Venat

So, question time and I'm sure this was long addressed when the game first came out but now that I finally beat the Zodiac Age version, I figured out something that has been bugging me: Was Venat evil or just the means to help humans become more powerful and thus the choices were solely their own?

Vayne could have been an interesting villain and for about the first half of the game he was shaded that way but I felt like he lost his inner turmoil until the very end of the game. Was he truly aware of the evil he was causing at all times and would he have made the same choices without Venat's goading? The conflicts played out on Ashe's end but I think using Vayne and Ashe as mirror images would have been a much more powerful conflict in the end with Venat acting as the conduit for either to make their decisions.

Take care all.

Nobody in XII is truly evil.







Except Judge Bergan. He can go jump off a cliff.


I feel the entire point of the game is that morality isn’t black and white and you migh just as easily become a villain if you’re not careful - which is something that almost happened to Ashe.

Venat is a person/godlike being who thinks on the extremely grand scale to the point of thinking nothing of sacrificing a Dalmasca or Nabradia or two in service of a higher purpose, and he incites Vayne and Cid to do the same. I don't think any of them, neither Venat nor the humans, are in denial of the pain and suffering they caused, but it's straight up not what really matters to them.

Probably the most interesting part to me though is that beyond this, Venat, Cid and Vayne are also shown to have a legitimate friendship. Everything we see between them seems to imply they do not use one another or think themselves higher than the other. They just genuinely respect and even value each other. The scene that stands out the most there is before the true final boss when Vayne proclaims himself a failure but Venat comforts him and walks alongside him during what they both likely knew were going to be Vayne's final moments. They stay true to their ambition still, but there's something really human in their relationship.

Venat's motives have always been a bit shrouded. We know they had a falling out with the Occurians and helped Vayne and Cid discover how to create Nethicite in order to be on equal standing with the Occurians, but exactly why Venat chose to do this is never really elaborated on. The best we can guess is that Venat either felt sympathy for the races of Ivalice and felt they were capable of making their own way through life, or they simply saw the system the Occurians had established as unfair. A lot of this could have been cleared up if the game had developed the Occurians more, because we really don't have much of an idea on what their actual endgame was, nor how destroying the Sun-Cryst somehow stops them from meddling any further.

I agree that I felt Vayne was always meant to have a different end to his story than what we got. He's a far more conflicted figure with a pretty sad past, but then he goes super megalomaniac once you get to the Sky Fortress Bahamut, which feels really out of character for him.