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

[Turtledeluxe]

What lore are you referring to that she didn't know what her attack would do? We literally tell her what she does. The walk cutscene, while not a literal retelling of events, shows her doing it deliberately. Also on the mention of not everyone dying; you're right there were THREE survivors from the entire planet. It's also worth noting that the use of the term genocide is not reliant on the effectiveness of said genocide. Not everyone has to be dead for us to call it what it is.

The devs stated it in a Q&A. It was a gamble. I've said this several times. It was a general attack meant to shatter Zodiark.

As far as "we told her"-- the devs also have not given a definitive answer to what happened with the timelines. I understand the morbol thing and elidibus remembering us, but a. Let's be real this would be a total retcon, there's never even been a hint the WoL existed in Elpis, we were proabably in Elpis as Azem and b. Even if the devs conceded that our Elpis visit is truly part of history then they're contradicting themselves by labeling what she did a gamble.

And if the devs can't even make sense it's not worth arguing about imo because it means only your interpretation matters.

[Xirean]

The devs stated it in a Q&A. It was a gamble. I've said this several times. It was a general attack meant to shatter Zodiark.

As far as "we told her"-- the devs also have not given a definitive answer to what happened with the timelines. I understand the morbol thing and elidibus remembering us, but a. Let's be real this would be a total retcon, there's never even been a hint the WoL existed in Elpis, we were proabably in Elpis as Azem and b. Even if the devs conceded that our Elpis visit is truly part of history then they're contradicting themselves by labeling what she did a gamble.

And if the devs can't even make sense it's not worth arguing about imo because it means only your interpretation matters.

What game did you play? No evidence the WoL existed in Elpis? Elidibus remembers us being there. When we confront Hydaelyn in the aetherial sea she remembers us being in Elpis. The end of the Paendamonium raid series has Eric remarking about us in the memory vision. If you did the Elpis side quests before finishing Myths of the Realm then you have special dialogue for some of the deities and the events you took part in. Believe me when I say I would love for the WoL to have not actually existed in Elpis, but that's simply what happened.

As for the sundering attacking on Zodiark. Link the specific portion of the Q&A you are referring to.

[Turtledeluxe]

What game did you play? No evidence the WoL existed in Elpis? Elidibus remembers us being there. When we confront Hydaelyn in the aetherial sea she remembers us being in Elpis. The end of the Paendamonium raid series has Eric remarking about us in the memory vision. If you did the Elpis side quests before finishing Myths of the Realm then you have special dialogue for some of the deities and the events you took part in. Believe me when I say I would love for the WoL to have not actually existed in Elpis, but that's simply what happened.

As for the sundering attacking on Zodiark. Link the specific portion of the Q&A you are referring to.

I played the game where it's casually hinted at multiple times that we were Azem. It's not possible the WoL existed in Elpis-- they're a sundered being. Argos also responded to us, doesn't mean it was literally us. Also Elidibus just conveniently remembers us despite never having his memory affected by Kairos...? I know someone's going to say "well he died and his memory was freshed"-- please. Elidibus is very familiar with our character and he would've sensed something before now. I don't think he was responding to your literal face but the fact you're a sundered part of Azem (as is Golbez imho). So by extension, there's an original past time line that exists independent of our visit.

And that goes for everything imo-- the Alliance Raid, pandaemonium, argos whatever. But it literally being our WoL vs Azem (or some Ancient) doesn't make any sense.

. I'd be interested to know how the unsundered Ascians—Lahabrea, Elidibus, and Emet-Selch—avoided being kicked into 14 pieces by Hydaelyn.
A4. https://youtu.be/WRpdIL7_NII?t=13301
Summary: Venat intentionally left a tiny flaw in her sundering attack, a "crack" for Emet-Selch to wiggle through. This was a gamble because she didn't have full control over the sundering attack, she could not be sure Emet-Selch would live.

How is it a gamble and how does she not have control if she knew she was going to it and the result because we told her? Riddle me this

[Absimiliard]

[Xirean]

I played the game where it's casually hinted at multiple times that we were Azem.

You mean where multiple characters noted the similarity of the WoL's soul to the soul of Azem.
Hythlodaus: "A bit thin in the aether, but it's soul is almost identical to Azem's"
The WoL introduces themself as "Azem's familiar" to several people.

It's not possible the WoL existed in Elpis-- they're a sundered being.

What do you think Elidibus did with the crystal tower? Send the WoL into a fever dream or a simulation? It was time travel which the tower is able to do because of Cid, explained in the sidequests for the dungeon The Twinning. It's the entire reason Shadowbringers was able to happen. It brought the tower to the first along with G'raha Tia.

Also Elidibus just conveniently remembers us despite never having his memory affected by Kairos...?

When was Elidibus effected by Kairos? He's not part of the Elpis MSQ where that device is relevant.

So by extension, there's an original past time line that exists independent of our visit.

How I wish that were the case.

I'd be interested to know how the unsundered Ascians—Lahabrea, Elidibus, and Emet-Selch—avoided being kicked into 14 pieces by Hydaelyn.
A4. https://youtu.be/WRpdIL7_NII?t=13301
Summary: Venat intentionally left a tiny flaw in her sundering attack, a "crack" for Emet-Selch to wiggle through. This was a gamble because she didn't have full control over the sundering attack, she could not be sure Emet-Selch would live.

How is it a gamble and how does she not have control if she knew she was going to it and the result because we told her? Riddle me this

A few things on this. The question is in regards specifically to how the trio escaped the sundering and not if Venat knew if the sundering attack would shatter the world or not. The "gamble" on Venat's part was if she could successfully keep those 3 unsundered or not, which she was able to do as we see in game with those 3 still being unsundered. Ironically you have actually provided evidence that goes against your claim and is one of the bigger pieces of evidence that people have used in this thread to prove that Venat did the sundering on purpose.

I ask you again. What game did you play?

[Turtledeluxe]

You mean where multiple characters noted the similarity of the WoL's soul to the soul of Azem.
Hythlodaus: "A bit thin in the aether, but it's soul is almost identical to Azem's"
The WoL introduces themself as "Azem's familiar" to several people.

Yes, you're proving my point. It's why they don't show Azem, why they never gender Azem, why we seem like Azem to others and most likely why we ended up inheriting the crystal.

What do you think Elidibus did with the crystal tower? Send the WoL into a fever dream or a simulation?

What I suspect occurred is that, in the original past there was no visit. So our visit created a deviant timeline which ends up conjoining with the present time. Recall that Venat tells us "a conjunction has begun to form between your time and mine". This is the reason the devs haven't definitively answered what happened with the timelines imo, because multiple ideas work. I prefer one that makes the story more coherent.

When was Elidibus effected by Kairos? He's not part of the Elpis MSQ where that device is relevant.

That's exactly my point. How does he not notice us until conveniently after the "conjunction" begins to form? He has no excuse.

The "gamble" on Venat's part was if she could successfully keep those 3 unsundered or not, which she was able to do as we see in game with those 3 still being unsundered. Ironically you have actually provided evidence that goes against your claim and is one of the bigger pieces of evidence that people have used in this thread to prove that Venat did the sundering on purpose.

You didn't answer the question. How can Venat gamble or lack control of something when she's well informed about the future of Emet and her imminent sundering slash?

In fact in general if it's single timeline time loop, why is the game the way it is at all? I could literally write a book of how it really makes pre EW Hydaelyn nonsensical and bizarrely obsessed with drawing out the Ascian conflict and keeping everything exactly the same.

[Absimiliard]

You didn't answer the question. How can Venat gamble or lack control of something when she's well informed about the future of Emet and her imminent sundering slash?

Yoshi-P already answered that question in the link the poster provided. In short, the sundering required utilizing her power to its utmost limits. The monumental effort required made the technique something unwieldy to say the least - virtually uncontrollable, and so she was unsure if her attempt to give Emet-Selch an out would actually work. It was also partially up to the man himself; he needed to recognize what was happening, spot the "flaw" in the sundering, and take action to preserve himself.

[Turtledeluxe]

Yoshi-P already answered that question in the link the poster provided. In short, the sundering required utilizing her power to its utmost limits. The monumental effort required made the technique something unwieldy to say the least - virtually uncontrollable, and so she was unsure if her attempt to give Emet-Selch an out would actually work. It was also partially up to the man himself; he needed to recognize what was happening, spot the "flaw" in the sundering, and take action to preserve himself.

How was she unsure when she knows his future is at the bottom of the sea playing games with their city? We told her all this. Emet existing in his og form post sundering absolutely requires that he survive the sundering. If it's all one timeline, if Venat is fully informed, then it isn't a gamble. It's a choice.

I also forgot to address Graha-- yes he time traveled and unlike us, he stayed there for a long time. It's unclear what would have occurred on the first without his visit.

[Xirean]

In fact in general if it's single timeline time loop, why is the game the way it is at all? I could literally write a book of how it really makes pre EW Hydaelyn nonsensical and bizarrely obsessed with drawing out the Ascian conflict and keeping everything exactly the same.

Yes exactly. That's what we have been saying this whole time. It's a time loop maintained by Venat at the expense of not just the Ancients but everyone else who ever lived on the planet, the shards or any other planet effected by the Endsinger. That's why we say the story should call her out.

[Theodric]

She didn't really know exactly what the sundering would result in as far as what exact state it would leave humanity in it because how would the WoL tell her all of that?

What do you mean? She could see the WoL right in front of her. She had their direct testimony, gleaned both from the Ascians and their very existence as a person. She knew it would yield a species that would be aetherically less dense, and what shape it'd take more or less. Plus we know from both her own mouth when questioned by Y'shtola and from the dev Q&A that she deliberately sundered them to bring about this result, i.e. she believed they'd wield dynamis more easily this way and feared that her own people would become like the Nibirun because she believed they couldn't change.

(most likely a significant number of people).

Nope:

Venat
You know as well as I that but few support our cause. Far fewer than they who place their faith in Zodiark.

See: https://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/B...rface#Dialogue

Other sources add to this, like the dev Q&A on why her summoning consumed her followers souls (well, aside from the little wrinkle that is the "fragments" of their souls in Myths...)

Finally and most importantly, the game doesn't frame her as perfect nor does it frame her solution as unquestionable.

It kind of does in the MSQ. It's not until the Omega quest that her decision is meaningfully questioned in any capacity. The MSQ presentation does not bother to question her logic at any point, and the codex doubles down on it as tragic but necessary and paints her actions as nothing other than benevolent.

the group who wanted a tempered future

Citation needed. Only the Convocation was tempered - a problem she knew how to shield from and could've prevented, if it mattered, by giving them the knowledge to avert the need to summon Zodiark. Both the dev Q&A and her own words in 5.2, and her short story in Tales from the Dawn, point to what she believed was her people's ability to adapt to the despair they had experienced as the cause, not tempering. You keep bringing tempering up but really, you're really just making it up at this point.

But even if you do, the story makes sense and Venat isn't some genocidal maniac.

Putting aside the word "maniac", her actions are nonetheless genocidal and the intent is there for this. Her actions come at the expense of the ancients' existence and furthermore rely on the Rejoinings taking place at least up to the 8UC for the sake of maintaining timeline consistency. You're trying to argue from the fact that she wasn't 100% confident if her methods would work to her aims being fuzzy, but that's really not how it's framed. Her aims are clear and pretty unambiguous, and frankly admitted to when questioned by Y'shtola, and also by Yoshi P in the Q&A.

In the very next quote you are saying Graha wanted to undo their future. I'm not how you can reconcile your own interpretation of this statement with what you said there. So, is some magic rule governing our time travel that Graha is not subject to? You're just misintrepreting what's being said.

Who can say? The writers have never really divulged the basis for how time travel works in the setting. We can only infer from the few instances we see and there's still question marks around that, to which the only answer so far is what Yoshi gave.

Time travel, in FFXIV, doesn't change reality. The variables can change, but it cannot be meaningful change,the result will be the same. Whether Graha travels back to the First or not, it would've theoretically been Flooded and eventually saved. Whether we travel to Elpis or not, the Final Days are bound to be instigated where they will affect our current reality. That's what he is saying. He's not just saying "you can't help".

Meanwhile the 8UC timeline existing as an independent forked timeline in its own right. Go read it here. https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes.../#sidestory_08

That pretty much sums up my thoughts overall on why the rhetoric about genocide is so bizarre and why the story, even if you believe in a single timeline, actually does make sense. It is believable? Maybe not. That's not what people have been arguing. What actually doesn't make sense, is how the time loop affects the rest of the game prior to EW with respect to Hydaelyn.

Yes, welcome to the club! We have been critical about how EW employed time travel in this thread since day one. Go look at the tags in the thread even. It does not, however, mean that what the writers wrote is not what they intend to be canon, regardless of how little sense it makes. And that is, that she is intending for the timeline from which you appeared in Elpis to remain consistent with the recollection you gave her, leading her to declare in EW that a conjunction of timelines has now been seeded. This is further supported by the devs' own words on how this can be interpreted, and her deliberate decision to try spare Emet-Selch.

At this point, I have to question, as have others, whether for someone who so vehemently argues their corner whether you've actually gone through the story, because there's a lot of misunderstandings that crop up in your posts. For instance, you keep hinging your words on what Elidibus said, but as the dev Q&A and her own words in EW make clear, it is Venat who is acting towards maintaining the timeline, which implies as a corollary that if she did not, it could deviate. Again, so far you've been reluctant to provide any sources for anything you say, and you come to very strange misinterpretations of the sources being provided.

Does it all make sense? Nope, but whether it does or not they're setting this out as how things went down, and on that basis, Venat is assigned a lot of agency and somehow, in spite of all the gaps in her knowledge, is aiming towards a timeline convergence. You don't have to like it or consider it logical - I certainly don't - but that is the level of agency she is being assigned. And on that basis, she is open to criticism. It doesn't really matter if in some other timeline, some hypothetical Venat made a greater effort to salvage her people, as all we have are her words that she'd make such efforts, and no tangible proof, so we are ultimately judging her based on what we do at least know. And that Venat is one who decided not to give her people the full picture and to proceed with the Sundering as an "answer" to Endsinger. It's possible to both criticise the weirdness of how they resorted to time travel, and to criticise the parties involved on the basis of what they chose to make canon as, whatever its faults, it's what we're stuck with.

It wasn't world's full of people and many of them did want to die, by literally serving a summon who recurring called for sacrifices and tempered the rest. I wouldn't call being permanently tempered living. It's bizarre because you're either being obtuse or just don't realize that Zodiark was only a good solution for people who were content permanently serving and sacrificing for him in order to act as a shield against the Final Days.

I don't really think you're in a position to be insulting others here over being obtuse. But Zodiark did not temper anyone but the Convocation, and even that was presented as a side effect without much follow up at the time. He was resorted to as a summoning because they had run out of other available sources of aether because of the Final Days eating away at their star. This is why people say it was within her hands whether or not they resorted to summoning him, because if they had been warned earlier of the nature of the problem, a different solution could have been devised. But you're still framing this in a misleading way that's not even consistent with the story's own way of presenting it.

And I keep having to remind everyone-- Hyaelyn was a group effort. So it's not the awful act of Venat, it's the awful act of a collective. And it isnt awful because as I keep saying, the force required to injure Zodiark had the byproduct of sundering. Its not "Venat plotted to send humans back to the dark ages". If anything your hyper focus on Venat seems very odd.

She had more knowledge than her combined group. This is also covered in her short story:

Unable to find the words, the archivist retreated into ritual. He held out a crystal—as he had countless times before—upon which was stored the last chapter of cosmological wisdom Venat had sought. Though she had spoken of its importance, he suspected she withheld the entire truth. Of her glimpse into the future, she had offered precious little.

That aside, I don't think any here would disagree that her entire group should share some of the blame, but we have to consider how much they knew compared to her.

I don't notice anyone calling out or making threads about the myriad other genocidal people in the story who are also framed as heros at particular points or even have redemption arcs. I think the real issue you have is deeper than that.

Must've been absent for most of ARR, HW, SB and SHB, then. But then again, the story does not shy away from criticising those characters, even where it presents their motives as sympathetic, so this is a rather moot point.

Venat doesn't even really get a redemption arc. It's a confession and then we kill her.

From the story's position (or even the way you tried to frame it), what is there to redeem? Even in the Omega story, the Watcher is hoping for validation of her and her group's ideological view through the Sundered. In the end, she herself insists on the fight, knowing the cost, because she sees it as a test she wants to administer.