@@kapsi It wasn't useless. Without that sacrifice there's no Zodiark. Without Zodiark, Meteion kills everyone. Both Hydaelyn and Zodiark were necessary evils. They both saved the world.
@@VDA19 That's the thing really, Fandaniel had to catch some hands but I feel like what he did was itself also necessary because of how the ancients were content with remaining stagnant. His failures as a researcher and a person created crisis, but it also along with everything else led to a future where life might not simply reach the conclusion seen on the other stars. I don't think any of it would have happened if Meteion wasnt trying to force the answer she found.
@@kapsi Zodiark is actually what keeping Etheirys safe for a while. Even after the sundered. Only after we killed Zodiark that Meteion could invade it.
The best part? She was absolutely, 100% right. The Ancients who summoned Zodiark had a tainted view of the past and their own world. They didn't know the sorrow because they couldn't see it.
@@NebulonRanger Not only they went a dark path to try and achieve their Utopia back, even IF they in the end managed to get their perfect world as it once was, it wouldn't have lasted. Venat knew this. You can see it in Meteion's report: once she starts talking about the world who ended all suffering (the last area of her dungeon too), you can see Venat's face darken as she hears about that people losing their will to live, after apathy and boredom settled in for good. She knew that an endless life with no adversities would eventually be meaningless, leading Meteion to victory once again.
@@AndreAConquerorII *Precisely*. Venat didn't create the current shards of Etheirys as a cruel joke. She saw what her people were becoming and set the world on a different path, one that would actually lead to lasting change. The post-Elpis cinematic confirms that was the intent. In a way, she actually agreed with the Fervent Ancient: what was happening *was* all wrong, but not because they had lost their utopia. It hadn't really existed in the first place ("No paradise is without its shadows."), and the Ancients' desire to pretend otherwise would have led to their stagnation and inevitable downfall, if not then, then in the future. Was her decision the right one? That's murky, since she (as Hydaelyn) admits it wasn't completely just. In the end, though, it was the correct decision to make to ensure mankind's future in the universe, even if not as ancient man.
It’s to prevent Denial of Service attacks. (Login and logout repeatedly with a huge amount of accounts (by hackers for example) made it possible to block login for vast majority of players.. a security risk and that is how they fixed it.)
@@tomasskala4405 I have no idea if this is the reason FFXIV has a queue but what ViewTube said is both very reasonable and certainly very plausible. FFXIV does seem to frequently suffer from ddos attacks and a short queue that attempts to keep a stable flow of, say, 20 players in and out of the game doesn't seem an entirely irrational measure to take to lessen their impact. Even if obviously not a solution in and of itself given recent events. I don't think the problem here is that they're overthinking. I think the problem here is that you just don't think. At all.
Square was greedy from the start. Europe didn't have servers and by that desastrous lags for TWO FULL YEARS and after that they always used "servers bad" as excuse fo not improving the game and just cutting it down further, but of course never just invest in more and better servers. When there wasn't enough plots for housing, they also didn't just invest into more server power to give more housing plots, not, they abused this to force people staying subbed, no matter how dead the game is, because else you lose the house and EVERYTHING inside, too.
I was not expecting this scene to just strike so hard as it did. It was incredible. Hydaelyn went from being sort of an abstract concept to a fully fleshed out character in the blink of an eye and i'm here for it.
@@harakiribanzai2483 I listened to it. Her normal voice is too soft in general, but when she speaks normally...its really good. I get the whole "good" goddess voice thing, but I would have preferred a normal voice like the English va. Venat would not have a soft voice if her personality is anything to go by.
It is frightening how this singular song came full circle. I feel this scene is the developer‘s Answers to the question of the meaning of life. I never imagined in my brightest hour that Endwalker would be this intense - and I love every second of it.
@@mjs3188 it's not the only song like this. One brings shadow, one brings light/two toned echoes tumbling through time. Who does this remind you of, and come to think of it why did hydlodaues's shade know to give you Azem's soul stone?
this is still the best cutscene in endwalker, made me cry, she made her children suffer so they can keep on living, she suffered alongside them, wept with them, and now after endwalker, her children are safe.
@@leonides1527 honestly if i were in Meteion's shoes, seeing the endless amounts of worlds that were overcome by their despair, i too would reach the conclusion that we should just end life if it meant eternal suffering everywhere we went, but Venat truly believed in mankind's potential to overcome it, such a powerful message by the developers, i think this is my favorite final fantasy story, reminds me of ff9 when zidane a bright colorful outgoing character was faced with his own dilemma of what being alive really meant.
@@poggamus4330 What I think is beautiful is that they don't entirely hand wave it aside, all these worlds DID suffer and die out, there was despair and even in the story, it's not about replacing suffering with happiness, but accepting suffering is a part of life. I love it cause I've struggled like many with similar question Hermes poses and questioning why to suffer and what's the point of happiness if it'll end abruptly with more suffering like some of these civilizations. I came to terms with it when met with contentment. Instead of striving for happiness and a perfect life, strive to be content with it and what it brings, see the lows and downs of it not as an enemy to run away from but as part of you just as much as the good moments. It's the small moments that makes it worth it though and the hope for brighter days. Despite being content with days of suffering and despair, doesn't mean you give up hope for better ones, but through contentment you can endure it and see the good in it all which the people of Ethyris does, rather than keep chasing those high's the other civilizations were doing, and once you reach the highest peak, it'll hurt all the more when you fall down from it and hit the bottom.
I love that they showed her literally taking every step we took, taking the hit from Ultima to carrying us walking up to Emet. This woman had so much love for her children.
As I said in a different video: The meaning behind Venats decision is so beautiful and logical, yet cruel and unforgiving. She sundered the star, mankind and all of creation knowing that in their imperfection, determined life span and receptiveness to dynamis we would inevitable seek the answer of hermes question. She further stresses to seek the answer by calling to us "Hear, Feel, Think" like a mantra, wich is exactly what we need to be able to understand dynamis and face Meteion. Especially, since Meteion, a beeing communicating using dynamis, tries to understand us using the same terms: Meteion: "I wish to hear your words... Share your feelings... Know your thoughts." tl;dr: Venat dooms mankind to suffer. Because in suffering we would seek meaning in our lifes. Therefore finding the answer hermes and meteion so eagerly seek. I love it!
@@pawbgles Kid, without that sacrifice (and it was VENAT who told SHIT about that time travel mumbo jumbo), there would have been nothing left for that Super Nazi to slaughter. Those people who gave their life WILLINGLY to save the planet and all others did the job. Venat then just came up with: lol, I kill everyone anyway and to make sure you don't stand up, I slaughter your souls with it and deform you completely.
@@miriamweller812 Yeah, thats not how nazi-ideology worked. Nazi ideology was based on an obsession with the ideal of one singular, superior race of super humans who should rule the world and wipe out everything they deemed lesser. It was heavily based on ideas of physical superiority, be it of athletic qualities or a biologically determined idea of intelligence, which in return creats superior societes. What Venat did is to split the world, to creat a humanity which is defined by weakness, imperfection but also diversity, compared to the original ascian race. Like, if you would go with that analogy, the definition of an Aryan as the nazis imagined them to be would be closer to the Ascians, who were a singular race of seemingly perfect humans with super human qualities living in an idealized society. Which actually resembels the idea of many esotericist leaning fascists consider the origins of the aryan race or similar constructs of mythological forebearers to the "white race" like the hyperboreans consider to be: A superior and highly advanced raced of mythical super humans with demi-godlike quantities, from which the "white race" fell from grace and which needs to be restored to their former glory. Considering the plans of the Ascians, both the originals and the Unsundered, to first bring back life to the planet just to sacrifice it again to bring back to life the sacrificed original Ascians and restore their idealized society back to their former glory, they were actually closer to nazi ideals. Like, before his defeat and change of heart, Emet-Selchs entire point was, that the sundered races are not worth living, because he considered them too inferior to the idealized society he lived in. What Venat did, was reject such a notion which forms the core of the world view of many esoteric fascist movements in our current world. Her core thesis was, that an imperfect, sundered and therfore diversified and weakened form of humanity that has to overcome hardship and learn to co-exist and cooperate would be more fit to fight despair than a people who will perpetually sacrifice those who don't fit their standart of perfection. Let us not forget that the Ascians actually engineered and wiped out entire species, just due to their perception of usefullness for the world. I mean, if anything the core thesis of Final Fantasy 14 and Endwalker specifically is pretty leftist, if anything. Normal human (and the different playable races of the games are usually refered to as human in general) beings who try to live their life to its fullest through hardship and find strength in diversity and their differences is more fit to overcome despair and nihilism than some idealized race of superhuman demi-gods who are all the same. It rejects usually rightwing ideas of utopianism which are based on perceptions of biological superiority and a return to a glorified past in favor of more left-leaning ideas of utopnianism, based on creating a more idealized and just society by rejecting nostalgia and creating a stronger society through emotional self improvement, allowing humans to culturally develope into being more empathetic and optimistic. Hell, even the whole beast tribe plot-line has pretty anti-colonialist undertones, considering that it was the usually european-coded city states which created the primal problem to begin with, through their oppression, warfare and chauvinism towards the beast tribes they considered inferior, to the point where all they could do is find flight in religious fundamentalism, because the city states kept on stealing or destroying their territories, ressources and cultural archievements. Like, the whole Limsa-kobolds Plotline in Shadowbringers can be fully read as an allegory of the history between european settlers and native nations in america, in that it the settlers who broke written treaties that clearly defined borders for their own self-gain and pushed the natives more and more to the brink. And in that plot, Merlwyb fully acknowledges that the entire fault for the conflict and the primal summoning was fully on her and her people, that the kobols are right to not trust them and that the burden to creat peace is fully on the Limsa Lominsans. The Limsans owe their wealth to the kobolds and paid them in treachery. And she fully acknowledges, that it isn't enough to just make peace, but that the Limsans owe it to the kobolds to engage with them in fair trade relations and support them in gaining prosperity to rebuild their society.
@@hermeticallysealed1 Yeah, sure planetar genocide is a question about that. Typical Nazi 'argument' (not that it actually is one...). congrats. You just prove it more. Also typical for fascists, they just dig deeper...
@@miriamweller812 Ah, so too many big words used, because Nazis are known for being literate and making reasoned explanations not based on inherent superiority. I fully buy your logic now.
"Even should you lose all that is dear to you. Even should it cost you your life...You bear the burden and fight on, kick and screaming until your last breath is spent!" -Elidibus
Actually an Ardbert quote that Elidibus stole from 3.4. In Ardbert’s body, but still. And then Ardbert rebuttals with another quote of his from Base ShB.
In that moment you realize the sheer tragedy of it all. There was no evil mastermind in the end. Venat and Emet fought for the same damn thing, but on opposite sides. It's heartbreaking. At the end of EW, it is the only time in my years of gaming that I looked at the main character and think, "you've been through too much." The WoL, the Ancients, they have suffered way too much.
@@somethinghandlesomething I wouldn't even say they were. Hermes loved all his creations Meteion included and didn't want her to die because she was a threat and wouldn't be of service to the star. Meteion was like a daughter to him almost and he wanted to hear her report. The notion of the Convocation examining her when they all knew the final verdict adding in what all 4 of them saw. So by wiping their minds and sending Meteion away to judge mankind and to be free he doomed them all. I think his suffering as an Ancient also compounded to Amon and Xande and finally OUR Fandaniel. It's a tragedy all around.
@@erym7483 Yeah, neither are masterminds as much as victims of suffering just as everyone else, Meteion in particular given her nature, what she was made for and what she found. Despite it all, if it weren't for Hermes and Meteion, all the tragedies wouldn't have happened and what then? Would the ancients eventually reach perfection? As seen in the last dungeon, that may have led to their own end as there would be nothing left to strive for and it by itself is a form of suffering. In the end, what the xpac and story teaches is that suffering and imperfection is not a curse or something to be rid of, cause even if it can lead to a tragic end, it's what completes life.
@@erym7483 i dont think id agree with ur hypothesis and even if i did, what you wrote is just motives not really why they aren't "mastermind" they literally planned it and deliberately wanted to and caused the final day to happen later on
Spoilers for Endwalker: * * * * * * * I've never been a huge fan of the whole "The world and life is suffering, so I'll just kill everyone to bring peace" trope in stories. But the idea that Hermes accidentally created a universal gestalt consciousness of all of the suffering in the UNIVERSE by having Meteion's sisters explore the stars is definitely a unique take on the concept. It definitely makes the nihilistic philosophy more reasonable, because Meteion absorbed the desolation of countless destroyed planets, absorbed the despair of countless dying civilizations, and inadvertently set another unknown number of people off on the path to extinction as a result of her discoveries elsewhere. I can't really blame Meteion for her reasoning and actions, as much as I disagree with her. She inadvertently absorbed the emotions of entire sapient species in their last moments, like the Ea who learned about the expansion of the universe. Or the Omicron, who realized that their fear of being conquered led to the extinction of others. Goddamn, it's a depressing reality with no real easy answer to something that is immortal and has experienced so much.
It's small, but really powerful to me, the look on Emet-Selch's face as he watches Hythlodaeus leave. For how offended he was at the idea that he would become who he was in Shadowbringers, that wave goodbye is 100% the moment that would start him down that path.
watching your comment made me realise, hytho said that when a human returns to life stream all the altered memories will be cleansed, same theory was said also by the old prof in sharlyan. When we defeated emet and send him to life stream ( not sealing him as laha was absorbed in thordan's sword or elidibus in the tower). Emet returned in the 5.3 Beause he remembered!
@@wontononionslicer1004 Emet WAS sealed, though. That's why he's in the lifestream at all instead of brooding in Pandaemonium... or already in another clone body, since he only stayed dead for two seconds when Varis shot him. Don't you remember Thancred slicing his auracite into a zillion pieces?
@@moonxrose26 and then later in a certain zone starting with an E when... Hythlodaeus tells us that no matter how frustrated Azem makes him, he ALWAYS answers the summons when she has need. So not only did he remember after returning to the aetherial sea, but he also continued to support one of his best friends when in need.
It wasn't so much that he was offended of what hw would become though. Emet-selch was a member of the Convocation. They were trained and upheld truthfulness. You told him something that he knew was undoubtedly the truth. Just like he knew that whatever comfort Hythlodaeus shared in that last moment was a lie. That he was accepting his end to save his people. Emet-selch didn't want to believe the story but you had no reason to tell such an outlandish lie and could tell you were being truthful. That's why he entrusted their legacy to you. Because you told him what he would become in his grief and he chose to trust you over anything he would be able to do to stop the End times. He told us to remember because in his long quest to save his people, he had forgotten the reason for fighting along the way.
There’s really no comparison between a world and a character carefully built with love over many years and a stitched together Frankenstein of a woman puked out by every misogynistic abuser at Blizz.
She's also super fucking badass. And super impartial. She let that ascian situation slide because she knows she has to wait for the sundered to prove themselves. Based queen.
All the more powerful when one realizes she isn't saying mankind is barred from paradise, but now they have to work for it...and in doing so they will find the answer Hermes sought.
The fact that “Answers” was THIS level of important is painfully incredible to experience after so long. Absolutely magical and yet horrendously sad to see this scene. So many emotions. Thank you to the writers for this story. Hydaelyn and Zodiark’s arc is one of the most impactful pieces of gaming I’ve experienced in my life. Thank you, thank you, thank you for this brilliant and beautiful moment.
@@-u-waa Totally agree. The fact that Venat did it was for the survival of all living things so that they can LIVE, so I'm interested in hearing their answer as well.
@@Darkfire0721 No, Zodiark saved all life. Venat killed all life and broke it. What would you say, when I kill your family, use their orgns to make humanlike abominations out of them and then just tell you, it will be for the greater good? Because that's the FF14 story. It's not like they even try to give it a reason. You are just told: yeah, Holocausting a planet is good and you should accept this. And then people really do that, wtf... Again: this is likely coming up with the idea to kill half of humankind to solve clima change and world hunger. Oh, yeah, this WILL work - but it's fucking insane and evil to the core. And in case is what not only only one half but everything and there was not even a plan. It was just pure insanity^2. But, yeah, she's an anime MILF with a nice voice and a sad song, so it's fine. W.T.F.
What amazes me is just how quickly Square managed to build a character. Hydaelyn has been this unknown "God", lurking in the background but never been fully explained. We have gone years knowing nothing, then suddenly boom, everything in one expansion. And honestly, I think this is the most perfect way they could ever have done it. Had we known about Venat as Hydaelyn before, the emotions would not have been the same. Square is a master at playing our emotions like a fiddle. And I'm perfectly fine with it.
It's incredible to me how they made me care DEEPLY for Venat in just an expansion. She went from something that didn't even exist to one of FFXIV's best characters in one single expansion.
It's very hard to make a legendary character FEEL legendary. Venat is one of those amazing few. Tying her to the player through Azem gave her this immediate bond with us, and it feels like losing her took away the one person who could ever understand the WoL (except Ardbert, who dwells within us).
I'm curious as to who the current azem was when we were in elpis. Seeing as venat was the azem who stepped down and we were attributed to the azem that currently held it, and our character is the future azem.
@@erickelley1680 Implied they were away on business aka traveling. Though the post credit scene implies Elidibus is waiting for Azem so they can see Pandæmonium.
@@acgearsandarms1343 That'll explain why he would accept our help during the raids. He might assume we're a familiar of Azem like the rest of the ancients and put his trust in us
This scene made me feel bad for ever doubting her conviction to help us during Shadowbringer. Still haven't finished Endwalker but this was so good I had to watch it again.
All those years of the suspicions, the wondering, is Hydaelyn good? Could she perhaps be secretly evil? Then this tear inducing cutscene spells it out. No. Hydaelyn/Venat is a big. fucking. Hero. The biggest one if it weren't for the player character.
The seat of Azem should seriously be renamed the Seat of Suffering. I say this facetiously because of the 5.3 trial, but it actually makes some sense from a story perspective. The Ancients/Amaroutines showed that they would have played right into Meteion's hands by sacrificing themselves right out of existence to avoid pain and loss. Venat forcibly changed their course from guaranteed oblivion to the possibility of a future by offering her own body and soul.
nah i always wondered after SHB what could cause a calamity those monsters from amaurot didnt explode in aether like almost every foe defeated in raids and dungeons and that the convocation was fanatical for some reason.
I see it now… just how much work they have put into this story… “To listen, to suffer, to entrust unto tomorrow…” “Thou must live, die and know…” She has given us this torch to carry, and sacrificed everything in hopes of our success… a true hero above all…
She killed everyone and distorted them. Your just cheer to the worst kind of fascism, you get this, right? That's the story fascists tell. That you have to get rid of the 'wrong' people. That you nave to use brutal violence to forge society in the way they want it to. And even in that fucked up story, nothing proves Venat''s Holocaust right in any way. You just got random plot armor, most things that help you succeed got NOTHING to do with Venat and the people it distorted but actually Garleans or remaining ancients. And of course all this could have been done MUCH better without the Holocaust.
@@miriamweller812 You do realize that the ancients had no way to defeat the Endsinger, right? Aside from the fact that they lacked the understanding of suffering and hardship to fight of the despair she inflicts, the fact that their dense Aether made them unable to even manipulate Dynamis means they would have been helpless against her if they went to face her, in her realm where the flood of Dynamis washes away and overwhelms Aether. In the current state of the world, they could have fought as hard as they wanted...and it would all have been for naught. They lacked both the experience and the very means to face the Endsinger in any meaninful way. Without Venat's actions, as harsh and cruel as they were, everything would have ended sooner or later.
@@miriamweller812 Nah she didn't killed them, they were sundered, all they lost is their ability to live forever and the ability to create things out of aether, which were their "wings to paradise", those were the only 2 things that were realistically stripped from them. The only ancients which brought genocide were the ascians who had ideals closer than the nazi, believing themselves to be superior to other and the only ones worth of existing, and the people at elpis who liked playing god, hermes in special who created a being which caused a cosmic wide calamity, meteion was using dynamis to hasten the end of the UNIVERSE. Zodiark wasn't saving anyone, it was stalling meteion effects, over time as the universe and everything around the world died, so would the world. Its like you didn't played this game, or just skipped to endwalker and decided to see nazi on everything.
@@spartanhexus6759 When I destroy your personality, delete your memories, take away all your abilities and everything you are, have been and would be - I KILLED you. Those people are DEAD. Even worse: Their souls are destroyed. Ripped apart. And it does not matter what you call them, they were just NORMAL. THEY were the normal people. From the PoV of an insect a human got an absurdly long life. But that's just normal. You can't argue from the PoV of that insect, that humans 'live too long' and so it's fine to cut that down. Again: this is like taking RL problems and say: yeah humans are the problem, let's just kill them all and use their biomass to form short lived mini humans out of them, which only live for a few months. And yes, killing a few billion humans WOULD solve many problem we got. The idea to just think about that is still just sick on every level - and to cheer for it... hell...
I kept thinking of Answers during this segment of the story When this cut scene came to an end... I don't think I can ever listen to Answers in the same way again. Such beautiful foreshadowing from the start
Answer marked the beginning of the reborn, and marked the ending of the saga. It tis very scary if they already plan that far to tell the story from the same version of a song
@@strikefred0m They do plan very far ahead but Answers was composed before Yoshi P. was even working on FFXIV so I'm pretty sure they just found a way to use the song for the finale at some point after Yoshi P. assumed.
The words "wept for innocence lost" and "wailed" seem to compare the Ancients to children. Their mindsets were that of children since the vast majority of them hadn't seen hardship and had the chance to grow from these experiences. A beautiful depiction how what we've been through makes us strong.
I had faith. I had so much faith that Ishikawa wouldn't give us the tired, tired trope of "Your God is Actually Bad". I kept the faith that Hydaelyn was the loving being she always showed herself to us as. If anything... I only underestimated just how much love she truly had. Edit: If one more of you armchair warriors with a lack of critical thinking skills screams at me "she committed GENOCIDE" I'm going to sunder my own buttcrack. Since I seem to have to clarify: I NEVER said that what Venat did was indisputably the correct moral decision. The choice she made had repercussions that inflicted suffering on all mankind and she herself admits how morally gray it was. But she did it with the intention to SAVE humanity, not eradicate it, because she loved humanity. That is, by literal definition, the opposite of "genocide". You are free to disagree with what she did with all you want and you wouldn't even be wrong, but god forbid you ALSO acknowledge that she is morally gray, instead of screaming a buzzword so that you can fake the moral high ground on anyone who disagrees with you.
The woman is the embodiment of hope. You feel like nothing could go wrong after you defeat Hydaelyn in that trial and get her ultimate approval, with her on your side nothing can stand against you. Its sad that she is gone for good now, my WoL will miss having Hydaelyn watching over him all the time.
The writing team played us SUPER good. Got us all set up to expect the reveal of her actually being evil, or at least very neutral or manipulative, just to hit us with "actually she's the biggest hero there ever was and one of the coolest characters in the entire franchise."
instead we got the tired tired trope of "literally no one important dies" how much harder would the message of carrying on in spite of despair had hit if one of the scions *actually* died?
"As fragmented imperfect beings, yours is a never ending quest. A quest to find your purpose, knowing your end is assured." SHIT JUST GOT META... Some of us may never know their true purpose in life. Or even get to that age. We suffer greatly yet why does mankind continue to move forward? It's because we find joy and happiness in the little things. Like family, food, comfort, ambition, religion, etc. We may not live forever but we value life more than any immortal being. That's our strength, we may fear death but when the time comes we accept it.
I'd recommend Viktor Frankl's 'Mans Search for Meaning'. This was his ideology, and he founded logotherapy, a therapeutic practice that seeks to help the client find their own personal meaning. He was incredible, and the book covers his time in a literal concentration camp, where his own personal meaning kept him going. So much of what he talks about ties in so closely to Endwalker's plot.
I think it's interesting how a video game makes more sense with life, than life has had any sense so far. Yes, it's fantasy, but I think the way they incorporated these ''ideals'' and ''morals'' is insane and genius. It might sound cheesy, but this literal scene, and the entirety of Endwalker, has made me look at life SOO much differently. I couldn't agree more with how they wrote Venat, and the reasons she made humanity suffer. They made her into this godly being, that only seemed to speak to a chosen few - to most, she was but fiction and just a name. But given everything they built her up to be.. I don't even have words. If we had to pick our own reality, this reasoning would be my nr.1 way to tackle life. Life sucks? Too bad, do something about it, because nobody is going to hold your hand and kiss your booboo and say it'll just go away. People are their own strength, but there's nothing wrong in believing in something bigger.
i love how in this part they move the camera to show us looking directly into her eyes its as if shes actually talking to us the player at that point telling us what we need to do and that there is no easy answer for us and that we need to find that answer
Venat might just be Final Fantasy's greatest hero. Not by power or might, but by sheer indomitable will that most Final Fantasy characters could never match.
@@AdeptKing It's actually mutual strength they gain from one another in an endless cycle of time. The WoL is the sundered soul of the final Azem, her pupil and friend. So obviously we are strengthened and pushed by her, but it actually goes both ways. She explains when you finally face her Primal Form that you, her Champion, were HER inspiration. The time you spent together with her in Elpis, the stories you told her of your adventures, the beauty of the world that she loves. You pushed her just like she pushed you. I hope that someday in the future, she, Hyth, and Emet can all be reincarnated as new characters who carry on that same spirit now that they're dead and returned to the star. It happened to Azem, why can't it happen for them?
The thing is also (correct me if im wrong) that primals usually require worship/faith and insane amounts of aether to be born into existance. She apparently manifested herself into a primal with nothing but her own power and her unbreaking will.
10:44 "As fragmented, imperfect beings, yours is a never-ending quest. A quest to find your purpose, knowing your end is assured. To find the strength to continue, when all strength has left you. To find joy, even as darkness descends... ...and amidst deepest despair, light everlasting."
Okay, whoever decided to make Hydaelyn the best characters with the rawest lines in the game in the midst of an exceptional cutscene that completely recontextualizes the literal main theme of the game while the lyrics are (kind of) used by the characters, needs a raise. Endwalker did not need to go this hard, but I'm glad it does. I also love the part where normally the "Now open your eyes, while our plight is repeated" plays, but instead the song shifts to an arrangement with an organ as the main instrument, you know, representing the goddess and all that, while Venat uses the text of the part that would normally play, to lecture the others. It's so good. And then cross cutting between her and the WoL in the ShB finale as she talks about perservering and whatever is just such an incredibly cool moment. God, I love this game. Until Shadowbringers, almost everyone was cautious of Hydaelyn, suspecting her to secretly be evil or something like that, and then Endwalker just turns everything on its head.
Yeah its amazing how Hydaelyn goes from being a distant and seemingly uncaring god that people cry to in their time of suffering, asking for answers. Only to find out that she has no answers and exists that we might have a chance to find them for ourself. And the suffering? She's enduring it with them every step of the way.
Yeah. I really didn't care much about Hydaelyn before as she didn't have much depth and/ or screen time. And now she might just be my favorite character.
Until now, I always imagined that section of Answers to be a bitter mortal screaming at a God that has failed them. This cutscene flips that on its head by making it a God calling it to another, higher God. God this game is so good
@@mrcool9090 I don't think think venat/hydaelyn is calling on a higher power actually, but asking her sundered children to find their own answer to the question that she and the Ascians could not. It's a beautiful parallel in a way, that for Hydaelyn, the struggle for the sundered life on Eitherys to exist validates her own decision and the pain she endured to give them the opportunity to live.
What i love about it is that it also shows she's not perfect. Some all knowing being. but a person trying to do good with the cards given and being forced to pass on that hope. Such a beautiful story moment all wrapped in the song.
And the secret is they never have to draw attention to the fact or disparage men in the process. She's just a great character that anyone can resonate with. So glad there's still writers out there who get it. The Character of the, er, character is all that matters.
@@happygaysounds Trust me. I have read fanfictions about Sylvanas that got better writing than whatever shit Blizz been pulling right out of their ass.
The kindest and most cruel decision one could have ever taken. Time after time, i revisit this cutscene and every time, without fail, i'm left speechless for a solid minute afterwards. It's so heavy, but somehow also uplifting. She (and Ishikawa) talks not only to the WoL, not only to every ingame character, but to us and every living person too. It's rare when a video game lets you question life itself and not in a #im14andthisisdeep way too.
this scene is so incredible on a lot of levels - but one of the most striking things to me is that it's one of the very few times they've really gone all out on playing with metaphor instead of representing a scene directly "as it happened"... and it winds up resulting in a phenomenally powerful scene with legitimate claim to the title of best scene of the expansion, if not the whole game. just fantastic.
Hands down the best scene in Endwalker SPOILER ALERT!!! . Here are my Top 5 picks for best moments in Endwalker 5. Best of the Best (or The Avengers Assemble moment in the Lochs) - Most of our favorite Characters from earlier expansions assembling to form the Ilsabard Contingent is a very satisfying scene especially because not only that it features favorite Main Scenario Characters but also Sidequest chatacters which you will recognize if you played their particular quest or if you haven’t you will be encouraged to try out their story arcs. 4. Urianger and Moenbryda’s Parents - One of the most heart felt moments if not the most in Endwalker. They somehow gave more meaning to one of the most forgettable characters in the game. 3. Looking for Qerasaf, Mehvan and their child - fetch quest are suppose to be dragging and exhausting and most side characters are forgettable but doing the series of quests here really got me totally engaged and my heart raised and watching Matsya try to calm the dying Qerasaf so he wouldn’t turn into a blasphemy and him trying to bring the infant child of Mehvan and Qerasaf to safety while fighting his fear so he wouldn’t turn really left a mark on me. 2. Quintus shoots himself, Garlemald has fallen - From the very beginning, Garlemald is the enemy for them to meet their end this ironic way is brilliant writing because it is unexpeted and Quintus’ final message on why he will never accept aid from his enemies really hit me. Honorable mentions: Zenos takes control of your body, Zenos’ entrance in the Final Trial as Shinryu, journey in Ultimate Thule 1. Thou must Leave, Die and Know (Venat sunders the Star) - All the questions that we have on what happened during the sundering and why it happened, finally we are given an answer and after ten years, “Answers” was finally given meaning.
I think the shot of Venat at the end is probably one of the most powerful in the game. Think about it this way. This scene is a metaphor for the several millennia Venat spent alone in the depths of the aetherial sea as Hydaelyn. As she continues to prepare for the future the Warrior of Light described to her in Elpis, she is forced to watch the suffering she wrought on the world, and she continuously hears her children's cries of despair. Eventually, the Ascians begin to enact the Rejoinings, which are represented in this scene as sharp flares of pain that cause black grime to accumulate on Venat. As the Rejoinings occur, she grows weaker and weaker, inching closer toward her own death as she loses aether. By the end of the sequence, we see her staggering, barely able to walk. As she continues her path, we see flashes of the Warrior of Light's showdown with Emet-Selch. She remembers hearing them recall the tale of their battle, and it gives her the conviction to walk on. Venat is almost completely covered in filth, yet her eyes still shine through, fixed on the road ahead. She is in utter agony, yet she remains focused on the future.
What is a goddess? Is she a maiden as undefiled as crystal? A being sacrosanct with the bounty of the earth and the wrath of the heavens? Venat's "Answer": Nay, a goddess is lone duelist, caked with blood and beset by oblivion. But nonetheless, the light never leaves her eyes and the boundless darkness she marches through is permeated by a lonely, unrelenting grace, enough to sustain the entirety of the will that burns in those who persist onward in her footsteps, however invisible the path she has traced may be.
A big flaw of Endwalker I feel is how much it focused on and wanked her pain, though. Why does it focus so much on how she suffered from the decision? Regardless of how you feel about her, she made the decision to cast judgement on all of humanity and that's wrong. Any chance to call her out in game is immediately handwoven by the characters and they even force the player to have a personal connection with her by tying us to her via Azem. That's not really to us few who didn't personally like her all that much. Square needs to step back and stop forcing so much characterization onto the Warrior of Light.
@@azatheeverchosen7615 That's literally what we've been missing the entire time though lol, no true characterization for the WoL - and it's still their story to direct, as they're the literal creators of it. Also, she wasn't judgementing people in a sense I feel as you're portraying it. She sundered people to suffering so they may know true happiness through hardship, and not continue down a path of hopeless sacrifices if this were to happen again, as they could not let go of their past - being over taken by grief and fear and all kinds of emotions. There was suffering everywhere if that passed your view. It doesn't take a genius to generally see that the Ancients suffered at the idea that their home be destroyed, that their people would disappear. There's more anguish there than anything, but I assume that to be clear to everyone who went through the entire thing, all of the expansion. And just because the WoL is tied to Azem, and Venat, they are still very much different people - you as the character carried out what the story was, but you can still hold your own values and that's fine. You also seem to forget that every person throughout the entire thing shaped the end one way or a another, be it fiction or not. Venat wanted humanity to continue, not perish. Just as did the others.
I love how this game shows that both Zodiark and Hydelean weren't evil, Zodiark was made to be a stop gap from Dynamis, but it was the people that couldnt let go of thier sorrow and fear and hatred, that prompted them to want to sacrifice more to him to make thier plight easier, becoming a temptation/crutch to make everything better. And Venat/Hydelean decided to that it woudn't fix our problems, just make them worse, til we were like every other star that Meteoin saw. SO she sundered us and locked him away to make sure we didnt cause that. It was only later the Ascians made Zodiark seem evil, (and one actually portray him that way in the end)
@Urazz I don’t think zodiark can temper his follower nor the ascians were tempered. These 2 were created by the power of creation magic, not unlike the summoning magic that we know of, but the inherent different is that these 2 creations have hearts and souls (elidibus/venats). Beast tribes are taught summoning magics by the ascians but with a twist, they added in the will to dominate and temper them to the will to the primal.
@@huynhvonhatan The Convocation was 100% Tempered, Emet actually tells you this in Shadowbringers, in flavor text, if you talk to him within the Crystal Tower.
@@paladinbrewer But endwalkers dialogue suggests otherwise before the Ragnarok. He could've meant that they were tempered in the manner that they were already fully devoted to his summoning and preservation and he was deemed the last bastion of hope for the majority of ancients
@@CelerisXIV This is just a theory of mine but from what i get is, the summoning of Zodiark was imperfect, cuz it was summoned out of despair and fear which already tainted their creation magic as you see how they where creating the terminus beast out of thin air because of said despair. Also as Livingway explain it as they were about to use the mothercrystal to boost Ragnarok and ask for the beast tribe's help, the reason why the primals tempered people in the first place is because the summoners wished to enforced their will and believes on others, so the primal only indulged in doing so exerting its creator's will, hence its imperfect creation magic. Those who created Zodiark where adamant that it was the only way, so they pretty much tried to enforced those same believe on other, which would temper them. At least that is the way I see it, Endwalker for me was a huge lore bomb, so my lore knowledge is shattered and all over the place xD
@@paladinbrewer If they were tempered, then they would have been hideously wrapped and mindlessly devoted to the cause. Emet would have never tried to reason with you or even help you. None of the unsundered were. Elidibus gave off the impression, but in the end it turned out to be obsession for a duty long forgotten. They wanted so bad to return everything back to the way things were, that they didn't care how many people died to make it happen.
She was our teacher, our guiding light and our inspiration. In the sundering she became everyone's. In the hopes that her children will find the answer. To achieve this she bore all the hate, suspicion, and suffered with us.
But the amazing thing is that our character is the same thing for Venat. It were our stories of the future that kept her going. All that happened was on both our character and Venat, but Venat suffered the most of it because of the massive timespan.
Venat saw the flaw in Meteion's reasoning. The failures of civilizations weren't that despite their best efforts, they could not erase suffering, but rather that they should not have tried to erase suffering in the first place.
That reasoning gets... iffy. Bad faith actors will make the claim that means we shouldn't address inequality; oppression, slavery, fight disease, starvation... If suffering is "noble", why save these people from it? If knowledge of how countless stars destroyed themselves is made widespread, I fear the apathy it could breed. That apathy would no doubt destroy Etheirys as surely as anything else. I suppose therein lies the crutch: Etheirys will die one day. It's inevitable. The sun will burn out, the planet will stop being habitable... Is what Venat did really heroic, in the end? Life is doomed to die anyway, so why drag out the suffering? Is a long, albeit brutal life, sprinkled with little moments of joy, preferable to a short, but blissful existence?
@@TheSuperRatt I don't think that suffering is portrayed as "noble" here- more as inseperable to life. If you want to redeem life somehow, you will have to accept its existence. Also affirming life through having pleasure outbalance pain is *difficult* to say the least. The Philosopher David Benatar has some pretty strong arguments for suffering generally outweighing pleasure. And as an Antinatalist would probably share most of Meteions views. Venat's view seems to me to be quite Nietzschean, insofar as she affirms life via aesthetic means: "Lands that stretched on forever, skies one could drown in [...]" I think in her view the suffering in life can be affirmed by contributing to its beauty. The MSQ wouldn't have been as much of "a gripping tale" if there were no stakes after all.
This is up there along the greatest video game cinematic cutscenes ever made. An actual perfect culmination of a 10 year long journey, flawless cinematography, giving new meaning to a 10 year old song's lyrics, astonishing VA. This belongs in a goddamn museum of art.
What’s truly moving about her is not that she is suffering outright, physically, but that faced with an impossible choice, she took on the burden of choosing the hard path for the ultimate sake of everyone she loved. Emotionally, it must have been devastating to know that all the eons of strife and pain she witnessed were due to her intervention, like a parent putting their kid through chemo to treat their cancer, and having to watch and hold their hand as they scream and thrash and curse. You know that if they can only get through the pain then they have a chance to survive and find joy in life, but part of you also wants to yank out all the cords and IVs and take them home to let them slip away in a morpine-induced bliss, free of that pain and suffering. In fact I think the entirety of this story is a lot like someone getting cancer. It begins with one malignant cell, in this case Meteion’s despair, proliferating and choking out its neighbors, and consuming everything. The host can either succumb to that despair and give up, or they can give it their all to fight for every additional moment, every new day.
I would say that she's also _very much_ suffering physically. Those moments in the cutscene where she's feels pain & thrashes about is basically the calamities causing shards to be rejoined, and as the will of Etheirys, she feels that calamitous impact physically.
When I saw this cutscene for the first time it made my hair stand up on end. I was completely speechless. It’s so beautifully powerful. I’ve not finished ew yet but it’s absolutely amazing.
Poor Wesk had to take a 10 min brb. I was tired at the time, which makes me even more emotional, (not 'tired and emotional', a British euphemism for being drunk), and I blubbed like a baby for five whole minutes, couldn't see the quest UI for the forcible closing of my eyes.
To be fair for the longest time we are led to believe any primal that is summoned usually lead to bad things. The fact that hydaelyn is a primal is just a matter of putting two and two together at that moment
She's evil. 100%. Or crazy, that she's evil without getting it. And people who don't see that should ask themselves, if they are crazy, too, to just accept genocide, because someone sells it as the right thing to do.
@@miriamweller812 when did hydaelyn accept genocide? she was trying to stop senseless mass suicide and teach people resillience to face the final days, since the amaurotines were so ill prepared to face life
@@shinkamui Hydaelyn COMMITED genocide. I wish it would only accept it. YOU people accept genocide and praise it here. Hydaelyn distoreted all life that it has to kill each other all the time and dies all the time. That it is driven by fear, gread and hate. That it suffers, endlessly. And that for NOTHING, because stopping that broken AI thing would be easy in endless ways. You people cheer for something that is on the same if not worse level than the idea to kill 4 million people on planet earth to solve climat changes and hunger. Just because someon tells you: yeah, that's the only way, just don't question it, just do what I tell you. NO! Just no! It's sick to write such a story in such away and I have read quite a lot of sick stories, but this one, hell, that's a whole own level of sick. To have a Holocaust in your fiction is one thing. To praise it like that... wtf.
@@miriamweller812 The ascians committed genocide Seven times in canon. Through 7 rejoining they killed 7 entire stars, let alone Emet-Selch not considering sundered beings anywhere close to "worthy of life." Fully creating and enforcing the Garlean empire, whose head is focused on creating a pure master race and a singular world nation. The "broken AI thing" was using a power that the Ancients had no knowledge of, they were fully doomed. Calling the sundering a "Holocaust" is also an ignorant insult to the survivors, victims, and relatives of, those who experienced actual systematic murder led by real life racists subscribing to fundamentally ignorant ideologies. Hydaelyn's actions aren't even praised, they were seen as a necessary evil. Do you feel special that you're so different though? Do you feel cool just spouting edge lord horseshit?
@@zelohendricks51 she saved the world from doom. If she’s didn’t sunder mankind, they would’ve eventually bring about their own down fall just like those other stars did to themselves. Also she sundered us she didn’t kill no one. Mankind was weak in sundered form and have short life span. ppl of Eitherys weren’t immortal. They had longer life span but would eventually die.
I had a few doubts until the second trip to Amh Araeng confirmed in full she not only didn't cause but tried to stop the flood, then it team Hydaelyn the whole way
@@zOMGGaiaOnline The ancients were the ones blind enough to suffering that they were willing to keep offering up lives to a deity that would always demand more. In the end, despite being understandable and empathized with, Emet stood on the wrong side. He, Lahabrea, and to a lesser extent Elidibus succeeded seven times in obliterating innocent people. Venat was the only one willing to brave the reality of how warped their ideology had become.
@@Lancun Ironically, Rejoinings also helped to evolve mankind. Besides, if we would go by clear death count, Venat still has it bigger due to sheer 'sunder 'em all to mortal and squishy forms' thing. There is a reason why 'Azem' rejected BOTH sides of the conflict. And Venat admits her act was an atrocity Pity we have not seen Elidibus/Venat debates on this matter
@@aznereth3767 I wouldn't say they helped to evolve anything. The First existed on its own and was near identical to the Source with its same problems and politics, but the Beast Tribes were much more readily accepted by the humanoids. And everyone on the First was a sundered 14th of what was whole as opposed to the Source who was halfway complete.
This cut scene remind me greatly of "Youre not alone" segment from FF9. The setting and the mood is the same. Except, this is much darker. Zidane went through his segment hopeless and aimless, but his friend came to his aid along to the way to show that he's not alone. Eventually, Garnet slap some sense into him. All his friends acknowledge Zidane's positive impact on them and in turn they want to be there for him. Vanet, however, walked this path alone for thousand of years with no one to truly understand her plight and what she had to do. Her impact on her surrounding isn't positive but rather "a necessary evil". She bear the weight on her own.
And it definitely isn't where the FF9 references end. People call this the FF4 Expansion, but it's got connections to multiple parts of all of Final Fantasy.
@@ionmeth2031 I'd even go so far as to say the final boss is themed similarly to Necron from FF9. That inevitability of death being fought back by the beliefs and hopes of your allies.
When the "Answers" choir kicked in, I whispered a little Michael Scott "Don't", because I knew there was no way I was getting through this cutscene without sobbing.
After I finished this quest I simply started crying. This is what we've been fighting for years, years and years of suspicions and they deliver the greatest hero of all. And let's not forget how incredible this song is. This is THE quest of the expansion
Who would have thought that when Hydalen finally tempered us, it would be IRL...Would have never guessed Venat/Hydalen would be the most badass character in the entire story....
I was emotional through the whole video... but then the fadeout to the final line, "Thou must live, die, and know,"... returning me to the fadeout of the Realm Reborn trailer. The end referencing the beginning, and making every step of our journey as a character and as players have meaning. We lived, we died, and now we know. Pardon me as I go cry over this game now.
My girlfriend just started playing FFXIV and is currently in Stormblood. She's really into the ethics and philosophy. We often discuss "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" and how she would rather save the one meant to suffer for others to live in paradise rather then live knowing that one person is suffering at the expense of others. Rewatching these cutscenes in preparation for doing Shadowbringer/Endwalker with her I can't help but think of all the parallel's to that story. A world where all are susceptible to suffering and growing stronger vs a world where all live in paradise at the expense of few (or in this case, half the population of ancients.) She's going to have an absolute field day with this story and I think for the first time in years I won't be able to hold back my tears when she yells for joy at the screen when this scene is revealed. This game is magical.
This scene... To me, Hydaelyn was always someone I wanted to truly understand. And after this scene, I finally did. Her love, that endless love... The love for life, and all things it can bring. The words player hears at the very beginning of the game: "Hear, Feel, Think". Venat wanted mankind to experience life through these three concepts; Hear the world around you, Feel the world around you, Think through life, and find your answer. Magnificently written character.
It makes sense how the former Azem, Venat, would care so much about everything and everyone given what Azem's job was. It only makes sense the most recent Azem, the WoL's soul, would be equally as strong as Venat. Maybe the only person capable of it. It's nice they both saw it through to the end. It's funny how there was a two way split and division among the Ancients, but our world was unanimously united.
@@beatricecorradi7072 I know. But at the time we are at elpis there are three azems. Even if we are an incomplete soul of the current one that is exploring the world/worlds
When pyro sees this he will explode! The most incredible moment in the game for me, literal answers whilst we get a god tier version of answers playing. Take my tears!
@@necroxisz I think by the time you complete Elpis, and especially once you see the cut scene after the second trial, anyone that suspected Hydaelyn of being evil will feel profound levels of guilt for ever doubting mom. She loved all of her children unconditionally this entire time.
@@necroxisz i know he mentions he wants that story and to be done right. But i dont think he will be angry at it that she has been good all along. But where he is at now he kinda changing what his thinking BUT i feel once Emet comes into play he might think Hydealyn is evil. Personally i never doubted Mommy Crystal. Even after finding out she was a primal. I just knew Venat knew what she was doing.
Venat, the second-to-last Azem, sundered us all and suffered interminable agony and sorrow over twelve thousand years, all so the last Azem could walk to the end and save the entire universe.
I've rewatched this so many times. In hindsight I think this might've been the best story moment in gaming for me. The way the cutscene plays out giving meaning to the lyrics of the song, that one song that accompanied us since the beginning. This moment answered so many questions we had, it's also asking mankind for their Answer all the while "Answers" plays in the background. It's years of storytelling culminating in this one revealing moment and all the pieces fall together neatly. I'm honestly in awe at what they've done.
Because of this cutscene, the meaning of both answer and the 2.0 trailer is way more sorrowful and meaningful. I have always felt something Missing about the meaning of the song and title "Answers", but now the truth of "Answers" is laid bare and it makes me both happy and sad 😭.
This is probably my favorite cutscene/story moment in any game I've ever played. The music, the struggle to come to terms with what must be done and the consequences afterwards. Truly a masterclass in story telling. Bravo CBU3. One of the best stories in gaming ever.
Hands down the best scene in Endwalker SPOILER ALERT!!! Here are my Top 5 picks for best moments in Endwalker 5. Best of the Best (or The Avengers Assemble moment in the Lochs) - Most of our favorite Characters from earlier expansions assembling to form the Ilsabard Contingent is a very satisfying scene especially because not only that it features favorite Main Scenario Characters but also Sidequest chatacters which you will recognize if you played their particular quest or if you haven’t you will be encouraged to try out their story arcs. 4. Urianger and Moenbryda’s Parents - One of the most heart felt moments if not the most in Endwalker. They somehow gave more meaning to one of the most forgettable characters in the game. 3. Looking for Qerasaf, Mehvan and their child - fetch quest are suppose to be dragging and exhausting and most side characters are forgettable but doing the series of quests here really got me totally engaged and my heart raised and watching Matsya try to calm the dying Qerasaf so he wouldn’t turn into a blasphemy and him trying to bring the infant child of Mehvan and Qerasaf to safety while fighting his fear so he wouldn’t turn really left a mark on me. 2. Quintus shoots himself, Garlemald has fallen - From the very beginning, Garlemald is the enemy for them to meet their end this ironic way is brilliant writing because it is unexpected and Quintus’ final message on why he will never accept aid from his enemies really hit me. Honorable mentions: Zenos takes control of your body, Zenos’ entrance in the Final Trial as Shinryu, journey in Ultima Thule 1. Thou must Leave, Die and Know (Venat sunders the Star) - All the questions that we have on what happened during the sundering and why it happened, finally we are given an answer and after ten years, “Answers” was finally given meaning.
Unlike many others I never had any doubts about her. Simply because the WOL does things because it is the right thing to do, it would be a slap in the face of all of that for Hy/venat to be "evil".
She literally lost so much power shielding the WoL from Lahabrea's Ultima spell that she couldn't speak for almost three expansions. If that wasn't the tip off that Hydaelyn was someone to absolutely trust, I don't know what else she could've done to prove herself.
Any 'doubts' I had were the feeling she was pushing us and thus life as a whole towards being truly self-sufficient and not relying on higher beings to fix our problems. We need face our problems no matter how daunting head on aiming towards a better, brighter future
I never had any doubts about her, I thought/feared they'd go down the route of Zodiark being consumed by Zenos and so she sacrifices herself to allow you to beat Zenos and boy am I glad it went a completely different direction. In some ways it also seems Zodiark too was not evil but the dependence that people had on Zodiark instead became the issue, the Amauroites created themselves a god to take care of them and in doing so tempered themselves. The Ascians then went on to teach the races that spawned from the sundering the power of creation with the same flaw that the amauroites had made in creating Zodiark, aetheric corruption/tempering.
Perhaps the strongest female character in the entire series. She bears so much love, that she endures thousands of years of pain and anguish so that humanity has a chance at fighting back, leaving a torch to guide humanity in our hands. I'm in tears by the end of this cutscene no matter how many times I watch it.
I think it is a crime for how good this expansion was, and personally I can't wait until the NG+ comes out. I would say it surpassed ShadowBringers to a degree, though it did have it's "boring" parts but that is another story. I think it's funny though, the song Answers, if one really thinks about it, had a role to play in all expansions if you break down all the verses.
I can't believe they spent so long making us doubt Hydaelyn and then reveal that Venat is the main fucking hero of the universe (alongside yourself). If Shadowbringers recontexualizes the argument of "Light = Good & Dark = Bad" then Endwalker did the same to...basically everything we know. How are they one upping Shadowbringers.
Games very rarely make me sob. I've shed tears before. Felt emotion. But never has a game made me audibly weep before. I was one of the people who was incredibly suspicious of Hydalyn. I thought she might have been the cause for the final days. That she was going to betray us. To have it so plainly shown that she was no god but a person with great power who sacrificed everything to simply give us a chance at life. It's the first time a game has ever made me break down and made me feel like I should apologize to a character. It's all fiction but.... I've never been hit so hard by a piece of a fiction.
Venat walked with us our entire journey, and held close her promise. She had so much love and hope. This expansion made me cry harder than any game, book, or movie ever has. This scene still makes me sob uncontrollably. It’s been a month since launch and I am STILL breaking down this story in my head and crying over it.
My favourite part of EW, is even if meteion didnt exist, etheirys could have very well still have ended up like the other stars, destroyed and barren. It was only the curiousity of hermes that allowed for them to know of the fate of the other stars. If hermes rationally thought about it, and sent better questions for meteion to ask, the ancients would be more informed of the suffering of lives unlike theirs and learn from it. But then again, maybe venat is right, maybe without sundering them, the ppl of etheirys would never have grown and accept suffering.
![Thou Must Live, Die, and Know | FFXIV Endwalker Reactions [Part 14]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/NmII_11ryJQ/mqdefault.jpg)
"No more shall man have wings to bear him to Paradise. Henceforth, he shall walk."
Sounds evil but with the context...
The toughest and thus, truest of love.
I had So many chills when I first heard that line
My new favorite quote. Previous one: "ONE BRINGS SHADOW, ONE BRINGS THE LIGHT."
That quote is a reference to the tale of Icarus is it not?
Seeing Hythlodaeus just leave, smiling, to be sacrificed, because he wants his friends to live on, shattered my heart completely.
I'm sorry Hyth, but your sacrifice was useless. Venat killed them all.
@@kapsi It wasn't useless. Without that sacrifice there's no Zodiark. Without Zodiark, Meteion kills everyone.
Both Hydaelyn and Zodiark were necessary evils. They both saved the world.
@@VDA19 That's the thing really, Fandaniel had to catch some hands but I feel like what he did was itself also necessary because of how the ancients were content with remaining stagnant. His failures as a researcher and a person created crisis, but it also along with everything else led to a future where life might not simply reach the conclusion seen on the other stars. I don't think any of it would have happened if Meteion wasnt trying to force the answer she found.
@@kapsi Zodiark is actually what keeping Etheirys safe for a while. Even after the sundered. Only after we killed Zodiark that Meteion could invade it.
Kinda wished they showed us Lahabrea and Elidibus as they showed us Hythlodaeus, emet and fandaniel
Venat really went "This is why we can't have nice things" then proceed to nerf the world.
And give us catgirls
It was a nerf and a buff at the same time.
The best part? She was absolutely, 100% right. The Ancients who summoned Zodiark had a tainted view of the past and their own world. They didn't know the sorrow because they couldn't see it.
@@NebulonRanger Not only they went a dark path to try and achieve their Utopia back, even IF they in the end managed to get their perfect world as it once was, it wouldn't have lasted. Venat knew this. You can see it in Meteion's report: once she starts talking about the world who ended all suffering (the last area of her dungeon too), you can see Venat's face darken as she hears about that people losing their will to live, after apathy and boredom settled in for good.
She knew that an endless life with no adversities would eventually be meaningless, leading Meteion to victory once again.
@@AndreAConquerorII *Precisely*.
Venat didn't create the current shards of Etheirys as a cruel joke. She saw what her people were becoming and set the world on a different path, one that would actually lead to lasting change. The post-Elpis cinematic confirms that was the intent.
In a way, she actually agreed with the Fervent Ancient: what was happening *was* all wrong, but not because they had lost their utopia. It hadn't really existed in the first place ("No paradise is without its shadows."), and the Ancients' desire to pretend otherwise would have led to their stagnation and inevitable downfall, if not then, then in the future.
Was her decision the right one? That's murky, since she (as Hydaelyn) admits it wasn't completely just. In the end, though, it was the correct decision to make to ensure mankind's future in the universe, even if not as ancient man.
"No more shall man have instant login to bear him to Eorzea. Henceforth, he shall queue" - Yoshi P
It’s to prevent Denial of Service attacks. (Login and logout repeatedly with a huge amount of accounts (by hackers for example) made it possible to block login for vast majority of players.. a security risk and that is how they fixed it.)
LMAO
@@ViewTube_Emperor_of_Mankind You are the embodiment of overthinking lmfao
@@tomasskala4405 I have no idea if this is the reason FFXIV has a queue but what ViewTube said is both very reasonable and certainly very plausible. FFXIV does seem to frequently suffer from ddos attacks and a short queue that attempts to keep a stable flow of, say, 20 players in and out of the game doesn't seem an entirely irrational measure to take to lessen their impact. Even if obviously not a solution in and of itself given recent events.
I don't think the problem here is that they're overthinking. I think the problem here is that you just don't think. At all.
Square was greedy from the start. Europe didn't have servers and by that desastrous lags for TWO FULL YEARS and after that they always used "servers bad" as excuse fo not improving the game and just cutting it down further, but of course never just invest in more and better servers.
When there wasn't enough plots for housing, they also didn't just invest into more server power to give more housing plots, not, they abused this to force people staying subbed, no matter how dead the game is, because else you lose the house and EVERYTHING inside, too.
I was not expecting this scene to just strike so hard as it did. It was incredible. Hydaelyn went from being sort of an abstract concept to a fully fleshed out character in the blink of an eye and i'm here for it.
Try watch the JP version Hydaelyn(Venat)’s voice is so strong it hits harder imo
lol reminds me of a friend named austin.
@@harakiribanzai2483 I watched it, and I much prefer the English voiceover. The JP version of Venat's voice is too high-pitched for my liking.
@@harakiribanzai2483 I listened to it. Her normal voice is too soft in general, but when she speaks normally...its really good. I get the whole "good" goddess voice thing, but I would have preferred a normal voice like the English va. Venat would not have a soft voice if her personality is anything to go by.
@@Anharie Venat's voice isn't stereotypical in English either. She has the voice of a seasoned orator, which is fitting of the seat of Azem I feel.
It is frightening how this singular song came full circle. I feel this scene is the developer‘s Answers to the question of the meaning of life. I never imagined in my brightest hour that Endwalker would be this intense - and I love every second of it.
The meaning changes completely after this scene. It's so fucking amazing
@@mjs3188 it's not the only song like this. One brings shadow, one brings light/two toned echoes tumbling through time.
Who does this remind you of, and come to think of it why did hydlodaues's shade know to give you Azem's soul stone?
@@Hawkbreath36 Do not squander it. The Iegacy I Ieave you.
I swear, the meaning of Answers’ lyrics changes with each expansion. It’s beautiful.
@@pwnorbepwned There's a reason the version of the song that plays during her trial fight is "Your Answer". It all came full circle.
this is still the best cutscene in endwalker, made me cry, she made her children suffer so they can keep on living, she suffered alongside them, wept with them, and now after endwalker, her children are safe.
All the more reason to stop that damn bird Mr. Hermes wanted to keep
@@leonides1527 honestly if i were in Meteion's shoes, seeing the endless amounts of worlds that were overcome by their despair, i too would reach the conclusion that we should just end life if it meant eternal suffering everywhere we went, but Venat truly believed in mankind's potential to overcome it, such a powerful message by the developers, i think this is my favorite final fantasy story, reminds me of ff9 when zidane a bright colorful outgoing character was faced with his own dilemma of what being alive really meant.
@@poggamus4330 Hope really is the most powerful force in the Universe
@@poggamus4330 What I think is beautiful is that they don't entirely hand wave it aside, all these worlds DID suffer and die out, there was despair and even in the story, it's not about replacing suffering with happiness, but accepting suffering is a part of life.
I love it cause I've struggled like many with similar question Hermes poses and questioning why to suffer and what's the point of happiness if it'll end abruptly with more suffering like some of these civilizations. I came to terms with it when met with contentment. Instead of striving for happiness and a perfect life, strive to be content with it and what it brings, see the lows and downs of it not as an enemy to run away from but as part of you just as much as the good moments.
It's the small moments that makes it worth it though and the hope for brighter days. Despite being content with days of suffering and despair, doesn't mean you give up hope for better ones, but through contentment you can endure it and see the good in it all which the people of Ethyris does, rather than keep chasing those high's the other civilizations were doing, and once you reach the highest peak, it'll hurt all the more when you fall down from it and hit the bottom.
Ok but what about g'raha burger, that scene is a contender for best cutscene
I love that they showed her literally taking every step we took, taking the hit from Ultima to carrying us walking up to Emet. This woman had so much love for her children.
Taking the hit from Ultima? Where? or am I blind.
@@aaronh678 that shield that she maid in the mainszenario when Ultima was made to fire its ultimate attack. That was her taking the hit for us
@@Alien361 Thought he was on about in this cutscene..
@@aaronh678 One of the sound effects that plays when she’s struck during the long walk is the same one that Ultima’s attack used.
@@StellaStarfall Thanks. I'll have to listen out :)
As I said in a different video:
The meaning behind Venats decision is so beautiful and logical, yet cruel and unforgiving. She sundered the star, mankind and all of creation knowing that in their imperfection, determined life span and receptiveness to dynamis we would inevitable seek the answer of hermes question. She further stresses to seek the answer by calling to us "Hear, Feel, Think" like a mantra, wich is exactly what we need to be able to understand dynamis and face Meteion. Especially, since Meteion, a beeing communicating using dynamis, tries to understand us using the same terms:
Meteion: "I wish to hear your words... Share your feelings... Know your thoughts."
tl;dr: Venat dooms mankind to suffer. Because in suffering we would seek meaning in our lifes. Therefore finding the answer hermes and meteion so eagerly seek. I love it!
@@pawbgles Kid, without that sacrifice (and it was VENAT who told SHIT about that time travel mumbo jumbo), there would have been nothing left for that Super Nazi to slaughter.
Those people who gave their life WILLINGLY to save the planet and all others did the job. Venat then just came up with: lol, I kill everyone anyway and to make sure you don't stand up, I slaughter your souls with it and deform you completely.
@@miriamweller812 Reductionist nonsense at it's best.
@@miriamweller812 Yeah, thats not how nazi-ideology worked. Nazi ideology was based on an obsession with the ideal of one singular, superior race of super humans who should rule the world and wipe out everything they deemed lesser. It was heavily based on ideas of physical superiority, be it of athletic qualities or a biologically determined idea of intelligence, which in return creats superior societes. What Venat did is to split the world, to creat a humanity which is defined by weakness, imperfection but also diversity, compared to the original ascian race. Like, if you would go with that analogy, the definition of an Aryan as the nazis imagined them to be would be closer to the Ascians, who were a singular race of seemingly perfect humans with super human qualities living in an idealized society. Which actually resembels the idea of many esotericist leaning fascists consider the origins of the aryan race or similar constructs of mythological forebearers to the "white race" like the hyperboreans consider to be: A superior and highly advanced raced of mythical super humans with demi-godlike quantities, from which the "white race" fell from grace and which needs to be restored to their former glory.
Considering the plans of the Ascians, both the originals and the Unsundered, to first bring back life to the planet just to sacrifice it again to bring back to life the sacrificed original Ascians and restore their idealized society back to their former glory, they were actually closer to nazi ideals. Like, before his defeat and change of heart, Emet-Selchs entire point was, that the sundered races are not worth living, because he considered them too inferior to the idealized society he lived in. What Venat did, was reject such a notion which forms the core of the world view of many esoteric fascist movements in our current world. Her core thesis was, that an imperfect, sundered and therfore diversified and weakened form of humanity that has to overcome hardship and learn to co-exist and cooperate would be more fit to fight despair than a people who will perpetually sacrifice those who don't fit their standart of perfection. Let us not forget that the Ascians actually engineered and wiped out entire species, just due to their perception of usefullness for the world.
I mean, if anything the core thesis of Final Fantasy 14 and Endwalker specifically is pretty leftist, if anything. Normal human (and the different playable races of the games are usually refered to as human in general) beings who try to live their life to its fullest through hardship and find strength in diversity and their differences is more fit to overcome despair and nihilism than some idealized race of superhuman demi-gods who are all the same. It rejects usually rightwing ideas of utopianism which are based on perceptions of biological superiority and a return to a glorified past in favor of more left-leaning ideas of utopnianism, based on creating a more idealized and just society by rejecting nostalgia and creating a stronger society through emotional self improvement, allowing humans to culturally develope into being more empathetic and optimistic. Hell, even the whole beast tribe plot-line has pretty anti-colonialist undertones, considering that it was the usually european-coded city states which created the primal problem to begin with, through their oppression, warfare and chauvinism towards the beast tribes they considered inferior, to the point where all they could do is find flight in religious fundamentalism, because the city states kept on stealing or destroying their territories, ressources and cultural archievements. Like, the whole Limsa-kobolds Plotline in Shadowbringers can be fully read as an allegory of the history between european settlers and native nations in america, in that it the settlers who broke written treaties that clearly defined borders for their own self-gain and pushed the natives more and more to the brink. And in that plot, Merlwyb fully acknowledges that the entire fault for the conflict and the primal summoning was fully on her and her people, that the kobols are right to not trust them and that the burden to creat peace is fully on the Limsa Lominsans. The Limsans owe their wealth to the kobolds and paid them in treachery. And she fully acknowledges, that it isn't enough to just make peace, but that the Limsans owe it to the kobolds to engage with them in fair trade relations and support them in gaining prosperity to rebuild their society.
@@hermeticallysealed1 Yeah, sure planetar genocide is a question about that.
Typical Nazi 'argument' (not that it actually is one...). congrats. You just prove it more.
Also typical for fascists, they just dig deeper...
@@miriamweller812 Ah, so too many big words used, because Nazis are known for being literate and making reasoned explanations not based on inherent superiority.
I fully buy your logic now.
"Even should you lose all that is dear to you. Even should it cost you your life...You bear the burden and fight on, kick and screaming until your last breath is spent!"
-Elidibus
Actually an Ardbert quote that Elidibus stole from 3.4. In Ardbert’s body, but still. And then Ardbert rebuttals with another quote of his from Base ShB.
@@rezahydra Indeed. One must always remember what one is fightning for. Elidibus could barely remember at that point.
@@rezahydra wait fr???? TUFF
In that moment you realize the sheer tragedy of it all. There was no evil mastermind in the end. Venat and Emet fought for the same damn thing, but on opposite sides. It's heartbreaking. At the end of EW, it is the only time in my years of gaming that I looked at the main character and think, "you've been through too much." The WoL, the Ancients, they have suffered way too much.
meteion and hermes are the mastermind
@@somethinghandlesomething I wouldn't even say they were. Hermes loved all his creations Meteion included and didn't want her to die because she was a threat and wouldn't be of service to the star. Meteion was like a daughter to him almost and he wanted to hear her report. The notion of the Convocation examining her when they all knew the final verdict adding in what all 4 of them saw.
So by wiping their minds and sending Meteion away to judge mankind and to be free he doomed them all. I think his suffering as an Ancient also compounded to Amon and Xande and finally OUR Fandaniel.
It's a tragedy all around.
@@erym7483 Yeah, neither are masterminds as much as victims of suffering just as everyone else, Meteion in particular given her nature, what she was made for and what she found.
Despite it all, if it weren't for Hermes and Meteion, all the tragedies wouldn't have happened and what then? Would the ancients eventually reach perfection? As seen in the last dungeon, that may have led to their own end as there would be nothing left to strive for and it by itself is a form of suffering.
In the end, what the xpac and story teaches is that suffering and imperfection is not a curse or something to be rid of, cause even if it can lead to a tragic end, it's what completes life.
@@erym7483 i dont think id agree with ur hypothesis and even if i did, what you wrote is just motives not really why they aren't "mastermind" they literally planned it and deliberately wanted to and caused the final day to happen later on
Spoilers for Endwalker:
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I've never been a huge fan of the whole "The world and life is suffering, so I'll just kill everyone to bring peace" trope in stories.
But the idea that Hermes accidentally created a universal gestalt consciousness of all of the suffering in the UNIVERSE by having Meteion's sisters explore the stars is definitely a unique take on the concept. It definitely makes the nihilistic philosophy more reasonable, because Meteion absorbed the desolation of countless destroyed planets, absorbed the despair of countless dying civilizations, and inadvertently set another unknown number of people off on the path to extinction as a result of her discoveries elsewhere.
I can't really blame Meteion for her reasoning and actions, as much as I disagree with her. She inadvertently absorbed the emotions of entire sapient species in their last moments, like the Ea who learned about the expansion of the universe. Or the Omicron, who realized that their fear of being conquered led to the extinction of others.
Goddamn, it's a depressing reality with no real easy answer to something that is immortal and has experienced so much.
It's small, but really powerful to me, the look on Emet-Selch's face as he watches Hythlodaeus leave.
For how offended he was at the idea that he would become who he was in Shadowbringers, that wave goodbye is 100% the moment that would start him down that path.
It's easy to assume you would never do something until you're put into a desperate situation. He was a very tragic and well done character.
watching your comment made me realise, hytho said that when a human returns to life stream all the altered memories will be cleansed, same theory was said also by the old prof in sharlyan. When we defeated emet and send him to life stream ( not sealing him as laha was absorbed in thordan's sword or elidibus in the tower). Emet returned in the 5.3 Beause he remembered!
@@wontononionslicer1004 Emet WAS sealed, though. That's why he's in the lifestream at all instead of brooding in Pandaemonium... or already in another clone body, since he only stayed dead for two seconds when Varis shot him. Don't you remember Thancred slicing his auracite into a zillion pieces?
@@moonxrose26 and then later in a certain zone starting with an E when...
Hythlodaeus tells us that no matter how frustrated Azem makes him, he ALWAYS answers the summons when she has need. So not only did he remember after returning to the aetherial sea, but he also continued to support one of his best friends when in need.
It wasn't so much that he was offended of what hw would become though. Emet-selch was a member of the Convocation. They were trained and upheld truthfulness. You told him something that he knew was undoubtedly the truth. Just like he knew that whatever comfort Hythlodaeus shared in that last moment was a lie. That he was accepting his end to save his people.
Emet-selch didn't want to believe the story but you had no reason to tell such an outlandish lie and could tell you were being truthful. That's why he entrusted their legacy to you. Because you told him what he would become in his grief and he chose to trust you over anything he would be able to do to stop the End times.
He told us to remember because in his long quest to save his people, he had forgotten the reason for fighting along the way.
Her eyes man... She is sooooo hurt and yet her eyes were burning with love and determination.
What a certified badass and incredible character!
That thing just slaughtered a planet and distorted all life on it, burning eyes are very fitting to such a Satan indeed....
@@miriamweller812 work on your ability of understanding literatures. it’s obviously lacking.
@@lxNOLUCA ???
@@FumiTheSillyGirl someone was kinda crazy about my coment and he pretty much call the bullshit that the other person was saying :)
Sylvanas fucking WISHES she was half as badass as Venat
There’s really no comparison between a world and a character carefully built with love over many years and a stitched together Frankenstein of a woman puked out by every misogynistic abuser at Blizz.
@@SergeDuka The thing is Sylvanas used to be a pretty well written character, they just kept passing that Garrosh idiotball around.
I love how "He Shall Walk" sounds equal parts promise and threat.
She isn't evil. But she still scary
She's neither evil nor good. Just another sinner. Like us.
She's also super fucking badass. And super impartial. She let that ascian situation slide because she knows she has to wait for the sundered to prove themselves. Based queen.
She did not want to get into pesky debates and refused to elaborate further.
Yep, based indeed
She's best mom. But she was totally in the right.
@@TKUltra971 she's basically the ultimate Tiger Mom
Henceforth, he shall walk.
Every single time, this brings me to tears
And amidst deepest despair, Light everlasting…
All the more powerful when one realizes she isn't saying mankind is barred from paradise, but now they have to work for it...and in doing so they will find the answer Hermes sought.
@@WalkerRileyMC yes this. we can make it to this paradise but we need to work for it. it won't be handed to us on a silver platter
6:45
The look of horror, anguish, grief, and heartbreak on Venat's face, realizing what she has to do. God this scene was powerful.
It hurt her to go with this but she knew she had no choice
The fact that “Answers” was THIS level of important is painfully incredible to experience after so long. Absolutely magical and yet horrendously sad to see this scene. So many emotions. Thank you to the writers for this story. Hydaelyn and Zodiark’s arc is one of the most impactful pieces of gaming I’ve experienced in my life. Thank you, thank you, thank you for this brilliant and beautiful moment.
@@miriamweller812 Feel free to tell us what would've happened if Venat didn't do this.
@@-u-waa Totally agree. The fact that Venat did it was for the survival of all living things so that they can LIVE, so I'm interested in hearing their answer as well.
@@miriamweller812 I really don't think you understand what Venat did. She stopped the genocide of the other races.
@@Darkfire0721 No, Zodiark saved all life. Venat killed all life and broke it.
What would you say, when I kill your family, use their orgns to make humanlike abominations out of them and then just tell you, it will be for the greater good? Because that's the FF14 story.
It's not like they even try to give it a reason. You are just told: yeah, Holocausting a planet is good and you should accept this. And then people really do that, wtf...
Again: this is likely coming up with the idea to kill half of humankind to solve clima change and world hunger. Oh, yeah, this WILL work - but it's fucking insane and evil to the core.
And in case is what not only only one half but everything and there was not even a plan. It was just pure insanity^2.
But, yeah, she's an anime MILF with a nice voice and a sad song, so it's fine.
W.T.F.
@@miriamweller812 Tell the world you didn't understand the story without saying you didn't understand the story
It was when I hit this cutscene when I realized this is officially the best FF to date and not just "one of the best", but literally THE best
Fetch quests till you succumb to the boredom and start skipping every single cutscene since 2.4
@@agentriot then skip ARR?? Lmao
You didn't need the word literally
@@agentriot Still better than FFXVI
@@pppgggr nah.
What amazes me is just how quickly Square managed to build a character. Hydaelyn has been this unknown "God", lurking in the background but never been fully explained. We have gone years knowing nothing, then suddenly boom, everything in one expansion.
And honestly, I think this is the most perfect way they could ever have done it. Had we known about Venat as Hydaelyn before, the emotions would not have been the same. Square is a master at playing our emotions like a fiddle. And I'm perfectly fine with it.
It's incredible to me how they made me care DEEPLY for Venat in just an expansion. She went from something that didn't even exist to one of FFXIV's best characters in one single expansion.
@brandovlogs And 14 is mostly thanks to CBU3, not the rest of SE.
It's very hard to make a legendary character FEEL legendary. Venat is one of those amazing few. Tying her to the player through Azem gave her this immediate bond with us, and it feels like losing her took away the one person who could ever understand the WoL (except Ardbert, who dwells within us).
I'm curious as to who the current azem was when we were in elpis. Seeing as venat was the azem who stepped down and we were attributed to the azem that currently held it, and our character is the future azem.
@@erickelley1680 Implied they were away on business aka traveling. Though the post credit scene implies Elidibus is waiting for Azem so they can see Pandæmonium.
@@acgearsandarms1343 That'll explain why he would accept our help during the raids. He might assume we're a familiar of Azem like the rest of the ancients and put his trust in us
@@ieyasumei4339 Assume nothing with Azem. You can’t possibly understand them unless you were Hythlodaeus or Emet-Selch.
@@acgearsandarms1343 And they can't can't understand Azem half the time either XD
This scene made me feel bad for ever doubting her conviction to help us during Shadowbringer. Still haven't finished Endwalker but this was so good I had to watch it again.
All those years of the suspicions, the wondering, is Hydaelyn good? Could she perhaps be secretly evil? Then this tear inducing cutscene spells it out. No. Hydaelyn/Venat is a big. fucking. Hero. The biggest one if it weren't for the player character.
The seat of Azem should seriously be renamed the Seat of Suffering. I say this facetiously because of the 5.3 trial, but it actually makes some sense from a story perspective. The Ancients/Amaroutines showed that they would have played right into Meteion's hands by sacrificing themselves right out of existence to avoid pain and loss. Venat forcibly changed their course from guaranteed oblivion to the possibility of a future by offering her own body and soul.
I can't think of another time that a character so quickly went from suspicious to one of my favorites and believing in them fully, and done so well.
nah i always wondered after SHB what could cause a calamity those monsters from amaurot didnt explode in aether like almost every foe defeated in raids and dungeons and that the convocation was fanatical for some reason.
I was suspicious until vritra's line about how midgardsormr trusts her and I'm like, OK valid
@@Pompadourius Show Blizzard how it's done
I see it now… just how much work they have put into this story…
“To listen, to suffer, to entrust unto tomorrow…”
“Thou must live, die and know…”
She has given us this torch to carry, and sacrificed everything in hopes of our success… a true hero above all…
You know what? Louisiox did too and the same song was used there. This games thematic tie ins are kinda nuts!
She killed everyone and distorted them. Your just cheer to the worst kind of fascism, you get this, right? That's the story fascists tell. That you have to get rid of the 'wrong' people. That you nave to use brutal violence to forge society in the way they want it to.
And even in that fucked up story, nothing proves Venat''s Holocaust right in any way. You just got random plot armor, most things that help you succeed got NOTHING to do with Venat and the people it distorted but actually Garleans or remaining ancients. And of course all this could have been done MUCH better without the Holocaust.
@@miriamweller812 You do realize that the ancients had no way to defeat the Endsinger, right? Aside from the fact that they lacked the understanding of suffering and hardship to fight of the despair she inflicts, the fact that their dense Aether made them unable to even manipulate Dynamis means they would have been helpless against her if they went to face her, in her realm where the flood of Dynamis washes away and overwhelms Aether.
In the current state of the world, they could have fought as hard as they wanted...and it would all have been for naught. They lacked both the experience and the very means to face the Endsinger in any meaninful way.
Without Venat's actions, as harsh and cruel as they were, everything would have ended sooner or later.
@@miriamweller812 Nah she didn't killed them, they were sundered, all they lost is their ability to live forever and the ability to create things out of aether, which were their "wings to paradise", those were the only 2 things that were realistically stripped from them. The only ancients which brought genocide were the ascians who had ideals closer than the nazi, believing themselves to be superior to other and the only ones worth of existing, and the people at elpis who liked playing god, hermes in special who created a being which caused a cosmic wide calamity, meteion was using dynamis to hasten the end of the UNIVERSE. Zodiark wasn't saving anyone, it was stalling meteion effects, over time as the universe and everything around the world died, so would the world. Its like you didn't played this game, or just skipped to endwalker and decided to see nazi on everything.
@@spartanhexus6759 When I destroy your personality, delete your memories, take away all your abilities and everything you are, have been and would be - I KILLED you.
Those people are DEAD. Even worse: Their souls are destroyed. Ripped apart.
And it does not matter what you call them, they were just NORMAL. THEY were the normal people.
From the PoV of an insect a human got an absurdly long life. But that's just normal. You can't argue from the PoV of that insect, that humans 'live too long' and so it's fine to cut that down.
Again: this is like taking RL problems and say: yeah humans are the problem, let's just kill them all and use their biomass to form short lived mini humans out of them, which only live for a few months.
And yes, killing a few billion humans WOULD solve many problem we got. The idea to just think about that is still just sick on every level - and to cheer for it... hell...
I kept thinking of Answers during this segment of the story
When this cut scene came to an end... I don't think I can ever listen to Answers in the same way again.
Such beautiful foreshadowing from the start
Ye its magical how this scene completely recontextualizes the lyrics to a song composed 10 years ago.
Answer marked the beginning of the reborn, and marked the ending of the saga. It tis very scary if they already plan that far to tell the story from the same version of a song
@@strikefred0m They do plan very far ahead but Answers was composed before Yoshi P. was even working on FFXIV so I'm pretty sure they just found a way to use the song for the finale at some point after Yoshi P. assumed.
The words "wept for innocence lost" and "wailed" seem to compare the Ancients to children. Their mindsets were that of children since the vast majority of them hadn't seen hardship and had the chance to grow from these experiences. A beautiful depiction how what we've been through makes us strong.
I had faith. I had so much faith that Ishikawa wouldn't give us the tired, tired trope of "Your God is Actually Bad". I kept the faith that Hydaelyn was the loving being she always showed herself to us as. If anything... I only underestimated just how much love she truly had.
Edit: If one more of you armchair warriors with a lack of critical thinking skills screams at me "she committed GENOCIDE" I'm going to sunder my own buttcrack. Since I seem to have to clarify: I NEVER said that what Venat did was indisputably the correct moral decision. The choice she made had repercussions that inflicted suffering on all mankind and she herself admits how morally gray it was. But she did it with the intention to SAVE humanity, not eradicate it, because she loved humanity. That is, by literal definition, the opposite of "genocide". You are free to disagree with what she did with all you want and you wouldn't even be wrong, but god forbid you ALSO acknowledge that she is morally gray, instead of screaming a buzzword so that you can fake the moral high ground on anyone who disagrees with you.
Agreed.
The woman is the embodiment of hope. You feel like nothing could go wrong after you defeat Hydaelyn in that trial and get her ultimate approval, with her on your side nothing can stand against you. Its sad that she is gone for good now, my WoL will miss having Hydaelyn watching over him all the time.
She's the reason that the Wol is so good in the first place.
The writing team played us SUPER good. Got us all set up to expect the reveal of her actually being evil, or at least very neutral or manipulative, just to hit us with "actually she's the biggest hero there ever was and one of the coolest characters in the entire franchise."
instead we got the tired tired trope of "literally no one important dies"
how much harder would the message of carrying on in spite of despair had hit if one of the scions *actually* died?
"As fragmented imperfect beings, yours is a never ending quest. A quest to find your purpose, knowing your end is assured."
SHIT JUST GOT META... Some of us may never know their true purpose in life. Or even get to that age. We suffer greatly yet why does mankind continue to move forward? It's because we find joy and happiness in the little things. Like family, food, comfort, ambition, religion, etc. We may not live forever but we value life more than any immortal being. That's our strength, we may fear death but when the time comes we accept it.
I'd recommend Viktor Frankl's 'Mans Search for Meaning'. This was his ideology, and he founded logotherapy, a therapeutic practice that seeks to help the client find their own personal meaning. He was incredible, and the book covers his time in a literal concentration camp, where his own personal meaning kept him going. So much of what he talks about ties in so closely to Endwalker's plot.
I think it's interesting how a video game makes more sense with life, than life has had any sense so far.
Yes, it's fantasy, but I think the way they incorporated these ''ideals'' and ''morals'' is insane and genius.
It might sound cheesy, but this literal scene, and the entirety of Endwalker, has made me look at life SOO much differently. I couldn't agree more with how they wrote Venat, and the reasons she made humanity suffer.
They made her into this godly being, that only seemed to speak to a chosen few - to most, she was but fiction and just a name. But given everything they built her up to be.. I don't even have words.
If we had to pick our own reality, this reasoning would be my nr.1 way to tackle life.
Life sucks? Too bad, do something about it, because nobody is going to hold your hand and kiss your booboo and say it'll just go away.
People are their own strength, but there's nothing wrong in believing in something bigger.
i love how in this part they move the camera to show us looking directly into her eyes its as if shes actually talking to us the player at that point telling us what we need to do and that there is no easy answer for us and that we need to find that answer
Ishikawa not only toping her game with this masterpiece but also retroactively making ShB even better. Bravo.
Venat might just be Final Fantasy's greatest hero. Not by power or might, but by sheer indomitable will that most Final Fantasy characters could never match.
She limit broke through all history.
She's the reason Wol is so good as well. She passed it on to them.
@@AdeptKing It's actually mutual strength they gain from one another in an endless cycle of time. The WoL is the sundered soul of the final Azem, her pupil and friend. So obviously we are strengthened and pushed by her, but it actually goes both ways.
She explains when you finally face her Primal Form that you, her Champion, were HER inspiration. The time you spent together with her in Elpis, the stories you told her of your adventures, the beauty of the world that she loves. You pushed her just like she pushed you. I hope that someday in the future, she, Hyth, and Emet can all be reincarnated as new characters who carry on that same spirit now that they're dead and returned to the star. It happened to Azem, why can't it happen for them?
The thing is also (correct me if im wrong) that primals usually require worship/faith and insane amounts of aether to be born into existance. She apparently manifested herself into a primal with nothing but her own power and her unbreaking will.
@@wildwombatarmy The absolute audacity!! Venat is the original WoL!!!
I wish i could forget all of Shadowbringers and Endwalker so i could experience it with fresh eyes again.
Such an amazing game, and story
10:44
"As fragmented, imperfect beings, yours is a never-ending quest.
A quest to find your purpose, knowing your end is assured.
To find the strength to continue, when all strength has left you.
To find joy, even as darkness descends...
...and amidst deepest despair, light everlasting."
Okay, whoever decided to make Hydaelyn the best characters with the rawest lines in the game in the midst of an exceptional cutscene that completely recontextualizes the literal main theme of the game while the lyrics are (kind of) used by the characters, needs a raise.
Endwalker did not need to go this hard, but I'm glad it does.
I also love the part where normally the "Now open your eyes, while our plight is repeated" plays, but instead the song shifts to an arrangement with an organ as the main instrument, you know, representing the goddess and all that, while Venat uses the text of the part that would normally play, to lecture the others. It's so good.
And then cross cutting between her and the WoL in the ShB finale as she talks about perservering and whatever is just such an incredibly cool moment.
God, I love this game.
Until Shadowbringers, almost everyone was cautious of Hydaelyn, suspecting her to secretly be evil or something like that, and then Endwalker just turns everything on its head.
Yeah its amazing how Hydaelyn goes from being a distant and seemingly uncaring god that people cry to in their time of suffering, asking for answers. Only to find out that she has no answers and exists that we might have a chance to find them for ourself. And the suffering? She's enduring it with them every step of the way.
Yeah.
I really didn't care much about Hydaelyn before as she didn't have much depth and/ or screen time. And now she might just be my favorite character.
Until now, I always imagined that section of Answers to be a bitter mortal screaming at a God that has failed them. This cutscene flips that on its head by making it a God calling it to another, higher God.
God this game is so good
@@mrcool9090 I don't think think venat/hydaelyn is calling on a higher power actually, but asking her sundered children to find their own answer to the question that she and the Ascians could not. It's a beautiful parallel in a way, that for Hydaelyn, the struggle for the sundered life on Eitherys to exist validates her own decision and the pain she endured to give them the opportunity to live.
What i love about it is that it also shows she's not perfect. Some all knowing being. but a person trying to do good with the cards given and being forced to pass on that hope. Such a beautiful story moment all wrapped in the song.
The very definition of a strong female character.
Remember when WoW honored women by turning them in to bowls of fruit?
And the secret is they never have to draw attention to the fact or disparage men in the process. She's just a great character that anyone can resonate with. So glad there's still writers out there who get it. The Character of the, er, character is all that matters.
@@happygaysounds Trust me. I have read fanfictions about Sylvanas that got better writing than whatever shit Blizz been pulling right out of their ass.
@@Vincent-hx1ql Because the fanfic authors actually care about the character lmao
Take notes Western developers this is how it’s done right, not some Mary Sue Bull shit !!!
The kindest and most cruel decision one could have ever taken.
Time after time, i revisit this cutscene and every time, without fail, i'm left speechless for a solid minute afterwards.
It's so heavy, but somehow also uplifting. She (and Ishikawa) talks not only to the WoL, not only to every ingame character, but to us and every living person too.
It's rare when a video game lets you question life itself and not in a #im14andthisisdeep way too.
#imfinalfantasy14andthisisdeep
Endwalker was such a great journey, this is one of the most impactfull scenes!
this scene is so incredible on a lot of levels - but one of the most striking things to me is that it's one of the very few times they've really gone all out on playing with metaphor instead of representing a scene directly "as it happened"... and it winds up resulting in a phenomenally powerful scene with legitimate claim to the title of best scene of the expansion, if not the whole game. just fantastic.
Hands down the best scene in Endwalker
SPOILER ALERT!!!
.
Here are my Top 5 picks for best moments in Endwalker
5. Best of the Best (or The Avengers Assemble moment in the Lochs) - Most of our favorite Characters from earlier expansions assembling to form the Ilsabard Contingent is a very satisfying scene especially because not only that it features favorite Main Scenario Characters but also Sidequest chatacters which you will recognize if you played their particular quest or if you haven’t you will be encouraged to try out their story arcs.
4. Urianger and Moenbryda’s Parents - One of the most heart felt moments if not the most in Endwalker. They somehow gave more meaning to one of the most forgettable characters in the game.
3. Looking for Qerasaf, Mehvan and their child - fetch quest are suppose to be dragging and exhausting and most side characters are forgettable but doing the series of quests here really got me totally engaged and my heart raised and watching Matsya try to calm the dying Qerasaf so he wouldn’t turn into a blasphemy and him trying to bring the infant child of Mehvan and Qerasaf to safety while fighting his fear so he wouldn’t turn really left a mark on me.
2. Quintus shoots himself, Garlemald has fallen - From the very beginning, Garlemald is the enemy for them to meet their end this ironic way is brilliant writing because it is unexpeted and Quintus’ final message on why he will never accept aid from his enemies really hit me.
Honorable mentions: Zenos takes control of your body, Zenos’ entrance in the Final Trial as Shinryu, journey in Ultimate Thule
1. Thou must Leave, Die and Know (Venat sunders the Star) - All the questions that we have on what happened during the sundering and why it happened, finally we are given an answer and after ten years, “Answers” was finally given meaning.
I think the shot of Venat at the end is probably one of the most powerful in the game. Think about it this way. This scene is a metaphor for the several millennia Venat spent alone in the depths of the aetherial sea as Hydaelyn. As she continues to prepare for the future the Warrior of Light described to her in Elpis, she is forced to watch the suffering she wrought on the world, and she continuously hears her children's cries of despair. Eventually, the Ascians begin to enact the Rejoinings, which are represented in this scene as sharp flares of pain that cause black grime to accumulate on Venat. As the Rejoinings occur, she grows weaker and weaker, inching closer toward her own death as she loses aether. By the end of the sequence, we see her staggering, barely able to walk. As she continues her path, we see flashes of the Warrior of Light's showdown with Emet-Selch. She remembers hearing them recall the tale of their battle, and it gives her the conviction to walk on. Venat is almost completely covered in filth, yet her eyes still shine through, fixed on the road ahead. She is in utter agony, yet she remains focused on the future.
Venat carried humanity on her back for a millenia, alone. Heartbroken to see what she had to endure in this cutscene.
What is a goddess? Is she a maiden as undefiled as crystal? A being sacrosanct with the bounty of the earth and the wrath of the heavens? Venat's "Answer": Nay, a goddess is lone duelist, caked with blood and beset by oblivion. But nonetheless, the light never leaves her eyes and the boundless darkness she marches through is permeated by a lonely, unrelenting grace, enough to sustain the entirety of the will that burns in those who persist onward in her footsteps, however invisible the path she has traced may be.
@@Mnemoniforma9.00 you should become a writer
Y u gotta do this. Why did I read this. Did I cry, yes - and thank you!
A big flaw of Endwalker I feel is how much it focused on and wanked her pain, though. Why does it focus so much on how she suffered from the decision? Regardless of how you feel about her, she made the decision to cast judgement on all of humanity and that's wrong. Any chance to call her out in game is immediately handwoven by the characters and they even force the player to have a personal connection with her by tying us to her via Azem. That's not really to us few who didn't personally like her all that much. Square needs to step back and stop forcing so much characterization onto the Warrior of Light.
@@azatheeverchosen7615 That's literally what we've been missing the entire time though lol, no true characterization for the WoL - and it's still their story to direct, as they're the literal creators of it. Also, she wasn't judgementing people in a sense I feel as you're portraying it. She sundered people to suffering so they may know true happiness through hardship, and not continue down a path of hopeless sacrifices if this were to happen again, as they could not let go of their past - being over taken by grief and fear and all kinds of emotions.
There was suffering everywhere if that passed your view. It doesn't take a genius to generally see that the Ancients suffered at the idea that their home be destroyed, that their people would disappear. There's more anguish there than anything, but I assume that to be clear to everyone who went through the entire thing, all of the expansion.
And just because the WoL is tied to Azem, and Venat, they are still very much different people - you as the character carried out what the story was, but you can still hold your own values and that's fine. You also seem to forget that every person throughout the entire thing shaped the end one way or a another, be it fiction or not. Venat wanted humanity to continue, not perish. Just as did the others.
I love how this game shows that both Zodiark and Hydelean weren't evil, Zodiark was made to be a stop gap from Dynamis, but it was the people that couldnt let go of thier sorrow and fear and hatred, that prompted them to want to sacrifice more to him to make thier plight easier, becoming a temptation/crutch to make everything better. And Venat/Hydelean decided to that it woudn't fix our problems, just make them worse, til we were like every other star that Meteoin saw. SO she sundered us and locked him away to make sure we didnt cause that. It was only later the Ascians made Zodiark seem evil, (and one actually portray him that way in the end)
@Urazz I don’t think zodiark can temper his follower nor the ascians were tempered. These 2 were created by the power of creation magic, not unlike the summoning magic that we know of, but the inherent different is that these 2 creations have hearts and souls (elidibus/venats). Beast tribes are taught summoning magics by the ascians but with a twist, they added in the will to dominate and temper them to the will to the primal.
@@huynhvonhatan The Convocation was 100% Tempered, Emet actually tells you this in Shadowbringers, in flavor text, if you talk to him within the Crystal Tower.
@@paladinbrewer But endwalkers dialogue suggests otherwise before the Ragnarok. He could've meant that they were tempered in the manner that they were already fully devoted to his summoning and preservation and he was deemed the last bastion of hope for the majority of ancients
@@CelerisXIV
This is just a theory of mine but from what i get is, the summoning of Zodiark was imperfect, cuz it was summoned out of despair and fear which already tainted their creation magic as you see how they where creating the terminus beast out of thin air because of said despair.
Also as Livingway explain it as they were about to use the mothercrystal to boost Ragnarok and ask for the beast tribe's help, the reason why the primals tempered people in the first place is because the summoners wished to enforced their will and believes on others, so the primal only indulged in doing so exerting its creator's will, hence its imperfect creation magic.
Those who created Zodiark where adamant that it was the only way, so they pretty much tried to enforced those same believe on other, which would temper them.
At least that is the way I see it, Endwalker for me was a huge lore bomb, so my lore knowledge is shattered and all over the place xD
@@paladinbrewer If they were tempered, then they would have been hideously wrapped and mindlessly devoted to the cause. Emet would have never tried to reason with you or even help you. None of the unsundered were. Elidibus gave off the impression, but in the end it turned out to be obsession for a duty long forgotten. They wanted so bad to return everything back to the way things were, that they didn't care how many people died to make it happen.
They made me cry. Again.
Absolutely stunning.
Emeth and hythloadeus silent farewell broke me.
Hythlodaeus‘ pained smile broke me
I am so glad someone else feels this way. When I saw him bidding his farewell to Emet I just lost it. So deeply, deeply sad
@@Ville_x What broke me more than that was Hades' pained expression as Hythlodaeus walks away, knowing he'll never see his friend again.
She was our teacher, our guiding light and our inspiration. In the sundering she became everyone's. In the hopes that her children will find the answer. To achieve this she bore all the hate, suspicion, and suffered with us.
But the amazing thing is that our character is the same thing for Venat. It were our stories of the future that kept her going. All that happened was on both our character and Venat, but Venat suffered the most of it because of the massive timespan.
Venat saw the flaw in Meteion's reasoning. The failures of civilizations weren't that despite their best efforts, they could not erase suffering, but rather that they should not have tried to erase suffering in the first place.
That reasoning gets... iffy. Bad faith actors will make the claim that means we shouldn't address inequality; oppression, slavery, fight disease, starvation... If suffering is "noble", why save these people from it? If knowledge of how countless stars destroyed themselves is made widespread, I fear the apathy it could breed. That apathy would no doubt destroy Etheirys as surely as anything else. I suppose therein lies the crutch: Etheirys will die one day. It's inevitable. The sun will burn out, the planet will stop being habitable... Is what Venat did really heroic, in the end? Life is doomed to die anyway, so why drag out the suffering? Is a long, albeit brutal life, sprinkled with little moments of joy, preferable to a short, but blissful existence?
@@TheSuperRatt Yes, Hydaelyn, I think we can track Meteion using this youtube profile.
@@TheSuperRatt I don't think that suffering is portrayed as "noble" here- more as inseperable to life. If you want to redeem life somehow, you will have to accept its existence. Also affirming life through having pleasure outbalance pain is *difficult* to say the least. The Philosopher David Benatar has some pretty strong arguments for suffering generally outweighing pleasure. And as an Antinatalist would probably share most of Meteions views.
Venat's view seems to me to be quite Nietzschean, insofar as she affirms life via aesthetic means:
"Lands that stretched on forever, skies one could drown in [...]"
I think in her view the suffering in life can be affirmed by contributing to its beauty. The MSQ wouldn't have been as much of "a gripping tale" if there were no stakes after all.
This made me ugly cry for an hour. Relentless, cruel, enlightening and most of all.... beautiful. Venat earned her place as a goddess.
This is up there along the greatest video game cinematic cutscenes ever made. An actual perfect culmination of a 10 year long journey, flawless cinematography, giving new meaning to a 10 year old song's lyrics, astonishing VA. This belongs in a goddamn museum of art.
What’s truly moving about her is not that she is suffering outright, physically, but that faced with an impossible choice, she took on the burden of choosing the hard path for the ultimate sake of everyone she loved. Emotionally, it must have been devastating to know that all the eons of strife and pain she witnessed were due to her intervention, like a parent putting their kid through chemo to treat their cancer, and having to watch and hold their hand as they scream and thrash and curse. You know that if they can only get through the pain then they have a chance to survive and find joy in life, but part of you also wants to yank out all the cords and IVs and take them home to let them slip away in a morpine-induced bliss, free of that pain and suffering.
In fact I think the entirety of this story is a lot like someone getting cancer. It begins with one malignant cell, in this case Meteion’s despair, proliferating and choking out its neighbors, and consuming everything. The host can either succumb to that despair and give up, or they can give it their all to fight for every additional moment, every new day.
I would say that she's also _very much_ suffering physically. Those moments in the cutscene where she's feels pain & thrashes about is basically the calamities causing shards to be rejoined, and as the will of Etheirys, she feels that calamitous impact physically.
When I saw this cutscene for the first time it made my hair stand up on end. I was completely speechless. It’s so beautifully powerful. I’ve not finished ew yet but it’s absolutely amazing.
This cutscene actually killed me. I want to see a reaction supercut for all sorts of popular streamers reacting to it.
Poor Wesk had to take a 10 min brb. I was tired at the time, which makes me even more emotional, (not 'tired and emotional', a British euphemism for being drunk), and I blubbed like a baby for five whole minutes, couldn't see the quest UI for the forcible closing of my eyes.
To think we speculated that she's evil.
What a great character she turned out to be.
To be fair for the longest time we are led to believe any primal that is summoned usually lead to bad things. The fact that hydaelyn is a primal is just a matter of putting two and two together at that moment
She's evil. 100%. Or crazy, that she's evil without getting it.
And people who don't see that should ask themselves, if they are crazy, too, to just accept genocide, because someone sells it as the right thing to do.
@@miriamweller812 when did hydaelyn accept genocide? she was trying to stop senseless mass suicide and teach people resillience to face the final days, since the amaurotines were so ill prepared to face life
@@shinkamui Hydaelyn COMMITED genocide. I wish it would only accept it. YOU people accept genocide and praise it here.
Hydaelyn distoreted all life that it has to kill each other all the time and dies all the time. That it is driven by fear, gread and hate. That it suffers, endlessly.
And that for NOTHING, because stopping that broken AI thing would be easy in endless ways.
You people cheer for something that is on the same if not worse level than the idea to kill 4 million people on planet earth to solve climat changes and hunger.
Just because someon tells you: yeah, that's the only way, just don't question it, just do what I tell you.
NO! Just no! It's sick to write such a story in such away and I have read quite a lot of sick stories, but this one, hell, that's a whole own level of sick.
To have a Holocaust in your fiction is one thing. To praise it like that... wtf.
@@miriamweller812 The ascians committed genocide Seven times in canon. Through 7 rejoining they killed 7 entire stars, let alone Emet-Selch not considering sundered beings anywhere close to "worthy of life." Fully creating and enforcing the Garlean empire, whose head is focused on creating a pure master race and a singular world nation.
The "broken AI thing" was using a power that the Ancients had no knowledge of, they were fully doomed.
Calling the sundering a "Holocaust" is also an ignorant insult to the survivors, victims, and relatives of, those who experienced actual systematic murder led by real life racists subscribing to fundamentally ignorant ideologies.
Hydaelyn's actions aren't even praised, they were seen as a necessary evil.
Do you feel special that you're so different though? Do you feel cool just spouting edge lord horseshit?
6:48 - That facial expression... When she finally understood why she had to make that decision...
She even asked the wol why she would do that. Guess you could say she got her answer.
She had little choice. I like to think this is like if the people the Wol met refused to listen/change and instead stuck to their old grudges.
Who were the idiots that suspected her of being evil??? Lmaoo y’all clearly didn’t pay attention to the story if y’all thought that… oof
@@chkh007 She isn't evil but blood is on her hands and always will be. She also played God which no one has the right to do
@@zelohendricks51 she saved the world from doom. If she’s didn’t sunder mankind, they would’ve eventually bring about their own down fall just like those other stars did to themselves. Also she sundered us she didn’t kill no one. Mankind was weak in sundered form and have short life span. ppl of Eitherys weren’t immortal. They had longer life span but would eventually die.
"Henceforth, he shall walk" struck me to my core
I never lost faith. This Paladin was always faithful. And it hurts to see her suffer.
I had a few doubts until the second trip to Amh Araeng confirmed in full she not only didn't cause but tried to stop the flood, then it team Hydaelyn the whole way
Every time I hear a streamer in ShB say they think Hydaelyn is probably evil, I'll feel pain.
people in ShB do be thinking "based and zodiark/emetpilled"
@@zOMGGaiaOnline The ancients were the ones blind enough to suffering that they were willing to keep offering up lives to a deity that would always demand more.
In the end, despite being understandable and empathized with, Emet stood on the wrong side. He, Lahabrea, and to a lesser extent Elidibus succeeded seven times in obliterating innocent people. Venat was the only one willing to brave the reality of how warped their ideology had become.
@@Lancun They were playing gods
@@Lancun Ironically, Rejoinings also helped to evolve mankind.
Besides, if we would go by clear death count, Venat still has it bigger due to sheer 'sunder 'em all to mortal and squishy forms' thing. There is a reason why 'Azem' rejected BOTH sides of the conflict. And Venat admits her act was an atrocity
Pity we have not seen Elidibus/Venat debates on this matter
@@aznereth3767 I wouldn't say they helped to evolve anything.
The First existed on its own and was near identical to the Source with its same problems and politics, but the Beast Tribes were much more readily accepted by the humanoids. And everyone on the First was a sundered 14th of what was whole as opposed to the Source who was halfway complete.
"Amidst deepest Despair, light everlasting"
We need to remember this now, more than ever.
This might be my favorite cutscene of the entire game. I’ve watched it over and over again. So powerful and beautifully done.
This cut scene remind me greatly of "Youre not alone" segment from FF9. The setting and the mood is the same. Except, this is much darker. Zidane went through his segment hopeless and aimless, but his friend came to his aid along to the way to show that he's not alone. Eventually, Garnet slap some sense into him. All his friends acknowledge Zidane's positive impact on them and in turn they want to be there for him.
Vanet, however, walked this path alone for thousand of years with no one to truly understand her plight and what she had to do. Her impact on her surrounding isn't positive but rather "a necessary evil". She bear the weight on her own.
And it definitely isn't where the FF9 references end. People call this the FF4 Expansion, but it's got connections to multiple parts of all of Final Fantasy.
The last part before final dungeon too reminds me of ff9. Even the quest name is the song name.
@@ionmeth2031 I'd even go so far as to say the final boss is themed similarly to Necron from FF9. That inevitability of death being fought back by the beliefs and hopes of your allies.
@@TheKnightswhoplaywii yeah definitely
@@TheKnightswhoplaywii agreed.. The endsinger is the better written Necron
When the "Answers" choir kicked in, I whispered a little Michael Scott "Don't", because I knew there was no way I was getting through this cutscene without sobbing.
After I finished this quest I simply started crying. This is what we've been fighting for years, years and years of suspicions and they deliver the greatest hero of all. And let's not forget how incredible this song is. This is THE quest of the expansion
Who would have thought that when Hydalen finally tempered us, it would be IRL...Would have never guessed Venat/Hydalen would be the most badass character in the entire story....
and thus Answers was born , what a BRILIANT way to do this. She was no joke!
Momdaelyn is the fucking best. I literally cried.
I was speechless after this cutscene. I put my controller down and just let that scene sink in. A well written heroine!!
Heroine lmao
I was emotional through the whole video... but then the fadeout to the final line, "Thou must live, die, and know,"... returning me to the fadeout of the Realm Reborn trailer. The end referencing the beginning, and making every step of our journey as a character and as players have meaning. We lived, we died, and now we know. Pardon me as I go cry over this game now.
If anything, the beginning referenced the end, which makes it all the more impressive. The heart of this conflict was written almost a decade ago.
My girlfriend just started playing FFXIV and is currently in Stormblood. She's really into the ethics and philosophy. We often discuss "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" and how she would rather save the one meant to suffer for others to live in paradise rather then live knowing that one person is suffering at the expense of others. Rewatching these cutscenes in preparation for doing Shadowbringer/Endwalker with her I can't help but think of all the parallel's to that story. A world where all are susceptible to suffering and growing stronger vs a world where all live in paradise at the expense of few (or in this case, half the population of ancients.) She's going to have an absolute field day with this story and I think for the first time in years I won't be able to hold back my tears when she yells for joy at the screen when this scene is revealed. This game is magical.
This scene... To me, Hydaelyn was always someone I wanted to truly understand. And after this scene, I finally did. Her love, that endless love... The love for life, and all things it can bring. The words player hears at the very beginning of the game: "Hear, Feel, Think". Venat wanted mankind to experience life through these three concepts; Hear the world around you, Feel the world around you, Think through life, and find your answer. Magnificently written character.
It makes sense how the former Azem, Venat, would care so much about everything and everyone given what Azem's job was. It only makes sense the most recent Azem, the WoL's soul, would be equally as strong as Venat. Maybe the only person capable of it. It's nice they both saw it through to the end. It's funny how there was a two way split and division among the Ancients, but our world was unanimously united.
3 azems technically that we know of, venat, the current azem when we are in elpis, and our character
@@erickelley1680 Technically 2 Azems because the current Azem in Elpis and our character is the same person... or at least the same soul.
@@erickelley1680 we are the Elpis Azem sundered.
@@beatricecorradi7072 I know. But at the time we are at elpis there are three azems. Even if we are an incomplete soul of the current one that is exploring the world/worlds
When pyro sees this he will explode! The most incredible moment in the game for me, literal answers whilst we get a god tier version of answers playing. Take my tears!
If he doesn't explode i will be shocked to the core, especially since he loves answers.
He'll complain that Hydaelyn/Venat wasn't actually evil.
Bet anything.
@@necroxisz I think by the time you complete Elpis, and especially once you see the cut scene after the second trial, anyone that suspected Hydaelyn of being evil will feel profound levels of guilt for ever doubting mom. She loved all of her children unconditionally this entire time.
@@necroxisz i know he mentions he wants that story and to be done right. But i dont think he will be angry at it that she has been good all along. But where he is at now he kinda changing what his thinking BUT i feel once Emet comes into play he might think Hydealyn is evil.
Personally i never doubted Mommy Crystal. Even after finding out she was a primal. I just knew Venat knew what she was doing.
@@necroxisz There's already people on the sidelines whining that they didn't go with that
By far the best cutscene in the whole game. Absolutely phenomenal!!!
The jumps to the player walking to Emet get me each time.
This made me cry.. Knowing what I knew, knowing the helplessness, knowing that it could have all been avoided. The finest story I have ever played.
The pain in Venat's face as she realises what she has to do.
Bravo. What an immense scene.
Venat, the second-to-last Azem, sundered us all and suffered interminable agony and sorrow over twelve thousand years, all so the last Azem could walk to the end and save the entire universe.
Answers hits differently in this expansion with it being used as her theme more or less. and damn i could hardly keep the tears in watching this
I've rewatched this so many times. In hindsight I think this might've been the best story moment in gaming for me. The way the cutscene plays out giving meaning to the lyrics of the song, that one song that accompanied us since the beginning. This moment answered so many questions we had, it's also asking mankind for their Answer all the while "Answers" plays in the background. It's years of storytelling culminating in this one revealing moment and all the pieces fall together neatly. I'm honestly in awe at what they've done.
Just got to this scene today and I had to watch it again. I have chills. Mom is a badass.
"henceforth we shall walk".
I say the same thing to myself when I pickup pizza from a shop 2 blocks away instead of driving.
Because of this cutscene, the meaning of both answer and the 2.0 trailer is way more sorrowful and meaningful. I have always felt something Missing about the meaning of the song and title "Answers", but now the truth of "Answers" is laid bare and it makes me both happy and sad 😭.
This is probably my favorite cutscene/story moment in any game I've ever played. The music, the struggle to come to terms with what must be done and the consequences afterwards. Truly a masterclass in story telling. Bravo CBU3. One of the best stories in gaming ever.
Hands down the best scene in Endwalker
SPOILER ALERT!!!
Here are my Top 5 picks for best moments in Endwalker
5. Best of the Best (or The Avengers Assemble moment in the Lochs) - Most of our favorite Characters from earlier expansions assembling to form the Ilsabard Contingent is a very satisfying scene especially because not only that it features favorite Main Scenario Characters but also Sidequest chatacters which you will recognize if you played their particular quest or if you haven’t you will be encouraged to try out their story arcs.
4. Urianger and Moenbryda’s Parents - One of the most heart felt moments if not the most in Endwalker. They somehow gave more meaning to one of the most forgettable characters in the game.
3. Looking for Qerasaf, Mehvan and their child - fetch quest are suppose to be dragging and exhausting and most side characters are forgettable but doing the series of quests here really got me totally engaged and my heart raised and watching Matsya try to calm the dying Qerasaf so he wouldn’t turn into a blasphemy and him trying to bring the infant child of Mehvan and Qerasaf to safety while fighting his fear so he wouldn’t turn really left a mark on me.
2. Quintus shoots himself, Garlemald has fallen - From the very beginning, Garlemald is the enemy for them to meet their end this ironic way is brilliant writing because it is unexpected and Quintus’ final message on why he will never accept aid from his enemies really hit me.
Honorable mentions: Zenos takes control of your body, Zenos’ entrance in the Final Trial as Shinryu, journey in Ultima Thule
1. Thou must Leave, Die and Know (Venat sunders the Star) - All the questions that we have on what happened during the sundering and why it happened, finally we are given an answer and after ten years, “Answers” was finally given meaning.
Almost 6 months later. And 2:29 STILL makes me cry so much.
It breaks my heart to see them so afraid...
Unlike many others I never had any doubts about her. Simply because the WOL does things because it is the right thing to do, it would be a slap in the face of all of that for Hy/venat to be "evil".
Plus if Hydaelyn was evil, she would have stopped Minfillia or tried to kill you because you were the Warrior of Darkness like Elidibus.
She literally lost so much power shielding the WoL from Lahabrea's Ultima spell that she couldn't speak for almost three expansions. If that wasn't the tip off that Hydaelyn was someone to absolutely trust, I don't know what else she could've done to prove herself.
Any 'doubts' I had were the feeling she was pushing us and thus life as a whole towards being truly self-sufficient and not relying on higher beings to fix our problems. We need face our problems no matter how daunting head on aiming towards a better, brighter future
I never had any doubts about her, I thought/feared they'd go down the route of Zodiark being consumed by Zenos and so she sacrifices herself to allow you to beat Zenos and boy am I glad it went a completely different direction.
In some ways it also seems Zodiark too was not evil but the dependence that people had on Zodiark instead became the issue, the Amauroites created themselves a god to take care of them and in doing so tempered themselves. The Ascians then went on to teach the races that spawned from the sundering the power of creation with the same flaw that the amauroites had made in creating Zodiark, aetheric corruption/tempering.
this entire scene destroyed me emotionally
and yet I cannot stop watching it over and over
because it informs me how much Venat loved her fellows
this moments is venat's "if you take one more step, could you save our world" moment, or perhaps ours mirrors hers.
Perhaps the strongest female character in the entire series. She bears so much love, that she endures thousands of years of pain and anguish so that humanity has a chance at fighting back, leaving a torch to guide humanity in our hands. I'm in tears by the end of this cutscene no matter how many times I watch it.
The strongest except for those that play a female WoL
@@chazdoit True.
When I first watched this I was literally speechless like holy hell WOW
I enjoy that you can usually find references to this cutscene by searching little more than something like 'ffxiv THAT cutscene'
I think it is a crime for how good this expansion was, and personally I can't wait until the NG+ comes out. I would say it surpassed ShadowBringers to a degree, though it did have it's "boring" parts but that is another story.
I think it's funny though, the song Answers, if one really thinks about it, had a role to play in all expansions if you break down all the verses.
So many emotions, I had goosebumps on my arms and tears in my eyes, BRA-FUCKING-VO SE! BRA-FUCKING-VO I cannot wait for the final cutscene
I can't believe they spent so long making us doubt Hydaelyn and then reveal that Venat is the main fucking hero of the universe (alongside yourself). If Shadowbringers recontexualizes the argument of "Light = Good & Dark = Bad" then Endwalker did the same to...basically everything we know.
How are they one upping Shadowbringers.
Whenever my anxiety peaks I return to watch this. The last few sentences are strong and soothing...
Games very rarely make me sob. I've shed tears before. Felt emotion. But never has a game made me audibly weep before. I was one of the people who was incredibly suspicious of Hydalyn. I thought she might have been the cause for the final days. That she was going to betray us. To have it so plainly shown that she was no god but a person with great power who sacrificed everything to simply give us a chance at life. It's the first time a game has ever made me break down and made me feel like I should apologize to a character. It's all fiction but.... I've never been hit so hard by a piece of a fiction.
Venat walked with us our entire journey, and held close her promise. She had so much love and hope. This expansion made me cry harder than any game, book, or movie ever has. This scene still makes me sob uncontrollably. It’s been a month since launch and I am STILL breaking down this story in my head and crying over it.
I can now officially say this is the best moment in Endwalker for me.
Ah yes I do recall being emotionally broken by this and sobbing like crazy at my keyboard
Oh...the pain in her face when she realized what she had to do.
God the lyrics to Answers hit so fucking different now.
Oh my god, Answers actually contains the... Answers to everything.
Answers as a totally new meaning after this CS.
Before i tho it was about renewal (From 1.0's ashes, ARR was born)
Endwalker just has been a 20/10 expansion, story tied up everything really well and love how they developed Venat/Hydaelin.
I doubt I was the only one practically screaming for forgiveness for doubting Venat/Hydaelyn during/after this.
Henceforth… he shall walk
My favourite part of EW, is even if meteion didnt exist, etheirys could have very well still have ended up like the other stars, destroyed and barren. It was only the curiousity of hermes that allowed for them to know of the fate of the other stars. If hermes rationally thought about it, and sent better questions for meteion to ask, the ancients would be more informed of the suffering of lives unlike theirs and learn from it.
But then again, maybe venat is right, maybe without sundering them, the ppl of etheirys would never have grown and accept suffering.