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

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Originally Posted by Xuto-cxb

Considering she is giving a speech about having to sunder everyone to make it impossible to return to paradise, and then says literally "I sunder us"...I don't see how it could be taken to be anything other than what it was. The entire cutscene is a disaster and I suspect localization issues aren't helping. It felt incredibly rushed and in dire need of a few more passes before it was anything near finished. That said, I'm not convinced it was hydaelyn either. It didn't look or sound like the venat-esque version we see in "present day" stuff. Whatever they were going for, they swung and missed by a mile.

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The entire cutscene is basically a summarized version of what led Venat/Hydaelyn to sunder the world I think. If we go by the long version of the struggle betweeen Zodiark and Hydaelyn as well as their respective supporters then it will be several movie worth of scenes. Like one poster already mentioned, the more detailed version has been told throughout the game from 1.0 to the present.

https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki...lyn_(character)
This wiki fandom clearly states as well that venat was already hydaelyn when she sundered both the world and Zodiark. Hence I think the entire cutscene was really merely a summarized version to show us in a short scene the mood, situation and reason for Venat's decision. Especially for people who did not pay attention to the stories from past expansion or have forgotten.

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Originally Posted by Kolsykol

I am pretty sure she was already Hydaelyn at that point.?

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Agree.

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Originally Posted by iheartlove42

ITT: People who've never played any other Final Fantasy's or JRPG's surprised by the time travel and the final trial boss coming out of nowhere as a being that represents a worldview (nihilism in this case). This is at least 50% of the genre. I mean there's at least a thousand JRPG's where at the end of the story the heroes discover that God exists and is evil, so they end up killing God. And then there's thousands more where the heroes discover everything was being manipulated by some villain who gets introduced in a cutscene right before you kill them at the end of the game.

The Japanese have a different culture than the audience of this board, their stories don't always follow the standard western novel narrative. It's actually why I like many JRPG's because it's something different. Not everything needs to be foreshadowed or perfectly explained but I guess Reddit addicts have come to expect that via Hollywood and the MCU.

Funny it's made it to 93 pages lmao.

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I’ve played every final fantasy game barring 11. If we really want to go down the “14 is like the other ff’s” then shall i bring up how the past ff games have actually had consequences for the protagonists and killed off their characters? If you read some of these posts you’d see that while people do take issue with meteion or what have you, there’s much more being said about the actual themes, how they’re contradicted numerous times, and(in peoples opinion) the overall poor writing for this end of a 10 year long arc.

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Originally Posted by KizuyaKatogami

I’ve played every final fantasy game barring 11. If we really want to go down the “14 is like the other ff’s” then shall i bring up how the past ff games have actually had consequences for the protagonists and killed off their characters? If you read some of these posts you’d see that while people do take issue with meteion or what have you, there’s much more being said about the actual themes, how they’re contradicted numerous times, and(in peoples opinion) the overall poor writing for this end of a 10 year long arc.

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I've also played pretty much every Final Fantasy game as well as various other JRPG's. FFXIV itself gave the impression of wanting to tell a mature, coherent story rather than plunge into the pitfalls that led so many other games in the genre astray.

In addition, as someone who left WoW due to that game jumping the shark with its own storytelling? Well, it's a shame to see yet another MMO arguably make some of the same mistakes!

It'll be interesting to see if they address any of the criticism of the story in the upcoming Live Letter(s).

Was really disappointed with how Anima was handled. Expected him to at the very least be a trial...not a dungeon boss...especially considering how powerful she is in FFX

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Originally Posted by iheartlove42

ITT: People who've never played any other Final Fantasy's or JRPG's surprised by the time travel and the final trial boss coming out of nowhere as a being that represents a worldview (nihilism in this case). This is at least 50% of the genre. I mean there's at least a thousand JRPG's where at the end of the story the heroes discover that God exists and is evil, so they end up killing God. And then there's thousands more where the heroes discover everything was being manipulated by some villain who gets introduced in a cutscene right before you kill them at the end of the game.

The Japanese have a different culture than the audience of this board, their stories don't always follow the standard western novel narrative. It's actually why I like many JRPG's because it's something different. Not everything needs to be foreshadowed or perfectly explained but I guess Reddit addicts have come to expect that via Hollywood and the MCU.

Funny it's made it to 93 pages lmao.

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Wow, what a way to generalize everyone here. And culture doesn't do shit when modern Japanese literature are being influenced by Western ideology, and vice versa.


If you are FF "fan", then you must have known how "final trial boss that come out of nowhere", like Necron for example, has sparked debate among the fandom. Some feels it's a good thing while others feel the opposite. It's the same here with Meteion. And regarding time-travel, people are more troubled with how it's written, not the time-travel itself.

The difference between those JRPG games and FFXIV, is that they are single-player game that was done in 50 hours or so, not a game that spans for 10 years. Shoving new concept (dynamis) and final boss that is personification of despair halfway through EW is just jarring.

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Originally Posted by KizuyaKatogami

I’ve played every final fantasy game barring 11. If we really want to go down the “14 is like the other ff’s” then shall i bring up how the past ff games have actually had consequences for the protagonists and killed off their characters? If you read some of these posts you’d see that while people do take issue with meteion or what have you, there’s much more being said about the actual themes, how they’re contradicted numerous times, and(in peoples opinion) the overall poor writing for this end of a 10 year long arc.

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Originally Posted by Theodric

I've also played pretty much every Final Fantasy game as well as various other JRPG's. FFXIV itself gave the impression of wanting to tell a mature, coherent story rather than plunge into the pitfalls that led so many other games in the genre astray.

In addition, as someone who left WoW due to that game jumping the shark with its own storytelling? Well, it's a shame to see yet another MMO arguably make some of the same mistakes!

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They do kill off characters in previous expansions. The Scions heavily followed in Endwalker were the core members that everyone stans. If any one of them died you two would be writing an essay in a different thread about how that's bad writing according to this Youtube channel you watched or just being mad your favorite character died. The last major Scion they killed off (Papalymo) made a lot of people seethe.

Not everything has to be grimdark or GoT style where characters die left and right, eventually the shock wears off. For example, Avatar: The Last Airbender manages to be mature leaning while having every main character make it through to the end and most of humanity loves that show. I always got the feeling FF14 had a similar tone to that show. I'll admit when I started the xpac I thought some of the Scions would die, but after Garlemald I realized they're probably all gonna make it and I accepted it because it means I can commission more lewd art of my WoL and Y'shtola.

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Originally Posted by Akimori

Was really disappointed with how Anima was handled. Expected him to at the very least be a trial...not a dungeon boss...especially considering how powerful she is in FFX

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Varis got robbed.

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Originally Posted by Kozh

Wow, what a way to generalize everyone here. And culture doesn't do shit when modern Japanese literature are being influenced by Western ideology, and vice versa.


If you are FF "fan", then you must have known how "final trial boss that come out of nowhere", like Necron for example, has sparked debate among the fandom. Some feels it's a good thing while others feel the opposite. It's the same here with Meteion. And regarding time-travel, people are more troubled with how it's written, not the time-travel itself.

The difference between those JRPG games and FFXIV, is that they are single-player game that was done in 50 hours or so, not a game that spans for 10 years. Shoving new concept (dynamis) and final boss that is personification of despair halfway through EW is just jarring.

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Dynamis was foreshadowed by the Omega raids. Omega says there's some kind of energy it can't detect fueling you and hints it's willpower based. It's basically a lore explanation for the power of friendship. It's influenced heavily by Spiral Power from Gurren Lagann. This game (and most of the series) is first and foremost marketed towards Japanese players, Final Fantasy just happened to be the JRPG series that blew up in the west during the 90s on the SNES and Playstation. Maybe on this forum a lot of people will have played it but you'll be hard pressed to find people in the general western populace who have ever heard of or played Drakengard, Xenosaga, Yakuza, SaGa, .hack, Ogre Battle etc.

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Originally Posted by iheartlove42

They do kill off characters in previous expansions.

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Very few characters of prominence have actually been killed off. Typically they fall into some very specific categories - you have the throwaway characters such as Tesleen that are introduced and then killed off five minutes later. You have secondary characters such as Papalymo who didn't spend nearly as much time in the spotlight as the other Scions did. In addition, there's antagonists - who are usually made sympathetic right before they are killed off. Then there's characters such as Minfilia who were controversial and were arguably considered safe targets to eliminate.

Nobody on the level of Y'shtola, Alisae or Raubahn has ever been in danger of actually dying - which in the eyes of many, serves to erode away any sense of threat or loss.

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Originally Posted by iheartlove42

The Scions heavily followed in Endwalker were the core members that everyone stans. If any one of them died you two would be writing an essay in a different thread about how that's bad writing according to this Youtube channel you watched or just being mad your favorite character died.

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I think that is a rather strange assumption to make and I think it's pretty clear that you haven't read many of the posts throughout this thread if that is your take on the contributions here.

I'm personally indifferent to the Scions and most of my favourite characters have been killed off or have been reduced to background figures in role quests. Not everybody throws a fit if their 'fave' perishes.

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Originally Posted by iheartlove42

The last major Scion they killed off (Papalymo) made a lot of people seethe.

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Who? Where? I've participated in discussions across a number of different platforms and I have very rarely seen Papalymo brought up outside of the patch, years ago, when he died.

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Originally Posted by iheartlove42

Not everything has to be grimdark or GoT style where characters die left and right, eventually the shock wears off.

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I've always found such comparisons to be disingenuous. Putting aside the simple fact that Game of Thrones was hardly the first story in existence to kill off major characters, hardly anyone in this thread is even asking for mass character deaths. It's simply being suggested that if a threat is to be taken seriously, then killing off one or two major characters in a way that makes sense would not only show that the stakes are high but also allow more room for new faces to step into the spotlight.

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Originally Posted by iheartlove42

For example, Avatar: The Last Airbender manages to be mature leaning while having every main character make it through to the end and most of humanity loves that show.

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Large swathes of humanity adore fast food, though that hardly equals fine dining.

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Originally Posted by iheartlove42

I always got the feeling FF14 had a similar tone to that show.

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ARR and HW had a mature tone with realistic consequences for what was happening at the time. SB and beyond is where the writing arguably took a shift towards low stakes engagements.

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Originally Posted by iheartlove42

I'll admit when I started the xpac I thought some of the Scions would die, but after Garlemald I realized they're probably all gonna make it and I accepted it because it means I can commission more lewd art of my WoL and Y'shtola.

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Such is often the motivation as to why certain characters supposedly cannot be killed off, it seems.