We Haven't Been Heroes In A Long Time

[HelSpites]

Did you post in the right thread? The WoL being sidelined has nothing to do with what people have been arguing.

[Turtledeluxe]

Wuk Lamat: Even if we cannot be friends right now, we need to find a different path forward. A way that Tuliyollal and Alexandria can coexist.

Sphene: I fear that can never be. There is no other path for us. It's too late.

Alisae: Hear me, Sphene . We appreciate your commitment to serving the Alexandrians and have endeavored to understand your beliefs. Be that as it may, you must know it is wrong to sacrifice our living to save your dead.

Sphene: For them I will do anything. No price is too high. if bloodshed will save my subjects, I will become history's most brutal Queen.

Reading is important.

[Alice_Rivers]

Time for the least popular comment of the thread.

It's entirely possible for good people to do bad things and for bad people to do good things. Emet and Venat were both good people with good intentions (to save the world) through the ("evil") act of sacrificing their civilisation. The principle difference being that Emet and co wanted to save the people where Venat wanted to end the endsong, in the short term at least it's safe to say that Zodiark would have achieved Emet's goal but it wouldn't have ended the endsong and eventually they would have found themselves facing the final days again. Venat's solution actually achieved the final end of saving the world, at least from the endsong, albeit at a price nobody would want to pay. In the face of existential threat though, there is little room for right or wrong, there is only survival or not - Such is the choice both Emet and Venat made, they both chose survival, through different means.

It is unclear whether Zodiark's tempering was a result of a botched summoning or an intentional part of his design, what we do know is that the convocation became rather evil entities defined only by their need to restore their world and civilisation at any cost as a result of it. Why did Venat permit the ascians to exist? She had no choice. To deal with them in person would not only have risked her death but also weakened Zodiark's prison and thereby her entire plan to save the world. Why did she barely save us at Praetorium while hoarding away aether with which to send us to Meiteion? Do you spend your life savings for say, a fridge, when you need them for a house or some such? Of course not. You spend the bare minimum to arrange your fridge and hope you don't have to replace it anytime soon, you know you're not actually going to die without it.

Finally, the part a eluded to in the first line of this post; for all the atrocities the Nazis committed, they gave us a lot of medical data and techniques that save hundreds of thousands of lives, they achieved breakthroughs in rocketry that lead to the moon landings, they created the first form of modern encryption and much of the infrastructure they built is used by Europe today - Does that make them good?

[Magikazam]

Why did she barely save us at Praetorium while hoarding away aether with which to send us to Meiteion? Do you spend your life savings for say, a fridge, when you need them for a house or some such? Of course not. You spend the bare minimum to arrange your fridge and hope you don't have to replace it anytime soon, you know you're not actually going to die without it.

The issues with her saving power is that she used some just to fight us. Like let be honest, that was useless. She say that she does it to ''test if we can beat meiteion'' wich is kinda stupid since she has no idea on how strong one need to be to beat Meteion AND it not like she already killed her whole race just for us.

Like, the whole issue with Venat is that the moment they decided to let her keep her memory, it created lot of problem. She know how thing will turn on and she does NOTHING to change them.

[Alice_Rivers]

The issues with her saving power is that she used some just to fight us. Like let be honest, that was useless. She say that she does it to ''test if we can beat meiteion'' wich is kinda stupid since she has no idea on how strong one need to be to beat Meteion AND it not like she already killed her whole race just for us.

She's not testing our strength though, she's testing our will, and gets pretty close to killing herself in the process.

Like, the whole issue with Venat is that the moment they decided to let her keep her memory, it created lot of problem. She know how thing will turn on and she does NOTHING to change them.

As for this, that's how temporal paradoxes work, it's not like we have an encyclopaedic knowledge of the world's history when we go back to Elpis. But even if we did and told her the full history of the world, there's no way for her to sensibly change it since any change to the timeline might result in her or us being stronger or in us not doing something integral to going back and starting the loop anew. Unfortunately for your argument, the integrity of the timeline is necessary, both to create the Endsinger and to defeat it.

[Magikazam]

She's not testing our strength though, she's testing our will, and gets pretty close to killing herself in the process.

Don't change much, Fighting us was a waste of her remaining power.

As for this, that's how temporal paradoxes work

It only a temporal paradoxe cause Venat decide to do nothing and tell no one what going to happen. She don't need knowledge of the whole world history to attempt to tell other that the final day are going to happen. She know the final day are happening relatively soon and that dynamis is linked to it somehow. Like, we're talking about someone who figured out we come from the futur like 1 minute after meeting her.

Rn the issues is that the story team needed to make a time paradox (since you know, can't really change the futur, for obvious gameplay and plot reason). But they also decided to not wipe her memory for no reason, so that create a kinda ''plot hole'' where for this to make sense, you need to assume she either stupid or that she just lose all her morals the moment we tell her what happen in the futur.

[Alice_Rivers]

Don't change much, Fighting us was a waste of her remaining power.

So she gambled, when the final days were in full swing, the world was actively ending and her own plan was at the do or die point, so what? I fail to see how this is bad, it's not like the power she spent testing our will could affect the literal end of the world and she didn't dip into the store that would send us to the Endsinger.

It only a temporal paradoxe cause Venat decide to do nothing and tell no one what going to happen. She don't need knowledge of the whole world history to attempt to tell other that the final day are going to happen. She know the final day are happening relatively soon and that dynamis is linked to it somehow. Like, we're talking about someone who figured out we come from the futur like 1 minute after meeting her.

Rn the issues is that the story team needed to make a time paradox (since you know, can't really change the futur, for obvious gameplay and plot reason). But they also decided to not wipe her memory for no reason, so that create a kinda ''plot hole'' where for this to make sense, you need to assume she either stupid or that she just lose all her morals the moment we tell her what happen in the futur.

As I recall, it was explained in one of the text boxes and/or cutscenes why she didn't bother with the convocation, and given how Emet entertained us but didn't believe until he actually saw the events preceding the final days. Then he had his memory wiped by the most annoying and most genocidal person on the planet, yes I really hate that person, so you can spend precious time rehashing stuff with only your memories as evidence that will be dismissed or you can start gathering people towards actually saving the world. Would you really squander that time?

Again, in the face of existential threats, there is survival or not - morality is a luxury you can't afford.

[Tizzy_Tormentor]

The illusion of choice, Dawntrail good? Dawntrail bad? Doesn't matter, we get another 2 years of Venat discourse.

[CuteBucket]

OP, I'm a huge Emet-Selch stan. He is my favorite fictional character ever, hands down. I have artwork of him framed on the walls of my home. I have an ita bag full of pins of him. I have shelves of figures and acrylic stands of him. I run a little Discord fan server about him just for fun because I love connecting with others who are obsessed with him too. I adore the Ancients and the lore around them. Shadowbringers single-handedly made me fall in love with Art Deco architecture and now I own several vintage books about the style and learned all this amazing real world history from my interest in a video game. I read all of Sir Thomas Moore's Utopia twice and annotated it just to learn more about the literature that inspired the Ancients in FFXIV. I cannot stress enough how much I love ShB and Emet-Selch.

I say all that so that you understand where I'm coming from when I say that Emet-Selch is unquestionably a villain. He is a fallen hero who has been warped by time and tragedy into a villain, and that is a huge part of what makes him so compelling. Is he a morally grey villain with a deeply empathic history? Absolutely. When he asks us "Wouldn't you do the same?" in Rak'tika, I really had to grapple with how my character would answer that if he was being honest with himself. This fictional Final Fantasy man has permanently altered my brain chemistry even all these years after I first saw him. I truly love this character to bits.

He's the villain. He did terrible things in pursuit of what he believed was the right thing to do to save the star. And in the end, while he concedes the fight, he never renounces his path, and good for him, it would have felt cheap if he had.

Endwalker (which should have been two expansions) didn't do the best job at covering some of the Ancients and I think did Venat dirty, but we actively, in game on a few occasions even, get to openly distrust her and not agree with her about things. She isn't a villain, but neither is she shown to be perfectly "good" either, and that's what makes her interesting too. While I do wish the story had taken the time to show more of that morally grey side of Venat as a foil to Emet-Selch, two Ancient beings doing what the truly believe must be done to save the future, the thing is, Venat's plan worked. As devastating and messy as the Sundering was, life continued, civilizations flourished and fell and rose again, and when the time came to face Meteion, they did it. We can argue 'till the cows come home over how well executed it was (I have my own issues with Endwalker, trust me), but it's really wild to claim that actually the Ascians were right all along and it was Hydaelyn who was the evil one. And that's from a Certified Ascian Lover(tm).