Quote Originally Posted by Adamantini View Post
I don't care about bad stories. If they wanted to make a drama, do it the first time we arrived in Sharlayan, not after we were in a hurry to save the world.



For real? I don't trust a bunch of teddy bears that say they terraformed the moon. Put someone charismatic but less silly and I'll take it seriously.



No, I'm throwing it in the guy's face, back there, that his writer didn't know how to write the story. I'm not saying "I didn't like it", I'm arguing because it's bad.
Again, they couldn't answer the questions about Hydaelin and Zoldiark, they created holes in the script, and they didn't even get a coherent narrative.
Why it is bad? Simple, because after Zoldiark died, there was no more time for cute bunnies on the moon. The expansion lacked urgency, leaving the "end of the world" story a joke.
In their urgency to make the characters the audience likes more "funny", they made most of them stupid, to the point where Graha, the Crystal Exarch we met in the first, a guy who stops in the middle of catastrophe, to talk about tapestry.
Elpis was irrelevant. If his goal was to build the boss, he didn't fulfill it. If his goal was to answer who Venat is, he did it wrong.



This.
Not only that. It was supposed to end the story, and what I see most in LL, are questions about Hydaelin, Zoldiark, Emet... But the story is already over, why are there still so many doubts?
A story being bad or not is extremely subjective. Yes there are some objective measures, and no story is ever perfect. It is still possible for people to disagree on whether a story is good or not though because of the subjective nature of art and literature. May classic pieces of literature were widely disliked during their time, but now are hailed as masterpieces.

That said you are being willfully obtuse on certain parts of the story which are fully explained in the story. Zodiark did require the sacrifices as in order to enact the kind of things being requested a huge amount of aether was required, so much so that those living had to sacrifice their lives to provide the aether. While Venat knew of what was going to happen there was little she could do, because she'd have to convince the entire convocation, not to mention the populace at large, without a single shred of proof other than her word. Seeing as people today straight up deny science the probability of her succeeding in that is so small it shouldn't be an option.

Hydaelyn's ability to split Zodiark isn't a feat of pure power either. As discussed in the Shadowbringer's MSQ, Hydaelyn's ability is incredibly niche allowing her to split her foe into multiples and reducing their strength by the number of multiples they were split into. She created a total of 14 separate entities, which because Zodiark was the will of the star split Etheirys into the source and 13 shards. This reduced zodiark's power by a factor of 13 making him weak enough for Hydaelyn to contain. As for why she didn't take on Meteion, this is also brought up directly in the MSQ. One, she did make it so Meteion could be tracked. Two, aether and dynamis are opposites. The Ancients, to include Hydaelyn, were too rich in aether to be able to counter dynamis. It is only due to the diluted nature of the sundered's souls that they are able to manipulate dynamis which was a requirement to being able to take on Meteion.

Now I will agree, the time travel thing could have been handled better and they should not have used two different types of time travel theory that stand opposed to one another in the same story. Time paradoxes are annoying to say the least. Not to mention there were indeed some plot holes, but the same can be said of any story. Most stories never answer 100% of the questions readers have. In many case most stories do leave readers with questions and a desire to know more. That's just the way of it. Having questions remaining doesn't make it a bad story, it just means there's a loose thread. Also the scene with Urianger was important character building. It was not drama for drama's sake, it was to help his character move on from the guilt he felt.