What's the point with that quite lackluster story in Endwalker?

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Originally Posted by Seraphor

The only hope of survival, was an action that, through way of a causal time loop, was given to Venat as a sure-fire way to survive for at least another 18,000 years, and the only way to potentially survivor past that.

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It was not a surefire way to survive, all Venat knows when she causes the sundering is Zodiark will keep the world safe and when his shield is removed all hell breaks lose. There is no way of know that would could get to her and stop her and no way to know the ancients couldn't either. The game couldn't be bothered and instead just othered the ancients which was some pretty vile writing and then crowns the monster that murdered them a god and spends nearly all of EW telling is how wonderful she is.

I did joke a bit with friends about how, while there was some good stuff in the Omicron quests, there was also that uneasy feeling when built off of 6.0: "There's no correct or incorrect way to exist! Everyone can be saved! Everyone can rediscover hope and the will to survive! ...except Those Ancient Guys, there was no saving them, sorry, they just point blank had to die no matter what. answers.ogg"

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Originally Posted by Seraphor

Poor story telling, that scene isn't literal. She didn't sunder the world on a whim after a conversation with half a dozen snivelling scared old men. We know she had at least 12 other companions, and it certainly took more than raising her sword in the air to sunder an entire world into 14 reflections.
The whole scene is metaphorical, due to time constraints because they crammed two expansions worth of story into one.

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Honestly I think that's pretty damning, they couldn't be bothered to portry one of the most import events on Etheryis but instead gave us a scene where Venat literally pronounces her whole race unfit for existence with a big showy speech while it's been generally othering the victims

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Originally Posted by Brinne

I did joke a bit with friends about how, while there was some good stuff in the Omicron quests, there was also that uneasy feeling when built off of 6.0: "There's no correct or incorrect way to exist! Everyone can be saved! Everyone can rediscover hope and the will to survive! ...except Those Ancient Guys, there was no saving them, sorry, they just point blank had to die no matter what. answers.ogg"

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It's so odd, the story is all about hope other than that one group who don't deserve hope for some reason and can't be saved for some reason. (Even the murderer robots that glass planets deserve hope)

I think they really screwed up the core principle of what Hydaelyn was supposed to be and tried to pull a BERSERK on us but only the late Miura or Yoko Taro can feasibly pull it off. Venat ain't no Griffith that's for sure. Pulling an Eclipse might have been better if it was illustrated that Venat fought for the world and was left with no choice but to sacrifice it but the storytelling just isn't there.

But again I can see the intent of "You all must die so my ideals can live" schtick they had going.

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Originally Posted by Brinne

"I automatically know what this story is doing with a concept because I've seen how completely different stories do it" is kind of a weird way to engage with a text.

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The whole concept of “Utopia” from its original inception is that it’s a farce, that’s the way almost every single piece of media has played it to be, and the writers even connected it directly to that original concept with its naming of the main city the civilization centered around.


The way the story interacted with the Ancients was always awkward because it was very roughly tacked on with no foreshadowing and the concept didn’t even occur to the writers until halfway through the life of the game.

The Ancients were always going to die because otherwise our characters and world going back to the very beginning of the game wouldn’t exist. The writers stumbled when trying to make a pre-existing civilization in the middle of the story that’s somehow responsible for everything from the elementals to migrating birds, made them the civilization of our enemies that have caused every bad thing to happen, but also balance that out with being empathetic and the events around them being a tragedy caused by the entity that had been unquestionably good and supportive this whole time.

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Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

The whole concept of “Utopia” from its original inception is that it’s a farce, that’s the way almost every single piece of media has played it to be, and the writers even connected it directly to that original concept with its naming of the main city the civilization centered around.

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I mean, it might just be a different in reading styles, but I'm not really into "I instantly know what this is doing without needing to pay closer attention because of [references completely unrelated stories] [also possibly a TV Tropes list]" and "using this Very Symbolic name means I instantly know what this is about, no further observation required." It's a bit frustrating when people point to things like that instead of anything that actually concretely exists or is illustrated in the text or characterization itself. It kind of comes back to that whole "is this a story or a list of author's bullet points?" kind of thing.

I guess some people do approach stories like they're a matter of puzzle-solving author intentions above all else, and that can be fun and interesting sometimes, but it's not really relevant to me in this particular kind of discussion - back to evaluating whether or not the Ancients really just needed to die or if they proved themselves unworthy of existing, somehow, yet again.

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The way the story interacted with the Ancients was always awkward because it was very roughly tacked on with no foreshadowing and the concept didn’t even occur to the writers until halfway through the life of the game.

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I have a lot of praise to offer Ishikawa in Shadowbringers with how she utilized the pre-existing traits of the Ascians to spin into the Ancients and their culture, and how clever so many of the small touches there felt, but overall, yeah. They ultimately weren't willing to commit to Shadowbringers throwing in a swerve that nobody foresaw the impact of and the reception to. Lots of short-sighted writing blunders that has left us in a really weird, uncomfortable place regarding the most significant and foundational event in the entire lore.

IIRC, it always seemed a little bit interesting to me that Yoshida (?) named Ishikawa, specifically, who wanted to use Shadowbringers as a chance to "humanize" the Ascians, down to Ishikawa pushing for Emet becoming "a part of the party" in the way he did while he had reservations about it. I suppose you could speculate all day where the cracks formed between Ishikawa going hog wild with her vision for Shadowbringers without accounting for and baking in planning for what would inevitably follow, or possibly Yoshida/other writers for being inflexible and not quite seeing what was happening in their own story and being willing to bend to it organically, or everyone's fault for not properly planning things out until the last second across several expansions, or somewhere in between.

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Originally Posted by MagiusNecros

I think they really screwed up the core principle of what Hydaelyn was supposed to be and tried to pull a BERSERK on us but only the late Miura or Yoko Taro can feasibly pull it off. Venat ain't no Griffith that's for sure. Pulling an Eclipse might have been better if it was illustrated that Venat fought for the world and was left with no choice but to sacrifice it but the storytelling just isn't there.

But again I can see the intent of "You all must die so my ideals can live" schtick they had going.

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Not really, gods are just gods. Theyre not the be all end all of what is ultimately good and evil especially with the writing of your typical fantasy jrpg. Its almost always written were the heroes forge their own path with whatever assistance a benevolent being provided with the end result being the dismantle of the established diety mythos in the world.

So Hydaelyn was written how she was supposed to be all along. Its just people over analyzing it and making these mental gymnastics over trying to give their reasons for meaning when the writers intent was already given clear as day. I dont understand the confusion here with you people.

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Originally Posted by Atelier-Bagur

Not really, gods are just gods. Theyre not the be all end all of what is ultimately good and evil especially with the writing of your typical fantasy jrpg. Its almost always written were the heroes forge their own path with whatever assistance a benevolent being provided with the end result being the dismantle of the established diety mythos in the world.

So Hydaelyn was written how she was supposed to be all along. Its just people over analyzing it and making these mental gymnastics over trying to give their reasons for meaning when the writers intent was already given clear as day. I dont understand the confusion here with you people.

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I want to remind everyone the interviews/fanfests leading up to Endwalker Yoshi P was gladly telling people to examine everything and that you would never guess where Endwalker was going. I can't really fault people after that kind of build up for doing just that and analyzing the story as heavily as they did. I personally think the choice in the Omega quest of "Everyone was wrong" is the correct answer myself they elected to add that choice there for some reason instead of treating it like the MSQ and never letting me question Venat.

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Originally Posted by Brinne

What does this even mean...?

"I automatically know what this story is doing with a concept because I've seen how completely different stories do it" is kind of a weird way to engage with a text.

w-what does this even mean. what does it even meannnnnn

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Did you not notice how hermes and eric were suffering? People like them existed back then but their suffering was ignored. No one tried to understand them.

To me it sounds like you argue under the idea that a perfect utopia is infact possible. I disagree and (caution: very judgemental statement following) and think you need to stop huffing lethal amounts of copium. The trope of the seemingly perfect but actually rotten utopia is a common one because fiction is generally written by humans. Many people in our world have declared themselves or their way of live perfect. Fiction authors want to convince you how foolish that is. However, while perfection is unattainable, improvement is attainable.

What it means is that instead of settling for nothing less than perfection (and growing more and more desperate in the search of it) you should strive for improvement. That striving is what is being celebrated in the game. This cannot make sense if you cling to the idea that a perfect utopia can exist (or worse if you think it already exists).


On the topic of 'was venat justified?':
I think we need to ask a different question first: Was she looking for justification? What kind of justification?
In the cutscene after her trial I think she said something like "there was no kindness in the destruction I wrought". I dont think she was looking for moral justification, ever. It was always my interpretation that she was acting out of desperation and this is supported imo by the completely doomed backup plan of using the moon as an escape vessel. Faced with the choice of letting the ancients work themselves to their unavoidable doom or shattering the world and having the remnants be inhabitated by living feeling beings that have a better chance of defeating the catastrophe unleashed on the universe, she made her choice.

I found the omega beyond the rift quest very interesting in that regard. It poses not only the question of 'do you think what she did was justified?' but also includes hermes into that. He was desperately looking for justification for his actions. A search that not only doomed the world on accident but a doom he, given knowledge of the consequences of his action, also embraced in his authority as judge over the rights to existence of living beings on etherys.

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Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

The whole concept of “Utopia” from its original inception is that it’s a farce, that’s the way almost every single piece of media has played it to be, and the writers even connected it directly to that original concept with its naming of the main city the civilization centered around.

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I feel like this fanbase has collectively absorbed the superficial detail that Thomas More's Utopia is a satire and assumed it's a satire of the concept of utopias, when that's not really the case at all.

Utopia is a satire of the early Humanist movement of 16th century European society, poking holes in the contradictions between the radical ideals it had on paper, and the structural issues it refused to challenge - such as the influence of religion on government and and the social problems caused by property ownership and the emerging proto-materialist culture of the time. The Utopia in the book isn't named "no-place" because More was arguing it was unachievable or undesirable (in fact, he was almost certainly advocating for a society like the one depicted, judging by the tone and how it mocks a bunch real countries via explicit contrast) but rather because it was so alien to renaissance-era Europe that it was beyond the scope of what most people were even willing to imagine.

His point was that to attain a perfect society where no one was treated unfairly, just about every cultural sacred cow would need to be slaughtered; money, aristocracy, self-expression, Christian morality, etc. Ironically, by positing that it's wrong for the Ancients to have social and ethical systems unlike our own through a largely emotional argument (see how the critique of their custom of voluntary death is framed wholly through Hermes' visceral discomfort, without even really trying to examine it on merit), the writing is proving his point: That we are too reactionary and defensive regarding our own customs and values to rationally envision a completely different kind of society from the ground up.

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Originally Posted by Lurina

I feel like this fanbase has collectively absorbed the superficial detail that Thomas More's Utopia is a satire and assumed it's a satire of the concept of utopias, when that's not really the case at all.

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Thomas More’s Utopia was designed as a contrast to contemporary European society just as FFXIV’s Amaurot does the same to Eorzea, but from a modern lens it is by no means perfect. In More’s Amaurot, individualism and privacy do not exist and everyone owns slaves.

At the end of the book, More disagrees with much of Amaurot’s society but wants to learn more about it and implement parts of it despite thinking it’ll never happen.

Much of what More actually meant is still up for debate and unless FFXIV’s writers told us the intention and the angle they were going with the references, we’ll just end up in circles.

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Originally Posted by Lurina

That we are too reactionary and defensive regarding our own customs and values to rationally envision a completely different kind of society from the ground up.

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This could also apply to the pearl-clutching reaction people have to Venat’s actions and labels of evil and genocide.

Elpis established that they believed everyone back then was in service of the Star and an intrinsic part of it while at the same time being so powerful that they felt they had the right to make extreme decisions on behalf of everyone else.

Would they consider it genocide? Or would they consider it just a continuation of their souls being recycled? This never comes up and these questions are never asked.

While an immediately bad thing that breaks everyone and everything into 14, it’s never treated by the story as a genocide and also not treated as a maliciously heinous act of evil. Venat never gets a dressing-down from Emet-Selch or Hythlodeus and the story continues to treat her as good.

Since this thread is kind of hell, I'm not really interested in diving into the actual discourse here (though I'm not sure how you could play Shadowbringers and get the impression that at least Emet didn't essentially consider the Sundering a war crime; he condemns the heck out of Hydaelyn there, to the point that his final EW scene comes across as sort of a forced happy resolution), I just wanted to confront the idea that merely by referencing More's Utopia, FFXIV could only have been foreshadowing the Ascians utopian society as a "farce", since his work - irrespective of its sometimes dated values - largely presented the society positively. Even at the end of the book, his concerns are more about the impracticality of its implementation than it being bad for its own sake.

More specifically says that parts of their society and culture are absurd.

The very last sentences are also:

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I cannot perfectly agree to everything he has related. However, there are many things in the commonwealth of Utopia that I rather wish, than hope, to see followed in our governments.

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But people have also been disagreeing with what More actually intended with all of this for 500 years. We’re not going to come to a consensus here.


As far as Emet goes, I was more specifically talking about EW Emet at the end, not him during ShB. Of course he’d be against Venat/Hydaelyn during his time as an Ascian actively fighting against her.

Instead we get a “I admit your plan was the one that worked but I regret nothing”.

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Originally Posted by Saraide

Did you not notice how hermes and eric were suffering? People like them existed back then but their suffering was ignored. No one tried to understand them.

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These two examples are kind of insane, to be blunt. Well, okay, let me amend: the example of Hermes is kind of insane, the example of Erich is completely insane.

Hermes is someone who is noted, when you talk to the NPCs around Elpis, to be pretty distant and keep people at arms' length; none of his subordinates know much about him personally, although they respect him. Hermes's short story in Tales from the Dawn goes further into how people did want to help him and tried to reassure him, but Hermes had made his mind up about how they were just patronizing him and that the words and sentiments they offered weren't good enough. You can have a discussion about how relatable Hermes's frustration about what he felt were others' platitudes may or may not be to you, but to say they simply ignored his suffering is weird. It wasn't ignored when Hermes chose to share it; people just didn't quite immediately get where he was coming from, which isn't a crime or a sign of any moral deficiency.

And frankly, you have a direct, onscreen example playing out right in front of your eyes about an Ancient being sympathetic to and open to hearing out Hermes's thoughts, even if he doesn't immediately, intuitively understand where he's coming from: Emet-Selch, who keeps breaking protocol or helping Hermes out personally when he evidences distress in spite of himself, and whose thoughts continue to linger on Hermes's distress after Hermes shouts him down, and who felt so badly for his pain he offered him a top level government position to extract him from it. Emet's response to Hermes wasn't perfect by any means, but he was trying his best with the best of intentions, and Hermes was not playing ball because the attempts to understand and help weren't exactly the kind that he was looking for - since he was looking for agreement and unconditional validation on his unusual, for their society, response to and extreme fears about death.

You'd be better off making the argument that Hermes felt isolated because he was suffering badly in a world where not many people suffer badly, necessitating the hard work of two-way connection and actually explaining himself, than suggesting that people just ignored his problems or were callous to him.

Erichtonios, on the other hand, just kind of flat out blows my mind that you'd hold him up as an example of someone whose suffering was "ignored" when we had a whole arc in Pandaemonium about Lahabrea's stress and internal conflict about what he put Erich through, and an entire scene therewithin where he and Agdistis discuss, onscreen, before our eyes, the stress that Lahabrea's decision to protect him is going to put Erich through and how it still isn't right - to the point that Agdistis's dying action is trying to address the problem and forcing Lahabrea to do the same. The actual opposite of "sweeping it under the rug."

You have Erich only speaking in the most glowing terms about his coworkers - Hesperos, before his transformation, the aforementioned Agdistis, everyone else who Erich is so passionate about saving. Everyone seems to have treated him well and he doesn't harbor any ill feelings towards them at all. Erich specifically talks about how kind they are and how much they care about the people working under them.

And then there's Themis, Elidibus himself, who is also nothing but utterly sympathetic to Erich's plight, consistently takes his side both emotionally and in passionately defending him against anyone who might slight him. Themis who never once speaks down to him, and who Erich counts as one of the dear friends whose support has let him overcome Athena's brainwashing. Themis, who recognizes that fact that, and expresses that he's glad for, that Lahabrea and Erich look like they're on the road to reconciliation (even if it will take time, and won't be easy) and a better future for themselves - incredibly, something apparently actually possible for Ancients, overcoming their problems and their suffering, when we start defining them into actual characters and situations instead of thematic vagaries and symbols.

And frankly, Erich is an Ancient himself. He's not portrayed as exceptional, either. Erich's introduction is panicking and being frantic to save his coworkers to the point that you fight him. At no point does Themis make an aside that, boy, it sure is weird and gross in their society that Erich feels so much for the people around him - Themis immediately takes a shine to him because of it, and then even takes his side against Lahabrea!

This speaks back to, again, how while it's easy to talk in sweeping platitudes or paint with a broad brush, it gets squeamish fast when the vague generalities are narrowed down into actual specifics, actual pictures. The Ancients were beyond hope, doomed people who had to die, culturally poisoned and spoiled and a dead-end. Erichtonious is a dead end, an Ancient so far gone culturally he needs to be put down? Agdistis was a dead end? Themis was a dead end? These people just simply couldn't be saved, weren't and aren't worth trying to save from what awaits them? That starts becoming a very staggering claim.

It's once again a case of what Endwalker actually wrote completely undermining what Endwalker then steps back and tries to say about what it wrote. Honestly, the sheer amount of "don't give a fig" Pandaemonium has so far about Endwalker's themes and how it tried to shoehorn the Ancients to fit into it in favor of just showing them to be people, struggling and suffering in their own ways, but doing their best to do the right thing, is kind of hilarious.

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To me it sounds like you argue under the idea that a perfect utopia is infact possible. I disagree and (caution: very judgemental statement following) and think you need to stop huffing lethal amounts of copium.

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Not expecting you to have looked through my post history or read the tedious walls of text within, but suffice it to say: nope! Incorrect!

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What it means is that instead of settling for nothing less than perfection (and growing more and more desperate in the search of it) you should strive for improvement. That striving is what is being celebrated in the game. This cannot make sense if you cling to the idea that a perfect utopia can exist (or worse if you think it already exists).

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But enough about how the Ancients were good people!

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Originally Posted by Lurina

Since this thread is kind of hell, I'm not really interested in diving into the actual discourse here

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A mood of significant proportions. For the sake of my mental balance, I try not to dive into the war zone too often. The fact is, I would much rather be in my Art Deco metropolis, having tea with all the other (charitable, not patronizing) wizard scientists in my big comfy snuggie… Regrettably however, this isn't that kind of role playing game, so the playable character I personally do not particularly identify with is stuck in this rather middling and boring fantasy world, with all these sundered protagonists I've never felt particularly attached to but have been willing, so far, to suffer to catch a glimpse of the far more interesting antagonists.
Speaking of… …sort of… I enjoyed Rubicante; it's just a bit of a shame he was more or less a one scene wonder. Now I feel like the only interest in the story I have left is the prospect of Deep-Voiced Final Fantasy Villain In Big Bad Armor name dropping Zodiark. Just name dropping will do. Endwalker in general has trained me to lower my standards. (Also, loud shout-out to the French localization team for having Golbez refer to the "Ascians" who told him of the 13 other worlds as actually singular and female, alluding to Igeyorhm in all but name. For once, this is not me dunking on the EN localization (wow?!), because the original JP also talks of "Ascian", unspecified. I just wanted to acknowledge these French guys and gals sure can ascian, and they have my respect for that!)

Anyway, I look forward to the next instance of this thread being called an echo chamber, even though it seems as liable as ever to turn overnight into what can only be described as the terrible, cursed lovechild of the lore subforum and /r/ffxivdiscussion's story threads, babysat by The Balance's lore channel. Mercifully, it does not have nearly enough horny fan art of female WoLs and average screenshots of in-game scenery to be taken to the daycare by /r/ffxiv.

In the meantime, I had thought we all agreed on time travel being a very risky plot device that can go horribly wrong at the drop of a hat, and yet here we are, transported right back to July 2019 by FirstGearFirstGear. Peculiar! I suppose she also used the second bad plot device, Kairos, to wipe from her memory the responses to those musings she probably got for the past three years and a half. Personally I am quite baffled that anyone would call these arguments "a breath of fresh air", because to literally every Ascian fan since patch 5.0, they smell rather stale. Are you guys excited for the first tier of Eden to drop? I hope the remix of Force Your Way slaps! (It did, thank you Soken)
While I personally disagree that the Unsundered had a better reason to exist than the Sundered, I see the point of players who think they do by virtue of the former being the original whole and the latter being the broken result of a… sigh… intended and purposeful planet-wide extermination of their people, culture, history and civilization (sorry, some people don't like it when we use the G-word to speak of an act done by a good guy!), but I don't reason that way myself. Whatever. I'm not particularly offended by other people's takes on complicated moral matters as long as everyone involved in the discussion is respectful, especially when the subject matter is ultimately fiction.
In an in-universe context however, I have always interpreted the situation in Shadowbringers as one where both sides deserved the right to fight for their existence, in tragic circumstances where it didn't look like both sides could feasibly coexist – though it wasn't for a lack of trying on Emet-Selch's part, as he makes a point of, both in-game and in his first short story. I perfectly understand however where the Unsundered are coming from, as both Emet and Elidibus make very clear that they were simply unable to relate to the Sundered and consider them "human" from their PoV, owing to the massive cultural differences resulting from the Ancients' immutable biological characteristics. It does not matter how human you think the Sundered are. To the Unsundered, things seemed so different as to be irreconcilable, and to consider their stance, you also need to take into account that they were governmental officials of the highest level, supposed to oversee the planet and represent their people. The former is, to their eyes, unambiguously broken into pieces, and the latter are either 1) locked up and expressing a wish to be made whole again and go back home, or 2) shadows of their former selves living very short (again – to them) and cruel lives.
Back in 5.0, anti-Ancient people used to argue that Emet's account of his society was too rose-tinted and that it was actually a not-so-secretly dysfunctional dystopia, ergo not nearly perfect enough, thus the Ancients were Wrong™. Now, after 6.0 (which, To Be Fair, You Must Have A Very High IQ To Understand…), it is apparently also a valid argument to say that the Ancients' society was too perfect, thus the Ancients were Wrong™. That's the brilliant thing with Endwalker, you see: no matter how you look at it, you can ALWAYS say the Ancients were Wrong™ and feel good about yourself being on the side of Good™! Marvelous. This story was almost threatening to be morally complex at one point. Aren't we all glad Endwalker put that to rest? I sure am wiping the sweat off my brow!
But the thing is, Ancients being simultaneously too perfect and not perfect enough should have never even mattered in the first place. Because who are we to judge them when the Sundered have such marvels as the pirate rape cave, Doman pimps being given a slap on the wrist, magic-capable people chasing the magicless out to cold inhospitable lands, the Xaela and some of their frankly ridiculous customs existing, racist wood people ruled by weirdly obtuse spirits, and rampant pint-sized capitalism? Emet throws what amounts to this argument in the Scions' faces, and Alphinaud doesn't have much to answer to this plain truth. Regardless, it still feels justified for the Sundered to fight him and Elidibus, and of course it does. You don't have to justify your existence. Neither the Sundered nor the Ancients should.

…except, of course, when you ineptly introduce, right in the last episode of your arc, a plot device that you can very conveniently point to and say "B-bb-but look! The Ancients were literally biologically incapable (and culturally, and emotionally as well, because why the hell not? Might as well throw it all in!) of manipulating The Power Of Friendship IN SPACE™! They were doomed! TEAM HYDAELYN WINS!". Dynamis is so terribly-written that it appears to act literally like the well-established Power System that already existed in-universe for years, with somewhat loosely defined rules that we the audience were gradually learning about, except it kinda tosses these rules out the window, so the writers can sort of make things up as they go. What does it do that Aether cannot? Well… Nobody's really sure. It can transform people into grotesque monsters, but so can Aether. It can create things, including living and self-aware things, but so can Aether. Limit Breaks are Dynamis, except they've always been defined as Aether before, and surely some LBs must be Aether still, otherwise surely the literal Unsundered Ancient juiced up on sweet Elder Primal Aether shouldn't be able to spam LBs at us?? The alliance raid tells us the Twelve are given their shape by the prayers and emotions of people, and so, ohhhh, could it be DYNAMIS?!?! But this sounds just like what Aether has always done with Primals?…
Not content with merely being a useless addition, it also does a number on the world building. So, apparently, it was largely under-researched by the immortal scientist wizards with an insatiable thirst for knowledge (of course, otherwise the writer's fave wouldn't be A Very Special Boy as required by this convoluted plot). Well, makes sense, because they were so uninterested in space, right? Ah, except they apparently knew enough about space for Venat to conjure up a whole bunch of spaceship-building, space-faring familiars, which we can surmise she based off the Anamnesis Anyder archives on space Simpeus of Anyder gave her in his short story. Well, all right. Let's just accept anyway the immortal scientist wizards were totally uninterested in this thing they were aware made up two thirds of a universe they had not even begun to explore yet. What of the Sundered and their science, then? If the Elpis flowers survived all the way to 12,000 A.S., then we can surmise they also existed before then, with all their tantalizing mood-ring mystery that isn't Aether. So, I suppose even the incredibly technologically advanced Allagans were also terribly uninterested in this mysterious energy. Even though they were also interested in space! Everything back then was also made of 4/14th density Aether, so logically Dynamis should have had more of a presence then than during our 8/14th density Aether era prior to Zodiark's death, during which Thavnairan alchemists were aware of the concept. There is apparently no trace of it ever being researched before Thavnairan alchemy. Nope. I guess everyone in this universe simply found the thing too boring to ever be properly researched at all and passed down history before Endwalker suddenly introduced it to us.
Dynamis is poorly introduced, fits awkwardly into the lore, and doesn't seem to do anything much that Aether could not do. It has no good reason to exist in the story.
I kid. Of course it does, and that good reason is palatable justification for genocide, effectively undermining what made Shadowbringers and the Ascians' struggle so poignant in the first place.


But I digress and am off-topic. This is, after all, What's the point with that quite lackluster story in Thomas More's Utopia? Silly me!
SPOILERS for the latest installment of Thomas's magnum opus

It does not matter how smart you think you are for citing Utopia (at least before you got told by a lit major who actually read the thing). This is Final Fantasy XIV Endwalker we are talking about. That a JRPG makes a reference does not imply its story even has to follow the same moral and point. It could very well subvert it, or it could also just be a shallow reference you aren't supposed to give too much thought to – and Final Fantasy XIV has never exactly been a stranger to things you aren't supposed to give too much thought to. (Case in point, I think I've just given Dynamis far more thought than it actually deserves. Perhaps more thought than even went into creating it. This particular bar doesn't sound very high, if I can be honest with you all.)
Neither themes nor literary references make a plot good or well-executed. Imagine the makers of something pretty universally panned and/or disappointing like the final season of Game of Thrones, or Rise of Skywalker, saying that actually, you didn't get it, they really did their research and were referencing this old as balls work of classical literature, and that maybe if you weren't such a boorish, low-brow rube, you would appreciate their masterpiece. Is this supposed to make the story's weird change in tone, tired old plot devices or weirdly anticlimactic conclusion to years of build-up that apparently went nowhere more satisfying to the audience? What even is the point here? (Other than condescension on an online forum because you might frankly be more upset than you should be at people not liking a thing you like.)
It's not that deep. Especially not shōnen-trope-heavy Endwalker, of all things.

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Originally Posted by FirstGearFirstGear

I also find it kind of funny that the example we have of Venat saving Ancient lives is just as bad as killing them apparently.

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Now, we all know you simply couldn't be arguing this in good faith, for a couple of reasons:
1. "Saving Ancient lives" (from… from her own genocide??) absolutely was not the intent of Venat allowing Emet-Selch (and two really unlucky dudes, if I am to believe what this story and the Q&A told me) through the Rift. She did so out of the hope the time loop would eventually happen. As she knows, this entails the Ascians committing genocides. They have to for the loop to close and for her brave little spark to benefit from the Apple Tag she deftly threw on a flying target. She didn't just put a gun on a table and then the Ascians shot up planets with them. She was actively planning on them to do that.
2. Yes, allowing three people to live as survivors of a genocide and suffer for an eternity from loneliness and enough mental distress that one becomes depressed, another's identity devolves into a cackling villain, and the last willfully lets himself forget his human life because the alternative would hurt more, hanging onto the vague hope (that turned out to have always been futile, because it's a time loop, and it ends with them being killed by the broken remnants of their former colleague and friend that Venat groomed for the job. Cool.) that they will one day succeed and see their loves ones again and finally rebuild their home world… sounds kinda bad to me, honestly. Killing them with the rest would have been a mercy. But perhaps you were coming at this from the point of view of Endwalker's "life must continue at all costs, even if it means an eternity of suffering". In which case… well. This is your brain on Endwalker, I suppose.

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Originally Posted by Seraphor

Yes, please continue to completely miss the point.
Like I said, this is why I don't do this...

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Oh! Well then. Be our guest.

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Originally Posted by Teraq

Dynamis is poorly introduced, fits awkwardly into the lore, and doesn't seem to do anything much that Aether could not do. It has no good reason to exist in the story.

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I mean, Spiral Power Dynamis does have one obvious meta use aside from being an easy means of justifying the extinction of entire worlds because they can't git gud at using it.


After Shadowbringers firmly established that Dark and Light are the Active and Passive polarities for aether, there was a pressing, overwhelming need to simplify things so players would understand who the good guys and bad guys were. Enter Dynamis! The miracle power that... is exactly the same as aether in every way, as you've said. But unlike aether, it's explicitly coded to be Good or Evil depending on what sort of character is using it. Good Dynamis is always bright, shiny, and either colorful or white. Bad Dynamis is always icky, grungy, and purple or black. Good Dynamis creates Good People replicas of civilizations long dead, and can even create whole planets out of nothing more than wishful thinking. Bad Dynamis destroys planets and creates scary monsters that scream in despair as they burn down cities and eat people.


… So, how long do you think it'll be before the writers get bored with Dynamis and try to play with it in more interesting ways than just "Aether, but with color coded morality"?

EDIT: I should clarify that I don't dislike simplistic visual displays of moral alignment in fiction. Gods know I love me some Star Wars, where you can tell at a glance whether someone is good or evil by the color of their sword. But I will never not disappointed that the devs backslid into one of Fantasy's biggest comfort zones after taking a few baby steps away from it and inviting us to think a little more critically about it.

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Originally Posted by Teraq

snip.

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I do think that the argument is rather off-the-rails. Venat's actions are NOT justifiable in relation to pre-Final Days Ancients. Plain and simple. Thing is... We only get briefest (and debatably very subjective) look at the Ancients during Final Days and exclusively second hand accounts for after the Final Days were averted. And while morality of her actions is very hard to reconcile, I think it is look at what Ancients as a society ended up becoming after summoning of Zodiark, which is the point at which Venat's opposition actually started gaining support and led to eventual summoning of Hydaelyn (which I believe is rather important, as neither her nor Emet ever imply she or her followers actually opposed the Convocation prior to Zodiark's summoning). So, question is, were there any changes to the way ancients and their world view as a society works? I say, yes. Very much so. Prior to Final Days, as we see first hand, Ancients do not believe that singular lives, be it their own, of their friends or their creations, matter not and only thing that matters is betterment of the star. That view is why both Hermes and Venat are treated as outsiders in such society, though in vastly different ways, as they actually do put value in individual lives, even if at that point Venat is not actively trying to change the society, but rather just adhere her own views personally in spite of others' disapproval, unlike Hermes who kept trying to change minds of others. But then come and go the Final Days, ancients lose most of their world and 3/4th of their civilization. And that society... Completely abandons principles of betterment of the star and instead of trying to get back to their work, now that they had more work than ever restoring the star after the Final Days, they start getting ready for a new plan - cultivate life on the star as sacrifice to get their lost comrades, who gave their lives for the star. And in other camp we have Venat and her desire to move on, to not worship Zodiark as saviour to give sacrifices in return for those who are lost, but simply overcome and move on. I can't argue if juxtaposition is intentional, but this 'morality swap' between Convocation and Venat pre- and post- Final Days seems very interesting. Again, I can't really judge how good Venat's plan was or how justified it was for her to choose to sunder Ancients to stop them from Zodiark sacrifice restoration paln. But, the important part is, what they were preparing to do was very much on scale of evil that Ascians ended up doing down the line. And the moral compass we're expected to follow, I think, is neither Venat nor Convocation, but... our own old self - Azem. Azem who opposed the plan to summon Zodiark AND refused to participate in plan to summon Hydaelyn.

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Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

More specifically says that parts of their society and culture are absurd.

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Alright, I won't argue about Endwalker, but I will argue about this five century old book purely to make a point! I won't stand for it being suggested I'm just looking at TvTropes! I wasted three years of my life going to college for English Lit, dying on pedantic forum hills is all I have!!!!!!!!

Firstly, the word More actually uses is "absurdus" (since the original text is written in Latin) which has a slightly different connotation than it does in modern English; we often use it to mean irrational and stupid, while in Latin it's sometimes retains the former meaning, but is generally applied to mean "bizarre" or "unlikely". An example would be Voltaire's popular phrase Credo quia absurdum, or "I believe this because it is absurd", a maxim of faith in the face of logic.

Having said that, let's take a look at some of the other contexts it's used throughout the work.

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But though these discourses may be uneasy and ungrateful to them, I do not see why they should seem foolish or extravagant; indeed, if I should either propose such things as Plato has contrived in his ‘Commonwealth,’ or as the Utopians practise in theirs, though they might seem better, as certainly they are, yet they are so different from our establishment, which is founded on property (there being no such thing among them), that I could not expect that it would have any effect on them. But such discourses as mine, which only call past evils to mind and give warning of what may follow, leave nothing in them that is so absurd that they may not be used at any time, for they can only be unpleasant to those who are resolved to run headlong the contrary way; and if we must let alone everything as absurd or extravagant—which, by reason of the wicked lives of many, may seem uncouth—we must, even among Christians, give over pressing the greatest part of those things that Christ hath taught us, though He has commanded us not to conceal them, but to proclaim on the housetops that which He taught in secret.

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In choosing their wives they use a method that would appear to us very absurd and ridiculous, but it is constantly observed among them, and is accounted perfectly consistent with wisdom.

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Again, he's not talking about how Utopia is bad, he's explicitly (especially in the first entry) commenting on how it's alien character makes it impossible for us to reckon with rationally - with even he himself being unable to do so. This is true also for the instance that I assume you're quoting.

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When Raphael had thus made an end of speaking, though many things occurred to me, both concerning the manners and laws of that people, that seemed very absurd, as well in their way of making war, as in their notions of religion and divine matters—together with several other particulars, but chiefly what seemed the foundation of all the rest, their living in common, without the use of money, by which all nobility, magnificence, splendor, and majesty, which, according to the common opinion, are the true ornaments of a nation, would be quite taken away...

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The emphasis isn't on Utopia's merits, but how different it is European society; how many institutions held up as sacred are simply not present. Ergo More, who is meant to stand in for the reader, cannot accept them on that basis.

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Originally Posted by Heroman3003

I can't really judge how good Venat's plan was or how justified it was for her to choose to sunder Ancients to stop them from Zodiark sacrifice restoration paln. But, the important part is, what they were preparing to do was very much on scale of evil that Ascians ended up doing down the line. And the moral compass we're expected to follow, I think, is neither Venat nor Convocation, but... our own old self - Azem. Azem who opposed the plan to summon Zodiark AND refused to participate in plan to summon Hydaelyn.

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I feel a touch reluctant to call exchanging the lives of ill-defined lifeforms to spare the souls of those who gave themselves to save the world from languishing in purgatory "evil" without deeper context.

The Ascians crossed a line once their plan shifted to involve the lives of sundered mankind, but if we're talking strictly animals and other non-sentient life, they (And mankind as a whole regardless of the era or fiction vs. reality) were already okay with using those beings for their own benefit. In the end, it wasn't even the morality behind the decision that was being opposed but the ideology.

As far as Azem goes, all the evidence suggests that the former instance was simply a case of putting emotions before logic and reason as it's discussed that they had tried several alternatives, exhausted avenues of approach and that Zodiark was an absolute last resort because nothing else was working.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

I feel a touch reluctant to call exchanging the lives of ill-defined lifeforms to spare the souls of those who gave themselves to save the world from languishing in purgatory "evil" without deeper context.

The Ascians crossed a line once their plan shifted to involve the lives of sundered mankind, but if we're talking strictly animals and other non-sentient life, they (And mankind as a whole regardless of the era or fiction vs. reality) were already okay with using those beings for their own benefit. In the end, it wasn't even the morality behind the decision that was being opposed but the ideology.

As far as Azem goes, all the evidence suggests that the former instance was simply a case of putting emotions before logic and reason as it's discussed that they had tried several alternatives, exhausted avenues of approach and that Zodiark was an absolute last resort because nothing else was working.

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Its very ambigous as to what matter of life they would be sacrificing. We know they treat familiars, who we know are perfectly capable of being completely independant and sapient living beings, as little different from animals already. And we know that primals hunger for richer aether and more of it. While it is very much an assumption, I would not say its a stretch they would populate the world with not just life, but sapient beings that they view as lesser, part of another sacrifice. And even if they didn't, ultimately, they'd still basically be abandoning everything they as civilization stood for prior to the Final Days, while very much wreaking great long-term havoc on star's aetherial state to return the paradise lost. I do believe that summoning Zodiark was a 'pragmatically correct choice', although game's morality fits not around pragmatically, but emotionally correct choices. However, after he prevented the Final Days and restored world to livable state, that should have been the end of it. And if it was, I do think that Hydaelyn would never be summoned and sundering would never have occured. The Ancients would start working on building new paradise, perhaps with brand new appreciation of individual lives imprinted upon them now and forevermore.

Not gonna argue on EW's story, I've had my fair share of it, but

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Originally Posted by Teraq

Neither themes nor literary references make a plot good or well-executed. Imagine the makers of something pretty universally panned and/or disappointing like the final season of Game of Thrones, or Rise of Skywalker, saying that actually, you didn't get it, they really did their research and were referencing this old as balls work of classical literature, and that maybe if you weren't such a boorish, low-brow rube, you would appreciate their masterpiece. Is this supposed to make the story's weird change in tone, tired old plot devices or weirdly anticlimactic conclusion to years of build-up that apparently went nowhere more satisfying to the audience? What even is the point here? (Other than condescension on an online forum because you might frankly be more upset than you should be at people not liking a thing you like.)

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You can reference a lot of things, and still not be condescending, and you can be narratively bad, but be great in other aspects of a story's play (referencing rise of skywalker, here, which is what it is, but from a directing point of view is probably the best of star wars movie). Likewise, there are a lot of novels that are pretty bad, but very well written, as in "sentences are pleasant to read".

Then again, "deep" things are not the same for everyone. And this time, you're the one that could (not saying you are) be condescending. If people feel like something is deep, that's a feeling of their own, and you don't really get a say in it. Their life led them to have some philosphy that may or may not be questioned by whatever they "live", whether that is some niche, obscure novel from the XXth century, or a themepark video game. None is more pathetic or despicable than the other.

And finally, it's absolutely possible that most people reading/watching/playing a narrative object miss the point. It is a failure per se, but it doesn't necessarily mean that the story is not interesting or badly written.

Then again, not saying EW's story is great or bad, just saying you shouldn't be so close minded and, maybe, accept that some people do have different point of view (and that applies to far more than a random video game we all spend time on to divert ourselves from the unstoppable walk of time that will slowly but relentlessly guiding us all towards a certain death with shiny armours and pop folk music)

Besides, for that "Other than condescension on an online forum because you might frankly be more upset than you should be at people not liking a thing you like." part, the angrier people might be one that write 7770 messages about how bad something is...

I want to complain again about how Meteion, created by 1 regular dude, destroyed the WHOLE UNIVERSE but our planet. God how do I hate that decision. I dislike lots of things about Endwalker but this is what I dislike the most by far(other than the very weird message on suffering). It would be enough if our creation just finished a handful of civilizations, or if what destroyed the rest of the universe was something not related to the Ancients in any way. It is just too Etheirys-centric as it is and also kills the wonder of the unknown.

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Originally Posted by ameliaw

I want to complain again about how Meteion, created by 1 regular dude, destroyed the WHOLE UNIVERSE but our planet. God how do I hate that decision. I dislike lots of things about Endwalker but this is what I dislike the most by far(other than the very weird message on suffering). It would be enough if our creation just finished a handful of civilizations, or if what destroyed the rest of the universe was something not related to the Ancients in any way. It is just too Etheirys-centric as it is and also kills the wonder of the unknown.

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That's not what happened though.

Meteion visited various Civilizations who were destroying themselves, as seen in 'The Dead Ends'. Granted her empathic abilities did bring about the end of a few of them but not all.

And I don't recall reading anything that suggested that she wiped out all life in the universe - in fact, to the contrary, the Omicrons are still out there.

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Originally Posted by ameliaw

I want to complain again about how Meteion, created by 1 regular dude, destroyed the WHOLE UNIVERSE but our planet.

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Leave think to guild. Must see long game.

No Shadow God it wanting to become the mustard race. To do this it must kill the lesser ape. But Megaman planet and Dragon planet it come to attak No Shadowlands to fight in the Starcraft tournament become mustard race. King Solus he hire the Herman to create God Meteo to destroy all others with the depression. But God Meteo is the kind god and feeling the depression of the Doctor Wily and the Midgard. So it attak the No Shadow God and killing them too. Is refer to FF4 spell Meteo which killing spoony bard who using it.

We having the genius idea. Is so much of the complaint on the 778 page submit by the silent majority. Guild it make the online petition for course correct to kill all ape chara and bring back No Shadow God. Then can take to the Yoshi Island and teach the lessen to the Jr ghost writer. Tariq take the note. We putting him in charge of plan.

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Originally Posted by Carin-Eri

That's not what happened though.

Meteion visited various Civilizations who were destroying themselves, as seen in 'The Dead Ends'. Granted her empathic abilities did bring about the end of a few of them but not all.

And I don't recall reading anything that suggested that she wiped out all life in the universe - in fact, to the contrary, the Omicrons are still out there.

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It's on the wiki that she decided to end all life in the universe as mercy after witnessing the end of a few. I do recall that she did succeed and Etheirys was the only place left, but I could be mistaken.

So I watched a few Endwalker cutscenes and I can tell that it was at least implied that she did indeed wipe everyone, considering that she's on the ''edge of the universe'' and says this
https://i.imgur.com/5ZoH1dA.png

https://i.imgur.com/XSgAwlD.png
https://i.imgur.com/N55I0ez.png
https://i.imgur.com/VwyhWvu.png
https://i.imgur.com/kt4Gy8n.png
I'm trying to fact check but it seems to be ambiguous at best.
Also, isn't Omega the last omicron, the rest being dynamis copies? I didn't start their tribe quests yet.

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Originally Posted by ameliaw

So I watched a few Endwalker cutscenes and I can tell that it was at least implied that she did indeed wipe everyone, considering that she's on the ''edge of the universe'' and says this
https://i.imgur.com/5ZoH1dA.png

I'm trying to fact check but it seems to be ambiguous.
Also, isn't Omega the last omicron, the rest being dynamis copies? I didn't start their tribe quests yet.

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Metions goal is to end all life as she can't understand why anything destined to die would want to live (or something) so the story strong implies she's purged everything she could in the universe meaning only planets able to protect themselves are left

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Originally Posted by ameliaw

So I watched a few Endwalker cutscenes and I can tell that it was at least implied that she did indeed wipe everyone, considering that she's on the ''edge of the universe'' and says this
https://i.imgur.com/5ZoH1dA.png

https://i.imgur.com/XSgAwlD.png
https://i.imgur.com/N55I0ez.png
https://i.imgur.com/VwyhWvu.png
https://i.imgur.com/kt4Gy8n.png
I'm trying to fact check but it seems to be ambiguous at best.
Also, isn't Omega the last omicron, the rest being dynamis copies? I didn't start their tribe quests yet.

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We know life still exists out there, as of quest we get from Omega after the end. She did make effort to prevent life from flourishing by collecting all the aether she had into dead star we see in skybox of Ultima Thule, stopping life from flourishing anew on stars that died before she encountered them or as she encountered them. So you could say she ended all life in universe, but not in direct way, moreso by finding the graveyards and making sure nothing can ever grow from the ashes. As she puts it at some point, as she took feelings of dead and dying as her own, she started believing that true mercy is not just death - its nonexistance, not even being born. I dont doubt she ended at least a few worlds purely by singing her song, but its clear that it wasn't all of them. And her defeat also marks leakage of aether from the dead star she formed, which already causes birth of new one in the Omicron quests.

This is going to be a long post since I haven't really commented on the story and I wanted to actually defend it for a change.


I'm going to be completely honest, I have just been skimming the story. My friends are always further into the story, Tuesday is a 12 hour day for me, and I don't know if it's because of that or I'm generally getting impatient and just wanting to unlock things. Yoshida said he wasn't aware of people paying that close attention to details (in reference to the Shadow hunter scene....zooming in on the masks and people able to potentially identify them) but going on that I'll assume small details don't matter. I've been reading the first and last part of paragraphs and just, getting the general idea of what's going on.

All that being said, I feel the patch content has been okay. Not great or bad, just general middle of the road, kind of boring, but okay. The pacing seems fine if a bit slow, the characters have been okay, I don't feel like I'm being manipulated, there's no time travel, and cut-scenes were okay. I feel like this is a vast improvement over most of endwalker. I'd rather have a slow, boring story over whatever endwalker was. I did enjoy the character animations, especially for the eyes. I feel it gave them more life and maybe the writers might actually get me to eventually care about the characters. What I didn't like was Y'shtola being completely stupid. The dragon being sensed in Garlemald was an obvious trick. All they needed was for her to say, "this is probably a trick, keep your guard up" or something instead of "hey she may have been able to escape for a short time?". It was frustrating. The scene after defeating fire dude was weird too, I may have missed something. I was just letting the autoplay go for it and I guess I'm supposed to feel bad for him because he came to our world to die and rejoin the cycle of rebirth. I don't know, there was sad music playing. I feel like a lot of these story bits have already been done in the game and it's fine to re-do them, just bring something new to the table. I don't feel the patch quests have been doing that.

On to the food/slow scenes. I never cared for the burger scene. I felt it was awkwardly placed and served little to no purpose. I also just find hamburgers disgusting. The slow scenes have been on an incline since shadowbringers I feel. We've had them before, but they're nothing new. I am not concerned about budget being wasted on them, but if they continue like this, I feel that some of the slow/eating scenes will become saturated and feel less special. I liked the scene Where Jullus shares food with Zero. Did I skip it? Yeah...toward the end, again, that's on me. I'm impatient. I do appreciate that it was a way for Zero to remember being human, companionship and camaraderie. It was also a callback to the Jullus soup moment, which is one of my favorite scenes in the game. Off the top of my head, that one, anything with Beaten in it, every second Fandangle Dingobills was on screen, Vidofnir getting attacked (I was ready to kill a dragoon for that), and Bacon Moses Frog parting the Red Sea.

On where it started going downhill for me. I've said it before but 5.3. I really did not lie it. Great trial and music though, hated the story. Shadowbringers was a balancing act with the more "friendly and Disneyfied" moments and the darer scenes. It wasn't perfect, but I felt shadowbringers did a much better job at letting the heavy scenes play out to a natural conclusion. Also, I've been playing since 2.0, the reveal at the end of 5.0 felt like a payoff and I loved it. That being said, I really like Hades as a character, but...that's Elidibus's spot. He was the white rabbit motif we had in ARR, the ascian following us should have been him. The only thing is that the whole friendship with Hades, but then again, that could have been Elidibus.

On Ishikawa. She made a tweet that she was stepping down from lead writer about a month before endwalker. She made crossover content showing the sundering for an entirely different game series. I don't thin the fault of the endwalker mess lies with her at all. I feel that she wasn't allowed to do what she wanted to. Yoshida saying he stepped in to help because she was overworked, mentions of a re-write, covid issues and movie everyone to work from home, everyone potentially wanting to get a last say in to the "end of the story". These are the things I feel made the problems. It seems that things that get delayed, have too many writers, or are passed from one person to another, are things that have more potential to have problems. Because of corporate reasons, we may never know the truth and all Ishikawa can say was "that it was meant to be this way". Actions speak louder than words, her stepping down and writing material for another game shows to me she was not happy with endwalker.

Picking apart a story and analyzing it should make it better, not worse.

Also if we are going to complain about powerlevels: the ancients sacrificed half their population to create a being to make a shield, and another half of the remaining to jumpstart life. Venat munched 13 souls and created 13 worlds worth of budding life.

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Originally Posted by DevonEllwood

The scene after defeating fire dude was weird too, I may have missed something. I was just letting the autoplay go for it and I guess I'm supposed to feel bad for him because he came to our world to die and rejoin the cycle of rebirth. I don't know, there was sad music playing. I feel like a lot of these story bits have already been done in the game and it's fine to re-do them, just bring something new to the table. I don't feel the patch quests have been doing that.

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Yeah, the post trial cutscene in this patch was a bit shaky. I think the big issue with the archfiends in general is that they're treated less like characters and more like monsters of the week that we meet, fight, and kill in rapid succession. There really isn't enough time to set them up as proper characters, so it feels really weird when they try and act like Rubicante is someone we're meant to connect to and feel bad for. Unless they get some serious work done in flashbacks or they get revived like they do in FFIV, I feel like the archfiends are just going to be generic baddies that will be quickly forgotten about, not characters we can sympathize with. Zero preaching to Rubicante was also pretty annoying. She's the only voidsent we know of who has gotten lucky enough to be transformed back into something resembling her previous state, brought to the Source, told she can stay, and allowed to feed on normal food without having to hunt for it. (at least she's the only one I can think of, and even if there's another one that's slipping my mind, her case is exceedingly rare) And yet she wants to preach to a voidsent who is forced into a cycle of violence and constant hunger? It just seems like she's tone-deaf and that the messenger shouldn't be the one bringing the message.

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Originally Posted by DevonEllwood

Picking apart a story and analyzing it should make it better, not worse.

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I agree. I have a very analytical mind, and looking at Endwalker logically ruined it for me.

Writing overall seems to have dropped off a cliff. Will ultimately reserve judgment until after 7.0 drops.

It's amusing that Hildibrand questline tells a better story then the actual MSQ.

And even more interesting is that big potential plot elements are gated behind the crafting questchains in Sharlayan.

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Originally Posted by MagiusNecros

Writing overall seems to have dropped off a cliff. Will ultimately reserve judgment until after 7.0 drops.

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I'm kinda in the same boat. If 7.0 is as bad as 6.0 Endwalker was, I'll probably lose any small amount of faith I have left in the writers to turn this ship around.

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Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

Pearl clutching

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It's not pearl clutching at all. It's mostly akin to the idea that rewriting a person to be fundamentally different destroys them.

The destruction of a people and their society can only be described as evil to said society.

FFXIV only shows us the people in the highest echelons of its society as feeling they can make the grand decisions that affect the whole star. Convocation members, former convocation members, and close friends/lovers to Convocation members. The average researchers in Elpis certainly don't believe themselves to have such grand authority.

Consider this: By the end of EW, Emet-selch considers Hydaelyn/Venat, "The Last of Us." aka The Last Ancient. She herself also considers herself in this way. They do not consider the Sundered to be the same people, even though they carry fragments of that dead people with them forever. Take notice that in spite of Venat knowing we are her fragmented protégé, there is no call from her to remember that side of ourselves. It is ignored.

In this small way, EW itself tacitly confirms that the Sundering was genocide. Which says a lot, considering they bent over backwards to bend the story around trying to hide the evil in that act.

As mildly alluded to, there's a similar situation in Mass Effect 2. Legion's loyalty mission involves rewriting the Geth "heretics" so that they will no longer worship The Reapers. You can rewrite them or destroy them. It varies according to each third wheel member, but a couple of them quip up with, "Rewriting them is worse than outright destroying them because you're killing their identity." One of the responses Shepard can retort with is something along the lines of, "We can't apply biological ethics to synthetic beings! They're different!"

Ignoring that by making the choice for them, we force our beliefs onto them, making them shadows of ourselves.

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Originally Posted by Vyrerus

It's not pearl clutching at all.

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It is the pearl clutch. Is look at the Venar with the heat then Virus it is surprise by the evil kicking of the pearl. Virus he is double over and clutch the pearl. Then evil Venar say to the Virus henceforth thou shall just walk it off brah. He still limping. He become the 1/14 of what he once was. He pray to the God Meteo to make the whole again. Is show in the famous light novel Miranda Effect 2.

Can't help but notice that the last two pages seem... off. Like, enough posts disappeared that it seems like Lurina's post went to the "next" page despite the total page count going down.

Does moderation truly exist on this forum? I wonder what even got deleted.

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As mildly alluded to, there's a similar situation in Mass Effect 2. Legion's loyalty mission involves rewriting the Geth "heretics" so that they will no longer worship The Reapers. You can rewrite them or destroy them. It varies according to each third wheel member, but a couple of them quip up with, "Rewriting them is worse than outright destroying them because you're killing their identity." One of the responses Shepard can retort with is something along the lines of, "We can't apply biological ethics to synthetic beings! They're different!"

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There's a parallel to this in one of the level 90 dungeon quests. The Omicron only ever stopped their omnicidal strip mining of the universe because they ran out of stronger things to attack, so after the defeat of Meteion, one of their higher ups decided to launch an attack on Etheirys. Sir—I think it was Sir, at least—has you dive into that Omicron's memory in order to "convince" it that an attack on Etheirys would lead to the Omicron's downfall. Which you accomplish by, uh, killing it in a dream, I guess? And somehow this causes that Omicron to do a complete 180 and suddenly want to save all the people Meteion trapped in Ultima Thule (which leads into the Omicron Tribe quests).

Of course, since this is FFXIV and specifically Ultima Thule, any question of ethical ambiguity is thrown out the window. Move forward, see you feel you, etc. Also the presence of the Omicron as one of the Dead Ends strongly implies that their star(s?) is(are?) no more, and yet the threat this singular Omicron poses is played very seriously, iirc.

Also also, that same dungeon strongly suggested that many, if not all of the Omicron's alternate forms, are actually enslaved races that the Omicron conquered and converted into soulless machines. That, of course, gets glossed over too.

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Originally Posted by Vyrerus

It's not pearl clutching at all. It's mostly akin to the idea that rewriting a person to be fundamentally different destroys them.

The destruction of a people and their society can only be described as evil to said society.

Consider this: By the end of EW, Emet-selch considers Hydaelyn/Venat, "The Last of Us." aka The Last Ancient. She herself also considers herself in this way. They do not consider the Sundered to be the same people, even though they carry fragments of that dead people with them forever. Take notice that in spite of Venat knowing we are her fragmented protégé, there is no call from her to remember that side of ourselves. It is ignored.

In this small way, EW itself tacitly confirms that the Sundering was genocide. Which says a lot, considering they bent over backwards to bend the story around trying to hide the evil in that act.

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Why do people always ignore that Emet-Selch in ShB explicitly says the Convocation's plan was to generate a massive amount of life purely to kill it in order to bring back the Ancients who originally "sacrificed" themselves? Venat's "sundering" solution is typically seem as the "better" option because the simple fact is that a massive genocide was going to happen no matter what. The only question was whether the victims would be completely innocent beings or the people who were going to murder them in the first place.

As for us as "Azem," part of that is obviously the natural development of a story over a decade resulting in some retcons - the other part - I'm genuinely curious if it's even possible for sundered beings to "remember" their other parts. We only know about Ardbert because we physically interact with him, and despite knowing now that we're a fragment of Azem, it doesn't somehow give us the ability to reach out to or remember our other fragments or past self. Put simply, I don't think Venat "ignores" who we are because we're fragmented; I think she "ignores" it because there's literally nothing that can be done about it, anyway.

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I'm kinda in the same boat. If 7.0 is as bad as 6.0 Endwalker was, I'll probably lose any small amount of faith I have left in the writers to turn this ship around.

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For me, if the writing continues being as good as I found it in EW, I'll continue loving this game. A bonus if we keep most of the hundreds of thousands of players, maybe add a few more, and weed out the sad naysayers who are so bitter they can't stand the thought of other people being happy :).

(Oh, and going back a couple pages, I've stated numerous times the support for why the echo chamber of negativity here is minuscule in comparison to most players. You can ignore it all you want, but it doesn't make it any less true. Heck, it's frequently the bitter cabal who provide the info...)

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Originally Posted by AwesomeJr44

I'm kinda in the same boat. If 7.0 is as bad as 6.0 Endwalker was, I'll probably lose any small amount of faith I have left in the writers to turn this ship around.

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There are games with weak stories that can get away with having good gameplay to make up for it. There are games with jank gameplay but have stories so good that you can power through them.

Current FFXIV is neither. The story seems to have been co-opted by individuals who shall not be named that essentially threw out everything that preceded them to prop up their own lacklustre work. I could have forgiven this but as of now my main class only barely plays like the level 50 version we should have gotten back in ARR and my other favourite Paladin got destroyed by a rework it did not need. There is also no repeatable content to take any class in, and with patch cycles extended needlessly the game is now in what feels like a perpetual content drought.

With Yoshi deciding to nerf the final boss of FFXVI and his focus on the easy mode accessories in that game, I have no delusions that combat here will ever see a significant improvement. The story however could in theory be salvaged if whatever comes in 7.0 is completely divorced from the trashfire writing we've been subjected to this expansion - but only time will tell. What is certain is that a handful of people will proceed to seal-clap for anything and everything they put out regardless of how good or bad it is. All while screaming in our faces about how glad they'd be to be rid of us.

GCBTW.

If 7.0 is a low stakes 5 zones of meracydia + not-antarctica with Aenor and the Boulder brothers, I think it could go a long way toward addressing several of the key issues with endwalker.

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Originally Posted by Graeham

the famous light novel Miranda Effect 2.

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I'd read that. Lmfao. You're a treasure, Graeham.

The best part of this thread is seeing beyondreams complain about an “unneeded rework of paladin” that ruins the job for them after spending the last year crying about “poison mage summoner/dot mage” lmao. I bet they want the old paladin “dot-knight” job to come back rofl, new paladin spits all over the pal job fantasy of using dots!”, “If I wanted to play a non-dot tank I’d play dark knight raaaaaar!”