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

[RyuDragnier]

No...I really don't care. In what headspace could I possibly justify my single life being more valuable than an entire planet's and generations of people yet to be born? Also, just to clarify, this is not real and is all make-believe. If this scenario happened in any form of media that I was consuming, I would laugh and shut the book, turn off the TV, leave the theatre, whatever. And then I'd leave a scathing review of the media. It's just that bad.

I think I see the issue here...you're currently believing it was only for YOUR life. It was not...it was for the lives of all that would follow, not just yours. The Ancients in the flashbacks showed they were willing to sacrifice newer life (meaning essentially children) to safeguard their own way of life. Venat and the ones with her who summoned Hydaelyn were against that, feeling that they should do everything in their power to leave things to the newer life and safeguard them.

[Lauront]

You....don't care that if she hadn't done what she did you and your ENTIRE reality would not exist? Are you actually being serious? Your entire reality would cease to exist along with you which would also have the added consequence of creating a time paradox.

All this would actually be relevant if AUs didn't form in this setting... but they do. And hey, if it's good enough for the Ironworks to make a decision like that for a "brighter tomorrow", my character could roll those dice, too...

Even Eldibus tells you you cannot change the past no matter what you do. There was nothing else she could do other than what was destined to happen. And the writers never let you forget Emet is a villain? They could not be sublte in beating you over the head that he's really a good boy who just did bad things. Even Darth Vader was not this blatantly whitewashed and Darth Vader didn't even do as much evil. Vader only blew up one world. Emet blew up, what was it, 8?

And yet she says she will take nothing for granted.

Venat: Heavy will weigh the burden of guiding this legion of souls...
Venat: Yet I have faith in mankind's potential. As long as he believes in himself, there is naught he cannot achieve. So I will not give up on him. On us.
Venat: You may find your world to be very different. Or perhaps the erasure of our friends' memories has sown the seeds of a conjunction between us.
Venat: We cannot know until the moment is at hand. So shall I strive to do my best, taking naught for granted as I walk my path.

At this point, we know the Exarch did not cease to exist as well even though his timeline had been averted. Even if Elidibus does not fully grasp the implications of this, the MC is cognisant of this fact and it is offered up as a possibility from G'raha himself. Really, the issue here is why employ time travel yet again, and then not make use of the one advantage it could provide over other methods (e.g. using the Echo to show flashbacks of the past), which is to allow for an AU... and they keep this gate to Elpis open so you can go back to do Pandaemonium to add injury to insult.

The rest of your post is just bizarre. Emet-Selch is shown as his ancient persona to underscore how much he changed by SHB. The entire crew of Scions with you in the Tempest is against him, ranting against him, and your character challenges him. EW showcases his persona before all this. It is not a "whitewash", it is a: here is how having your entire civilisation and planet shattered while having no understanding why (due to a memory wipe) can change you. You keep trying to bring up Emet's actions but you refuse to acknowledge or deal with the fact that she allowed for it all; whether that was "necessary" to preserve the timeline or not, she took the conscious action to enable it.

Your problem is you're mad that she wasn't just blatantly villified and treated as such by us. Zero moral ambiguity, just straight up "Hydaelin evil".

But Emet is fine. Okay. You literally kill her and destroy her soul. Emet doesn't even get such a horrible fate.

Pure strawmanning of that poster at this point. There is not a single negative reaction to her actions, barring Y'shtola not questioning her words - and even then, she wishes to re-cast them in a positive light. As Kaoru mentions, even Emet in an out of character fashion, blunts any criticism he has to praise her. And if I may correct you on a point: you aren't the one who decides to kill her - she decides to draw on her remaining life energy to "test" the group. This happens by her will, much as it is Emet's decision to confront the WoL.

I think I see the issue here...you're currently believing it was only for YOUR life. It was not...it was for the lives of all that would follow, not just yours. The Ancients in the flashbacks showed they were willing to sacrifice newer life (meaning essentially children) to safeguard their own way of life. Venat and the ones with her who summoned Hydaelyn were against that, feeling that they should do everything in their power to leave things to the newer life and safeguard them.

Hmm no, it doesn't mean "essentially children". It is heavily implied from the JP version of the Hyth dialogue to be "life" seeded by Zodiark. Knowing what we do now of how the ancients created life, this is likely to be beings similar to those in Elpis, i.e. creations fit to gain souls. Nowhere is any indication given that these would be ancients. It's at the point where I am beginning to think, given her penchant for lying to achieve outcomes she desired, that she took advantage of this whole issue to set up opposition to the sacrifices as before the Anamnesis Anyder scene (noting she does not chide the Convocation for them... kinda odd if this is child sacrifice of their own), there was more widespread opposition to them. We now know that her opposition to the sacrifices is instrumental, in the sense that they would enable restoration of the ancient civilisation and her concern is, above all else, the ancients heading for a fate like the Plenty; that is why she opposes them.

[redheadturk]

I think I see the issue here...you're currently believing it was only for YOUR life. It was not...it was for the lives of all that would follow, not just yours. The Ancients in the flashbacks showed they were willing to sacrifice newer life (meaning essentially children) to safeguard their own way of life. Venat and the ones with her who summoned Hydaelyn were against that, feeling that they should do everything in their power to leave things to the newer life and safeguard them.

New life could have been plants, animals, or familiars as far as we know. And they had as much right to feed their familiars to Zodiark as we do to slaughter cattle for food.

[PawPaw]

I think I see the issue here...you're currently believing it was only for YOUR life. It was not...it was for the lives of all that would follow, not just yours. The Ancients in the flashbacks showed they were willing to sacrifice newer life (meaning essentially children) to safeguard their own way of life. Venat and the ones with her who summoned Hydaelyn were against that, feeling that they should do everything in their power to leave things to the newer life and safeguard them.

No..no they did not. We actually have no idea what the third sacrifice would entail but there is no reason to believe that it wouldn't have been arcane entities such as those we came across in Elpis. The writers have chosen to leave this ambiguous for some reason, but absolutely nowhere is it stated that human lives would be sacrificed to facilitate the return of the lives in Zodiark. And that doesn't change my stance. No, my single life and existence is not worth the destruction of a world. And you assume that Zodiark needed to exist at all. We have no idea what might have happened if the Ancients had actually been told about the dangers facing them before everything went to hell. All we have is the thought process of a single person who thought she knew what was best for everyone on the planet.

[Lauront]

In a perfect world, I think the player should be able to distance themselves from both characters, as both are very morally dubious; but the fact of the matter is that one of them we fought as an actual antagonist final boss of an expansion, and the other is being regarded as a hero, with no opportunity to denounce or combat her ideals in the way Emet's were. I agree with the heart of what you're trying to say, but trying to argue that there isn't an incredible bias towards Venat in the writing is simply madness.

Agree with this - some more control over how the character reacts in general would be good.

[aveyond-dreams]

There is an alternate timeline somewhere where the writers didn't take this convoluted route and wrote an Endwalker without any time travel or blue haired bird people, where both Zodiark and Hydaelyn were fleshed out and given enough depth and better rationales underscoring both of their chosen courses of actions.

Instead here we are, several months later after all the hype has worn off and still trying to process just how many ways Endwalker went wrong in terms of its writing. I'm not going to read through the bulk of the last few posts given their length so I'll summarize my thoughts below (again):

Venat / Hydaelyn is lying, hubristic, and manipulative individual who should not have been so readily "forgiven" by the game. She is a beautiful yet deeply flawed woman who I found likeable as a person, but felt betrayed by later on due to her lack of taking appropriate action and deliberate omission of key information that could have helped avert the coming catastrophe. This caused me to severely question and reassess my stance on her and ultimately I feel she was mismanaged.

She is a villainess. A vain, proud angel who challenged "God" and then quite literally spent the next several millennia in the frozen/crystallized centre of the world. From her actions, all malice and evil began to form in the hearts of humanity. Immortality was lost. Paradise was lost. Humanity was condemned to a lesser state, forced to survive in a broken world that was only made viable due to the actions of Zodiark, her opponent. This isn't a character who needs constant praise and repeated attempts from the game to forgive - I would rather the player be given more agency to make up their minds about her actions rather than being conditioned into a certain view of her.

Zodiark as a God even gave his people a "son" of sorts to help guide them in the form of the returned Elidibus, a messianic embodiment of hope for the Ancients. This Elidibus later went on to sacrifice himself in the name of his brothers, loyal and faithful to his duty until the end. Whether or not the original Elidibus remained within as the main puppeteer of the God is a question we likely won't get the chance to explore, but it is possible that his essence may have faded with time in the same way that the souls within Hydaelyn faded over time as well, or else was destroyed or "silenced" when Hermes took control.

We have one "supreme deity" whose actions resulted in mostly unspeakable cruelty and mass destruction. We have another whose actions were for the specific purpose of safeguarding his people's interests.

[Skyborne]

@Skyborne

We had a character like that, not by your specific example, but that was literally Emet. He traveled the world and was willing to throw everything away after the birth of his son. The line people like to throw around is him relating the sundered to ants or something. I don't know who is weirder: The people who take him literally and say "he has a point", or the people who say "cool story, still genocide". It's a coping mechanism. If you are killing people you either accept it for what it is or you dehumanize the enemy. He took the second option and tried convincing himself even though deep down he knew it wasn't true. He saw the sundered as children, just like Hydaelyn. He was delusional and so was she, the difference being he cracked after 12k years of suffering and pressure, she was coo coo out of the gate.

Oh, yes, I agree with that assessment. I was more thinking in terms of an individual who was less in denial and more outright tormented over it taking the first route and with total sincerity. The way one carries themselves seems to be more important to some than their actual actions, after all, from what I've seen. Some found Emet to be annoying and unbearable, others found him charming.

I don't really browse social media of my own volition, but every time I get linked something Emet-related there is bound to be some comment chain that goes on about how he is a fascist ugly genocidal maniac that is only carried aloft by crazed fujoshi so I'm not sure where some posters get the impression that no one has a problem with him!

A toast to mother dearest, btw, since it just happens to be that day. She may be gone, but we're forever the watered-down survivors of an apocalypse in a world that is literally drained of soul and color!

[YukikoKurosawa]

So uh, why did Venat choose to try and grab Meteion with just her bare hand when she was chasing after her on Argos, when she could just generate a whip and yoink her from far away? Or hell, she could've just conjured her sword and slashed her, seeing as how she had already gotten within inches of her. By that point she could've easily hit her with her sword.

Or better yet, just blast her with magic.

Literally anything else besides her bare bloody hands.

[Raoabolic]

So uh, why did Venat choose to try and grab Meteion with just her bare hand when she was chasing after her on Argos, when she could just generate a whip and yoink her from far away? Or hell, she could've just conjured her sword and slashed her, seeing as how she had already gotten within inches of her. By that point she could've easily hit her with her sword.

Or better yet, just blast her with magic.

Literally anything else besides her bare bloody hands.

I assumed it was one of those anime moments where she used every ounce of her strength to accelerate and the moment she stopped to do something else she would lose her. My issue is why didn't they just delete the giant memory erasing analog clock to prevent said mcguffin from making a convenient excuse of why no one remembers anything and why we, the player, were not even given a hint of these events in the last 10 years, lol. I would have figured Emet would just blow the stupid thing up and tell the conclave.

[KizuyaKatogami]

I assumed it was one of those anime moments where she used every ounce of her strength to accelerate and the moment she stopped to do something else she would lose her. My issue is why didn't they just delete the giant memory erasing analog clock to prevent said mcguffin from making a convenient excuse of why no one remembers anything and why we, the player, were not even given a hint of these events in the last 10 years, lol. I would have figured Emet would just blow the stupid thing up and tell the conclave.

Or she could have just used yknow, the echo, that huge plot relevant thing that we’re specifically told there can be used to show others memories.