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

[KageTokage]

The EW role quests did at least go over how his rather naïve treatment of "Tsuyu" and other post-occupation matters soured opinions of him; to the extent that he was the only leader that had some of his people actively turning against him.

[Brinne]

I'm willing to make an allowance for the fact that when dealing with state actors in such a setting that they can probably get their hands fairly bloody without their morals being brought into question. Again, it would be nice if you could express some of your views via your character to perhaps dispute it, but I think with Venat it's the sheer scale and extent of it that made it much harder for me to ignore.

I mean, I'm no fan of Hien and could in fact cheerfully criticize him for days over tea, but as I said, it's not game-breaking or anything for me. And I will say that there's a distinction between "I will manipulate these uninvolved people to fight in my war for my country" versus what was ultimately "I will flat out kill everyone over a philosophical disagreement." One is mostly "wow, uh, pretty cutthroat and ruthless methods for your cause, bro, kinda weird though that we don't get to point out how ruthless and terrible to those people they are" and the other is "what is this I don't even."

The EW role quests did at least go over how his rather naïve treatment of "Tsuyu" and other post-occupation matters soured opinions of him; to the extent that he was the only leader that had some of his people actively turning against him.

Hien had some conflict over Tsuyu, but that was very much in a "hm, do I punish a person who is fundamentally innocent for the crimes she committed as a different self and how will people respond to that" - it's a situation where Hien's fundamental goodness of person and intent is never in question - versus "wow, the father I idolized sure did run a country that turned a blind eye to sex trafficking and abuse!" The most he says about what Yotsuyu actually endured is a very vague "uh, we'll make it so things are better? I'll assign the guy who sold Yotsuyu into slavery to another post I guess? I can't judge him?" Which. Hm. Yes.

[Lauront]

I mean, I'm no fan of Hien and could in fact cheerfully criticize him for days over tea, but as I said, it's not game-breaking or anything for me. And I will say that there's a distinction between "I will manipulate these uninvolved people to fight in my war for my country" versus what was ultimately "I will flat out kill everyone over a philosophical disagreement." One is mostly "wow, uh, pretty cutthroat and ruthless methods for your cause, bro, kinda weird though that we don't get to point out how ruthless and terrible to those people they are" and the other is "what is this I don't even."

Yup, and in all fairness, I think it's fine for the game to reflect the ability to at least tolerate such a cut-throat mentality given that the character is part of the setting and, ultimately, the player should be given some agency in the manner of character they want to play; it also fits particularly well with some jobs - that would of course include options to express some shock at his methods. After all, if they could add in that totally bizarre expression of shock in Elpis with the butterflies... they could do it in situations where it actually would fit better. It's just weird to me, because Yoshi didn't want to allow a thief type character to be playable because it didn't fit with the sort of character they wanted you to play, but wiping out a race for barely logical philosophical reasons? All good!

[Ixon]

It is a bit jarring that the 'good guys' are never held accountable for the same actions that they kill and enforce regime change over elsewhere but if I had things my way the game would either take a consistent stance across the board or ditch the preachy sophistry altogether.

I would be interested in how you would enforce that for our character. An Expansion in a jail cell? XD Our character has been personally called out for past transgressions, but the most they can do is have others suffer in our stead to make us feel bad. We had that table talk with Varis zos Galvus calling the nations and our character out. Then there was the whole quest line with Merlwyb acknowledging Limsa's past digressions. Our fight with Garleans was a straight up war, and rules are quite different when it comes to a war. Plus almost the entirety of the Garlemald zone was about how badly we affected their lives, when for everything up till then it was the other way around.

Could be cool if story wise our character and maybe even the scions were exiled for our crimes in order for the Garleans and remaining beast tribes to remotely accept an alliance. Probably won't happen, but just a thought.

[Theodric]

It's not the transgressions I care about so much as the hypocrisy surrounding them. I don't need the game to be preaching real world modern day morals and ideologies to me at every turn. I just want a cool story at the end of the day. In World of Warcraft I played a Blood Elf Warlock since the idea of using demonic magic appealed to me. It doesn't mean I go around summoning big, beefy demons in the real world.

Stuff like Limsa's piracy never bothered me. Pirates are cool and it's a real shame that the nation has opted to remove access to a key fantasy trope. I despise the majority of the Beast Tribes, so I could care less if they're 'oppressed' or not. Most fantasy settings do well enough having large swathes of semi-sentient beings such as kobolds and goblins being fodder to be culled.

What bothers me is sitting through near a decade of concern trolling from characters who never hold themselves or their allies truly accountable for their crimes yet insist on condemning others for doing whatever is needed simply to survive in what is very much a bleak and cruel world.

It's why Venat walking away with zero consequences and criticism for her actions felt bizarre and tone deaf. It just reveals all the preaching and moral concerns as irrelevant because they're never actually applied properly and fairly - thus we could do without them across the board as I see it.

[anhaato]

I certainly don't agree with all the hot takes here about how Venat committed genocide. This is being said as if ancients weren't sacrificed en masse to support their new god, and then more to fix the damage, and yet more to fight the second coming of the final days. At that point it was a dilemma of "do I let everyone be sacrificed for something that isn't working, or do I protect the still living souls and allow them to live on, but as fragments of their former selves?" and I don't know about you, but I'd choose a guaranteed future over the basically-guaranteed extinction of Etheirys. People just love to conveniently forget what would've happened if she didn't do all of that...

The one thing I wish they didn't do regarding this is ultimately portray her as the ACTUAL benevolent god, while Zodiark remained a malicious god purely because he no longer had a mind of his own and was the figure of worship of the Bad Guys TM. If they had only let Zodiark actually matter when the chips fell, and didn't make us kiss the ground Hydaelyn walks upon, then it would've been a far more compelling "maybe there's no real right or wrong" moment. Instead they had to portray her actions as abject good when it's debatable at best. The conclusion of the Elpis scene absolutely broke me, and I still believe it was an amazing part of the story. It would've been much better if we had instead just watched how everything proceeded up to it WITHOUT us intervening and creating a paradox that completely blows up numerous plot points from before.

[KizuyaKatogami]

I certainly don't agree with all the hot takes here about how Venat committed genocide. This is being said as if ancients weren't sacrificed en masse to support their new god, and then more to fix the damage, and yet more to fight the second coming of the final days. At that point it was a dilemma of "do I let everyone be sacrificed for something that probably won't even work, or do I protect the still living souls and allow them to live on, but as fragments of their former selves?" and I don't know about you, but I'd choose a guaranteed future over the basically-guaranteed extinction of Etheirys. People just love to conveniently forget what would've happened if she didn't do all of that...

The one thing I wish they didn't do regarding this is ultimately portray her as the ACTUAL benevolent god, while Zodiark remained a malicious god purely because he no longer had a mind of his own and was the figure of worship of the Bad Guys TM. If they had only let Zodiark actually matter when the chips fell, and didn't make us kiss the ground Hydaelyn walks upon, then it would've been a far more compelling "maybe there's no real right or wrong" moment. Instead they had to portray her actions as abject good when it's debatable at best. The conclusion of the Elpis scene absolutely broke me, and I still believe it was an amazing part of the story. It would've been much better if we had instead just watched how everything proceeded up to it WITHOUT us intervening and creating a paradox that completely blows up numerous plot points from before.

Her plan wasn’t a guaranteed future though. There was nothing showing that her plan would 100% work, she gambled the lives of billions on a plan even she herself didn’t fully believe in and made a backup plan for that would end in the extermination of countless worlds. You’re acting like the ancients sacrificed other people without consent. The ancients who were sacrificed for the 1st and 2nd round were volunteers. There was also no indication they would continue sacrificing people after the 3rd round, in fact we have a counterpoint to that of Hythlodaeus who tells us after said 3rd sacrifice they would go back to their duties as stewards of the star. If she didn’t do all of that and instead told them the damn truth, they most likely could have all survived.

I’ll agree with the Zodiark comment though, it’s writer bias at its finest.

[Lauront]

I certainly don't agree with all the hot takes here about how Venat committed genocide.

I'm going to link to the relevant dialogue here, because I think your understanding is a bit patchy (possibly because of the muddled post-Elpis flash forward scene, as it doesn't do a good job of conveying the story properly):



They sacrificed to bring Zodiark into being to halt the crisis, because of how depleted the star was by that point. Further sacrifices were made to rectify that. I'm not sure how exactly that means that what she did to the remaining 25% or so of the ancients is not genocide. Bear in mind, for her plan to work, she required Zodiark to be summoned and the star to be repaired, hence...



So there is no doubt about Zodiark functioning. Her reason for fracturing the remnant 25% is because she feared they'd eventually meet the fate of the Plenty, because they did not respond to her demands regarding suffering in the way she liked, and wanted to restore the world back to how it was (bearing in mind they were not given the true story behind her concerns.) It's for this reason that people term it a genocide. It's only dubiously shown as 'necessary' to deal with Meteion, and when answering the question about this, the writers framed a lot of it around her beliefs more than anything else.

[anhaato]

Her plan wasn’t a guaranteed future though. There was nothing showing that her plan would 100% work, she gambled the lives of billions on a plan even she herself didn’t fully believe in and made a backup plan for that would end in the extermination of countless worlds. You’re acting like the ancients sacrificed other people without consent. The ancients who were sacrificed for the 1st and 2nd round were volunteers. There was also no indication they would continue sacrificing people after the 3rd round, in fact we have a counterpoint to that of Hythlodaeus who tells us after said 3rd sacrifice they would go back to their duties as stewards of the star. If she didn’t do all of that and instead told them the damn truth, they most likely could have all survived.

I’ll agree with the Zodiark comment though, it’s writer bias at its finest.

So if people get brainwashed or fearmongered into consent then it's ok? And, again, the world was ultimately dying either way and they were seeing it to its destruction, Zodiark or no. Tell them the truth about what evil is out there? So they can freak out some more, and cause more destruction in their muh despair? Convince them they were wrong, because that was going so well? The intent of the Elpis arc was to stress that the original Etheirys was ruled by a flawed society that would either destroy itself or be destroyed, at the precipice of disaster Venat made her decision, and the final Elpis scene was trying to sum that up into a few minutes of footage. I got their intent, but I will admit that it was poorly illustrated through the Elpis arc. Instead of properly giving the impression that they would destroy themselves the way the other worlds did, they turned some bird into a galactic school shooter and her creator into her accomplice and sent them on a genocide mission. So in a way I understand your point and everyone else's but I don't agree.

[Lauront]

So if people get brainwashed or fearmongered into consent then it's ok?

What are you even talking about? Their world was at risk of destruction. They developed a method to counter this. What gives you the impression they were brainwashed or fearmongered?

And, again, the world was ultimately dying either way and they were seeing it to its destruction, Zodiark or no.

According to whom? They did not know about the bird creature, in large part thanks to Venat. For all intents and purposes, Zodiark did stop the problem cold in its tracks, so they had ample time to develop a means to deal with her.

Tell them the truth about what evil is out there? So they can freak out some more, and cause more destruction in their muh despair?

Zodiark was an effective shield against Meteion and restored the star, so I am unsure why that would cause an issue.

The intent of the Elpis arc was to stress that the original Etheirys was ruled by a flawed society that would either destroy itself or be destroyed

An "intent" that was instantiated into the story very poorly and which was predicated on her not telling them the truth.