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

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Originally Posted by PawPaw

Umm. Are you serious? Is she willing to see anyone "good" die in this game? As if the plot armor for the "heroes" wasn't already at laughable levels.

More reason for me to really hope that we get some writer changes going forward; I don't need to play in a cotton-candy land where the only bad things that happen are to those they dictate to be the "villains" or to throwaway NPCs.

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It's a stance that even Yoshi-P appears to be echoing of late which is annoying. They're seeking to appease a vocal portion of social media followers who would have everything reduced to 'good guys' and 'bad guys' which in turn leads to things becoming very stale and predictable.

Even Matsuno was held back by Yoshi-p and told that he couldn't kill off anyone of note during the Bozja storyline. I don't like death for the sake of death but I've never asked for that - I just think that if someone intends to tell a story about war and loss then there should be some of the latter for the protagonists instead of conveniently just emotionally manipulating people into finding the antagonists sympathetic as they - and only they - stand to lose absolutely everything.

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Originally Posted by aveyond-dreams

I too would like my video games to have stories with meaningful development and consequences. Otherwise, what separates Endwalker from just twitter fanfiction?

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Whatdya mean? We lost Fandaniel, Zenos, Venat/Hydaelyn, Zodiark, Ahewann, Quintus, the two sisters that got mauled, that one kid that got turned into a meatball and squished. /s

What's annoying is that I can totally see the writers bringing back Emet and Hythlodaeus somehow but it'd feel so contrived and forced that it'd ruin them for many of their fans. Especially if they had a complete shift in behaviour, attitude and perspective to the point of effectively being entirely different characters. Much like with Gaius.

I consider 'character development' to be something more than just conveniently jumping ship and agreeing with the player character on every front.

It's made worse by seeing how differently the single player games handle rival and antagonist figures. Seifer. Kuja. Rufus. The Turks. Golbez. To name but a few.

We don't see them imprisoned or killed. They just do their own thing and survive the events of their respective games. Meanwhile FFXIV seemingly takes pleasure in setting up the antagonists to have sympathetic reasons for doing what they're doing only to punish them to bizarre degrees for...daring to not just roll over and die in the face of awful circumstances.

As if they're meant to give up and not do what they feel is best when not lucky enough to have the stupid 'I WIN' button at their beck and call that is the Warrior of Light.

I love G'raha to pieces so it doesn't bother me. The "hero worship" is the closest they're probably going to get to romantic undertones. However, I can see how it would be annoying for anyone who doesn't like his character. There are some characters who if they started fawning over me would make me uncomfortable.

I liked Moenbryda more than most of the other Scions. It wouldn't have bothered me if they'd kept her and ditched someone else. However, surely Ishikawa was aware that Moenbryda was a disposable character when she wrote her. She's alive for, what, 5 quests? This couldn't have come as a shock.

Given her penchant for not wanting to kill characters and coming up with reasons for them to return combined with the overwhelming popularly of Emet, I'd like to think we haven't seen the last of him yet.

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Originally Posted by PawPaw

Answers and Flow can both die in a fire but I'm OK with the rest. 'Neath Dark Waters is probably my favorite song in the game.

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I hate that I have to keep looking up songs on YouTube because they aren't labelled like "Amaurot theme". :P

My favorite tracks - that I don't know the names of - are Azys Lla, the Tower of Babil dungeon theme, Garlemald night theme, Coerthas Western Highlands (day or night), Lochs night theme (shame it's wasted on a zone you spend 15 minutes in), and I've been listening to Endwalker Midboss Theme "On Blade's Edge" (Epic Metal Cover by Skar Productions) a lot too.

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Originally Posted by Theodric

I don't like death for the sake of death but I've never asked for that - I just think that if someone intends to tell a story about war and loss then there should be some of the latter for the protagonists instead of conveniently just emotionally manipulating people into finding the antagonists sympathetic as they - and only they - stand to lose absolutely everything.

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Agreed, I don't want to see Scions and side characters getting bumped off just because I'm bloodthirsty but there is only so much I can suspend disbelief when we are constantly being thrown into these super high risk situations and no one is coming away with as much as a scrape. There are no consequences for anything that this group does and that makes me more detached from them and the believability of them as characters as a whole. Why would I ever be anxious and nervous for the protagonists at any point when no matter what they do, they always come out on top?

Oh, Y'shtola's died again? Oh well. Give her five and I'm sure she'll be right back. Yawn.

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Originally Posted by PawPaw

Agreed, I don't want to see Scions and side characters getting bumped off just because I'm bloodthirsty but there is only so much I can suspend disbelief when we are constantly being thrown into these super high risk situations and no one is coming away with as much as a scrape. There are no consequences for anything that this group does and that makes me more detached from them and the believability of them as characters as a whole. Why would I ever be anxious and nervous for the protagonists at any point when no matter what they do, they always come out on top?

Oh, Y'shtola's died again? Oh well. Give her five and I'm sure she'll be right back. Yawn.

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It's amusing how the entire last leg of EW feels like the least high-stake to me because we are literally in Feely Emotion Space that runs on The Power of God and Anime. Scions sacrificing themselves? We know they'll be back right away. Twitter Hivemind chucking planets at us? Yeah whatever I'll just Power of Friendship through that. Twice.

You just know there would be no other outcome when it's gone full anime.

Meanwhile back on Etheirys everyone in Sharlayan is okay just watching the sky that definitely stays blue.

(Ancients and Dynamis though? No, The Power of God and Anime doesn't work like that!)

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Originally Posted by Teraq

It's amusing how the entire last leg of EW feels like the least high-stake to me because we are literally in Feely Emotion Space that runs on The Power of God and Anime. Scions sacrificing themselves? We know they'll be back right away. Twitter Hivemind chucking planets at us? Yeah whatever I'll just Power of Friendship through that. Twice.

You just know there would be no other outcome when it's gone full anime.

Meanwhile back on Etheirys everyone in Sharlayan is okay just watching the sky that definitely stays blue.

(Ancients and Dynamis though? No, The Power of God and Anime doesn't work like that!)

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Agreed, I don't think I was emotionally invested at all in the last zone till Zenos showed up, and was a bit disappointed in the "dead but not really" approach they took with your allies.

I'd like to think that there was a Loporrit(Filmingway? Screeningway?) off screen with a camera recording everything in the final zone and projecting it onto a massive flat screen in the sky back on Etheirys.

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Originally Posted by Ixon

I'd like to think that there was a Loporrit(Filmingway? Screeningway?) off screen with a camera recording everything in the final zone and projecting it onto a massive flat screen in the sky back on Etheirys.

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I hope they used their connection to Hydaelyn somehow to project it into the Aetherial Sea too! Because I want Fandaniel to see it all and ragequit.

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Originally Posted by aveyond-dreams

Guess we'll just have to wait for Thancred's alleged "cool moment" in 6.1 to pay off, because I remember nothing of what he did in Endwalker other than the "This is Thancred" meme.

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Speaking of Ultima Thule reminded me of Thancred's greatest EW accomplishment: he was a great atmosphere, single-handedly evening the score in the Universe's most important game of Calvinball. Him losing his aether was all part of the grand plan so he could make the finest oxygen and nitrogen atoms around. 10/10 would breathe again!

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Originally Posted by aveyond-dreams

I too would like my video games to have stories with meaningful development and consequences. Otherwise, what separates Endwalker from just twitter fanfiction?

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I mean now that we have crummy maguffin race out of the way to justify crummy loli bird antagonist and just crummy maguffin plot in general out of the way (Shadowbringers started this dreck) we might get a good story again.

It is kind of silly that I'm subconsciously unable to worry about the well-being of the Scions at this point due to them having plot kevlar.

It's mostly the secondary and/or new characters that are at any risk, but the lack of screentime is naturally going to limit any impact their loss will have unless it's someone who's been around for multiple expansions.

Did people complain when Papalymo or Minfillia died? If they did it could be a reason why they aren't making any other Scion die anymore and have perma tempered will/holmgang (use the invul of your choice).
Not talking about Moenbryda because she wasn't technically a Scion, same for Ysayle and Haurchefant.

I didn't see much of a reaction to Papalymo's death and Minfilia was always a divisive figure to the point that the development team itself made use of her in a parody released on April's Fools one year. So in the end, both deaths were safe and inoffensive options.

It's just weird to me that characters such as Emet-Selch are consistently winning popularity polls but are killed off yet even minor characters amongst the protagonists are clad in ridiculous levels of plot armour.

Then again, the game in general seems to be desperately trying to pretend as if its pushing the various conflicts as a 'clash of ideals' only to then resort to gaslighting later on when people point out that, actually, Emet only resorted to genocide because Venat did so first and forced his hand.

Maybe it's just a sign of the times. Even the shift in localisation seems to be trending towards appeasing Twitter users more than those of us who found the original style of the game to our liking.

Was watching a playthrough of EW today and they got to the scene at the end of the moon quests, where everyone is preparing to go back to Eitherys. They're going over their plans and I had to do a double take because all of the Scions universally voice their agreement that they need to inform the world leaders of the coming apocalypse the second they return. That it's up to them to decide how they want to handle letting the public know, whatever is best to avert a panic, but that the first priority was making sure that everyone was aware and had a chance to prepare.

And I just...nodded with mouth agape. Because, yes, of course, this is the natural thought process you'd have when you're not an egotistical sociopath. And yet, someone on the writing team thought to themselves that having another character do the exact opposite for the sake of their own arbitrary "test" when placed in the very same position was an equally reasonable way to deal with an impending calamity and it will never not be astonishing to me that this made it into the game and that they actually tried to make me believe that this was completely logical.

Sorry, it's a tangent and doesn't really link up to the most recent discussion. It just happened and I am still just shaking my head. I think I'm just going to pretend that the game ended when I arrived in Elpis and just leave it at that.

Edit: Imagining an alternate scenario where Y'shtola looks around conspiratorially and says "Guys...what do you think about taking this opportunity to test all of mankind instead of letting them know the truth? They kinda suck anyway, right? All the wars and killing animals for fun and all. What say we just let them figure it out on their own and see how they handle it? They'll probably just be upset if we tell them the world is ending anyway". "Yeah, that sounds fair." "Nod."

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Originally Posted by Theodric

I didn't see much of a reaction to Papalymo's death and Minfilia was always a divisive figure to the point that the development team itself made use of her in a parody released on April's Fools one year. So in the end, both deaths were safe and inoffensive options.

It's just weird to me that characters such as Emet-Selch are consistently winning popularity polls but are killed off yet even minor characters amongst the protagonists are clad in ridiculous levels of plot armour.

Then again, the game in general seems to be desperately trying to pretend as if its pushing the various conflicts as a 'clash of ideals' only to then resort to gaslighting later on when people point out that, actually, Emet only resorted to genocide because Venat did so first and forced his hand.

Maybe it's just a sign of the times. Even the shift in localisation seems to be trending towards appeasing Twitter users more than those of us who found the original style of the game to our liking.

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Oh well, then maybe we can still hope for a turn of event for the Scion and see their adamantium plot armour fall for once.
She was definitely the first aggressor and showed the way to the others. I mean, to begin with if she took the right to sunder, it was only natural they assumed the right to rejoin.

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Originally Posted by PawPaw

Was watching a playthrough of EW today and they got to the scene at the end of the moon quests, where everyone is preparing to go back to Eitherys. They're going over their plans and I had to do a double take because all of the Scions universally voice their agreement that they need to inform the world leaders of the coming apocalypse the second they return. That it's up to them to decide how they want to handle letting the public know, whatever is best to avert a panic, but that the first priority was making sure that everyone was aware and had a chance to prepare.

And I just...nodded with mouth agape. Because, yes, of course, this is the natural thought process you'd have when you're not an egotistical sociopath. And yet, someone on the writing team thought to themselves that having another character do the exact opposite for the sake of their own arbitrary "test" when placed in the very same position was an equally reasonable way to deal with an impending calamity and it will never not be astonishing to me that this made it into the game and that they actually tried to make me believe that this was completely logical.

Sorry, it's a tangent and doesn't really link up to the most recent discussion. It just happened and I am still just shaking my head. I think I'm just going to pretend that the game ended when I arrived in Elpis and just leave it at that.

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Yup, that is called double standards I believe, same for hope. As someone said in a post before, seems like it's not for everyone. Be with the "good" guys and you get everything, otherwise too bad.


Manichean views and stories get stale very quick, I sure wish they'll review their ways with the stories to come.

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Originally Posted by Teraq

It's true the plot has ... issues. But I think that, as far as I'm concerned at least, there's a bit of self-reinforcing bias in how I see Endwalker: it rubbed me the wrong way therefore I am very willing to look for any inconsistency and articulate exactly how and why it bothered me. I would probably be a lot more forgiving of the damned memory-wiped causal time loop and everything else if I had loved most everything EW threw my way and cried all the way through Ultima Thule.

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It depends on what they did with it. If they left it as is, the issues are not minor enough for me to simply disregard. I guess my point is I'd find this plot an abysmal mess even if I went in expecting nothing of it.

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Originally Posted by Rulakir

My music tastes are apparently vastly different from other players. I dislike most of the top song choices, especially Answers.

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Same - for me it'd be 'Neath dark waters and its various arrangements, Shadowbringers, Invincible, To The Edge and a few others, like Thunderer and the Garlean Territorial anthem and Locus Amoenus reclamation radio theme. I don't consider Answers bad as a piece of music but given what it attaches to thematically? It leaves me rather cold.

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Originally Posted by Teraq

Speaking of Ultima Thule reminded me of Thancred's greatest EW accomplishment: he was a great atmosphere, single-handedly evening the score in the Universe's most important game of Calvinball. Him losing his aether was all part of the grand plan so he could make the finest oxygen and nitrogen atoms around. 10/10 would breathe again!

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Let's bottle him up and turn him into a cologne. I like Thancred because he is quite a manly man type character, but both he and Y'shtola really took the backseat for EW (although in the latter's case some may say that's a step in the right direction. :D)

Answers used to be one of my favorites, loved that original ARR trailer! However, the associations it has after EW have completely ruined it for me. I'm not your Dear Child and you're not my mother, you maniac.

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Originally Posted by Lauront

Same - for me it'd be 'Neath dark waters and its various arrangements, Shadowbringers, Invincible, To The Edge and a few others, like Thunderer and the Garlean Territorial anthem and Locus Amoenus reclamation radio theme. I don't consider Answers bad as a piece of music but given what it attaches to thematically? It leaves me rather cold.

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Shadowbringers Scions&Sinner version is absolutely awesome, Neath Dark Waters and To the Edge are amongst my favourites too, and recently Endcaller (Zodiark trial theme) has been added to the list. Going to older expansions, The Ancient City (Amdapor dungeon iirc) piano at the beginning never gets tiring.

'The Ancients have a different morality than we do.' -_- Frankly, I don't see how that holds water when the victims of the sundering don't echo that sentiment. Just say Venat had a different morality than everyone else, that would be more accurate.

I didn't like Answers before and I especially don't like it now.

I love Thancred, but I'm over his obsession with Minfilia. I'm not looking forward to him and Krile being my traveling companions if they're going to end up swapping stories about her. No other character in the game is as fixated on another character as he is with her. Unless you count Zenos and the WoL. :P

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Originally Posted by Kyohei

Shadowbringers Scions&Sinner version is absolutely awesome, Neath Dark Waters and To the Edge are amongst my favourites too, and recently Endcaller (Zodiark trial theme) has been added to the list. Going to older expansions, The Ancient City (Amdapor dungeon iirc) piano at the beginning never gets tiring.

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I'd second the ones you added and add Thunder God's theme to that. Elpis, Ktisis Hyperboreia and Aitiascope all had great themes as well, as did Castrum Fluminis. For me when it comes to the Amdapor themes, I like this one best. Ah, and I forgot Tears for Mor Dhona.

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Originally Posted by PawPaw

Answers used to be one of my favorites, loved that original ARR trailer! However, the associations it has after EW have completely ruined it for me. I'm not your Dear Child and you're not my mother, you maniac.

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Venat insisting on being everybody's mother just reminds me of Marguerite from Resident Evil 7.

Though unlike Venat, Marguerite was simply an innocent victim in the grand scheme of things.

I had forgotten about the first theme of Amdapor keep, and Thunder God really has what I'd call a very "FF" feel which is great. Also was going to add Footsteps in the Snow, Equilibrium, Castrum Fluminis, Elpis night/day, Ktisis, Sharlayan night and Heroes Forge Ahead but figured the list started to be a bit too long.

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Originally Posted by PawPaw

And I just...nodded with mouth agape. Because, yes, of course, this is the natural thought process you'd have when you're not an egotistical sociopath. And yet, someone on the writing team thought to themselves that having another character do the exact opposite for the sake of their own arbitrary "test" when placed in the very same position was an equally reasonable way to deal with an impending calamity and it will never not be astonishing to me that this made it into the game and that they actually tried to make me believe that this was completely logical.

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Looks like Hermes did manage to pass the idiot ball to Venat after all. Must've been from all the time she spent in elpis. Sadge

Edit: But yeah, this is certified idiot moment from her. Her main reason for not telling people are: 1) avoid mass panic and 2) so people won't get divided (conflict with each other). However, by the time the final days already hit them, people already panic. What's her reason to not tell them at this point?? Even after zodiark is summoned, she still kept that a secret from everyone, including the convocation. Like, Elidibus as heart of Zodiark is there. He can be your strongest ally! Worried about Fandaniel? He isn't needed anymore after Zodiark is summoned, chucked him into Pandaemonium or something. Imagine having the Ancients to work together to solve their problem and learn from it (show them the knowledge of other civilizations), instead of being vague and deny them (what they thought as) their only chance and way to bring back their loved ones.

Whew ok, so...

Speaking of music, even with my displeasure in Venat, I've got to say Flow is one of my favorite. I just like that style of songs. Not sure if it's #1 on my list, but definitely among the top three. If I have to pick top five, it would be:

To the edge, Flow, Revolution, Extreme (mostly because it's my first savage and I made a lot of good memory with my static there), and Garlemald bgm. Runner up are Invincible and Elpis bgm. I want to rank Invincible higher, but sometimes it can be too "high energy" and distracting when doing something else.

It's very hard to rank ff14 music lol, majority of them are just that good.

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Originally Posted by Theodric

Venat insisting on being everybody's mother just reminds me of Marguerite from Resident Evil 7.

Though unlike Venat, Marguerite was simply an innocent victim in the grand scheme of things.

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To be fair, how many people did she "create" when she sundered all of Etheirys? A planets worth of people times 13? Not necessarily a great mother, but a busy one.

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Originally Posted by PawPaw

(great post)

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YoshiP: "Ah but that's just because Venat is an Ancient, and Ancients just did this!"

But I thought they loved debating and knowledge above all else? And that decisions were taken at the highest level by a council of 13 people with a mediator instead of just a single person going off?

Personally, rewatching the Moon quests had made me ponder how Ancient characterisation in Elpis made them sound like they seemed rather space-illiterate, with apparently no Seat of the Convocation dedicated to astronomy, astrophysics or space exploration (in spite of the very design of the Convocation being literally based on stars, I suppose), but once again it turns out these people collectively had zero common sense: they could have simply come up with familiars whose purpose is to research space travel, and wait for them to develop. It doesn't matter how long it took for the Loporrits to achieve all that: a comatose Zodiark managed to protect the planet for that long anyway.

Re: music, I still love Answers, I find it just slaps IMO. Watching the Bahamut world second never gets old.
One particular case where my brain wants to like the music but also gets triggered is the one that plays during the post-Ktsis cutscene as you are escaping with Venat. Oh it sounds cool, yes, but (CRINGE) (brain puts its hands up as it exits stage left)

The mention of Endcaller reminds me of that one part in the launch trailer where most people thought it was (bizarrely) Fandaniel beseeching Zodiark and some (huffs the copium deeply) thought it was Elidibus finally making an appearance of sorts in trailers for the very final Hydaelyn/Zodiark expac. As it turned out, it was just Random Strawman Ancient #1 within Venat's MartyrVision montage. This is an incredibly apt summary of my feelings on Endwalker.

Translated Famitsu interview with Yoshida, Ishikawa, and Oda on the development of Endwalker's story. Plans to release a EW-related side story confirmed.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme..._with_yoshida/

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Originally Posted by Ixon

Translated Famitsu interview with Yoshida, Ishikawa, and Oda on the development of Endwalker's story. Plans to release a EW-related side story confirmed.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme..._with_yoshida/

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We lost a Garlemald expansion to this? Seriously?

https://i.imgur.com/mCGBCln.jpg

This is it this is my whole post

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Originally Posted by Ixon

Translated Famitsu interview with Yoshida, Ishikawa, and Oda on the development of Endwalker's story. Plans to release a EW-related side story confirmed.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme..._with_yoshida/

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My takeaway is that the FFXIV team had no idea what they were doing with their story until ShB, and it shows. Makes tons of sense and now I can stop listening to people gushing about how "they've been planning this for a decade".

Well, that's disappointing. So as expected we did miss out on a Garlemald focused expansion. The way in which Hermes is described is utterly bizarre as well. I also note that they're being entirely non-committal to the idea of the Ancients being fated to follow the path shown within the Dead Ends. They keep using the term 'might have' instead of 'would have' which, of course, means it would not be a certainty.

Ishikawa, at least, seems to 'get it'. I can't say I'm fond of Yoshi-P's takes on many fronts in that interview. No, Hermes and Venat seeking to inflict genocide upon their own race isn't the same as Emet-Selch seeking to reverse that genocide when it was inflicted upon his people with no forewarning. Nor is it a fair 'test' in any rational, logical capacity. Especially when we know that the Ancients and beings forged through Creation magic are most certainly not the same.

I'm losing count of how many times Yoshi-P confessed to 'crying' over something in the game. Moenbryda had closure back in ARR and not everybody even liked her, so pushing her to the forefront yet again felt strange to me. I like Jullus, though I'm tired of this 'everybody's crying and screaming over every little thing' approach to the game's story.

I'm still not seeing why we missed out on a Garlemald focused expansion. We could have then gotten proper closure for that aspect of the story and then had the Hydaelyn and Zodiark/Ancients arcs conclude in the following expansion.

Meh.

Introducing suffering and killing millions is a good thing rather than slowly improving society somewhat, actually, if you have an attitude I dislike. It's for your own good, because you might get bored and off yourselves in the distant farflung future. Our heroes...

I'd like to think that they are trying to not offend Hermes fans, but it's kind of hard to tell. Never seen any other game where the 'ancient race died out' trope was used to elevate the player characters so hard. Ultimately a race of punching bags to vindicate the playerbase and make their egoes swell with 'superiority'. It did work, though, overwhelmingly.

Also, Anima going from being a final boss to a dungeon boss. ohnonoonnoahhahahhaha

Varis died just to be a dungeon boss instead of the penultimate boss of a potential Garlean themed expac.

This some bs.

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Originally Posted by Kozh

Looks like Hermes did manage to pass the idiot ball to Venat after all. Must've been from all the time she spent in elpis. Sadge

Edit: But yeah, this is certified idiot moment from her. Her main reason for not telling people are: 1) avoid mass panic and 2) so people won't get divided (conflict with each other).

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And ironically to avoid 'dividing people in conflict' she instead chose to divide them physically into 14 pieces causing untold suffering for 12,000 years, much better than having people disagree. /eyeroll at Venat

No matter how I try to understand at her motives I can't come up with any logical reason for why she did what she did. The story sure doesn't show us her thoughts during it at all so we have people saying everything from "ancients can't interact with dynamis" (which is shown in the story multiple times to be untrue), "people need to grow strong through suffering" (universally, causing suffering is NOT seen as heroic), "eventually they would have become like the plenty so it had to be done"(?), "people needed to learn to not live in the past" (??!?), "Ancients are just like that!"(??!??) to "well our world wouldn't exist had she not done that so she made the right choice" (bad, bad take imo).

None of those truly make sense within the story. It feels like major questions of the arc were entirely ignored. Why did she not tell anyone? Had she tried to stop the end days, and if so, how? How, and at what point did she come to the decision that destroying, not only her entire race, the entire world was the best or only option?

As it stands it looks (to me) like she thought Hermes test was a great idea and watching from the sidelines as a "supreme deity" would be a grand adventure! That doesn't really match her character in Elpis however. So what happened? Why skip such an important part of the story yet expect us to admire and love her?

Re music:
I used to love answers but now my stomach clenches whenever I hear it. Flow just isn't my style at all so no matter the story, I'd probably not like it a lot.
Neath Dark Waters, Rak'tika night music, Garlemald radio music (perfect atmosphere for that part of the story *chefs kiss*), Invincible and a few others are my faves.

Varis really was done dirty. I was never under the impression that every last little thing was planned out in advance but...can we get a shift in development so that someone who actually notes plot hooks like Regula's last words is in charge of writing the story? Please?

Eh, well the interview just confirms what I thought if anything. Having to rewrite it because no agreements were reached is precisely what I theorised happened when playing msq and seeing the many inconsistencies.

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Originally Posted by Teraq

https://i.imgur.com/mCGBCln.jpg

This is it this is my whole post

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She really wants me to believe that it's the latter but I'm sorry, I clearly have a vastly different set of morals than this team does. At no point would my brain ever stop to ponder on the rights and wrongs of destroying a world and its people. Emet did it and it was wrong then also. I completely understand why he did it and feel terrible about what he's had to suffer through, and the fact that he was set up to become a murderer; but that doesn't make it not wrong. No, what Hermes did is not up for f*%!ing debate, it's wrong. And trying to pass it off as questionably correct because he's your FaVoRiTe is disingenuous.

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Originally Posted by Fiel_Tana

And ironically to avoid 'dividing people in conflict' she instead chose to divide them physically into 14 pieces causing untold suffering for 12,000 years, much better than having people disagree. /eyeroll at Venat

No matter how I try to understand at her motives I can't come up with any logical reason for why she did what she did. The story sure doesn't show us her thoughts during it at all so we have people saying everything from "ancients can't interact with dynamis" (which is shown in the story multiple times to be untrue), "people need to grow strong through suffering" (universally, causing suffering is NOT seen as heroic), "eventually they would have become like the plenty so it had to be done"(?), "people needed to learn to not live in the past" (??!?), "Ancients are just like that!"(??!??) to "well our world wouldn't exist had she not done that so she made the right choice" (bad, bad take imo).

None of those truly make sense within the story. It feels like major questions of the arc were entirely ignored. Why did she not tell anyone? Had she tried to stop the end days, and if so, how? How, and at what point did she come to the decision that destroying, not only her entire race, the entire world was the best or only option?

As it stands it looks (to me) like she thought Hermes test was a great idea and watching from the sidelines as a "supreme deity" would be a grand adventure! That doesn't really match her character in Elpis however. So what happened? Why skip such an important part of the story yet expect us to admire and love her?

Re music:
I used to love answers but now my stomach clenches whenever I hear it. Flow just isn't my style at all so no matter the story, I'd probably not like it a lot.
Neath Dark Waters, Rak'tika night music, Garlemald radio music (perfect atmosphere for that part of the story *chefs kiss*), Invincible and a few others are my faves.

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^ All of this x100000

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Fiel_Tana

And ironically to avoid 'dividing people in conflict' she instead chose to divide them physically into 14 pieces causing untold suffering for 12,000 years, much better than having people disagree. /eyeroll at Venat

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Also urges to "Answer together" but proceeds to solo decides for everyone ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It's along the points we discussed didn't make sense, no other way but to accept it. We can at least now understand the reasons why it was messy with the interview.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Kyohei

Also urges to "Answer together" but proceeds to solo decides for everyone ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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(Proceed to conjure up a gigantic Primal fuelled by hope for their planet because it was the solution she left them with)

"No not like that!"

Quote:

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Originally Posted by PawPaw

My takeaway is that the FFXIV team had no idea what they were doing with their story until ShB, and it shows. Makes tons of sense and now I can stop listening to people gushing about how "they've been planning this for a decade".

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Venat's obsession with an "answer" (AUDIENCE STANDS AND CLAPS) legitimately had me very worried an EW track title would have something to do with a "question"

A FFX reference as the final boss of an expansion? Nah, I think they made the right call on that part at least.

Hopefully they'll still do something else with Garlemald though.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Teraq

[I]Venat's obsession with an "answer" (AUDIENCE STANDS AND CLAPS) legitimately had me very worried an EW track title would have something to do with a "question"

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With the number of times this song was directly quoted in EW, I think we can assume that they simply took the lyrics and made a story around it so that it would LOOK like they'd planned it that way all along.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Yencat

A FFX reference as the final boss of an expansion? Nah, I think they made the right call on that part at least.

Hopefully they'll still do something else with Garlemald though.

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They literally had us fight the Knights of the Round from FFVII in Heavensward. The response was overwhelmingly positive at the time. Doubtless the same would have occurred if we fought Varis in the form of Anima, who was more respected as an antagonist than Thordan ever was.