majority of their number had to sacrifice to prevent their star from dying beneath their feet and how we'd realistically react in this scenario and hope for platitudes to carry the day.

[Skyborne]

This guy ended up being the unsung tragic martyr of the resistance against Venat's "grand plan":

All hail the boomer amaurotines. They just wanted to grill and mow their beautiful perfect lawns in their beautiful perfect world, then walk into the suicide machine 5 minutes later. Also, the perception that Zodiark was putting on his bib and slamming 3 pairs of forks and knives on the table begging for more souls still is funny since it was revealed that he had been keeping them all intact for all these 12k years while the ones in Hydaelyn were consumed.

[Lauront]

Ah yes, the never-ending soul sacrifices to feed the greedy darkness! How can one forget that old chestnut. Yeah, that was quite the revelation, that he wasn't quite the hungering blood god some thought he was, and actually preserved them inside him.

[Rulakir]

I'd go one step further and make Emet a woman, looking like Cruella de Vil in ShB and being absolutely Tsundere for Azem in EW. Now the Unsundered can be the Mean Girls I've always wanted them to be deep down. You can't hang out with us, Sundered.

Here you go. :P