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

In my maximalist fantasy for this game's storyline, we would've taken an expansion to cover Ala Mhigo and get a city state for it, then Doma, then the First, then Garlemald and Thavnair, and finally everything in Endwalker. I realize of course that by this time we would still be stuck in the same storyline, but if every episode is great then who cares? And I can tell you, selling a conclusion to a 15 year storyline is much more interesting than a 10-11 year one. Ala Mhigo would've gotten its chance to matter in the story and we'd have a city state for it, same with Doma as well as us getting a greater window into the Far East as opposed to just how tiny it feels now. And being there to have a hand in the true downfall of Garlemald would've been incredible! It also would've made us understand what exactly Zenos is aside from an OP enemy who's also part-Ascian. Why was Elidibus weak enough to his "echo" to give him his body back as soon as he showed up? Why is he a reaper now? Why was he having dreams of the Final Days? Being related to Emet is not a good enough answer to all of this. While I did come around to him at the end of 6.0 because of just how absurd in a good way it was for him to pop in out of nowhere, it would've been much better if that came after truly learning about him.

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Originally Posted by Skyborne

Would be nice to actually explore Ilsabard and deal with Garlemald in a way that isn't "lmao not my problem just move on sweeties, now you are part of the glorious global citizen Alliance and everything is great". However, it's pretty early to tell until 6.1 actually releases in a couple weeks. And even then, we may have to wait another 4+ months to see how things are going. My hopes aren't too high, considering how hard they want to just bury anything old and just immediately beat this "new adventure! new adventure! avenchur!" horse. While having afterschool club meetings and pizza parties with the Scions, of course.


Still 99% sure we will get some sort of Tales of the End where Venat is shown saving Amaurotine schoolchildren from a burning building or something. P-please like her... please...

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Like i said, i can only hope it was moved to make the situation more interesting in Ilsabard, which it certainly is right now, but they need to strike while the iron is hot. Hopefully they can see that there are a lot of players who want to go to Ilsbabard and have the clouds remove and that there are a lot of players who think that the storyline in EW rushed a lot of long running plotpoints and stumbled at the end so they take the time to take a step back and do a better job of wrapping up some of theses stories in Ilsabard. If it is Meracydia or anywhere else however and we ignore the situation in Ilsabard to just go off and AdVeNtUrE and leave them to pick up the scraps after the final days then I may just unsubscribe (at least until Ilsabard) because that gives me little hope for a future story arch that they will just end it when ever they get tired of it or think what players want.

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Originally Posted by aveyond-dreams

My personal preference for the future at this point is to go explore the former imperial territories and perhaps going about restoring fallen monarchies/heirs to their respective thrones.

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Agreed. I'd also like to see Garlemald transition to something like Archades.

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Originally Posted by Theodric

Yeah, I was bitterly disappointed by the lack of an authentic Garlean expansion. We've been following them in the story since the days of ARR and many people liked what they brought to the table so to have them thrown under the bus struck me as very questionable.

It also makes me second guess the feedback being gathered and sent to the development team. Where are they getting it from? What voices are they listening to and which are they ignoring?

Where are our community representatives and why aren't they engaging with the community here, on the game's official site? I guess they must be busy changing diapers or some such...

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With how much it was being built up in both Stormblood and Shadowbringers, with all the cutscenes and even the solo duty there it felt like it was building for an expansion set there for 4 years and I was anticipating it the whole time getting more exited only for it to be one mostly ruined zone. It felt like Chekhov's Gun with multiple people calling attention to it on the wall and such a big deal being made out of it but when it comes time to set it off it is just one of those fake guns you see Joker use in the old Batman Cartoons with a flag that says bam coming out except here it would say Gotcha, now enjoy the stupid moon bunnies instead.

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Originally Posted by FrightfulNight

With how much it was being built up in both Stormblood and Shadowbringers, with all the cutscenes and even the solo duty there it felt like it was building for an expansion set there for 4 years and I was anticipating it the whole time getting more exited only for it to be one mostly ruined zone. It felt like Chekhov's Gun with multiple people calling attention to it on the wall and such a big deal being made out of it but when it comes time to set it off it is just one of those fake guns you see Joker use in the old Batman Cartoons with a flag that says bam coming out except here it would say Gotcha, now enjoy the stupid moon bunnies instead.

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Yeah. I'm still annoyed that nothing of note came of Regula's sacrifice in Azys Lla. Why did it take until Endwalker for the Scions to realise that the situation with Garlemald wasn't black and white and that there were plenty of good people set to be screwed over if it all fell apart when a high ranking soldier selflessly took an attack meant for a child right in front of the Scions? To my knowledge, they never mentioned it again and the story decided to present the likes of Valens and Zenos front and centre instead from that point onwards.

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Originally Posted by Skyborne

Still 99% sure we will get some sort of Tales of the End where Venat is shown saving Amaurotine schoolchildren from a burning building or something. P-please like her... please...

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I was joking about this same thing with a friend earlier but I feel as though it's guaranteed that we're going to get some sort of attempt at a retcon to convince the people who dislike her her to like her. I can smell it.

I'm honestly not sure they'll even bother with something like that because I've already noticed troublingly large amounts of people just rolling over and accepting what Yoshi claimed was "intended" by the writing.

He said he didn't expect people to "think so deeply" about the story, and many evidently don't if they're willing to just accept claims like "Ancient culture was scary" or "The Ancients were doomed to meet the same fate as the Plenty" without noticing/considering the myriad ways the narrative suggests otherwise or worse, making reaches to try to justify those claims.

At the end of the day, the people voicing discontent are still the minority even if there was enough of them to actually be noticed.

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Originally Posted by Lauront

Regarding Zenos, my suspicion is Emet-Selch may have simply removed him from the equation if he posed a threat to their plans, if Black Rose itself did not, since he'd have little to keep him on the First. On the other hand, we saw how Zenos's motivation drained without the WoL as a sparring partner, so it's not inconceivable that, depending on the order of events, something similar happened in the 8UC, as well.

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I can't help but feel Zenos got the shaft in the same way that Garlemald and the Ancients did. There were a lot of aspects about him that led to nothing or were hand waved away in the Q&A LL. It seems like for whatever reason they wanted to be done with all of the previous storytelling and move onto something new and it had better be worth it.

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Originally Posted by Theodric

Yeah. I'm still annoyed that nothing of note came of Regula's sacrifice in Azys Lla. Why did it take until Endwalker for the Scions to realise that the situation with Garlemald wasn't black and white and that there were plenty of good people set to be screwed over if it all fell apart when a high ranking soldier selflessly took an attack meant for a child right in front of the Scions? To my knowledge, they never mentioned it again and the story decided to present the likes of Valens and Zenos front and centre instead from that point onwards.

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It always did feel weird that they showed the more sympathetic honorable Garleans like Gaius and Regula first before showing the more unhinged ones like Valens and Zenos the closer we got to Garlemald proper before switching back to EW, especially since it seems the original intent was the opposite if i recall people talking about how the story would have gone. Just another way it felt rushed and could have used the original 6.0 plan to maybe show more of the other side before reaching the capitol, maybe even visit Rhitania's (i hope i am pronouncing that correctly) nation to see some where life either did not change much or benefitted. Maybe see some of the provinces where some of the citizens fled during the civil war like that one soldier who mentioned he was able to see his family safely to before the fighting got worse. maybe you also run into the wife of that one soldier you killed while acquiring the magiteck reaper in ARR who he said was with child at the time. Then after this buildup you go to the Capitol to help. As it stand right now going from Valens in ShB to going to the Capitol feels like such a tonal whiplash, it could have gradually built to that if they had a Garlean Focused expansion.

Then after this version of 6.0 when you have the actual world ending threat in 7.0 it can feel like the whole world is both in danger and coming together by seeing the entire three continents being effected by the final days but all the factions are working together to fight it back. Like I said I can only hope they salvage this storyline with an actual Ilsabard expansion.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

He said he didn't expect people to "think so deeply" about the story, and many evidently don't if they're willing to just accept claims like "Ancient culture was scary" or "The Ancients were doomed to meet the same fate as the Plenty" without noticing/considering the myriad ways the narrative suggests otherwise or worse, making reaches to try to justify those claims.

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Once again, "I don't hate Endwalker, but I hate what Endwalker brings out in people."

I'm fine with letting them wrap things up on the Ancients front. If they keep going with it then at best we'll get a bunch of cheap retcons. I'm happy they're reducing the scale of the story now because they've clearly proven that they can't handle anything greater than SHB.

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Originally Posted by Brinne

Once again, "I don't hate Endwalker, but I hate what Endwalker brings out in people."

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I find myself resisting the urge to facepalm at the sheer number of people who now parrot the nonsense of "The Ancients woud've died this way!" whenever a remotely popular streamer gets to the final section of the Dead Ends.

I have to give them credit, while the post-Elpis cutscene did nothing for me other than solidify my hatred of Venat it clearly achieved the goal of making others sympathize with her. I've watched at least 2-3 streamers now who echoed our points up until that scene and then did a complete U-turn on her character. Apparently the evocation of pity for someone is a powerful thing.

I mean, I guess it's a good reminder at how susceptible we as humans can be to textbook apologism rhetoric and propaganda, but, uh, I Hate It?

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Originally Posted by Rulakir

Re: Elpis time travel

Personally, I considered it the only morally correct choice for me to try to avert the Final Days for the Ancients.

The cost without an AU is a future that simply wouldn't come to be and I'm perfectly fine with that given the mess the sundering and rejoinings caused over the subsequent millennia.

As far as an AU, well, this just exemplifies how much of a failure Venat's plan was. No WoL = Meteion is never defeated and Etheirys is destroyed.

(I don't know how anyone rationalizes AU and time loops. More power to you if you can, but the mental gymnastics are too much for me.)

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To understand the impact of altering time in this story, you have to look at the one successful example in Shadowbringers. The time traveller who alters their own past is not erased from history, and the side story An Unpromised Future confirms that the other timeline continues to exist parallel to ours. (And yes, that timeline may need its own method of defeating Meteion if it ever reaches the same point of Zodiark being destroyed, but that is entirely the realm of speculation and fanfic.)

From that model we can deduce that even if we "change" the fate of the ancients, we are only creating a second branch of time. Our original timeline and all of the suffering within it will not be erased, but we may not be able to get back there to save it.

I'm a bit confused which scenario you're talking about where there is no WoL. There is no part of Venat's plan that will stop the WoL from coming into existence.

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Originally Posted by Rulakir

I have to give them credit, while the post-Elpis cutscene did nothing for me other than solidify my hatred of Venat it clearly achieved the goal of making others sympathize with her. I've watched at least 2-3 streamers now who echoed our points up until that scene and then did a complete U-turn on her character. Apparently the evocation of pity for someone is a powerful thing.

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It did work with Emet-Selch first. However, the game also made it clear he was not on Team-Sundered-Who-Are-Superior-Because-Of-An-Obscure-Energy-Source-Useful-Only-In-Space and a threat that flung himself at us in a duel to the death. There was no "Wind-Up Hero" plopped in our inventory, either. At most, he was called a hero... to his people, by the Minstrel. They wanted to capture ShB's lightning in a bottle again in EW... seems it worked, mostly. That said I have actually seen people who were turned off by the Q&A revelations...

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Originally Posted by Iscah

From that model we can deduce that even if we "change" the fate of the ancients, we are only creating a second branch of time. Our original timeline and all of the suffering within it will not be erased, but we may not be able to get back there to save it.

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I think I see what you're saying. Basically, the Elpis we visited could have branched into an alternate timeline we don't know about if that Venat had at any point changed her mind but, regardless, the Venat in our timeline ended up following the roadmap of the future we told her about to the letter?

The only problem is still the 8UC. Everything in that timeline happens the same as ours, however, the WoL is killed by Black Rose before they could journey to Elpis. Venat doing everything exactly the same regardless of the WoL's interference requires a substantial suspension of disbelief. The only work around I can think of is a future reincarnation of the WoL doing it and there are a lot of issues with that too.

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Originally Posted by Skyborne

It did work with Emet-Selch first.

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True. It's like Ishikawa said in the Famitsu interview, Emet's motives were more sympathetic. The unsundered were put in the position of victims, whereas both Hermes and Venat were always the aggressors.

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Originally Posted by Rulakir

The only problem is still the 8UC. Everything in that timeline happens the same as ours, however, the WoL is killed by Black Rose before they could journey to Elpis. Venat doing everything exactly the same regardless of the WoL's interference requires a substantial suspension of disbelief. The only work around I can think of is a future reincarnation of the WoL doing it and there are a lot of issues with that too.

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Our other self does not need to go back to Elpis.

The events of that timeline are not completely independent of ours, but split apart from our timeline due to the events of Shadowbringers. At absolute earliest, it happened some time after 3.4 which we can mark as the time when the Flood of Light happened.

Prior to that point, the two timelines share a past, and the events at Elpis (starring "good timeline WoL") happened in that shared past, therefore "bad timeline WoL" has no need to separately visit Elpis.

O.o Oh time travel talk *walks away*

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Originally Posted by Iscah

Prior to that point, the two timelines share a past, and the events at Elpis (starring "good timeline WoL") happened in that shared past, therefore "bad timeline WoL" has no need to separately visit Elpis.

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This is what I meant by the mental gymnastics needed for this to make sense. :P So, the loop is dependent on the 8UC timeline failing? Messy. Imagine being Hydaelyn in the 8UC and realizing you're in the failed/sacrificial timeline. It still doesn't explain the paradox surrounding the name "Hydaelyn" either.

Unfortunately, it doesn't make me feel any better how things played out as no matter what our WoL deciding to share the future in an attempt to avert it is ultimately what caused it, thus making us responsible for the sundering. It was a full on Greek tragedy. -_-

To react to others having a differing take on a scene by immediately chocking it up to emotional manipulation and “propaganda” seems a bit arrogant no?

It's probably been discussed before but remember when Venat implied that she'd be judging mankind (Ancients) based on their response to dealing with despair? So she commits genocide after they respond in a way she doesn't approve of and then flash forward 12k years to us. The rules for her game aren't exactly fair, are they? Her criteria for passing or failing includes her leaving her people in the dark and completely vulnerable to what was happening to them. They had to figure it out on their own and move past it, and they fail, of course. Anyone would. I'm actually laughing at her thinking that the Sundered were going to be better than them.

So let's remove all of our access to gods and otherworldly assistance at every damn turn and imagine a Source in which the world, the Scions and the player character know big fat nothing about what is happening to them; Just like the Ancients! She thinks that sundered man would handle despair better when presented with the same dilemma, because we know suffering; This is what she murders her entire race for. Overcome it through the power of positive thinking? No chance. More like, within a week, anyone still alive would round up every frail and vulnerable member of society and forcibly feed them to a Cthulhu in the hopes that it would somehow save us from the mysterious catastrophe.

The Sundered don't even have the magical power to raise an effective stopgap shield like Zodiark. All they have is being slightly soul-broken which doesn't make them any less vulnerable, but this is also the single reason I am supposed to believe this was all necessary. They'd be absolutely helpless and even if they figured out that despair=monsters, there's not enough yoga and self-help in the world to happy thoughts the FD into ending. Sometimes I stop and think again about all the ridiculous deus ex machina used to get us to the end of the game, how instead of giving her own people a chance to live she chose to weave this ridiculous series of coincidences together in this flimsy hope that we'd pick up the slack one day. And this is all based on their failing her pop quiz whereas we are given the equivalent of an e-mailed answer sheet while taking the same test...and I'm just amazed all over again. Imagine what that society could have done differently if they had had even the slightest bit of assistance. Damn this story just makes me upset.

Ugh, rant over and bedtime.

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Originally Posted by Rulakir

Unfortunately, it doesn't make me feel any better how things played out as no matter what our WoL deciding to share the future in an attempt to avert it is ultimately what caused it, thus making us responsible for the sundering. It was a full on Greek tragedy. -_-

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Man, I don't think I'll ever forgive the writers for this.

As an aside, the latest seasonal event made me realise that there really isn't much in the way of suspense left in the game these days. The premise of the event in question is a fashion show and I had a strong hunch that our character would win and that's exactly what happened.

Does anyone else find it boring? I don't play narrative heavy games to have my ego stroked so the idea that the player character succeeds at almost every task - be it major or minor - simply doesn't do anything for me. Even indirect aid provided by the player character usually results in victory for the NPC in question. Which, again, feels boring to me. We don't see or experience much in the way of a struggle on any meaningful capacity it seems. Which is ironic given the supposed 'themes'.

It just feels off for the characters who genuinely struggle to all end up killed off by a supposedly well meaning 'herois' whereas those who get every possible advantage and 'I WIN' button handed to them are praised as saviours...despite doing very little of note.

Ah well. The Live Letter is tomorrow and the trailer for 6.1 should arrive as well. I'm curious to see what is in store next, though I'd be lying if I said I wasn't having much more fun with other games at the moment compared to this one.

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Originally Posted by Rulakir

This is what I meant by the mental gymnastics needed for this to make sense. :P So, the loop is dependent on the 8UC timeline failing? Messy. Imagine being Hydaelyn in the 8UC and realizing you're in the failed/sacrificial timeline. It still doesn't explain the paradox surrounding the name "Hydaelyn" either.

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Yes, the ultimate outcome of the Shadowbringers branched timelines is that they both exist side-by-side. One doesn't happen "earlier" than the other; they're just both there, and our timeline is immediately available as the path around which the time loop forms.

If you're able to suspend disbelief enough that the present day relies on Elpis happening and events at Elpis rely on the present day happening, then it doesn't seem much more of a stretch to accept that the loop can also rely on the branched timeline forming to open the path. I just don't think too hard about how the loop could have gotten established in the first place, and accept that it somehow can. (With a bit of periodical whinging about how it could have been written more neatly and with less paradoxes, but still.)

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Originally Posted by Theodric

As an aside, the latest seasonal event made me realise that there really isn't much in the way of suspense left in the game these days. The premise of the event in question is a fashion show and I had a strong hunch that our character would win and that's exactly what happened.

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I would hardly count a seasonal event as an indicator of how much tension might be written in the MSQ. Have they ever been anything but fluff and paint-by-numbers happy outcomes? Even as someone who enjoys the "nicest" interpretation of the MSQ, I've never found them anything but trite.

I didn't play the event nor do I plan to given the fact the headpiece, for some reason, wasn't dyeable-but anyway the overly predictable sequence of events in the final stretch of Endwalker was not handled well nor am I surprised that people are concerned for the future MSQ. Ultima Thule and the events that happened there were cheap, but most of us who played Endwalker at launch were helped along by the hype. Nowadays I don't think I could've taken the fake sacrifices seriously.

Especially not after Stranger of Paradise, Final Fantasy Meme Central, managed to pull off meaningful sacrifices in its final act. The Frank Sinatra song that apparently is supposed to represent Jack manages to feel more fitting than Close in the Distance does for the Scions, due to how little these characters evolved during Endwalker and their lack of substance. Or, in G'raha Tia's case, a total fall from grace compared to how he won a decent amount of people over as the Crystal Exarch, only to exhaust our patience once he became a plushie.

This is certainly not the case for numerous numbered mainline titles as well as spinoffs. When the time came for the final showdown, there was far more suspense and *danger* besides clouds of dark smoke. Crisis Core, anyone? FFXIII-2? FFXV? FFX gets a special mention-the Aeons, the mostly silent beings who I called on in nearly every battle became one of my last opponents. A single line each, them fighting me with the same abilities that I had given them, it all made for so much more impact than Ultima Thule.

Which is to say nothing of the events that took place after the battle with Yu Yevon. Yuna performed one last sending, and one by one they were all set free. The emotional catharsis brought on soon afterwards solidified Yuna as one of Final Fantasy's best heroines, and that cast as one of the strongest in the series.

I'm not particularly excited for the MSQ of 6.1, but my opinion could be swayed depending on what we see in the trailer. I'm still wary of Thancred allegedly having a "cool moment" which could possibly mean that we get an expensive animation of him eating sushi or something. There will almost certainly be more slice-of-life filler quests in Sharlayan surrounding the old teacher whose name I forgot, and I pray that the scene with Estinien is him inviting us to go on a monster hunt and the subsequent patch dungeon.

The idea that the Ancient society was supposed to be scary would’ve been a lot more believable if they were shown to be more willing to kill ostensibly innocent creations instead of just ones that were literally immediately dangerous to everyone around. But instead we were shown that the people who were more willing and/or able to kill innocents than anyone else (albeit after they lost their marbles) were the two who had problems with how it was ran or the direction it was going. That was a massive swing and a miss in terms of writing that even I can’t deny, as someone who still adores EW.

As of now, the scariest thing about the Ancients is that they could even breed two people like that.

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Originally Posted by Rulakir

This is what I meant by the mental gymnastics needed for this to make sense. :P So, the loop is dependent on the 8UC timeline failing? Messy. Imagine being Hydaelyn in the 8UC and realizing you're in the failed/sacrificial timeline. It still doesn't explain the paradox surrounding the name "Hydaelyn" either.

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In 8UC Emet-Selch and Elidibus would be alive so 2nd Final days would not be happening or at least would not be happening at the time it happened on our timeline and until they get killed in 8UC timeline.

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Originally Posted by PawPaw

(snip)

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You have to remember that, according to the writers'/story's logic (which I definitely do not agree with), suffering and mortality = good.

The entire point of Endwalker is to try to tell the player that a life with no suffering or misery is either impossible or delusional. We're shown multiple societies that reached the "pinnacle" of whatever advancement or goal they wanted to achieve (the Omicrons, the Ea and the Plenty) and such "perfection" wound up making all of them despondent for one reason or another. The devs have even confirmed that the Plenty was meant to be an allegory for what the Ancients were probably headed toward. And then, of course, we have Cookingway flat out tell us that the Ancients "caused" their own downfall by striving for perfection instead of simply making the best of their lot in life.

To the writers, the Ancients had to go because their world didn't have enough suffering. The problem was, they were also too lazy to fully commit to the idea of "Utopia is a delusion". They could have shown the Ancients creating familiars only to treat them as full-on slaves without rights. I think that's sort of what they were going for when they initially had Emet-Selch calling your character "it" and speaking of you with disgust, but that doesn't last long. By the time you reach the next MSQ, he and Hyth are treating you with a decent amount of respect. Then, throughout the rest of the Elpis storyline, we learn that a familiar/concept with sapience and reason like the WOL is pretty much unheard of. Even Meteion is specifically stated to be unique. So basically, all of their familiars/concepts are basically monsters and animals...and if they're expecting players to dislike Ancients for treating animals and monsters as disposable, they must have forgotten what videogame we're playing. If anything, the charybdis portion shows us that even though they're pretty quick to write off "defective" concepts, they'll still listen to reason and reevaluate with sufficient evidence.

So, in the end, the entire premise of the Ancient society being bad because they didn't suffer enough relies on the logic of "trust me, bro". Even the aforementioned dead worlds they offer as "proof" (the Omicron, Ea and Plenty) come across less as worlds destroyed by their own hubris and more like juvenile writing.

It’s less they had to go because they didn’t suffer enough and more that they couldn’t cope with suffering and move on. The irony being that Venat suffered enough to take such a drastic action herself, showing that she was also unable to cope with it. Then she proceeded to spend entire millennia entirely alone to bear the weight of what she had done and inflicted on others, leaving her as the only one who actually had to cope with that suffering.

Well, her and the ascians she left alive.

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Originally Posted by AziraSyuren

It’s less they had to go because they didn’t suffer enough and more that they couldn’t cope with suffering and move on.

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In this case, it's the same thing.

As I said, the writers were trying to convey the idea that a life without suffering is either impossible or delusional. That's the entire reason we see the Ancients during the Final Days panicking and longing to go back to the way things were. The argument is that, without a life of suffering to make them "stronger", the Ancients were ill-prepared for when it finally came. Thus, they were doomed to fall into even more delusional and blissfully-ignorant dreams of "utopia" if they ever got their paradise back.

I could spend all day unpacking the faults with this philosophy, why it doesn't quite work as the writers intended, and why it's potentially harmful, but my point at the moment is just to explain why, to the story's logic, the Ancients were painted as "delusional".

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Originally Posted by Theodric

As an aside, the latest seasonal event made me realise that there really isn't much in the way of suspense left in the game these days. The premise of the event in question is a fashion show and I had a strong hunch that our character would win and that's exactly what happened.

Does anyone else find it boring? I don't play narrative heavy games to have my ego stroked so the idea that the player character succeeds at almost every task - be it major or minor - simply doesn't do anything for me. Even indirect aid provided by the player character usually results in victory for the NPC in question. Which, again, feels boring to me. We don't see or experience much in the way of a struggle on any meaningful capacity it seems. Which is ironic given the supposed 'themes'.

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I see I'm not the only one who's making the event last minute :P

After being engaged in this thread for so long it was very funny because one of the options to say is literally "I had a hunch I would win".

And I feel like for this event there was a chunk that was cut off in the middle. Like we went from the introduction to the contest and auto-winning, without any sort of "conflict" in-between to be solved. There weren't even other contestants presented! It feels really off.

It's also off that Redolent Masked Rose is impressed by "quite the unconventional combination", which in the case of the "princess" option is just a standard Ishgardian ballroom dress which has been in the game for soooo long and even involved in WVR quests, and always presented as a 1-piece dress (despite the jacket). What "combination"? And no idea what's "unconventional" about the seneschal outfit.

They're just not trying to immerse us anymore. This was so disjointed. Not long until they have bots writing the quests. Maybe this event was already written by one.

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Originally Posted by Sicno

They're just not trying to immerse us anymore. This was so disjointed. Not long until they have bots writing the quests. Maybe this event was already written by one.

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Again, it's a seasonal quest. They've always been mediocre compared to the actual game story writing. It's an excuse plot to hand you items.

I'd love the seasonal quests to have more spark to them, but maybe they don't want to spend actual good ideas on something temporary.

I'm coming up to... four? five? years of playing and seasonal quests have hardly produced anything engaging in all that time. A couple of character skits have been decent, but the core "tugging the heartstrings" plot is always trite. "Here's a person/animal/pet rock who is sad. Help them fulfil their dream! Congratulations, you did it!"

If there are genuine complaints to be made about the writing in the MSQ – and I don't dispute that there are, though I'll disagree with some here on the details – then I think raising the seasonal quests as "proof" is muddying the waters. They're not proof of a recent decline but a longstanding dullness in a specific corner of the game.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

Again, it's a seasonal quest. They've always been mediocre compared to the actual game story writing. It's an excuse plot to hand you items.

I'd love the seasonal quests to have more spark to them, but maybe they don't want to spend actual good ideas on something temporary.

I'm coming up to... four? five? years of playing and seasonal quests have hardly produced anything engaging in all that time. A couple of character skits have been decent, but the core "tugging the heartstrings" plot is always trite. "Here's a person/animal/pet rock who is sad. Help them fulfil their dream! Congratulations, you did it!"

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But even then, at the very minimum there's a basic structure questlines usually follow in this game, including events:


-There's an introduction, where they present a character you'll stick with through the questline. They'll tell you who they are and give you a broad idea of what they're trying to achieve.

-There's a basic task to perform, like talking to npcs around town, making some delivery, checking some place, etc.

-Upon reuniting with the quest character and having a little bit of chatter a bigger conflict is introduced (with "worrying" music playing).

-From this point the quest structure and objectives vary until said conflict is resolved, but some common points involve learning more about the character and their ultimate goal, and by talking to you while you silently listen they reach some sort of epiphany which lets them resolve their conflict.

-After the conflict is resolved there's some sort of motivational speech and they'll thank you for your help/inspiration even when all you did was slilently stare at them and nod. But this is NOT the end of the questline.

-Meet them again in town. They'll thank you some more and give you your reward.



I feel like in this case they didn't even get to presenting the "actual conflict" and skipped directly to the victory lap.

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Originally Posted by PawPaw

Ugh, rant over and bedtime.

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Exactly this. Without ample assistance from a variety of sources, they'd fail this "test" outright; they're even more susceptible to dynamis to the point that it consumes them in the process. Much as they would fail Hermes's own twisted "test" outright one way or another. All the while, because the writers don't really want to fully commit to the implications of this "accept suffering" ideology, mankind continues to strive to minimise suffering and towards "better tomorrows".

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Originally Posted by AziraSyuren

It’s less they had to go because they didn’t suffer enough and more that they couldn’t cope with suffering and move on. The irony being that Venat suffered enough to take such a drastic action herself, showing that she was also unable to cope with it. Then she proceeded to spend entire millennia entirely alone to bear the weight of what she had done and inflicted on others, leaving her as the only one who actually had to cope with that suffering.

Well, her and the ascians she left alive.

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The story may try to present it that way but my real problem with it is (based on the post-Elpis cutscene) she's just throwing a bunch of platitudes at them. This is a society that managed, one way or another, to reduce suffering along a number of dimensions and had Zodiark as a viable means of enacting their plans. She was not providing them with anything concrete to change their stance. I wouldn't have found her convincing either, in their shoes.

Then the Q&A premises a lot of this on her belief that her people wouldn't change - but what reason was she giving them to do so? There's various supposed reasons as to why she didn't want to reveal the truth about what happened, but whatever the case may be, she kept that to herself. All in all, what they may have wanted to convey and how plausible what they ended up putting in is are two very different things. Some people may see it the way they intended; I don't.

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Originally Posted by CrownySuccubus

Then, throughout the rest of the Elpis storyline, we learn that a familiar/concept with sapience and reason like the WOL is pretty much unheard of. Even Meteion is specifically stated to be unique. So basically, all of their familiars/concepts are basically monsters and animals...and if they're expecting players to dislike Ancients for treating animals and monsters as disposable, they must have forgotten what videogame we're playing. If anything, the charybdis portion shows us that even though they're pretty quick to write off "defective" concepts, they'll still listen to reason and reevaluate with sufficient evidence.

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Indeed, and the Elpis sidequests by and large further reinforce this.

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So, in the end, the entire premise of the Ancient society being bad because they didn't suffer enough relies on the logic of "trust me, bro". Even the aforementioned dead worlds they offer as "proof" (the Omicron, Ea and Plenty) come across less as worlds destroyed by their own hubris and more like juvenile writing.

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Agreed.

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Originally Posted by Theodric

It just feels off for the characters who genuinely struggle to all end up killed off by a supposedly well meaning 'herois' whereas those who get every possible advantage and 'I WIN' button handed to them are praised as saviours...despite doing very little of note.

Ah well. The Live Letter is tomorrow and the trailer for 6.1 should arrive as well. I'm curious to see what is in store next, though I'd be lying if I said I wasn't having much more fun with other games at the moment compared to this one.

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Yep, pretty much the same here. The ego stroking is not something I care for much and it just feels rather vapid.

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Originally Posted by CrownySuccubus

In this case, it's the same thing.

As I said, the writers were trying to convey the idea that a life without suffering is either impossible or delusional. That's the entire reason we see the Ancients during the Final Days panicking and longing to go back to the way things were. The argument is that, without a life of suffering to make them "stronger", the Ancients were ill-prepared for when it finally came. Thus, they were doomed to fall into even more delusional and blissfully-ignorant dreams of "utopia" if they ever got their paradise back.

I could spend all day unpacking the faults with this philosophy, why it doesn't quite work as the writers intended, and why it's potentially harmful, but my point at the moment is just to explain why, to the story's logic, the Ancients were painted as "delusional".

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I am still bothered by the sudden shift in focus from "Sacrificing more lives is bad" to "Not being able to cope with the loss of friends and loved ones is bad".

Confirmation that the Ancients who gave their lives to summon Zodiark were trapped in a state between life and death just made the desire to bring them back seem all the more justified, as being unable to return to the star in a society where doing such was seen as a beautiful fulfillment of one's life and purpose and a privilege would've been profoundly disturbing to them. Tellingly, Elidibus sounds relieved upon hearing that they were finally able to have their peace after Zodiark was destroyed.

Now, if they had been intending to undo all of the damage from the Final Days, including reviving those who had been killed by the disasters and beasts, then would've felt a lot more delusional and like a collapse of their society's values.

They were noted as having unfortunate "work accidents" from time to time, but it seems like they largely just accepted it and moved on and I think as long as they utilized creation magicks some level of suffering was going to be present in their lives.

I've been slowly going through EW and trying to pay attention to all the details. Got to the lopporits where Livingway says (in regards to Thancred's question about the shards): "We were born of Hydaelyn's love for Etheirys, and the salvation of the people on that star, and that star alone, has ever been our aim." So far, all I've seen is that the rejoinings were a problem because it made imprisoning Zodiark increasingly difficult. My long running theory was that the shards were ever collateral damage, but damn. The irony is this is the mentality people hated about the Ascians.

Famitsu, Game Watch and 4gamer released new pre-live letter interviews today. This Reddit thread provides a 'translation of key points' but does anyone know someone who would be willing to provide full translations? Or if already online somewhere, a link please?

I'm curious if there's more explanation to "On the Myths of the Realm alliance raids: “You could say this is close to being an epilogue to the Hydaelyn and Zodiark arc”."

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

Now, if they had been intending to undo all of the damage from the Final Days, including reviving those who had been killed by the disasters and beasts, then would've felt a lot more delusional and like a collapse of their society's values.

They were noted as having unfortunate "work accidents" from time to time, but it seems like they largely just accepted it and moved on and I think as long as they utilized creation magicks some level of suffering was going to be present in their lives.

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As I said, I could literally sit here all day and give a point-by-point list of all the problems with Endwalker's philosophy of "suffering-fetishism", but one of the major ones is exactly as you said. A period of time without major suffering or challenge is, essentially, just a time of normality. Acting as if a life without suffering is bad or makes people weak begs what the alternative should be: should people constantly be striving to make every aspect of life worse, just for the hell of it? If there are no sources of suffering and terror, should we make our own until we eventually get used to that, and then make something even worse just to make sure there's still a prerequisite amount of horror?

Like, if we take the Plenty at face value and assume they solved every problem they ever had, their despair over having nothing left to achieve makes no sense because it presumes that no challenges will ever happen to them ever again. Did no one on their planet invent sports or competition of any sort? Were there no natural disasters? Were there never any asteroid/meteor impact events? Did no one bring up the challenge of expanding offworld and into space? If they were so advanced, surely they could have made contact with other species that were willing to learn from them? I guess we're supposed to assume that their world had eliminated any need or worry about such things, but how or why? That's the thing: the story tells us they achieved a perfect "paradise", but glosses over exactly what that means.

I think there is a high chance that the future patches will expand the "cafe" at the Nekropolis and add recreations of the extinct races from the Dead Ends so we can perhaps get more detail on what eventually led to their ends.

I feel it's more likely to prove them all the more dissimilar to the Ancients, though. The people of the Plenty were described by Meteion as having eliminated all sources of strife, but the Ancients' creation magicks were probably the single biggest source of strife in their society, yet they chose to simply take mitigative measures through the screening process at Elpis and designated problem solvers like Azem and others as opposed to abandoning the pursuit entirely.