(MAJOR SPOILERS) Just beat Endwalker MSQ...

[KageTokage]

I feel like almost everyone who has beefs with Endwalker tends to have fairly similar ones; usually in regards to awkward pacing, feeling like there was a lack of stakes, and the truth of the Hydaelyn/Zodiark business not being quite as satisfactory as they were expecting.

[Gemina]

Oh no. Hide, you poor thing. You've just activated the Emet fanclub. Their seething, raging, venomous loathing of fictional character Venat is a sight to behold. Prepare for a small but insistent flood that she's the most spiteful, evil, wicked, hateful, deceitful, vicious witch the canon of fiction has ever produced, and the Ancient utopia "deserved" to keep going forever. No, explaining story themes isn't a deterrent.

Glad you enjoyed the story.

We were lead to believe that she struck down Zodiark and imprisoned him on the moon to save mankind. I know it isn't like we met with Hydaelyn for tea on Wednesdays or anything, but omitting the whole, "I kinda killed everyone too." was a bit convenient towards accomplishing her goals. Obviously, the WoL cannot know this early on in order for this story to progress, but it also doesn't change that Venat was all of those things you mentioned. Every one of them. Even Evil. The ancients are capable of both good and evil acts, and the most powerful ones like Elidibus, Emet, Lahabrea and Venat have the ability to produce phenomenal feats when fueled by either of those pursuits.

[Iscah]

The problem with Venat/Hydaelyn's decision is that it seems that what we actually saw her do on screen is not, at a broad-scale intent level, what the writers apparently set out to portray her doing, which was for the Sundering to be utterly necessary and the only long-term way to save humanity, making it a harsh but necessary act that she took the burden of carrying out. We're clearly intended to see her as someone who has suffered for the good of humanity because she cares about them.

Unfortunately the details of the portrayal just don't work well, other parts of the narrative work at cross-purposes to it, and she comes out of it looking much worse than the writers seem to want her to appear.

I think they went into it with an odd clash in their base philosophy – that idea they lean on that "our struggles make us strong, and people who never experience that don't have the same strength" makes some degree of sense in our world where it's simply an inevitability of life, but to take it that step further and say that "suffering had to be introduced to the world because of this" is just jarring and makes the whole narrative awkward, and is not the lofty philosophical concept they try to sell it as.

Perhaps it's all because they wrote themselves into a corner in the first place by creating the "perfect" Ancients without really having a good answer why they had to be torn down from that position, and having to come up with the link afterwards. I think a lot of the awkward parts of this story's narrative come from all these pre-established fragments invented for different narratives at their own time, which now need to be fused together even though they don't sit comfortably.

(Though they haven't even done a great job of that, what with dropping the entire "Hydaelyn fought and sundered Zodiark" narrative presented to us most recently by Emet in Shadowbringers, so it's not just Hydaelyn making the story up. And it makes it feel like the overarching story of the last four expansions got abandoned at the final reveal.)

[Travel]

Well, I come back, and... I feel I've made some people upset. My apologizes; I looked over my original post and realized I didn't explain a few points as well as I thought I did; that's what happens when you get rushed to type something out. Let me see if I can explain my thoughts a bit better now; grab a drink or two, this might take a bit.

Ah yes just the thing to come and do to people grieving, to telling them that they are wrong to grieve for the loved ones what a hateful thing to do. Hey everyone you loved is dead, well just get over it and move on. it's a hateful spiteful mindset.
Greif breaks people and I find the idea that if people don't react in an someone imposed way then they don't deserve to exterminated to be one of the most evil acts I've seen in Final Fantasy.

I'm not saying that it's really a "good" thing to do; I'm just pointing out that, sometimes, you really do just need to get up and try and deal with the problem and keep going. We kinda did it ourselves back in Heavensward, with Emmanellian; it's not a nice thing to do, but in a high-stress situation - especially in an apocalypse scenario - getting someone out of that mindset is important.

The group she talked with wasn’t summoning Zodiark, that scene is metaphorical and represents different points of the timeline. By that time Zodiark was already there and they are present worshipers.

You say that they didn’t fix the problem and didn’t look to the future, but how do you envision it? They tried to restore their home and rebuild just like the sundered did after the last calamity, why is it wrong? It was hard for them to deal with grief(figures considering they lost 75% of their population), but they did the best they could considering they did not know of the source of the Final Days(concealed by Venat btw)

Basically, what I’m asking is what in your opinion they should’ve done which would ‘earn them the right’ to not be sundered?

Let me see if I can explain this for you and the guys above; put simply, the Ancients didn't deserve what happened to them, it was just a very shitty situation all around. It's not that the Ancients were in the wrong for wanting to return to the way everything was - what they wanted was completely, perfectly understandable, and hell, if I were in Emet's shoes, I'd have done the exact same thing. The issue here, is Dynamis; the Ancient's were too broken by grief to be able to properly deal with it, wanting to go back to their lives that they had before, but they couldn't because the Endsinger was still active - that, and remember, the Ancients couldn't deal with Dynamis directly because they had too much Aether. The only one with any knowledge on the subject was Hermes, and even then, he wasn't exactly the best at understanding it; his interactions with Meteion are a good example. I'll let TvTropes explain this one:

"Meteion's breakdown is the ultimate indictment of Amaurotine society - as a familiar, she was essentially an organic robot to them, with even Hermes, her creator, ultimately regarding her as a tool for his plan to explore the universe, and because of that impatiently sent her sisters out without submitting his plan to the Convocation for peer review. To him, he was just getting his new toy up and running without Emet-Selch interfering, when in reality she had the emotional maturity of a newborn and simply seeing her as a person who needed to be emotionally prepared for it, which Emet-Selch immediately recognized. Cut to her discovering the truth, and rather than admit he did something awful to her, Hermes uncritically accepts it to confirm his own growing biases and disaffection from society, sabotaging any attempt to subdue her. And Venat remembers it all - no wonder she decided to begin the Sundering when she realized that the Amaurortine are planning to sacrifice a full three-quarters of their population just to bring it back to status quo, by that point it was no great loss in her eyes."

The Ancients aren't in the wrong, they just couldn't deal with the issue causing everything, and that's what led to Venat sundering everything.

As for Venat; not saying she was in the right, either, and frankly her entire plan was very, very lucky it went the way it did. Honestly, from what I've gathered, it's rather likely that she just simply was going on what the Warrior of Light told her; basically, the WoL ended up causing what is known as a time loop, and Venat was ensuring the timeline would go the same way as it did in-game, which was a timeline that she knew would give humanity a fighting chance against the Dynamis issue - certainly not a good plan, but it was the only one that she knew that could work. That, and it's also likely that simple desperation could have played a part; it's very likely that she was just going on the only real plan she could think of at the time in such a scenario. I don't think it was active malicious intent, I think it was more desperation than anything else.

That, and there's the issue with Zodiark, the primal; while certainly well-intentioned, and the Ancients were completely in the right for wanting their world back, there's one key issue. Namely, primals require sacrifices, and Zodiark is technically a hivemind of the sacrificed; while initially made up of willing sacrifices, what would happen when people that were unwilling were sacrificed?

I'm not disagreeing with you, mind; Venat certainly could have handled the situation better. Thing is; I don't entirely think we're supposed to really think she's completely right - the way she was set up sort of indicates that she was supposed to be seen as this anti-hero more than anything else. Remember, the story of Endwalker was supposed to take place over the course of two entire expansions, originally, with it ending in 7.0; it was cut down because the devs felt that they were dragging the story out. It's very plain to see that a LOT of story content was cut, and I imagine we would have gotten a much better explanation of everything had the story been its proper length.

TL;DR: The Ancients didn't deserve what happen to them, it was just a horrific situation, Venat certainly could have been handled better, remember that the plot got trimmed a TON.

I enjoyed the EW story well enough, but even I can recognize its pretty major flaws. I will also be honest in saying that you mostly lost me and I resorted to skimming your posts after you said it was better than HW. Calling Shadowbringers overrated didn't help your case either. In my opinion, EW was okay, but it did not quite live up to the hype. Shadowbringers went above and beyond in that regard, and we got a story I don't think most people expected to be as good as it was.

Yeah, sorry about that; I didn't explain myself really well there. Let me try to explain below.

I gave them the benefit of the doubt and read everything, but not gonna lie, saying it was better than Heavensward made it tempting to stop and leave the topic. However some of their negatives I do agree with, specially on the Loporrits and pacing.

Right, first off, let me bring up something; this was whole post was basically my opinion on the subject. I'm not saying "you're wrong, I'm right" - I really do apologize if that's how it came out - it's just that I found the theme of holding onto hope in Endwalker more enjoyable for me than Heavensward's focus on revenge and forgiveness. Believe it or not, I actually consider Heavenward's story to be more or less flawless compared to the others - it really does go at just the right pace for everything, and I genuinely can't recall a negative thought concerning the story and such. It's just that the theme of Endwalker hit harder for me; you follow? It's not that I didn't enjoy Heavensward, far from it, I just found a story about hope/despair more moving than a story about revenge/forgiveness. Different strokes for different folks, is all.

As for my comments about Shadowbringers; well, I have a few things to say. To put it nicely, one reason why I couldn't enjoy Shadowbringers as much as the others was because I had gotten spoiled on literally almost every plot detail in the story before I ever even jumped into the expansion. There was nothing exciting, because I saw everything coming; it's a damn good story, make no mistake, but I really couldn't enjoy it because all of the twists I knew were coming.

The other reason, as well as the reason I call it "overhyped", is that, well, just about everyone I've seen talking about it constantly praises it while ignoring some of the flaws that it has. Again, it's a fantastic expansion, and I really do wish that I could have ran it blind, but saying that the story is completely flawless is... a bit much; I found some issues with pacing, namely, along with other issues such as Ran'jiit, for instance. They're minor issues, yes, but when the story is being constantly praised as absolutely flawless despite this, it makes even minor flaws stand out so much more.

Again, it's a good story, and if I could run it blind/with more tempered expectations, I certainly would. It's still my third favorite expansion, with HW and EW being neck-and-neck ahead, so it's not like I hate it.

TL;DR: For Heavensward and Endwalker, I went in mostly blind on both and had no real expectations, and both blew me away as a result. Meanwhile, I went into Shadowbringers both spoiled on almost everything and with VERY high expectations, and was left wanting as a result.

Oh no. Hide, you poor thing. You've just activated the Emet fanclub. Their seething, raging, venomous loathing of fictional character Venat is a sight to behold. Prepare for a small but insistent flood that she's the most spiteful, evil, wicked, hateful, deceitful, vicious witch the canon of fiction has ever produced, and the Ancient utopia "deserved" to keep going forever. No, explaining story themes isn't a deterrent.

Glad you enjoyed the story.

Thanks for the kind words; it's funny, I'm an Emet fan myself, but seeing everyone go after me is... a bit saddening. Are people not allowed to have differences in opinion anymore? It's entirely possible to like one character without hating another, after all.

[Aniya_Estlihn]

The problem with Venat/Hydaelyn's decision is that it seems that what we actually saw her do on screen is not, at a broad-scale intent level, what the writers apparently set out to portray her doing

I felt it was pretty obvious, especially with the lodestone story and the 5.2 and 5.3 information we have, that the scene post-Elpis is not a literal representation of events, more like a non-committal summary. A theatrical representation, if you will. A very bad one, at that, but it's definitely not meant to be taken literally like so many people do—which is utterly baffling to me. It's like people can't think for themselves and recognize context clues.

Does anyone seriously think Emet-Selch and Hythlodaeus were just standing in the middle of a street while the Final Days went on around them and Hythlo just walks off to become a sacrifice for Zodiark? Not a chance. Why would a member of the convocation not be present for Zodiark's creation? When we know he was. Why would Venat be casually walking through the city like that when she knows what happening and had seemingly already been amassing her followers? It's all vague recollections of her memories of what happened, rather than a true to life re-enactment.

Further, why would a group of random no-name ancients be standing in a random building from the Amaurot dungeon to offer up more souls to Zodiark for the second set of sacrifices when we know its the Convocation who made these decisions and not these no names? Oh and let's just point out the fact the Convocation members and citizens of Amaurot were not to be seen without their masks, it was a major social taboo outside of Elpis. So why were Hermes, Hades and Hythlodaeus shown without?

It's all dramatized nonsense that isn't meant to show canon events as we know them.

(Though they haven't even done a great job of that, what with dropping the entire "Hydaelyn fought and sundered Zodiark" narrative presented to us most recently by Emet in Shadowbringers, so it's not just Hydaelyn making the story up. And it makes it feel like the overarching story of the last four expansions got abandoned at the final reveal.)

This is also inaccurate, all of this still happened, but the scene we saw is NOT indicative of the actual events and more the "mark" they left on history. They didn't drop anything, they just opted not to show it to us in game. It was a bad decision on their part, but the exclusion of these details is likely because they assumed the player already knew it happened and they instead wanted to focus on Venat's guilt and regret.

Nothing was dropped just because it wasn't shown and the narrative makes it obvious that our visit to Elpis didn't change anything, Venat always met us, she always did the exact same thing and nothing ever changed because our visit always occurred. The fight still happened, everything is the same as its always been, they just chose not to present it to us in cutscene form and instead gave us a crappy theatrical summary of the events that dramatized them in a way that was supposed to make us feel sorry for Venat.

[Midareyukki]

I think they went into it with an odd clash in their base philosophy – that idea they lean on that "our struggles make us strong, and people who never experience that don't have the same strength" makes some degree of sense in our world where it's simply an inevitability of life, but to take it that step further and say that "suffering had to be introduced to the world because of this" is just jarring and makes the whole narrative awkward, and is not the lofty philosophical concept they try to sell it as.

Perhaps it's all because they wrote themselves into a corner in the first place by creating the "perfect" Ancients without really having a good answer why they had to be torn down from that position, and having to come up with the link afterwards. I think a lot of the awkward parts of this story's narrative come from all these pre-established fragments invented for different narratives at their own time, which now need to be fused together even though they don't sit comfortably.

Yeah... I mean... You try telling someone from a war-torn country whose invaders are cruel and borderline want to genocide them "Hey, don't be upset! Without those harrowing experiences, life wouldn't be worth living! Aren't you more appreciative of life now? "
...no brenda, no they probably aren't.

I get their intention, but they pushed it so much and phrased it so awkwardly that it left me wondering if the devs actually gave more thought to their idea other than trying to push for a moral outcome.

As for the Ancients, I can't help but think of Star Trek. They're literally the Vulcans, except glorified and recontextualized. And one thing is using them allegorically like SHB did (SHB is a minefield of literary allegories!), another thing is portraying them directly as though they were present and try to explore them further. And you cannot have the Vulcans acting like their human counterparts on a whim while still maintaining that "they're totally perfect, cold-rationale and pragmatic Ancients guys, we pinky promise! They only caused the apocalypse in the most human and preventable way possible!"

Because then that begs the question. Are they Vulcans and truly are so disconnected that they'd view killing the Sundered as justified? Or are they Vulcans trying really hard to not act human that not only can some slip up, they also are now commiting atrocities out of being petty?

[SannaR]

The sad thing is in one of the Tales from stories we learn Hermes did get help in developing the Meteia.

[AwesomeJr44]

Oh no. Hide, you poor thing. You've just activated the Emet fanclub. Their seething, raging, venomous loathing of fictional character Venat is a sight to behold. Prepare for a small but insistent flood that she's the most spiteful, evil, wicked, hateful, deceitful, vicious witch the canon of fiction has ever produced, and the Ancient utopia "deserved" to keep going forever. No, explaining story themes isn't a deterrent. Glad you enjoyed the story.

I'm fairly sure that the people who don't like Venat (or at least most of them) have pretty much dropped the subject entirely as the people who like her were annoying to talk to. In fact, the people desperate to start debates over her seem to be the people who like her more than those who don't. Posters like SannaR were (I use 'were' because I stop caring enough to acknowledge when they do it) going into any story related threads they can find, either whining about how it's going to be derailed into a 'Venat thread' (it never does), or bringing the topic up out of nowhere and posting a gif of Venat to try and bait people. At best/worst you'll have people who don't like Venat simply state that they don't for the obvious reasons if the topic is brought up, but that's really it.

[Thenightvortex]

.

TL;DR: The Ancients didn't deserve what happen to them, it was just a horrific situation, Venat certainly could have been handled better, remember that the plot got trimmed a TON.

Ah, thank you for explaining your point, if I seem upset then I assure you that is not my intention, I thoroughly enjoy the conversation.I agree that the expansion suffers a lot from having too much content that was initially planned for two expansions, imo it was a big oversight on SE’s part to finish this arc so early instead of giving it more time to flourish and reach its culmination.

I think the writers are very keen to throw out every possible reason for why Venat was in the right during 6.0 story, but for me all of them fall flat. The time-loop they made is very flimsy because in the previous expansion, they showed how past can be unwritten without damaging the future(our timeline and that of the 8UC co-existing), so if we are to go by that logic she could have changed it wi out ruining our timeline.

It’s the same with Dynamis. We know that Hermes isn’t the only expert on the matter, there were others even at the time of Elpis that could’ve helped. Not to mention that if they knew that Dynamis was behind the rot that decimated their star, many would be eager to research it further. After all, even if they couldn’t interact with Dynamis themselves, they would could make creations that did. The presence of Zodiark gave them an eternity during which they could’ve worked towards solving the problem if they knew what the problem was, which Venat concealed from them. For example, they could’ve created another entelechy or sundered some of their own and trained them to eventually go to Ultima Thule and end the threat for others. The possibilities are many, which is why it is rather bizarre that SE write ancients off when even the sundered would have never found out what was causing the Final Days without time travel.

Lastly, I’m afraid I don’t see the acknowledgement that she is not a pure hero in game. No scions questions her, everyone unanimously supports Hydaelyn’s decisions, WOL is not given any negative dialogue options towards her. Even Emet in UT is made far more charitable than he ought to be, the man was forced to suffer for thousands of years just to maintain a loop.

TL;DR: I think the story did a very poor job of showing that there was no other way. It could’ve been made better had we got more content over two expansions or at least some negative options towards Hydaelyn, but it it what it is.

Oh no. Hide, you poor thing. You've just activated the Emet fanclub. Their seething, raging, venomous loathing of fictional character Venat is a sight to behold. Prepare for a small but insistent flood that she's the most spiteful, evil, wicked, hateful, deceitful, vicious witch the canon of fiction has ever produced, and the Ancient utopia "deserved" to keep going forever. No, explaining story themes isn't a deterrent.

Glad you enjoyed the story.

1. Please don’t write us off as Emet fanclub, we love our boys Lahabrea and Elidibus as well.
2. The ancient utopia deserved to go forever, yeah.
3. Not our fault that the themes are inconsistent trash.

[Carin-Eri]

*Snip due to character limit*

This is about the best summary I've read - thank you