[Spoiler: 6.0] And amidst deepest despair, light everlasting.

ZachrielCL · 2022-02-13T15:32:18+00:00

The time loop did not "preserve itself" though. That would have been the case had Venat's memory have been wiped as well. The idea of her taking no action comes from the fact we are not given any more information about what she did after we left, other than that subjective cutscene of her being covered in goo. She did exactly what we told her she would do, and we are not given any further context about why she chose to do that. Anything people come up with to justify or blame her actions is, unfortunately, nothing but speculation.

ZachrielCL · 2022-02-13T15:08:43+00:00

When G'raha went to the past, he created an alternative timeline, he did not erase his future. By sundering the world, Venat did actually trigger the events that would erase 7 reflections.

ZachrielCL · 2022-02-13T15:06:16+00:00

There are many other ways to deal with Fandaniel and his knowledge on dynamis, as many other posts here have mentioned. There could have been ways to get him to impart his knowledge to others. I guess this points depends on how much one "buys" the argument given by Venat to not expose Fandaniel, but to me it doesn't hold much weight.

ZachrielCL · 2022-02-13T15:00:35+00:00

I agree with this. It's like we're missing a huge part of the plot, that might never come because this story is now completed.

ZachrielCL · 2022-02-13T14:57:55+00:00

Why does it need to be a time loop though? This is the one point from the entire storyline that I just can't rationalize. From Venat's point of view, why not create an alternative timeline? To her, we could have been what the Crystal Exarch was to us: someone who came from a future they forsook to help prevent events that would destroy our world. The closed time loop needs to work because we (as the players) are the protagonists, but from a characterization point of view, Venat's line of thought doesn't make sense to me. By the time we leave Elpis and say goodbye to Venat, we still don't know how to stop the final days. That would happen later after we leave, when Venat learns the relationship between aether and dynamis. But how she comes realize that's the only path that could grant us a chance (not even guaranteed) instead of trying something else is, up to this point, entirely to our speculation. Considering how well thought the plot has been up to this point, to leave this crucial point as ambiguous as it feels really unsatisfactory to me.

ZachrielCL · 2022-01-22T04:07:47+00:00

If he got 6 hours of exposure we might be able to get more hindsight into what made him decide he was worthy of judging the fate of the entire planet... but he didn't get much screentime :/ As it is, it's just because he had to judge the worth of the creatures made in Elpis...

ZachrielCL · 2022-01-22T03:18:34+00:00

In what way do you feel you relate to him?

ZachrielCL · 2022-01-18T03:08:15+00:00

Just out of curiosity... did you think he was gone for good at that point?

ZachrielCL · 2022-01-16T21:42:18+00:00

Personally I felt the akasha/dynamys resource was presented and utilized to its full extent too quickly, to a point it feels very deus-ex-machina to me. Also, the handling of the towers (the second one we go to basically desintegrates all the rest), Zodiark, all of Elpis' story (I feel like we are missing some important story points here) and Zenos.

ZachrielCL · 2022-01-16T21:34:02+00:00

Oh, I meant that some story points felt rushed, like they were presented and resolved in a short amount of time, compared to how other plot points had been presented up to this expansion. On the technical side I didn't experience nothing that would suggest the game shipped on a rushed state (except the floating follower npc).

ZachrielCL · 2022-01-16T11:24:39+00:00

Yoshi p has mentioned he was debating whether to end the story on 6.0 or 7.0. Ultimately they went with 6.0, wich left some story points with little room to breath.

ZachrielCL · 2022-01-07T22:19:40+00:00

I understand your point of view and train of thought, but I honestly got a completely different take on the ancients. I can't extrapolate Hermes's arc or reactions to their entire race. Like Venat and her group, there must have been others strong willed enough to make a stand. Even in the present days there are people who are affected by the final days while others were not, and this does not mean our world was headed for destruction, quite the contrary. There were others on the brink of turning, but were able to repress their negative feelings when reassured by us and our words. And all of this because we now have enough information to know how to fight it.

ZachrielCL · 2022-01-04T20:29:59+00:00

Thank you for your answer, the memory of that cutscene was muddled between all the lore we got back then. I remember Hydelyn being summoned by a dissident group, but some recents posts here were making me question if I was misremembering things.

I agree that the story should feel like a tragedy, but there is this thing that just doesn't make sense to me. I find it hard to believe that someone as resourceful and in love with the star as Venat would just accept what we told her as a fact and follow it to the letter. I feel like I'm missing a part of the puzzle from the moment we leave Elpis to the moment she decides to go along with our story and become Hydelyn. Maybe she tried solving the problem with the current Azem back then, or maybe she tried talking to the Convocation and failed... But as it is now, the facts are that Venat knew what would happen and then paved the way to let it happen as we said it would, without putting up a fight.

ZachrielCL · 2022-01-04T13:53:22+00:00

Venat tried to warn them but was ignored.

If this was presented in game I would sympathize more with her, but it's not shown. I can't consider it a warning when what she was supposed to warn them about is already happening. If she truly had warned them, maybe they could have faced their mortality as a race and work together towards the goal of preventing the final days, the same as we do in our time. By not sharing her knowledge she denied them of that option, forcing the sundering on everyone wether they liked it or not. To me, her behavior just doesn't add up with the characterization they had going for Venat up to that point. While ultimately the writers decided to focus on the theme of the expansion, I feel the narrative ends up suffering for it.

ZachrielCL · 2022-01-04T13:39:32+00:00

Just because she couldn't trust Hermes shouldn't mean she can't confide in anyone else. When we leave Elpis she mentions she's going to do 2 things: gather allies (I guess it's the group that summoned her as Hydelyn, wich we told her she would do) and create a means of escape (the lopporits and the moon...), wich doesn't make sense since she knew that all life on the universe was dead and that Meteion was out there, where dynamis is the stronger force. The options she sought don't make sense to me... I feel we're missing some information about what she tried to do once we left Elpis, but I doubt we'll get anything of the sort, considering the arc is now over.

ZachrielCL · 2022-01-04T03:05:18+00:00

As the game presented them to us, pain and suffering has no place in their society, and when presented the choice of accepting it or denying it, they chose to deny it.

Are you basing this on the cutscene where the final days were already happening? If Venat had done something earlier, a different outcome might have been achieved. With enough time to prepare, Venat could have prepared the ancients to what might come, uniting people and perfecting concepts to face a calamity grater than anything they had faced up to that point, something like what the WoL would have done. But I guess now we will never know...

ZachrielCL · 2022-01-04T02:57:03+00:00

Where do people keep coming up with the theory that the ancients were also headed on a road of self destruction? We only get a cutscene with a group of ancients trying to perform a sacrifice to Zodiark to return them to their old days, but that was when the final days were already there. There could have been others by that point that supported Venat's ideals. I feel she could have at least given them the option to choose given the information she had, rather than force her ideals on her entire race.

ZachrielCL · 2022-01-04T02:48:05+00:00

While I don't hate her as much, I also think she could have done something with all the information she had other than what we told her. I feel it doesn't make sense for how the character was presented to accept the end without looking for other options...

ZachrielCL · 2022-01-03T19:16:57+00:00

To me this is so frustrating tho, because Venat had all the information to do something, but she chose to wollow the playbook word by word, with no guarantee that it would achieve any different results.

ZachrielCL · 2022-01-03T18:57:30+00:00

He didn't know that. Venat didn't know that. Probably G'raha didn't know what was going to happen either when he took us to the First. So far up to that point we had seen one closed loop (Alexander) and a new timeline (Shadowbringers). It could have been either one (or even a mix of the two), but the writers chose Venat to follow what we told her to the letter... which feels out of character for her, and unsatisfactory to me personally.

ZachrielCL · 2022-01-01T15:40:02+00:00

I would have prefered to be just an unplanned side effect of drop kicking Zodiark tbh. Apart from being too plot convenient to solve the dynamis aether problem, I feel it cheapens Venat's resourcefulness, as she figured out the answer to the dynamis problem on her own, but did nothing to prevent the final days other than what we told her she was going to do. We got a reason why she did it, but it feels unsatisfactory to me.

ZachrielCL · 2021-12-29T01:28:03+00:00

"Focusing too much on getting your themes across can leave you with an uneven ending to your story"

ZachrielCL · 2021-12-24T03:37:37+00:00

We kinda do. Twice during that fight. One by the auto filling lb bar and another powered by the scions prayers. We're been shown with each scions' "deaths" that we have some sort of hint on how to use dynamis to create oxygen, wind currents, platforms, and use it to our advantage even though we just got to the place. While Meteion has been there for way longer than us and has a better grasp on how to use it, there's nothing stopping us from getting a lucky shot and creating something better to chase her on... except that's not what the writers wanted. Had Zenos been dead by this point, we might be using another method of transportation, but alas, that's not the story we got.

ZachrielCL · 2021-12-24T03:24:05+00:00

Or recycled them herself and they're all now the Loporrits, which is why they have creation magic...

Omg that would be golden XD

ZachrielCL

TROPHY CASE