Sundering stuff established in the Q&A

[Kozh]

I mean I really doubt that we would tell her every little detail about the history of our planet. Maybe we simply said that the world was sundered, Emet, Lahabrea and Elidibus escaped the sundering and that right now x amount of shards got rejoined. Also that seemingly Emet recreated Amaurot and that we defeated him there. So maybe she knew that the First was important but I doubt that she knew exactly which shard would get a rejoining and when it would happen. (I am not even sure if our WoL knows that)

I don't even say the WoL told her about every calamity or the world's history. Dunno where people get this from - _-

I'm just saying it's possible we told about ultima, because we directly fight it and it was quite a big deal.

Of course she could have sat there, counting the amount of rejoinings and the remaining time until we are born and be like "welp time to help or it will be out of order" but I really doubt that.

I personally don't doubt that. She intentionally let the unsundered survive to do rejoining after all. She knew the world would survive despite being rejoined 7 times. She only need to do the bare minimum, by making warrior of lights and let them sort it out by themselves. After all, rejoining is a vital part of her plan to introduce despair to the sundered.

[Lyth]

...

That really highlights the problem with doing a literal script translation instead of transcreation. Koji outlined this back in 2013. Sure, it's easier to do when you only have access to the script and not the actual author in house, but you lose intent, style, tone, and context. That's why localization gets done on site. Nobody with common sense is going to interpret Emet's line to mean 'Our Amaurotian spaceflight technology was not advanced enough to get us to Ultima Thule.'

[Lyth]

...

No, but the FFXIV localization team does. That's the massive advantage of having an in-house localization team, and why the current English localization lead talked to the writers about their views and intent before popping over to do the Q+A. You really can't do that with a literal translation.

It also makes even less sense to translate a translation. I have no problem with looking at the French script for myself, but if you're going to claim that one language script is more 'official' than the others as a means of gatekeeping, at least do so with the Japanese script.

[Theodric]

The French localisation is perfectly fine and aligns pretty smoothly with the Japanese script. Given that some of the posters who come here are European - and in some cases French themselves - the gatekeeping over localisation is getting pretty bizarre.

I think it's pretty telling that whenever a new patch trailer or New Year's message went live, it was not at all unusual to see posters rush to make comparisons between all the different localisations. Yet now doing it is suddenly a problem? Funny, that.

[Kozh]

It also doesn't change the fact that she had no assurances the WoL would be successful. She gambled trillions of lives on a 1-2 day meeting, which is Disney levels of love at first sight leads to happily ever after type nonsense.

Yep, if not for meteion suddenly attacking us on the ship, the party wouldn't even able to traverse ultima Thule.

Antagonists who've done less were raked over the coals, but Venat is celebrated. I'll never understand it. I can only assume the backlash from Japanese players was worse than it was here because Reddit and western streamers/YouTubers have done nothing but gush about EW.

It's really head scratching, the behavior of those people. Apparently you need to write a 2 page essay on how you understand how Big Bad(tm) the character you like, how you personally doesn't support their ideal in real life, how even if they tried to atone they still have blood on their hands, before you could say something like "man, I really like Gaius. I hope he show up more". Otherwise people won't stop going into you post/tweet about how evil™ you fav character is.

But Venat? "oh no such a sad tragic heroine she is. Look at how she suffer by using her soul to fight us".

[Firlont]

He does mention that it is his duty to help with this because it's Fandaniel's fault, too.

[Theodric]

At no point did I suggest that it wasn't an impressive feat.

It'll be interesting to see how things fare if and when there's another character popularity poll within the course of the next few weeks or months and everything is still at least somewhat 'fresh'.

[Lauront]

Honestly, I would say that the Japanese is quite the opposite. A more literal translation of his Japanese line would be "Still, the fact that humanity has gotten this far... It's true that this result could not have been achieved by our methods." The context for this line is all the pain and suffering he had to endure, so Venat will get no thanks for the part she made him play in it. And in the Japanese it's not pointed at the WoL specifically, but that "humanity" has gotten this far.

If the French translation is more specific here, I think they made an inference that wasn't present in either the Japanese or English versions, and may have slightly constrained the meaning of the line.

(Reference if you want to hear the Japanese line: https://youtu.be/c4My9iGEqGA?t=1459)

Accepting that as the case for the time being (as I'm not familiar with Japanese in the slightest), both the French and German versions are in agreement that what she is being praised for is her matchmaking ability, i.e. bringing them all there (and by this I would assume it doesn't just mean physically getting there but also navigating the vagaries of time travel, setting Emet aside in the Aetherial Sea, marking Meteion etc etc., i.e. the cumulative set of actions to bring them all together.) As was mentioned, they coordinate to discuss and agree these translations in tandem, so we have one set specific to her matchmaking ability and the other with a somewhat less precise claim but which can be read in the same vein. As far as I am concerned, this undermines any sweeping reading of the claim as amounting to an assertion from Emet that the ancients would've never been able to achieve all this even had circumstances been different (i.e. she spilled the beans.)

I find it interesting how the game refers to both Venat ("Wind-up Herois") and Emet (in the Minstrel's Ballad flavor text, before we really even saw him do anything that could be considered heroic) as "heroes." It kind of makes you wonder what their working definition of that term is.

They are taking the term to mean self-abnegation in service of a greater ideal, I believe. By that definition, Emet-Selch, Elidibus and Venat would all qualify - in fact, they sort of set this up for Elidibus with this (even more evident in the French version.) WoL in this case can be taken as synonymous for hero. Though with Hades, they do throw in "fallen" to qualify it.

[polyphonica]

As far as I am concerned, this undermines any sweeping reading of the claim as amounting to an assertion from Emet that the ancients would've never been able to achieve all this even had circumstances been different (i.e. she spilled the beans.)

Well, I think the rest of the context before that is important too. First he blames Hermes for making him forget; that's the root of it all. Then he laments the 12k years of suffering he had to endure, and says he'll give Venat no thanks for her role in orchestrating that... although he acknowledges that their methods wouldn't have gotten humanity to this point. These "methods" are basically what he's been doing these last 12k years -- trying to sacrifice more life to Zodiark to bring back their past. They tried already to stop Meteion in the past and failed in their "fair chance" (according to Hermes's rules, anyway). Venat and the WoL were always the sort of Plan B that Emet-Selch himself helped to orchestrate in Elpis (although he forgot that he did). He obviously has a huge benefit of hindsight now to see that the ancients were misguided from the start, and so they never got the point of what Venat was doing and why.

The "spilling the beans" option was always there, but a big risk. Venat had one good lead of a possible alternate solution if the Ancients failed, which was the WoL. She herself explained the risk of getting Emet-Selch, who was on the convocation, involved, which could result in Hermes being thrown off the Convocation (at best, or retaliation at worse) which would deprive humanity of probably the most useful player they could have on their side given his research, and could also jeopardize the one other lead they had. So it's basically a two-pronged plan: hope the Convocation is successful and make sure all the best minds are working on that, but protect the backup plan so that you can execute it if need be.

So yeah, if someone were to make a sweeping statement like "there's no possible conceivable way the Ancients could have ever figured out a solution on their own," that's obviously wrong. Hermes himself created Meteion after all, so even without being able to directly manipulate dynamis, they could create more life that did (in a way other than sundering). If it weren't for Hermes's gambit, the memory wipe, and the knowledge of the future Venat had through us, they might have come up with other options. But yeah, the issue for Venat is that straying from the path could mean closing that door, and she at least knew for sure that there was a chance with the WoL.

I guess, in other words, the Convocation's job was Plan A, and Venat's job was Plan B. You're criticizing her for not exploring Plans C (through Z), but if she did that she might have forfeited Plan B. Whatever she did was taking an unbelievable risk, so she chose the largely-known path rather than the unknown one. And yeah, she deserves both criticism and acknowledgement for it, which is what Emet-Selch offered.