Endwalker was a great mess(SPOILERS)

[Dewslam]

It feels to me like they could have introduced the whole despair and emotional power thing without having to weirdly retcon in a surprise antagonist that's secretly been responsible for literally everything, even the actual antagonists we've been dealing with the whole time, just to give us a big monster to punch and say we've punched the problems away. It gives me real Zeomus, Necron, Ultimecia, and yu yevon vibes. Which is to say that it isn't uniquely bad among final fantasy games, they literally have a history of doing this. It just feels like a lame way to do the big climax of literal years worth of story.

So why did the End Times happen, why was everything so fucked up, why did the worlds get sundered and why did any of this happen the way it happened? Because a sad man launched some little bird girls into space and they got extra sad and decided to kill the world.

EDIT: also I'm still mad that the whole elpis segment was also effectively retconned, narratively, by the doofiest dang plot device, a magical memory machine invented by the sad man that was mentioned literally once like a third of the way through the whole ordeal and never again until it was time to make sure emet-selch regressed as a character.

[Floortank]

It feels to me like they could have introduced the whole despair and emotional power thing without having to weirdly retcon in a surprise antagonist that's secretly been responsible for literally everything, even the actual antagonists we've been dealing with the whole time, just to give us a big monster to punch and say we've punched the problems away. It gives me real Zeomus, Necron, Ultimecia, and yu yevon vibes. Which is to say that it isn't uniquely bad among final fantasy games, they literally have a history of doing this. It just feels like a lame way to do the big climax of literal years worth of story.

Yu Yevon and Ultimecia aren't surprise bosses. Yu Yevon in particular is thoroughly discussed throughout the whole story, with more layers of lies peeled off as you get closer to the truth, and the ending of the game. While Ultimecia doesn't show up until the very end, she is pointed out as the villain very early in the game and her actions are repeatedly central to the plot's focus.

The problem with Meteion isn't that she's a surprise boss. She's not. They set her up very convincingly to be our foe in Elpis. The problem is that instead of contacting some sort of diametrically opposed sentience hostile to life itself, ala Zeromus, and becoming infected by it, she simply becomes a template of all the despair and disharmony in the universe, and decides to commit universal suicide to shut it all off. This leaves us essentially without a villain, because she is a victim.

They even pull the rug out from under our feet in the final battle. "Blue" / "good" Meteion vanishes from the story at the end of Elpis, vanishes utterly, but then suddenly appears again in the final battle, fluttering about the Endsinger's head and begging her not to do what she's been doing. Again, they rip out the idea that we're even looking at a villain, and rather something like a cosmic accident or a powerful misunderstanding. It becomes annoying rather than exciting at that point, just being a janitor or a cosmic babysitter.

If they were gonna go the victim rout, they should have had her get possessed and infected by something like Zeromus. Some actual wicked alien force antithetical to life, moving through the dynamis to poison her and manifest through her. But instead they made it just "baby had a nightmare" and that makes our role the person giving her a bottle.

[Velnora]

Yu Yevon and Ultimecia aren't surprise bosses. Yu Yevon in particular is thoroughly discussed throughout the whole story, with more layers of lies peeled off as you get closer to the truth, and the ending of the game. While Ultimecia doesn't show up until the very end, she is pointed out as the villain very early in the game and her actions are repeatedly central to the plot's focus.

The problem with Meteion isn't that she's a surprise boss. She's not. They set her up very convincingly to be our foe in Elpis. The problem is that instead of contacting some sort of diametrically opposed sentience hostile to life itself, ala Zeromus, and becoming infected by it, she simply becomes a template of all the despair and disharmony in the universe, and decides to commit universal suicide to shut it all off. This leaves us essentially without a villain, because she is a victim.

They even pull the rug out from under our feet in the final battle. "Blue" / "good" Meteion vanishes from the story at the end of Elpis, vanishes utterly, but then suddenly appears again in the final battle, fluttering about the Endsinger's head and begging her not to do what she's been doing. Again, they rip out the idea that we're even looking at a villain, and rather something like a cosmic accident or a powerful misunderstanding. It becomes annoying rather than exciting at that point, just being a janitor or a cosmic babysitter.

If they were gonna go the victim rout, they should have had her get possessed and infected by something like Zeromus. Some actual wicked alien force antithetical to life, moving through the dynamis to poison her and manifest through her. But instead they made it just "baby had a nightmare" and that makes our role the person giving her a bottle.

Meteion is a surprise because she was introduced in the second to last zone. Over the course of a 10 year build up. Yu Yevon was brought up over the course of 10, but seemingly appeared out of nowhere. Jecht, by many, is considered the true final boss. As with Necron, it just shows up.

[Floortank]

Meteion is a surprise because she was introduced in the second to last zone. Over the course of a 10 year build up. Yu Yevon was brought up over the course of 10, but seemingly appeared out of nowhere. Jecht, by many, is considered the true final boss. As with Necron, it just shows up.

The 10 or 15 hour span between our last moment with Meteion before the Endsinger is more time to sit with it and feel the product of her actions than we get from the time we actually meet Yunalesca and see what happened to Jecht and Auron firsthand, to the end of FFX. Perhaps maybe an hour or two hours of the game remains at that point. We knew details about Jecht and Braska's story, but not the full scope until those scenes. And it does not reduce the ending even one iota.

The problem with Meteion is Meteion. They rip whatever dramatic tension she represents right out of her by making her a victim and essentially good, but misunderstood.

EDIT: made some FFX references more ambiguous due to spoilers

EDIT: Also if you were surprised by Meteion to the degree that you think the Endsinger is like Metron, I dunno what to tell you. I knew I was looking at the final villain the moment I met her. There's no way the cause of the Final Days would be something so obvious Emet-Selch would miss it. She was an immediate red herring.

I read a shit ton of books.

[Velnora]

The 10 or 15 hour span between our last moment with Meteion before the Endsinger is more time to sit with it and feel the product of her actions than we get from the time we actually meet Yunalesca and see what happened to Jecht and Auron firsthand, to the end of FFX. Perhaps maybe an hour or two hours of the game remains at that point. We knew details about Jecht and Braska's story, but not the full scope until those scenes. And it does not reduce the ending even one iota.

The problem with Meteion is Meteion. They rip whatever dramatic tension she represents right out of her by making her a victim and essentially good, but misunderstood.

EDIT: made some FFX references more ambiguous due to spoilers

EDIT: Also if you were surprised by Meteion to the degree that you think the Endsinger is like Metron, I dunno what to tell you. I knew I was looking at the final villain the moment I met her. There's no way the cause of the Final Days would be something so obvious Emet-Selch would miss it. She was an immediate red herring.

I read a shit ton of books.

10 or 15 hours is nothing.

[Akiudo]

The problem with Meteion isn't that she's a surprise boss. She's not. They set her up very convincingly to be our foe in Elpis. The problem is that instead ....This leaves us essentially without a villain, because she is a victim.



If they were gonna go the victim rout, they should have had her get possessed and infected by something like Zeromus. Some actual wicked alien force antithetical to life, moving through the dynamis to poison her and manifest through her. But instead they made it just "baby had a nightmare" and that makes our role the person giving her a bottle.

for one she is pretty much the embodiment of despair, saying "baby had a nightmare" is ignoring that she is literally supernaturally empathetic and got pumped full of the despair of an untold number of civilizations all at once. however, even if that wasn't case, why do we need "a villain" ? first and foremost we are an adventurer, what we "need" is a problem so we can solve it, that is a role easily fullfilled by what meteion has become, villain or not.

[Ririta]

for one she is pretty much the embodiment of despair, saying "baby had a nightmare" is ignoring that she is literally supernaturally empathetic and got pumped full of the despair of an untold number of civilizations all at once. however, even if that wasn't case, why do we need "a villain" ? first and foremost we are an adventurer, what we "need" is a problem so we can solve it, that is a role easily fullfilled by what meteion has become, villain or not.

Not having a proper villain is boring.

It all went downhill for me once Fandaniel and Zodiark "died" (were written out of the plot). There was nothing to carry the story anymore. Zenos was only fun because Fandaniel was there to annoy him. Meteion is a non-character. Hydaelyn is a Mary Sue who couldn't do any wrong according to the plot the writers tried to tell, thus, couldn't be an antagonist.

There was nobody to carry the plot anymore, to provide interesting moments and character development (I also blame the scions for this).

Meanwhile, Zenos, people might hate him, but he together with Tsuyu and Fordola antagonized us all the way through Stormblood. To drive him to suicide was satisfying. Emet-Selch and Vauthry, we knew were villains, and they too antagonized us and moved the plot forward. It was satisfying to break Vauthry's delusions of godhood and shove into Emet's face the fact that this was our story, not his. In Heavensward Nidhogg provides the first half and then Thordan the second, both sides of the same coin, both with their own reasons for promoting the war.

It's always fun to have that "justice has been served" moment. Such moment never happens in Endwalker. I swear, it feels like they added Zenos as the actual final boss just so players could have that moment.

Ra'la would've been more interesting as a main villain, they could drop all the "bathos" and provide us with a character that can't be reasoned with, he's from another world with a completely different set of morals.

Finally, I have to say, "embodiment of x" stuff stayed in the 90s/early 2000s for a reason. If such "characters" ever have the opportunity to talk more than a few lines before dying, everybody gets to see how one-dimensional they are. For example, Necron works because he doesn't have such opportunity and Kuja is allowed to move the plot forward until the very end. If the Endsinger appeared right at the end, after Fandaniel Zodiark's level 59 trial together with the "Final Days", that would be much better as we wouldn't have so much time to sit on a stagnated stale-mate plot.

[Akiudo]

Finally, I have to say, "embodiment of x" stuff stayed in the 90s/early 2000s for a reason. If such "characters" ever have the opportunity to talk more than a few lines before dying, everybody gets to see how one-dimensional they are. For example, Necron works because he doesn't have such opportunity and Kuja is allowed to move the plot forward until the very end. If the Endsinger appeared right at the end, after Fandaniel Zodiark's level 59 trial together with the "Final Days", that would be much better as we wouldn't have so much time to sit on a stagnated stale-mate plot.

you are saying "the problem" being the embodiment of despair is boring yet advertise for having something that is either just evil for the heck of it or a quite literal giant space flea from nowhere, sorry but if you truly think a villain coming out of bum **** nowhere at the last second adds literally anything to the story i don't know what to tell you aside from "if the endsinger just popped up randomly out of black mist leaving zodiarks body" or something like this than we would have a lot more threads complaining about that aspect, and if we didn't have anything beyond zodiark that would still leave the question of why the frick the ascians ever summoned their dark god so something, anything, quite literally had to be there.

[Avidria]

...

See I felt totally different about almost all of this. My only odd note where I kinda agree is that I do think we took out Zodiark too soon - even if you consider that teeeechnically we fought the "real" Zodiark when we fought Elidibus, as his heart, so what Fandaniel took over was really just the leftover shell of a primal with no real sentience or direction left. At least as far as I can tell.

And Hydaelyn... she's kinda in the same boat as G'raha, where they both made some extremely morally gray decisions, and Venat actually imo did a better job of acknowledging that than G'raha did. She made the active choice to rip the world apart to guarantee that every generation following hers would come to know suffering, and to accept it as an inevitable part of life, to prevent them from making the decisions the ancients made that could (likely would) have led to an unending cycle of blood sacrifice in exchange for maintaining their lost paradise at any cost. That's... I mean that's pretty freaking dark actually, imo, and while I struggle to think of a better solution when we're talking actual cataclysmic, world-ending consequences and weighing probably millions of lives in the dark here, that's like... I mean she is very clearly not any kind of saint for what she did. And she acknowledges that.

I also absolutely do not think we need a single "villain" to move the story forward. Sometimes there is no villain. Sometimes the thing you're fighting is vast and unknowable, sometimes it's disease and sometimes it's darkness and sometimes it's an endless pit of despair. The entire message of the story, as I understood it, is that suffering is inevitable but does not have to be the only thing there is, that even knowing that everything will end, there are still things worth fighting and living for and that those things can fuel a hope strong enough to carry you through even the darkest pit of despair.

I mean it sounds a bit flowery, and maybe it's a little cheesy at times, but I dunno. I kinda like that. I liked that our goal wasn't necessarily to defeat some big bad evil villain - our goal, at the end of the day, was to save and protect the things we love and care about. To stop despair from drowning out hope.

That's also why I kind of don't mind Meteion not being much of a character - even if the one we talk to did get to show a little of her own personality, briefly, she was never really her own character. She was a result and a representation of Hermes' despair. She was his last ditch effort to find meaning in a world he couldn't find any in. Hermes was already on the edge of despair, he was already losing hope and faith in the society that he was a part of. Meteion's discoveries, and her ultimate decision that nothingness is a gift preferable to the inevitable ugliness of death and despair, were ultimately the result of one man's desperate grab for an answer that he was never going to get and never going to like. And that's far more interesting to me than some evil dude we had to stab at the end of the day tbh. We do enough big bad stabbing.

Even if punching Zenos in the face was IMMENSELY satisfying.

[Ririta]

mean it sounds a bit flowery, and maybe it's a little cheesy at times, but I dunno. I kinda like that. I liked that our goal wasn't necessarily to defeat some big bad evil villain - our goal, at the end of the day, was to save and protect the things we love and care about. To stop despair from drowning out hope.

Personally I'm fine with such themes as long as its background, like the Flood of Light was a background. I think it works best when we still have a colorful cast of characters such as Ryne, the Crystal Exarch, Ranjit and Vauthry moving things forward in a natural way, each with their own emotions, needs, personality and so on. In fact to be honest I think that Shadowbringers did such themes better as we saw the two opposing factions (Eulmore and Crystarium) and its people representing each side, with Eulmore people giving up and just living in luxury while Crystarium people did their best to help out their world... we're never "told" what we should feel, we were always shown via the characters doing their thing.

snip

It's not like the Endsinger would come from "nowhere"; we just wouldn't actually interact with her (Meteion) until the very end, just like how you don't interact with King Thordan (the primal) until before the final trial even though everything else built up to that moment.