(MAJOR SPOILERS) Just beat Endwalker MSQ...

[Kazhar]

I would've been infinitely more satisfied by the Sundering being either accidental or the product of some manner of deception or misunderstanding rather then it being completely intentional and fueled by logic that given what little context there is behind it felt poorly grounded to me.

Completely agree. Hydaelyn's POV as presented in Shadowbringers was fine, even sympathetic. She thought the sacrifices were wrong and tried to stop it, but by doing so it had a desastrous impact on the entire world. Like Zodiark's summoning it's a tragedy created by people who were faced with impossible choices and it was a compelling narrative. There were no right answers. It really didn't need anything else.
Every single of the Endwalker additions make her look way worse and severly weakens the moral ambiguity of the Ascians vs Sundered conflict, which was the ENTIRE point.

[Travel]

Am I the only one that doesn't see Venat as inherently genocidal? She did what she thought/was informed would have been the best way to stop Zodiark's self-sacrificial loop. They're both genocidal by the same standards. But unlike Zodiark whose souls actually got lost and/or still remain in the moon as mindless echoes, Hydaelyn's actions preserved the lives that existed, even if it meant splintering them. Sure, they lost their people as a result, but that was going to happen either way, and it's not like anyone was handling the apocalypse well at all.

>.> also that isn't about me mentioning "conqueror wants to genocide a whole people" thing I said before, is it? Because I just used that as an example. The beast tribes, Werylt and Bozja have that, for example.

I don't you're the only one, no; I've seen far more civil conversations on Reddit, Discord, and even YouTube about this topic that pointed out that both sides had a point. People here just want to see everything in a certain way.

I think the comparison is still valid since it was their choice to end it in 6.0 and Endwalker's story certainly could've used more time, it's basically 2 expansion stories crammed into a X.0 patch.


But even if we only compare 3.0 to 6.0 it will depend on the player. Do you prefer a more grounded story (atleast by Final Fantasy standards) that is internally consistent or do you want the big emotional payoff and themes?

Honestly, I really do think I would have preferred EW ending in 7.0; I like what we got, but there are a lot of points where the story felt undercooked. I really do feel like the story could have been better if it were made over a longer time; remember, 6.0 was the technical end of the Endwalker story, in comparison to the previous expansion stories which ran from X.0 to X.5. 6.1 onward is supposed to be a new story, meaning that we aren't really going to be dealing with plot points from EW anymore.

That being said; it's possible that the devs might notice all this controversy and go back to try and fix things. They've done it before, after all, and given how Yoshi-P mentioned that he really does love FFXIV, I can imagine him trying to fix it up someday.

The annihilation of culture is still genocide and Venat murdered the people alive at the time and at best remade them into something new inhabiting weaker failures bodies and inhabiting a crueller more brutal world and Venat had a fetish for sufffering and everyone had to suffer to justify her evil ideology

Also the sacrifice falls apart in EW, it made sense in ShB that the races we see in the game may have been created during the second sacrifice when the world was set to right. But now all the player races are ancients souls reworking there bodies to deal with the effects of being sundered so there's no people to sacrifice

Okay, at this point, I know that this is going to make me sound like a complete ass, but; I seriously can't take what you've said seriously here. Honestly, a lot of people on this topic in general seem to be deliberately ignoring the Dynamis issue - you know, the thing that Endwalker's entire fucking story was written around, and was brought up so much? The Ancients couldn't manipulate it due to having too much aether, while lesser beings such as our characters would be able to manipulate and fight it better; that's exactly why Venat sundered everything, because any attempt to rebuild Amaurot would have gotten destroyed anyway because of the Endsinger. Make no mistake, what Venat did was fucking horrifying - if the Dynamis issue wasn't there, then yeah, Venat would deserve everything she got and more; hell, the game itself outright has Venat/Hydaelyn state that what she did was beyond horrific. The problem here, is that there really wasn't a single good choice - it was either let everyone die, let Zodiark sacrifice people in what could very well likely cause new, unforeseen issues in the future - or take one hell of a gamble on a plan that the WoL told her about. There's no good answer here, but there had to be a choice made.

What you don't seem to get, and neither do the white knights who think this is about Emet VS Venat, is that we don't think the treatment of Venat in the MSQ sucks because we're "team Emet-Selch". It's because she's just as 'bad' but doesn't get called out for it. The MSQ forces us to be sympathetic and treat her like 'mommy'. Both Venat and Emet are self righteous genocidal, only differed by the justification they gave to their actions. The treatment of Emet in ShB is better because we're allowed to choose how to respond, and even though the Scions eventually understand where he comes from, they ultimately disagree because, well, they don't want to die or have the people they care about die. It's the supposed "grey area" that Yoshida loved to talk about during the Endwalker preparation hype. Grey area which turned out to be absent in Endwalker's MSQ.

No one is "white-knighting" Venat here; hell, my original post even pointed out that her plan was pretty damn stupid. All I'm pointing out is that the issue isn't exactly as one-sided as so many people make it out to be.

That, and you should remember that the EW MSQ got cut down a LOT to make it fit in a single expansion; it's fairly obvious that some major story scenes were cut. Venat looks weird because the scenes that gave her more development were likely taken out; it's not perfect, but at the very least SE tried to have a situation that wasn't completely black-and-white with what space they had.

Completely agree. Hydaelyn's POV as presented in Shadowbringers was fine, even sympathetic. She thought the sacrifices were wrong and tried to stop it, but by doing so it had a desastrous impact on the entire world. Like Zodiark's summoning it's a tragedy created by people who were faced with impossible choices and it was a compelling narrative. There were no right answers. It really didn't need anything else.
Every single of the Endwalker additions make her look way worse and severly weakens the moral ambiguity of the Ascians vs Sundered conflict, which was the ENTIRE point.

Fully agree with both of you. With how the story was cut, EW really didn't do a good job with Venat's character; I can sort of see a continuation of the characterization from Shadowbringers, but the lack of development for her hurts. Which is a shame, because I feel that more development would have really helped the story in general. Here's hoping that SE goes back and tries to fix it sometime.

[Thenightvortex]

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Okay, at this point, I know that this is going to make me sound like a complete ass, but; I seriously can't take what you've said seriously here. Honestly, a lot of people on this topic in general seem to be deliberately ignoring the Dynamis issue - you know, the thing that Endwalker's entire fucking story was written around, and was brought up so much? The Ancients couldn't manipulate it due to having too much aether, while lesser beings such as our characters would be able to manipulate and fight it better; that's exactly why Venat sundered everything, because any attempt to rebuild Amaurot would have gotten destroyed anyway because of the Endsinger. Make no mistake, what Venat did was fucking horrifying - if the Dynamis issue wasn't there, then yeah, Venat would deserve everything she got and more; hell, the game itself outright has Venat/Hydaelyn state that what she did was beyond horrific. The problem here, is that there really wasn't a single good choice - it was either let everyone die, let Zodiark sacrifice people in what could very well likely cause new, unforeseen issues in the future - or take one hell of a gamble on a plan that the WoL told her about. There's no good answer here, but there had to be a choice made.

But why do you think there was no other way? Final Days is a cataclysm that was engineered by ONE ancient, and the fact that he couldn’t interact with Dynamis directly didn’t hinder that. We know that he wasn’t the only Dynamis expert, and I think if Venat forewarned the ancients, many more would’ve attempted to study the force that was between their world’s end. As I mentioned in previous post, it could be either creating more entelechys designed to counter Meteion or sundering a number of ancients so they could develop a squad that could interact with Dynamis. There are so many possibilities that Venat didn’t explore which is why I don’t see how we have any proof that they wouldn’t be able to overcome Dynamis issue in some way.

I agree on all your points regarding this expansion being rushed and much content cut, it might have been better if 7.0 was the ending, but it is what it is and we have to judge what SE writers presented to us.

[Gemina]

It's not even genocide, is it? Because she doesn't kill them, she just sunders them. Many of them are about to sacrifice themselves anyway.

You can try to use yourself to answer this question: If through some kind of magic your soul or essence is split, and your conscience (thoughts, memories, etc.) along with your corporeal form cease to be, would you consider that a death?

To say the sundering is not genocide is to say that the sundering is non-consequential. Perhaps in terms of the flora and fauna; beings that simply exist, and are purely instinctual, but the sundering carried dire consequences. The WoL is now eight times rejoined with their original aether, and still has no recollection of their life as pre-sundered Azem. We do seem to retain behavioral traits of the previous Azem, which suggests there might be signature values to a soul, but it could also be pure coincidence considering these 'signature traits' of Azem can pretty much be applied to anyone with an adventurous and selflessly good heart in the same manner it applies to every gamer playing FFXIV.

It's just been confirmed for us our soul used to belong to the previous Azem. Convenient to say the least, but it now belongs to us, the WoL. This can be twisted and turned all kinds of ways, but will always end at 'you are you'.