Endwalker's message (spoilers!)

[Jennah]

Someone else brought up in the thread, I don’t remember who otherwise I would quote them. But what really ruined the last zone for me was that not a single society knew about dynamis or was dynamis based instead being aether based. It feels like they just generalized thousands of stars to force them to come to the same conclusion to make Meteion more tragic. I just have a hard time believing that not a single society was capable to fight her off or that all them reached to the idea that dying is the solution.

Which is ESPECIALLY weird since they said that dynamis was much lower on Etheriys than anywhere else, due to its massive Aether supplies.

Also, considering we figured it out at least twice post-Sundering despite being far less advanced - nobody else seems to know about time travel.
Which, if nothing else, would've greatly helped the planets that were more murdered than suicided.

I couldn’t really get emotional for anything because i knew like, the scions weren’t going to die. It’s why i felt the ending portion where they’re all saying their goodbyes and sacrificing themselves was kind of poor taste. This games theme has always been about sacrifice for the greater good and even this expansions main theme talks about loss, yet that hasn’t applied to the main cast in forever. Hard to get emotional at their goodbyes when i know they’ll be back in 10 mins. I think the only slightest bit of emotion i felt was when we see shiva appear at the final boss of the 89 dungeon and it’s mainly because i thought it was a very creative callback to syrcus tower. I couldn’t really get excited about Zenos because he just had no purpose in the story, but i will say him showing up at the end was kind of an anchor to make the story feel a bit…normal? Because honestly from the moon and onwards the game started feeling like a bad fever dream. Especially post elpis.

I'd put the EXACT moment the expansion storyline lost me as when Meteion delivered her report. Why in the world did Emet-Selch and Hermes get all murderous over if the report needed to be heard RIGHT NOW? I could see Hermes freaking out and protecting her - but unless Emet somehow intuited this was going to be (again, somehow...) universe ending, his actions make zero sense.
And then the rest of it ... well, either one of two things must be true:
a) Every civilization ever naturally commits suicide - and somehow they've all mostly chosen to do so within the same few decades. OR
b) Meteion killed most of those civilizations herself.
If a is true ... wow, someone at Squeenix is a MAJOR pessimist. And if b is true ... it's a big universe. If one single person can end it that easily, why hasn't it ended long before now?

I kinda liked the bit with the Scions, though. Sure, as soon as we didn't spend any time at all mourning Thancred it was pretty obvious they were coming back - and by the time Urianger added himself to Y'shtola's sacrifice for no real reason it was utterly inconceivable they wouldn't be - but THEY, presumably, didn't know that. It's the thought that counts.

[Rinhi]

b) Meteion killed most of those civilizations herself.
If a is true ... wow, someone at Squeenix is a MAJOR pessimist. And if b is true ... it's a big universe. If one single person can end it that easily, why hasn't it ended long before now?

I don't remember if it's straight up said or strongly implied, but Meteion could also influence the emotions of others iirc