Endwalker was a great mess(SPOILERS)

[Lauront]

I have a feeling that dynamis is going to disappear as quickly as it was introduced.

Probably for the best, too.

[SeverianLyonesse]

And something else that bothers me is the nonsense in the final area. Something something emotions controlling the place. I can get how talking their way into an irredeemably hopeless simulacrum can reveal it to be Meteion but how winning that moral battle ends up with the scions being deconstructed (they win... to lose anyway?) and then turning into a bridge? I get the part that being reduced to pure dynamis could make it possible for them to manipulate that space but it's all so... nebulous and unclear... yet they seem to be super clear on knowing how the process works... am I the only one who doesn't get what the hell is going on and what they're doing? And am I supposed to enjoy this nonsense I'm not understanding as the end to this entire saga? And you know what the most insulting part is? Each time the way forward seemed to be something so simple that I can't help but feel like there could have been another way that didn't require such "sacrifice".

I think it was a little more symbolic than logical. The "destroyed civilizations" were representing the inevitability of despair through various ideologies, and they were kind of custom-written to oppose the scions' personal struggles (to whatever extent that may be). It wasn't really about the practicality of the obstacle so much as encouraging the scions to make declarations about what they stand for and continuing this theme of finding reasons for hope in the face of despair.

Yeah it's irrational and cheesy, but when you look at it as a matter of wrapping up *counts on fingers 123456* 7 deuteragonists' personal journeys, it wasn't the worst direction to take things. Although yes, I would have liked it much more if the obstacles had been a bit more...obstructive.

And there's also the primals. After being such a big problem since the beginning of the game they suddenly tell you "lol they've been summoning them the wrong way all this time, there was a proper way". In 2 lines of dialog. Almost like a footnote.

Yeah I think as a matter of writing, this was one of the things that bothered me the most. I don't know why we even needed to summon the primals to take the Ragnarok to the end of the universe. We know primals are a leech on the land, but we have our manufacted nethicite macguffin or whatever so they aren't actually stealing the world's energy this time. BUT as a simple matter of energy efficiency, they are just another intermediate that is probably wasting a lot of that energy sustaining themselves that could instead have gone directly into the Ragnarok. I guess they were some sort of conduit/battery, but then again so were the Dalamud shards. The whole thing just feels terribly contrived and contrary to the past ten years of telling us that primals = bad.

[ReynTime]

Honestly, they had my hopes up. Yeah there were some eye-roll inducing writing here and there but before Elpis I was legitimately satisfied with the story.

The Elpis portion had a lot of fanservice that would have been fine on its own, but it was unfortunately tied to some really stupid plot devices and motivations very difficult to take seriously.
I'm not too surprised Meteion already has a lot of fans but she was the worst thing to ever happen to XIV's plot. Yeah I do prefer Zenos over her, despite not changing my mind he should have stayed dead after 4.0.
And I would have preferred if they didn't get so hung up on wanting to explain "The Sound" in so much detail, because the final explanation was ridiculous nonsense. A final threat being something that couldn't be reasoned with, like a Lavos type of force, would have satisfied me way more than a torimimi clearly designed to sell merchandise whose motivation is given in a rushed exposition dump that consisted of complete nonsense.
Well, I'll say her reveal was at least better than pulling a Necron. But forcing me into a bunch of a tedious fetch quests with her in Elpis didn't really make me care.
The Ascians had 9+ years of build-up. Other antagonists had whole expansions. Meteion had a few awful scenario quests.

And Kairos... had me laughing out loud in the voice call with the group I was in. Memory loss plot device, really? That's your solution?

At least the final fights were fun...


Going back to Garlemald... Almost everything was fine there. Probably the best part of Endwalker. The final few MSQ in it however were super sudden and rushed. This was clearly not a challenge meant to be taken as a short arc of an expansion, because it shouldn't have been that easy to convince the garleans. The destruction brought by Zenos didn't serve any real purpose either, it was just the way Ishikawa or whoever else made the decision, to get rid of Garlemald in the plot asap any way they could.
Goes to show 5.4 was a sign of things to come. They really wanted to get their hollywood ending for all of Aldenard at any costs in 6.0 exactly.

[SieyaM]

I definitely felt disappointed that the final arc of this story was not the Hydaelyn vs Zodiark conflict that we had really been told was the overall arc since ARR, but some other kind of weird interstellar nebulous force introduced half way through the last expansion. For me a lot of things that could and should have been more weighted and explored were quickly swept aside, especially the final days. There is one dungeon and only one region we visit that seems to be having any kind of actual crises but we are supposed to be this is the end of our world. Not only that but if Dynamis really is the cause of this, and it is present throughout the universe then why would anyone believe that fleeing the star would work anyway? Wouldn't people still succumb to the effects of Dynamis no matter where they went? I also thought the moon being an ark designed for interstellar travel was ridiculous. Never before that I can recall was interstellar travel or exploration ever even considered as a thing that might be possible, yet here we are ready to board an ark to escape destruction caused by a force that is present throughout all of known creation.

[ReynTime]

There are other problems too. XIV changes its time travel nonsense rules every time it uses time travel as a plot device. Wish more stories took hints from Back to the Future or Chrono Trigger, because those two are some of the few EXCEPTIONS of stories that 1. Make their time travel rules clear and 2. Stay thorough consistent with them and don't get pretentious. I'd also add Dirk Gently to this, ironically as intentionally confusing as that series was, the complexity was consistent with the tone of the series itself, which isn't the case for XIV.

[van_arn]

There are other problems too. XIV changes its time travel nonsense rules every time it uses time travel as a plot device. Wish more stories took hints from Back to the Future or Chrono Trigger, because those two are some of the few EXCEPTIONS of stories that 1. Make their time travel rules clear and 2. Stay thorough consistent with them and don't get pretentious. I'd also add Dirk Gently to this, ironically as intentionally confusing as that series was, the complexity was consistent with the tone of the series itself, which isn't the case for XIV.

I flip that on its head and ask “what if the rules actually are consistent, but we don’t know enough about the situation to codify those rules?”

[SeverianLyonesse]

There are other problems too. XIV changes its time travel nonsense rules every time it uses time travel as a plot device. Wish more stories took hints from Back to the Future or Chrono Trigger, because those two are some of the few EXCEPTIONS of stories that 1. Make their time travel rules clear and 2. Stay thorough consistent with them and don't get pretentious. I'd also add Dirk Gently to this, ironically as intentionally confusing as that series was, the complexity was consistent with the tone of the series itself, which isn't the case for XIV.

Best instances of time travel I have seen that don't default to a lazy "many worlds" alternate timeline explanation are those that strictly deal in deterministic causal loops. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Dragonriders of Pern. Doctor Who's Blink and other better episodes. Arrival. Interstellar. Game of Thrones, somewhat. FF8.

[Floortank]

Best instances of time travel I have seen that don't default to a lazy "many worlds" alternate timeline explanation are those that strictly deal in deterministic causal loops. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Dragonriders of Pern. Doctor Who's Blink and other better episodes. Arrival. Interstellar. Game of Thrones, somewhat. FF8.

It's weird to throw the term "lazy" around when a causal loop is not any more difficult to write than a "reconstructed future" story such as Back to the Future, which is the precursor of the "many timelines" type of idea.

I'd argue that it's easier to write, and also less interesting and more farcical.

[EriShvakh]

Each time the way forward seemed to be something so simple that I can't help but feel like there could have been another way that didn't require such "sacrifice"..

Consider this:
A man is born into the world, faced with despair and realization that existence is meaningless, then he finds his reason to live, fights with despair to protect his reasons and ideals and eventually dies, his life's work building a road for next generations to move forward and fight their own fights and eventually die, to let others go forward and others go forward and...

Like it's one of the themes for both ShB and EW or something (and whole game in general really)... "For we who walk before may lead those who walk after".

[Kozh]

Endwalker is pretty confusing for me, emotional wise. By all means, I'm a pretty sentimental person. You give me good cutscene with emotional music, and I'll be hooked. Always has been since ARR; when we escape uldah, fight nidhogg in 3.3, liberating doma, having the alliance soldiers open our way to Ala mhigo castle, fighting emet and elidibus, and many more.

And yet... I rarely feel that way when playing endwalker. The climax of my experience is near the end of elpis, when we can't save the Ancients again. Second in place is when we meet emet and hythlodaeus in ultima Thule. Other than that, honestly not much. Theoretically, I should be feeling something when final days hit thavnair, or when the scion sacrifice themselves (though I can say enjoy Garlemald very much). But I didn't.

I guess it's due to how I disagree with a lot of things the game try to do/tell us. Too much comedy, final days feels less threatening than flood of light, zodiark get so little time screen, time travel being stupid, lopporit, I very much disagree with venat action and motivation, and dynamis being more deus ex machina than aether.

Fortunately Zenos see the memo that he's boring, and will always be, and has the decency to remove himself for most part of the game.