...and at some point, if a particular situation is written badly enough then there's no obligation to just blindly go along with it. There's a big difference between the writers expecting someone to accept that, say, that there's a fictional type of berry in Final Fantasy XIV called a rolanberry and a story attempting to convince the player that sometimes genocide is the correct solution to a problem.

Maybe, just maybe, they should not have written such things in the first place. Though they did as much, nobody is denying that. There's still no obligation for anyone to like or dislike specific characters or agree with what is being written though. I'm fond of cats, if the game told me to hate cats I wouldn't agree because I like cats and no matter the reasoning I'm not going to change my mind on that.

Incidentally, I don't support genocide and I'm deeply troubled by many of the horrific events going on in the real world involving such. Though no matter how much FFXIV tries to pretend as if such horrific things are acceptable so long as a pretty mother goddess or an enthusiastic cat boy cheer them on...I'm not going to change my mind on that, either.

Though that's scale things back a bit, since one of the biggest problems here isn't so much that the writers are actually demanding that everybody accepts Venat as she is written as a good thing. They've actually made many interview statements - repeatedly posted by myself and others over the years - specifically encouraging players to come to their own conclusions about specific characters.

No, this is very much more about what certain posters here want - and that is for Venat to be considered 'right' and 'good' and that everything she did is a 'grim necessity'. Which is why the moment a new poster came here to discuss the story and express a dislike for the character in question, she was immediately swarmed by some of the regulars. Something which quite a lot of posters have experienced to the point where this forgotten little corner of the forum has become a rather notorious echo chamber in recent years.

I don't expect perfection from a setting when it comes to world-building. Yet if a game sets out to be exceedingly preachy with its supposed morals then it isn't unreasonable to expect them to be consistently applied across the board. Especially given that this is an MMORPG, one that appeals to a great many players from many different backgrounds, countries, cultures and belief systems. That's another reason why 'just blindly go along with what the story presents' does not really hold up under scrutiny.

Incidentally, I was under the impression that these situations were exactly what the ethics department was created for but that's another matter entirely, I suppose.

Personally I think the writers were banking on Venat being another Emet-Selch but due to the circumstances it didn't really land. It doesn't help that Endwalker arrived amidst a rather dire part of recent human history where people in the real world where genuinely calling for the deaths and imprisonment of anyone who disagreed with them over the pandemic and lockdowns. Not to mention those of us who lost loves one during that period aren't really thrilled by child-like stories that proclaim that some people are more deserving than others of living whereas others are just fodder to cast aside to prop up the heroes because they're extra special. Words truly cannot describe how tone deaf and infantile it all is, really.

...but more than anything, the funny thing is morality wouldn't even factor into it all that much if this forum wasn't plagued by regular posters turning every little thing the antagonists did into a huge moral drama that absolutely had to be punished and criticised at length by the game's protagonists.

I actually had rather considerable respect for those of you who I thought genuinely believed such things only to see that many then immediately turned around and declared that so long as the 'protagonists' are doing the same thing, only then is it necessary and good.

It's really just one big, giant tangled web of a mess that I do not believe the writers can truly untangle at this point...and the game isn't exactly fresh these days either. Time will tell how popular 'lol graha ate taco XD' proves to be especially with some healthy competition finally emerging on the market.