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

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Originally Posted by Raoabolic

TO BE FAIR, a lot of the reworks are a result of the Trust NPCs not able to do crazy mechanics so the reworks were there to ensure they could be done with Trusts. RIP in peace Sohr Khai, your final boss will be sorely missed. ;_;7

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...Was it really that exciting? Aside from the collapsing platform gimmick, Hraesvelgr only had divebomb attacks, exploding add summons, and the dragon heads/orbs that slowly follow you around. The current version actually makes you do stuff as a team and alludes to the mechanics that you'll face when dealing with Nidhogg at the Final Steps of Faith as well as serving as a retroactive reference to Dragonsong Reprise's mechanics.

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Originally Posted by Raoabolic

TO BE FAIR, a lot of the reworks are a result of the Trust NPCs not able to do crazy mechanics so the reworks were there to ensure they could be done with Trusts. RIP in peace Sohr Khai, your final boss will be sorely missed. ;_;7

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That was the boss change I hated the most. The platforms were one of my favorite MSQ boss gimmicks and made that fight very memorable.

I liked the original version of that fight as well. Though I did think they kinda soft balled it by making his tank buster not cleave.

Actually had a group or two that did so poorly in it, when it was closer to being new, that we ran out of platforms. Good times.

The one change was was the one I hated the most would of be the one to Niddhog in the Aery. You had to heal Estinien during that whole time and in a way, it would of been the big clue to to heal Haurefacunt in DSR but now, they got rid of that and it made it way too easy now.

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Originally Posted by Vyrerus

I liked the original version of that fight as well. Though I did think they kinda soft balled it by making his tank buster not cleave.

Actually had a group or two that did so poorly in it, when it was closer to being new, that we ran out of platforms. Good times.

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This happened to me two times

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Originally Posted by Millybonk

• The mighty Zodiark, which has been build up as this mighty(evil) entity over several expansions, turns out to be nothing but filler trash for the first Endwalker trial
• The true cause of the Final Days is a pet-project from an ancient which goes mad after observing countless dead world and possibly causing the death of several world by projecting negative emotions unto them, and is thus dead-set on bringing despair to every world, upon which said ancient goes mad and is now letting her run her course to test humanity if they can withstand/fight despair
• Venat, who hasn't had her memory wiped + still remembers you from being in Elpis, quite apparently doesn't lift a finger to learn about Dynamis herself or to mobilize the other ancients to end Meteion then and there, and instead chooses to turn herself into Hydaelyn, sunder the world and the inhabitants, thereby forcing them to live with and face despair and gambling that their resilience against despair might be enough to face Meteion one day

Really?
This is the best SQ could do in terms of story after ShB?

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You mispelled shadowbringers. God that was an awfully boring and dragged out story with so much filler. No matter how many times I try to like it, I can't help but notice how much they intentionally dragged stuff out , like everything from the landscape to the quest design is just a major time sink with nothing really moving forward. Endwalker was a RELIEF in comparison to shb.

Endwalker is such a (bad) rehash of Shadowbringers it literally suffers from the same problems and adds its own new share of issues on top of it.
Apart from a single quest every new addition just makes it worse, like the NPC escorting and the super janky "stealth" NPC trailing and the tedious frog sequence.
It also manages to feature even less combat in its quests.

I feel like Shadowbringers and Endwalker have opposite problems in pacing and map design.

Shadowbringers has more of a slow burn approach, diving into the worldbuilding for the First, and taking its time to bring you into it. The maps are big and expansive to sell you on the idea that this is, indeed, a whole new world (well, the part of one that's still livable, anyway). It also takes its time to let you get to know the important characters, like Lyna, Feo Ul, Rhunar, even Vauthry. (Hell, Magnus gets more development than a lot of characters in EW, and he's only relevant for about a quarter of the back half of one zone!) The downside is that it can feel like it takes a while to actually get anywhere, but it feels like more of a journey when you do.

Endwalker, on the other hand, bumrushes the player through a lot of the plot, because they're trying to tell two expansions and a patch series in one expansion's time. Story elements are brought up and then go nowhere until they're suddenly important (remember akasha getting a brief mention in Radz-at-Han before being renamed dynamis and taking over the story?), or get built up and then dropped (like Corvus, which we never end up visiting). And the maps....well, Garlemald, a continent-spanning empire, gets one zone, and it's mostly empty snow fields. And the moon has a big zone, which....has a handful of landmarks and nothing much else to do. So it feels like being dragged from setpiece to setpiece. It also makes the places where the plot actually does slow down a little (like the introduction of the Loporitts) feel even more jarring.

Part 1:

925 pages, and this thing is still open. And I am here for it. I read the first 150 pages before responding.

I am a person who is pretty forgiving about a lot of plot elements. Time travel. Dropped Ascians and Ascian plans. Some inconsistency. People came in here and taught me how much of a mess those things were, and how much of a mess Hydaelyn was. I appreciate that. I want to give my own perspective though.

I finished Endwalker story only a month ago and I'm going to be very negative today.

After loving Shadowbringers and only really having a problem with the final cutscenes and Ran'jit, Endwalker is an icon for a lot of what I hate about most Japanese pop/anime writing. It's nonsensical, it's style-over-substance, it's got bad morals, and it sticks to the same weird, nonsensical tropes that I am honestly super tired of.

When I started Endwalker, I thought the only problem I was having was how poorly-paced, empty, and at the time seemingly devoid of purpose both Sharlayan and Thavnair were. Then the glurge cutscenes started to become a pattern. You know, the ones where they talk non-stop about love and hope and friendship, sometimes at completely inappropriate times. In Thavnair, Vrtra literally stops you after everyone else left the palace to talk about how "you need to look out for your friends because they're going to suffer because of you", and it was so poorly-written in the moment and the glurge patterns were already so established, that I *already* knew it would have nothing to do with anything— and I was right. That stupid speech had nothing to do with what would happen in the future, nor would Vrtra even have any way of knowing what would happen in the future anyway. It was forced and senseless and it took me out of the moment, like most of Endwalker.

Garlemald felt super great, until 1.) the Zenos body-switch interrupted a time when the game SUCCEEDED at helping me believe in the power of hope, with Jullus. Then 2.) the body-switch ended up affecting nothing and was never talked about again (WTF). Then 3.) in retrospect, Garlemald is just a bunch of boring ruins and we didn't spend a lot of time there, no matter how good that time was.

Fandaniel was obnoxious and so is every character who acts like him. I can't stand to look at them. Emet-Selch had charm, so learn from him.

Loporrits were an insufferable, unfunny waste of time, both on their own and plot-wise. I really sometimes want to ask Japanese people if they actually find their "comedy" tropes funny, or if they're just writing characters that way because "that's just how we do all our comedy, please play along".

The Final Days section with Thavnair was so infuriating I was screaming. The newborn section was just emotional manipulation with no sense, like a lot of EW. Why would a newborn "succumb to despair"? They're a newborn. All they know is "this is a stranger running with me", not "my parents just died". They aren't "in despair", they are crying because they're a newborn. Are you going to tell me that every child who cries in Thavnair is going to turn into a monster? That brings up such an important point, too: this story doesn't even seem to know what despair actually is. Most of the time the transformations are due to *fear*, not despair. It's just plot convenience, like the whole expac.

Part 2:

Part 2:

I could not hate Meteion more. I do not care about an anime loli pet that you brought up last-second to be the "big bad", who tries to tell you that all civilizations are going to be nightmare-horrors eventually, especially when they seek "perfection", and who cries black anime blood in a jumpscare, and who wants to destroy everything ever because *some* civilizations die.

Speaking of Meteion: Japanese writers and Square Enix, please stop writing villains who want to destroy everything due to straw-nihilism. As Lightning said when defeating the final boss of the much-better-story FFXIII, "we don't think like that". So take that message to heart. We people who play your games are *smarter* than straw-nihilism. And it's old and boring. If you like nihilism that much, please stop melodramaticizing it, and instead learn about *real-world* nihilism. Fun fact: you can be a nihilist and still be excited to enjoy life to the fullest and make it better for everyone. I'm not even a nihilist and I know that.

As for tribals. The Hippo Riders were fine, but the Omicrons and the Loporrits were an unbelievably-senseless waste of potential. How did we go from Loporrits not knowing what music was to *instant* rave equipment and a hundred years of music theory?! And what for? They should be having an existential crisis about what to do with all their millennia of work on the moon, and how to make it useful. I would have liked that a lot, and it would have made sense! Instead, dance party "because cute"! And then Omicron tribals *could* have been good, except for how childishly forgiving and power-of-friendshipy the characters acted with the enemies who murdered or even genocided them. And the bad messages, and the stupid race at the end.

I would also like to add that the soundtrack for EW was barebones.

Coming off of my love for Shadowbringers, I was unbelievably angry at Endwalker, and having none of it the whole time— save a little bit of the first parts of Sharlayan and Thavnair, most of Garlemald, the time on the moon with the Watcher, and most of Venat (until Meteion). All of the rest of it was god-awful.

I don't know if I can take the MSQ writing in FFXIV seriously anymore; and for a game that is mostly about writing, that is the biggest crime of all. Now that I've seen your EW tribals, and I've seen Pictomancer and Viper, I'm losing a lot of interest in this game. Please treat your audience with intelligence and dignity— I've seen you do better. ARR was good, HW was great, ShB was amazing, and I really liked Gyr Abania when Zenos wasn't involved.

For future reference, if you care SolemnDream, you can edit a post after posting to increase its size to whatever you want, if breaking your posts up bothers you.

Glad to see another honest reaction to Endwalker's poor narrative and side content.

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Originally Posted by SolemnDream

Part 2:

I could not hate Meteion more. I do not care about an anime loli pet that you brought up last-second to be the "big bad", who tries to tell you that all civilizations are going to be nightmare-horrors eventually, especially when they seek "perfection", and who cries black anime blood in a jumpscare, and who wants to destroy everything ever because *some* civilizations die.

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Couldn't agree more. I remember back in 2021 when this was first revealed to me during my MSQ playthrough, I just sat there in disbelief. I kept thinking to myself: "is this really it? Is this the culmination of ARR and its four expansions? SE couldn't think of anything better than this?..."

Not to mention dynamis, which is equally silly.

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Originally Posted by Vyrerus

For future reference, if you care SolemnDream, you can edit a post after posting to increase its size to whatever you want, if breaking your posts up bothers you.

Glad to see another honest reaction to Endwalker's poor narrative and side content.

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Gotta love when people define "honest" as "agrees with me." Personally, I thoroughly enjoyed what I found to be a great narrative and solid side content. The loporrits brought humor, the FFIV callbacks made me smile, the walk and pre-Meteion cutscene made me tear up. I thought it an excellent culmination of FFXIV up to the present point.

So, what do you say? Are you glad to see my honest reaction about EW's quality content?

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Originally Posted by Striker44

Gotta love when people define "honest" as "agrees with me." Personally, I thoroughly enjoyed what I found to be a great narrative and solid side content. The loporrits brought humor, the FFIV callbacks made me smile, the walk and pre-Meteion cutscene made me tear up. I thought it an excellent culmination of FFXIV up to the present point.

So, what do you say? Are you glad to see my honest reaction about EW's quality content?

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Yes, because the more posts this thread gets, the closer it gets to being 1000 pages.

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Originally Posted by Striker44

Gotta love when people define "honest" as "agrees with me." Personally, I thoroughly enjoyed what I found to be a great narrative and solid side content. The loporrits brought humor, the FFIV callbacks made me smile, the walk and pre-Meteion cutscene made me tear up. I thought it an excellent culmination of FFXIV up to the present point.

So, what do you say? Are you glad to see my honest reaction about EW's quality content?

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Eh...

Yeah, humor is what I want when dealing with an end of the world scenario and thematic nihilism. Those things aren't very merchandise friendly though.

Yeah, FFIV callbacks is what I want when I haven't played the game in over fifteen years and don't tie my own liking of that game to a 1:1 liking of a poor replica of it. "IT HAS THING THAT I LIKED THAT I REMEMBER AND WHEN I SAW IT I CLAPPED!!!!"

Yeah, I found the walk pretty cool before everyone was revived and made the walk meaningless. Your heartstrings being pulled doesn't have any value to me, and me being irritated for the entire last half of the MSQ has no value to you.

Meteion was only good when she was destroying, planning to destroy, or recounting the destruction of civilizations.

I'm about as "glad" to see this as when I see a raccoon digging through "quality" trash and eating garbage.

Good for them, they're getting their "excellent" meal for the night, but it couldn't be me. Glad it isn't.

EDIT: Forgot who wrote this, now I'm gonna have to listen to "millions of people loved this and are enjoying everything every single day how can you say that about them who do you think are you are etc etc"

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Originally Posted by Swordsman

Not to mention dynamis, which is equally silly.

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Yeah, there were so many things to talk about that I temporarily forgot about Dynamis and the Walk of Emotional Manipulation. As bad as Dynamis was, at least it was a concept that could work in a better story. I *hate* the kind of logicless, thoughtless emotional manipulation that was going on in those last scenes including the walk.

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Originally Posted by Millybonk

• The mighty Zodiark, which has been build up as this mighty(evil) entity over several expansions, turns out to be nothing but filler trash for the first Endwalker trial
• The true cause of the Final Days is a pet-project from an ancient which goes mad after observing countless dead world and possibly causing the death of several world by projecting negative emotions unto them, and is thus dead-set on bringing despair to every world, upon which said ancient goes mad and is now letting her run her course to test humanity if they can withstand/fight despair
• Venat, who hasn't had her memory wiped + still remembers you from being in Elpis, quite apparently doesn't lift a finger to learn about Dynamis herself or to mobilize the other ancients to end Meteion then and there, and instead chooses to turn herself into Hydaelyn, sunder the world and the inhabitants, thereby forcing them to live with and face despair and gambling that their resilience against despair might be enough to face Meteion one day

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I think I can cover this one.

Zodiark was understood to be the evil big bad as much as Ascians were understood to be servants of the big bad.
This all changed in Shadowbringers your example of peak storytelling.
You see in Shadowbringers we learned that both Zodiark and Hydaelyn were primals born from the sacrifices of the ancients.
Zodiark was specifically created to forestall final days with his amazing power. Zodiark is successful but is also a gigantic ravenous monster tempered many remaining ancients.
The Plan the Ancients had next was to have yet another mass sacrifice to fully cleanse the star and to bring every ancients back.
Hydaelyn is created instead sealing away Zodiark and sundering the Star creating the shards as we know them today.

So Zodiark and Hydaelyn are not the penultimate forces of Good and Evil. Whatever created the Final Days the Ancients did not know except for a sound "A cacophonous keening from beneath the Earth" as said by one of the spectred ancients in Amarot - A sound which distorts all living beings within earshot turning them into blasphemes. This sound is the Endsingers song.

Yes, the Final Days is a byproduct of the hubris of Ancient Society and one rogue Ancient going a bit nuts.
Hydaelyns creation was in part to make sure the mistakes of the past are not repeated, though people's shattered existence will be made to suffer in life, it will enrich their purpose such as creating an answer which may overcome despair.
Given so many lives are sacrificed in the process to make both Zodiark and Hydaelyn, the fact that many ancients were tempered into Zodiarks thrall in general, whatever power Hydaelyn has which seals Zodiark away... You could not reasonably say there was an opportunity to tell people there's a blue bird lady at the edge of the universe somewhere lets go get her that'll fix everything!

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Originally Posted by Nadda

I think I can cover this one.

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Not really a good cover, especially with Encyclopedia Eorzea 3 out.

Zodiark was made to stop the Final Days as The Ancients understood them. He required massive amounts of aether to do this, and he was successful, but the planet was still burnt up and ending as shown from the orbital view of Etheirys in the Amaurot dungeon. So they again made another sacrifice, the number of sacrifices now totaling 75% of the survivors of The Final Days. They then planned a third sacrifice that would have to wait for new life to crop up on Etheirys, their intent being to sacrifice new life to bring back their sacrificed friends and family.

Venat was resolved to see the time loop through, or a slave to fate, pick your poison. There are no other valid reads. To do this, she had to incite a civil war by taking followers onto her side. Followers who were exempted from or refused to sacrifice themselves in the first place, leading to some very sticky morality on display, since the game intends for us to view Venat as a hero (not evil at a minimum, as stated/requested by Yoshi-P).

To justify their civil war, she lays a lot of blame on Zodiark saying that the Ancient Ascians have already gone too far, given him too much, and that another sacrifice to bring back the ones first sacrificed would be wrong and against Amaurotine Ascian code of conduct. Nevermind that she eschews that code of conduct herself when she refused to return to the star after fulfilling her duty as Azem in some hundreds or thousands of unspecified years before even the events of Elpis.

To become Hydaelyn she lied to her followers and then had them all sacrifice their lives to her, and in order to make herself strong enough to perform the Sundering and contend with Zodiark, their souls and lives and all future possible lives were burnt up completely in the ritual. A ritual that they had to steal from the Convocation, because it is the same ritual as the one used to create Zodiark.

The game's narrative also has a haphazard way of displaying that Zodiark tempered the Convocation. Emet says he did, but shows no signs of tempering. None of the other Convocation members show any signs either, and even the one who became Zodiark's heart is still able to be more reasonable than any other tempered person we've been shown in the setting. We get a tongue in cheek joke from the Hummingways about Zodiark being so powerful that his powerful seduced their minds, "a little tug." This makes it different from other tempering, which is chocked up to being a purposeful alteration and ability granted to primals by Ascians altering the creation magicks for them.

This is all mildly at odds with the only actual in game portrayal of the Amaurotine civil war that we're shown in game, the Qitana Ravel cave paintings, which clearly depict a being of white and a being of black clashing with followers in the shape of men beneath them of matching colors on opposing sides.

So Zodiark is a misinformed, literal savior god who may have been able to solve the problem with the right information. Hydaelyn is a god made to split him, and then kill all of mankind through a reductive, unstable mutation. This ensures that the Warrior of Light and our present would come into being, but it is very evil on an absolute moral level.

To accept it as the only way forward clashes with Final Fantasy's most basic premise in the series' very first entry. It also means you must accept that in spite of having full control over The Echo, and having an unremoveable tracker branded onto Meteion, there was no way to tell the Convocation and make them believe Venat. Which simply isn't true, give that The Echo lets you open the whole of your life's memories to other people (see Fordola experiencing the WoL's entire life in Stormblood for an example), and if Venat were to do that for Hythlodaeus and Emet-selch, they would regain the information lost in their memories from Ktsis Hyperboreia.

Never mind the kick in the teeth at the very end of everything as Meteion is dying, "What I was looking for was on Etheirys all along..." Literal in game confirmation that there was nothing actually wrong with the Ancients, and that it was merely Venat's fear and co-opted power that was their undoing.

She could have been a real hero. She could have been their savior, even. Instead, she's responsible for more death in the setting than literally anyone else, responsible for more than even Meteion.

No, my coverage was sufficient. You don't even need the Third Encylopedia for that information you think I missed.
It's within the game. And at any rate, the character limit prohibits me from making longer posts.
Further, I disagree fundamentally with your understanding of the story.
It only reads this way if you misrepresent Venat in completely bad faith and waving away the hubristic nature of the Ancients as being morally unassailable.
The story gives enough reasonable justifications for the course it took.

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Originally Posted by Nadda

And at any rate, the character limit prohibits me from making longer posts.

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Editing your post bypasses the character limit.

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Originally Posted by Nadda

No, my coverage was sufficient. You don't even need the Third Encylopedia for that information you think I missed.
It's within the game. And at any rate, the character limit prohibits me from making longer posts.
Further, I disagree fundamentally with your understanding of the story.
It only reads this way if you misrepresent Venat in completely bad faith and waving away the hubristic nature of the Ancients as being morally unassailable.
The story gives enough reasonable justifications for the course it took.

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This is one of the most "no u" posts I've seen in the thread so far.

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Originally Posted by ReynTime

This is one of the most "no u" posts I've seen in the thread so far.

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"Story's fine and everything you said is wrong because I say so."

As opposed to the constant "Story is bad because I say so"?

I tend to see more actual reasoning and evidence at play when it comes to the critics.

Most counter "arguments" tend to boil down to "no u" and resort to shallow dismissive remarks like people lacking media literacy, not reading/bad faith reading, etc while failing to offer anything of substance.

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Originally Posted by Vyrerus

She could have been a real hero. She could have been their savior, even. Instead, she's responsible for more death in the setting than literally anyone else, responsible for more than even Meteion.

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It would have been amazing if you could have gone into the past, met Venat, Emet and company, informed them of what happened and using that new information worked with them to destroy Meteon in the past causing a timeline split and then using that knowledge to work with our timelime Hydaelyn to save our timeline USING Zodiark and then freeing the ascian souls within which would begin to heal the land instead of killing the Twelve to do so. Then in the 24 man storyline the Twelve could have been revealed to be Venat's version of the convocation who now needed help overcoming some corruption created by the new influx of aether and souls from Zodi's destruction but after purified would continue to keep the source and reflection in balance.

That would have preserved Hydaelyn as a force of good, made Venat and her followers endearing and kept the mythos of the Twelve intact. It would have also opened up the unsundered world for more stories or side content later on.

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Originally Posted by Nadda

No, my coverage was sufficient. You don't even need the Third Encylopedia for that information you think I missed.

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No, your coverage was biased and left out what Venat actually did. It's essentially a lie by omission.

Also, unfortunately, we're dealing with a game where a hefty portion of context and stories and character development happen in supplemental materials and online short stories provided by the game's developers. It's something I actually do not enjoy about XIV, since it requires extra purchases and reading beyond what's shown in the game.

You're welcome to disagree with me or with anyone, but if you disagree with what's explicit within the game and all of its associated stories, then you're making a fan theory, not covering the story.

Also, it reads that way 100% of the time even without the extra context, because it is a part of Venat's character that she, in fact, reads her own civilization in bad faith believing them to be beneath her to the point that she makes it her new life fulfillment to help them until they don't need her anymore. She tells the WoL as much on the rampart scene when she asks the WoL about the adventures that they personally enjoyed the most. Of course, I wouldn't blame you for missing it, since it's a one on one scene that spends the majority of screen time focused on Venat's eyes and facial expressions while she garnishes what she's saying in flowery language and proclamations of loving mankind.


Your own assertions of the Ancient Ascians being hubristic, and that the story had reasonable enough justifications for their extermination is laughable at best. Rather, it is Ancients like Venat and Hermes who were hubristic, believing themselves to stand above and apart from everyone else in their society, and then acting outside of that society's laws and customs that caused their downfall.

Venat by withholding information, stealing godmaking rituals, and then sacrificing her own followers to herself (and then, of course, executing her own people). Hermes by making Meteion to explore outer space and find not just one other civilization to ask how they live, but apparently all other civilizations as well.

Venat was pride. Hermes was ambition. Athena was both. And all three of these people hid their beliefs, motives, and desires from all the rest of the world. None of them were justified or could ever be justified.

I don't really know how to express my feeling towards the story of EW but I can say that I feel like it felt mostly like misery prawn. There was a lot of talk about misery and the theme was clearly nihilism vs hope, but the way it came across wasn't really that good. The end of Ultima Thule is a huge example of this. I'm not saying it wasn't effective, but that it was pure misery and loss for the sake of misery and loss. Dead ends is a beautiful dungeon but hammers down too hard how everyone is miserable everywhere in this wide universe and beyond. We know why abimonations are born but what does it mean to fall in despair in FFXIV is unclear.

I'm still wondering what are the clues for Metion that Yoshi-P hinted before EW. I thought the plot would have taken the more logical turn of Hydelyn is the bad guy after all the hinting. Hermes and Metion are not bad characters but feel like they don't belong in this story. As many have already said, they feel tacked on and hastly made. Both could have worked better with more careful writing. Even Athena would've made more sense and had had more clues.

I personally would have preferred if Sharlayan had been a nation that had found out about the ancients and had become arrogant. (So effectively to have no connection to Hydelyn and the excuse of 'we are building an ark no one knows about because...?') The pure need to protect and shield themselves from every and all outsiders as a nation is already something that is implied. Elpis should have been brought up earlier. Garlemald was OK but there's something is still bothering me... Is that whole area just an area for the body swap and a way to get to the moon? Lopoporrits were fine I guess but could have had a bigger role on the moon and as a whole.

One thing that annoys me is that this was marketed as a closing chapter but there wasn't really that much closing. Just finishing things and quickly moving on. What I mean by this is that e.g. the job quests got ther epilogues in Shadowbringers already. There weren't any kind of stories after the MSQ that felt like they were a closing chapter after a story. Just a quick new start. The Zero story line could have been that if it was better written and not just FF IV redux. I don't know if this bothers anyone else.

There were more than one good portion however. Not fan of the body swap but it's an importan scenario. Aitioscope is great. The Urianger scene in Sharlayan is great. The part with Quintus is great. Mother crystal (the battle) is great. The idea of Dead ends is great. I love the conversation scene with Venat. So it's not all bad.

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Originally Posted by kyyninen_kirahvi

I'm still wondering what are the clues for Metion that Yoshi-P hinted before EW.

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Realistically, there are none, and it's because of this that some players complain about Meteion and dynamis being shoehorned into the story at the last expansion of the story arc. They absolutely feel rushed and out of place.

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Originally Posted by kyyninen_kirahvi

I thought the plot would have taken the more logical turn of Hydelyn is the bad guy after all the hinting.

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That would've been an interesting twist if Hydaelyn actually turned out to be the villain, lol. I was actually expecting it to be a hostile alien civilization from a distant planet when Meteion became possessed at Elpis. As cliche as that sounds, to me, that or Hydaelyn being a traitor would've been a heck of a lot more interesting than bird girl being able to use sadness and despair to kill people.

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Originally Posted by kyyninen_kirahvi

Both could have worked better with more careful writing. Even Athena would've made more sense and had more clues.

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That's true too. If Hermes, Meteion, and dynamis were introduced more gradually to the story rather than being thrown in at the last possible second, it could've worked a lot better, but I'm aware the story writers have a habit of winging it and will sometimes continue writing without having a proper long-term plan or outline in place.

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Originally Posted by Vyrerus

Venat was pride. Hermes was ambition. Athena was both. And all three of these people hid their beliefs, motives, and desires from all the rest of the world. None of them were justified or could ever be justified.

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Venat was totally justified. I like her a lot. I cried when she cried :(

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Originally Posted by Boblawblah

Venat was totally justified. I like her a lot. I cried when she cried :(

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It's ok. Simping is human nature.

In terms of Endwalker's plot, the point to me where it went from alright to my least favorite story this game has ever told was the 2nd half. Specifically everything about the Final Days.
The big hyped up world ending event that absolutely destroyed Amarout and the rest of the ancients. I was looking forward to see how that would change the world, how each city would deal with it, theres a lot of potential for something like this.

What did we get? Red Sin Eaters that only attacked Elephants in India for like 2 days. Sure we had the role quests, but those were basically episodic mini-stories where we saw everyone we ever met was just fine actually, and only newly made npcs could be turned into Red Sin Eaters, everyone else was just fine. The only character across the entire journey we had across all expansions, the only one who struggles with potentially becoming a Red Sin Eater is Fordola, and its not like that even happens, and its not even part of the main story even, just some side quest for materia.

No one was affected by this in side stories in any lasting way, Only NEW characters were affected in the MSQ. It was insanely toothless and felt fake to me.

The Final Days really should have been called "The temporary inconvenience of elephant people"

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Originally Posted by Oizen

The Final Days

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The reason for this is that we played a protagonist centered morality game where no adversity can ever actually overcome our designated protagonist's ability to deal with it. It wasn't an issue in the past, because they were willing to have the protagonists lose or have major setbacks, like the ransacking of The Waking Sands and the execution of almost all minor Scions. Or the blood banquet at the end of 2.55 followed by most of the side cast of Heavensward dying or being held in jeopardy at a minimum.

These were events contained to single cities, and as such, were easier to show in an accurate manner.

XIV got too ambitious though, come Stormblood, and that's the first time that a major event in the story needed to be large scale, and it was proof that they don't do large scale events well. Stormblood rarely felt like a war, more like some plucky rebels winning a few major, albeit small, skirmishes for most of its story. With its post story turning towards mostly random adventure set mostly in and near Yanxia.

Shadowbringers was basically the writers realizing that they could never show the scale they'd need to with a proper war with Garlemald, so they ran away from it. That's why Shadowbringers was full of Ascian backstory and big big reveals surrounding the mysteries left in the setting. It was do that, or try to show a war in a very poor way again.

This gambit was really, in my opinion, done to give them time to actually craft a war setting for the Garlean expansion that we were supposed to have, but the unexpected popularity surrounding Emet-selch and the Ascians' backstory and ancient civilization caused them to change course again. They instead turned towards expounding and centering the story on that, leaving the assets they'd worked on for the Garlean expansion in Bozja, Zadnor, and Delubnum Reginae in the post SHB content. This is why it was SHB post game content. It was leavings leftover from the cancelled Garlean war expansion.

I think this was all a turn taken prior to the pandemic happening, and when it happened it was probably seen as a boon in some small way for offloading the narrative they didn't wanna try and tell that they had originally planned to tell.

And since the story entered the realm of the nonsensical with regards to relying on time travel again (done mainly for fan service), they really hoped people wouldn't doff their horse blinders and just focus on what was shown over what was not.

Unfortunately the cracks do show up quite well to a lot of people, because gameplay design cracks are starting to rear their ugly head as well. I believe the hope now is that Dawntrail papers over those cracks with a lot of flash over substance, because the design team seems to have fallen into the trap that as long as things are showy and cool, they will be well received.

And I guess they're not entirely wrong.

I will agree for all the focus the concept of The Final Days had in marketing and EW lead up it pales in comparison to most threats that came before it. I always find it a bit sad The Calamity in the long term had way more effect on the world and story then something called The Final Days.

It also would have felt a bit more impactful if it had lasted longer and had effected more zones throughout the MSQ. I am amazed Sharlayan never had to deal with it for example. At the end of the day it added to EW feeling like a rushed job expansion because the writers wanted a new story and were sick of the old one.

A Garlemald expansion would've just been Stormblood 2.

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Originally Posted by Dorito_Burrito

A Garlemald expansion would've just been Stormblood 2.

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Probably someone's quip in the board room when they shelved the Garlean war expansion.

Stormblood really didn't give us a proper taste of a full on war with the Garleans until Ghimlyt Dark.

Paratroopers dropping down from the dreadnaught overhead. Magitek everywhere. Wrecked Magitek everywhere. Ceruleum oozing into the depleted soil that's been shelled to hell and back. Loads of side characters taking to the battlefield.

We basically got the 2.0 version of that in Bozja/Zadnor, and those had some of the finest content in the game. Castrum Lacus Litore and Dalriada. Particularly the Dalriada being lowkey a Final Fantasy II Dreadnaught mission reference.

Garlemald didn’t get enough time but I don’t think outright war with them was ever on the table of a good idea, it is far more thematic to the story that they collapsed under their own weight when it was revealed they are being run by ascians in an attempt to facilitate a rejoining

SB wasn’t “big enough” on the conflict side but skirmishes over the territories (doma, gyr abania, Bozja) was all conflict with garlemald should have been, not open war

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Originally Posted by SolemnDream

The Final Days section with Thavnair was so infuriating I was screaming. The newborn section was just emotional manipulation with no sense, like a lot of EW. Why would a newborn "succumb to despair"? They're a newborn. All they know is "this is a stranger running with me", not "my parents just died". They aren't "in despair", they are crying because they're a newborn. Are you going to tell me that every child who cries in Thavnair is going to turn into a monster? That brings up such an important point, too: this story doesn't even seem to know what despair actually is. Most of the time the transformations are due to *fear*, not despair. It's just plot convenience, like the whole expac.

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Actually I think the part with the baby makes perfect sense, because it is such an extreme circumstance and to me it just seemed like a natural conclusion that a baby doesn't have complex thinking yet and is just going to feel everything at its keenest. It doesn't comprehend "my parents have died" but it can comprehend "I want Mummy and this is not Mummy", "a strange person is holding me uncomfortably and shouting", "I am cold and wet", "I am being jolted around", probably there are all sorts of eerie noises and sensations going on around it, and it all becomes too much for a tiny mind that has no comprehension yet of staying calm or controlling emotions.

To be fair, yes, it seems that the transformation is more about reaching an immediate threshold of negative emotion that doesn't have to be long-term despair at all, but an underlying mood would perhaps bring people to that threshold sooner.

And yes, it is likely that some other children were thrown into a similar situation and had no last-minute reprieve, while others were kept safe and did not reach that threshold of utter misery.

The most charitable I could be about the baby turning is that a baby's corporeal aether would naturally be thinner than an adults, so it could be turned without needing to give into despair at all.

Part of the Sundered's problem with The Final Days is that they are too thin aetherially and interact with Dynamis more readily, meaning they are at Dynamis's command if they slip into negative emotions too poignantly or for too long.

Remember, Alphinaud even counsels Jullus against getting too angry at Zenos.

I still don't think it delivers the baby scenes well, though, and they are definitely cheap, emotional manipulation, since I don't think we even learned the mom's name before her neck was broken. I would think given the trauma it experienced, even with Alphinaud wanding a healing hand over it, the baby would be unconscious after nearly drowning.

I still did really enjoy Matsya in that scene. All of Thavnair was one of the stronger points in Endwalker, even if it still has its issues.

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Originally Posted by Vyrerus

This gambit was really, in my opinion, done to give them time to actually craft a war setting for the Garlean expansion that we were supposed to have, but the unexpected popularity surrounding Emet-selch and the Ascians' backstory and ancient civilization caused them to change course again.
[…]
[Bozja] was leavings leftover from the cancelled Garlean war expansion.

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It feels like your point is based too heavily on a lot of wild personal speculation than anything substantial.

We already know that they didn’t begin to formally discuss the next expansion until after 5.0 had already released for players so it’s really doubtful to me that they already had plans for Shadowbringers as a buffer for 6.0 with a story and even assets made before 5.0 even came out and then abandoned or repurposed all that work just because players liked Emet-Selch. I don’t really think that we were “supposed to have” anything, it was never set in stone to begin with and they just write as they go.

A potential Garlemald expansion was never “cancelled”, that would mean that it would have actually had to have existed as something beyond just a vague idea. They said in an interview that they could have ended the story in one or two expansions, decided on one, and IF they had decided on two instead they just said that the first one would have been the Garlemald bits of what we already had in Endwalker without saying anything had actually been fully planned out more than that. I feel like a lot of people took that snippet from the interview and ran with it.

This narrative that they would have made assets for a potential future expansion in Garlemald way in advance that early and ended up having to reuse them in Bozja after that was scrapped doesn’t make much sense either. The first Bozja content came out in April of 2020 after the next expansion had already been decided in autumn/winter of 2019 so it’s likely would have needed to have been planned long before. You would think that the main content for Field Exploration/relics, hiring of a third party (Matsuno), and all the writing, gameplay, and assets would much more likely to have been planned well in advance of Shadowbringers’ release let alone just after “cancelling” Garlemald, and wouldn’t have anything to do with fan reactions to Emet-Selch.

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Originally Posted by Xeronia

I will agree for all the focus the concept of The Final Days had in marketing and EW lead up it pales in comparison to most threats that came before it. I always find it a bit sad The Calamity in the long term had way more effect on the world and story then something called The Final Days.

It also would have felt a bit more impactful if it had lasted longer and had effected more zones throughout the MSQ. I am amazed Sharlayan never had to deal with it for example. At the end of the day it added to EW feeling like a rushed job expansion because the writers wanted a new story and were sick of the old one.

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Forced to agree.

I'm actually not in the 'Endwalker sucks' camp here - I enjoyed it and I'm not willing to pretend otherwise. And I wasn't exposed to the pre-launch marketing/hype since I didn't start playing the game until shortly after EW launched and avoided anything related to it for the sake of not spoiling the MSQ for myself. Playing the MSQ at my own pace, I didn't actually reach Endwalker until the following March.

And I watched the Footfalls Cinematic right before I started Endwalker. To this day I still think that cinematic was incredible - I recall watching it that first time. The music and the lyrics, the promise of a 'end of the world' scenario story. The emphasis on the moon and the question of it's role in the story, not to mention the question of why the Warrior of Light was on the moon - alone no less! I was completely blown away by it and couldn't wait to see how it would all translate into the story.

But even as someone who very much enjoyed Endwalker.... I don't think the story quite lived up to what the cinematic portrayed.

As you say, 'The Final Days' should've been a world-changing, almost apocalyptic, event - but it doesn't feel as if it had as big an impact, or long-term consequence, on the world as Dalamud/Bahamut did.