When are we supposed to stop fighting?

[Veloran]

What makes Pelennor different is the fact that, from the point that Aragorn recruits the ghosts prior to the battle, the protagonists have a bigger army and the conflict is non-existant. The problem posed is: 'How do we win against a bigger army?' and the solution is 'We actually had a bigger army all along.' The ghosts are free to show up at any point, because there's no constraint attached, and so there is no real conflict. What makes Helm's Deep different is that the critical condition set up before the fight is 'If you hold out for five days, you will win.' The tension comes from whether or not they can hold out for long enough.

You've turned the argument now. Again,

The example that Sanderson gives in the lecture that Valorian linked contrasts Helm's Deep and Pelennor Fields in the Lord of the Rings as a means of illustrating the principle. The same solution is used to resolve both of them (army shows up, we win). The difference is that Helm's Deep has a victory condition placed upfront (survive for five days). This, he argues, is the reason why the former feels satisfying, while the latter feels like Deus Ex Machina.

The arrival of reinforcements at Pelennor was also set up. In the film it's basically the entire C plot. Something being set up does not, in and of itself, make for a satisfying and resonant narrative point.

Before you were arguing that with the Sanderson conception, the set up of the crystal justifies the ending being satisfying, just as the non-set up of reinforcements to Pelennor is what makes the payoff there unsatisfying. However you are now effectively agreeing with me, and are saying that it isn't the presence of a setup alone that makes the payoff good, as the reinforcements were set up in RoTK. It's the particulars of the themes, conflict, and execution that makes for a satisfying ending, setup is one element to this mix.

I think that a main part of the story of Endwalker was to show Hermes and Meteion that their perspectives were flawed. That's why, even Amon at the end of his journey has his doubts, and why you have the option of offering both him and Meteion respectively the opportunity to find an answer together in the future. You're not going to do that if they just killed your friend. Killing off a Scion makes the plot darker and edgier, but it comes at a cost.

Meteion and Hermes killed trillions. Emet and (arguably let's not get into this) Venat killed billions. The game makes a big deal out of people letting go of their resentments, a lot of people were personally wronged by the likes of the dragons or Fordola or Yotsuyu and the message is always that they need to move forward with that. But basically what you're saying here is that if it involves someone the player is actually invested in, that's all null and void. If Emet had actually killed G'raha or Meteion had killed any of the Scions or Zenos had actually killed Y'shtola in Stormblood or anybody in your body in Endwalker, the act of forming a connection despite all that would carry way more weight. Emet only sort of gets this treatment and it still carries pretty hard.

If the player can't be made to suffer personal loss and accept the same messages that countless other characters espouse and are forced to all the time, then it's all utterly hollow.

[Absimiliard]

There's also something to be said for a lack of consequences. While how a bad situation is handled is very important, so too is the understanding that things can be taken away permanently. We knew in Ultima Thule that every single Scion would return unharmed, because at this point SE has demonstrated a complete lack of interest in terminating any one of them. No amount of appropriately handled writing of a given situation is going to leave anyone on the edge of their seat once they've figured out this simple truth, and by this point I figure nearly everyone has.

[_Koneko_]

meteion just killed a failed race of ancients that had failed hermes test of proving their worthiness to live and there is little proof that meteion killed any civilization she actually came across their own failures was most likely amplified by her presence but she did not kill them i'm glad endwalker shined some light on the ancients and proving they was not the utopia society that people think they are they was a highly flawed race that ultimately got erased like they had for so many other failed concepts ironically they died by their very own measurement of what makes one worthy of existence to the very end Emet-Selc and the other 2 failed to proven the ancients worthy of being alive by not respecting all life Emet proved Hermes right in his role as Chief of Elpis Hermes test determined that the ancients was indeed not worhy of life

[KizuyaKatogami]

meteion just killed a failed race of ancients that had failed hermes test of proving their worthiness to live and there is little proof that meteion killed any civilization she actually came across their own failures was most likely amplified by her presence but she did not kill them i'm glad endwalker shined some light on the ancients and proving they was not the utopia society that people think they are they was a highly flawed race that ultimately got erased like they had for so many other failed concepts ironically they died by their very own measurement of what makes one worthy of existence to the very end Emet-Selc and the other 2 failed to proven the ancients worthy of being alive by not respecting all life Emet proved Hermes right in his role as Chief of Elpis Hermes test determined that the ancients was indeed not worhy of life

Except the whole "test" is a sham. How are you going to test someone but not give them, for all intents and purposes, a study guide. However, even despite not knowing wtf was going on, they did live. They summoned Zodiark. What killed them was Venat's sundering. That has nothing to do with Hermes' "test." If youre going to say the ancients deserved to be erased for erasing concepts, you had better be saying the sundered and wol need to be erased since we create our own concepts only to kill them immediately afterward in Eden.

[KariTheFox]

Other than the obvious, notable example of Meteion sending the final days in the direction of Ethyris, did she actually intentionally kill anyone? I thought the implication that the nature of her existence meant that she broadcasted suicidal despair wherever she or her sisters went without really wanting to or meaning to. It was only after making her report and seeing the barren, despair filled nature of the universe that she (all her sisters) decided to intentionally bring the final days to the ancients.

It's hard to use the right pronouns when talking about Meteion since she's both a person and hivemind conglomerate of (dozens, hundreds?) of birds.

[Veloran]

worthy of being alive by not respecting all life

Hello oxymoron.

Other than the obvious, notable example of Meteion sending the final days in the direction of Ethyris, did she actually intentionally kill anyone?

She has a giant graveyard of souls as her nest and has spent 12,000 years spreading despair throughout the universe.

[Necrotica]

She has a giant graveyard of souls as her nest and has spent 12,000 years spreading despair throughout the universe.

Look at Mr. Ivory Tower.

Let he who is without a giant graveyard of souls cast the first stone.

[KariTheFox]

She has a giant graveyard of souls as her nest and has spent 12,000 years spreading despair throughout the universe.

She didn't kill the dragons, she didn't kill the Ea, she didn't kill the omicrons or any of the societies in the Dead Ends. She either found them all already dead, or they committed societal suicide shortly after communicating with her. But it doesn't appear that she went out of her way to cause harm to any of them.

It was only after that - when she intentionally broadcasts that suicidal despair back to Ethyris that she's acting with any intent ( though you can argue she's following her original mission parameters. Hermes asked her to find out what people in the greater universe live for, and she broadcasts suicidal despair back as the answer because the rest of the universe as far as we know is dead.)

[_Koneko_]

Uhm that was the fair part of the test if they had known about the test they would have artificially altered their society to reflect the test by not knowing they continued along on their self destructive path Emet had every chance to prove Hermes wrong but for 12,000 he clung to a dead end civilization and refused to alter his views so by the goals listed by Hermes, Emet-Selc and the ancients failed to prove them self worthy of existence and was rightfully wiped out the test was never winnable by the ancients because their society never allowed for the kind of thinking that hermes was testing them for they lacked Empathy so why would they respect all life

the ancients by their very nature was a failed concept as meteion proved by other similiar civilizations that all perished heck the final civilization in dead ends seem to be the goal the ancients was trying to reach and look what happen to them

[KariTheFox]

My reading of the 'test' that Hermes gave was that it wasn't meant to be the kind of test you are given to pass or fail - but a scientific test, the same kind as he gave the creations of Elpis before either destroying them or letting them become part of Ethyris's ecosystem.

In that kind of test, it's important that the subjects do not know they are being tested for the purposes of scientific accuracy. He's trying to apply the same principles to mankind that he applies to the creations in Elpis, he even says as much. With the parameters being if mankind can survive the Final Days, they deserve to live, if they can't, then they should be unmade like all other failed creations. (is it messed up to do that? absolutely. not trying to argue the validity of his test, just the nature of it)