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

[Krithas]

This is what's so baffling to me. Venat on paper reads as an antagonist, quite possibly the biggest one in the game as the effects of the sundering overshadow those of the Final Days quite substantially with far lasting consequences. The only thing that makes her 'not a bad guy' is the gross amount of gaslighting the game does. It doesn't matter if her intentions were good and not out of malice, there have been plenty of well-intentioned antagonists who are still antagonists. However, write the WoL and Scions as loving her? Write Emet, a fan favorite and quite possibly the person she screwed over the most, to commend her at the end? Suddenly all is forgiven, apparently. Ignoring the fact that Venat wouldn't have hesitated to sunder the WoL if she had the power and thought it would achieve her goal. She had a very abstract 'love of life' and no loyalty to anyone or anything but her ideals. I guarantee the Scions wouldn't have been okay with it, which makes their acceptance of her actions even more galling due to how grossly self-serving and hypocritical it is.

Yeah, that part got me as well. Not only did the have the MC, Scions, narrative, and every other character in existence kiss her ass without question, they brought back Emet as fan service (He's a favorite character, but it felt like poor taste, especially when they did it again in 6.1) and had him partially suck her off as well. Combine that with having him bring back every single scion after their "noble sacrifice", and that stupid song that started playing on your way to the nest, trying to tug at your emotions and make you feel even sadder for the "deaths" when they were blatantly going to revive all of them again just pissed me right off. If I didn't enjoy the game so much before Endwalker, I'd have canceled my sub right then instead of waiting 'till 6.1. At least he somewhat told her to fuck off by outright rejecting her gift of revival, that was something that made me feel a bit better. That and being able to say fuck you to Graha by saying you like traveling alone was satisfying lol.

[Skyborne]

The developers themselves have confirmed Hydaelyn deliberately left a crack in space for Emet and pals to squeeze through to avoid the sundering. This action makes 0 sense if she genuinely believed mankind would be able to overcome any form of adversity on their own, which means she instead did this in order to recreate the exact conditions that resulted specifically in our version of history. What this ultimately means is she NEEDED the Ascians to exist, and she NEEDED 7 shards to be rejoined. Hydaelyn, a character who the devs have gone on record stressing is not supposed to be evil, knowingly orchestrated events that resulted in 7 planets worth of lives being destroyed.

Not once have I ever heard the devs or anyone in game bring attention to this fact, therefore I assume the writers themselves don't see anything wrong with this, thus I'm inclined to believe they can and will do this again in future expansions.

It's just the endgame of protagonist-centered morality. The protagonists and our PC are the Certifiably Good People™️ as ordained by the writers, so anything is forgiveable as long as you are not a meanyhead about it and it benefits you -- and the benefit is always noble and pure, of course. Anyone who opposes the Good People are Bad and inherently selfish and greedy by principle. Even if someone manages to slip in a bit of humanization and actually makes you feel a bit bad for them, the Bad People are still bad and this needs to be corrected by the flanderization you mentioned, often with one of their favorite devices to make you dislike a character -- the Ugly Old Elezen Man Face (or UOEMF). Or a funny sinister meme face with a zoom-in.

Are the writers malicious? I don't believe so, they're just not thinking about it and we're the ones overthinking it (if that Q&A is any indication). The main priority is elevating and praising us the player and giving us goodfeels. Look at you, you defeated the embodiment of despair! Adventure! The journey was worth it! Everyone is cheering for you and your friends are okay without a single scratch! Okay, maybe you're indirectly responsible for all of this in the first place, but all the people who got wiped out were just not cool like you are! Even that Emit-Squelch guy agrees!

There are countless pages in this thread of people standing up to say this or that needs to be changed. They don't agree with it. But does anyone honestly think SE is going to make those changes? Maybe they will use it when the story for future expansions is under consideration. But what has happened has happened.

Don't think they'll change anything retroactively, but as long as the thread is around, stragglers can feel slightly more sane for not thinking it's the best ever. Also, it's become weirdly fun in a way.

[Nilroreo]

This is what's so baffling to me. Venat on paper reads as an antagonist, quite possibly the biggest one in the game as the effects of the sundering overshadow those of the Final Days quite substantially with far lasting consequences. The only thing that makes her 'not a bad guy' is the gross amount of gaslighting the game does. It doesn't matter if her intentions were good and not out of malice, there have been plenty of well-intentioned antagonists who are still antagonists. However, write the WoL and Scions as loving her? Write Emet, a fan favorite and quite possibly the person she screwed over the most, to commend her at the end? Suddenly all is forgiven, apparently. Ignoring the fact that Venat wouldn't have hesitated to sunder the WoL if she had the power and thought it would achieve her goal. She had a very abstract 'love of life' and no loyalty to anyone or anything but her ideals. I guarantee the Scions wouldn't have been okay with it, which makes their acceptance of her actions even more galling due to how grossly self-serving and hypocritical it is.

It's kinda funny thinking back to HW, there's a scene where Ardbert attempts to assault Hydaelyn for waiting until just then to finally help the First with the flood. I wonder how he'd feel learning that she's responsible for the chain of events leading to the flood happening in the first place. Only after most of the damage has already been done does she finally choose to play her part, eroding what's left of Minfilia's flesh and soul to stop it temporarily.

[Xirean]

It would bother me if I dwelled on it. But honestly...what does anyone think they are gonna accomplish by lamenting it? It's part of the story now. SE is not going to go back and retcon the entire thing, remake Endwalker all over to change that aspect of the story because people don't like it.

It's like people saying they should cut out Zenos from all the stuff he is in, because they don't like him. Or they don't want Raubahn to lose his arm in the ARR patch quests. Or any other number of events that happened that you may or may not like in the story.

At the end of the day, you aren't going to get such drastic changes put into the game. So just...why bother worrying about it? It's a fictional story, in a fictional world. It's not real life. You only end up stressing yourself out when you take these things too seriously.

There are countless pages in this thread of people standing up to say this or that needs to be changed. They don't agree with it. But does anyone honestly think SE is going to make those changes? Maybe they will use it when the story for future expansions is under consideration. But what has happened has happened.

Oh, no I would never expect them to change anything. Breaking down critiques in stories is a fun past time. It's genuinely fun to post what ifs and rewrites. I'd hardly expect SE to look at this forum much less care. If I could hope for anything it would be that they never do time travel in this story again and maybe give some consequences to the main cast. Also it's nice to know that there are other people who did not like this story. I don't need to expect something to change to voice my critiques.

[Rulakir]

It's kinda funny thinking back to HW, there's a scene where Ardbert attempts to assault Hydaelyn for waiting until just then to finally help the First with the flood. I wonder how he'd feel learning that she's responsible for the chain of events leading to the flood happening in the first place. Only after most of the damage has already been done does she finally choose to play her part, eroding what's left of Minfilia's flesh and soul to stop it temporarily.

It gives a whole new context to his line "we did everything right". Yes, yes you did. Too bad like many others you were collateral damage in Venat's grand plan to get back to the WoL. The callous disregard she has for the shards and individuals is staggering.

By the way, my alt's on Zalera, when do you usually play?

[Nilroreo]

It gives a whole new context to his line "we did everything right". Yes, yes you did. Too bad like many others you were collateral damage in Venat's grand plan to get back to the WoL. The callous disregard she has for the shards and individuals is staggering.

By the way, my alt's on Zalera, when do you usually play?

No set schedule, but usually in the afternoon around 6 ish. Usually just hop on for a few hours to work on relic weapons nowadays and maybe eureka.

[Teraq]

At the end of the day, you aren't going to get such drastic changes put into the game. So just...why bother worrying about it? It's a fictional story, in a fictional world. It's not real life. You only end up stressing yourself out when you take these things too seriously.

There are countless pages in this thread of people standing up to say this or that needs to be changed. They don't agree with it. But does anyone honestly think SE is going to make those changes? Maybe they will use it when the story for future expansions is under consideration. But what has happened has happened.

To me this isn't about changing anything, it's about making ourselves heard. I know I felt a little insane in December after going through the MSQ and being massively disappointed while it seemed everyone on Reddit and Twitter loved it. It felt like I had played an entirely different game. Multiple people have come into this thread expressing a similar sentiment of finally finding similar opinions and feeling like they aren't alone and crazy anymore. While it may not matter to you because it's a work of fiction / "it's just a game" etc, everyone reacts differently to things for myriad reasons. Personally, the disappointment of EW after being so invested in this game hit me hard, especially since, in retrospect, I had been using the game as something of an emotional crutch vs. real life, which I of course realize is massively cringe and omg get another hobby sis etc etc, but that's just how things were. I was unwell after the credits rolled. Reading the few and far between negative opinions on EW gave me some solace.

[OhNooo]

#RejoinMeDaddyEmet

[Lauront]

This is what's so baffling to me. Venat on paper reads as an antagonist, quite possibly the biggest one in the game as the effects of the sundering overshadow those of the Final Days quite substantially with far lasting consequences. The only thing that makes her 'not a bad guy' is the gross amount of gaslighting the game does. It doesn't matter if her intentions were good and not out of malice, there have been plenty of well-intentioned antagonists who are still antagonists. However, write the WoL and Scions as loving her? Write Emet, a fan favorite and quite possibly the person she screwed over the most, to commend her at the end? Suddenly all is forgiven, apparently. Ignoring the fact that Venat wouldn't have hesitated to sunder the WoL if she had the power and thought it would achieve her goal. She had a very abstract 'love of life' and no loyalty to anyone or anything but her ideals. I guarantee the Scions wouldn't have been okay with it, which makes their acceptance of her actions even more galling due to how grossly self-serving and hypocritical it is.

I was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt and say her hands were tied, even if the whole situation sucked and I thought the writing to justify it all was hamfisted and piss-poor... until that Q&A. Now I really cannot see how they can insist she's not a villain (a term Yoshi kept using for SHB Emet-Selch, to which he tries to compare her) or antagonist whilst also giving the answers they did in that Q&A. Just does not compute.

It's just the endgame of protagonist-centered morality. The protagonists and our PC are the Certifiably Good People™️

One wonders how thin the line between "Certifiably Good" and "Certifiable" is in this case - a purely rhetorical question, naturally.

[OhNooo]

It's just the endgame of protagonist-centered morality. The protagonists and our PC are the Certifiably Good People™️ as ordained by the writers, so anything is forgiveable as long as you are not a meanyhead about it and it benefits you -- and the benefit is always noble and pure, of course.

The main priority is elevating and praising us the player and giving us goodfeels. Look at you, you defeated the embodiment of despair! Adventure! The journey was worth it! Everyone is cheering for you and your friends are okay without a single scratch! Okay, maybe you're indirectly responsible for all of this in the first place, but all the people who got wiped out were just not cool like you are! Even that Emit-Squelch guy agrees!

All of this. It got to the point where it was kind of nauseating for me. Ok enough. I get it. We’re the best and we’ll always win.

I can’t handle another self righteous monologue or a convenient lack of dialogue options when the writers wanna push a narrative. The scions could disappear right now and I wouldn’t lose any sleep. Yoshi P was surprised at how deeply people were looking into the story. LMAO yeah so weird that people would be into the lore in a “story based mmorpg.”

I admit I was let down and needed to rant for awhile. But I’ve had time to think and I realize how silly the whole story looks to me. It’s kind of funny to me now.

Please keep this thread alive for entertainment purposes