I don't think the game's direction is sustainable anymore (ending spoilers)

[Thatusernameistaken]

How you can get to the end of this story and not trust this team to write another amazing tale is beyond me.

[Powercow]

I had a really, really off-the-wall wildcard theory that didn't come true... *yet*... about how they could de-escalate things. Yoshida did say the audience would exclaim, "They would go THAT FAR?!" when we see how they plan to tell the new story after Endwalker, so something really drastic is definitely on the table. Given that this is a team who blew up the world to reboot the game once already... well...

As for the bats*** insane theory...

What if we die? And I don't mean like, "go to the Shadowlands" or "get killed and resurrected" but I mean legitimately, the Warrior of Light is dead. Dead-dead. Dies and does not come back. Big heroic sacrifice. We'd be playing a whole new character, who has to prove to the world we can be a hero to fill the shoes of the WoL.

They *DID* set up the memory-wiping thing in this expansion, so future cutscenes could talk about how they just vaguely remember who that person was. Kiiinda like they did from 1.0 to 2.0.

Of course from an actual gameplay standpoint, there's 0% chance they'd delete our characters or take our stuff. And doing any old content would definitely need a suspension of disbelief, but given that you can queue for Thordan -- who's very much dead and doesn't even have worshippers to re-summon him -- I think the playerbase can cope with it. We even get tangible equipment from stuff like Zodiark Extreme, and that's literally the Wandering Minstrel overexaggerating a story.

And even then, we can always just say that we're experiencing what the Warrior of Light did through that ever-convenient mechanic, the Echo. Look at the 1.0 trailer (that SE re-uploaded recently); the WoL there is experiencing another hero's story (and that guy definitely did not survive that fall) through a leveplate. Maybe if we do old quests we'd just be experiencing the Warrior of Light's adventures.

Is this theory likely? Almost certainly not. Just the ramblings of a sleep-deprived madman. But I would not put it past them to do something drastic.

[TristanX]

There are many doors open since ARR. They definitely could come up with something. One of them is defeating a Primal is not permanent.

[Flarestar]

They already basically set up that Zodiark is likely not actually gone.

[LariaKirin]

I think there were more important components to the story than scale. Characters and mysteries. Questions and satisfying answers.

Emet-Selch being stronger than what came before him is not what made Shadowbringers great. I'd argue the same for Endwalker. It's the answers we got throughout the story.

So when I think about visiting another shard, I'm not thinking about what big bad we'll fight. I'm thinking about what we'll discover and what questions we will have next.

[KageTokage]

The stakes are going to be lower by necessity going into the future, but I don't think that's a bad thing.

Moving onto more grounded HW-like stories where we free a nation/country of its plight would be perfectly fine with me.

[anhaato]

Listen I'm not opposed to going back to basics at all, once again it's what I want more than anything, but I worry about the reception or if they'll manage to make good battles out of it. But I suppose the responses in here are heartening.

They already basically set up that Zodiark is likely not actually gone.

Bro what

[ArkenaeuxBelmont]

Without Hydaelyn's blessing we basically are just a regular adventurer now. We don't have any otherworldly shield or ability. Even the power of Azem's crystal is gone.

All it takes for a back to basics for us now, is a more grounded local type of story. Send us to Merycidia so we can assist with whatever the cultural and political stakes exist over there (Hell, Tiamat could easily serve as the gateway for this). Send us to the New World to explore on behalf of the East Aldenard Trading Company, or Tataru wanting to expand her dang merchantile enterprise. There are SO many places left unexplored on our Star, that was the entire point of Emet's speech to us. We know so very little. There's an entire world where we have yet to walk.

The end of the universe is no longer hanging over our head. Our star is safe. We can go and do anything we want, without world ending threats being an issue. Let's see what groundwork they lay for us, to walk along for another ten years.

[Floortank]

My point is: regardless of where the story goes, this will be seen as its highest peak, and it'll be controversial regardless. If the threats keep becoming greater, many of us will grow exhausted and find it contrived. If the threats become smaller, people will complain that it's boring. And should the threats be smaller, how will the story be compelling? How could we possibly struggle against anything? Primals are a joke to us now, only a god offers us a challenge.

This progression you're describing of "we're too strong, enemy must get stronger" is not how storytelling works outside of certain anime.

Think about it this way.

Zenos kicks our ass in Stormblood. We go all the way through Stormblood until we're strong enough to get our W back. Zenos is really the first person to step to us and just beat us straight up anywhere in the MSQ to that point. Then we hand him an L.

Next expansion, we're rolling around Lakeland, fighting off a Eulmoran invasion when suddenly Ran'jit, and hands us and all of the Scions an L.

Is your conclusion that Ran'jit is more powerful and more badass than Zenos? Because he isn't.

This event should be your first clue that the story has careened off the conventions of a shounen anime to describe a less shallow sort of universe, where the "top of the heap" is not a matter of power levels, but rather a matter of narrative nuance and cunning description, and where your character's mortality is always in view of their uncanny positioning between gods and men.

It could be practically anyone who steps up to replace us, or kill us. Hell, we even "died" in the future to a simple poisonous gas, albeit after being weakened by the stasis of the 8th Umbral Calamity.

Spider-man has been around for 59 years, and in those years, one week he defeats the Incredible Hulk, only next week to lose a fight to Paste Pot Pete. While individual stories may have more or less merit, the overall momentum of a title does not stem from a writer's ability to make you believe or disbelieve, but rather to make you care enough to keep reading.

[Averax]

My first thought as i neared the end was "How in the hell do they top killing actual god, the devil, and the physical embodiment of entropy, where do we go from here?"

Sure there will always be problems in the world, they stressed the importance of that quite heavily, but wow it got a little grandiose this expansion, and with no secret temporary power up we could use to handwave going back to fighting proverbial boars in the woods.