Spoiler, Sploilers, and more Spoilers

[Cithaerias_pyropina]

tl;dr: instead of cheaply kill off characters to make the player feel, the writers have been investing make the NPC more interesting to make us feel far more than their death. And I applaud them for it.

This has caused the exact opposite for me. I loathe many of this game's characters because I know full well absolutely nothing bad will happen to any of them and if something bad does happen it'll be hand waved away a cutscene later. The lack of death has made many of the characters boring and stale because I know nothing of substance will happen. Why do I need to feel any sort of emotional attachment toward any character when I know nothing will happen to them. The only characters I were ever attached to are unironically all dead now. Wilred, dead. Ardbert, dead. Palpylmo, dead. Eulmaron Adjutant, dead. Elidibus, dead. Now I'm stuck with a merry band of Mary Sues. I'm so wanting that in 6.x none of the scions will be present as they're all so flawless, perfect, irritating and unrelatable.

[Theodric]

This has caused the exact opposite for me. I loathe many of this game's characters because I know full well absolutely nothing bad will happen to any of them and if something bad does happen it'll be hand waved away a cutscene later. The lack of death has made many of the characters boring and stale because I know nothing of substance will happen. Why do I need to feel any sort of emotional attachment toward any character when I know nothing will happen to them. The only characters I were ever attached to are unironically all dead now. Wilred, dead. Ardbert, dead. Palpylmo, dead. Eulmaron Adjutant, dead. Elidibus, dead. Now I'm stuck with a merry band of Mary Sues. I'm so wanting that in 6.x none of the scions will be present as they're all so flawless, perfect, irritating and unrelatable.

I'm in the same boat. The Scions have long since overstayed their welcome and I would enjoy the ability to tell them to back off. Especially G'raha. Of all the characters that they could possibly have fawn over over our character, it just had to be him.

He's so weird looking. I want my character to shove him in a locker and toss it into the sea. I'd much prefer someone like Hien or Magnai worshipping the ground my character walks upon instead. At least they're hot.

[van_arn]

I'm in the same boat. The Scions have long since overstayed their welcome and I would enjoy the ability to tell them to back off. Especially G'raha. Of all the characters that they could possibly have fawn over over our character, it just had to be him.

He's so weird looking. I want my character to shove him in a locker and toss it into the sea. I'd much prefer someone like Hien or Magnai worshipping the ground my character walks upon instead. At least they're hot.

Fordola. You forgot to mention Fordola as the ultimate Scion.

[Shuuli]

The only reason I do not like time travel is that it is very hard to keep the rules consistent. When Graha used it, he created multiple timelines, when we use it, we cannot change anything.

I actually don't mind the original theory where we CAN change the events. I personally really would like to see the age of the 12. Way before the Zodi - Hida ark, waaaay before the original unsundered Man situation.

And the story did feel very fanservicy at some points.

I really liked the Garlemald story though. To me, that zone story wise was 10/10. (Except anything related to Zenos and Fandaniel)

The last zone was rushed by my opinion. Because of how fast your friends disappear, and how very little time is given to dwell on it, you just know that they will be fine. I wish that we had more parts of that zone FULLY ALONE. To get a bit of weight of the happenings.

And lastly, Zenos and Fandaniel's presence and Zenos's story was so "meh" to me. Many times I felt like the writers did not really know what to do with Zenos and they just wanted to put an end to his story because of that.

[Awarewolf]

I think that we really needed this story to conclude with 7.0 as originally planned. Far too much happened in too short a period of time and as such it wasn't able to properly 'settle'. Much of the story also ended up being needlessly convoluted and I daresay it almost feels as though it was written to get maximum 'feels' even at the cost of what made sense to actually occur. Worse yet, certain characters and zones were clearly not given their fair share of time in the spotlight in order to mash everything together.

I also think it jumped the shark and escalated things to a ridiculous degree. I wasn't pleased when WoW did that and I am certainly not pleased with FFXIV going down the same route.

I am in total agreement. It just seemed like the emotional points were put in just to specifically make a fanboy (me) cry. Because it felt forced and contrived, I just didn't buy it. I didn't have an "ah-ha!" moment. Not even a *clutch my pearls* moment.

It just felt like a Final Fantasy way to end the story, but not the FFXIV way to end the story, ya know?

[RyuDragnier]

It just felt like a Final Fantasy way to end the story, but not the FFXIV way to end the story, ya know?

*looks at ends of 1.0, ARR, HW, SB, and ShB*
Are you SURE about that?

[Kozh]

First thing first, let me just say that I enjoy EW, I like it. I give it 8/10. I like the story in general, thavnair and Garlemald (especially) sections are really well done. I LOVE Elpis and meeting the Ancients again. However, whatever enjoyment I get from the elpis part, I have the equal amount of disappointment. It's really hard to describe my feelings about it lol.

Maybe I'm biased because above all else, I just want to save the Ancients. When we went to the past, I thought "oh we will have branching timeline like in ShB, they will be saved", but no, because the WoL needs to come back to their OG timeline, the only different thing is venat put a track on meteion. For all talk about her wisdom as previous Azem, her being friends with the current Azem (and in turn, with emet and hythlodaeus), about gathering trustworthy people; in the end it went back to "summon hydaelyn" and waiting for the chosen one. Don't get me wrong though, I like her a lot, but because of that expectation, I'm let down by her choice.

The next dissapointing thing is dynamis. It's such a vague thing that the Ancients can't even really explain it. The game also basically have to go "it just works, don't thing to much about it". I find "emotion power" to be a very loose concept that's prone to bad writing. I have to say that they do a decent job to make it make sense fortunately. And honestly dynamis being introduced this late is partially why I dislike it too. Feels like they're struggling to look for an explanation of the Sound and have to make a new concept for it.

*yes I know about the whole LB thing, but still, it's janky.

All in all, I have to agree with Theodoric that it should have ended in 7.0 like it was planned before. So many things crammed into this expansion. I would rather the Sound being alien crashing to the earth (like jenova) rather than dynamis.

[Ririta]

So... I'm not a fan of dynamis myself due to its future implications, its a deus ex machina that can bail us out whenever the writers feel like it.

But how are we sure that LBs are dynamis? Dynamis' nature is that it can be anything, even the paths that the scions build for us is explained as "dynamis". Can't LBs just be the LBs that we know and love and the dynamis that the boss saw is our *Determination to survive and beat it?

[KizuyaKatogami]

So... I'm not a fan of dynamis myself due to its future implications, its a deus ex machina that can bail us out whenever the writers feel like it.

But how are we sure that LBs are dynamis? Dynamis' nature is that it can be anything, even the paths that the scions build for us is explained as "dynamis". Can't LBs just be the LBs that we know and love and the dynamis that the boss saw is our *Determination to survive and beat it?

Well that’s the thing, they kind of imply this expansion that limit breaks are fueled by dynamis, but there’s so much that contradicts that. It’s like they didn’t look back on all the past stuff they wrote for it lol. And then of course there’s the Meteion thing. None of it adds up and it’s just another plot hole in the story introduced because they decided to implement dynamis.

[Jandor]

Well that’s the thing, they kind of imply this expansion that limit breaks are fueled by dynamis, but there’s so much that contradicts that. It’s like they didn’t look back on all the past stuff they wrote for it lol. And then of course there’s the Meteion thing. None of it adds up and it’s just another plot hole in the story introduced because they decided to implement dynamis.

Did it? I don't recall Limit Breaks being mentioned. Was it a sidequest?