Is it just me, or are Expansions getting more brutal and depressing every time?

I think the way how Squeenix designs their Jobs and actually dumbs them down even further every time, is the most brutal thing of all.

You seem to have confused sadness with unhealthy. It IS very sad. That said, the message is a true one.
We have to learn to accept suffering and live with joy inside that can push back. Life is suffering along with all the good.
When you understand you will find relief and any pain and any loss, however great, can be weathered.

It is totally OK if that is too much for you, that just means you need to slow down tho. To me Endwalker was an explanation of all the suffering we had been through before this expansion felt uplifting and hopeful -- because it tells me this huge team of hundreds of people went through so much to give me a real message. Not just cheap entertainment, but an actual heart-to-heart depth between the team and the players.

Perhaps that's part of why it hits so hard; do you know about Soken's battle with cancer while working on the music? From his speech at the festival, you just know he really put his heart and soul into it -- and that means we are given a gift that goes past just a game. This storytelling is moving art showing what it is to live, to die, to grow.

Hang in there buddy. We may not have met but we are connected. Through the experience, the game, and in other ways as people on our planet. Take care.

imo you shouldn't aim to be sparing or heavy or moderate with death in the stories. It should fit what's happening.
The WoL has been through war after war, but usually we are spared the more grim scenes even with what we've been pushed through before. It doesn't even compare with events we know of from history, but this expansion just lightly brushes on such horrors. I think that is both appropriate and honestly a good experience.

Modern folks are truly far too soft if we can't even bare simulated tragedy. Think of it as a way to realize how precious real lives are before you lose those you love, so that you cherish them even more.

As long as the scions are in the Trust system they won't be killed.

Storywise there is buildup and then filler. The threat of Despair filled dynamis killing the inhabitants loses agency when met with the filler of the WoL time traveling into the past. IMO the entire planet should have been affected and reflected in every zone.

The Final Days bit in Thavnair was probably the best in the game before it dropped off hard.

It sounds like you need to seek professional help to deal with underlying problems that we cannot help you with.

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Originally Posted by BaconBits

Not dark enough, the Final Days phenomenon should have struck more than just Thavnair and Garlemald, and Terminus Beasts/Blasphemies should have been roaming older maps as special mobs. Also wish we got to actually see some of the Meteia go through their existential crises upon realizing that each and every star they visited was either dead, dying, or wishing for death, eventually leading to one of the Meteia having the bright idea of granting their wish.

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Unfortunately it was probably restricted to only those two zones for budget reasons.

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

The issue I have with the main cast always having such heavy plot armor is that the final area made this huge deal about their sacrifice so that we could progress—and then it was completely copped out by Y’shtola being like, “Yeah, you can just use Azem’s crystal to bring us back or whatever, but ideally don’t do that even though we all know you’ll be able to anyways”. It completely negated all the big speeches and “deaths”, and I think that could have been rectified by having at least one Scion be irrecoverable. Otherwise it had too much plot armor and lost a lot of significance to me.

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I know a lot of people bought into the full-on plot armor, but I remained "we can bring them back, but will we be able to bring all of them back" until the very end. I can see better ends for Y'shtola and Thancred on the First, but the rest of the party I'm not so sure about. Urianger, for example, had a solid close to his arc this expansion and he could've fallen down a hole and never come back.

That said, there were enough people expecting character deaths (myself included) that I'm not entirely sure just offing a scion would've surprised too many people. If anything, it was a bit more surprising for me for them all survive with all of the death flags throughout the narrative and marketing and then disband the Scions, each going off on their own adventures for now.

This expansion is literally about fighting depression. There's gonna be sad moments.

You also have a responsibility to yourself to create a mental wall between "this is fantasy sad" and "this is real life sad". Sad things in games can be sad and touching in the moment, and you can empathize with what the characters go through, but the instant you allow it to carry outside of the moment into real life is when it's a problem. This isn't real, these characters aren't real, and these scenarios aren't real. You owe it to yourself to separate these emotions.

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Originally Posted by EirolOcarrol

Endwalker certainly lives up to the depressing implications of it theme and does not hold back.

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I feel like we played a VERY different expansion. There wasn't a moment in it where I felt things were dark and depressing. In fact, most of the expansion is spent clowning around with friends, doing silly errands, meeting space bunnies and observing their antics, etc.

Even when the apocalypse starts, nobody really seems to bothered by it. The only 'depressing' thing is seeing our resident winged doombringer turns into an emo edgelord and wants to kill everyone.