Thou Must Live, Die, & Know: Reaction to 87 Endwalker MSQ Ending 

I mean, she commited an evil act. A necessary evil, but evil nonetheless. But it had to be done, for the greater good and to give mankknd a fighting chance. You're meant to have your doubts, as the dialogue options even reflect this.

After shadowbringers I had a hunch she was a good primal because of how Ramuh was, but after beating the first endwalker trial i was getting more skeptical if that was the case but that was meteion who said those words i think, then after we found out who hydaelyn's heart was all my remaining doubt was gone. Ramuh would probably be very nice if summoned under better circumstances

I felt the same exact way. 🤝

sorry but she was very selft centred !!! she follows the path of stupidity !! Ascian can create Zordiak to stop effect from Metreion, and i'm sure if they know the truth, the would have been able to kill her :)

@@watertommyz they did it on purpose tho, the post-zodiark moon scene for example

If you believe that then you do not understand what suffering is. For a person or people to suffer is a terrible thing and one should learn from it. The blind woman in the cutscenes truly is a fool. Paradise could easily be achieved if you ruled over it as a true leader and it had a society where things are not given in trade or taken but are given instead. I realized the truth as to why we are to suffer and it is because we live on a world where the better intelligent and physically strong you are the better your life will be. And there is no country where the less intelligent and physically weaker are truly treated well. After all, why would any person in any government in the world ever care about their poor or homeless citizens since they don't pay much taxes even though it is very possibly that anyone could end up poor or homeless. Answer me that confusing concept

@@RoxasKnight Many poor and homeless choose to be there. Also being more intelligent, being physically stronger, does not mean you're going to be happier. There will never be paradise for everyone, as everyone has different views of what paradise is. There will never be equality the way you imagine it. Only equal misery.

@@JustinStrife many homeless and poor definitely do not choose to be poor or homeless yet it is true that some people will choose to be poor or homeless of their own accord. Think about this logically, logic assumes that because we as people have sex with other people or a person even if that person is physically or mentally disabled, some adults are therefore born with mental disabilities that can insure they aren't able to have and or keep a job that has physical or mental requirements, which in turn means that person will have less types of paid jobs he or she can do or that person will end up poor and unable to get a job in his or her lifetime. So sex with physically or mentally disabled people insures that a currency based nation is certainly a terrible and chaos ridden place.

@@RoxasKnight Good luck trying to stamp out human nature. Disparity exists. It will always exist. We do not live in paradise, and to promise such only brings more suffering, usually behind the barrel of a gun. History has seen this promise of yours die time and again, and Venat is not blind, you're just being a maroon to push authoritarian misery.

I’ve even been jamming out to Answers more 😅

Aye. And when it randomly drops to just organ and then hits the crescendo of the song 🥺🥺 absolutely incredible.

@@TalonSongYT I want an orchestrion of that organ rendition so bad

@@Froggsroxx that’s the version that plays fighting Phoenix btw so you def can get it, it might also not be recontextualized as we always assumed what answers was about and since their is that Morse code bit in that cutscene from CT that translates into it’s all wrong, could be meant that way from arr but hell I know that it was originally eureka but was scrapped for eureka in stormblood so

@@dustincieslik5397 oh awesome thank you!

This was also the first time the full version ever played in-game. The ARR cinematic version was a shorter version of this. We'd heard Answers: Reprise a few times now starting with Shinryuu, but to pull the full song out and finally give us the question that Answers is for was genius.

The Boss, from MGS, very similar characters, embody the strength of will it takes to give everything for their children.

@@keithfilibeck2390 Oh yeah huh damn I haven't played MGS3 in a while 👍🏻

@@keithfilibeck2390 same japanese VA, actually. Kikuko inoue is the boss *and* venat.

@@XCC23 Remember what the Boss's codename was and what her lover's codename was?

It's odd. It's probably because I have a very different relationship with my mother, but I never quite saw her as a mother, but as a powerful and intimate friend. Not quite like a spouse. Idk. Something... Entirely unique, I suppose.

That is bull and you know it. Venat KNEW, she KNEW the Final Days were coming and did NOTHING to stop it. All she did was genocide her own people and literally birthed pain and suffering for us, causing us to endure lifetime over lifetime of pain, simply because of this stupid plan of hers. Emet knew nothing, had to endure that while trying to bring back his people and then forced to choose between helping us, the dude who literally killed off all his friends, or to watch everything end. He had every right to tell us to piss off, it shows that they are far better people then Venat or the WoL by helping us, because without them, we would have lost. Venat's dumb plan would have failed had Emet or Elidibus told us to go get bent, and they had every right to say so. They were dead, what do they care if the world ends? Theirs was already ended by the genocidal maniac Hydaelyn.

@@imaran1303 lol

@@Lancun Nice comeback. 'LOL'

@@imaran1303 I don't need to make a comeback for total deluded insanity like what you shat onto your keyboard.

@@Lancun Yes, stand atop your little soapbox, no one cares, you have no arguments.

Wish there was at least an option to play it tone down or not

That’s a mood.

Aye, I remember and know why of course. That’s what made it worse, and why I started crying in the first place! The whole Elpis story was incredible leading up to this as well. So of course I would lose it

Is accepting but if you see his face when he turns from emet you can see how much is broken and full of fear.

And the determination to put things right is forged and tempered by the ice cold grip of time.

Even worse, for Emet this cannot have been long after Azem walked out of the Convocation in protest of the summoning of Zodiark...so Emet might very well have just lost both his closest friends...

@@TheTriforceDragon Had not even taken that into consideration. Damn, losing his two best friends, being only one of three of the 14 unsundered with an apparently incompetent Lahabrea (in contrast to how he's depicted, hopefully Pandemonium clears that up) and a near amnesiac Elidibus. Any wonder he turned into the megalomaniac we first met?

Honestly the black dynamis goop fits way better, as it shows how she is struggling to remain strong in the face of depair over 12,000+ years.

Wait, is that why the Ascians/Ancients wore masks?

@@watertommyz Not really sure if that is why they wear them, I think it was more of a cultural thing.

@@BigStou But it is a nice way of looking at it, the flaws of individuality hidden by a fragile mask of perfection as expected of their society.

@@TheTriforceDragon well said I do think is ignorance that let them believe that there was no suffering, old saying is true I want to know but only what is acceptable to me.

Same. I was talking to my husband about it comparing it to Guild Wars 2. I love that MMO, but I’ve never had this strong of a connection. Even at the end of Heart of Thorns, which I thought was their peak narrative.

I have to say... I think there are AT LEAST three that are better that are still yet to come. One more of a happy... One more of a WTF... And one that is a... Amalgamation of Happy, Sad and WTF.

@@cadencepierce6347 yah this game is really something.

I can't help but feel amazed at her determination and endurance to keep believing in plan that might not even work.

Well...we don't know for sure just yet about the state of gods. Primals are all of mortal making, including the Big 2. But we're going to find out what the deal with The Twelve are with the new alliance raids. I'll be very curious what is really the story behind them.

We still arent sure abt the gods part, we know next to nothing about the twelve. We’ll learn more in the alliance raid series

@@Hiroyashy I've been playing FF Games going back to the original Nintendo. Venat is now my favorite FF character of all time, surpassing Tifa Lockhart. She was such an amazing and loving character to all.

this cutscene in particular solidified my view that Venat had 2 major qualities that transcended everything else. Her love of the world and everything in it, and sheer, unyielding will

We know he's sacrificed because he tells us on the moon. Mind you, Hythlodeus looks a lot different in spirit form, but it is definitely still him.

Seriously.. I'm not sure about the trust yet because it's complicated. But regardless, I love how Venat's and Emet's ways of solving things essentially contrast each other, but also involve "KILLING" people. Like, it's so good, but so sad. I could theorize for hours on the meaning behind it all. What I can say for sure, is that Venat/Hydaelyn is a badass female character regardless.

@@TalonSongYT That's why MANY agree that Venat is the queen of "Step-on-me" energy. Supplanting Y'shtola.

I don't think He us disagreeing with Emets plans. I think he was one of those who offered themselves, to save the others, and was smiling in acceptance and waving goodbye to Emet. Only thinking this because after watching him pass Venat bows her head and closes her eyes... as if saying goodbye. 😥

@@Gwydion_Wolf You are probably right too... That's the greatness of the ambiguity of the whole matter...

@@Gwydion_Wolf After rewatching it, I took it as he didn’t feel like he was good enough to do anything else, and it’s still a hard sacrifice. So he’s, choking it down essentially, and waving goodbye. He doesn’t disagree, he just wishes they were going back to the star together.

Normally I don't engage with stuff like this, but this take was so.....out there that I just HAVE to ask. What could have Venat done differently? The ancients had no way to combat dynamis at the time. She couldn't bring Hermes into the fold due to his unstable mental faculties despite him basically the authority on the subject matter for his time. With the WoL out of the timeline and Meiteion gone basically no proof either to prove the final days were coming, and if the convocation of 14 were as resistant to the news as Emet-Selch was then there probably would have been a whole host of other problems, but still even if they had all come together to face Meteion, what were they to do about something that they literally couldn't perceive, but could mess with their magicks which they relied HEAVILY on? I believe Venat did her best under the circumstances and her unyielding will is probably what made her stand out. Also, i'm not sure if you realized, but Emet only helped us AFTER returning to the aetherial sea which basically restores ones memories so of course he would help. Hythlodaeus just seemed to be a helpful guy overall (and seemed to go with the flow a lot), so his helping us on the moon didn't seem out of character for him despite not returning to the aetherial sea yet, but I believe that was only because the soul of Azem and he would do anything to help his friends.

@@Garyof11 Here are a few things: Bring Emet and Hythlodaeus into the fold. Yeah Emet distrusts us, but he still investigated, tell them everything up until the mind wipe. Also warn them of Hermes' involvement. Next, figure out a way to get to Ultima Thule. Aether can effect Dynamis, we saw it happen multiple times when Emet and Hythlodaeus shaped the area so we could summon our friends back. We saw it with Elidibus spamming Limit Breaks, which are confirmed as Dynamis. But hell! If they need time, summon Zodiark and manipulate the expert on Dynamis, Hermes, to help you out by making up some stories about it. Literally, there are countless things she at least could have tried, but she did nothing. Except for the mass slaughter of her own people.

@@imaran1303 With meteion gone there was nothing to investigate. All Venat would have it word of mouth. The trip to Ultima Thule literally took a millenia of stored aether to reach, and the ancients didn't have that much time. An ancient using limit break is not really a limit break for them just an overflow of their enormous aether. It's a limit break for sundered like us because we literally tap into dynamis to achieve what we normally couldn't with our limited aether pools thus breaking our limit. Also we saw in Venat flashback that lots of the ancients were so caught up on what was lost that they were willing to sacrifice even more of their number to get their 'perfect world' back because unlike those of the convocation I imagine that there were many ancients that just didn't have strong wills. I think you give the ancients too much credit. Venat tried to appeal the them as the cutscenes made it abundantly clear, but as we saw the remaining ancients couldn't bear the thought of suffering, so she in effect sundered humanity with the hope that man's potential would be enough to combat meteion, a gamble which ultimately paid off. I'm still convinced she made the right choice considering the alternatives. Also note that she mentioned before we left that she had to see who she could trust and bring them into the fold. I imagine that number was not very many if ultimately the plan resulted in the summoning of hydaelen and the sundering of her people.

The whole point of her speech here is that she knows the ancients as a civilization are too naive and lived a gifted, perfect life free of conflict, so there is no possible way they can come to appreciate the ambiguity of existence. They would keep doing the same thing over and over, sacrificing themselves to nostalgia because they cannot recognize what they've never experienced. Their "physical" makeup renders them unable to understand the inherent conflicts of existence, so when confronted by it, as they exist "currently" they will die out. All of them. Because the few self-actualized Ascians (Hades and Venat as examples) couldn't possibly destroy the billions of abominations that those weaker of will would beget. Everyone would die, hope would die. She had to introduce mortality and conflict to her people or they would never change enough to surmount the reality of existence. It's the whole point of "Answers," too. It always ways. The song was never about Bahamut, it was deliberately leading to this narrative the whole time. When you listen to it, think of the men's choir as the Ascians confused as to why they were sundered and then Venat's speech leading to the end of this cutscene. Either she teaches humanity to comprehend suffering and adversity, or they all simply die.

@@Garyof11 Let me make several things clear, first of, you think aether cannot influence dynamis, yet we hsaw it happen in Ultima Thule,Emet and Hythlodaeus did so. Next, Emet himself stated that lying to the convocation is impossible, and the only reason he didn't trust the story all that much is because it came from us, we are shown time and time again that he trusts Hythlodaeus, even if he is reluctant. He is that tsundere type, he would definetly investigate. Next, the energy stored up was by one primal ancient.... Now imagine if all ancients had known the actual cause of the Final days without Venat keeping it a secret from everyone so she could kill them all and thus usher in pain, misery and death. Had she told ANYONE, she would have had the convocation (-Hermes, possibly), Zodiark and the rest of the ancients. I am sure they could have gotten enough aether to get to Ultima Thule. Next of, if Elidibus is able to copy the effect of Dynamis LBs easily as he did, then he would have had no problem against the Endsinger as that was literally all we needed to win: two LBs. Two Tank LBs. You seem to underestimate the ancients, the same way Venat did. The same way Emet does, strangely. But at least they were sensible enough to understand that what Venat did to her own people was monstrous.

what gets me is that after he goes, you see the first hint of a slouch in Emet's posture