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

[aveyond-dreams]

Echo chamber aside. Zenos works as a simple antagonist. Shame about that middle bit with the Fandaniel/Hermes nonsense. Also having Venat play antagonist would just turn 14 into another cliché jrpg story.

If Zenos had more scenes where he actually did things instead of endless teasing he would have likely been received better. It's like watching one of those movies about relationship abuse, it's the scenes where the abuser does something that makes us afraid and angry at him. Or scenes from serial killer or masked killer movies where they pick people off one by one and in doing so create a sense of tension.

I disagree that Venat as the main antagonist would be too cliche, not if they went with a "fallen angel" scenario for her. She is presented to us as our best friend, anyone remember what happened with our "best friend" in the Devilman series? The manipulations and the betrayal on that scale would have made for a lot better than Hermoine Granger +10 times the arrogance becomes a goddess.

[Caurcas]

If Zenos had more scenes where he actually did things instead of endless teasing he would have likely been received better. It's like watching one of those movies about relationship abuse, it's the scenes where the abuser does something that makes us afraid and angry at him. Or scenes from serial killer or masked killer movies where they pick people off one by one and in doing so create a sense of tension.

I disagree that Venat as the main antagonist would be too cliche, not if they went with a "fallen angel" scenario for her. She is presented to us as our best friend, anyone remember what happened with our "best friend" in the Devilman series? The manipulations and the betrayal on that scale would have made for a lot better than Hermoine Granger +10 times the arrogance becomes a goddess.

So you wanted them to go full Griffith with Venat? Also it would've helped of they hadn't written the ancients to be so drab that I might've cared.

[Lauront]

Whether or not it would be "cliche", they did a good job of that kind of portrayal with Yunalesca, where she's not premised as evil so much as trying to enforce the continuation of a blood-soaked rite purely for the sake of maintaining hope. She was a very well executed antagonist. She did what she thought was necessary, but they didn't try whitewash what she was doing, either. Venat is not fundamentally different to her at the end of the day, as much as the game may try to convince you otherwise.

[aveyond-dreams]

So you wanted them to go full Griffith with Venat? Also it would've helped of they hadn't written the ancients to be so drab that I might've cared.

I'm not familiar enough with Berserk to know the full extent of that character's story but our "best friend" becoming our worst enemy was absolutely what I had wanted to see happen with Venat. Here we have this beautiful "lady of light" who seems almost too good to be true, and then as time goes on she could have begun to deviate from Ancient society through more open, even violent ways while manipulating those around her for her scheme.

In one final stand, the most loyal and fanatical of her followers sacrifice themselves to give her power while we as her former best friend turn away from the conflict, only to regret it too late afterwards. I desperately wanted to see her battle against Zodiark in game too, especially if it was going to be anything like the final battle between Ryo and Akira.

[Skyborne]

Bleats of 'cliche story' always ring hollow when we've been whipping out time travel since Louisiox sent us 5 years into the future, the 'chosen one', le ebil empire, hooded darkness men, corrupt church that had been lying to its people for 1000 years, POWAH OF FRIENDSHIP with the scions all praying for us as a remix of previous themes blare, sparkly fluffy light goddess vs. horny demon darkness god, nihilistic jesters who want to end all existence, a man who is a walking battle-hungry shounen antag who only cares about The Fight, crying little girls standing in flower fields, and so on. A game whose premise is lifting entire elements from previous games in the series, including Yoshi's fave, 3.

As far as I'm concerned we got our Yunalesca-Hydaelyn, it was merely directed at someone else with us being the ones who benefited from it (at their expense). The ones who were wronged can't object to it because they're all dead, mission accomplished!

Don't mind cliches, honestly, it's more the execution that matters to me. There's just something about EW's writing that was extremely cloying and intolerable, and my cringe tolerance is normally pretty high.

[Caurcas]

Eh, I disagree. They should've scrapped ShB and EW both in favor of a black rose/Garlemald expansion. A mixture of what we saw promised in Bojza with a dash of brutal WWI-esque warfare instead of boring magic Greeks being got by a sad man and his bird loli and disagreeing on a solution. It would've been less cliché and FF cannibalizing.

[CrownySuccubus]

I'm glad they didn't go with that tired old "The God/Goddess of Light was the evil one all along" cliche. I've honestly lost count of the number of anime and videogames which have used that "twist", to the point that it felt refreshing to me that Venat was actually sincere. I have a lot of issues with the story and, by extension, Venat's portrayal but her not being mustache-twirlingly evil all along ain't one of them.

[KizuyaKatogami]

What’s funny is she kind of is that evil trope in all but the game clarifying her as it. Lies to the main cast? Check. Keeps secrets about how she was actually the one behind fracturing the world,ruining it and everyone on it? Check.Has some pity point sequence that ends up just showing how evil she is? Check.

[SpectrePhantasia]

In the hypothetical of Hydaelyn being a more antagonistic force, I don't think she would be any more 'evil' than Emet-selch would be; just a person who believed her course of action was for the best, no matter the sacrifices that it would take to get to that point. That's already how she is portrayed in the narrative, but unlike with Emet, she faces no consequences, nor criticism from people who aren't antagonists that we promptly slay (like Emet). Characters who have done much much less than Venat have earned the protest and ire of the Scions, but you will find absolutely none of that here, because the story doesn't want to be about different perspectives anymore, it wants to be about one perspective. Venat isn't destroying our world, just someone else's, so it doesn't matter.

It's actually rather easy to reframe her mindset and values into an antagonist and have it work far better than that we got, in my opinion. Like for example, look at the future tense. Venat believes that a society that has mitigated most of its suffering through advancement and progression will inevitably become too weak-willed to endure tragedy and will be destroyed. What happens when a Sundered society reaches such a precipice, where they have unraveled the knowledge of the world that was taken from them once more, and reach new heights of comfort? Perhaps then it is time to flip the board again, reset them over and over, so that they will always have something to struggle towards, but never actually reach it? She proclaims her faith in mankind, but never gives them the autonomy to decide their fate for themselves, such was the flaw that led to the Sundering to begin with, as was acknowledged by the devs. I see in that a person who genuinely wants the best for the star and those living upon it, but isn't willing to surrender it for fear the tragedy she bore witness to would be repeated.

I don't know what people are imagining when they see others say they wanted something more antagonistic out of her, but I don't think anyone means some cackling traitor character. I wanted the kind of flawed, idealistic recklessness that would suit a character capable of performing an act such as what she did. Someone who you can understand, but criticize for the genuinely horrible thing that she did. Instead we doled out pats on the back, and it only ever was about how she felt about it, not the countless others whose lives she destroyed.

Alphinaud once said in Shadowbringers that living in a Rejoined world would be against his beliefs, saying, "But what value is there in surviving when all our history, all our struggles will be erased? I cannot conscience such an act." I'm sure the irony of that statement is not lost on just me. That he had no words for Venat on that front astounded me.

[Caurcas]

Because we don't need another poorly paced exposition speech in an expansion with too many exposition speeches to begin with.