About Hermes... I'm not going to say Kefka, Sephiroth, Kuja or Yu Yevon are particularly outstanding or just good villains because that's beside the point. What made them ACCEPTABLE as antagonists is that they're built up along a long story and you have plenty of time to get to your own conclusion regarding each one as evil forces or just people (in case of the first three). Hermes and Meteion? They try to cram feels for them in one questline. Two for Meteion. Two questlines for what is supposed to be the final bad of 10 years of story. Most of which is just retcon/made on the spot.Quote:
Originally Posted by Solarra
And the best part of those aforementioned bads? They're planned from the beginning, it shows, and they don't even need that much screentime. Kuja isn't on screen longer than Hermes is, Sephiroth is on screen even less, we HEAR about him a lot but see very little of him in person (until the sequels, prequels, etc, pretty much shat all on that), and yet it works because like the other mentioned antagonists, they're still built through their actions and their consequences on the world or characters around you. The only reason you have to accept that Meteion and Hermes are why the final days happen is because 8+ years later they decided it would be so. And they try to explain all of it in less than 1/3 of a single expansion.
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10-06-2022, 08:20 AMReynTime
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10-06-2022, 08:27 AMAtelier-BagurYeah I think if I had to majorly criticize EW (even though I still very much like it) is that Meteion and Hermes werent given proper built up or even hints of their existence. And their surprise reveal to have been the true cause of the Final Days felt more out of the blue than anything. Again, I still accepted it for what it is but I wish they were able to foreshadow them more in previous expansions.Quote:
Originally Posted by ReynTime
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10-06-2022, 09:14 AMSkyborneMy feelings exactly.Quote:
Originally Posted by Solarra
Yeah, not particularly concerned about "majorities" that cannot be proven either way, only myself and my friends.Quote:
Originally Posted by OdinelStarrei
- enhanced super soldier who goes insane and gains god powersQuote:
Originally Posted by ReynTime
- enhanced super soldier who goes insane and drops a meteor
- theatrical bioweapon goes insane, turns against his creator in a rage over his inevitable death
- summoner that once protected a recreation of his city, now degenerated into a mindless ravenous fiend
- Only Sad Man In The World researcher cannot accept the concept of death, goes mad from finding out his world is actually a relatively nice place and he wasn't vindicated... so sad.... doesn't he have a point? This says a lot about society.... so the narrative blatantly wants to make us think.
Man, putting him in the same category makes him seem even more out of place. (bear with me, I haven't played some of these in a while...) -
10-06-2022, 04:32 PMkaynideThis is the crux of what I consider a bigger misstep of Endwalker.Quote:
Originally Posted by ReynTime
It was a weird choice (to me) to have Zodiak’s “heart” attack us as the “original warrior of light”, in ShB… and then for Zodiark to be a mindless… puppet..thing.
There is something to be said about having twists and turns, but sometimes you can just let the big bad BE the big bad a la Sauron or Voldemort.
There was no need for the entire 2nd half of Endwalker when it could/should have just been about us vs Zodiark.
No need to do a “oh and the Ascians weren’t branded and forced to serve, teehee.”
And “oh we already have a means to go to the moon”
And “sorry I’m such a bad father but it was in your best interest lolz!”
If anything, the post Garlean arch should have been “how do we get to the moon” and “we need help from everyone to make this work”, not “yeah we gotcha fam, just need you to throw some garudas in the engine”.
Sometimes, for better or for worse, it’s just better to make a solid conclusion, even if it is extremely easy to predict..and not go full Game of Thrones. -
10-06-2022, 05:16 PMRufalus
I should add that the reason we're so disappointed is because the high points of this journey were so awesome. We know that this game's potential is so much greater than what we usually get handed. Personally I really liked the unique raids such as Baldesion Arsenal and Castrum Lacus Litore where you have to talk and organize a large group, decide who is going where. Weird to see things like that being a one-shot with no incentive to return after the expansion in which they debuted.
I feel like this is the ultimate waste of resources game. The only reason old normal dungeons are still run is because roulette randomly picks them, otherwise you'd almost never go back to specific ones on purpose. They are high quantity, low quality. I'd like meaningful content with high replayability, unique rewards that you need more than just once. Example: oh this new patch has a cool body armor but one of the items I need to create it is a unique crystal that only drops in baldesion arsenal, let's go back there, let's have new gearing options outside of the endless tomestone / savage combo.
Old crafting mats should probably be reused in new recipes more often to maintain some value, no need to add so many new mats each expansion. They could also come up with new ways to acquire recipes, not just pay for another master book every year, the old arbitrary scrip grinds for that and folklore nodes. The game design is on auto-pilot, they seldom challenge themselves to do things different and better than how they did it the past several years. Their dev resources are maxed out by almost exclusively repeating things they've done a hundred times already. It's supposed to be entertainment, why would you spend so much time rebuilding stuff that's functionally identical to your past works.
Variant dungeons might be a highlight of this year. It's new, but it's probably going to be it's own little side content bubble so that it doesn't influence the rest of the game. They have a habit of placing any ideas into this quarantine zone of side content, a fleeting relevance with one-shot rewards and no roulette, then leave it to die next expansion so we can get back to the business of monotone tome grinds and such bores. -
10-06-2022, 05:29 PMIscahYou mean Livingway's line about properly-done primals not tempering people, and you'd only get a tiny nudge from Zodiark? Apparently that's a mistranslation, or perhaps her tendency to understate issues, and other translations are more clear that something on the scale of Zodiark will still temper people.Quote:
Originally Posted by kaynide
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10-06-2022, 05:54 PMkaynideMostly this, yes. That the Ascians were explicitly not tempered (or if they were, it’s not strong enough to be meaningful). Were Emet compelled to fight us to the death, despite wanting to find another way, it would have made him more interesting.Quote:
Originally Posted by Iscah
I get them doing what they do, but it makes for a better tragedy if they have/had no choice. An “even if the ascians found another way to bring back their old friends, they could’t because they were forced to keep feeding Zodiark”
This could have been made all the more tragic if Elidabus was a first attempt at bringing back their friends, only for him to be a primal himself. (In a similar vein as Tiamat making bahamut).
Them realizing that even if they wish their friends back..they actually won’t really be those people…yet they are still forced/enslaved to serve Zodiark.
I don’t know if that would be a better story.. but I would have preferred a story meant to end the Ascian story to focus entirely on things established and not make up new lore entirely.
The constant changes in established lore disguised as fleshing it out was not something I enjoyed. Like the introduction of “janky primals” or Dynamis.
Though, full disclosure, I did/am enjoying the game..especially in chunks.. just the entire package feels off.