I really hope than Fandaniel and Zenos are not... (spoilers)

[KizuyaKatogami]

Man. I never knew that people had such rough feelings on Shadowbringers and 5.3. I conversely consider them to be some of the heights of the game's storytelling. They have a level of thematic coherence and resonance that no other expansion comes close to matching. Each side plot, each main event (even those stupid trolly boyz) all feed back into the same themes, motifs, and core concepts. It's a level of cohesion that you don't see very often in video games in general, let alone a mass-market MMORPG. Granted, I care a lot more about thematic concerns than 'realism in the setting' or what have you. I felt that Elidibus got one hell of a send-off, even if I understand why some people disagree.

Elidibus was a character from 2.0, that was built up to be essentially the “leader” if you will of the ascians. He’s the heart of zodiark, he’s regarded as the emissary etc etc. The problem i have with the ShB patches is that for starters, the man got two patches before being killed off, whereas we have some random guy who’s only motivation us to fight us, who’s had 3 expansions now and killed off a character with far more potential than him. As for Elidibus himself in 5.3, there were just so many plot holes that they created in making him out to be this primal. For starters why didn’t he just feed off of peoples faith in garlemald as zenos to beat us. We would’ve been dead. Why did Emet go against him? He would’ve won and their goal would’ve succeeded. Not to mention the dropped plot line of the crystarium WoL’s, Elidibus whole random memory issue which came out of absolutely nowhere, the whole plot with him “forging the final key” that was brought up in ARR and then never spoke of again. He deserved far more than to be butchered in two patches and not even given a unique form or trial. Instead it’s, here’s ff1 WoL for haha fanservice and the dissociate model with the dissidia move set. There was so much more they could’ve done with him but instead they chose to completely rush that storyline and in the end, Emet was more of an Emissary than Elidibus was, and despite him being the heart of Zodiark we were shown basically nothing of that relation at all.

[Theodric]

Honestly discussions like these really help me cement the fact this game has long since took a detour that I was never on board with.

I attribute a lot of it as pandering to the very vocal portion of the game's player base that flocks to Twitter. You may or may not be familiar with Attack on Titan - which finally concluded its story not too long ago. It, too, suffered similarly rushed pacing during the final arc and questionable shifts in tone/mood/character motivation. All to appease the portion of the fanbase who weren't on board with what the story set out to do and were so deep down the rabbit hole of head canon and shipping that the priority for the writer became turning the final arc into...a love story, of all things.

I've come to notice a lot of similar patterns in regards to FFXIV. We've gone from having a game world that felt dangerous and of consequence to...G'raha wriggling his ears because he's so obsessed with the player character.

I'll be giving Endwalker a fair chance, though I do hope it has at least some real stakes and lasting consequences for the protagonists given that it is meant to be the conclusion of most of the game's plot points from the days of 1.0 and 2.0.

Then it'll just be a matter of seeing what the new story elements involve - if they intrigue me, I'll stick around. If they don't, I'll either stop caring about the story altogether or just go elsewhere.

[CaesarCV]

Snip.

Side note, I'm going to "defend Elidibus" moreso than "defend Zenos" here lol. Our homicidally psychopathic Crown Prince may have a ridiculously sexy voice but I'm not going to say he's a great character unless they do a very good job retooling him in Endwalkers. Who knows, maybe we'll get lucky.

Some of this feels a bit more like willfully ignoring all of the buildup and development Elidibus had over the past few expansions, all of which just culminated in patch 5.3. He didn't get "2 patches" he got entire expansions worth of buildup and a slow explanation of his objectives, ideals, and nature which ended up being explained with his final reveal as a 'warrior of hope' in the climax. In a few patches, we get a pretty complete arc of growing frustrations, and a wonderful shift towards a more human version of the character. The sheer anger and fury that he displays over Elidibus's death and his incredible desperation as the last of the Ascians. The importance of memory, legacy, and the lack thereof is a vital theme of Shadowbringers, so it's kind of important to bring that into the final boss of the entire expansion. The loss of the Prime Ascians represents the loss of the memory of the Amaoroutine people, so adding in some extra stakes with Elidibus himself furthers those themes and heightens the drama. As for Emet-Selch's decision...it makes perfect sense if you take a look at the story thematically. Throughout all of Shadowbringers, Emet-Selch's goal is to sacrifice the new in order to resurrect the old. To kill a wonderful world of wondrous people in order to try and bring back what was lost. In his final moments, he finally lets go of this dream, and instead entrusts the dreams and memories of Amaurot to the next generation. Him saving the player (the present/future) against Elidibus/Azem (the past) is a demonstration of how things changed in the last moment.

Not sure how the WoL in the Chrystarium were dropped. They're clearly among the many souls that Elidibus uses in his plans. Additionally, I get the idea that he should have had a more unique appearance, but it's also vital that he represent a hero in the purest sense for his final battle. Elidibus is the white-robed ascian. The savior. He's a parallel of the player in many ways, a man desperately trying to save his people and embody the hopes that others put on him. And even better they cap it all off on the horrific reveal that he was basically a child. I feel like people kind of get lost in the hyper-specific plot mechanics like screentime when it's more important to view artwork through the media of thematic analysis and emotional resonance. This seems like a pretty perfect example of that.

[KizuyaKatogami]

snip

Elidibus didn’t start getting development until really the end patches of SB when he snatched Zenos’ body. Even then though there were weird conflicts with his character but i’ll ignore those. He really didn’t have much going for him because there were things that they built up, like the final key that just got dropped.Throughout the story we’re shown how calculating he is. He’s referred to as cunning and methodical yet he decides to throw himself at us in 5.2 and 5.3 which is a complete clash of his character. Elidibus deliberately let his memories go, and in context of the story it’s good that he did. Because as we see with emet he let his emotions get the better of him and he failed his duty. There is a lot from 5.3 that just doesn’t make sense. Example being Yshtola at the end of 5.3, she…somehow comes up with a hypothesis that Emet helped us so that Elidibus could be free. Yet we literally trapped him with his sorrowful memories inside a tower for eternity. As for the whole wonderful world thing…debatable. The life is sundered, the world is sundered. According to the devs the sundering even made the world unstable. The sundering made all lives susceptible to age and illness. The ascians’ goal of rejoining would end many lives sure, but it would also restore them to what they once were and lead to less death overall as people would be back to normal, able to live for thousands upon thousands of years and be safe from illness.The WoL in the crystarium was dropped because they built it up as if the crystarium people would go and become WoL’s, and start doing good deeds to trigger another flood of light. Which would’ve led to an interesting plot of, well how are the scions going to stop them, they can’t tell people to not do good things. This entire plot however was dropped in 5.3 when the alchemist lady says how a majority of them just decided not to become them and stayed back.The WoL souls elidibus conjured up were from other shards, not the crystarium people.Also, he wasn’t a child. I really wish people would understand this. He’s around Graha age, early 20’s basically, not a kid lmao. There were just so many things that didn’t make sense and felt so rushed. As a character from 2.0 and as Zodiark’s heart, he really should’ve had an expansion to himself. In the end yes, he was given basically two patches as a character other than the minor brief appearances he made in other expansions. He had very little time to actually shine, just like Varis. Both were victims of rushed storytelling and the writers not knowing what to do with them. The problem also with the other expansions which i mentioned previously is, the elidibus we got in 5.2 and 5.3 doesn’t feel like the elidibus we knew in past expansions as the way he acts is such a clash with what was built up previously.

[Terin]

Like I said, I like Zenos from the perspective of a potential "rival" more than "main antagonist"

I do wish they would A) revamp his appearance somewhat (a little more rugged or less "girly" perhaps), and B) do a little more to showcase his supposedly being a brilliant and ruthless tactician.

I'm personally hoping that, when the chips are down and if Zodiark manifests as a final boss, Zenos might join our side, if only temporarily, to prove his strength and ensure we live on to duel him again.

As far as Elidibus... man, I freaking LOVED how he and Emet-Selch were handled. Beautifully tragic, in a way there's a part of me that wishes we could've worked alongside them, but I guess that's what makes such a great couple of "villains". I'm super disappointed with the unique Weapons you can craft based on them, though.

[Crushnight]

There's hints of this in certain interviews they did re-jig aspects of the story, so I'm inclined to agree with this. Elements of the story they went with (e.g. Elidibus's Primal nature, as well as the memory loss) just about barely worked if you don't look too closely.

Regarding Ishikawa, I believe she's competent enough, but in the end, character popularity seems to play a big part in their decision making, and it can fluctuate quite a lot, and is a likely constraint that can force last minute changes. In particular, I suspect they may have had more planned for Elidibus, but Emet-Selch took a lot of his thunder, and his rather meteoric popularity must have been too tempting to resist putting to use, plus I am sure they began to grow leery of the fan reaction of terminating the Exarch for good. IMO 5.3 was a mix of good (ancients'/Elidibus backstory) and bad (much of the rest, afaic), and I was disappointed in some ways, because I was expecting great things out of Elidibus following 5.2... not for him to be dispatched summarily by 5.3, a mere few patches after Emet was taken out. Elidibus and Varis were two of my favourite characters.

This so much you can see that this happened many times throughout the story.

3.1 and 3.4 Renda Rae and Brae(The roe I can't remember how to spell) were gleeful in their fights with us.

Brae had a big ol grin as he was pushing his sword down on Y'shtola as she was barely keeping it from hitting it's mark, Renda Rae smirk when she realised she that she didn't miss hitting Alisae after Alphinaud spoke.

These characters, we were meant to be sympathetic towards, their portrayal in He's patches were anything but until the time to call on Minfilia.


I have the stance Zenos was meant to die in 4.0 because the patches afterwards are so sloppy in their execution around him. Zenos was popular because he was a very different villain at the time compared to the Villians prior but he had no staying power as a character once he slit his own neck, suicide is a big thing to make a character do, and it is laughably brushed off, what weight is there to the next conflict with Zenos, he came back from willingly dying, he dies again, guess what I ain't going to believe he is dead dead until the game shuts down now, he will be a loaded gun that always could come back because he came back when he willingly died.

[Theodric]

I'd be pretty gleeful putting a sword to most of the Scions, especially pre-Shadowbringers.

It's a classic case of 'it's okay when we do it' because there's numerous examples of the Scions cheering and smirking when they're about to go slaughter a bunch of Garleans or whatever.

[CaesarCV]

I mean, to be fair the whole 'gleeful violence thing' with Renda-Rae and the Warriors of Darkness is kind of a deliberate misdirect to make you think that they're villainous when they actually have more heroic motivations.

And like, not sure where the heroes were super thrilled to kill Garleans. I can't think of a single instance? Like, I guess Yda is still pretty chipper despite having to fight people but I can't think of many other times?

[Rokke]

Ishikawa isn't looking like that good of a writer since 5.1 and I'll be extremely surprised if she somehow turns it around with Endwalker.

Late reply to this thought but iirc Ishikawa did not write 5.1 or 5.2 (or .4/.5), she was only involved in 5.0 + 5.3 since she's part of the team that hammers out the groundwork for xpacs. If anything I wish the writing team really hammered out the pacing of the events leading to her next patch better because the pacing goes sideways when others are given the wheel, ie. if the team knew Elidibus was getting offed in 5.3 they really should have made him do more than his usual "all according to keikaku'"ing in the background for 2 patches. Going through msq on a 2nd character makes the whiplash so much more obvious :/

As for our current leading baddies...well, I have hopes for Danny. Zenos has had several xpacs worth of screen time and I still find him boring. Hoping whatever "The Sound" is will be revealed as the real big bad.

[CaesarCV]

if the team knew Elidibus was getting offed in 5.3 they really should have made him do more than his usual "all according to keikaku'"ing in the background for 2 patches. Going through msq on a 2nd character makes the whiplash so much more obvious :/

I feel a little like I'm taking crazy pills since I see these sorts of comments everywhere. Even at the Stinger of SHB he was panicking and getting angry and impulsive, and he continues more impulsive plans and the like throughout the next patches despite keeping a facade of civility and calculation that keeps breaking every time he talks to you. There are plenty of times I feel like the creators clearly changed their plans around (I think that Amarout wasn't always going to be quite so utopian, for instance, and that Stormblood was originally going to have Minfilia as the main character instead of Lyse) but there's a pretty clear throughline between the calm Elidibus and the one we see by 5.3 after all of his plans have been failing left and right and everyone he knows and loves is dead.

As for our current leading baddies...well, I have hopes for Danny. Zenos has had several xpacs worth of screen time and I still find him boring. Hoping whatever "The Sound" is will be revealed as the real big bad.

I kinda hope "The Sound" is more of just an elemental force or something. We don't really need "A calamity but biggar" as our final boss imo. Granted, with Zodiark and hearing the other side of the Final Days (IE, getting Venat/Hydelyan's perspective) we'll have plenty of cool stuff on the way in Endwalkers. I'm worried about Zenos but at least he and Fandaniel are fun to watch.