What lore do you ignore?

[Theodric]

Oh, okay, so there's no interest whatsoever in finding textual foundation. Is it fanfiction if you're clearly in no way a fan of what the writers wrote? ...and also not actually writing anything. What's the 'minimum viable product' for fanfiction as a term, anyway?

Since there's no substance or evidence to any of this, I choose to ignore most of it, and instead try to 're-reail'.

You must have missed this, then:

The video in question can be found here, with perhaps the most relevant section being the one aptly titled 'excuses':

https://youtu.be/fsk412wCrJY?t=1101

It's admittedly a long video so it might be worth watching it in chapters but everything is sourced from the game itself, various lore related interviews and short stories. I don't know where this idea that the people countering Venat's motivations aren't equipped with sources is coming from since it only takes a look through the post history of someone like Rulakir or Lauront to see that, yes, they do source a lot of their talking points and explain their reasoning and conclusions clearly.

See, that's the thing - all of the points raised by myself and various other posters have been backed up with sources at length. We posted them for years and you either insulted us or ignored us...or scurried away pretending as if your points had not been countered. So we made a video to keep all the points and sources in one - admittedly large (but split into chapters) video for the sake of efficiency especially when this exact same song and dance has been going on for many years now, largely at the behest of those thoroughly allergic to the idea of simply agreeing to disagree on the basis that no, actually, nobody is obligated to like, dislike, or side with specific characters in a fictional setting let alone praise even their most horrific actions.

You're welcome not to watch it though please do not insinuate that these talking points are coming out of nowhere or are not based on anything outlined in the game.

My theory on how this happened was they were setting Venat up to be evil knowing we'd be killing both Zodiak and Hydaelyn, but that idea got vetoed by a higher up, so they switched up her tone without changing her actions. Cause I can't imagine from the onset they were aiming for her to be good and started with "then she sunders everyone with the full knowledge of the hell she'll be putting them through."

I think that's fairly likely. If not evil - which I never wanted her to be, for that matter - but definitely a tragic antagonist along the lines of Yunalesca who meant well but needed to be put down nonetheless. The fact that there was a major delay and a confirmed rewrite for the expansion is rather suspicious in itself, though it remains to be seen if any solid details ever come out on that front one way or another.

Well, as long as we don't do a colonialism. *begs* Please, please, please don't have us go there and colonize these people. I don't want to spend the next three years trying to explain why being a colonizer is a bad thing.

It's hard to say at this point, though my bet is that they'll attempt to be so very safe in the execution that it ends up coming off as incredibly condescending. It doesn't help that we're stuck with the Scions who have repeatedly proven to be rather...insistent on imprinting their cultural values and beliefs upon everybody else.