I couldn’t do it. I tried. I really tried. But after almost two years of trying to wrestle with this idea I just have to finally say it. I hated Hermes. I think he’s a rushed antagonist and the MSQ having this weird fetish of making him seem sympathetic just makes things more weird. I just can’t take it anymore!
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there are parts of the video I agree with. But the idea that the MSQ is trying to force us to forgive Hermes I don't agree with. I feel like the MSQ wanted us to forgive our Meteion, the one we met, that tried to stop her sisters, who was taken over and drowned out before we ended their song and set them free. Hermes/Amon/Fandaniel are unforgiveable but Meteion and her sisters were just his puppets sent out by a very flawed and stupid person. I have also been questioning the Ancients for a while as well XD
You have a very flawed understanding of how empathy works. Empathy is not the ability to understand or relate to the emotions of others — that is sympathy. Empathy is the ability to feel other's emotions as one's own. The easiest way to explain empathy to most people is to have them recall a moment when something so embarrassing was happening in front of them that they were frozen with shame (as though it was their shame). For an empathic person it is not about "understanding" or "feeling bad" that someone else has been shamed (again, that is sympathy). For an empathic person there is no separation from the other person or their emotional experience in that moment. Now let us imagine than rather than shame the experience is pain, the helplessness of knowing yourself subjected to the will of a higher being that wishes to erase your existence because you do not fit its concept of perfection. An highly empathic person would experience that fear of being erased, that void of not mattering and having no choice, and the injustice of being judged unfit to exist by creatures who are just as flawed, every time they were forced to destroy a concept. Over time, they would internalize that struggle as their own feeling themselves invalidated, doomed to be erased and ultimately laboring for nothing — which would lead them to question the fairness and purpose of life.
When you frame it as "good people do not feel like that" you underestimate (and rightly so, as you have likely never felt it) the level of severity and persistence of that experience. It has nothing to do with being good. Anyone in severe enough chronic pain would seek their own end. Anyone convinced that this is a universal experience, would seek to end it for all and see it a fair endeavor — though just to be clear that is NOT what Hermes did. Rather than being consumed by that pain, Hermes sought to understand it and to every extent possible he sought to prove it wrong. He created the Metea and sought to use their empathy to understand the meaning of life, not as force-fed to him by the beliefs of his people, but as experienced by all manner of different civilizations across the universe. The experiment was flawed, as Emmet pointed out, both because it did not do enough to ensure the survey included a fair sampling of people willing and unwilling to continue living, and also because it did not consider that at some point the hyper-sensitive empathetic Metea would also internalize whatever the sisters found (like Hermes did before them). The Metea went on to experience the suffering, despair, resentment and loss of entire civilizations and planets as their own (empathy) not as something they were saddened by because it was happening to someone else (sympathy). And having experienced enough pain and convinced the whole universe was experiencing the same they south to end it. But even when confronted with the Metea's results, Hermes did not side with them. He merely did what was natural to him as chief of Elpis. He carried out a fitness experiment, no different than the experiments he conducted every day to evaluate the fitness to exist of other creatures. The only difference is that this test would be applied to his own people and to himself as he chose to remain, oppose the Metea and fought on the side of life until his sundering.
It would not be until several reincarnations later, during the age of the Allagan Empire that Hermes, now Amon, would come to the conclusion that life was simply not worth it. And he arrived at this conclusion only after granting eternal life to Xande and watching him crumble into misery and after experiencing for himself the decadence that emerged in the Allagan court — the members of which were largely devoid of suffering but still sought to inflict suffering onto others ("test subjects") for pleasure – an exercise that brought them temporary joy but that eventually left them empty as well. When Ammon received his memories as Hermes it was those memories plus his current experience that led him to the conclusion that life suffering because even in a perfect eternal society (he had now been a part of 2 iterations), humans could not help but to inflict suffering on their "lessers" and to fail to find happiness for themselves. However, prior to this Hermes, as his original ancient self, stood on the side of life and Aetherys and he used all his know-how to forestall the end of his world. His work and experiments with etherical currents are the basis for the creation of Zodiark as a shield for the planet. He fought to preserve life, even when his own suffering, the suffering of the creatures under his care and the experiments conducted by the Metea told him not to. Even as he dies, now sure that life is not the answer, he laments that this was not the answer he wanted at all. And all his actions as Hermes suggest this is true. He wanted to be proved wrong – he fought to that end. And he was proved wrong in the end too, even if he was too twisted to see it by 1000s of years of living and suffering.
Hermes, in this sense, represents our curiosity. The existential need to know, the fear that our existence is pointless and the tragedy that we never truly get an answer in this life. He equally embodies a warning of how our inability to come to terms with the necessary uncertainty of our existence can twist us and consume us to the extent that we miss the point of life entirely and end up embracing its antithesis. So yes, he makes sense as a character and fits perfectly into the greater argument that the expansion was trying to make. Even more so when you compare him to figures like Athena, who acts as a mirror image of Hermes in her uncomplicated, unempathetic search for godhood at the expense of everything and everyone – all of whom she considers lesser beings. And then somewhere in the middle fits Hydelyn who accepted that the complexity of creation far exceeded her grasp, but did not allow this to overwhelm or challenge her desire to protect her world and her people. She knew that suffering was a part of the deal, that if we are to preserve life, we must have it in equal measure with joy and so she sought to make a world that would perpetually exist in the twilight. She understood this was unkind, but accepted that unkindness to be the price of life as an experience. And in the end she made the ultimate sacrifice, ceasing to exist entirely herself (her soul spent and gone forever), so that we could live again and again.
A few things I disagree with here, it’s odd to me to call the creation of Ellis “AI chatbots” I always took away that the Ancients were literally creating life, soul and all. So his empathy for a creature which did truly exist but was created flawed by its creator feels valid to me. Also the idea that they were dumb to nominate someone so selfish to the convocation, I don’t think anyone at the convocation or even many people in Elpis knew exactly what Hermes was doing. To the outside, he does seem like an outstanding member of society. That being said, you said “I’m beginning to question Ancient society” I think that was like the whole point of Hermes, to make you question Ancient society. Like there’s a lot of iffy shit they did even in their day to day, not to mention the stuff they did during the end days, from Hermes, to the convocation and even Venat taking it upon herself to decide man’s future alone. They were all essentially gods, and had the egos to go with it. It’s kind of a miracle they existed for as long as they did without someone like Hermes fucking it up for all of them.
My take away from Hermes is he was someone who saw the life and value in every creation because they were alive just like him, and it hurt him to take life from another. He didn’t really agree with what the ancients did as a society, so he sent the Meteia out into the universe to see what other peoples live for. When she came back and told him they all lived only for war or strife, that they all despair and die in the end. It broke him, and he couldn’t see the value in living anymore. So he put mankind to the same “test” that Elpis puts all of its creations to, whether they’re fit to live or not by releasing Meteion to join her sisters and begin the end days. He is without a doubt a selfish mad man. But I can empathize with his inability to come to terms with what the Ancients were doing, playing god. He just ended up doing exactly what their kind had always done, he just turned it on his own kind rather than their creations. He’s tragic in the sense that he recognized the flaws of their way of life while having no way to escape them, falling into despair, and turning those flaws inwards into the downfall of his people.
All of that being said, I do understand what you mean about Endwalker being rushed. Knowing it was originally going to be two separate expansions doesn’t help. I think the end of the Hydaelyn/Zodiark storyline could have been handled so much better had they stayed two expansion, one for the Garlemald wrap up and another for the Hydaelyn/Zodiark stuff. I do think it’s a little weird to say that Hermes is a Endwalker only character. Fandaniel has all of Hermes memories so he was established in shadowbringers patches. Elpis was really just his backstory revealed. If anything was more out of nowhere, it was Meteion and not Hermes imo.
There was a few things I got from EW.
1. Is that the ancients are not as perfect as they claimed or seemed to be. Besides Hermes's clear mental instability, we have Emet denying he'd ever do his future actions. I saw another comment that said side quest NPCs in Elpis also were anxious and unsure of things. And another comment about how messed up ancient society was, dying once your purpose was fulfilled. This along with what so many have mentioned of the ancients not having proper support to those who think and wonder differently (why would they, they are oh so perfect apparently) was the source of their downfall.
2. Hermes's actions, while messed up and selfish, also potentially had some reason to them. For starters, there is the possibility that he wanted to preserve the timeline we came from, as we were the only one that had a connection to him via the Elpis flowers. I don't doubt he was mad and believed that he needed to do these actions, but perhaps having another future, the only one who has someone he had connected with, erased because he took the better path for the people he shared nothing with, was something he could not do. I believe it was also said by either him, Hythlodaeus, or Emet that this was their problem to face, not ours, in the event they could change their future (which obviously they didn't). Granted it was the source of our problems to begin with, but if the problem had been taken care of by them we would never exist as the eventual solution to it. Basically ensuring the time loop of XIV happens. A bit meta ensuring the events of XIV prior still happen, as otherwise our story wouldn't exist in this context. This is why time travel plotlines often have a lot of plotholes. While I do like how our interference caused our own future to happen, in the context of things our future shouldn't exist if characters acted a bit more rationally. Maybe chalk that up to ancients not being as perfect again though.
3. In the credits, before the art happens, the ancients walk towards us. Something I've noticed is Venat, Emet, and Hythlodaeus walk on one side of us, while Hermes on the other. In the art shown the ancients are behind the Scions, as that was intentionally done to promote the living cast and passing of the torch. But for the walk, I think it shows that Hermes is not an ancient we hold in the same way as Venat or Emet. Perhaps an irredeemable maniac, perhaps a tragic soul disserviced by their society, but I personally think they're someone who we can see be in a difficult spot, chose the ultimately wrong choice, and be a lesson for us going forward. Despite all the horrors Venat and Emet performed, we still hold them closely in our characters heart, as inspiration, as remembrance, and as hope. Maybe not forgive him, but a sense of acceptance for him. I mean look at Zenos, we all can agree that a certain level of hate and disgust is appropriate for him based on his actions, another someone not in their right mind, yet there are people who accept him.
Overall though I somewhat share your thoughts, Hermes was clearly unfit for the position of Fandaniel and extremely selfish. I disagree on Meteion, but honestly can't think of any legitimate counter to your reasoning, just a feeling. Perhaps it is due to how more human she acts, showing how much more Hermes put into her "programming" than other constructs. I do also agree that Hermes and Meteion being the source of everything did feel a bit weak for me as well. To me, Endwalker's story is alright, the Song of Hope at the end is great to experience and is hype, but overall I feel like Endwalker recontextualizes and enhances a lot of what makes Shadowbringers so good and that's why I like it.
Yeah no. I'm getting too many KH vibes with hermes. He isnt some final boss just a weak midboss.
Following FF logic, hes just a puppet/scapegoat.
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THIS VIDEO~! Seriously, this upload encapsulated so many of my issues with the character and Endwalker's story as a whole. There are others of course, but I frankly hated Hermes and Meteon being introduced. It always felt out-of-place to me.
P.S.
Also, any chance you could upload an analysis video on the Garleans? I mean honestly, prior to EW I felt nothing but disgust and hatred to Garleans and its Empire, and then suddenly EW asking me to forget all of their atrocities and start feeling sorry for them? That felt like tripe garbage to me, and no matter how hard they tried I felt NOTHING for the Garleans. Because as far as I was concerned, they got everything they deserved and more.
The second I saw the head wings on meteion I knew she was the big baddie lol
Not really.
Hermes to me is like someone who lives in a country where everything there is so backward.
The society may think that backward is normal or right, but he sees it as wrong.
He tries to find other countries, but none can satisfy him.
The backward sickening mindset of Ascian was to test and experiment with life as if they are gods and everything else is theirs to research, invent and innovate. If failed, discarded.
The extreme case of this mindset is, guess who, Athena.
gonna hear you out, but Hermes is literally my favorite antagonist in the entire game and felt incredibly well done to me.
edit: aaaand nope. only made it 5 minutes in before I considered your takes to be so weapons-grade bad it wasn't worth my time anymore.
Great cow of Moscow! You hate Hermes?
I do agree that they kind of did away with the Hydalaen and Zodiark story points as quickly as possible. I was surprised to have to fight Zodiark so quickly into the story. I fully expected him to be the final trial of the game. But this isn't the first time a Final Fantasy game has brought a final boss from completely out of left field. I immediately think of FFIX with its final boss that hadn't been in any way foreshadowed before you fight him. At least here they gave some actual character deveopment to Meteion before having to fight her.
I'm not as articulate as you when describing your thoughts, but from what I can get from this video is that you've probably never experienced extreme depression and overwhelming thoughts of self-deleting, in a society that does not care about you or life in general.
To be fair, Sadu is my favorite character. And she is a literal meteor spamming psychopath.
I'd probably get along fine with Hermes if that was his only issue.
But he's also a whiny little shit who just causes problems by being a big sucky baby.
Endwalker rushing through its story beats at breakneck speeds certainly didn't help his relatability. We had ALL of ShB to hand out with Emet. Yeah, Hermes never would have lived up to that, but he needed a LOT more time in the oven. Bro isn't even half baked. He exists for a single zone and his purpose is to make a mess of everything.
I've been playing 14 since the start and I completely agree with you. His whole arc made me feel like the ascians whole plan up to that point was misguided because if Meteion was still a threat even if they succeeded in their plans they would still be destroyed. It also makes the argument that the ascians would have been better for the star defiantly false rather than being ambiguous. Having it so they knew about Meteion this whole time raises so many questions that negatively impacted that part of the story for me.
Glad to see content that people only like Meteion because she's cute. I will die on the hill that if she wasn't a moe bird girl, people would accuse her of being the 2nd coming of Necron given how late she's introduced in this grand, decade long story.
I absolutely hate Hermes and Meteion. Hermes for selfishly doubling down even when he knows Meteion leads to the end of the world and Meteion for thinking she had the right to choose for the whole universe that they’re better off dying. Not to mention she was orchestrating horrible deaths for the life in the universe
Hermes' rather nihilistic views on life, even without taking into account everything happens after the reveal he's the true culprit, makes me distrust him. I'm empathetic and very cynical and pessimistic, but even I know life is rough and sometimes there're things beyond your control and must learn to accept it. His desire to know what is worth living for from external sources ultimately cost him, his society, and countless lives across both the Source and it's Shards. All due to his nihilism. As a villain, he falls rather flat, but Final Fantasy must have a nihilistic villain, so here's the checkbox for that.
Thank you!
I cannot stand Hermes as a character. Hes a massive hypocrite who nearly destroyed everything and in the end did everything in his power to make ir happen.
Yet the msq has the audacity to treat him like a "tragic misguided soul" tm. The only way I want him and his reincarnations to take part in the story again is a side quest to rip his soul from the aetherial sea and strap him into an eternal torture device.
Id probably add those anguished screams to my relaxation playlist.
I've told friends before that while I enjoyed Endwalker a lot, its story felt like 2 Expansions, maybe ever 3 expansion stories worth of content mashed into one. Hermes' character was a victim of this apparently rushed writing, and could have gone through a lot more character development (or atleast been teased before we go back to Elpis and talked about so he wasn't just thrown in there
I'm JUST saying, they'res a reason my friends groups literally EVERY time this twink gets brought up, someone always says "local man ruins everything," like what can i say at this point? Hermes LITERALLY destroyed reality all because he's a depressed sob looking for validation in his sad existence, I mean ffs he gave a bunch of poor birbs depression cause he wanted them to solve the freaking life equation as if the life equation even exists, imma be dead honest with yall, thank god I can;t say what I wanna say in game, cause honestly almost every ascian would get the same sentence from me, "you aint gods, you're just a bunch of nerds that forgot to invent safety protocols…. Because you were too busy making another f**king shark"
I feel like shadowbringers and half of endwalker do a really good job at bringing everything together and uses the 10 years of ffxiv very well. Then its all thrown out for 2 new characters and its all about them instead of 10 years of stories and characters. Was very disappointing to me. I don’t dislike hermes but I do dislike how he was used for the story.
Whilst I don't feel Hermes was "forced" like you do, I did have the exact same reaction when I saw him walking with the other Ancients at the end. I think I said out loud something along the lines of "WHAT'S THAT SLACK PRICK DOING HERE!?"
Oh thank god I thought I was the oddball who almost lost their shit when I saw him added to the end card after all of the d suckin' msq was giving him. I hope he never comes back.
Lol you seem to dislike Hermes a little huh
While I respect everything you brought up, I fundamentally disagree. As a person who was born with depression and has struggled with it all his life, a lot of my younger self in Hermes. That disdain and apathy for everything that didn't fit my mental image of what happiness was supposed to be. Ignoring people reaching out to me and instead filling the void that I made with things that would ultimately make it worse. I saw that darkness and isolation in Hermes. That fundamental unhappiness and inability to look to simple answers for solutions.
Weirdly enough I liked that Hermes wasn't important until endwalker. He's a just a man. There's no way for us to have known about him before endwalker and we (hopefully) won't hear from him again after. He's just a guy who made some bad decisions (understatement I know). I know this is just my preference but There are other reasons that I like Hermes.
I disagree that he is not empathetic. If you have seen the movie Ex Machina, people can absolutely feel empathy for non-living things. Hermes has had to live through the turing test every day since he started working in Elpis. Over time that is gonna start to mess with someone's mind. Is it any wonder that he was unstable? Over and over again he had to destroy these creatures that he thought could be alive until he learned from Meteion that there was essentially no future. Imagine playing a game that has no good ending. You are told from the beginning that you will not win, it is impossible. What is your response then? Do you play the game and lose, or turn off the game? Either way there's no good outcome. Hermes is an unstable man who got caught up in the mother of all existential crisis.
Although his actions lead to every other bad thing to happen, that doesn't mean they are his fault. Emet-Selch doing basically all of shadowbringers? Those were still his decisions. Lahabrea tricking Gaius with the ultima weapon? Lahabrea's fault. The Garleans doing pretty much anything they do? The Ascians fault. Hermes had no hand in anything else that happened until he was Fandaniel in endwalker. So while he was technically responsible for the whole plot, only the final days were directly his fault.
Hermes is actually also a reflection of the error of the ancients perfect world.
No one suspected such vile deeds from one of their own.
Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil.
I HATE Hermes, but I think he was well written. He's selfish, short-sighted and thinks he has simple answers to complex problems. He epitomizes people who argue that things aren't perfect so we should burn it all down, and the fact that I see people like that in real life makes him believable.
Ngl, I feel more pity for Meteion than Hermes. Meteion was used as a tool to ask a question that never had an answer to begin with as the meaning of life is subjective and is always different to everyone.
The most interesting thing about Hermes was the karma he was inflicted with. No matter how many incarnations he had, each was haunted by the memories he stole during the events that took place at the Ktisis Hyperborea. This atrocity was the catalyst for Meteion's final days. If not for his intervention, Emet would have ended Meteion with the snap of his fingers. This leads to thoughts that perhaps there is a one true God at play. Not a Hydaelyn. Not a Zodiark. Not any of the Twelve. But God. Our God.
As a character and his eventuality as Amon the Undying, he was just kind of 'meh'. A broken ancient with zero control over his emotions. He has been the least interesting among them. He's not forgettable though. He did leave a lasting impression, so he has that going for him.
I appreciate all the thoughts and input being had in the comment section, but I just have to say that the thumbnail alone is very alarming for people who have struggled with depression and other mental ills which he was clearly written to have had. While he is fictional, let's not only care about sick people when they are pleasant, and abhor them when they are not. Take care of and be good to each other out there.
I don't have anything new to add that other comments have already said but I hard disagree. I like to think myself a good caring person, but when I was at my lowest, outcasted from everyone my age around me. I genuinely thought the best way to help the out siders like myself was to burn it down. My depression and harmful thoughts i turned to the world instead of myself, so I understand where Hermes was coming from and quite honestly it made me uncomfortable playing the first time. Is it perfect? No not at all, but I don't think he was weak by any real measure.
there is a big aspect to this video with which I disagree, to say that the creations on Elpis are not /alive/ and akin to AI is major mischaracterization and undersells the true power of creation magicks. The things they make and unmake at will /are/ alive, they are as ensouled as any of the other life forms. I say this because 90% of the sidequests are about witnessing the creation of things like the Behemoth and other creatures with the implication that every notable creature in modern Etherys came from places like that. Hermes existed in a /culture/ that /considered/ those things not alive or of no importance, that self same callousness that makes Emet Selch believe what he does forever doesn't count because it isn't murder. Imagine feeling so isolated that you care that much about things that are not supposed to be alive but every fiber of your being is saying otherwise and by merit of Shadowbringers and Endwalker, are supposed to know quite well that those "lesser things" are alive and do matter.
If you fundamentally disagree that the creations are valid living creatures, you miss the point of the quest where you destroy the moths for robes, your character is upset by that and are told that is just the way things are in ancient society and how they view it. Also within the context of the world at large post sundering, if you believe that these creations are not alive, you should not weep for the injured chocobos or griffins or pets or any sort of animal companionship post sundering because it is highly likely there were a construct at one point, same goes for the Ixal, artificial creations or the Loporrits, who are just creation magicked bunny wards. Sure to the ancients it seems like created species are like ai chatbots but we as players are supposed to know that their viewpoint is /fucked/ and Hermes thinks the same way and believes he is /broken/ or something is wrong with him for it.
Should he be in charge of Elpis? No, just as much as someone who gets sad about giving lab rats cancer shouldn't be in charge of a bio-med lab but that doesn't make him mentally ill as you posit.
Please make theory content for the upcoming Patch following "The Dark Throne"
I noticed you didnt seem to talk about Fandaniel at all. Seeing as he's basically an extension of Hermes (no matter how much Amon may try to deny it) in the end he realises how much Fandaniel had influenced his development. I think the element of Fandaniel being introduced in 5.3-5.55 and early EW adds a lot to Hermes' character.
I also think that Hermes' didn't account for Meteion's temperamental change and he wasn't doing it out of pure malice as you may paint him to be. As Emet said, the question he gave Meteion was inherently flawed. But Meteion took this and scaled it up to 100. By that point, she was her own being. I doubt anything Hermes' could've said or done would've changed her from her course at that point.
So no, I don't think Hermes' is the inherent cause for every conflict leading up to EW. Meteion took the other half and ran with it where Hermes' was second guessing himself.
While you make good points, I do feel you missed some things that were brought up in the MSQ.
When we find Amon in the depths of the Aetherial sea, he himself highlighted the fact he and Hermes are NOT one and the same. Even with the memories of Hermes restored to him, he never considered himself Hermes. He was always Amon, Xande’s faithful servant, and was trying to bring his Emperor’s wishes to fruition. “The man I was, would weep at what I have become.”
If Hermes was a real person, he would be diagnosed with severe depression. He closed himself off, believing no one could understand him. Trying to find validation for living in the responses of other worlds. That’s where Hermes messed up. Meteon did actually touch on that, and tried her best to show him that. She later defines Hermes’ question as narrow and flawed, and that there is no one answer.
I think by letting Meteon go, he wanted to stop her destruction, and also justify Etheris’s right to exist by defeating the song of oblivion.
While I don't think he drags down Endwalker, I do agree that people really shouldn't be thinking of him as empathetic.
There's a line in the dungeon that really tips his hand. Paraphrased from memory: "I won't let you kill her, not before I hear my answer."
This instance of Meteion is the one creation he spent the most time with. He shared his emotions and burdens, shared his favorite food, had been around him at nearly all times. There should be no creation in all of Elpis that Hermes cares for more. And yet with his goal so close in front of him, the truth is he doesn't give a shit about her beyond what value he can gain from her.
As much as he made a big production about caring for the creatures, he was using them as an external vessel for his feelings about how ancient society as a whole handles death, and the creatures themselves never mattered.
As an aside about the selection of Hermes as Fandaniel, I will remind you though, that while no one catches the warning signs, once Hermes lays it all out in the open, Emet's immediate response is "You should never have been put in charge of Elpis with that mental state." ('Because that job is destroying you' is implied by my recollection.)
I just wanna say Syndonic Scribe, I appreciate you having the goolies to voice a strong opinion knowing full well how the comment section would react, hats off for your confidence.
I think one of the main points of the Elpis arc was to show us that the "perfect paradise" the ascians wished to bring back never existed. It wasn't perfect, and most certainly it wasn't a paradise. Everybody was equally happy, and everybody was happily working for the star. But when you look at it closer, the cracks show. Gross disregard to the lives they themselves created, the complete neglect of community and communication, the fact that they throw away their lives once "they finish their work", these all gather over time and create people like Hermes or Athena. Both maniacs, but Hermes fought with his depression and Athena got a god complex. And the majority of ancients never caught on to it, in their minds, everything is as it should be. Hermes was a brilliant researcher, nobody cared that he didn't submit his creation to inspection, even Hythlo drops the topic after Hermes tells him that she is still just an experiment for now. Which she was. And even when Hermes first rebelled, they never thought to actually fight him seriously (nobody in the party assumed their "battle form"). It was inconceivable to them that one of their own could be that far gone. Meteion didn't want to tell Hermes what her sisters found because she knew that it will break him. And it did. His actions are unforgivable. But it doesn't mean that we can't understand it or sympathize with its tragedy. All of this could have been avoided if the ancient society was actually the perfect paradise.
I don’t really agree with anything you’ve said but thanks for the vid
ok why has this video changed thumbnails twice in under24hs?
EW definitely felt rushed. i think they tried to cramp 2 expansions worth of story into 1 in order to tie up as many open threads as they could. garlemald invasions, the dragons' fate, beast tribe summoning, the ascians, what really happened to the ancients, how the world came to be, both zodiark and hydalyn are gone, even the calamities, all of it came to a close in ONE expansion. that's basically every major story push in the whole game since arr. all of it is gone now. hell even the void will be gone in like 3 months time.
and i have a theory: they did this because they're gonna announce a new ff mmo.
Yeah I am not convinced. I recently had some existential shit to work through and still kind of working through it. Through the course I went from seeing life as something to be preserved, to seeing a valid argument that it's more merciful to end life itself. If I had the power to do so, that conflicts too much with my other ideals that deciding the fate for others is wrong so I wouldn't, but I would be lying if I were to deny that the thought of destroying all life on the planet would be considered as compassionate. Hermes is an example of another someone who struggled with this shit, I believe, and fell mad from it when it all blew up in his face late in the Elpis story. I slightly empathize with him, in realizing what likely made him who he became, but mostly, I pity him for falling to it.
In summation, I don't see him as a bad character. I would have liked more explorations of him, I'll agree on that front, but he's a really good example of staring into the abyss, and the abyss staring back being the thing that drives him mad. He wanted answers, and like some poor fool in a lovecraftian story, he got his answers, but it was not what he expected; it drove him mad when the answers (the abyss, in this metaphor) stared back at him, as unflinching as reality's callousness.
A side note: I also think it's rather genius that the thing that caused all these problems was a mistake. A poor directive given to an untested empathic being. It lends credibility to the things Meteion herself encountered; that life can be snuffed out so easily.
I don't think introducing a character in an expansion solely for this expansion's plot makes the story forced and the character unimpressive or shallow. Besides, that's not even the case here. You already had a taste of Hermes' craziness long before Endwalker. You just didn't know it was him. Not every character needs to be as impressive as Emet, and not every character needs a background story across five expansions like G'raha Tia. That's perfectly ok. You can say you don't like this character because he is selfish and a sociopath (I am not a fan of Hermes either), but saying this character is underdeveloped and rushed because of the points you brought up just doesn't make sense.
An underdeveloped character is one in that you can't easily identify their characteristics or whose behaviors are inconsistent. It seems, as you described in this video, Hermes is neither. Isn't the reality that almost every big historical event or invention in human history started with a person having an idea or asking a question? What's wrong with that? To me, Hermes is not very likable, but this character makes sense. This video just sounds like a kid whining about a video game's story not being what he wanted.
He's up there with Asahi for my least favourite character. I don't care if he's "supposed to be a flawed character". He's an idiot, screwed everyone over because he lacks a brain.