What's the point with that quite lackluster story in Endwalker?

[TheMightyMollusk]

Agreed. I don't think it was a particularly satisfying trial, either. The first phase is decent though the second phase consisting of the boss almost exclusively just flailing about did very little for me.

While I did think it hilarious that her response to us surviving her ultimate is to just immediately cast it again, the whole "final boss flails/spams one attack through the last phase" thing does get old. We've already seen it with Thordan, Eden Shiva, Hades.....hell, one could even say Lahabrea's whole "fight" back in Praetorium was nothing BUT this, he does so little damage.

[Katie_Kitty]

• The mighty Zodiark, which has been build up as this mighty(evil) entity over several expansions, turns out to be nothing but filler trash for the first Endwalker trial
• The true cause of the Final Days is a pet-project from an ancient which goes mad after observing countless dead world and possibly causing the death of several world by projecting negative emotions unto them, and is thus dead-set on bringing despair to every world, upon which said ancient goes mad and is now letting her run her course to test humanity if they can withstand/fight despair
• Venat, who hasn't had her memory wiped + still remembers you from being in Elpis, quite apparently doesn't lift a finger to learn about Dynamis herself or to mobilize the other ancients to end Meteion then and there, and instead chooses to turn herself into Hydaelyn, sunder the world and the inhabitants, thereby forcing them to live with and face despair and gambling that their resilience against despair might be enough to face Meteion one day

Really?
This is the best SQ could do in terms of story after ShB?

Did you skip the cutscenes? They even show Venat trying to talk the ancients out of it before deciding to go through with the sundering.

[KizuyaKatogami]

Did you skip the cutscenes? They even show Venat trying to talk the ancients out of it before deciding to go through with the sundering.

Yes but this was post final days. She easily could’ve told everyone before this and prevent the days from even coming to fruition. She instead kept it a secret. Even her Anamnesis dialogue suggests her followers didn’t even know what her actual plan consisted of nor that it would end in their own demise.

[TaleraRistain]

Its pretty much the same thing with Thordan. After the Huge Knights of the Round Attack Phase (Totally Boss Callback Reference)
Thordan thought that would be your undoing, your Death. But because you survived, its like...what do I do now? Thats All I had! A Thousand Years of Prayer to obtain such power and it wasn't enough!??
-Flails because he doesn't know what to do-

Hades, too, and I enjoy the subtle differences. Thordan it's like "I don't know what to do, I'm going to swat you like a fly"

Hades was desperately trying to hold onto the dream he'd had for thousands of years. You winning meant that dream would never happen.

Endsinger is desperately trying to save everyone from the despair she (and thus all those civilizations) gave into.

[van_arn]

I'll just throw my 2 cents in here. And I would like to say, this is really my personal opinion, nothing else.

I liked the story for what it was meant to do, aka end the Zodiark/Hydaelyn saga.

But outside of that ? It really felt lackluster, rushed and average at best, the pacing was really all over the place. But what ever, I overall got what I paid for.
This has also a lot to do with me really getting tired of this world savior role and I hope that the implications from the story show true that we return to just being a "normal" (as a savior of the universe can be) adventurer.

I

Same; I don't think I'd consider it average though. I'd say it was still an excellent expansion that had every disadvantage thrown at it: it followed Shadowbringers, it was made during an unprecedented pandemic, and it was an ending to a beloved story. Any one of these would make telling a story difficult, but Endwalker had to deal with all three at the same time.

Personally, I can admit it could have used more time to snip away at certain parts. Garlemald might have gotten a little too dark for me, even if the situation is understandably dark. I don't like how I knew (though I appreciated the misdirection) the Sharlayans were working on an "ark" from the first. I think it can't stand on its own without the other expansions (as, say, Heavensward or Shadowbringers can) to give it context. I think the most compelling boss from a gameplay perspective is the second one, though I enjoyed all three and loved the last boss' design.

But even after all of that, I think it's my favorite expansion. Not only because of the spectacle -- which has points unmatched anywhere else in the story -- but because of the smaller moments: quiet time alone with characters we've known for a decade (and I'll go so far as to forgive plot armor in exchange for those moments), ridiculous situations I never thought I'd see in the game (riding Zenos to fight the last boss so we can have one final fight at the edge of the universe) and exploring the new the places added with this expansion (Radz is, by far, my favorite endgame hub along with Thavnair being an absolute delight). Also, Elpis and Ultima Thule are cool as hell. Ea would be an amazing beast tribe, but so would literally everything in Thule.

Above all, I'm excited because I don't know where we go from here. We finally have a clean break in the story; we can finally go anywhere at any time and do anything. We have new mysteries (of Dynamis, Pandaemonium, Emet's sizzlereel of teasers, and the new-old mystery of the Twelve). The closest to this we've had is traveling to the First for Shadowbringers, but even that was hamstrung by its reliance on the current arc. Coming back to the Source after the dealings on the First felt like a bit of a chore to me, but now I'm finally finally excited to be back on the Source.

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

Hades, too, and I enjoy the subtle differences. Thordan it's like "I don't know what to do, I'm going to swat you like a fly"

Hades was desperately trying to hold onto the dream he'd had for thousands of years. You winning meant that dream would never happen.

Endsinger is desperately trying to save everyone from the despair she (and thus all those civilizations) gave into.

I like all 3. I think they are Great.
But I think Hades is the Outlier, because he has One Final Desperation Attack thats a Final DPS Check; Where he casts Black Cauldron. And Ive seen it maybe Once because the group failed the QTE moment and couldnt recover XD
(and I could be wrong because I didnt let Endsinger get to the point that she might have a Final DPS check.)

[dapperfaffer]

Yes but this was post final days. She easily could’ve told everyone before this and prevent the days from even coming to fruition. She instead kept it a secret. Even her Anamnesis dialogue suggests her followers didn’t even know what her actual plan consisted of nor that it would end in their own demise.

Telling everyone what she knew after the WoL involvement would change the entire history of the game and involvement of the WoL.
Pre WoL, Hydaelyn sundered Zodiark and created the Source and the 14 shards because self sacrifice to keep what the Ancients had was bad.
Post WoL, its the same thing, just with the added bonus of suffering is best for life to have meaning.
Lahabrea was right, the root of the corruption is Hydaelyn.

Which I don't think is the OPs point. I think its because much like ARR and other expansions the story wasn't centered around the WoL/WoD, it again was based on the Ancients and their actions. Which works to provide the exposition needed to end the total story of ARR and Hydaelyn but makes for a pretty boring story.

[KizuyaKatogami]

Telling everyone what she knew after the WoL involvement would change the entire history of the game and involvement of the WoL.
Pre WoL, Hydaelyn sundered Zodiark and created the Source and the 14 shards because self sacrifice to keep what the Ancients had was bad.
Post WoL, its the same thing, just with the added bonus of suffering is best for life to have meaning.
Lahabrea was right, the root of the corruption is Hydaelyn.

Which I don't think is the OPs point. I think its because much like ARR and other expansions the story wasn't centered around the WoL/WoD, it again was based on the Ancients and their actions. Which works to provide the exposition needed to end the total story of ARR and Hydaelyn but makes for a pretty boring story.

That’s what i mean though. They had to involve all of this convoluted time travel to try and frame the sundering as semi-right when in reality it just isn’t. There’s little reasoning for her to have actually done it when they could’ve combatted meteion themselves, and it’s not like the ancients were without suffering. We’re shown numerous times how they suffered pre final days and even pandaemonium gives more insight on that, so that whole theme just comes off as pretty shoddy as well.

[Mezzoforte]

Yes but this was post final days. She easily could’ve told everyone before this and prevent the days from even coming to fruition. She instead kept it a secret. Even her Anamnesis dialogue suggests her followers didn’t even know what her actual plan consisted of nor that it would end in their own demise.

Walk into a room full of people tomorrow and try to explain to them the end of the workd us gonna happen in an unknown amount of time and get them to fully cooperate with you. Tell us how well that goes l o l

[Escalon]

Snip~ Snip~

WARNING : THERE ARE HEAVY SPOILERS IN THIS POST!!! DO NOT READ IF YOU DID NOT FINISH THE STORY OF EW!!!!

I will try to elaborate about why I think its not that great.

First, the whole setting is really shying away from what this game was before. Traveling to the past like its nothing? Casually teleporting to the Moon that is also an Spaceship and walking there like its nothing? Flying a space ship to the literal edge of space ? Casually taking an elevator down to the literal center of the Lifestream and all Aether ? We are flying to the edge of the universe to fight a "Bird" that for what ever reason can manipulate this absolutely new concept we never heard before on a cosmic scale and wipe whole planets with it.

Everything just feels like its soo far-fetched its not even funny.

The pacing was also all over the place, like right, we are flying to the edge of the universe to fight a "bird", but before that lets just haul around boxes. A lot of quest did not even make sense, like the "famous-infamous" In the Cold quest, that whole quest could be literally removed and it would have done nothing to change the narrative or the progress of the story, all it was meant to do is to use a cheap trick to inflict the player with this "OHNONONO" fear and of course nothing happened, also why did Zenos just walked there ? Fandaniel literally can teleport people around. And thats just one of a lot of examples.

I should note, I did not like ShB, not because it was bad, far from it, I loved the lore we got to know, but because it started to become also quite farfetched, but at least there we struggles with it, unlike in EW where we just can do anything without any problems.

I loved HW and StB since it felt grounded, not this farfetched story about time travel, different dimensions etc. And in terms of overall feel and story, I rank them over ShB and EW.

Not to mention, the whole quality of the game is starting to tank (NOTE: In my personal view). We get zones that are beyond boring, each zone gets 1 to 3 hubs with just nothing in between, there is literally nothing to discover since everything feels flat. ARR zones, even after 8 years, I find interesting places I have not noticed before or were just nicely hidden.

Dungeons dont feel as dungeons but just a story point, a thing we need to do to pass to a place where we need to be. Sure, this was even the case in the dungeons before, but they actually felt like dungeons (we are talking mainly ARR, HW, StB, ShB had like 2) The Dungeons dont need to be tons of corridors and places to explore, but at least give us the feeling that its way bigger than it really is. I give an great example of this, comapre The Swallows's Compass a dungeon from StB to probably closest is Ktisis Hyperboreia and you will see what I mean.


Remember the time where you had vendors who sold different things ? Where you had to travel to buy certain things ? And everything was not sold at 1 vendor ? Was it more tedious ? Yes, but it felt like an living, breathing world. Now its just HUB to HUB.

Thavnair according to the artworks should be such a huge and imposing city, question is, is it really ? Does it feel like a city compared to Ul'dah, Ishgard, Limsa Lominsa, Kugane ? Same can be said about Sharlayan.

I honestly wish that SE will return to the time of ARR and HW with the quality of things that are not just the story but the zones, dungeons, locations and small things like that. Its an MMO, one should feel to be part of a big breathing living world, a world one wants to explore, a world where even after 8 years one can find interesting places.

Oke, this became waaaaay more longwinded than I intended it to be, so I hope you can forgive me for that.
And as said, all those things are only my personal view, I fully understand others people view points about the story and other things.