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

[YukikoKurosawa]

The terrible, nonsensical sentence structure of this thread's title irritates me to no end.

[Lauront]

If anything Venat is the person that refuses to help on the project and watches her teammates struggle to get the project done in enough time. Right as the project is turned in she emails the professor to say everyone else wasn’t doing their work and that’s been doing the entire project alone by herself. She even makes up some fake screenshots as proof to convince the professor that everyone else is failing. Venat then takes all the credits and gets an A.

That's what I was thinking. It's the exact opposite. Gets the A or the big promotion, and rather thank thank the guy putting in all the hard work and building the entire infrastructure for the project, she shoves them down the stairs by "accident" and locks the closet they fall into while accusing them of sabotage.

Ah, man. I just linked this thread to someone on Reddit who felt like an outsider for not liking EW. Let's just get back to that, shall we?

Speaking of which, there's a thread on r/ffxivdiscussion about which character do you hate that everyone loves if anyone is interested. :P

Gee.... that's going to be a hard one! Some good discussion on there, though.

[Rulakir]

Got into a discussion in that thread about how every character's agency is ruined with the time loop as 'nobody could do anything differently' in order for the WoL to journey to Elpis. Then in an unrelated thread I saw someone quote Ardbert's "we did everything right" line and I thought, yeah, he did exactly what he was meant to do.

I genuinely don't understand what's satisfying about time loops and I've seen plenty of people say they prefer them to AUs. Near as I can tell, the one in EW completely undermined the agency of every major character in the foundation of the lore that establishes the world as we know it. Now that I think about it, had they gone the full Greek tragedy route similar to Oedipus where in trying to avoid an outcome it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, that might've made me like/sympathize with Venat. Instead, she chooses to follow the roadmap to the future the WoL gave her for nonsensical reasons.

[CrownySuccubus]

Got into a discussion in that thread about how every character's agency is ruined with the time loop as 'nobody could do anything differently' in order for the WoL to journey to Elpis. Then in an unrelated thread I saw someone quote Ardbert's "we did everything right" line and I thought, yeah, he did exactly what he was meant to do.

I genuinely don't understand what's satisfying about time loops and I've seen plenty of people say they prefer them to AUs. Near as I can tell, the one in EW completely undermined the agency of every major character in the foundation of the lore that establishes the world as we know it. Now that I think about it, had they gone the full Greek tragedy route similar to Oedipus where in trying to avoid an outcome it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, that might've made me like/sympathize with Venat. Instead, she chooses to follow the roadmap to the future the WoL gave her for nonsensical reasons.

The "romance" of time loops is sense of "destiny". Things had to happen this way, because the cosmic order needs them to happen this way, and you have a role in it.

A lot of people enjoy the idea that destiny shapes their lives. Societies like the Norse, Hindus, and some portions of Greco-Roman antiquity found comfort in the idea that your life was given meaning by whatever fate you were given. Free will is much more appealing to most people these days, but there's still lots of people who like to believe in things like "God's plan" and whatnot.

In fiction, the narrative irony and setup > payoff arc of time loops are also appealing. It works in a similar vein to things like foreshadowing and Chekhov's Guns. I'm reminded of movies like the first Terminator, where part of the intrigue was learning how much of the future was destined to happen. For example, the scene where Sarah asks about her future son, and Kyle tells her that John "is about [his] height with [her] eyes" hits different after you learn that Kyle himself is John's father.

[RoroCookies]

I probably have to agree a little bit that some time loops can be very satisfying when done right. But I just don’t feel that with ffxiv. I think the problem is that we have different types of time travel in ffxiv so it feels a bit off.

[Rulakir]

Well, it's no secret I wasn't the target audience for just about anything in EW from the themes to the main story arc. I'm agnostic on a good day. I believe life is a series of dice rolls that can't be controlled for or predicted, which is why bad things happen to good people and vice versa. As such, I would've found someone actively trying to carve a different path yet inadvertently leading to the same outcome more compelling.

Destiny only works if yours is positive. Telling someone they're destined to fail at every endeavor and die penniless and alone is significantly less 'romantic'. I understand faith as a necessity to deal with the struggles of life, but what we got wasn't a happy story. It still resulted in the obliteration of the parent civilization, the destruction of numerous worlds, apparently the extermination of tens of thousands of souls based on the scope of the blasphemies in Thavnair alone. Etheirys was "saved" but not only at a multi-apocalyptic cost, but one that was arguably unnecessary in the first place. Just because the WoL and Scions came out unscathed (as usual) didn't make it a feel good ending.

[Lauront]

Got into a discussion in that thread about how every character's agency is ruined with the time loop as 'nobody could do anything differently' in order for the WoL to journey to Elpis. Then in an unrelated thread I saw someone quote Ardbert's "we did everything right" line and I thought, yeah, he did exactly what he was meant to do.

I genuinely don't understand what's satisfying about time loops and I've seen plenty of people say they prefer them to AUs. Near as I can tell, the one in EW completely undermined the agency of every major character in the foundation of the lore that establishes the world as we know it. Now that I think about it, had they gone the full Greek tragedy route similar to Oedipus where in trying to avoid an outcome it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, that might've made me like/sympathize with Venat. Instead, she chooses to follow the roadmap to the future the WoL gave her for nonsensical reasons.

I don't like how it's used by some to try paint her actions as an inevitability, and I think with matters such as time travel, there are just too many variables to even attempt to control it so tightly as to ensure an exact future - not unless everything is strictly pre-determined or something with a bird's eye view can control events to ensure a certain outcome is reached. I personally am waiting to see if they will reveal what it tells us about the nature of the universe and whether it's all determined in advance in some respect, and what this means for the characters' agency, or whether it can just appear that way; after all, Venat says she will take nothing for granted. The big question to me is why can it result in an AU in one instance but not the other (that we know of)? The idea of there being some kind of fate, raises the question of whether it has some manner of arbiter (7R vibes ahoy!), or creator. Give it a few expansions and the big bad will be Fate.

[Skyborne]

Give it a few expansions and the big bad will be Fate.

Getting flashbacks to literally fighting an AI called FATE in Chrono Cross.

Just because the WoL and Scions came out unscathed (as usual) didn't make it a feel good ending.

It seems to be so to the majority of people; the feelgood stuff just falls apart if you actually cared about or got attached to the "losers" of the tale. It's protagonist-centered morality gone to the extreme... reminds me of a Persona game. "Screw you, our lives may suck but we are free from your tyranny of order! (except for me, the self-insert Japanese high school chad who is surrounded by supportive friends and beautiful women who want to jump my bones and succeeds at everything the first or second time)"

[Rulakir]

The idea of there being some kind of fate, raises the question of whether it has some manner of arbiter (7R vibes ahoy!), or creator. Give it a few expansions and the big bad will be Fate.

This is my concern as well. It'd be worse than the Meteion reveal. I feel they had the opportunity to go the 'higher power' route with Hydaelyn and Zodiark, but instead chose to make them primals. The only other thing is we know the star somehow doles out souls, but I thought that was either random or had to meet some sort of naturally achieved criteria? It didn't seem implied that there's a consciousness in Etheirys making the decision.

I still don't know what the 12 are supposed to be and, speaking of which, is anyone else good with recognizing voices? I saw someone on Reddit say that Nald'thal is Hythlodaeus & Emet's VAs, but I can't tell with the music and battle noises. I've also seen some say Azeyma is Venat, but comparing the raid to the Hydaleyn trial it doesn't sound like the same VA to me. I have my doubts that even if the 12 do share VAs with other characters that it necessarily means anything.

[Nilroreo]

The "romance" of time loops is sense of "destiny". Things had to happen this way, because the cosmic order needs them to happen this way, and you have a role in it.

I don't have an issue with time loops as long as they're mostly free of contradiction, but the rules of time travel are so fickle here that it seems to regularly conform to whatever the plot demands at any given time.

When G'raha traveled back from his own time, all it took for change to occur was him merely being present in the past. In our case however, we travel back not strictly with the intention of changing history, but to observe and investigate Hermes and the role he might've played in all this. Instead, we interact with key figures for a lengthy amount of time, then we proceed to commit the cardinal sin of explaining to them in EXCRUCIATING detail every major historical event that had transpired up to the present day, as well as the roles they would play in our history, and... nothing changes. As it turns out, It was our meddling with time in these moments that led to our version of history and accidentally created a closed loop, but why didn't it happen last time? What did WE do differently?

And of course there's the matter of this loop being an impossibility back in G'raha's timeline as ours only exists cuz of his meddling in ours, unless you buy into the "time is Y shaped" theory that suggests both timelines are canon and feed into one another. Occam's razor is preventing me from doing so myself as its easier to assume a time loop this grandiose wasn't always in the cards as evidenced by how weirdly incompatible it is with Venat's actions.

Instead, she chooses to follow the roadmap to the future the WoL gave her for nonsensical reasons.

She withholds information that might've saved them, which she has no reason to do unless following the roadmap, but then proceeds to plead with them not to sacrifice lives to Zodiark and instead find another way forward, breaking away from the roadmap. They naturally refuse, and she sunders her children "out of love" while deliberately avoiding Emet who she's fully aware would attempt to undo what she's done by rejoining the shards and effectively killing all the lives she "saved" (Following roadmap), then she goes on to treat the loss of those shards as failures on her part (not following roadmap). Fickle fickle fickle.