In Ultima Thule, when we summon Emet and Hythlo, I read Emet's "commendation" very differently. A lot of people, including you, assume he is talking about Venat, but this comes after a brief pause, almost as if he is shifting his focus. He also looks directly at US, the WoL, and caps it all off by saying "as a show of respect to the last of us". Now, you can absolutely read Venat/Hydaelyn as the "last of us" in some respects, but in many ways it is US, the embodiment of the sundered soul of Azem who is indeed the last ancient, and I totally read this as Emet talking directly to us. At this point, every other ancient, Venat included, is gone. She has entrusted us with the duty to finish the task after setting us on the path, and she admits that we have surpassed her. She is essentially putting her faith in us that we will find a way where she cannot necessarily see the path, much like Emet uses his final appearance to do an about face from his ShB rhetoric ("I find you lacking." "You cannot be entrusted with the fate of this star.") to literally pass us the reins ("You must be commended... my methods would not have brought mankind this far." "If you would do something for me... save our star."). So yeah. You might read this bit as directed at Venat, but I'm pretty sure he's talking to us. Both Venat and Emet are passing the torch to their old friend, Azem, who literally embodies a kind of Third Way that neither of them could see.
I may be having a smoke and thinking of a different scene, but isn't this the one where he says that line about the last of us, he simply refers to him and Hythlodaeus being summoned? In that moment, they represent the past (hence his line about the answer of all past and present lives on Etheirys), even if they are in ghost form. We do get an entire scene right after, which is all about him acknowledging your merit as Azem, when he goes on to explain the different things we haven't seen yet and so on. edit: ok so I just realized this was a comment under the Venat video, not the Emet video. That prolly explains why I was confused. Cos I also go over this scene in the Emet video, and much more in-depth. My apologies hahah, I suppose stuff like this is inevitable when there are scenes that are important for multiple characters Funnily enough, I'll be bringing up this scene AGAIN in the Hermes video
@@imacuttlefish6832 Yes, this is the Venat breakdown, hah! For context, and in regards to the "You must be commended" line, the preceding lines are literally Emet talking directly to/about Venat/Hydaelyn, and the specific preceding line is him speaking to himself/the void saying "Even so, you'll get no applause from me. A single gesture will not lighten the burden I've had to bear." THEN he specifically turns to the WoL and says "Still, YOU must be commended." I read this to be about the WoL because he SPECIFICALLY turns to us to deliver it and also because going from being generally catty about and refusing to acknowledge Venat (Are they friends? Yes! But it's fucking complicated, lol.) out of pride to then commending her would most definitely be out of character and in direct conflict to what he has literally just said.
@@rabid_si Ah right, I see now. My interpretation for that line was always that he's basically just addressing the sundered people in general, rather than any one specific person (such as Venat or the WoL). To me, it's very fitting to his character, seeing as his story was all about him judging the sundered people's right/worthiness to exist. So now he was finally able to see some merit to their existence, even if it was in regards to just this one thing. The WoL is basically a champion for the sundered people, hence him turning towards them.
@imacuttlefish6832 The bigger issue is that Venat is one with the Lifestream on Etheres at this point in the story. She's done her duty and finally returned to the Star. He could be talking to her, but it makes sense for him to tell the WoL that they are to be commended. It wasn't Venat that came up with a plan to defeat The Endsinger. It was the Sundered. The WoL that can take in Dynamis and use it. Can show their emotions to Meteion and feel the flow of Dynamis. We can more readily and easily show Meteion our emotions. In fact, she never used the ability on an Ancient, not as far as I remember. Maybe only Hermes because he created her. Our thinner Aether and inability to use Creation Magic to solve all our problems have us the fortitude and ability to beat her. Or well, that's how I saw it.
Endwalker was a very meta expansion. Tons of moments have characters saying something not just to your character, but to you at the exact same time. Venat does it, Emet does it practically selling the next story arc to you, Zenos does it at the end, it's very very likely it has two meanings. One diagetic and the other meta.
Venat knew what the consequences would be of sundering the world before she did it, she met the WoL prior to then and was told how much suffering would be caused by her actions. But remember the conversation on the bridge about how even after the untold suffering there is thousands of years later there is still joy, happiness and adventure. She had already seen that there was a light at the end of the tunnel. I think meeting the WoL is one thing that helped to steel her resolve to sunder the world.
Which just proves and strenghtens the fact that she acted purely out of curiosity or interest in another way of living and basically didn't care about her own people. All in all it's hard to tell what the developers intended with her tho.
@@Lyu-Phy It's that she views the WoL as her people. She describes us as "you who are our future." She saw that her people were doomed given their number one problem solving method was human sacrifice. So that left her with the option to change mankind or allow mankind to end. And since she's an Ancient and their number one problem solving method was human sacrifice...Henceforth, he shall walk. To singlehandedly decide you have the right to determine the course of an entire world, when only a handful of people even have all the info was a very Ancient thing to do (thus why they were doomed).
Should have steeled her resolve to tell her own people on what was actually happening, rather then let them stumble around and then go about genociding them.
That's like saying "the Reich the germans planed was fine since there would still be joy, happiness and adventure"... o_- You people are pretty sick in defending PLANETAR GENOCIDE plus DISTORTION OF LIFE plus MASS TORTURE all to create a single "super soldier" to do something that the original, real life could have easily done itself (not even starting with, that it was Quasi-Ancient Zenos who beat birdbrain. What would the WoL have done? Stand there and fart their pants?)
On the subject of symbolism, one of my favorite things about Venat and Hydaelyn is how they seem to parallel the Gnostic creation myth of Sophia and the Demiurge. We know the writers are definitely aware of Gnostic mythology because there was a literal primal based off of the same myth back in Heavensward, but there are even more references and allusions surrounding Hydaelyn specifically, like the approach to her in the Anti-Tower being called the Pleroma, or her most devoted servants all being dubbed Archons. In fact, some of the earliest "Is Hydaelyn a baddie?" theories that I remember seeing all the way back in 1.0 were based off of these references. In Gnostic mythology, an Archon is a kind of spiritual demon who encourages humans to indulge in their worldly desires in order to prevent them from realizing the truth: that the world we live in is an imperfect emanation (sometimes described as a reflection) of a once perfect and harmonious existence. Our flawed world was created by the Demiurge, a dumb, ignorant, or outright malicious false god who is the source of all human suffering, and that the only way to escape this prison is to open your third eye wide enough to abandon your physical form, prevent your own reincarnation back into this fallen world, and rejoin perfection in the Pleroma. FFXIV kind of took this and ran with it, but with a twist. The Ascians were basically your classic Gnostics from the word go, lamenting the fact they were forced to live in an inferior world full of maladies they never had to deal with before, forever cursing the supposedly evil god who condemned them to this hell for no reason besides her own vanity. In nearly all media with a Demiurge-inspired character, that character is objectively evil as hell. They exist for almost no reason other than to inflict suffering or maintain a flawed order, often just to force humanity to worship them. How could that ever be justified? Sometimes for variety JRPGs will mash up the Gnostic Demiurge with Jung's Demiurge, and you'll get Xenogears or multiple SMT/Persona games, where instead of a literal Demiurge born from the unity of the Pleroma you'll get a metaphorical Demiurge that arises from the collective unconscious of humanity. But FFXIV is the first story I've seen that straight up takes the Gnostic creation myth and reinterprets Sophia's sin (giving birth to the Demiurge without the support of the other Aeons and thus creating the imperfect material world) as a straight up good thing, a revolutionary act of love. It emphatically says that the flawed world the Demiurge created is actually great, and that the people who live there are better off for having learned to derive meaning from their suffering instead of rejecting it outright and only accepting perfection. Gnostic mythology is surprisingly popular in Asian media, possibly because it allows you to use Christian religious imagery while still justifying your big bad being capital g God, but there are actually a lot interesting similarities between Gnosticism and other eastern religions that make it fertile grounds for comparison, except those eastern religions tend to be a lot less pessimistic about the potential of life than the Gnostics typically were. I think that's why they chose to bring Thavnair into this expansion, their very Hindu and Buddhist-influenced perspective was seemingly handpicked to point out the similarities and differences, and then they threw in a little existentialism with Zenos at the end. I still can't get over how well-crafted Endwalker's themes were, I had a lot of faith and even I wasn't expecting them to pay off over a decade of foreshadowing as well as they did.
gnostic theology is all over the place in JRPGs, it's all wild and fascinating stuff so it's honestly no surprise so many devs choose to pull from it for inspiration--the Xeno series is another one that pulls heavily from it though admittedly they mix a lot of kabbalistic mythology in there too.
Fun fact about the material world being an emanation: The primal who is specifically making a dreamlike world where everybody is in bliss forever, Lakshmi, is literally fought in a place called Emanation as per the English name for her trial. Gnosticism is everywhere in FFXIV specifically, not just in the FF6 reference to Sophia or the situation with the Ancients/Ascians. Furthermore, the people who summoned Lakshmi, the Qalyana Ananta, pretty much lost everything, including the safety in neutrality when one of the skulls killed their child, and resolved to live in a dream world. In other words, they are literally trying to create a false world like the Demiurge does in Gnosticism.
Vevat it SHEER EVIL because it not only GENOCIDED a WHOLE PLANET but then RIPPED IT APART and DISTORTED IT all to create a new "superhuman" from her PoV. She's literally Adolf H - just 1000 times worse. And the WoL is the executioner. You play an SS officer in FF14, mindlessly slaughtering for your Führer, since you never care a single second if what you are doing is right or good or where it leads, you just nod and follow orders. FF14 is like some disgusting, racist warpropaganda since SB. And yeah, the disgusting part is, that it whitewashes it so much. It would be fine, if it would use all these things but makes clear how sick and evil it is. Instead it manipulates weak minds to accept it as fine. Wtf...
30:00 - There's a difference here. Venat knew of the future, was forewarned of it and may have even tried to take another path that does not result in the Sundering (something she said to WoL just before leaving Elpis). But all other options might have been exhausted by then and she came to realize the Sundered world was the only way to overcome the Final Days without the constant need of human sacrifices.
It's definitely a detail that's easy to miss because the game doesn't necessarily draw attention to it. But I'm glad I was able to slide that into the video.
@@tek512That's exactly right, but the logic is that the sundering is what allowed us to exist in the future because if they took another path we wouldn't exist in the first place. It's circular and annoying to me honestly.
@@tek512 Like what? By design, the Ancients could do nothing against Meteion except keep the senseless cycle of sacrifice themselves to strengthten Zodiark and sacrifice everything else to bring themselves back. The way their society was structured made it impossible for them to even understand properly the concept of strife, let alone bestow the means to deal with it to something else, which means nothing they could do or could create for that matter, would be able to even reach Meteion, let alone deal with her. It was just a matter of waiting until all life in the universe was dead and Meteion could fully focus on Etheirys. She was already damaging Zodiark's barrier without even trying, imagine her giving the planet her full attention. I've heard this before and usually most, if not all of the "options" involve sending Azem there and hoping real hard that they'll be able to solve everything because WoL.
@@tek512 You mean options like the Convocation's plan to rear newly created life just to sacrifice it to bring back the 75% that had been sacrificed to Zodiark (half the population for the initial summoning to rewrite the world's laws, another half to get life on the planet going again), Venat/Hydaelyn's back up plan in case man would not be able to challenge Meteion of roaming through space on the Moon with the loporitts and a sealed Zodiark as a shield to find a new planet, effectively putting the people in the same state that Midgardsormr and PuPu were when they flying through space before finding Etherys/Hydaelyn?
I think a lot of people forget that we don't see every last little thing Venat got up to. There's a lot of bad faith criticism about her, claiming she didn't do enough. We know she planned well enough to create an entire fucking celestial body to serve as a spaceship to escape the final days. Might she not have a metric ton of contingencies? We don't know. We just don't. I think some people had such keen pity for Emet and Elidibus and the others that they are willing to assume the worst of her. Her actions and manner in Endwalker lead me to believe that, while she understood We were the one she was waiting for, she definitely did try to mitigate and push back against her identity.
Aye, it's one of those things where, in the game, we jump straight from giving Venat a farewell to the sundering scene, but in reality, given what we know of the lifespans of the ancients, it could have been a very long time (like hundreds of years) between each of those events.
Not enough? She not only did shit, but destroyed everything the others actually did to save everyone. And for what reason? a) That people are just not good enough, so they have to be killed and be replaced. b) That these peopel dared to use agriculture (= cultivating life to sacrifice it for other life) - what is especially absurd, because the distorted life she ripped out of the real people is CONSTANTLY dying and CONSTANTLY killing to stay alive plus CONSTANTLY killing because it's distorted not only in body bit also in soul and mind and by that endlessly driven by fear, hate and greed. Oh, and don't forget: thanks to the time travel BS as basis of all that her plan also included: a) all the dying shards and how they return to the source, so all those falling apart are also her fault (not that a single person could even manage it that way, that those absolutely imbalance shards wouldn't fall apart sooner or later anyway with b) the backup plan that she would simply flee and after genociding the real planet also let all the fragments die. There is NOTHING good about Venat. It's a disgusting monster and the WoL is just a mindless tool of that monster. What overall is an insult for monster, even monster aren't that fricking evil.
I think there are some misconceptions about Venat's heroism. She herself said that there was no mercy or justice in what she did. She was accepting the role of the villain in order for life to persist. She had to shatter heaven to save all the souls within. And she didn't take away from those who sacrificed to summon Hydaelyn as she herself burned through her own soul to see that their sacrifices weren't in vain. It seemed to me that she suffered a lot of guilt over what she believed she had to do. Especially considering she is praised and worshiped as a goddess after all the suffering she caused. But felt it was important to persist because we told her about how there was still joy and beauty in the world in our time despite the sundering. She also didn't put all her eggs in one basket. Hence the whole moon ship thing. In our final conversations with Hydaelyn she mentioned her many failures, so it's wasn't simply we told her about the future therefore she just followed our blueprints. She evidently tried many different things which didn't work out. Also, I'm pretty sure in our conversations we didn't explain all the astral/umbral eras and each calamity in detail. It seemed more an outline of our personal experiences, the Ascians, and the coming Final Days. Before leaving Elpis she talks about the situation and different ways to find a solution that, ultimately, resulted in the sundering. There is a question as to whether us revealing that aspect of our history influenced her drawing that conclusion though. Like, "this is a last resort" kind of thing, but by putting it on the table to begin with, did she believe she had already exhausted all other options and reached the last resort before finding a better solution? Just as Emet-Selch didn't consider it killing people through rejoinings, Venat wasn't really killing her people, just spreading them out. The ancients entire civilization and culture is built around the enteral flow of aether. Sundering wasn't really killing anyone as demonstrated by Hermes/Amon/Fandaniel. There are still aspects of the ancient's soul that permeates each rebirth. And even the vision of the meteor shower from the first final days being imprinted on people's souls. So in a way they still live on as they would if they willingly returned to the aetheral sea. It's also heavily implied that the Ancient's civilization would have died out eventually. Not only for the fact that every other civilization Meteion encountered died but there are several instances of dialogue pointing towards stagnation already setting in for the ancients. Of course there is Hermes asking what will happen when the world is perfect and everyone's work is done. But also Hythlodaeus talking about how everyone was basically "jumping the shark" on their shark creations. It was getting boring. And I believe even some side quests make some remarks towards the stagnation of ideas(don't ask me which, I just remember building upon that theory while doing all the Elpis side quests). In conclusion: I think she acted under the idea of "love me, hate me, it doesn't matter, I will make sure you live so you can to feel whatever you feel about what I've done." To paraphrase Fourchenault.
I chose that Venat, Emmet, and Hermes all were justified in their own way. Each saw a problem in their world and sought to correct it in the ways they thought best. Granted the actions that they took to correct the problems they saw I cannot condone. Not a single one of them. But like you touched upon in the video, the ancients are fundamentally different from us in a variety of ways. Their life spans, their dreams, their entire culture is alien to us in subtle ways that only really lightly get touched upon in hermes's story unfolding in elpis. And it all resolves around the value of life, and death in their eyes. I would argue that, for the Ancients compared to modern humanity life and death have inversed weight. For sundered being death is constant, frequent, and a companion ever eager to embrace us. It is impactful, but also dulls us to it emotional impact after awhile. It's why mankind post sundering is more easily able to go to war and kill their fellows, something that is in comparisons unthinkable in the ancient society by my understanding. On the inverse, for Ancients Life is abundant and long lasting. And while they do respect the accomplishments of one's life it's more of just a means to a end, that 'beautiful death' they talk about and wax romantics about. Since death happens so infrequently and only when one choses to it's seen as a celebratory thing. Like... ah, I just thought of this, but it's celebrated in almost the same way that modern mankind would celebrate a birth of a child. To that end, for someone like Emmt who quite literally had the hopes and prays and history of his entire people weighing on his back. I can say he was justified in his actions he took. He refused to just blindly cave to them and seemingly tested the new form of mankind to see if they were worthy (Jury's out on if it was a rigged test or not, Tempering via Zodiark or no). But yeah, I don't know if I could say I would have done differently in Emmt's shoes. Or he done differently in mine. He was also raised up to be, effectively the top brass of the ancients. If there ever was someone to make choices on behalf of the ancients even in their sundered forms it'd be Emmt. For Hermes, Elpis Hermes was less a man and more a young confused adolescent. Hermes was, quite frankly a man raised into a position he had no business being in from a emotional/responsibility viewpoint. Both as the overseer to Elpis and on the convocation as Fandaniel. The reason he was raised to these positions was his knowledge and understanding though, which is valued highly in ancient society . The ends(His understanding of aeather vs dynamis ) I mean, and not the means in which they get there (Hermes reasons for learning about dynamis, ie his depression, is less important). And this creates the main 'contradiction' in his eyes. If he is so smart, so revered, why do people not listen to his words when he talks of aberrations and how what they do to their creations is wrong? About how this peer pressure to return to the star is wrong? And it causes doubt in his mind, in his self, and his well 'purpose' which we learn is the singular most important thing in this society. One's purpose, finding it, and achieving it, before returning to the star. So, when confronted with a, quite frankly tidal wave of heavy things to learn. That he supposedly causes the fall of the ancients far and wide, that the people beyond the stars he sought for help and guidance (Like, one would a mentor figure since he had none because he had risen to a position where no one could be above him too quickly) were all dealing with or rather failing to deal with similar issues like him, and that his peer's reaction were to from his PoV try and sweep all this under the rug and go back to normal to not address the issues staring, nay yelling at him in the face? Quite frankly I'm not surprised the man broke at that point, and defaulted to his training and upbringing to a horrifying level. Treating his fellow man as nothing more then a creation to be 'tested'. In his mind it was the only way to connect everything well. If his objections to the way the creations were tested, and discarded were wrong. Then surly that meant it was fine to subject mankind to a similar treatment since it would be 'for the betterment of the star' no? A twisted view, but I can understand how Hermes got there, though of course I cannot condone the action. And then there's Venat. Truthfully there's a lot of unknown blank space in which she likely acted, tried to find another way. We have no idea of how long a time was between us leaving Elpis and the end of the ancients. Though I imagine it would be a frightfully long time from our scale of it. I don't see Venat's choice to work without the convocation as a arbitrary choice to set things up in the closed time loop, but rather the correct pragmatic choice. She knows that, should she leave Hermes and the convocation alone they will one, inform the populace of the final days which would help them understand the gravity of it en mass without panicking (which would accelerate their fall to dynamis) rather then her being a single important person saying so. And Hermes himself as Fandniel would do much to stall the deadline of having to solve the issue, as well as be a backup plan should she not figure out a way to stop Mettion. As you said in your video, that cutscene, she very likely struggled with a complex range of emotions when she sundered the world. Some we more then likely could not even begin to comprehend. But she doesn't let her feelings justify or absolve her of the consequences of her actions. She knows she did something horrible, and even if it was for the betterment of all. It was still a horrible thing to do, for the past and future of mankind. And yet, I find her justified in her actions, here she was a outsider, and outlier to ancient society. She shirks tradition and marches to the beat of her own drum and is recognized and celebrated for it both as the accomplishments she made as Azem, and her willingness to help with problems small and big afterwards. So, in an almost similar way to other two, Venat was in a uniquely powerful position as far as ancients go. Where her words carried a lot of weight, and her decisions were almost universally thought of as good for the star. So if anything I think it speaks to her character that she knew what she was doing when she sundered the star and still chose to do it. Obviously we cannot relate with that choice. But I for one can at least respect it. To intentionally scar the world, humanity, and put them though unfair adversity in the hopes it would toughen them up is a hard choice to make. Doubly so for someone like Venat who clearly loves freely and deeply. I imagine it would have pained her greatly to a extent we can't really ever know. So in essence, I think that makes her the perfect character to have done the sundering, she's someone who knows the full detail of what it would entail, what it would do, and what it would cost. Someone who'd bear the full weight of the choice, and yet bear it for the hope that the children she sundered would grow stronger for it. Much like how some mothers in nature will throw their children out of the proverbial nest in hopes that they will grow up better for it.
Venat was not justified in ANY WAY. Venat is literaly a fantasy Adolf H. And WAY WORSE at that. You defend PLANETAR GENOCIDE and TORTURE. This is so f****ed up, that it's hard for the brain to even handle it. The germans look humane and sane in comparison to the endless insanity of Venat. And you guys cheer for that and defend it, because you can't even accept to be on the bad and evil side in a fricking video game... Hell, Venat LITERALLY uses the same "argument" as the germans, that the old life is not good enough, doesn't deserve to live, can't survive, so it must be replaced by a new race...
The fight between Hydaelyn and Zodiark, could have been done by the player, not as a raid, but as a solo instance where you play Hydaelyn, changing weapons and in the end finish with the strongest limit break 3 ever: The Sundering!
That would be sooooo freaking hype. Usually those RP solo instances have you playing a simple humanoid character, then again we did control the G-Warrior when fighting the Sapphire Weapon. So the foundation for controlling a bigger entity such as a primal, is deffo there. It would also be interesting in a sense that, an observant player might take note of the attacks used by her in the solo duty, and then maybe connect what that attack is, when you fight her in the trial. Sorta like knowing the exam questions beforehand lol
I can simplify it for you even more. It's a choice between choosing life, choosing the future (delayed gratification) and throwing a toddler tantrum because you don't like the present. The reason I can forgive Venat is that she made a very hard choice and chose a future with life in in and Emet-Selch was more than willing to slaughter millions of others so he could live in the past, never having to accept how he got to stay there. Venat knew what she was doing. Emet-Selch went mad trying to deny what he'd done.
Emet didn't go mad denying anything. He went mad from extreme tragedy and loss which led to his genocide. It wasn't what caused him to go mad. As he himself says, he gave us countless chances and tried to live among us for centuries. "I have fought with you, broken bread with you, grown ill, grown old, sired children and yes welcomed death's sweet embrace! For eons I have measured your worth and found you wanting."
Venat has more blood on her hands than all of the antagonists combined save for Hermes/Meteion. Her actions are antithetical to loving or choosing life. I never cease to be amazed how many people just *didn't* empathize with the Ancients. The sundering was a crime against mankind and the survivors of it have valid grievances against Hydaelyn. Saying they were just 'throwing a tantrum' because they objected to her genocide sure is something.
@@frademantle They were literally committing genocide too. Did you not pay any attention? She sundered the world for two reasons. 1 to stop the ancients from SACRIFICING OTHER RACES AGAINST THEIR WILL TO ZODIARK TO SAVE THEIR PEOPLE AND TO SAVE THE WORLD FROM THE SONG OF OBLIVION
@@KingMidgardsormr Venat is only attributed with two motivations for sundering the world: 1) Fear of The Plenty as a Dead End and 2) Dynamis. This is per the writers in the lore Q&A live letter. Venat is never characterized as having been concerned about life being sacrificed, that's Hermes' schtick. Also, only a "portion" (thus not genocide) of the life that *Zodiark* had created was going to be sacrificed. We're never told what that life was, so saying it was "other races" is pure speculation.
@@frademantle You clearly didn't play the fucking game. The cutscene where she sunders the world, she ONLY decides to sunder the world when she could not convince the Ancients to stop sacrificing to Zodiark. She LITERALLY SAYS IT. "Saving those we have lost by sacrificing yet more is not wisdom. It is weakness."
Hey there, nice to finally see the Hydaelyn video uploaded! I haven’t yet watched all of it, but kudos for the effort that you put into such a long and detailed analysis. I appreciate addressing the issues with the dialogue options and how the protagonist is not allowed a choice in the matter. One specific thing I wanted to address, however, is the claim that Venat’s, Hermes’s, and Emet’s(And Lahabrea’s and Elidibus’s) decisions show that ancients are built different and that it was a common thing for them to make such sweeping choices over everyone else. Starting with the Unsundered trio, when they made the decision to go through with rejoining, all of them were traumatized beyond any reasonable measure. They saw everyone they ever knew die in various ways(getting torn by the beasts, being sacrificed for Zodiark, being sundered and becoming mindless creatures as NIER reincarnation showed), and by the point they made this decision they were desperate and had no other way to save those still trapped in Zodiark. This shows them as very human, and I think most people in their situation(if they had as much power as the Unsundered do) would at least attempt the plan. They aren’t a fitting metric for judging ancients as a whole. In their normal state, they all were different people, for example, Elidibus/Themis’s duty is to be impartial as an emissary and give equal opportunity for each point of view in the convocation, which categorically goes against them being a race to make such choices for others. As for Venat and Hermes, they are the outliers, much the same way people like Thordan or Zenos are, and it would be unfair to use them to judge this race as a whole. The initial sacrifices to Zodiark showed that the actual mentality of the ancients was the one that allowed choice but encouraged commitment and self-sacrifice for the star, as all of them were voluntary and it was far from one or a few people making this choice for everyone. Similarly, there are other examples of ancient’s culture like the emphasis of evaluating and respecting all points of view regardless of how different they might be. Even in Elpis, the side quests show that there are a lot of ancients who are caring and considerate towards their creation, doing their best for them to succeed. One of those quests even has an observer(Charmion) hear a perspective from the WOL who she considers a simple familiar and note its value and how it broadened her horizon. This is a far cry from people who are stuck in their beliefs and never concede, no matter how terrible the outcome. As for the Omega quest: I chose Emet because I think he was the most justified compared to the other two, even though he has obviously done some horrible stuff too.
I appreciate this perspective, since it's a good reminder that there's always an inherent danger in attributing behaviours of an individual to a group of people (well, at least if you take it outside of discussing fictional characters) However, I think what the writers wanted to convey there (since Im mainly piggybacking off of Yoshida's comment on that part) is that it does make sense how these types of individuals, who make these sweeping decisions for an entire race, and are willing to sacrifice everything (thinking in extremities), would result from the ancients' society. Mainly for two reasons. One is that the way they handle conflict (as we see in an Amaurot sidequest) is through civil debate. And whenever they create something, it's all very structured with the dangers being as minimized as possible. This essentially means the ppl in their society as a whole, don't have a lot of experience when it comes to dealing with adversity. Some examples I can think of. The sidestory where that volcano is threatening to erupt. It basically mentions that the rest of the convocation were sorta just sitting on their arse doing nothing while Azem took care of it. Or even when Hythlodaeus mentions they rarely use the word "kill/death", and instead prefer to sugarcoat it in a way by phrasing it as "returning to the star". So when they are presented with a lot of violence and a massive conflict (especially if the threat is external), it makes sense for someone growing up in that sort of an environment, to react in that sort of a distressed, extreme way, because they are so out of their element. The other is how much power an individual ancient possesses. As I say in the video, a tiny group was able to summon a being that more or less undid their entire star. And to go off of what you said, an additional layer of danger there is precisely the fact that the ancients' society encouraged commitment and self-sacrifice for the star. That means you have a bunch of powerful individuals who are willing to throw themselves in sacrifice on the first option presented, as long as its advocated for by a figure of some authority (such as the convocation or Venat, a former convocation member). Both these points combined essentially means that the ancients' society were more prone to, sooner or later, creating these individuals who had this sorta "sacrifice everything for my ideology" mentality, as well as having the resources at their disposal to actually go through with their craziness. So it's less that every ancient is crazy, just more that their environment is very different from ours, which explains the behaviour of at least the "crazy ancients" we saw in the game. Though an interesting thing to note is that these sort of events do happen in our world as well. Where individuals in power utilized black and white thinking, in their overly abstract ways of viewing the world and the dangers that sort of a thing presented. And indeed in the sundered world too in XIV. But I speak more about this in my Alphinaud video so I dont want to dwell too much into it here.
after replaying on a new character I was quiet shocked how early the writers dropped the "you are tempered by Hydaelyn" red hering. So early indeed that it propably went over most peoples heads because the game haven't yet given the required informations to figure it out: After the Garuda trial she tries to temper you only for it to be unsuccessful. Her words after that were: "Ahh, she allready claimed you!" implying another primal was allready in charge of the WoL... most likely Hydaelyn.
Aye, there's quite a few lines like that. Even the very first primal you encounter, Ifrit, after failing to temper you says something about you already serving another, or something along those lines. Of course, the WoL being tempered theories became wild with 5.0. One theory that stuck out to me, though I did not subscribe to it was cool nonetheless, was that Midgardsormr untempered you in 2.5 by yeeting the Blessing of Light. Obviously didn't turn out to be true as we were never tempered but it was fun to see the speculation at the time haha
@@imacuttlefish6832 oh, allready Ifrit mentioned it? I might not have given that cutscene enough attention the second time around... Do you by chance have an idea whether these dialogues were like this in the original base game or if they included it in the ARR revamp, when the devs actually knew where the story is heading?
@@LuriTV They were deffo there from day 1! Though we should keep in mind that, at least I personally don't believe they had intended to allude to any kind of "Hydaelyn tempering" at that point in time, nor that Hydaelyn was a primal. They've openly said in interviews that when it came to a lot of that background stuff in ARR, like Zodiark and the Ascians, it was them basically just putting in some ominous bad guys doing evil things without much of an end goal. So I'd posit it's pretty likely that Hydaelyn's true nature was the same. ie "let's just put these 2 gods here and think of what we'll do with them later". That's just my theory of course. When I played through the game, I took those comments by Ifrit, Garuda and the like as them simply being ignorant of the fact that there exists a protection from the tempering, so it's logical for such a being to think "oh well you must be taken by someone else then" since the Ascians hard coded those summons to try and temper anyone and anything, they'd have no reason to assume a subject cannot be tempered. That's my take at least.
@@imacuttlefish6832 its also mentioned, i believe bit emet selch, in the shadow bringers, when he for the first time tells the creation and zodiark... he says something along the line "and we created the ultimate primal... and he tempered us all, as it was his right". so even in the shadowbringers, it seemed like tempering subplot was still on, and we were tempered agent of hydaelyn
Her objection wasn't to the desire to be happy but by the method they decided to go by it. These fools just invented morphine and their plan is just to stay high til they die. She looks at that and realizes, welp, this branch is a dead end. Bring on the cat girls and bunny boys.
43:21 - With the power of hindsight, we now know from interviews, that the method of time travel that FFXIV relies on at its core isn't the "unable to change things" type, but moreso branching timelines, similar to Steins;Gate (albeit with multiple world lines existing at the same time). Which is fine. You can present something that looks like a causal loop within that framework. It simply just means that we're not the first Warrior of Light to have gone through that journey. Timeline A: No WoL in the past. Hermes still does what Hermes does. The confrontation likely still happens, but without a Warrior of Light there. Hydaelyn and Zodiark are summoned. The world is sundered, and we go through with the 7 calamities. We eventually defeat the unsundered, only for Fandaniel to reappear. Hydaelyn, knowing the truth of the Final Days by escaping has dropped the hints for the Warrior of Light anyhow. The Warrior of Light of that timeline isn't helped by Argos in Mare Lamentorum, as they never went to the past. They then travel to Elpis, do their thing. The act of travelling to Elpis moves us onto timeline B. Timeline B: This is our initial timeline, from ARR until we cross into Elpis. Argos helps us because Timeline A WoL proved themselves to Hydaelyn. We travel to Elpis, moving us to timeline C, which is the timeline we've been on ever since.
It's worth noting that, if we go with the causal loop idea, then there is no "timeline a", "timeline b" etc. There never existed an instance of Elpis without the Warrior of Light, there was no "first time". What we see happen, is what always happened. The whole trick with a causal loop is that it switches the order of cause and effect, instead of A -> B -> C, it could become C -> A -> B. It messes with our minds because we can only perceive of cause and effect in a linear fashion (A -> B -> C). In a sense, you could think of it as, the WoL entering Elpis is essentially event C, but it happens first in the timeline of events. I hope that makes a modicum of sense, at least this was my interpretation. I hate trying to explain time travel, and I honestly don't feel it adds anything to the story anyway. Not to mention how FFXIV kinda just says screw it and has multiple time travel theories all in the same story. Ugh.
I think Venat/Hydaelyn essentially came to the same conclusion I did about the worshippers of Zodiark who became the later Ascians, that they had been conditioned (or tempered) by Zodiark to always want to sacrifice a portion of their people to their manufactured primal deity. First it was a sacrifice to restore Etheirys to its state from before the Final Days, undoing the destruction of the summoned blasphemies and the damage to their cities and settlements. Then, it was yet another planned sacrifice to restore the previous people who had been sacrified to summon Zodiark to begin with. Had Venat not intervened, I have no doubts sacrifices would've continued on, for less and less rational cause until almost none of the Ancients remained alive to be sacrificed. Emet-Selch himself confesses he and the other Ascians had been tempered, although he tries gamely to fob off the effect of this as minimal for an unsundered such as himself. I think in his heart of hearts Emet-Selch and Elidibus both knew this, too; which is why they subconsciously engineered their own deaths in the course of Shadowbringers, bringing a final conclusion to the Ascian plot to restore Etheirys-that-was.
There's some lore to support this. Even the best ancient with Creation Magic (Emet Selch) didn't have complete control over his creation, and accidentally added flaws and unintended side-effects to his works, like the Self-Aware Hythlodeus spectre in Amaurot, even a stray thought can have drastic changes on the final product When making a concept as complex as Zodiark, you have hundreds of Ancients channeling their power and creation magics into a single concept, and EVERY ONE OF THEM is thinking about the enormity of the sacrifice and justifying it to themselves. It's a certainty that these thoughts would end up tainting the end product.
I personally don't think zodiark was even capable of bringing anyone back, not truly. We've seen in stormblood what happens when a primal "restores" someone to life. They would've gotten simulacrums of those they lost, maybe even lifelike to a degree, but it would have been false. And like you said, Zodiark would've demanded more and more aether until Etheirys was left a desolate husk.
Why is Zodiark evil if he's just a mech suit driven by Themis and Hydaelyn good when she's just a mech suit driven by Venat? People apply the rules of other primals to Zodiark when we were taught summoning magic by the Ascians to sabotage ourselves, but they don't apply those same rules to Hydaelyn even though she was created from a stolen blueprint of Zodiark. Zodiark did nothing but the function for which he was created, which was to protect them planet from the Final Days for 12k years. He held the memories and souls of 75% of the Ancient population inside of himself for 12k years without absorbing them for aether, something we know is possible because Venat ate most the memories and souls of her sacrifices for additional power. So if he's evil and aether hungry and not just Themis attempting to do the job he was tasked with, why didn't he eat the souls inside of him in all this time? Especially when he was fighting Hydaelyn? He probably could have used more power at that moment. Venat never says that her reason for the sundering is because she thinks Zodiark is a danger to the planet. Her knowing about the threat of Meteion knows that her people have to get used to suffering to face the despair that is coming. She specifically says her motivation is to cripple her people enough that they can no longer prevent their own suffering. Not that she's protecting anyone or anything from Zodiark. "No more shall man have wings to bear himself to paradise. Henceforth, he shall walk." She doesn't say what they are doing won't work. She says it's *weakness* and she wants them to be *strong.*
In Shadowbringers, if you talk to Emet after the big lore bomb about Hydaelyn and Zodiark, he actually outright admits that after the Ascians came together to summon him, they were all tempered by him (or at least, everyone who partook in that summoning). He's pretty casual about it too, like "Yeah, of course he tempered us. He's a Primal. That's what they do."
There's a certain irony in YT not notifying me of your comment, and me missing it lmao edit: but glad you were able to make it, hope it was worth the watch :D
30:52 - THIS! so much this! I do wish at some point there was a mention of them interacting with each other post sundering I would say if anyone was justified it would be Venat, but not so much because she sacrificed her people, but more because she protected Aetheris, which is the purpose of the ancients. I know the cinematic only showed her trying to talk to the others once, but as far as I recall, there were multiple conversations happening between Venat's faction and the convocation. The goal of the ancients is to protect and nurture Aetheris, all the ancients were doing was delay the inevitable, and knowing her people and their way of thinking, it would have been (probably) impossible to change their way of thinking. They viewed themselves as gods, creators of life, so their goal was faulty from the start, also based on hermes's research, Aether was a very small percentage of the power of the universe, so their enemy would keep growing stronger while they could only delay their demise but not prevent it
Another addition. Making this in parts to not create a wall of text. To your part 1a. I would say the first time you are to think about Hydaelyns intentions is in the dungeon scene of the Anti-Tower. The reason I say this is because at the end, before she fades away, she tells you to "Seek the Truth of the World yourself." Meaning to go and learn yourself of what the secrets to the story arc, are. There are a lot of little things people miss that ffxiv plants for the players. ^-^
True, I could have brought up Anti-Tower in that context. I feel kind of silly cos at one point in editing I had Anti-Tower as a BGM for one of the segments (I ultimately scrapped it though), I guess that wasn't enough to ring any bells. Perhaps it's simply the fact that HW is so old now, really easy for a lot of details to slip the mind over the years. It's one of the reasons I'm gonna replay it!! I could have also mentioned it due to the interesting lore implications and how it ultimately tied to Sharlayan. Then again, Sharlayan isn't even mentioned in the video. But it's not a rundown of the lore kind of a video so I don't feel too bad about it hah. (and in my defence, if I had started doing a rundown of the lore, this video woulda been 12hrs long...)
@@imacuttlefish6832 I will say this. A sign of good writing, is that when you go back to old content, the context of old information gets a breath of fresh air. You can now re-analyze old information and have it still be valid and more profound that it originally was. It would add more to the story/world you are trying to create.
I think dynamis was added VERY early into the Endwalker story as a necessity because the story needed a force that the All Powerful Ancients couldn't act easily against. How do you write godlike beings into a situation where their very existence is threatened? You invent a force they are helpless against. It's Kryptonite with more steps.
They also realized they'd made an argument for genocide based on cultural flaws and needed to add genetic flaws to it in order to make it easier to swallow. The problem there is even if they'd all agreed with her and decided to leave their loved ones trapped in Zodiark she'd still need to sunder them as they are unable to interact with dynamis ignoring that any and all of them can instead produce beings capable of interacting with dynamis. They'd just have to teach those being emotional regulation before sending them off to deal with Meteion.
What I love is that Hydaelyn ultimately is a primal so she does ultimately temper people but not in the same way as the rest of the primals. Her tempering forces people to "Hear, Feel, Think" and thus gain free will through her tempering/blessing.
Hmm, I never thought of "hear, feel, think" as a way of tempering, and I don't think that's what's happening. However, I could see it being something analogous to tempering, like something more symbolic. Whereas other primals try to force their will upon others, Hydaelyn instead implores them to think for themselves. I like that idea.
I think one of the most unique and interesting things about Venat is that by sundering the Ancients she brought mortality to the realm meaning she IS Death. And with how much black stained her for her decision essentially forcing her to become the black hooded Death we know she actively chooses to instead become a Goddess dressed in white and present herself as a mother excited to see her children come home to hear of their tales as she puts them to sleep. And you can see it in the lyrics for Flow, a song written vaguely of who it's true recipient is as it's meant for all who must eventually return to the Aetherial Sea
I submit that I am not sold on her decision-making. Very bold to do what she did, single-handedly, and then even call us “her children”. I am with Emet here. And I imagine this is what the WOL would’ve done in the end too - after all our efforts are there to preserve what we can in our world and reflections. I completely understand that people will have other opinions and respect that.
with regards to the idea about a counter modifying the context of the Hydaelyn fight, they've already kind of done similar things such as the scene where the armies are gathering at Ala Mhigo and who speaks changes based on your current job and how far you've progressed in the class quests--it would definitely be possible to apply something like that to Hydaelyn.
Hmm yeah that is true, I didn't consider it being really similar to instances where the game checks if you'd done a particular quest, and gives extra dialogue (or dialogue options) based on that. Good observation!
@@imacuttlefish6832 right, definitely a happy ending.. i just empathized a LOT with the ancients and the ending of their tale was really bittersweet and tragic, that's why i was sad :)))
I like your version for the cutscene and wish that would have been how the game made it, with the possible exception of showing the fight between Zodiark and Hydaelyn. Considering the kind of powers going on there, there's a good chance they might not have been able to do it justice in the game engine, so leaving it to people's imaginations might be the better choice. Or they could cheat by making it a montage of still images, with just the opening attacks and final blow being fully animated, or do the in-between in a similar way to Hraesvelgar's clash with Niddhog in Heaven's Ward, were at one point we can only see lights flashing around, while the Earth trembles from their clashes. I am absolutely with you on the point of not showing Venat's faction. Even if they wanted to prioritize Venat's emotions, it was an odd choice to me, since having to sacrifice her faction to prevent the other faction from making more sacrifices in the future is part of her complex emotional state, so just glossing over those other people just feels wrong, even from a purely Venat-centric perspective. Just having them standing in the background and not doing anything at all could have been great. Imagine Venat at her most devastated moment, looking back over her shoulder, to have her faction standing there, nodding to her, both bolstering her resolve and breaking her heart further at the same time with what has to be done. The Mother Crystal trial was really difficult. For some reason my monitor was constantly on the frizz, going out out of focus and wavering, like I was seeing it through a layer of water. :P
I like the proposal of another commenter suggesting an RP segment where you play as Hydaelyn, and fight Zodiark directly. Maybe even a segment of you playing as Venat before the summoning as well. I believe I mentioned XVI in this video, but now, after the game having come out and having played it, when I come back to this moment in Endwalker, I am now even more sad about the lost potential. Because some of the summon battles there were incredible. (though, of course I understand its a different game w/ very different limitations) But I also agree that a good compromise could've been to simply have a very quick clash between them (even if Emet's comment in ShB kind of suggests it was more of a prolonged encounter but thats fine). Yeah, the other people of Venat's faction really got done dirty there hahah Also daym, that water filter sounds really brutal. Props to you for doing it. Even just playing normally, I kinda kept eating AoEs like a donut. Though I had tank privilege so I never actually died. I find it kind of amusing that after that kind of a clown show, Venat would be like "oh yea u are deffo worthy", when all I did was face tank everything. But then again, I suppose that's very characteristic of the WoL!
Venat 100% saved her race from death. Half of the ancients' ranks died leading up to zodiark, and a sizable chunk of what was left was going to be sacrificed yet again to fix the planet. id say it was safe to assume had she not intervened the entirety of their race wouldve been killed and not a single ancient wouldve been left alive on Etheirys. She took her race off the edge of the roof and spent the rest of her life hardening up their hearts so that they could accept their current circumstances, and it worked. and is continuing to work. because while the people that currently live are weaker in body, theyre clearly stronger in spirit and ended up overcoming the ancients in the end. Survival of the Fittest in motion. Elpis showed us first hand that there were clearly massive flaws in how the ancients ran their society and their preconceived notions on what their purpose for life is. Theyd create creatures with thoughts and feelings and memories in one moment only to kill those lives theyd create later if they deemed them unworthy because they had flaws. without considering the logical extreme of that thinking. That the responsibility for those flaws lie at the hands of their creators and therefore the creators are flawed. They had power, and they chose to use that power in inherently flawed ways which lead to their own demise, but by Venat and the Future she clung too so desperately they were spared totally annihilation and in their new lives given hope for a better future.
A good summary of the story. It basically boils down to the ancients not having other things to concern themselves with, no type of resistance in their lives, and with their ability to create anything they wanted, it's of course logical to want to aspire for perfection. It's kinda funny how many things had to happen in order for them to go for a different route (Hermes, Venat, time travel shenanigans etc.), it was honestly one big fluke in the end.
Thanks! Likewise, I'm appreciative of the fact that there are people with the interest to listen to these topics, even if I take a moment to explain my thoughts!
To call her Venat is because the WoL can totally understand and relate to her choices, it is an expression of love at the end. "I do not see you as a summoned monster:. Otherwise, WoL is still blaming or questioning her for all the suffering in all universes.
Now on part 2B: This is an interesting one since I see a lot of people miss the small things in the sundering scene for the sake of wanting a spectacle instead. When the WoL tells Venat and the rest his story so far, Venat does not understand why she would make the decision to sunder the world. It's such an action she sees as out of character. Then later when the WoL and Venat are alone waiting for the ancient who saw the Meteion. Venat talks about everything she experience and how much love she has for the world and how going on adventures had opened her eyes to the potential that mankind had. She loved the skies, the land, the sea and the people in them. Now the scene that plays and Venat watches as the Ancients are attempting to sacrifice lives that were not theirs to bring back the dead, Venat comes to a realization. She loves Etherys. She loves the skies, she loves the seas, she loves the land and she loves the people in it. To protect these things that are vulnerable to the Ancients, she will have to keep the ancients from desiring the paradise they lost. The only way to do that is to sunder their existence to keep them trying to enact another sacrifice. For should they remember, as emet selch told the scions about sacrificing more lives. The 3 Ascians are living proof that the Ancients desire for their paradise comes at the cost of everyone else. So even though Venat does make the decision she does, it is a harsh decision that is not out of character.
Your first sentence is interesting since I actually haven't heard people complain about the lack of spectacle. Maybe it's just a huge coincidence? Or a result of me being basically a hermit (I avoid the internet a lot, dont watch trailers etc etc lol) When I was talking about it I thought it would have been a hot take. I guess its reaffirming to hear plenty of other people had that thought. I'm also glad you brought up the point about Venat not understanding why she sundered the world. I too wanted to emphasize that, though its in the earlier part where I gush about the sundering scene. And YES! Venat seeing the true potential of mankind is... well, I kind of see it as a wholesome message. Thro her character, the game is basically saying humanity is good enough as it is, that it doesn't require perfection and is strong enough to overcome nihilism. It's such an awesome counter to all the media that basically embody the "we live in a society" meme. I love it! This is deffo one of the things I want to delve further into in the Hermes video (because theres overlap between the 3 major ancients, I didn't play all my cards in this video, even stuff that relates to Venat heheh...)
@@imacuttlefish6832 Which is funny because sundering due to dynamis is basically eugenics. Venat decided unilaterally that the Ancients were biologically inferior and destroyed them to produce a 'stronger' (by her definition) race of people. What you see as wholesome I see as grotesque.
@@frademantle Haha we've really come full circle. First it was the eugenics argument in Shadowbringers in regards to Emet and the ancients. Now it's the same argument, just in reverse: Venat and the sundered. Ima not say whether I agree or disagree with the take, just want to mention that observation cos I find it pre amusing
Here's something to think about for time travel and the way the story is written in ffxiv. Time Travel is usually themed about a person's actions being predetermined. No matter what you do, you'll always do it. Then, there is the concept of the universe suffering an eternal freeze where nothing you do matters in the end. Both of these tropes play with the idea of you losing yourself or self-worth, autonomy. At the same time, ffxiv enforces the idea that regardless of what circumstances you are in, to appreciate what you have. Sometimes, it's the small things that matter. Then you have Hydaelyn talking to the WoL directly since 2 expansions to tell him he is free to decide what he wants to decide. On one end, it is "no" choices because of predetermination. The other end, your choices don't matter in the great cosmos. In the middle of these themes is the WoL making their own choices, regardless of what anyone else has to say, to try to make a better future. To be hope and potential for others. It is a story that even if your life is predetermined or your choices don't matter in the end. To be happy and enjoy your own small things in life.
So uhhhhhh... i have something *very* similar in my preliminary notes for the Hermes script. Because there's a concept quite similar to this that I find interesting which I'm eager to bring up. Oh, don't mistake this as me complaining. Quite the opposite. It's great to see similar interests from viewers!!
Thank you for this broad analysis. Maybe Venat not returning to the Aetherial sea should be seen as good. She may have gained the spiritual understanding necessary and is now liberated from continuous death and rebirth.
I just can't bring myself to be satisfied with Venat's soul being lost. Out of the three who judged mankind, Venat, Hades, and Hermes, she was the one who suffered the most - 12,000+ years of solitude, feeling the misery and pain of all those who lived and died. Her choice was made with love for mankind, but judging her kind unfit to endure both the song of oblivion and the same doom that claimed other worlds. Hades made his choice out of love for his own kind, but judging sundered mankind unfit, while also being ignorant of the true threat. Hermes made his choice suspecting his own kind to be unfit and through despair and resignation for the fate of all life. All of them had their own justification, yet Venat is the one who suffered the most and had nothing but oblivion at the end. Both Hades and Hermes's souls endure. We even get to wish Hermes/amon a better next life - but the one who protected us and gave us the means to save ourselves and all of creation is utterly gone... I just can't see it as anything but a heartbreaking injustice.
so much said here probably comes down to Square Enix trimming the budget, anticipating their next bomb will be a hit, and disregarding their only game that makes more money than is put into it. I mean, this is a company so bad at making video games that they have to close down their mobile gacha games.
I wondered if, in a way, Venat actually created the WoL. She remembered us from the past when she first saw us in the future and gave us the echo to help us along. Moving us along on the path to the point where we would eventually meet up with her in past and set the whole thing in motion. Were we guided every step of the way to the conclusion? Was it ever our choice? 🤔 She wouldn't have know all the details of our journey, but she sensed herself in us when we visited the past and Hydalyn version remembered that and made it so. And because we are Azem, our spirit was pulled toward it?
The rejoinings would have had to have happened in the same way we described to her in order for us to be born and experience the life we experienced. So yes, all her choices came down to recreating the WoL including letting the Ascians go to do the rejoinings and letting the First fall to light so that G'raha would have to go back in time to save us, thus time travel would be invented. As a closed loop, everything that happened was predetermined.
It's a classic instance of a bootstrap paradox, wherein a thing exists purely as a result of time travel. For me, this "thing" would be Hydaelyn, but one could also make arguments for the Warrior of Light being the result of it, or heck, even the Final Days themselves. Basically if you ask the question of "who came up with the idea to create Hydaelyn". The WoL mentioned it to Venat in Elpis, which informed Venat's decision to go through with that plan, but the WoL couldn't have come up with it, as they only knew about it because Hydaelyn existed in the present. So where did that idea come from? That's basically the paradox. The answer is, that idea never existed. It simply was. Here you could just switch Hydaelyn with the Warrior of Light and make basically the same claim about them being a paradox and never existing.
52:34 I love your retelling of the sundering in that level 87 cutscene. You should make a video just with that idea and forward it to the devs to see if they can make those changes xD
Hahah I am glad you liked my little alternate version/fanfic thingy! :D Yeah, I wanted to be a bit careful when making this bit, as I didn't wanna come across as some sort of an armchair developer, thinking I could've done better than the writers/devs themselves. Seeing as I'm no professional writer or anything of that nature, just a bloke who enjoys talking about video game stories. Hence I framed it more as a "ok, here's one theoretical scenario they could've taken, to illustrate the potential behind an expanded Sundering scene".
Soz for the delayed response. In essence, Hydaelyn basically gambled that with Emet-Selch's talent, he might spot a "weakness/flaw" in the attack, which he did, and escaped to the rift in time with Lahabrea, who happened to be with him at the time. For the source, it's something they answered in a Q&A shortly after Endwalker's release: czcams.com/video/N2TWmsce_eg/video.html
At 41:15 you bring up one guy having the power to nuke the entire world. This actually happened to the extent one man was forced to make a choice that would have caused nuclear war between the USSR and the USA. His name was Stanislav Petrov.
This was a great video, thank you for giving a nuanced take on the character in a sea of very polarizing opinions. To give my own two cents, I've always held fast to the notion that in essence, Venat and Emet-selch are two sides of the same coin. They both believed that the ways of life they adhered to were the proper and correct ways to live, and in the end were unwilling to compromise alternatives to a very clear fault. Where I tend to take Emet's side in the debate of justifications is that, not counting Hermes, Venat is the initial aggressor here. Being the only one to retain memory, she was the one who would decide how the Final Days would be dealt with, and she chose to actually adhere to Hermes's antics. Emet-selch resorted to the things he did after everything he knew and loved was obliterated before his eyes, and he still (genuinely, according to the devs) allowed himself to believe in the Sundered's potential, time after time, but was let down by the aggression and frailty he perceived in them. He decided what he did was best after seeing humanity at it's very worst, through millennia of isolation, loneliness and trauma. So while of course the Rejoinings are visceral, terrible acts, its far more understandable that Emet would get to the point he did. Venat, conversely, came to her conclusion after the Ancients, stumbling in the dark as to the true nature of what was even happening, didn't respond favorably to her words after the apocalypse she KNEW was coming arrived (of course, that's setting aside the numerous Ancients who did join her, but I suppose those were the 'good' ones, eh?). Her reasons come off as far more one-note and flimsy than her opposition, and it seems that every new piece of information we learn about this time only casts further doubt upon her choices during the Final Days. For example, there was that bit in one of the Live Letters after Endwalker, that the reason the Unsundered escaped the Sundering was because Venat specifically chose to spare them from it, knowing what they would do. So either she is a slave to causality in the boring way of lacking agency that you described here, is someone too afraid to make any changes to the script she was given, or she is directly complicit in every single Rejoining, because having the Warrior of Light be 8 times rejoined suited her needs. That one bit of information essentially made the Ascians her controlled opposition and, at least for me, made the writing surrounding her character too tainted to appreciate the narrative's tendency to see her as unequivocally good. It really is a shame, because I wanted to like Venat, and her presence in the story, but it seems to me the devs were, ironically, unwilling to compromise with her character, and wanted to blanket specifically her actions as positively as they could. I would have found a more grey portrayal of her character far more fulfilling and much less dissonant. The kind of treatment she got makes sense with your theory as to dynamis's unpopular conception.
12 Ancients joined her. 75% of the world's population was in Zodiark at that point and it took her and 12 homies to end all life. She was right in that her species wouldn't have made it. If one badly worded question from a depressed guy or a woman and her 12 closest friends can end the world, then it's just a matter of time before someone succeeds. But what all the Ancients fail miserably at is consent. None of them lay out what's going on and let people decide for themselves what the best course of action would be. They all go straight to Plan: Genocide. The Ancients had the right to die in bliss if that's what they'd chosen to do, and she took that from them.
Another on the topic of tropes, this case with Time Travel and Villain. I never saw tropes as good or bad, just a tool for telling a story. Any trope, if used in the most general term, can devalue a story. i.e. The Lord of the Rings movie is just a story about a mismatch set of adventures. Said this way, you'd assume that the LotR trilogy was badly written, when it is not so. So time travel in ffxiv was used as more than just simply a plot device. There are lots of things we learned because of it. Ancients were "perfect" in their eyes alone, ignoring what they do to others for the sake of the star. Venat/Hydaelyn was an adventurer and a mother like figure, so well suited to the role she would play in the future. Hermes exposed how very little anyone cared for the creations they made. Emet Selch personality was not a quirk of his long 10K years of duty. He was always cheeky from which he used to cope with his loneliness. If given the chance and circumstances were different, would we of been close friends with these ancient friends? Answer is yes, something I'm sure people thought about during all of Shadowbringers. Time Travel was a tool used to explore the ancients, not simply a tool to move the plot forward with no substance. If you want to say all Time Travel does is move the plot forward with no substance, then you have to make an argument on why The Terminator and Back to the Future are bad movies because they include time travel as well Now speaking of The Terminator, he is a good example of why Emet Selch is the villain of Shadowbringers. An antagonist is simply a broad term used for an opposing force to the protagonist. If we go deeper to try to figure out what part the antagonist fits in the story, we can decide if he is a villain. Now villain doesn't mean mustache twirling 2D bad guy. All it means is that they are normally a person opposing the hero, but do deeds we would consider evil. In emet selch case, he did do a lot of evil acts. Not only destroying worlds but using an unborn child as a tool to push the calamity. These are villainous acts, we can still sympathize with Emet on why he did these things but that doesn't mean his acts were not evil. We can sympathize with villains, it's not a binary choice to automatically hate a villain no matter what. So what does this have to do with The Terminator? The Terminator is the villain of the first movie, no doubt about it. But, he is a tool following a program. He does very evil actions and there are no limits he would not push. But there is no joy in what he does, no pleasure, no hatred, no sadness, his actions are never based on emotions. He is a tool to kill Sarah Connors and either shut-down after or return or any other option after he kills her. He is villainous and does evil things, but we cannot easily classify him as mustache twirling villain because there are no emotions on what he does. He is almost just a force of nature. A villainous force of nature. All this to say that "villain" encompasses many things and not just 2D personality bad guy. Antagonist encompasses things that oppose the antagonists. The movie Twister antagonist is the tornado, but the tornado isn't a villain, not a person, but simply a force of nature for the protagonists to over-come.
Elpis is basically Fanservice and a potential "what if scenario + time travel" done right, and not only that it served to fully explore them, something a lot of people had on their mind. For me it was the same with the allag empire, glad we got to atleast explore the Ancients in some fashion. Because very rarely if at all we visit these hyped places/cultures/empires on their cultural peak, always when the dust has long settled. Elpis is FFXIV's best imho, not only of the implications but the culmination of everything.
I can see why that would be a concern, but I personally disagree. I don't think it needs to be a choice between the two, you can absolute have both. I would actually point to the Bahamut fight in XVI as a shining example of how combining spectacle with character moments and emotion can work brilliantly. Also, admittedly I did not mention this in the video, rather it was one of the comments. But someone suggested that, instead of a cutscene of the two primals fighting, we could even control Hydaelyn herself. I think that would make it even better. I think such an interactive element would've elevated that moment even more.
Idealistically I think I would be hard pressed to not take venats side. In the events of elpis, Here you have a person from the future, dropping the tea that the world is sundered and life goes on. They are the most idealistic person, well traveled and loves life just like you. The fact that ancients by and large focus on the betterment of the star, and the nourishment/life it brings forth. I think the idea of sacrificing everything to save the people selfishly, is not a thing they would normally choose. They’re a race of people that didn’t know desperation/suffering to that extent and they were not thinking straight. At least for the second summoning of zodiark; it’s probably the reason why or the symptom of the convocations establishment. And finally there is hope, since a very attractive WoL came from the future , so she’d know her decision would not end life or the longevity of the star.
Without knowing about the existence of Meteion, the idea of not trying to save the people in Zodiark seems nonsensical. How do they know they need to "get gud" at suffering? Trading plants and animals for the immortal souls of our loved ones wouldn't even be up for debate on Earth. We'd be jamming Zodiark full of cows so fast it wouldn't even be funny. She knew they'd reject her suggestion because it makes no sense. It's like seeing your loved one flailing in the ocean and being told you need to learn to let go and move forward as you're reaching for a life raft. At the end of the day, she deemed her people weak, she met the WoL and like Athena thought she could do better, so that's what she did. It was a decision made from sheer hubris.
I love that the Ancients as consistently bad at making meaningful decisions. All of them would literally stew in a weird thought process, go about it in secret, and then spring it on everybody. Truly, their society was basically perfect only because it is culturally ingrained never to stand out and to always focus on the star. And that is the point, but at this point I wonder if any of the Ancients were actually good or if they just think so or prefer to think of themselves as such.
@@iantaakalla8180 I wouldn't judge all of Ancient society off the handful of ones we met. For all you know we could have only met their Varises and Thordans.
Naa definitely not, vast majority of ancients we met were quite compassionate people. But the ancients' society was absolutely more prone to having these individuals with their extreme "this will solve everything" solutions. One is their unfamiliarity with suffering, yes. But I think a much more concrete factor is that even a single ancient has a crazy amount of power. Just thinking of the fact that a mere 14 people could summon an entity that was capable of sundering the entire star into multiple fragments is, quite frankly, horrifying. I also think their extreme collectivist mentality plays into this potential danger. We see it in both instances of summoning (Zodiark and Hydaelyn). The people are so commited to a cause, that once they rally behind an authority, whether that be the Convocation or a person, like Venat, they are so steadfast on pulling the trigger on the whole sacrifice thing. Combined with how insanely powerful an ancient's soul is and how much it can fuel a summoning, and we can easily see the kind of recipe for disaster when it comes to summoning.
Can't deny that the cinematic aspect of the sundering was underwhelming, even the fight against Zodiark's husk if I've to be honest. You keep seing them in frescoes and tales over the MSQ like they were the pinacle of creation and their clash was of cataclysmic proportions, yet... nothing to show for it. Especially today when we can see the titanic breach between Tural and Xak'Tural, supposedly being the result of the sundering, you can only wonder how that final blow went. I have some hope that they will be able to show it via an Ultimate raid that fuses Hydaelyn and Zodiark encounters, a bit like DSR.
Ima ignore the DT part of the comment as I have not played it yet. But aye, this whole thing could definitely be retconned in some way. Having it shown in ultimates would definitely be ambitious. But really, there could be a lot of excuses the writers could come up with to show another pov of the sundering, in which we could see a more concrete portrayal of events (and therefore the actual showdown between the two most powerful and eldest of primals).
Venat is a mistranslation if Venasu. Which could translate to Venath or Venus. Venus eventually gets you to Lucifer bringer of light who also launched a rebellion
Ah, if you are interested in more on this topic: in the screenshots at around 1:33:40, I have more detail about it. (I leave some segments as text/screenshots because I don't feel they are relevant enough to eat into video length, so understandably they can be missed if you watched with audio only) Basically the short answer is: it's not a mistranslation, as it's not meant to be Venus. It's simply meant to reference Venat from XII, a member of an ancient race that rebelled against their kind. I didn't explore the Venus/Lucifer connection (in the voiceover, anyhow), because I think the parallels there are a lot stronger with XII's Venat, less so with XIV's Venat. But that's just my opinion. Rarely is there a single interpretations to these things so yours is of course just as valid. And it is true that the rebellion aspect is there. As a side note: there is a character in XVI that has exactly this sort of "rebelling against God" symbolism all over them, so I deffo will gush about it when I get around to talking about that game hahah
@@imacuttlefish6832should add that her name isnt venasu.(ヴィーナス) Its venesu.(ヴィーネス) So not even the same spelling or any of the alternate katakana spellings of Venus. It could still originate from venus... (as in XIIs venat is a reference, but writing the name slightly different to not be too on the nose of potential story building) But people should atleast google and see if ppl are using her correct JP name. (Alot of ppl mistranslate her romaji spelling to "venasu", either because of oversight, it fit the theory better or not knowing katakana)
I know I'm doubling comments, but God after listening to your description of the battle between Zodiark and Hydaelyn, a familiar desire hits me. I wish ferverantly that maybe some time in the distant future, like when ff14 has truly ended, that they would do a rpg remake of the games. Fix the original game and make a single player rpg out of it, and do each of the expansions as their own thing. With high quality graphics, more voiced cutscenes, and maybe a bit firmer of a WoL, whether it be derplander or one warrior for each race that you can choose at the very beginning. Just so that we can see high fedelity Hydaelyn vs Zodiark, and a few more unique renderings. Also, while I understand your desire to see the encounter, think about something. Yoshi P and his team struggled to get the game out in time. I think that, if you gave them longer, they may have. But I just think Endwalker was supremely ambitious already.
On your last point, that's actually my single biggest criticism about Endwalker. It was way too ambitious, which I think hurt the story more than it helped. (side note: I do briefly cover this topic in the video - it's towards the end of the segment discussing the sundering scene, if you are interested!) The Elpis segment is a prime example of this. It's such a huge part of the story, so much character stuff going on there, setting up the main conflict, huge lore revelations, getting to explore the ancient world.... and it's like 2-3 levels in the story. And so they have to condense all of that. So yes, it's no wonder they couldn't give us a proper fight between the two. While I understand their desire to finish the story and move on to the next big saga (it can deffo be exhausting to work on the same storyline for nearly a decade), I still find that as far as the quality of the story is concerned, it would have benefitted from two more expansions, rather than one (as was their original plan).
I tried clearing Eidelyn with Trust but the scions were totally incapable of dealing with the moving waves of light and got wiped. They would wait for the very last moment to start dodging, but at that point the path through them would be too tight and they ate it all. I played a tank but couldn't finish alone, so I did it with other players. I'ts cool that they *tried* , but if you can't even beat the boss because the AI sabotages you that defeats the purpose... I don't *trust* them anymore.
Ah hahah that's funny cos I mention this same thing happening to someone else in one of the comments. Sucks that it happened to you and ruin the fight, though. Really unlucky, given how rarely I've heard of this bug happening. If I had to hazard a guess, it might have to do with positioning of the boss at the time the mechanic happens, which then breaks the AI in like these rare scenarios, for whatever reason.
i remember someone on twitter pointed out that y'shtola was the best at dodging the mechanics because at one point in battle she says "i can see the aetherflow" or something like that so i followed her when i did the hydaelyn battle and managed to survive lol
I kinda didnt have the problem with it. In fact, doing it with NPC was the best run I had as a DRG. Every other time I do it with players it always go horribly wrong
This is a good video! I agree entirely with the Sundering Scene being a massive waste of potential and your version covers a lot of what I wish we'd gotten. Which actually might have helped me personally like Venat more if we saw her interact with her followers and how hard she'd tried to get the Convocation and other survivors to listen to her and look for other solutions. I don't think Venat's a fundamentally bad person or character, but my problem with her was the narrative seemed uninterested in letting her morality and "correctness" be complicated. I felt like what the character of Venat was saying (that she wasn't a hero and the Sundering a cruel action to her people and us) and what the narrative was saying (the Scions and framing implying we're meant to feel warmth and gratitude towards her) were two different things, and that would have been fine for me if those complex emotions were acknowledged anywhere in the MSQ during her arc and not in a side quest after the whole expansion ended.
Glad you enjoyed my lil fanfic!! hahah I share much the same view about Venat as you. It definitely makes sense they took this route, the narrative heavily relies on us having that kind of an emotional buy-in, and to side with Venat. As obviously otherwise the whole thing sorta falls apart. But yeah, should've been fleshed out more. I think I mention it in the video, but it's quite astounding how they had to cram all of Venat's character into that very short Elpis segment. A segment that had tons of other things going on too. So while I do consider it impressive they managed to get most of us to like her in that short of a time span, it's also a bit telling of Endwalker's general ambition and trying to squeeze so much into that one story. I mean, if we look at characters like Estinien or G'raha Tia, they had basically an entire expansion dedicated to exploring their character. But an important character like Venat basically gets 2 levels in the MSQ in an already incredibly condensed 2 levels.
i dont know if you ever thought of it or are interested but wouldnt it be interesting to make a indepth video of the wol and there role in the game and there relationships with the scions and people around them
1:06:15 I feel it is also that this would be incredibly long cutscene full of redundant information in the world that we have 2 expansions squished into one and I could've possibly overpowered the rest of the expansion. And even though seing Heidi and Zodiark clash would be amazing the cutscene being so short and hitting out of nowhere may have ultimately worked better as the gut punch that writing team has intended, as it's focus is to convey the rapidly increasing despair rather than exposition, the feeling is dropped on us suddenly, just how it was dropped on the Ancients themselves.
You just said the magic words "2 expansions squished into one". That is one of my core issues with Endwalker. I felt it shud've been 2 expansions, as the first draft intended. In that context, it is true that fitting this in somewhere would've been technical. Though not impossible, I don't think. The abruptness does add to the scene, though I believe it could've remained fast-paced even with the fight included.
@@imacuttlefish6832 all that, on top of the fact that Anima is my personal favorite, I was super excited to its XIV appearance and I'm still sad it just landed as a dungeon boss. They did the best with the deal they had to work with, but it surely could've been better, if they had more time for that arc we couldve even had a duty as Venat, actually experiencing the sundering.
@@noodletrashcanOh my goodness, you have no idea how happy it makes me to see someone make that comment. I always felt Anima being a dungeon boss and basically just a distraction before Zodiark, is one of the biggest L's of Endwalker, Not only is it a shame to see one of the coolest summons in the series being wasted like that, but even ignoring the fanservice aspect, Anima itself in FFXIV was setup as a big threat, and the way we resolve it does absolutely not live up to that at all. I mean, it's quite telling that even Tritoch in Dawntrail had a much better execution, despite being way more of a distraction than Anima was. Such a waste.
1:08:23 Hmmm.... Agree to disagree. *pats Raha* 😆😸Seriously though, thanks for the time and effort you spent on this! Your rendition of the Final Days scenes and the Hydaelyn/Zodiark fight is perfect. We were *so* robbed. The Omega/Shinryu fight and Nidhogg/Hraesvelgr fights were so epic and enjoyable to watch. It was disappointing we didn't get even a glimpse of THE single most important fight in all of time. Beyond that, I was very confused when I went through the MSQ and got to that scene like... Emet-Selch *literally* just told me how this went down... this is. This is an entirely new story? Have I stepped into some alternate reality? It was very moving but it really did take me a long, long time to understand it.
I ultimately condone and hate Venat/Hydaelyn for her actions. Only because the story had to conclude in this expansion was why she ultimately was "right". That said well done on explaining your perspective I absolutely disagree with it but you make a better case than any "Mommy" Venat Simps.
honestly, i wanted to be to go Kreia on her and say "you disappointed me utterly, and complately"... giving her all those information to change so much yet she doing all those... i know what she is been through was hard, watching all the suffering she created, but second hand suffering of a freaking god is meaningless as rich's tears for the poor. i wanted to punish her by sundering her; so she could go and do all those imperfect human atrocities in her diluted pieces, and be victim of those atrocities, suffer disease, lost actualy loved ones... go be yotsuyu in couple of her lives, be asahi in another, a bandit who kills children in another, a child that dies to hunger in another... and just LIVE the 'tough life' she so much puts on pedestal... make her go through that few thousand years, re-merge her shards and tell her "now that you understand, tell me, was your tears for witnessing them really measures? was suffering and struggling without actualy having strenght of a goddess, was fun and fulfilling as you think it was?" hate is an apt word for what i feel about her...
I remember read in an interview that after the core team set the main plot for EW, Ishikawa rewrite it. I assume she comes up with Dynamis at this point And I think it worked fine. But maybe because I am a scientific nerd. The parallel is Dark Matter/Energy, IRL we dont know much about that. Some theories point in very different directions, like Heat Death or Big Crunch for example
Thank you for talking about her, the mother to our Journey. I can't say I understood her well before this video, but there's things I did understand. There's something about killing a character like her off, but at the same time giving us a back door to adventure with her in the "past", I guess for us to truly leave her and her blessings behind... would we still be the Warrior of Light and Dark? Thanks again for the vid.
Funny thing is the people who are arguing against what she did would conversely be against us never having existed. And every world with effectively endless lifespans did ultimately end themselves even without the song of oblivion, when would that have happened to Etheirys had she left it alone?
Well I suppose the argument there would be that they rather have been whole beings (ancients) rather than sundered plebs. As for Etheirys turning up like the rest, aye, the story does make it quite clear that's what would've happened. Of course, as mentioned in the video, there's a lot of arguing about the specific way the writers went about it, but yea
Parallel timelines have already been established, so the WoL attempting to change the future would have split the timeline, not wiped it out in a paradox. We wouldn't have existed in the timeline we changed, but the sundered would still exist in the timeline we came from. We might struggle to get back to our own timeline if we'd changed things, but our return was pretty much handwaved anyway. Any number of things could have happened if Venat had chosen a different path. They could have lost to Meteion leaving all souls in the universe in a pain-free afterlife until the heat death of the universe after which new universes would come into being and life would continue. Or they could have defeated Meteion and either changed culturally extending their existence or stagnated as Hermes had feared, ending their existence and once again, new life would spring up as that's how the cycle of life works. *Everything* ends. The sundered will one day end also. But new things spring up from those endings. Venat didn't save anything or anyone. She changed her people into beings she deemed tougher. We will still end, just like every other species in the universe. The only difference is we'll suffer more in the meantime because our maker believed suffering built character.
If I was to add in my own 2 cents in your part 1d section. Because of the way the story of the Arc was written, Venat did everything in her power to stop the release of Zodiark for millennium but failed every time. The giant crystal from Master Matoya is a crystal that belonged to a WoL in the past. This means she put a lot of her energy to past heroes, but they failed to stop calamities from happening. So the energy drain on her wasn't just because of the Calamities but the power she put into past heroes who failed again and again to stop calamities. Next is the Dragonsong music when fighting Nithogg. The song was originally assumed that Hydaelyn did not know why people would cause suffering to themselves when peace was at hand. Now with how the story played out, Venat is lamenting another failure to bring peace to the world when she would of course assumed she was getting closer to stopping the Final Days.
That's a pre astute observation, I hadn't rly thought about that. I'm about to replay HW so this'll be a nice dot to connect when I get there. That does explain why some of those older crystals had so much power, such as Tenzen's which was able to trap Koryu inside it. It does bring up an interesting topic. Did she try to empower the crystals harder in the previous eras, to stop the calamities as you say, or is it rather that the crystals became weaker as a by-product of Hydaelyn herself becoming weaker over the millennia? If it's the former, that could actually give a more concrete explanation as to how exactly she did get weaker (the explanation given in-game by her on the boat, she simply says that as Zodiark grew more powerful, she grew weaker. It's never rly elaborated on why that is, but if I had to hazard a guess, maybe it's something to do with her power over the lifestream diminishing as Zodiark's influence grew greater?) I kinda wished I had maybe explored this a bit more in the video but it's an interesting topic cos from a purely logical perspective, she shouldn't have much reason to lift a finger to prevent the calamities (until the First, anyway), since she knows that the "correct" WoL doesn't go on their journey until after x7 had happened. But that would also completely ignore the human element. She may have still wanted to prevent all those people from dying, even if it was an uphill battle, and ironically a hindrance to her end goal, because of course it would be painful to watch, esp knowing u are responsible for all of it. So in a vain hope kind of way, she was doing her best to prevent the calamities in whatever way she could, simply because it's the altruistic thing to do in that situation. Plus her belief of nothing being impossible. On Dragonsong. I was debating if I wanted to bring up other songs besides Answers that Venat's story can be read from retroactively. However, I think it's mainly just Answers, maybe Tomorrow and Tomorrow as well. But Dragonsong and Revolutions I find a bit too difficult to justify the connection. It's too much of a leap for me. This is cos I personally never saw Dragonsong from Hydaelyn's perspective. To me, the bit about not understanding why mankind would create a circle that results in their pointless deaths, was about the dragons not understanding mankind rather than Hydaelyn not understanding them. Of course, lyrics can have so many different interpretations so I'm not tryna argue which way is right, just providing my own perspective. If anything, I think it's awesome the song lined up so nicely with your previous interpretation. It was much the same for me with Answers haha
@@imacuttlefish6832 As far as I am aware, I could be wrong, it is an open secret that Hydaelyn is singing 4 songs. Dragonsong being one of them. There are lyrics in there that gave me this idea. "Tell me why create a circle none can break? Why must you let go, the life you were bestowed? This I fear I'll never know Never know" If you take out the context of Endwalker, these lyrics comes off as Hydaelyn being, as you said before, this God who keeps mortals are arms length. Considering what we know now of Venat, those lines change from an other wordly God, to someone who tried but ultimately failed to keep a lasting peace.
She wouldn't have had to deal with rejoinings/calamities at all had she not purposefully spared Emet. Yoshi-P said that her maintaining the time loop is a valid interpretation and I'd argue it's the only one that makes sense since she's shown repeatedly to either be unable or unwilling to save the shards. Given Ardbert, one of said WoLs, was instrumental in bringing about the Flood of Light it's difficult to argue it wasn't by design.
It was a good time! Getting clapped by Dabog (Zadnor edition) multiple times, banging out a few relics, completing Delubrum Savage with my FC. I look forward to more such content in Dawntrail.
I think you misunderstand that the meaning of villain and antagonist while often are synonymous, they are technically not the same. You can be a villainous person and not be antagonist to a protagonist and in fact be an ally. To me emet selch falls more into antihero than being a villain. Hes an antagonist yes but not a villain.
The way I look at the whole thing is this-no matter how anyone tries to frame it, wholesale genocide is not an answer. Ergo, Venat is unquestionably in the wrong. The argument can be made that the Ascians and the methods they employed were no better, and looking at it relatively, that's true. But you have to see this from the full scope. The Amaurotines that sacrificed themselves to Zodiark, did so willingly under the premise of revival. All to save countless others and the star. Was this a permanent solution to an underlying problem? No. But, Venat ultimately deprived the Amaurotines of any chance to really research and harness the use of dynamis. To say she was correct in her choice, you would have to say the Ascians (post Sundering) were also justified. Fact is, she should've never gotten the chance to do something so infantile as to throw a childish tantrum that cost the lives of billions across time. To me she's worse than Hermes.
L take, everyone was getting sacrificed anyway. One was going to continue life in a way that involved a semblance of freedom and free will. The other had people be slaves to a primal and sacrifice themselves (which is ultimately the entire antithesis of the Ancient way of life, choosing when to die) over and over and over....potentially. Because it sounds like 75% of the ancients were basically in zodiark at that point, iirc, so most of them weren't coming back it turns out. Zodiark was not keeping up that end of the bargain. Venat made a difficult decision that ultimately broke that horrid cycle, at the cost of people who were not going to continue living anyway.
My character called her Hydaelyn not out of respect, but for a personal reason. Hydaelyn was the Mothercrystal, the mother of our world who cared for us. My character's backstory is that he was an orphan. For him, Hydaelyn was the closest thing he had to a mother. Thanking her by the name Hydaelyn was him thanking her for showing him the love of a parent he would have never had otherwise.
Ohh, so calling her by her actual name would've kinda been like, how it feels weird to call your mother/father by their real names. That's a cool way of looking at it!
The answer is basically that Lahabrea and Elidibus happened to be hanging out with Emet at the time, and Emet's mastery over the lifestream allowed them to escape into the rift and escape the sundering. Venat basically knew Emet would have to survive so she was pre much just hoping Emet would find a way to avoid it, and they seem to sorta imply that she deliberately allowed some kind of a loophole in the attack for Emet...? Here's the full question and response (timestamped): czcams.com/video/N2TWmsce_eg/video.html
Really great video. Also when you talked about how Emet was stuck in the past and Venat chose the future there was something that I find ironic. Emet, by choosing to stay in the past was static and stagnating which is one of the aspects of the light ( while using magic thats closer to darkness ), while Venat chose to change the world and move forward which is more fitting for darkness ( while using magic thats closer to the light ). Both choose to act in a way that is more tied to the element they are opposed to, which is quite interesting and probably also a hint towards the greyness of their characters. And with the time travel. Well I can understand people being annoyed at using time travel as a story device. Its quite hard to do it without messing it up. Also it was not the first time FFXIV did time travel stuff. In the Alexander Raid we had stable time loops stacked onto other stable time loops. In Shadowbringers G'Raha Tias actions did such a big change that he created a new timeline. ( His original timeline still exists ), by nearly getting us killed in the fight against Elidibus and thus delaying the use of Black Rose enough for Zenos to kill Varys ( and from how the whole scene went, I'm pretty sure that, without interference we would have slapped Elidibus so hard he would wish to be sundered. ). And Now on Endwalker, we go back to what seems to be another closed time loop. But I think that our appearence didn't really matter at all when it comes to the final days and the sundering. Meteion still would have gone crazy and Hermes would still have done the same things he did to ensure Meteion could get away. Because if it would be a closed time loop, than what about the one timeline where Black Rose killed nearly everyone? Still sundered but without us to go back to the past. Timetravel is really werid.
When we time traveled what I had hoped for was another branched timeline. I am angry [and tbh punching Venat's face in in the trial felt *good* because I was angry about how they handled it] that she did not tell people. I would have been ok with the sundering either being accidental, or her telling Emet and Hythlodaeus what they were dealing with, them failing to stop it, and the sundering happening anyway because she had no other choice. I would also have been ok if they had branched the timeline.
The sundering scene with only Venat point of view is a disservice to others members of "her" club. I would like to have seen more of waht Azem was up to, but i understand why the Devs avoided this. Anyway, loved the expansion.
Given the revelations about memories in pandamonium and the twelve's connection to hydaelyn as well as the golden hydaelyn like figure see in the anni art im not convinced hydaelyn/venat is perma dead
All of this is... a very non-buddhist way of looking at the Buddhist themes FFXIV's world is built on. The core idea of Buddhism is that nothing will ever stay the same and all things are dynamic. That just as seasons come and go, so do life and people both. That death and suffering is inevitable. Based on this, any attempts by those who try and control or even prevent these two are in the wrong, and by extension, who cause even MORE are in the wrong. We see this even in Dawntrail. To conclude that death in itself is the ultimate evil is not really what the writers are going for. I don't agree that Venat is fully right or wrong but I do think she's way more in the right compared to everyone else by giving the survivors -- the continuation of the ancients especially in Buddhism death and rebirth context -- a *dignity* to choose their own life and fate. I guess this entire video's reading is. Okay, but fundamentally doesn't account for the writers' culture background at all. Meh.
I appreciate your perspective on buddhism, and you are correct, it's not a focus on here. Thanks for the reminder, I might bring it up in some future content. Though I'd like to say one thing. I don't focus on those themes as much, because I see those as more relevant to when talking about Endwalker and its themes as a whole, whereas this video focuses more on Venat and her perspective specifically. I am well aware of the story's portrayal about how to live is to suffer, especially given that it's quite heavyhanded with it. If I'd've gotten into the overarching themes of Endwalker, this video would've been even longer haha FWIW, in my Shadowbringers analysis, I do cover that story's portrayal of life and death, where I talk about how I view Emet's stance re the ancients as being in the wrong. I don't take a buddhist stance there, but I'd say they I oppose him for loosely similar reasons as you describe here. And I released that video before Endwalker was even released. So I wouldn't consider this a foreign concept to me, no. I have planned, for a while, to release a video talking about the ancients as a whole and how the story tackled them. So that may be something of interest to you, once I finally get around to it.
It's interesting cos seeing it as a genocide essentially does align with Emet's view, of there being a distinct difference between the ancients and the sundered people. If we were to draw that line, then yes, it's logical to conclude she commited genocide on the ancients. But it's quite clear that the game wants us to think of them not as separate but both as simply "mankind" at different points in time. Hence Venat's "hence he (mankind) shall walk" In the end though, it's not that black and white, it's a matter of perspective for sure. Some food for thought re the whole genocide route of thinking: since the WoL deals the deathblow on 2 entire civilisations, on the ancients by slaying Venat and on the Omicrons by defeating Omega, then does that make the WoL genocidal too? Perhaps even the most accomplished, behind the Meteia hahah
I really like Endwalkers writing and will show you what I mean when someone dismisses writing in this game by just calling anything a trope. This has to do with Miteion. Just need to remember Elpis and the finale of ffxiv when talking to Miteion the final time. The games writing makes it very clear that when we meet Meteion at the end of the game, after the boss fight, that our own memories of ffxiv story so far is what helps Meteion get over the emotional baggage she had to carry for 10k years. Meaning that the small moments of joy the WoL had in Etherys was a great motivator for her. What we also learn, through body language alone, is that Meteion never stopped looking for the light in the dark. When the WoL greets Meteion at the ending, when she was still dark, the WoL opens his soul to her to read. What is the first thing she looks for inside the WoL? Not the deaths or hatred or betrayal the WoL got. She specifically looks for anything or anyone who the WoL cherished in his/her life. Then she just takes in all that little bit of hope the WoL has and she just starts crying. The song Flow during this moment eludes that she waited a long, long time to find just a little bit of hope in the Universe and found it in the WoL. Here is how this ties in to time travel and the players choice in this without knowing it. When the WoL goes to Elpis and gets introduced to Meteion, we are told quickly what her abilities are, ie read people through emotions. Now because of how the trope of Time Travel works, the player is quickly and easily lead to not divulge anything to do with the future. Also Meteion, in her kindness, lets the player know that she will not read the players mind as to respect their privacy. Now the reaction I saw frequently at about a 99.9% from players was to not corrupt Meteion with our dark thoughts or future. Now the thing we all forgot is that we don't just have dark thoughts, we also carried the potential of hope for a better future from what we experience in all of FFxiv. If the player/wol wasn't so focused on the big picture and Meteion wasn't so nice and respectful. Meteion would of gained the information she needed to continue the search for a World that wasn't in apocalypse and living well as Etherys did. She would of easily gotten 10k years worth of effort, the same way Venat used the WoL experience to continue moving forward. Meaning the WoL could have completely changed the future if our own fear of the trope of Time Travel didn't get in the way of helping a little girl in a single chance moment in the past. This isn't to say the WoL is to blame, I am just pointing out that there were chances to change things but we missed it. All of this from just a few scenes from Meteion and the song "Flow". It's why it's important to not just look at what tropes are in the story but how the characters intermingle with each other to tell the story. This is to also say it follows into a theme that Endwalker was pushing, that sometimes it's the small things that matter. That small moment could of changed everything.
Once Zodiark is summoned, the sundering is a must. They can't keep sacrificing new lives to Zodiark. The question is, could she have done more BEFORE they summoned Zodiark. Could she have told someone, Elidibus maybe, that there's a depressed bird somewhere causing creation magic to go wrong. Maybe they could've found a better solution than Zodiark.
Aye, this is deffo one of the big unknowns, and there's certainly a lot of speculation there. Such as, could the ancients have been capable of "weaponising" dynamis through familiar against the depressed bird? Basically fight fire with fire. Suppose we'll never know. Unless they decide to do some sorta crazy alternate timeline where we get a glimpse of the ancients taking a different path. But personally, after Endwalker and Rebirth, I think I've had my fill of time travel and multiverses for a while hahahah
It's one of the preset shaders from a preset pack that comes with something called "Espresso Glow". Specifically, it's the "Shadowbringers gameplay" preset, though I've modified it a bit over the years I think. I don't kno about posting links on YT comments, but a quick google of "Espresso Glow" should result in an installer. It's basically an installer of reshade + the preset pack all at once, but if you already have reshade, it just gives you the presets, I'm pre sure.
I don't like Hydaelyn now that we know what she did. She gave up and knowingly forced her entire civilization into ten thousand years of suffering, and she specifically wanted them to suffer. That's evil and she's a terrible person for it, but try to bring that up anywhere and you'll get hounded. Venat had a very long yet undefined amount of time to convince her people to change their ways, and she'd have sway as a former Azem too. It doesn't help that the writing fell on its face during the final Hermes scene where the trio free themselves from the chains, they all very well know what's going to happen if they stay in the "building" and yet Emet and Hythlodaeous just stand and talk for a long, long time even after Emet open the door out. They just stand there and let it happen to them...sure the writers wrote themselves into a corner but they should've planned for it in the first place, not made the main gang into a buncha idiots. Even regarding the whole sundering to use dynamis...that's not true, nothing stopped the ancients from creating an army of Meteion-like drones to combat her.
I do not think she did the right thing. Her and her followers decided to go against humainity's will because they didn't like it. It was a very small few against the rest of the star's population. The start was on the verge of gaining it's souls back sacrificed to bring about Zodiark by giving the extra aether of the star to Zodiark. That was the last step and all that needed be. She caused a lot of suffering for what seemed like spite. She is no better than Hermes in this light. They both wanted to end the course humanity was on. As far as the crystal... it's original barer was Emet-selch. Azem never had the crystal. Emet-Selch made it in secred as the convocation made them before the summoning of Zodiark after Azem had left the convocation. So it would be Emet-Selch's words she is remembering... not Azem's. As for my sources of information, those would be the game itself and the encyclopedias released by square.
When she talks about the crystal's original bearer, I don't think she is referring to the one who first bore the crystal in a literal sense. If that was the case, and she was indeed talking about Emet, calling him the crystal's original creator would make much more sense. I think "bearer" in this case simply refers to the person bearing the crystal's name, Azem. When accounting for the context of when she says the line, and the content of the quote itself, I also see it more sensible that she's talking about Azem, as I'm not sure why'd she bring up Emet there. Also, for full clarity, I don't expect people commenting to provide sources, so please just discuss freely. I usually know which scenes people refer to, especially if they are talking about things covered in the video, so it's often not necessary. I may specifically ask for it on rare occasion, though. As a side note: while I genuinely do appreciate wanting to provide a source, I don't think something so incredibly vague as citing 3 entire books, and a massive game spanning multiple expansions featuring thousands of lines of text, is very efficient. Generally, the more you can narrow down your source, the better. Like I said though, it's not something I expect and a YT comment isn't obviously as serious as a citation in a thesis or whatnot, so don't worry too much about it haha
Depression Beam: I'm confused by this honestly. Game made it very clear that Zodiark created a shell to protect Etherys. Dynamis also very very, very weak to Aether. To the point that the ancients saw Dynamis the same way our own scientists see "Chi/Ki". As far as I know, sundered doesn't mean dead or not possible. Just means a weaker version of a whole. The shell on Etherys just needs to be strong enough to stop Dynamis. Aether doesn't need to over-exert itself to push against Dynamis, it's the other way around. Aether just needs to be strong enough, that's all.
Since I dont remember this part from the script, I assume it was one of those text bits about why dynamis confused people. The Zodiark aether wall protecting against the Endsinger's dynamis depression beam, the confusion there really comes from the fact that the answer to this question IS presented in the game, but it might be kind of easy to miss. It's basically the bit where Hermes says more or less what you just pointed out, that aether is a lot more thick than dynamis and thus has a harder time penetrating it. Which is why ancients can't really make use of it. Anyway, with this knowledge, it's easy to understand why Zodiark, even at 1/14 power, might still be able to protect Etheirys. It's just kind of easy to miss, which is why I understand ppl could mix it up easily. Also, from Hermes's explanation, the takeaway for most people would be "oh, that explains why the ancients couldnt use dynamis". Then its easy to forget the whole Zodiark aspect of it. It's also kind of logical to go "why would an aetheric shroud protect against a dynamis attack?" So we can then either blame the players for missing it or blame the devs for not making it apparent enough. Honestly, I'd sort of say both. It's normal for players to miss details, but the Elpis segment was also tasked with doing so much over such a short period.
@@kyeda This is a good point. They flat out say that the ancients can't interact with dynamis because of how dense they are. That's why we can hear Meteion and they can't. And also why Venat sundered the world. To make it so that we could interact with dynamis and therefore have power in Meteion's realm. Cause honestly, if Ancients couldn't weld dynamis, I wasn't sure what they were gonna do, because even if they made other dynamis beings to stop Meteion, those beings would fall to despair too. But you're right. Elidibus demonstrated an ability to weld dynamis beyond ours, which shouldn't have been possible. And if it was possible she destroyed the world for nothing.
The only thing that I have to say: turn off your color mods, everything is either too bright or too dark XD As for the rest of the video, of course: I suppose that developers (and writers?) had to rush some stuff. Your idea sounds good, but the video would have been even longer. Honestly For how it looks like, I have the feeling that we were going to see the end of times with Venat, that would have given time to let us see all the events that happened in the past but in the end they went with the cs explaining "relevant" events. 1:02:36 I will say that the fight was never promised or at least I don't recall the game promising such a thing. It would have been cool to see: The great sacrifice to hold the end days. Watch how messed up the world looked like. The creation on Hydaelyn. The fight between Zordiak and Hydaelyn.
Oh, if you think this is bad, you should see the original footage! I turned down the brightness in post. On the real though, I appreciate the feedback. It shouldn't be hard to fix. It's kind of a technical problem that I myself can't really see, but I can get around my limitations by just having my friends review some of the footage and giving their thoughts on the brightness.
To reply to the edit: On the cutscene being longer if they did all this stuff. Well, I'm not sure it'd be that much longer, you could still try to condense stuff, we still don't wanna ruin the pacing. But aye, might add a few minutes to it at the very least. But I don't know if that's much of a problem, since it's one of those sequences where the game warns you about many cutscenes playing in a row (which is basically the game's way of saying the game will now turn into a movie). On the fight being promised: haha, I gotta be real, that was me just trying to add some extra flair! Plus it's a GoT reference, I guess. But my reason for calling it that is still rooted in how I felt about it. I do feel like that fight should have happened. You are absolutely right though, calling it something the devs explicitly promised is hyperbole.
the shinryu vs omega fight was spectacular on a visual perspective, but i didnt thoroughly enjoyed it tbh hahaah. i was just like "oh neat they fighting".
Tbh, Zodiak or Hydaelyn. Idrc. In the end of the Day, there 2 evil beings having a Hissy fit, in concept doing the same thing, and we (WOL) get wrapped up into it, with no real ways out, and ~Flips a coin Oh Look, your on Her side, sorry no refunds.
I don't think they can be defined as evil, neither the Hydalyn faction nor the Zodiark faction, but rather good people who have to face impossible choices. I don't think letting the Final Days run their course is considered a good thing
She's a hypocrite, uncooperative, slothful, self-righteous, and plays favorites with the player. MC. I say no she wasn't justified. She could've told Themis is what happened( after he separated from zodiark heart looking to make peace) with Hermes in Kitsis dungeon but kept quiet and turned the world to shit with a hax power up. Very bad writing.
That wouldn't have allowed the current version of the game to exist. The ancients are all unjustifiably egocentric. Hermes was flawed, he was mentally in need of therapy yet living in Paradise. Its not bad writing to have Venant be an egocentric ancient who sundered existence to design a people who will be able to experience and learn from suffering. Through Astral and Umbral eras people grew and changed and learned how to deal with the emotional issues of existence (Dynamis). Seriously turned the world to shit and hax power.... very mature... someone apparently has an egocentric perception of events.
@@liony9400 No, it would just have created a paradox and split the timeline, creating one in which the Sundering does not happen. Which I am *fine* with.
@@JohnSears1970 you are fine with the sundering not happening? The sundering is the whole reason the world and your character exists. Without the sundering there is no game. I mean Have you been to elipis? So we play on floating islands making minions? and that is the point?
@@liony9400 You misunderstood. The game timeline would still exist on one track [Much like the 8th umbral calamity timeline *still exists* along a seperate time track]. Just so would one where the Ancients survived. That is all I want. The Ancients deserve their happy ending too.
@@JohnSears1970 The ancients lived a happy existence in ancient times. Until it wasn't so happy, and their "star" was in danger. They all wanted the same thing for the "star" to have a future. They just went about it in different ways. They currently do exist in a paradox, we can visit Elipis when we like.
Ahhh hmmm, Azem is kind of technical though because they are basically you. As such, it's hard to dedicate an entire video to them. But I did have one video idea which would feature them, it's kind of crazy though so I'm still debating if I wanna create the video hahah Also something that may have already been apparent from just the Emet and Venat videos, I do plan to consistently bring up Azem with all of these ancients, with maybe the exception of Hermes. But Lahabrea and Elidibus for sure. Since the interactions they had with these other characters is still interesting to discuss.
@@imacuttlefish6832 Yah I am aware of the immense challenges faced when trying to piece together the narrative of Azem, particularly from the perspectives of the Devs. They cannot do too much without breaking player immersion. Still there are so many hints of wonderful stories of Azem's reaction/plans/actions to the first Final Days. My headspace for Azem had evolved from him/her being a simple victim of the Sundering (from the little information we got in Shadowbringers) to being an individual who had a decent sense of what they might have had to do/sacrifice ... and all of it without being fully appraised of Venat's own plans directly by her. I am quite keen on seeing how they slowly peel away the story of Azem's final actions as that entity, and their legacy to the current world.
@@CheeWaiLee1972 Ooh, I've heard that idea brought up before. Whether or not Azem "knew". And I can see why. As you said, it's kind of lame to think Azem as being a simple victim of the sundering, that they were, idk, taking a nap when it all went down lol Would be fun to see more of their story for sure. I liked the references to them in the Pandemonium story so far, so maybe we'll get more in 6.4!? As if I needed more reason to be hyped for that patch...
@@imacuttlefish6832 The fact Azem refused to join Venat doesn't speak to the veracity of her cause. Given "A Friendship of Record" confirmed Venat never even told her own followers the truth, the people who literally gave up their souls for her to become Hydealyn, it's highly doubtful she told Azem. Also, based on the shards of Azem we know, the WoL and Ardbert, both of whom were willing to throw whole worlds under the bus as long as they could save their own, if they ever did write Azem as agreeing to having one BFF trapped in Zodiark indefinitely, another BFF damned to become what he did (not to mention Elidibus), and the complete genocide of their race, culture, and history, it would be not be character consistent. (Not that EW seems to care about these things in general.) This isn't even mentioning how sinister it is for Venat to have specifically spared Emet knowing that in the future she would be grooming Azem's reincarnation to kill him.
Dynamis, is an interresting item. It's named and explained really late, and yet... It was introduced as early as 1.0 Strong faith and aether brought forth the primals. Strong faith brought forth Louisoux's partial summoning of the 12. It turned the holy see into a king of myth. It brought treasures and puppets to life. Wrought fear into reality in ancient times, and called heroes through the rift to save a dying world. Time travel though... The game seems really clear, all time travel happens in a stable, closed loop, but... We currently still have one case where this seems false. G'raha. His present state is an unresolved paradox, that the game even comments on. This world's history has become intwined with another reality, making it muddled and unclear. This isn't neccesarily a plothole yet, and may become a plotpoint in future.
In Ultima Thule, when we summon Emet and Hythlo, I read Emet's "commendation" very differently. A lot of people, including you, assume he is talking about Venat, but this comes after a brief pause, almost as if he is shifting his focus. He also looks directly at US, the WoL, and caps it all off by saying "as a show of respect to the last of us".
Now, you can absolutely read Venat/Hydaelyn as the "last of us" in some respects, but in many ways it is US, the embodiment of the sundered soul of Azem who is indeed the last ancient, and I totally read this as Emet talking directly to us. At this point, every other ancient, Venat included, is gone. She has entrusted us with the duty to finish the task after setting us on the path, and she admits that we have surpassed her. She is essentially putting her faith in us that we will find a way where she cannot necessarily see the path, much like Emet uses his final appearance to do an about face from his ShB rhetoric ("I find you lacking." "You cannot be entrusted with the fate of this star.") to literally pass us the reins ("You must be commended... my methods would not have brought mankind this far." "If you would do something for me... save our star.").
So yeah. You might read this bit as directed at Venat, but I'm pretty sure he's talking to us. Both Venat and Emet are passing the torch to their old friend, Azem, who literally embodies a kind of Third Way that neither of them could see.
I may be having a smoke and thinking of a different scene, but isn't this the one where he says that line about the last of us, he simply refers to him and Hythlodaeus being summoned? In that moment, they represent the past (hence his line about the answer of all past and present lives on Etheirys), even if they are in ghost form.
We do get an entire scene right after, which is all about him acknowledging your merit as Azem, when he goes on to explain the different things we haven't seen yet and so on.
edit: ok so I just realized this was a comment under the Venat video, not the Emet video. That prolly explains why I was confused. Cos I also go over this scene in the Emet video, and much more in-depth. My apologies hahah, I suppose stuff like this is inevitable when there are scenes that are important for multiple characters
Funnily enough, I'll be bringing up this scene AGAIN in the Hermes video
@@imacuttlefish6832 Yes, this is the Venat breakdown, hah!
For context, and in regards to the "You must be commended" line, the preceding lines are literally Emet talking directly to/about Venat/Hydaelyn, and the specific preceding line is him speaking to himself/the void saying "Even so, you'll get no applause from me. A single gesture will not lighten the burden I've had to bear." THEN he specifically turns to the WoL and says "Still, YOU must be commended."
I read this to be about the WoL because he SPECIFICALLY turns to us to deliver it and also because going from being generally catty about and refusing to acknowledge Venat (Are they friends? Yes! But it's fucking complicated, lol.) out of pride to then commending her would most definitely be out of character and in direct conflict to what he has literally just said.
@@rabid_si Ah right, I see now.
My interpretation for that line was always that he's basically just addressing the sundered people in general, rather than any one specific person (such as Venat or the WoL).
To me, it's very fitting to his character, seeing as his story was all about him judging the sundered people's right/worthiness to exist. So now he was finally able to see some merit to their existence, even if it was in regards to just this one thing.
The WoL is basically a champion for the sundered people, hence him turning towards them.
@imacuttlefish6832 The bigger issue is that Venat is one with the Lifestream on Etheres at this point in the story. She's done her duty and finally returned to the Star. He could be talking to her, but it makes sense for him to tell the WoL that they are to be commended. It wasn't Venat that came up with a plan to defeat The Endsinger. It was the Sundered. The WoL that can take in Dynamis and use it. Can show their emotions to Meteion and feel the flow of Dynamis.
We can more readily and easily show Meteion our emotions. In fact, she never used the ability on an Ancient, not as far as I remember. Maybe only Hermes because he created her.
Our thinner Aether and inability to use Creation Magic to solve all our problems have us the fortitude and ability to beat her.
Or well, that's how I saw it.
Endwalker was a very meta expansion. Tons of moments have characters saying something not just to your character, but to you at the exact same time. Venat does it, Emet does it practically selling the next story arc to you, Zenos does it at the end, it's very very likely it has two meanings. One diagetic and the other meta.
Venat knew what the consequences would be of sundering the world before she did it, she met the WoL prior to then and was told how much suffering would be caused by her actions. But remember the conversation on the bridge about how even after the untold suffering there is thousands of years later there is still joy, happiness and adventure. She had already seen that there was a light at the end of the tunnel.
I think meeting the WoL is one thing that helped to steel her resolve to sunder the world.
Which just proves and strenghtens the fact that she acted purely out of curiosity or interest in another way of living and basically didn't care about her own people. All in all it's hard to tell what the developers intended with her tho.
@@Lyu-Phy It's that she views the WoL as her people. She describes us as "you who are our future." She saw that her people were doomed given their number one problem solving method was human sacrifice. So that left her with the option to change mankind or allow mankind to end. And since she's an Ancient and their number one problem solving method was human sacrifice...Henceforth, he shall walk. To singlehandedly decide you have the right to determine the course of an entire world, when only a handful of people even have all the info was a very Ancient thing to do (thus why they were doomed).
Should have steeled her resolve to tell her own people on what was actually happening, rather then let them stumble around and then go about genociding them.
That's like saying "the Reich the germans planed was fine since there would still be joy, happiness and adventure"... o_-
You people are pretty sick in defending PLANETAR GENOCIDE plus DISTORTION OF LIFE plus MASS TORTURE all to create a single "super soldier" to do something that the original, real life could have easily done itself (not even starting with, that it was Quasi-Ancient Zenos who beat birdbrain. What would the WoL have done? Stand there and fart their pants?)
On the subject of symbolism, one of my favorite things about Venat and Hydaelyn is how they seem to parallel the Gnostic creation myth of Sophia and the Demiurge. We know the writers are definitely aware of Gnostic mythology because there was a literal primal based off of the same myth back in Heavensward, but there are even more references and allusions surrounding Hydaelyn specifically, like the approach to her in the Anti-Tower being called the Pleroma, or her most devoted servants all being dubbed Archons.
In fact, some of the earliest "Is Hydaelyn a baddie?" theories that I remember seeing all the way back in 1.0 were based off of these references. In Gnostic mythology, an Archon is a kind of spiritual demon who encourages humans to indulge in their worldly desires in order to prevent them from realizing the truth: that the world we live in is an imperfect emanation (sometimes described as a reflection) of a once perfect and harmonious existence. Our flawed world was created by the Demiurge, a dumb, ignorant, or outright malicious false god who is the source of all human suffering, and that the only way to escape this prison is to open your third eye wide enough to abandon your physical form, prevent your own reincarnation back into this fallen world, and rejoin perfection in the Pleroma.
FFXIV kind of took this and ran with it, but with a twist. The Ascians were basically your classic Gnostics from the word go, lamenting the fact they were forced to live in an inferior world full of maladies they never had to deal with before, forever cursing the supposedly evil god who condemned them to this hell for no reason besides her own vanity. In nearly all media with a Demiurge-inspired character, that character is objectively evil as hell. They exist for almost no reason other than to inflict suffering or maintain a flawed order, often just to force humanity to worship them. How could that ever be justified?
Sometimes for variety JRPGs will mash up the Gnostic Demiurge with Jung's Demiurge, and you'll get Xenogears or multiple SMT/Persona games, where instead of a literal Demiurge born from the unity of the Pleroma you'll get a metaphorical Demiurge that arises from the collective unconscious of humanity. But FFXIV is the first story I've seen that straight up takes the Gnostic creation myth and reinterprets Sophia's sin (giving birth to the Demiurge without the support of the other Aeons and thus creating the imperfect material world) as a straight up good thing, a revolutionary act of love. It emphatically says that the flawed world the Demiurge created is actually great, and that the people who live there are better off for having learned to derive meaning from their suffering instead of rejecting it outright and only accepting perfection.
Gnostic mythology is surprisingly popular in Asian media, possibly because it allows you to use Christian religious imagery while still justifying your big bad being capital g God, but there are actually a lot interesting similarities between Gnosticism and other eastern religions that make it fertile grounds for comparison, except those eastern religions tend to be a lot less pessimistic about the potential of life than the Gnostics typically were. I think that's why they chose to bring Thavnair into this expansion, their very Hindu and Buddhist-influenced perspective was seemingly handpicked to point out the similarities and differences, and then they threw in a little existentialism with Zenos at the end. I still can't get over how well-crafted Endwalker's themes were, I had a lot of faith and even I wasn't expecting them to pay off over a decade of foreshadowing as well as they did.
Interesting. I never thought about it from a gnostic pov, but it certainly explains a lot actually. Thank you for sharing!
Wow this is really interesting, thank you for sharing!
gnostic theology is all over the place in JRPGs, it's all wild and fascinating stuff so it's honestly no surprise so many devs choose to pull from it for inspiration--the Xeno series is another one that pulls heavily from it though admittedly they mix a lot of kabbalistic mythology in there too.
Fun fact about the material world being an emanation: The primal who is specifically making a dreamlike world where everybody is in bliss forever, Lakshmi, is literally fought in a place called Emanation as per the English name for her trial. Gnosticism is everywhere in FFXIV specifically, not just in the FF6 reference to Sophia or the situation with the Ancients/Ascians.
Furthermore, the people who summoned Lakshmi, the Qalyana Ananta, pretty much lost everything, including the safety in neutrality when one of the skulls killed their child, and resolved to live in a dream world. In other words, they are literally trying to create a false world like the Demiurge does in Gnosticism.
Vevat it SHEER EVIL because it not only GENOCIDED a WHOLE PLANET but then RIPPED IT APART and DISTORTED IT all to create a new "superhuman" from her PoV.
She's literally Adolf H - just 1000 times worse.
And the WoL is the executioner.
You play an SS officer in FF14, mindlessly slaughtering for your Führer, since you never care a single second if what you are doing is right or good or where it leads, you just nod and follow orders.
FF14 is like some disgusting, racist warpropaganda since SB. And yeah, the disgusting part is, that it whitewashes it so much. It would be fine, if it would use all these things but makes clear how sick and evil it is. Instead it manipulates weak minds to accept it as fine. Wtf...
30:00 - There's a difference here. Venat knew of the future, was forewarned of it and may have even tried to take another path that does not result in the Sundering (something she said to WoL just before leaving Elpis). But all other options might have been exhausted by then and she came to realize the Sundered world was the only way to overcome the Final Days without the constant need of human sacrifices.
It's definitely a detail that's easy to miss because the game doesn't necessarily draw attention to it. But I'm glad I was able to slide that into the video.
The game shows us clear evidence of multiple other options being available, none of which we chose to pursue.
@@tek512That's exactly right, but the logic is that the sundering is what allowed us to exist in the future because if they took another path we wouldn't exist in the first place. It's circular and annoying to me honestly.
@@tek512 Like what? By design, the Ancients could do nothing against Meteion except keep the senseless cycle of sacrifice themselves to strengthten Zodiark and sacrifice everything else to bring themselves back. The way their society was structured made it impossible for them to even understand properly the concept of strife, let alone bestow the means to deal with it to something else, which means nothing they could do or could create for that matter, would be able to even reach Meteion, let alone deal with her.
It was just a matter of waiting until all life in the universe was dead and Meteion could fully focus on Etheirys. She was already damaging Zodiark's barrier without even trying, imagine her giving the planet her full attention.
I've heard this before and usually most, if not all of the "options" involve sending Azem there and hoping real hard that they'll be able to solve everything because WoL.
@@tek512 You mean options like the Convocation's plan to rear newly created life just to sacrifice it to bring back the 75% that had been sacrificed to Zodiark (half the population for the initial summoning to rewrite the world's laws, another half to get life on the planet going again), Venat/Hydaelyn's back up plan in case man would not be able to challenge Meteion of roaming through space on the Moon with the loporitts and a sealed Zodiark as a shield to find a new planet, effectively putting the people in the same state that Midgardsormr and PuPu were when they flying through space before finding Etherys/Hydaelyn?
I think a lot of people forget that we don't see every last little thing Venat got up to. There's a lot of bad faith criticism about her, claiming she didn't do enough. We know she planned well enough to create an entire fucking celestial body to serve as a spaceship to escape the final days. Might she not have a metric ton of contingencies?
We don't know. We just don't. I think some people had such keen pity for Emet and Elidibus and the others that they are willing to assume the worst of her. Her actions and manner in Endwalker lead me to believe that, while she understood We were the one she was waiting for, she definitely did try to mitigate and push back against her identity.
Aye, it's one of those things where, in the game, we jump straight from giving Venat a farewell to the sundering scene, but in reality, given what we know of the lifespans of the ancients, it could have been a very long time (like hundreds of years) between each of those events.
Not enough? She not only did shit, but destroyed everything the others actually did to save everyone.
And for what reason?
a) That people are just not good enough, so they have to be killed and be replaced.
b) That these peopel dared to use agriculture (= cultivating life to sacrifice it for other life) - what is especially absurd, because the distorted life she ripped out of the real people is CONSTANTLY dying and CONSTANTLY killing to stay alive plus CONSTANTLY killing because it's distorted not only in body bit also in soul and mind and by that endlessly driven by fear, hate and greed.
Oh, and don't forget: thanks to the time travel BS as basis of all that her plan also included:
a) all the dying shards and how they return to the source, so all those falling apart are also her fault (not that a single person could even manage it that way, that those absolutely imbalance shards wouldn't fall apart sooner or later anyway
with
b) the backup plan that she would simply flee and after genociding the real planet also let all the fragments die.
There is NOTHING good about Venat. It's a disgusting monster and the WoL is just a mindless tool of that monster. What overall is an insult for monster, even monster aren't that fricking evil.
I think there are some misconceptions about Venat's heroism. She herself said that there was no mercy or justice in what she did. She was accepting the role of the villain in order for life to persist. She had to shatter heaven to save all the souls within. And she didn't take away from those who sacrificed to summon Hydaelyn as she herself burned through her own soul to see that their sacrifices weren't in vain. It seemed to me that she suffered a lot of guilt over what she believed she had to do. Especially considering she is praised and worshiped as a goddess after all the suffering she caused. But felt it was important to persist because we told her about how there was still joy and beauty in the world in our time despite the sundering.
She also didn't put all her eggs in one basket. Hence the whole moon ship thing. In our final conversations with Hydaelyn she mentioned her many failures, so it's wasn't simply we told her about the future therefore she just followed our blueprints. She evidently tried many different things which didn't work out. Also, I'm pretty sure in our conversations we didn't explain all the astral/umbral eras and each calamity in detail. It seemed more an outline of our personal experiences, the Ascians, and the coming Final Days. Before leaving Elpis she talks about the situation and different ways to find a solution that, ultimately, resulted in the sundering. There is a question as to whether us revealing that aspect of our history influenced her drawing that conclusion though. Like, "this is a last resort" kind of thing, but by putting it on the table to begin with, did she believe she had already exhausted all other options and reached the last resort before finding a better solution?
Just as Emet-Selch didn't consider it killing people through rejoinings, Venat wasn't really killing her people, just spreading them out. The ancients entire civilization and culture is built around the enteral flow of aether. Sundering wasn't really killing anyone as demonstrated by Hermes/Amon/Fandaniel. There are still aspects of the ancient's soul that permeates each rebirth. And even the vision of the meteor shower from the first final days being imprinted on people's souls. So in a way they still live on as they would if they willingly returned to the aetheral sea.
It's also heavily implied that the Ancient's civilization would have died out eventually. Not only for the fact that every other civilization Meteion encountered died but there are several instances of dialogue pointing towards stagnation already setting in for the ancients. Of course there is Hermes asking what will happen when the world is perfect and everyone's work is done. But also Hythlodaeus talking about how everyone was basically "jumping the shark" on their shark creations. It was getting boring. And I believe even some side quests make some remarks towards the stagnation of ideas(don't ask me which, I just remember building upon that theory while doing all the Elpis side quests).
In conclusion: I think she acted under the idea of "love me, hate me, it doesn't matter, I will make sure you live so you can to feel whatever you feel about what I've done." To paraphrase Fourchenault.
I chose that Venat, Emmet, and Hermes all were justified in their own way. Each saw a problem in their world and sought to correct it in the ways they thought best. Granted the actions that they took to correct the problems they saw I cannot condone. Not a single one of them. But like you touched upon in the video, the ancients are fundamentally different from us in a variety of ways. Their life spans, their dreams, their entire culture is alien to us in subtle ways that only really lightly get touched upon in hermes's story unfolding in elpis. And it all resolves around the value of life, and death in their eyes.
I would argue that, for the Ancients compared to modern humanity life and death have inversed weight. For sundered being death is constant, frequent, and a companion ever eager to embrace us. It is impactful, but also dulls us to it emotional impact after awhile. It's why mankind post sundering is more easily able to go to war and kill their fellows, something that is in comparisons unthinkable in the ancient society by my understanding.
On the inverse, for Ancients Life is abundant and long lasting. And while they do respect the accomplishments of one's life it's more of just a means to a end, that 'beautiful death' they talk about and wax romantics about. Since death happens so infrequently and only when one choses to it's seen as a celebratory thing. Like... ah, I just thought of this, but it's celebrated in almost the same way that modern mankind would celebrate a birth of a child.
To that end, for someone like Emmt who quite literally had the hopes and prays and history of his entire people weighing on his back. I can say he was justified in his actions he took. He refused to just blindly cave to them and seemingly tested the new form of mankind to see if they were worthy (Jury's out on if it was a rigged test or not, Tempering via Zodiark or no). But yeah, I don't know if I could say I would have done differently in Emmt's shoes. Or he done differently in mine. He was also raised up to be, effectively the top brass of the ancients. If there ever was someone to make choices on behalf of the ancients even in their sundered forms it'd be Emmt.
For Hermes, Elpis Hermes was less a man and more a young confused adolescent. Hermes was, quite frankly a man raised into a position he had no business being in from a emotional/responsibility viewpoint. Both as the overseer to Elpis and on the convocation as Fandaniel. The reason he was raised to these positions was his knowledge and understanding though, which is valued highly in ancient society . The ends(His understanding of aeather vs dynamis ) I mean, and not the means in which they get there (Hermes reasons for learning about dynamis, ie his depression, is less important). And this creates the main 'contradiction' in his eyes. If he is so smart, so revered, why do people not listen to his words when he talks of aberrations and how what they do to their creations is wrong? About how this peer pressure to return to the star is wrong? And it causes doubt in his mind, in his self, and his well 'purpose' which we learn is the singular most important thing in this society. One's purpose, finding it, and achieving it, before returning to the star.
So, when confronted with a, quite frankly tidal wave of heavy things to learn. That he supposedly causes the fall of the ancients far and wide, that the people beyond the stars he sought for help and guidance (Like, one would a mentor figure since he had none because he had risen to a position where no one could be above him too quickly) were all dealing with or rather failing to deal with similar issues like him, and that his peer's reaction were to from his PoV try and sweep all this under the rug and go back to normal to not address the issues staring, nay yelling at him in the face? Quite frankly I'm not surprised the man broke at that point, and defaulted to his training and upbringing to a horrifying level. Treating his fellow man as nothing more then a creation to be 'tested'. In his mind it was the only way to connect everything well. If his objections to the way the creations were tested, and discarded were wrong. Then surly that meant it was fine to subject mankind to a similar treatment since it would be 'for the betterment of the star' no? A twisted view, but I can understand how Hermes got there, though of course I cannot condone the action.
And then there's Venat. Truthfully there's a lot of unknown blank space in which she likely acted, tried to find another way. We have no idea of how long a time was between us leaving Elpis and the end of the ancients. Though I imagine it would be a frightfully long time from our scale of it. I don't see Venat's choice to work without the convocation as a arbitrary choice to set things up in the closed time loop, but rather the correct pragmatic choice. She knows that, should she leave Hermes and the convocation alone they will one, inform the populace of the final days which would help them understand the gravity of it en mass without panicking (which would accelerate their fall to dynamis) rather then her being a single important person saying so. And Hermes himself as Fandniel would do much to stall the deadline of having to solve the issue, as well as be a backup plan should she not figure out a way to stop Mettion.
As you said in your video, that cutscene, she very likely struggled with a complex range of emotions when she sundered the world. Some we more then likely could not even begin to comprehend. But she doesn't let her feelings justify or absolve her of the consequences of her actions. She knows she did something horrible, and even if it was for the betterment of all. It was still a horrible thing to do, for the past and future of mankind. And yet, I find her justified in her actions, here she was a outsider, and outlier to ancient society. She shirks tradition and marches to the beat of her own drum and is recognized and celebrated for it both as the accomplishments she made as Azem, and her willingness to help with problems small and big afterwards.
So, in an almost similar way to other two, Venat was in a uniquely powerful position as far as ancients go. Where her words carried a lot of weight, and her decisions were almost universally thought of as good for the star. So if anything I think it speaks to her character that she knew what she was doing when she sundered the star and still chose to do it. Obviously we cannot relate with that choice. But I for one can at least respect it. To intentionally scar the world, humanity, and put them though unfair adversity in the hopes it would toughen them up is a hard choice to make. Doubly so for someone like Venat who clearly loves freely and deeply. I imagine it would have pained her greatly to a extent we can't really ever know. So in essence, I think that makes her the perfect character to have done the sundering, she's someone who knows the full detail of what it would entail, what it would do, and what it would cost. Someone who'd bear the full weight of the choice, and yet bear it for the hope that the children she sundered would grow stronger for it. Much like how some mothers in nature will throw their children out of the proverbial nest in hopes that they will grow up better for it.
Venat was not justified in ANY WAY. Venat is literaly a fantasy Adolf H. And WAY WORSE at that.
You defend PLANETAR GENOCIDE and TORTURE. This is so f****ed up, that it's hard for the brain to even handle it. The germans look humane and sane in comparison to the endless insanity of Venat.
And you guys cheer for that and defend it, because you can't even accept to be on the bad and evil side in a fricking video game...
Hell, Venat LITERALLY uses the same "argument" as the germans, that the old life is not good enough, doesn't deserve to live, can't survive, so it must be replaced by a new race...
The fight between Hydaelyn and Zodiark, could have been done by the player, not as a raid, but as a solo instance where you play Hydaelyn, changing weapons and in the end finish with the strongest limit break 3 ever: The Sundering!
That would be sooooo freaking hype.
Usually those RP solo instances have you playing a simple humanoid character, then again we did control the G-Warrior when fighting the Sapphire Weapon. So the foundation for controlling a bigger entity such as a primal, is deffo there.
It would also be interesting in a sense that, an observant player might take note of the attacks used by her in the solo duty, and then maybe connect what that attack is, when you fight her in the trial. Sorta like knowing the exam questions beforehand lol
G warrior was super hype
Oh, sure, let the player themselves genocide the planet, why not. The last level of the brainwashing, eh?
I can simplify it for you even more. It's a choice between choosing life, choosing the future (delayed gratification) and throwing a toddler tantrum because you don't like the present. The reason I can forgive Venat is that she made a very hard choice and chose a future with life in in and Emet-Selch was more than willing to slaughter millions of others so he could live in the past, never having to accept how he got to stay there. Venat knew what she was doing. Emet-Selch went mad trying to deny what he'd done.
Emet didn't go mad denying anything. He went mad from extreme tragedy and loss which led to his genocide. It wasn't what caused him to go mad. As he himself says, he gave us countless chances and tried to live among us for centuries. "I have fought with you, broken bread with you, grown ill, grown old, sired children and yes welcomed death's sweet embrace! For eons I have measured your worth and found you wanting."
Venat has more blood on her hands than all of the antagonists combined save for Hermes/Meteion. Her actions are antithetical to loving or choosing life.
I never cease to be amazed how many people just *didn't* empathize with the Ancients. The sundering was a crime against mankind and the survivors of it have valid grievances against Hydaelyn. Saying they were just 'throwing a tantrum' because they objected to her genocide sure is something.
@@frademantle They were literally committing genocide too. Did you not pay any attention? She sundered the world for two reasons. 1 to stop the ancients from SACRIFICING OTHER RACES AGAINST THEIR WILL TO ZODIARK TO SAVE THEIR PEOPLE
AND TO SAVE THE WORLD FROM THE SONG OF OBLIVION
@@KingMidgardsormr Venat is only attributed with two motivations for sundering the world: 1) Fear of The Plenty as a Dead End and 2) Dynamis. This is per the writers in the lore Q&A live letter. Venat is never characterized as having been concerned about life being sacrificed, that's Hermes' schtick.
Also, only a "portion" (thus not genocide) of the life that *Zodiark* had created was going to be sacrificed. We're never told what that life was, so saying it was "other races" is pure speculation.
@@frademantle You clearly didn't play the fucking game. The cutscene where she sunders the world, she ONLY decides to sunder the world when she could not convince the Ancients to stop sacrificing to Zodiark. She LITERALLY SAYS IT. "Saving those we have lost by sacrificing yet more is not wisdom. It is weakness."
Hey there, nice to finally see the Hydaelyn video uploaded!
I haven’t yet watched all of it, but kudos for the effort that you put into such a long and detailed analysis. I appreciate addressing the issues with the dialogue options and how the protagonist is not allowed a choice in the matter.
One specific thing I wanted to address, however, is the claim that Venat’s, Hermes’s, and Emet’s(And Lahabrea’s and Elidibus’s) decisions show that ancients are built different and that it was a common thing for them to make such sweeping choices over everyone else.
Starting with the Unsundered trio, when they made the decision to go through with rejoining, all of them were traumatized beyond any reasonable measure. They saw everyone they ever knew die in various ways(getting torn by the beasts, being sacrificed for Zodiark, being sundered and becoming mindless creatures as NIER reincarnation showed), and by the point they made this decision they were desperate and had no other way to save those still trapped in Zodiark. This shows them as very human, and I think most people in their situation(if they had as much power as the Unsundered do) would at least attempt the plan. They aren’t a fitting metric for judging ancients as a whole. In their normal state, they all were different people, for example, Elidibus/Themis’s duty is to be impartial as an emissary and give equal opportunity for each point of view in the convocation, which categorically goes against them being a race to make such choices for others.
As for Venat and Hermes, they are the outliers, much the same way people like Thordan or Zenos are, and it would be unfair to use them to judge this race as a whole. The initial sacrifices to Zodiark showed that the actual mentality of the ancients was the one that allowed choice but encouraged commitment and self-sacrifice for the star, as all of them were voluntary and it was far from one or a few people making this choice for everyone. Similarly, there are other examples of ancient’s culture like the emphasis of evaluating and respecting all points of view regardless of how different they might be. Even in Elpis, the side quests show that there are a lot of ancients who are caring and considerate towards their creation, doing their best for them to succeed. One of those quests even has an observer(Charmion) hear a perspective from the WOL who she considers a simple familiar and note its value and how it broadened her horizon. This is a far cry from people who are stuck in their beliefs and never concede, no matter how terrible the outcome.
As for the Omega quest: I chose Emet because I think he was the most justified compared to the other two, even though he has obviously done some horrible stuff too.
I appreciate this perspective, since it's a good reminder that there's always an inherent danger in attributing behaviours of an individual to a group of people (well, at least if you take it outside of discussing fictional characters)
However, I think what the writers wanted to convey there (since Im mainly piggybacking off of Yoshida's comment on that part) is that it does make sense how these types of individuals, who make these sweeping decisions for an entire race, and are willing to sacrifice everything (thinking in extremities), would result from the ancients' society.
Mainly for two reasons. One is that the way they handle conflict (as we see in an Amaurot sidequest) is through civil debate. And whenever they create something, it's all very structured with the dangers being as minimized as possible. This essentially means the ppl in their society as a whole, don't have a lot of experience when it comes to dealing with adversity.
Some examples I can think of. The sidestory where that volcano is threatening to erupt. It basically mentions that the rest of the convocation were sorta just sitting on their arse doing nothing while Azem took care of it. Or even when Hythlodaeus mentions they rarely use the word "kill/death", and instead prefer to sugarcoat it in a way by phrasing it as "returning to the star".
So when they are presented with a lot of violence and a massive conflict (especially if the threat is external), it makes sense for someone growing up in that sort of an environment, to react in that sort of a distressed, extreme way, because they are so out of their element.
The other is how much power an individual ancient possesses. As I say in the video, a tiny group was able to summon a being that more or less undid their entire star. And to go off of what you said, an additional layer of danger there is precisely the fact that the ancients' society encouraged commitment and self-sacrifice for the star. That means you have a bunch of powerful individuals who are willing to throw themselves in sacrifice on the first option presented, as long as its advocated for by a figure of some authority (such as the convocation or Venat, a former convocation member).
Both these points combined essentially means that the ancients' society were more prone to, sooner or later, creating these individuals who had this sorta "sacrifice everything for my ideology" mentality, as well as having the resources at their disposal to actually go through with their craziness. So it's less that every ancient is crazy, just more that their environment is very different from ours, which explains the behaviour of at least the "crazy ancients" we saw in the game.
Though an interesting thing to note is that these sort of events do happen in our world as well. Where individuals in power utilized black and white thinking, in their overly abstract ways of viewing the world and the dangers that sort of a thing presented. And indeed in the sundered world too in XIV. But I speak more about this in my Alphinaud video so I dont want to dwell too much into it here.
after replaying on a new character I was quiet shocked how early the writers dropped the "you are tempered by Hydaelyn" red hering. So early indeed that it propably went over most peoples heads because the game haven't yet given the required informations to figure it out:
After the Garuda trial she tries to temper you only for it to be unsuccessful. Her words after that were: "Ahh, she allready claimed you!" implying another primal was allready in charge of the WoL... most likely Hydaelyn.
Aye, there's quite a few lines like that. Even the very first primal you encounter, Ifrit, after failing to temper you says something about you already serving another, or something along those lines.
Of course, the WoL being tempered theories became wild with 5.0. One theory that stuck out to me, though I did not subscribe to it was cool nonetheless, was that Midgardsormr untempered you in 2.5 by yeeting the Blessing of Light. Obviously didn't turn out to be true as we were never tempered but it was fun to see the speculation at the time haha
@@imacuttlefish6832 oh, allready Ifrit mentioned it? I might not have given that cutscene enough attention the second time around...
Do you by chance have an idea whether these dialogues were like this in the original base game or if they included it in the ARR revamp, when the devs actually knew where the story is heading?
@@LuriTV They were deffo there from day 1!
Though we should keep in mind that, at least I personally don't believe they had intended to allude to any kind of "Hydaelyn tempering" at that point in time, nor that Hydaelyn was a primal. They've openly said in interviews that when it came to a lot of that background stuff in ARR, like Zodiark and the Ascians, it was them basically just putting in some ominous bad guys doing evil things without much of an end goal. So I'd posit it's pretty likely that Hydaelyn's true nature was the same. ie "let's just put these 2 gods here and think of what we'll do with them later". That's just my theory of course.
When I played through the game, I took those comments by Ifrit, Garuda and the like as them simply being ignorant of the fact that there exists a protection from the tempering, so it's logical for such a being to think "oh well you must be taken by someone else then" since the Ascians hard coded those summons to try and temper anyone and anything, they'd have no reason to assume a subject cannot be tempered. That's my take at least.
@@imacuttlefish6832 its also mentioned, i believe bit emet selch, in the shadow bringers, when he for the first time tells the creation and zodiark... he says something along the line "and we created the ultimate primal... and he tempered us all, as it was his right". so even in the shadowbringers, it seemed like tempering subplot was still on, and we were tempered agent of hydaelyn
It made me instantly wonder if she was a primal. But then it kinda faded from memory.
By the time I confronted Venat, I only saw her as a madman, worse than Emet Selch. It took me out of it to only be allowed to be positive towards her.
Hey man, this is a seriously great video. I really appreciate your style n tone.
Glad you found something to fit your tastes!
Ancients: "we want to be happy!"
Venat: "fuck all yall"
Her objection wasn't to the desire to be happy but by the method they decided to go by it. These fools just invented morphine and their plan is just to stay high til they die. She looks at that and realizes, welp, this branch is a dead end. Bring on the cat girls and bunny boys.
43:21 - With the power of hindsight, we now know from interviews, that the method of time travel that FFXIV relies on at its core isn't the "unable to change things" type, but moreso branching timelines, similar to Steins;Gate (albeit with multiple world lines existing at the same time). Which is fine. You can present something that looks like a causal loop within that framework. It simply just means that we're not the first Warrior of Light to have gone through that journey.
Timeline A: No WoL in the past. Hermes still does what Hermes does. The confrontation likely still happens, but without a Warrior of Light there. Hydaelyn and Zodiark are summoned. The world is sundered, and we go through with the 7 calamities. We eventually defeat the unsundered, only for Fandaniel to reappear. Hydaelyn, knowing the truth of the Final Days by escaping has dropped the hints for the Warrior of Light anyhow. The Warrior of Light of that timeline isn't helped by Argos in Mare Lamentorum, as they never went to the past. They then travel to Elpis, do their thing. The act of travelling to Elpis moves us onto timeline B.
Timeline B: This is our initial timeline, from ARR until we cross into Elpis. Argos helps us because Timeline A WoL proved themselves to Hydaelyn. We travel to Elpis, moving us to timeline C, which is the timeline we've been on ever since.
It's worth noting that, if we go with the causal loop idea, then there is no "timeline a", "timeline b" etc.
There never existed an instance of Elpis without the Warrior of Light, there was no "first time". What we see happen, is what always happened. The whole trick with a causal loop is that it switches the order of cause and effect, instead of A -> B -> C, it could become C -> A -> B. It messes with our minds because we can only perceive of cause and effect in a linear fashion (A -> B -> C). In a sense, you could think of it as, the WoL entering Elpis is essentially event C, but it happens first in the timeline of events.
I hope that makes a modicum of sense, at least this was my interpretation. I hate trying to explain time travel, and I honestly don't feel it adds anything to the story anyway. Not to mention how FFXIV kinda just says screw it and has multiple time travel theories all in the same story. Ugh.
Hearing you say "apathy leads to death" and being instantly smacked with Kreia flashbacks
I'm so glad someone catched the reference!! Nice
I'll say.. when she dropped her song scroll on my first time doing her extreme... i have never seen two words carry more lore impact
I think Venat/Hydaelyn essentially came to the same conclusion I did about the worshippers of Zodiark who became the later Ascians, that they had been conditioned (or tempered) by Zodiark to always want to sacrifice a portion of their people to their manufactured primal deity. First it was a sacrifice to restore Etheirys to its state from before the Final Days, undoing the destruction of the summoned blasphemies and the damage to their cities and settlements. Then, it was yet another planned sacrifice to restore the previous people who had been sacrified to summon Zodiark to begin with. Had Venat not intervened, I have no doubts sacrifices would've continued on, for less and less rational cause until almost none of the Ancients remained alive to be sacrificed. Emet-Selch himself confesses he and the other Ascians had been tempered, although he tries gamely to fob off the effect of this as minimal for an unsundered such as himself. I think in his heart of hearts Emet-Selch and Elidibus both knew this, too; which is why they subconsciously engineered their own deaths in the course of Shadowbringers, bringing a final conclusion to the Ascian plot to restore Etheirys-that-was.
There's some lore to support this. Even the best ancient with Creation Magic (Emet Selch) didn't have complete control over his creation, and accidentally added flaws and unintended side-effects to his works, like the Self-Aware Hythlodeus spectre in Amaurot, even a stray thought can have drastic changes on the final product
When making a concept as complex as Zodiark, you have hundreds of Ancients channeling their power and creation magics into a single concept, and EVERY ONE OF THEM is thinking about the enormity of the sacrifice and justifying it to themselves. It's a certainty that these thoughts would end up tainting the end product.
I personally don't think zodiark was even capable of bringing anyone back, not truly. We've seen in stormblood what happens when a primal "restores" someone to life. They would've gotten simulacrums of those they lost, maybe even lifelike to a degree, but it would have been false. And like you said, Zodiark would've demanded more and more aether until Etheirys was left a desolate husk.
Why is Zodiark evil if he's just a mech suit driven by Themis and Hydaelyn good when she's just a mech suit driven by Venat? People apply the rules of other primals to Zodiark when we were taught summoning magic by the Ascians to sabotage ourselves, but they don't apply those same rules to Hydaelyn even though she was created from a stolen blueprint of Zodiark. Zodiark did nothing but the function for which he was created, which was to protect them planet from the Final Days for 12k years. He held the memories and souls of 75% of the Ancient population inside of himself for 12k years without absorbing them for aether, something we know is possible because Venat ate most the memories and souls of her sacrifices for additional power. So if he's evil and aether hungry and not just Themis attempting to do the job he was tasked with, why didn't he eat the souls inside of him in all this time? Especially when he was fighting Hydaelyn? He probably could have used more power at that moment.
Venat never says that her reason for the sundering is because she thinks Zodiark is a danger to the planet. Her knowing about the threat of Meteion knows that her people have to get used to suffering to face the despair that is coming. She specifically says her motivation is to cripple her people enough that they can no longer prevent their own suffering. Not that she's protecting anyone or anything from Zodiark. "No more shall man have wings to bear himself to paradise. Henceforth, he shall walk." She doesn't say what they are doing won't work. She says it's *weakness* and she wants them to be *strong.*
In Shadowbringers, if you talk to Emet after the big lore bomb about Hydaelyn and Zodiark, he actually outright admits that after the Ascians came together to summon him, they were all tempered by him (or at least, everyone who partook in that summoning). He's pretty casual about it too, like "Yeah, of course he tempered us. He's a Primal. That's what they do."
Omg idk how I missed this upload! Been missing your character analysis so much. Very excited to watch this!
There's a certain irony in YT not notifying me of your comment, and me missing it lmao
edit: but glad you were able to make it, hope it was worth the watch :D
30:52 - THIS! so much this! I do wish at some point there was a mention of them interacting with each other post sundering
I would say if anyone was justified it would be Venat, but not so much because she sacrificed her people, but more because she protected Aetheris, which is the purpose of the ancients.
I know the cinematic only showed her trying to talk to the others once, but as far as I recall, there were multiple conversations happening between Venat's faction and the convocation. The goal of the ancients is to protect and nurture Aetheris, all the ancients were doing was delay the inevitable, and knowing her people and their way of thinking, it would have been (probably) impossible to change their way of thinking. They viewed themselves as gods, creators of life, so their goal was faulty from the start, also based on hermes's research, Aether was a very small percentage of the power of the universe, so their enemy would keep growing stronger while they could only delay their demise but not prevent it
Another addition. Making this in parts to not create a wall of text. To your part 1a. I would say the first time you are to think about Hydaelyns intentions is in the dungeon scene of the Anti-Tower. The reason I say this is because at the end, before she fades away, she tells you to "Seek the Truth of the World yourself." Meaning to go and learn yourself of what the secrets to the story arc, are. There are a lot of little things people miss that ffxiv plants for the players. ^-^
True, I could have brought up Anti-Tower in that context. I feel kind of silly cos at one point in editing I had Anti-Tower as a BGM for one of the segments (I ultimately scrapped it though), I guess that wasn't enough to ring any bells.
Perhaps it's simply the fact that HW is so old now, really easy for a lot of details to slip the mind over the years. It's one of the reasons I'm gonna replay it!!
I could have also mentioned it due to the interesting lore implications and how it ultimately tied to Sharlayan. Then again, Sharlayan isn't even mentioned in the video. But it's not a rundown of the lore kind of a video so I don't feel too bad about it hah.
(and in my defence, if I had started doing a rundown of the lore, this video woulda been 12hrs long...)
@@imacuttlefish6832 I will say this. A sign of good writing, is that when you go back to old content, the context of old information gets a breath of fresh air. You can now re-analyze old information and have it still be valid and more profound that it originally was. It would add more to the story/world you are trying to create.
I think dynamis was added VERY early into the Endwalker story as a necessity because the story needed a force that the All Powerful Ancients couldn't act easily against.
How do you write godlike beings into a situation where their very existence is threatened? You invent a force they are helpless against.
It's Kryptonite with more steps.
They also realized they'd made an argument for genocide based on cultural flaws and needed to add genetic flaws to it in order to make it easier to swallow. The problem there is even if they'd all agreed with her and decided to leave their loved ones trapped in Zodiark she'd still need to sunder them as they are unable to interact with dynamis ignoring that any and all of them can instead produce beings capable of interacting with dynamis. They'd just have to teach those being emotional regulation before sending them off to deal with Meteion.
What I love is that Hydaelyn ultimately is a primal so she does ultimately temper people but not in the same way as the rest of the primals. Her tempering forces people to "Hear, Feel, Think" and thus gain free will through her tempering/blessing.
Hmm, I never thought of "hear, feel, think" as a way of tempering, and I don't think that's what's happening. However, I could see it being something analogous to tempering, like something more symbolic. Whereas other primals try to force their will upon others, Hydaelyn instead implores them to think for themselves. I like that idea.
Venat and Hades, ally and anthagonist, hero and villain both, depending on who's tale you tell
hell yeah, i knew the venat analysis would eventually come!
I hope it's worth the wait haha
I think one of the most unique and interesting things about Venat is that by sundering the Ancients she brought mortality to the realm meaning she IS Death.
And with how much black stained her for her decision essentially forcing her to become the black hooded Death we know she actively chooses to instead become a Goddess dressed in white and present herself as a mother excited to see her children come home to hear of their tales as she puts them to sleep. And you can see it in the lyrics for Flow, a song written vaguely of who it's true recipient is as it's meant for all who must eventually return to the Aetherial Sea
I submit that I am not sold on her decision-making. Very bold to do what she did, single-handedly, and then even call us “her children”. I am with Emet here. And I imagine this is what the WOL would’ve done in the end too - after all our efforts are there to preserve what we can in our world and reflections. I completely understand that people will have other opinions and respect that.
Fair
with regards to the idea about a counter modifying the context of the Hydaelyn fight, they've already kind of done similar things such as the scene where the armies are gathering at Ala Mhigo and who speaks changes based on your current job and how far you've progressed in the class quests--it would definitely be possible to apply something like that to Hydaelyn.
Hmm yeah that is true, I didn't consider it being really similar to instances where the game checks if you'd done a particular quest, and gives extra dialogue (or dialogue options) based on that. Good observation!
i love venat with my whole heart. she is amazing and made a huge sacrifice for the future of life
these videos are like my therapy after the sadness of endwalker :))) thank you for making this amazing video
I think I was more happy after Endwalker than sad. After all, it do be a very happy ending and all that :D
@@imacuttlefish6832 right, definitely a happy ending.. i just empathized a LOT with the ancients and the ending of their tale was really bittersweet and tragic, that's why i was sad :)))
I like your version for the cutscene and wish that would have been how the game made it, with the possible exception of showing the fight between Zodiark and Hydaelyn. Considering the kind of powers going on there, there's a good chance they might not have been able to do it justice in the game engine, so leaving it to people's imaginations might be the better choice.
Or they could cheat by making it a montage of still images, with just the opening attacks and final blow being fully animated, or do the in-between in a similar way to Hraesvelgar's clash with Niddhog in Heaven's Ward, were at one point we can only see lights flashing around, while the Earth trembles from their clashes.
I am absolutely with you on the point of not showing Venat's faction. Even if they wanted to prioritize Venat's emotions, it was an odd choice to me, since having to sacrifice her faction to prevent the other faction from making more sacrifices in the future is part of her complex emotional state, so just glossing over those other people just feels wrong, even from a purely Venat-centric perspective.
Just having them standing in the background and not doing anything at all could have been great. Imagine Venat at her most devastated moment, looking back over her shoulder, to have her faction standing there, nodding to her, both bolstering her resolve and breaking her heart further at the same time with what has to be done.
The Mother Crystal trial was really difficult. For some reason my monitor was constantly on the frizz, going out out of focus and wavering, like I was seeing it through a layer of water. :P
I like the proposal of another commenter suggesting an RP segment where you play as Hydaelyn, and fight Zodiark directly. Maybe even a segment of you playing as Venat before the summoning as well.
I believe I mentioned XVI in this video, but now, after the game having come out and having played it, when I come back to this moment in Endwalker, I am now even more sad about the lost potential. Because some of the summon battles there were incredible.
(though, of course I understand its a different game w/ very different limitations)
But I also agree that a good compromise could've been to simply have a very quick clash between them (even if Emet's comment in ShB kind of suggests it was more of a prolonged encounter but thats fine).
Yeah, the other people of Venat's faction really got done dirty there hahah
Also daym, that water filter sounds really brutal. Props to you for doing it. Even just playing normally, I kinda kept eating AoEs like a donut. Though I had tank privilege so I never actually died. I find it kind of amusing that after that kind of a clown show, Venat would be like "oh yea u are deffo worthy", when all I did was face tank everything. But then again, I suppose that's very characteristic of the WoL!
Venat 100% saved her race from death. Half of the ancients' ranks died leading up to zodiark, and a sizable chunk of what was left was going to be sacrificed yet again to fix the planet. id say it was safe to assume had she not intervened the entirety of their race wouldve been killed and not a single ancient wouldve been left alive on Etheirys. She took her race off the edge of the roof and spent the rest of her life hardening up their hearts so that they could accept their current circumstances, and it worked. and is continuing to work. because while the people that currently live are weaker in body, theyre clearly stronger in spirit and ended up overcoming the ancients in the end. Survival of the Fittest in motion. Elpis showed us first hand that there were clearly massive flaws in how the ancients ran their society and their preconceived notions on what their purpose for life is.
Theyd create creatures with thoughts and feelings and memories in one moment only to kill those lives theyd create later if they deemed them unworthy because they had flaws. without considering the logical extreme of that thinking. That the responsibility for those flaws lie at the hands of their creators and therefore the creators are flawed. They had power, and they chose to use that power in inherently flawed ways which lead to their own demise, but by Venat and the Future she clung too so desperately they were spared totally annihilation and in their new lives given hope for a better future.
A good summary of the story.
It basically boils down to the ancients not having other things to concern themselves with, no type of resistance in their lives, and with their ability to create anything they wanted, it's of course logical to want to aspire for perfection.
It's kinda funny how many things had to happen in order for them to go for a different route (Hermes, Venat, time travel shenanigans etc.), it was honestly one big fluke in the end.
Well said! :D
hell yeah brother. thank you for all you do for the ffxiv literacy group
Thanks! Likewise, I'm appreciative of the fact that there are people with the interest to listen to these topics, even if I take a moment to explain my thoughts!
To call her Venat is because the WoL can totally understand and relate to her choices, it is an expression of love at the end. "I do not see you as a summoned monster:. Otherwise, WoL is still blaming or questioning her for all the suffering in all universes.
Now on part 2B: This is an interesting one since I see a lot of people miss the small things in the sundering scene for the sake of wanting a spectacle instead. When the WoL tells Venat and the rest his story so far, Venat does not understand why she would make the decision to sunder the world. It's such an action she sees as out of character. Then later when the WoL and Venat are alone waiting for the ancient who saw the Meteion. Venat talks about everything she experience and how much love she has for the world and how going on adventures had opened her eyes to the potential that mankind had. She loved the skies, the land, the sea and the people in them. Now the scene that plays and Venat watches as the Ancients are attempting to sacrifice lives that were not theirs to bring back the dead, Venat comes to a realization. She loves Etherys. She loves the skies, she loves the seas, she loves the land and she loves the people in it. To protect these things that are vulnerable to the Ancients, she will have to keep the ancients from desiring the paradise they lost. The only way to do that is to sunder their existence to keep them trying to enact another sacrifice. For should they remember, as emet selch told the scions about sacrificing more lives. The 3 Ascians are living proof that the Ancients desire for their paradise comes at the cost of everyone else. So even though Venat does make the decision she does, it is a harsh decision that is not out of character.
Your first sentence is interesting since I actually haven't heard people complain about the lack of spectacle. Maybe it's just a huge coincidence? Or a result of me being basically a hermit (I avoid the internet a lot, dont watch trailers etc etc lol)
When I was talking about it I thought it would have been a hot take. I guess its reaffirming to hear plenty of other people had that thought.
I'm also glad you brought up the point about Venat not understanding why she sundered the world. I too wanted to emphasize that, though its in the earlier part where I gush about the sundering scene.
And YES! Venat seeing the true potential of mankind is... well, I kind of see it as a wholesome message. Thro her character, the game is basically saying humanity is good enough as it is, that it doesn't require perfection and is strong enough to overcome nihilism. It's such an awesome counter to all the media that basically embody the "we live in a society" meme. I love it!
This is deffo one of the things I want to delve further into in the Hermes video (because theres overlap between the 3 major ancients, I didn't play all my cards in this video, even stuff that relates to Venat heheh...)
@@imacuttlefish6832 Which is funny because sundering due to dynamis is basically eugenics. Venat decided unilaterally that the Ancients were biologically inferior and destroyed them to produce a 'stronger' (by her definition) race of people. What you see as wholesome I see as grotesque.
@@frademantle Haha we've really come full circle. First it was the eugenics argument in Shadowbringers in regards to Emet and the ancients. Now it's the same argument, just in reverse: Venat and the sundered.
Ima not say whether I agree or disagree with the take, just want to mention that observation cos I find it pre amusing
@@imacuttlefish6832 It's true in both cases though. They simply disagree on who the "better" people are.
Was the story good? Yes. was it worth it? Fuck yeah!
Here's something to think about for time travel and the way the story is written in ffxiv.
Time Travel is usually themed about a person's actions being predetermined. No matter what you do, you'll always do it. Then, there is the concept of the universe suffering an eternal freeze where nothing you do matters in the end. Both of these tropes play with the idea of you losing yourself or self-worth, autonomy. At the same time, ffxiv enforces the idea that regardless of what circumstances you are in, to appreciate what you have. Sometimes, it's the small things that matter. Then you have Hydaelyn talking to the WoL directly since 2 expansions to tell him he is free to decide what he wants to decide. On one end, it is "no" choices because of predetermination. The other end, your choices don't matter in the great cosmos. In the middle of these themes is the WoL making their own choices, regardless of what anyone else has to say, to try to make a better future. To be hope and potential for others. It is a story that even if your life is predetermined or your choices don't matter in the end. To be happy and enjoy your own small things in life.
So uhhhhhh... i have something *very* similar in my preliminary notes for the Hermes script. Because there's a concept quite similar to this that I find interesting which I'm eager to bring up.
Oh, don't mistake this as me complaining. Quite the opposite. It's great to see similar interests from viewers!!
Thank you for this broad analysis. Maybe Venat not returning to the Aetherial sea should be seen as good. She may have gained the spiritual understanding necessary and is now liberated from continuous death and rebirth.
Which is a bit funny cos that's exactly what Amon wanted haha
I just can't bring myself to be satisfied with Venat's soul being lost. Out of the three who judged mankind, Venat, Hades, and Hermes, she was the one who suffered the most - 12,000+ years of solitude, feeling the misery and pain of all those who lived and died. Her choice was made with love for mankind, but judging her kind unfit to endure both the song of oblivion and the same doom that claimed other worlds. Hades made his choice out of love for his own kind, but judging sundered mankind unfit, while also being ignorant of the true threat. Hermes made his choice suspecting his own kind to be unfit and through despair and resignation for the fate of all life. All of them had their own justification, yet Venat is the one who suffered the most and had nothing but oblivion at the end. Both Hades and Hermes's souls endure. We even get to wish Hermes/amon a better next life - but the one who protected us and gave us the means to save ourselves and all of creation is utterly gone...
I just can't see it as anything but a heartbreaking injustice.
Aye, regardless of one's stance on the character, getting full deleted, soul and all, is such a brutal fate.
Brilliant video - cheers
Glad to see another video. Today is going to be a good day
Enjoy!! :D
so much said here probably comes down to Square Enix trimming the budget, anticipating their next bomb will be a hit, and disregarding their only game that makes more money than is put into it. I mean, this is a company so bad at making video games that they have to close down their mobile gacha games.
No, just no. That's like asking if the germans in 2.WW were justified. And Venat is much, MUCH worse in absolute every regard.
I wondered if, in a way, Venat actually created the WoL. She remembered us from the past when she first saw us in the future and gave us the echo to help us along. Moving us along on the path to the point where we would eventually meet up with her in past and set the whole thing in motion. Were we guided every step of the way to the conclusion? Was it ever our choice? 🤔 She wouldn't have know all the details of our journey, but she sensed herself in us when we visited the past and Hydalyn version remembered that and made it so. And because we are Azem, our spirit was pulled toward it?
The rejoinings would have had to have happened in the same way we described to her in order for us to be born and experience the life we experienced. So yes, all her choices came down to recreating the WoL including letting the Ascians go to do the rejoinings and letting the First fall to light so that G'raha would have to go back in time to save us, thus time travel would be invented. As a closed loop, everything that happened was predetermined.
It's a classic instance of a bootstrap paradox, wherein a thing exists purely as a result of time travel. For me, this "thing" would be Hydaelyn, but one could also make arguments for the Warrior of Light being the result of it, or heck, even the Final Days themselves.
Basically if you ask the question of "who came up with the idea to create Hydaelyn". The WoL mentioned it to Venat in Elpis, which informed Venat's decision to go through with that plan, but the WoL couldn't have come up with it, as they only knew about it because Hydaelyn existed in the present. So where did that idea come from? That's basically the paradox. The answer is, that idea never existed. It simply was.
Here you could just switch Hydaelyn with the Warrior of Light and make basically the same claim about them being a paradox and never existing.
52:34 I love your retelling of the sundering in that level 87 cutscene. You should make a video just with that idea and forward it to the devs to see if they can make those changes xD
Hahah I am glad you liked my little alternate version/fanfic thingy! :D
Yeah, I wanted to be a bit careful when making this bit, as I didn't wanna come across as some sort of an armchair developer, thinking I could've done better than the writers/devs themselves. Seeing as I'm no professional writer or anything of that nature, just a bloke who enjoys talking about video game stories.
Hence I framed it more as a "ok, here's one theoretical scenario they could've taken, to illustrate the potential behind an expanded Sundering scene".
Great video, great analysis.
Btw. do you know why Hades and Lahabrea were able to avoid the sundering?
Soz for the delayed response. In essence, Hydaelyn basically gambled that with Emet-Selch's talent, he might spot a "weakness/flaw" in the attack, which he did, and escaped to the rift in time with Lahabrea, who happened to be with him at the time.
For the source, it's something they answered in a Q&A shortly after Endwalker's release:
czcams.com/video/N2TWmsce_eg/video.html
@@imacuttlefish6832 Great, thank you!
At 41:15 you bring up one guy having the power to nuke the entire world. This actually happened to the extent one man was forced to make a choice that would have caused nuclear war between the USSR and the USA. His name was Stanislav Petrov.
Ooh, a fellow fan of history! That's a good catch!!
i love all your analysis vids man, now i finished EW, i can explore the lore more! Ty.
This was a great video, thank you for giving a nuanced take on the character in a sea of very polarizing opinions.
To give my own two cents, I've always held fast to the notion that in essence, Venat and Emet-selch are two sides of the same coin. They both believed that the ways of life they adhered to were the proper and correct ways to live, and in the end were unwilling to compromise alternatives to a very clear fault. Where I tend to take Emet's side in the debate of justifications is that, not counting Hermes, Venat is the initial aggressor here. Being the only one to retain memory, she was the one who would decide how the Final Days would be dealt with, and she chose to actually adhere to Hermes's antics. Emet-selch resorted to the things he did after everything he knew and loved was obliterated before his eyes, and he still (genuinely, according to the devs) allowed himself to believe in the Sundered's potential, time after time, but was let down by the aggression and frailty he perceived in them. He decided what he did was best after seeing humanity at it's very worst, through millennia of isolation, loneliness and trauma. So while of course the Rejoinings are visceral, terrible acts, its far more understandable that Emet would get to the point he did. Venat, conversely, came to her conclusion after the Ancients, stumbling in the dark as to the true nature of what was even happening, didn't respond favorably to her words after the apocalypse she KNEW was coming arrived (of course, that's setting aside the numerous Ancients who did join her, but I suppose those were the 'good' ones, eh?). Her reasons come off as far more one-note and flimsy than her opposition, and it seems that every new piece of information we learn about this time only casts further doubt upon her choices during the Final Days.
For example, there was that bit in one of the Live Letters after Endwalker, that the reason the Unsundered escaped the Sundering was because Venat specifically chose to spare them from it, knowing what they would do. So either she is a slave to causality in the boring way of lacking agency that you described here, is someone too afraid to make any changes to the script she was given, or she is directly complicit in every single Rejoining, because having the Warrior of Light be 8 times rejoined suited her needs. That one bit of information essentially made the Ascians her controlled opposition and, at least for me, made the writing surrounding her character too tainted to appreciate the narrative's tendency to see her as unequivocally good.
It really is a shame, because I wanted to like Venat, and her presence in the story, but it seems to me the devs were, ironically, unwilling to compromise with her character, and wanted to blanket specifically her actions as positively as they could. I would have found a more grey portrayal of her character far more fulfilling and much less dissonant. The kind of treatment she got makes sense with your theory as to dynamis's unpopular conception.
12 Ancients joined her. 75% of the world's population was in Zodiark at that point and it took her and 12 homies to end all life. She was right in that her species wouldn't have made it. If one badly worded question from a depressed guy or a woman and her 12 closest friends can end the world, then it's just a matter of time before someone succeeds. But what all the Ancients fail miserably at is consent. None of them lay out what's going on and let people decide for themselves what the best course of action would be. They all go straight to Plan: Genocide. The Ancients had the right to die in bliss if that's what they'd chosen to do, and she took that from them.
Another on the topic of tropes, this case with Time Travel and Villain. I never saw tropes as good or bad, just a tool for telling a story. Any trope, if used in the most general term, can devalue a story. i.e. The Lord of the Rings movie is just a story about a mismatch set of adventures. Said this way, you'd assume that the LotR trilogy was badly written, when it is not so. So time travel in ffxiv was used as more than just simply a plot device. There are lots of things we learned because of it. Ancients were "perfect" in their eyes alone, ignoring what they do to others for the sake of the star. Venat/Hydaelyn was an adventurer and a mother like figure, so well suited to the role she would play in the future. Hermes exposed how very little anyone cared for the creations they made. Emet Selch personality was not a quirk of his long 10K years of duty. He was always cheeky from which he used to cope with his loneliness. If given the chance and circumstances were different, would we of been close friends with these ancient friends? Answer is yes, something I'm sure people thought about during all of Shadowbringers. Time Travel was a tool used to explore the ancients, not simply a tool to move the plot forward with no substance. If you want to say all Time Travel does is move the plot forward with no substance, then you have to make an argument on why The Terminator and Back to the Future are bad movies because they include time travel as well
Now speaking of The Terminator, he is a good example of why Emet Selch is the villain of Shadowbringers. An antagonist is simply a broad term used for an opposing force to the protagonist. If we go deeper to try to figure out what part the antagonist fits in the story, we can decide if he is a villain. Now villain doesn't mean mustache twirling 2D bad guy. All it means is that they are normally a person opposing the hero, but do deeds we would consider evil. In emet selch case, he did do a lot of evil acts. Not only destroying worlds but using an unborn child as a tool to push the calamity. These are villainous acts, we can still sympathize with Emet on why he did these things but that doesn't mean his acts were not evil. We can sympathize with villains, it's not a binary choice to automatically hate a villain no matter what. So what does this have to do with The Terminator? The Terminator is the villain of the first movie, no doubt about it. But, he is a tool following a program. He does very evil actions and there are no limits he would not push. But there is no joy in what he does, no pleasure, no hatred, no sadness, his actions are never based on emotions. He is a tool to kill Sarah Connors and either shut-down after or return or any other option after he kills her. He is villainous and does evil things, but we cannot easily classify him as mustache twirling villain because there are no emotions on what he does. He is almost just a force of nature. A villainous force of nature. All this to say that "villain" encompasses many things and not just 2D personality bad guy. Antagonist encompasses things that oppose the antagonists. The movie Twister antagonist is the tornado, but the tornado isn't a villain, not a person, but simply a force of nature for the protagonists to over-come.
Elpis is basically Fanservice and a potential "what if scenario + time travel" done right, and not only that it served to fully explore them, something a lot of people had on their mind. For me it was the same with the allag empire, glad we got to atleast explore the Ancients in some fashion. Because very rarely if at all we visit these hyped places/cultures/empires on their cultural peak, always when the dust has long settled. Elpis is FFXIV's best imho, not only of the implications but the culmination of everything.
having a fight playout in a supposedly sad and heavy cutscene would have thrown me off and will sort of ruin my immersion to the scene.
I can see why that would be a concern, but I personally disagree. I don't think it needs to be a choice between the two, you can absolute have both. I would actually point to the Bahamut fight in XVI as a shining example of how combining spectacle with character moments and emotion can work brilliantly.
Also, admittedly I did not mention this in the video, rather it was one of the comments. But someone suggested that, instead of a cutscene of the two primals fighting, we could even control Hydaelyn herself. I think that would make it even better. I think such an interactive element would've elevated that moment even more.
Idealistically I think I would be hard pressed to not take venats side. In the events of elpis, Here you have a person from the future, dropping the tea that the world is sundered and life goes on. They are the most idealistic person, well traveled and loves life just like you.
The fact that ancients by and large focus on the betterment of the star, and the nourishment/life it brings forth. I think the idea of sacrificing everything to save the people selfishly, is not a thing they would normally choose. They’re a race of people that didn’t know desperation/suffering to that extent and they were not thinking straight. At least for the second summoning of zodiark; it’s probably the reason why or the symptom of the convocations establishment.
And finally there is hope, since a very attractive WoL came from the future , so she’d know her decision would not end life or the longevity of the star.
Without knowing about the existence of Meteion, the idea of not trying to save the people in Zodiark seems nonsensical. How do they know they need to "get gud" at suffering? Trading plants and animals for the immortal souls of our loved ones wouldn't even be up for debate on Earth. We'd be jamming Zodiark full of cows so fast it wouldn't even be funny. She knew they'd reject her suggestion because it makes no sense. It's like seeing your loved one flailing in the ocean and being told you need to learn to let go and move forward as you're reaching for a life raft. At the end of the day, she deemed her people weak, she met the WoL and like Athena thought she could do better, so that's what she did. It was a decision made from sheer hubris.
I love that the Ancients as consistently bad at making meaningful decisions. All of them would literally stew in a weird thought process, go about it in secret, and then spring it on everybody. Truly, their society was basically perfect only because it is culturally ingrained never to stand out and to always focus on the star. And that is the point, but at this point I wonder if any of the Ancients were actually good or if they just think so or prefer to think of themselves as such.
@@iantaakalla8180 I wouldn't judge all of Ancient society off the handful of ones we met. For all you know we could have only met their Varises and Thordans.
Naa definitely not, vast majority of ancients we met were quite compassionate people. But the ancients' society was absolutely more prone to having these individuals with their extreme "this will solve everything" solutions. One is their unfamiliarity with suffering, yes. But I think a much more concrete factor is that even a single ancient has a crazy amount of power. Just thinking of the fact that a mere 14 people could summon an entity that was capable of sundering the entire star into multiple fragments is, quite frankly, horrifying.
I also think their extreme collectivist mentality plays into this potential danger. We see it in both instances of summoning (Zodiark and Hydaelyn). The people are so commited to a cause, that once they rally behind an authority, whether that be the Convocation or a person, like Venat, they are so steadfast on pulling the trigger on the whole sacrifice thing. Combined with how insanely powerful an ancient's soul is and how much it can fuel a summoning, and we can easily see the kind of recipe for disaster when it comes to summoning.
Mate.. you need a lot more of Abo's.. great vid!
I seem to be slowly getting there haha. Thanks, it means a lot!
Can't deny that the cinematic aspect of the sundering was underwhelming, even the fight against Zodiark's husk if I've to be honest.
You keep seing them in frescoes and tales over the MSQ like they were the pinacle of creation and their clash was of cataclysmic proportions, yet... nothing to show for it.
Especially today when we can see the titanic breach between Tural and Xak'Tural, supposedly being the result of the sundering, you can only wonder how that final blow went.
I have some hope that they will be able to show it via an Ultimate raid that fuses Hydaelyn and Zodiark encounters, a bit like DSR.
Ima ignore the DT part of the comment as I have not played it yet. But aye, this whole thing could definitely be retconned in some way. Having it shown in ultimates would definitely be ambitious.
But really, there could be a lot of excuses the writers could come up with to show another pov of the sundering, in which we could see a more concrete portrayal of events (and therefore the actual showdown between the two most powerful and eldest of primals).
Venat is a mistranslation if Venasu. Which could translate to Venath or Venus. Venus eventually gets you to Lucifer bringer of light who also launched a rebellion
Ah, if you are interested in more on this topic: in the screenshots at around 1:33:40, I have more detail about it.
(I leave some segments as text/screenshots because I don't feel they are relevant enough to eat into video length, so understandably they can be missed if you watched with audio only)
Basically the short answer is: it's not a mistranslation, as it's not meant to be Venus. It's simply meant to reference Venat from XII, a member of an ancient race that rebelled against their kind.
I didn't explore the Venus/Lucifer connection (in the voiceover, anyhow), because I think the parallels there are a lot stronger with XII's Venat, less so with XIV's Venat. But that's just my opinion. Rarely is there a single interpretations to these things so yours is of course just as valid. And it is true that the rebellion aspect is there.
As a side note: there is a character in XVI that has exactly this sort of "rebelling against God" symbolism all over them, so I deffo will gush about it when I get around to talking about that game hahah
@@imacuttlefish6832should add that her name isnt venasu.(ヴィーナス) Its venesu.(ヴィーネス) So not even the same spelling or any of the alternate katakana spellings of Venus. It could still originate from venus... (as in XIIs venat is a reference, but writing the name slightly different to not be too on the nose of potential story building)
But people should atleast google and see if ppl are using her correct JP name. (Alot of ppl mistranslate her romaji spelling to "venasu", either because of oversight, it fit the theory better or not knowing katakana)
@@TheDwagonHD Ah gotcha, good to know, thanks!
I know I'm doubling comments, but God after listening to your description of the battle between Zodiark and Hydaelyn, a familiar desire hits me. I wish ferverantly that maybe some time in the distant future, like when ff14 has truly ended, that they would do a rpg remake of the games. Fix the original game and make a single player rpg out of it, and do each of the expansions as their own thing. With high quality graphics, more voiced cutscenes, and maybe a bit firmer of a WoL, whether it be derplander or one warrior for each race that you can choose at the very beginning.
Just so that we can see high fedelity Hydaelyn vs Zodiark, and a few more unique renderings.
Also, while I understand your desire to see the encounter, think about something. Yoshi P and his team struggled to get the game out in time. I think that, if you gave them longer, they may have. But I just think Endwalker was supremely ambitious already.
On your last point, that's actually my single biggest criticism about Endwalker. It was way too ambitious, which I think hurt the story more than it helped.
(side note: I do briefly cover this topic in the video - it's towards the end of the segment discussing the sundering scene, if you are interested!)
The Elpis segment is a prime example of this. It's such a huge part of the story, so much character stuff going on there, setting up the main conflict, huge lore revelations, getting to explore the ancient world.... and it's like 2-3 levels in the story. And so they have to condense all of that. So yes, it's no wonder they couldn't give us a proper fight between the two.
While I understand their desire to finish the story and move on to the next big saga (it can deffo be exhausting to work on the same storyline for nearly a decade), I still find that as far as the quality of the story is concerned, it would have benefitted from two more expansions, rather than one (as was their original plan).
I tried clearing Eidelyn with Trust but the scions were totally incapable of dealing with the moving waves of light and got wiped.
They would wait for the very last moment to start dodging, but at that point the path through them would be too tight and they ate it all.
I played a tank but couldn't finish alone, so I did it with other players.
I'ts cool that they *tried* , but if you can't even beat the boss because the AI sabotages you that defeats the purpose...
I don't *trust* them anymore.
Ah hahah that's funny cos I mention this same thing happening to someone else in one of the comments.
Sucks that it happened to you and ruin the fight, though. Really unlucky, given how rarely I've heard of this bug happening.
If I had to hazard a guess, it might have to do with positioning of the boss at the time the mechanic happens, which then breaks the AI in like these rare scenarios, for whatever reason.
i remember someone on twitter pointed out that y'shtola was the best at dodging the mechanics because at one point in battle she says "i can see the aetherflow" or something like that so i followed her when i did the hydaelyn battle and managed to survive lol
I kinda didnt have the problem with it. In fact, doing it with NPC was the best run I had as a DRG. Every other time I do it with players it always go horribly wrong
This is a good video! I agree entirely with the Sundering Scene being a massive waste of potential and your version covers a lot of what I wish we'd gotten. Which actually might have helped me personally like Venat more if we saw her interact with her followers and how hard she'd tried to get the Convocation and other survivors to listen to her and look for other solutions.
I don't think Venat's a fundamentally bad person or character, but my problem with her was the narrative seemed uninterested in letting her morality and "correctness" be complicated. I felt like what the character of Venat was saying (that she wasn't a hero and the Sundering a cruel action to her people and us) and what the narrative was saying (the Scions and framing implying we're meant to feel warmth and gratitude towards her) were two different things, and that would have been fine for me if those complex emotions were acknowledged anywhere in the MSQ during her arc and not in a side quest after the whole expansion ended.
Glad you enjoyed my lil fanfic!! hahah
I share much the same view about Venat as you. It definitely makes sense they took this route, the narrative heavily relies on us having that kind of an emotional buy-in, and to side with Venat. As obviously otherwise the whole thing sorta falls apart.
But yeah, should've been fleshed out more. I think I mention it in the video, but it's quite astounding how they had to cram all of Venat's character into that very short Elpis segment. A segment that had tons of other things going on too.
So while I do consider it impressive they managed to get most of us to like her in that short of a time span, it's also a bit telling of Endwalker's general ambition and trying to squeeze so much into that one story.
I mean, if we look at characters like Estinien or G'raha Tia, they had basically an entire expansion dedicated to exploring their character. But an important character like Venat basically gets 2 levels in the MSQ in an already incredibly condensed 2 levels.
good video. Hit the two buttons.
i dont know if you ever thought of it or are interested but wouldnt it be interesting to make a indepth video of the wol and there role in the game and there relationships with the scions and people around them
oh like a character analysis of the WoL? That sounds hella fun, thanks for the good shout!
1:06:15 I feel it is also that this would be incredibly long cutscene full of redundant information in the world that we have 2 expansions squished into one and I could've possibly overpowered the rest of the expansion. And even though seing Heidi and Zodiark clash would be amazing the cutscene being so short and hitting out of nowhere may have ultimately worked better as the gut punch that writing team has intended, as it's focus is to convey the rapidly increasing despair rather than exposition, the feeling is dropped on us suddenly, just how it was dropped on the Ancients themselves.
You just said the magic words "2 expansions squished into one". That is one of my core issues with Endwalker. I felt it shud've been 2 expansions, as the first draft intended. In that context, it is true that fitting this in somewhere would've been technical. Though not impossible, I don't think.
The abruptness does add to the scene, though I believe it could've remained fast-paced even with the fight included.
@@imacuttlefish6832 all that, on top of the fact that Anima is my personal favorite, I was super excited to its XIV appearance and I'm still sad it just landed as a dungeon boss.
They did the best with the deal they had to work with, but it surely could've been better, if they had more time for that arc we couldve even had a duty as Venat, actually experiencing the sundering.
@@noodletrashcanOh my goodness, you have no idea how happy it makes me to see someone make that comment. I always felt Anima being a dungeon boss and basically just a distraction before Zodiark, is one of the biggest L's of Endwalker,
Not only is it a shame to see one of the coolest summons in the series being wasted like that, but even ignoring the fanservice aspect, Anima itself in FFXIV was setup as a big threat, and the way we resolve it does absolutely not live up to that at all.
I mean, it's quite telling that even Tritoch in Dawntrail had a much better execution, despite being way more of a distraction than Anima was. Such a waste.
1:08:23 Hmmm.... Agree to disagree. *pats Raha* 😆😸Seriously though, thanks for the time and effort you spent on this! Your rendition of the Final Days scenes and the Hydaelyn/Zodiark fight is perfect. We were *so* robbed. The Omega/Shinryu fight and Nidhogg/Hraesvelgr fights were so epic and enjoyable to watch. It was disappointing we didn't get even a glimpse of THE single most important fight in all of time. Beyond that, I was very confused when I went through the MSQ and got to that scene like... Emet-Selch *literally* just told me how this went down... this is. This is an entirely new story? Have I stepped into some alternate reality? It was very moving but it really did take me a long, long time to understand it.
I appreciate it!!
Alternate reality... hahah, that's one way to describe this situation
I ultimately condone and hate Venat/Hydaelyn for her actions. Only because the story had to conclude in this expansion was why she ultimately was "right".
That said well done on explaining your perspective I absolutely disagree with it but you make a better case than any "Mommy" Venat Simps.
This.
honestly, i wanted to be to go Kreia on her and say "you disappointed me utterly, and complately"... giving her all those information to change so much yet she doing all those... i know what she is been through was hard, watching all the suffering she created, but second hand suffering of a freaking god is meaningless as rich's tears for the poor. i wanted to punish her by sundering her; so she could go and do all those imperfect human atrocities in her diluted pieces, and be victim of those atrocities, suffer disease, lost actualy loved ones... go be yotsuyu in couple of her lives, be asahi in another, a bandit who kills children in another, a child that dies to hunger in another... and just LIVE the 'tough life' she so much puts on pedestal... make her go through that few thousand years, re-merge her shards and tell her "now that you understand, tell me, was your tears for witnessing them really measures? was suffering and struggling without actualy having strenght of a goddess, was fun and fulfilling as you think it was?"
hate is an apt word for what i feel about her...
I remember read in an interview that after the core team set the main plot for EW, Ishikawa rewrite it. I assume she comes up with Dynamis at this point
And I think it worked fine. But maybe because I am a scientific nerd. The parallel is Dark Matter/Energy, IRL we dont know much about that. Some theories point in very different directions, like Heat Death or Big Crunch for example
yh theres the 68.3% reference w/ it too
I do recall there being a sort of a rewriting, yes.
41:10
There is one person to nuke the entire World.
Arguably even more than 2..
Who is the Azem after Venat? The one still missing in action?
Thank you for talking about her, the mother to our Journey. I can't say I understood her well before this video, but there's things I did understand. There's something about killing a character like her off, but at the same time giving us a back door to adventure with her in the "past", I guess for us to truly leave her and her blessings behind... would we still be the Warrior of Light and Dark?
Thanks again for the vid.
Well it's safe to say we'd still be her brave little spark haha
Funny thing is the people who are arguing against what she did would conversely be against us never having existed. And every world with effectively endless lifespans did ultimately end themselves even without the song of oblivion, when would that have happened to Etheirys had she left it alone?
Well I suppose the argument there would be that they rather have been whole beings (ancients) rather than sundered plebs.
As for Etheirys turning up like the rest, aye, the story does make it quite clear that's what would've happened. Of course, as mentioned in the video, there's a lot of arguing about the specific way the writers went about it, but yea
Parallel timelines have already been established, so the WoL attempting to change the future would have split the timeline, not wiped it out in a paradox. We wouldn't have existed in the timeline we changed, but the sundered would still exist in the timeline we came from. We might struggle to get back to our own timeline if we'd changed things, but our return was pretty much handwaved anyway.
Any number of things could have happened if Venat had chosen a different path. They could have lost to Meteion leaving all souls in the universe in a pain-free afterlife until the heat death of the universe after which new universes would come into being and life would continue. Or they could have defeated Meteion and either changed culturally extending their existence or stagnated as Hermes had feared, ending their existence and once again, new life would spring up as that's how the cycle of life works.
*Everything* ends. The sundered will one day end also. But new things spring up from those endings. Venat didn't save anything or anyone. She changed her people into beings she deemed tougher. We will still end, just like every other species in the universe. The only difference is we'll suffer more in the meantime because our maker believed suffering built character.
If I was to add in my own 2 cents in your part 1d section. Because of the way the story of the Arc was written, Venat did everything in her power to stop the release of Zodiark for millennium but failed every time. The giant crystal from Master Matoya is a crystal that belonged to a WoL in the past. This means she put a lot of her energy to past heroes, but they failed to stop calamities from happening. So the energy drain on her wasn't just because of the Calamities but the power she put into past heroes who failed again and again to stop calamities. Next is the Dragonsong music when fighting Nithogg. The song was originally assumed that Hydaelyn did not know why people would cause suffering to themselves when peace was at hand. Now with how the story played out, Venat is lamenting another failure to bring peace to the world when she would of course assumed she was getting closer to stopping the Final Days.
That's a pre astute observation, I hadn't rly thought about that. I'm about to replay HW so this'll be a nice dot to connect when I get there. That does explain why some of those older crystals had so much power, such as Tenzen's which was able to trap Koryu inside it.
It does bring up an interesting topic. Did she try to empower the crystals harder in the previous eras, to stop the calamities as you say, or is it rather that the crystals became weaker as a by-product of Hydaelyn herself becoming weaker over the millennia?
If it's the former, that could actually give a more concrete explanation as to how exactly she did get weaker (the explanation given in-game by her on the boat, she simply says that as Zodiark grew more powerful, she grew weaker. It's never rly elaborated on why that is, but if I had to hazard a guess, maybe it's something to do with her power over the lifestream diminishing as Zodiark's influence grew greater?)
I kinda wished I had maybe explored this a bit more in the video but it's an interesting topic cos from a purely logical perspective, she shouldn't have much reason to lift a finger to prevent the calamities (until the First, anyway), since she knows that the "correct" WoL doesn't go on their journey until after x7 had happened. But that would also completely ignore the human element. She may have still wanted to prevent all those people from dying, even if it was an uphill battle, and ironically a hindrance to her end goal, because of course it would be painful to watch, esp knowing u are responsible for all of it.
So in a vain hope kind of way, she was doing her best to prevent the calamities in whatever way she could, simply because it's the altruistic thing to do in that situation. Plus her belief of nothing being impossible.
On Dragonsong. I was debating if I wanted to bring up other songs besides Answers that Venat's story can be read from retroactively. However, I think it's mainly just Answers, maybe Tomorrow and Tomorrow as well. But Dragonsong and Revolutions I find a bit too difficult to justify the connection. It's too much of a leap for me.
This is cos I personally never saw Dragonsong from Hydaelyn's perspective. To me, the bit about not understanding why mankind would create a circle that results in their pointless deaths, was about the dragons not understanding mankind rather than Hydaelyn not understanding them.
Of course, lyrics can have so many different interpretations so I'm not tryna argue which way is right, just providing my own perspective. If anything, I think it's awesome the song lined up so nicely with your previous interpretation. It was much the same for me with Answers haha
@@imacuttlefish6832 As far as I am aware, I could be wrong, it is an open secret that Hydaelyn is singing 4 songs. Dragonsong being one of them. There are lyrics in there that gave me this idea. "Tell me why create a circle none can break?
Why must you let go, the life you were bestowed?
This I fear I'll never know
Never know"
If you take out the context of Endwalker, these lyrics comes off as Hydaelyn being, as you said before, this God who keeps mortals are arms length. Considering what we know now of Venat, those lines change from an other wordly God, to someone who tried but ultimately failed to keep a lasting peace.
She wouldn't have had to deal with rejoinings/calamities at all had she not purposefully spared Emet. Yoshi-P said that her maintaining the time loop is a valid interpretation and I'd argue it's the only one that makes sense since she's shown repeatedly to either be unable or unwilling to save the shards. Given Ardbert, one of said WoLs, was instrumental in bringing about the Flood of Light it's difficult to argue it wasn't by design.
Venat probally kept her memories due to the adpect of light imparting stadis and stability
1:36:40 FIIIIIINALY SOMEBODY ELSE MADE THE CONNECTION TO LOOK, LEARN, AND REMEMBER!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAA I LOVE YOU!
Hahah it's funny cos Omega has a similar 3 verb line too: "Fight. Win. Evolve".
Soo... think, learn and evolve ??
@@imacuttlefish6832 My mind just exploded. Holy shit LOL
AFTER UNSUBBING OR GRINDING BOZJA FOR A MONTH U RITE
It was a good time! Getting clapped by Dabog (Zadnor edition) multiple times, banging out a few relics, completing Delubrum Savage with my FC. I look forward to more such content in Dawntrail.
I think you misunderstand that the meaning of villain and antagonist while often are synonymous, they are technically not the same. You can be a villainous person and not be antagonist to a protagonist and in fact be an ally.
To me emet selch falls more into antihero than being a villain. Hes an antagonist yes but not a villain.
The way I look at the whole thing is this-no matter how anyone tries to frame it, wholesale genocide is not an answer. Ergo, Venat is unquestionably in the wrong. The argument can be made that the Ascians and the methods they employed were no better, and looking at it relatively, that's true. But you have to see this from the full scope. The Amaurotines that sacrificed themselves to Zodiark, did so willingly under the premise of revival. All to save countless others and the star. Was this a permanent solution to an underlying problem? No.
But, Venat ultimately deprived the Amaurotines of any chance to really research and harness the use of dynamis. To say she was correct in her choice, you would have to say the Ascians (post Sundering) were also justified. Fact is, she should've never gotten the chance to do something so infantile as to throw a childish tantrum that cost the lives of billions across time. To me she's worse than Hermes.
Tldr?
L take, everyone was getting sacrificed anyway. One was going to continue life in a way that involved a semblance of freedom and free will. The other had people be slaves to a primal and sacrifice themselves (which is ultimately the entire antithesis of the Ancient way of life, choosing when to die) over and over and over....potentially. Because it sounds like 75% of the ancients were basically in zodiark at that point, iirc, so most of them weren't coming back it turns out. Zodiark was not keeping up that end of the bargain. Venat made a difficult decision that ultimately broke that horrid cycle, at the cost of people who were not going to continue living anyway.
My character called her Hydaelyn not out of respect, but for a personal reason. Hydaelyn was the Mothercrystal, the mother of our world who cared for us. My character's backstory is that he was an orphan. For him, Hydaelyn was the closest thing he had to a mother. Thanking her by the name Hydaelyn was him thanking her for showing him the love of a parent he would have never had otherwise.
Ohh, so calling her by her actual name would've kinda been like, how it feels weird to call your mother/father by their real names. That's a cool way of looking at it!
if you think about it. in a sense the ancients ARE gods.
how did they escape the sundering, for those who didn't watch the Q&A?
The answer is basically that Lahabrea and Elidibus happened to be hanging out with Emet at the time, and Emet's mastery over the lifestream allowed them to escape into the rift and escape the sundering.
Venat basically knew Emet would have to survive so she was pre much just hoping Emet would find a way to avoid it, and they seem to sorta imply that she deliberately allowed some kind of a loophole in the attack for Emet...?
Here's the full question and response (timestamped):
czcams.com/video/N2TWmsce_eg/video.html
Really great video. Also when you talked about how Emet was stuck in the past and Venat chose the future there was something that I find ironic. Emet, by choosing to stay in the past was static and stagnating which is one of the aspects of the light ( while using magic thats closer to darkness ), while Venat chose to change the world and move forward which is more fitting for darkness ( while using magic thats closer to the light ). Both choose to act in a way that is more tied to the element they are opposed to, which is quite interesting and probably also a hint towards the greyness of their characters.
And with the time travel. Well I can understand people being annoyed at using time travel as a story device. Its quite hard to do it without messing it up. Also it was not the first time FFXIV did time travel stuff. In the Alexander Raid we had stable time loops stacked onto other stable time loops. In Shadowbringers G'Raha Tias actions did such a big change that he created a new timeline. ( His original timeline still exists ), by nearly getting us killed in the fight against Elidibus and thus delaying the use of Black Rose enough for Zenos to kill Varys ( and from how the whole scene went, I'm pretty sure that, without interference we would have slapped Elidibus so hard he would wish to be sundered. ). And Now on Endwalker, we go back to what seems to be another closed time loop. But I think that our appearence didn't really matter at all when it comes to the final days and the sundering. Meteion still would have gone crazy and Hermes would still have done the same things he did to ensure Meteion could get away. Because if it would be a closed time loop, than what about the one timeline where Black Rose killed nearly everyone? Still sundered but without us to go back to the past. Timetravel is really werid.
Oohh, that's a very cool observation about light/dark relating to Emet and Venat!
When we time traveled what I had hoped for was another branched timeline. I am angry [and tbh punching Venat's face in in the trial felt *good* because I was angry about how they handled it] that she did not tell people. I would have been ok with the sundering either being accidental, or her telling Emet and Hythlodaeus what they were dealing with, them failing to stop it, and the sundering happening anyway because she had no other choice. I would also have been ok if they had branched the timeline.
The sundering scene with only Venat point of view is a disservice to others members of "her" club. I would like to have seen more of waht Azem was up to, but i understand why the Devs avoided this. Anyway, loved the expansion.
Given the revelations about memories in pandamonium and the twelve's connection to hydaelyn as well as the golden hydaelyn like figure see in the anni art im not convinced hydaelyn/venat is perma dead
Serious note: yes she was. Tragically so though. Unserious note: justified or not she’s hot so I support her
Y'kno what, I respect the honesty haha
All of this is... a very non-buddhist way of looking at the Buddhist themes FFXIV's world is built on. The core idea of Buddhism is that nothing will ever stay the same and all things are dynamic. That just as seasons come and go, so do life and people both. That death and suffering is inevitable. Based on this, any attempts by those who try and control or even prevent these two are in the wrong, and by extension, who cause even MORE are in the wrong. We see this even in Dawntrail.
To conclude that death in itself is the ultimate evil is not really what the writers are going for. I don't agree that Venat is fully right or wrong but I do think she's way more in the right compared to everyone else by giving the survivors -- the continuation of the ancients especially in Buddhism death and rebirth context -- a *dignity* to choose their own life and fate.
I guess this entire video's reading is. Okay, but fundamentally doesn't account for the writers' culture background at all. Meh.
I appreciate your perspective on buddhism, and you are correct, it's not a focus on here. Thanks for the reminder, I might bring it up in some future content.
Though I'd like to say one thing. I don't focus on those themes as much, because I see those as more relevant to when talking about Endwalker and its themes as a whole, whereas this video focuses more on Venat and her perspective specifically. I am well aware of the story's portrayal about how to live is to suffer, especially given that it's quite heavyhanded with it. If I'd've gotten into the overarching themes of Endwalker, this video would've been even longer haha
FWIW, in my Shadowbringers analysis, I do cover that story's portrayal of life and death, where I talk about how I view Emet's stance re the ancients as being in the wrong. I don't take a buddhist stance there, but I'd say they I oppose him for loosely similar reasons as you describe here. And I released that video before Endwalker was even released. So I wouldn't consider this a foreign concept to me, no.
I have planned, for a while, to release a video talking about the ancients as a whole and how the story tackled them. So that may be something of interest to you, once I finally get around to it.
I never saw the sundering as genocide, and still don't
It's interesting cos seeing it as a genocide essentially does align with Emet's view, of there being a distinct difference between the ancients and the sundered people. If we were to draw that line, then yes, it's logical to conclude she commited genocide on the ancients. But it's quite clear that the game wants us to think of them not as separate but both as simply "mankind" at different points in time. Hence Venat's "hence he (mankind) shall walk"
In the end though, it's not that black and white, it's a matter of perspective for sure.
Some food for thought re the whole genocide route of thinking: since the WoL deals the deathblow on 2 entire civilisations, on the ancients by slaying Venat and on the Omicrons by defeating Omega, then does that make the WoL genocidal too? Perhaps even the most accomplished, behind the Meteia hahah
I really like Endwalkers writing and will show you what I mean when someone dismisses writing in this game by just calling anything a trope. This has to do with Miteion. Just need to remember Elpis and the finale of ffxiv when talking to Miteion the final time. The games writing makes it very clear that when we meet Meteion at the end of the game, after the boss fight, that our own memories of ffxiv story so far is what helps Meteion get over the emotional baggage she had to carry for 10k years. Meaning that the small moments of joy the WoL had in Etherys was a great motivator for her. What we also learn, through body language alone, is that Meteion never stopped looking for the light in the dark. When the WoL greets Meteion at the ending, when she was still dark, the WoL opens his soul to her to read. What is the first thing she looks for inside the WoL? Not the deaths or hatred or betrayal the WoL got. She specifically looks for anything or anyone who the WoL cherished in his/her life. Then she just takes in all that little bit of hope the WoL has and she just starts crying. The song Flow during this moment eludes that she waited a long, long time to find just a little bit of hope in the Universe and found it in the WoL. Here is how this ties in to time travel and the players choice in this without knowing it.
When the WoL goes to Elpis and gets introduced to Meteion, we are told quickly what her abilities are, ie read people through emotions. Now because of how the trope of Time Travel works, the player is quickly and easily lead to not divulge anything to do with the future. Also Meteion, in her kindness, lets the player know that she will not read the players mind as to respect their privacy. Now the reaction I saw frequently at about a 99.9% from players was to not corrupt Meteion with our dark thoughts or future. Now the thing we all forgot is that we don't just have dark thoughts, we also carried the potential of hope for a better future from what we experience in all of FFxiv. If the player/wol wasn't so focused on the big picture and Meteion wasn't so nice and respectful. Meteion would of gained the information she needed to continue the search for a World that wasn't in apocalypse and living well as Etherys did. She would of easily gotten 10k years worth of effort, the same way Venat used the WoL experience to continue moving forward. Meaning the WoL could have completely changed the future if our own fear of the trope of Time Travel didn't get in the way of helping a little girl in a single chance moment in the past.
This isn't to say the WoL is to blame, I am just pointing out that there were chances to change things but we missed it. All of this from just a few scenes from Meteion and the song "Flow". It's why it's important to not just look at what tropes are in the story but how the characters intermingle with each other to tell the story. This is to also say it follows into a theme that Endwalker was pushing, that sometimes it's the small things that matter. That small moment could of changed everything.
Once Zodiark is summoned, the sundering is a must. They can't keep sacrificing new lives to Zodiark. The question is, could she have done more BEFORE they summoned Zodiark. Could she have told someone, Elidibus maybe, that there's a depressed bird somewhere causing creation magic to go wrong. Maybe they could've found a better solution than Zodiark.
Aye, this is deffo one of the big unknowns, and there's certainly a lot of speculation there. Such as, could the ancients have been capable of "weaponising" dynamis through familiar against the depressed bird? Basically fight fire with fire.
Suppose we'll never know. Unless they decide to do some sorta crazy alternate timeline where we get a glimpse of the ancients taking a different path. But personally, after Endwalker and Rebirth, I think I've had my fill of time travel and multiverses for a while hahahah
what reshade/gshade is that? it looks really beautiful
It's one of the preset shaders from a preset pack that comes with something called "Espresso Glow". Specifically, it's the "Shadowbringers gameplay" preset, though I've modified it a bit over the years I think.
I don't kno about posting links on YT comments, but a quick google of "Espresso Glow" should result in an installer. It's basically an installer of reshade + the preset pack all at once, but if you already have reshade, it just gives you the presets, I'm pre sure.
I don't like Hydaelyn now that we know what she did. She gave up and knowingly forced her entire civilization into ten thousand years of suffering, and she specifically wanted them to suffer. That's evil and she's a terrible person for it, but try to bring that up anywhere and you'll get hounded. Venat had a very long yet undefined amount of time to convince her people to change their ways, and she'd have sway as a former Azem too. It doesn't help that the writing fell on its face during the final Hermes scene where the trio free themselves from the chains, they all very well know what's going to happen if they stay in the "building" and yet Emet and Hythlodaeous just stand and talk for a long, long time even after Emet open the door out. They just stand there and let it happen to them...sure the writers wrote themselves into a corner but they should've planned for it in the first place, not made the main gang into a buncha idiots.
Even regarding the whole sundering to use dynamis...that's not true, nothing stopped the ancients from creating an army of Meteion-like drones to combat her.
Nothing except for them not knowing about Metion save for Hermes and Venat
@29:12 the way you put it is very PG, so ill make the real message he was pointing out. "well first of all, fuck you, second, lets save the world"
I do not think she did the right thing. Her and her followers decided to go against humainity's will because they didn't like it. It was a very small few against the rest of the star's population. The start was on the verge of gaining it's souls back sacrificed to bring about Zodiark by giving the extra aether of the star to Zodiark. That was the last step and all that needed be. She caused a lot of suffering for what seemed like spite. She is no better than Hermes in this light. They both wanted to end the course humanity was on. As far as the crystal... it's original barer was Emet-selch. Azem never had the crystal. Emet-Selch made it in secred as the convocation made them before the summoning of Zodiark after Azem had left the convocation. So it would be Emet-Selch's words she is remembering... not Azem's. As for my sources of information, those would be the game itself and the encyclopedias released by square.
When she talks about the crystal's original bearer, I don't think she is referring to the one who first bore the crystal in a literal sense. If that was the case, and she was indeed talking about Emet, calling him the crystal's original creator would make much more sense.
I think "bearer" in this case simply refers to the person bearing the crystal's name, Azem. When accounting for the context of when she says the line, and the content of the quote itself, I also see it more sensible that she's talking about Azem, as I'm not sure why'd she bring up Emet there.
Also, for full clarity, I don't expect people commenting to provide sources, so please just discuss freely. I usually know which scenes people refer to, especially if they are talking about things covered in the video, so it's often not necessary. I may specifically ask for it on rare occasion, though.
As a side note: while I genuinely do appreciate wanting to provide a source, I don't think something so incredibly vague as citing 3 entire books, and a massive game spanning multiple expansions featuring thousands of lines of text, is very efficient. Generally, the more you can narrow down your source, the better. Like I said though, it's not something I expect and a YT comment isn't obviously as serious as a citation in a thesis or whatnot, so don't worry too much about it haha
Depression Beam: I'm confused by this honestly. Game made it very clear that Zodiark created a shell to protect Etherys. Dynamis also very very, very weak to Aether. To the point that the ancients saw Dynamis the same way our own scientists see "Chi/Ki". As far as I know, sundered doesn't mean dead or not possible. Just means a weaker version of a whole. The shell on Etherys just needs to be strong enough to stop Dynamis. Aether doesn't need to over-exert itself to push against Dynamis, it's the other way around. Aether just needs to be strong enough, that's all.
Since I dont remember this part from the script, I assume it was one of those text bits about why dynamis confused people.
The Zodiark aether wall protecting against the Endsinger's dynamis depression beam, the confusion there really comes from the fact that the answer to this question IS presented in the game, but it might be kind of easy to miss. It's basically the bit where Hermes says more or less what you just pointed out, that aether is a lot more thick than dynamis and thus has a harder time penetrating it. Which is why ancients can't really make use of it.
Anyway, with this knowledge, it's easy to understand why Zodiark, even at 1/14 power, might still be able to protect Etheirys. It's just kind of easy to miss, which is why I understand ppl could mix it up easily. Also, from Hermes's explanation, the takeaway for most people would be "oh, that explains why the ancients couldnt use dynamis". Then its easy to forget the whole Zodiark aspect of it. It's also kind of logical to go "why would an aetheric shroud protect against a dynamis attack?"
So we can then either blame the players for missing it or blame the devs for not making it apparent enough. Honestly, I'd sort of say both. It's normal for players to miss details, but the Elpis segment was also tasked with doing so much over such a short period.
@@kyeda This is a good point. They flat out say that the ancients can't interact with dynamis because of how dense they are. That's why we can hear Meteion and they can't. And also why Venat sundered the world. To make it so that we could interact with dynamis and therefore have power in Meteion's realm. Cause honestly, if Ancients couldn't weld dynamis, I wasn't sure what they were gonna do, because even if they made other dynamis beings to stop Meteion, those beings would fall to despair too. But you're right. Elidibus demonstrated an ability to weld dynamis beyond ours, which shouldn't have been possible. And if it was possible she destroyed the world for nothing.
Yes, she was. 👌👍
Fair enough, haha
The only thing that I have to say: turn off your color mods, everything is either too bright or too dark XD
As for the rest of the video, of course:
I suppose that developers (and writers?) had to rush some stuff. Your idea sounds good, but the video would have been even longer. Honestly For how it looks like, I have the feeling that we were going to see the end of times with Venat, that would have given time to let us see all the events that happened in the past but in the end they went with the cs explaining "relevant" events.
1:02:36 I will say that the fight was never promised or at least I don't recall the game promising such a thing. It would have been cool to see:
The great sacrifice to hold the end days.
Watch how messed up the world looked like.
The creation on Hydaelyn.
The fight between Zordiak and Hydaelyn.
Oh, if you think this is bad, you should see the original footage! I turned down the brightness in post.
On the real though, I appreciate the feedback. It shouldn't be hard to fix. It's kind of a technical problem that I myself can't really see, but I can get around my limitations by just having my friends review some of the footage and giving their thoughts on the brightness.
To reply to the edit:
On the cutscene being longer if they did all this stuff. Well, I'm not sure it'd be that much longer, you could still try to condense stuff, we still don't wanna ruin the pacing. But aye, might add a few minutes to it at the very least. But I don't know if that's much of a problem, since it's one of those sequences where the game warns you about many cutscenes playing in a row (which is basically the game's way of saying the game will now turn into a movie).
On the fight being promised: haha, I gotta be real, that was me just trying to add some extra flair! Plus it's a GoT reference, I guess. But my reason for calling it that is still rooted in how I felt about it. I do feel like that fight should have happened. You are absolutely right though, calling it something the devs explicitly promised is hyperbole.
@@imacuttlefish6832 it is still a great video. Very entertaining and it is usually nice to see other POV.
Not justified in the least. She made no effort to save her own people, instead passing judgment on them long before Zodiark was even a thing.
the shinryu vs omega fight was spectacular on a visual perspective, but i didnt thoroughly enjoyed it tbh hahaah. i was just like "oh neat they fighting".
Mate im impressed. You are criminel low in subs compared to the content
Tbh, Zodiak or Hydaelyn. Idrc.
In the end of the Day, there 2 evil beings having a Hissy fit, in concept doing the same thing, and we (WOL) get wrapped up into it, with no real ways out, and ~Flips a coin
Oh Look, your on Her side, sorry no refunds.
I don't think they can be defined as evil, neither the Hydalyn faction nor the Zodiark faction, but rather good people who have to face impossible choices.
I don't think letting the Final Days run their course is considered a good thing
I think azem is the closest to justified
I like to think Azem was just chilling in their Island Sanctuary as it all went down. Therefore, I agree! Very much justified!
She's a hypocrite, uncooperative, slothful, self-righteous, and plays favorites with the player. MC. I say no she wasn't justified. She could've told Themis is what happened( after he separated from zodiark heart looking to make peace) with Hermes in Kitsis dungeon but kept quiet and turned the world to shit with a hax power up. Very bad writing.
That wouldn't have allowed the current version of the game to exist. The ancients are all unjustifiably egocentric. Hermes was flawed, he was mentally in need of therapy yet living in Paradise. Its not bad writing to have Venant be an egocentric ancient who sundered existence to design a people who will be able to experience and learn from suffering. Through Astral and Umbral eras people grew and changed and learned how to deal with the emotional issues of existence (Dynamis). Seriously turned the world to shit and hax power.... very mature... someone apparently has an egocentric perception of events.
@@liony9400 No, it would just have created a paradox and split the timeline, creating one in which the Sundering does not happen. Which I am *fine* with.
@@JohnSears1970 you are fine with the sundering not happening? The sundering is the whole reason the world and your character exists. Without the sundering there is no game. I mean Have you been to elipis? So we play on floating islands making minions? and that is the point?
@@liony9400 You misunderstood. The game timeline would still exist on one track [Much like the 8th umbral calamity timeline *still exists* along a seperate time track]. Just so would one where the Ancients survived. That is all I want. The Ancients deserve their happy ending too.
@@JohnSears1970 The ancients lived a happy existence in ancient times. Until it wasn't so happy, and their "star" was in danger. They all wanted the same thing for the "star" to have a future. They just went about it in different ways. They currently do exist in a paradox, we can visit Elipis when we like.
I suspect you may be waiting for more details of Azem's actions before making a video about him/her. I am looking forward to that.
Ahhh hmmm, Azem is kind of technical though because they are basically you. As such, it's hard to dedicate an entire video to them. But I did have one video idea which would feature them, it's kind of crazy though so I'm still debating if I wanna create the video hahah
Also something that may have already been apparent from just the Emet and Venat videos, I do plan to consistently bring up Azem with all of these ancients, with maybe the exception of Hermes. But Lahabrea and Elidibus for sure. Since the interactions they had with these other characters is still interesting to discuss.
@@imacuttlefish6832 Yah I am aware of the immense challenges faced when trying to piece together the narrative of Azem, particularly from the perspectives of the Devs. They cannot do too much without breaking player immersion.
Still there are so many hints of wonderful stories of Azem's reaction/plans/actions to the first Final Days. My headspace for Azem had evolved from him/her being a simple victim of the Sundering (from the little information we got in Shadowbringers) to being an individual who had a decent sense of what they might have had to do/sacrifice ... and all of it without being fully appraised of Venat's own plans directly by her.
I am quite keen on seeing how they slowly peel away the story of Azem's final actions as that entity, and their legacy to the current world.
@@CheeWaiLee1972 Ooh, I've heard that idea brought up before. Whether or not Azem "knew". And I can see why. As you said, it's kind of lame to think Azem as being a simple victim of the sundering, that they were, idk, taking a nap when it all went down lol
Would be fun to see more of their story for sure. I liked the references to them in the Pandemonium story so far, so maybe we'll get more in 6.4!?
As if I needed more reason to be hyped for that patch...
@@imacuttlefish6832 The fact Azem refused to join Venat doesn't speak to the veracity of her cause. Given "A Friendship of Record" confirmed Venat never even told her own followers the truth, the people who literally gave up their souls for her to become Hydealyn, it's highly doubtful she told Azem. Also, based on the shards of Azem we know, the WoL and Ardbert, both of whom were willing to throw whole worlds under the bus as long as they could save their own, if they ever did write Azem as agreeing to having one BFF trapped in Zodiark indefinitely, another BFF damned to become what he did (not to mention Elidibus), and the complete genocide of their race, culture, and history, it would be not be character consistent. (Not that EW seems to care about these things in general.) This isn't even mentioning how sinister it is for Venat to have specifically spared Emet knowing that in the future she would be grooming Azem's reincarnation to kill him.
Dynamis, is an interresting item. It's named and explained really late, and yet... It was introduced as early as 1.0
Strong faith and aether brought forth the primals. Strong faith brought forth Louisoux's partial summoning of the 12. It turned the holy see into a king of myth. It brought treasures and puppets to life. Wrought fear into reality in ancient times, and called heroes through the rift to save a dying world.
Time travel though... The game seems really clear, all time travel happens in a stable, closed loop, but... We currently still have one case where this seems false. G'raha. His present state is an unresolved paradox, that the game even comments on. This world's history has become intwined with another reality, making it muddled and unclear. This isn't neccesarily a plothole yet, and may become a plotpoint in future.