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

[Divinemights]

You say this like its a good thing

It is a good thing.
Original Aerith death is so artificial and you know it

[Theodric]

It is a good thing.
Original Aerith death is so artificial and you know it

'Artificial'? How so?

I was under the impression that it is rather widely considered to be one of the most shocking and iconic video game scenes to date.

There's other JRPG's - such as Legend of Dragoon and Shadow Hearts - that dared to kill off members of the main cast during the course of their story and it wasn't done just for shock value but because it tied into the story itself.

[KizuyaKatogami]

Yet, it is FF1 and FF3 path the FF legacy where no one important dies.
FF7R is also attempting to break what FF7 has done.
Again, you don't need to artificial death to tell an epic story.
People already fed up with such style of story telling, Last of US 2 ring the bell?
Is golf death really that necessary?

To my knowledge though, i dont recall 1 and 3 being the most talked about. But character deaths moving the story starts as early as ff2. FF7 is one of the most talked about ones and it had a very iconic character death that drove the story forward.We dont know where the remake is going truth be told. For all we know they could be giving people false hope and in the end itll turn out exactly how it did before if not worse. FF6's most iconic moment is the world coming to ruin. I dont think its a coincidence that the popular and rated series is the same series that deals an awful lot with death and suffering and again, please tell me then how im expected to take a theme about loss,suffering, and moving on seriously if it never applies to the main cast and in fact, the main cast contradicts said theme and actually gets resurrected. Something even you said earlier ruined WoW. 14 did the very same thing.Personally i think whats artificial is constant death fakeouts and constant fluff in a world ending situation. The world is ending meanwhile im going on a lunch date with people and supposed to laugh because a catboy ate a burger and an elf lady doesnt like pickles? Such tension, such threat. Lets not forget playing dress up with bunnies less than 5 minutes after slaying the god who was the only thing keeping the planet safe.

[Jandor]

It seems to be a recurring thing, so lets insert some plausible character deaths:

• Zenos in your body kills Alisaie and G'raha Tia before you can reach him.
  
  
• Alphinaud's dad dies when the trip to the Garlemald tower fails.
  
  
• Hydaelyn doesn't enchant your Azem stone. Urianger takes G'raha Tia's place, and Alphinaud takes on Meteion alone. You can summon everyone back for the finale but as you can't give them new bodies they'll fade away when the spell wears off. Every main Scion is dead.
  
  
• As Alisaie wasn't around to give Zenos a stern talking to he just slaughters his way through Sharlayan instead of making a deal. Krile, Tataru, basically every B character that was in Sharlayan at the time is killed by him to get to you.

I'll be honest, all of those would be far too much and I think the story would be worse for it. Doing one or two might be interesting if handled well, but I doubt it would majorly turn things around for people that didn't like Endwalkers story.

[Scryar]

Again, you don't need to artificial death to tell an epic story.

You know what is artificial.
That there is a world ending threat and there are zero causalities on the "good guys" side aside from a few throwaway characters.
That the enemies of team WOL fall left and right but we somehow get through all that mainly unharmed.
Zenos absolutely should have killed someone. This whole scene was sabotaged by the ending of nothing happening.

After Heavenward for a character to die
a) they have to be a "baddie"
b ) if they are not , they have to be a minor character.

[Neotempest]

You know what is artificial.
That there is a world ending threat and there are zero causalities on the "good guys" side aside from a few throwaway characters.
That the enemies of team WOL fall left and right but we somehow get through all that mainly unharmed.
Zenos absolutely should have killed someone. This whole scene was sabotaged by the ending of nothing happening.

After Heavenward for a character to die
a) they have to be a "baddie"
b ) if they are not , they have to be a minor character.

A character dying doesn't dictate what is bad or good storytelling. Let me show you what I mean.

After Fellowship of the Ring, for a character to die.
a)they have to be a "baddie"
b)if they are not, they have to be a minor character.

LotR had no one else, part of the main cast, die after fellowship of the Ring. Heck, some may even argue that the only person to die wasn't a main cast. Yet you will be hard pressed to find someone say LoTR movie trilogy is bad story telling because no one else died. The "worst" consequence in that movie is that Frodo is going to the homeland of the elves. Any movie can be broken down into generalities, regardless of how good it is, and have that movie stripped of its quality.

[Neotempest]

To my knowledge though, i dont recall 1 and 3 being the most talked about. But character deaths moving the story starts as early as ff2. FF7 is one of the most talked about ones and it had a very iconic character death that drove the story forward.We dont know where the remake is going truth be told. For all we know they could be giving people false hope and in the end itll turn out exactly how it did before if not worse. FF6's most iconic moment is the world coming to ruin. I dont think its a coincidence that the popular and rated series is the same series that deals an awful lot with death and suffering and again, please tell me then how im expected to take a theme about loss,suffering, and moving on seriously if it never applies to the main cast and in fact, the main cast contradicts said theme and actually gets resurrected. Something even you said earlier ruined WoW. 14 did the very same thing.Personally i think whats artificial is constant death fakeouts and constant fluff in a world ending situation. The world is ending meanwhile im going on a lunch date with people and supposed to laugh because a catboy ate a burger and an elf lady doesnt like pickles? Such tension, such threat. Lets not forget playing dress up with bunnies less than 5 minutes after slaying the god who was the only thing keeping the planet safe.

It's a writing method done in great movies to relieve stress. Unless you want to now start making the argument that Saving Private Ryan is a bad movie because it contained funny humanistic scenes to release stress. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJr-4OZPwLk

[Kozh]

From what I see right now, recent WoW refuges are expecting typical story flow like WoW: a big bad evil dude, someone important dies, an epic battle against this evil dude.
They will be disappointed.
For normal FF franchise players, this is an epic story telling.

Those who expecting wow style of lack in-depth character growth will never like Endwalker, that is just how it is

FF franchise player here; I disagree. Even though the writing is far from perfect, ff15 feels more epic than EW in term of dealing with loss, death, apocalypse, and self-sacrifice.

[Scryar]

A character dying doesn't dictate what is bad or good storytelling. Let me show you what I mean.

After Fellowship of the Ring, for a character to die.
a)they have to be a "baddie"
b)if they are not, they have to be a minor character.

LotR had no one else, part of the main cast, die after fellowship of the Ring. Heck, some may even argue that the only person to die wasn't a main cast. Yet you will be hard pressed to find someone say LoTR movie trilogy is bad story telling because no one else died. The "worst" consequence in that movie is that Frodo is going to the homeland of the elves. Any movie can be broken down into generalities, regardless of how good it is, and have that movie stripped of its quality.

Where exactly did I write that there can't be a good story without character deaths?

I still can criticize certain aspects and think that they cheapen a story while liking and thinking it's good overall.

I get that many people want to play a flawless hero in shining armor saving the world power fantasy but I never felt FF as a whole was about that. At least in the the FF I played there were always loses and sacrifices on both sides.
Worst of all the writers are constantly using characters deaths as bait. The huge amount of fake deaths during the course of the game has become a meme at this point. For me and I'm sure many others supposed deaths of scions don't even trigger any emotion anymore (which kinda defeats their purpose) because I know that they will be fine and surprise , surprise....that's exactly what happens every single time after Hw.

It also doesn't make sense sometimes. Let's get back to the Zenos scene again. All that Zenos want's is our attention, our rage and anger. And yet he is trying really hard to avoid doing something that would give him exactly that, like killing one of our friends.
He, one of the most powerful beings in the body of the WOL get's stopped and knocked over by a level 10 paladin who could barely defeat tempered soldiers earlier.
That scene was so absurd that the whole body change part felt pointless and cringe. I didn't even expect him to kill a scion as everybody knows by now that they have a ridiculous amount of plot armor but not even a B character? What was even the point of that whole scene? Showing that Zenos is incapable of getting what he want's even if it's served on a silver plate?
Or take the ending in Ultima Thule and all the "sacrifices" accompanied with emotional speeches from the Scions only to return 30 minutes later. What kind of sacrifice is that?
Emet's look when Hythlodaeus left to be sacrificed to Zodiark has a way bigger emotional impact on me then all the fake sacrifices of the scions during the Ultima Thule arc. Because the former had consequences even 5000 years later while the latter was forgotten after 30min , as if nothing happened.

[ReynTime]

Where exactly did I write that there can't be a good story without character deaths?

I still can criticize certain aspects and think that they cheapen a story while liking and thinking it's good overall.

I get that many people want to play a flawless hero in shining armor saving the world power fantasy but I never felt FF as a whole was about that. At least in the the FF I played there were always loses and sacrifices on both sides.
Worst of all the writers are constantly using characters deaths as bait. The huge amount of fake deaths during the course of the game has become a meme at this point. For me and I'm sure many others supposed deaths of scions don't even trigger any emotion anymore (which kinda defeats their purpose) because I know that they will be fine and surprise , surprise....that's exactly what happens every single time after Hw.

It also doesn't make sense sometimes. Let's get back to the Zenos scene again. All that Zenos want's is our attention, our rage and anger. And yet he is trying really hard to avoid doing something that would give him exactly that, like killing one of our friends.
He, one of the most powerful beings in the body of the WOL get's stopped and knocked over by a level 10 paladin who could barely defeat tempered soldiers earlier.
That scene was so absurd that the whole body change part felt pointless and cringe. I didn't even expect him to kill a scion as everybody knows by now that they have a ridiculous amount of plot armor but not even a B character? What was even the point of that whole scene? Showing that Zenos is incapable of getting what he want's even if it's served on a silver plate?
Or take the ending in Ultima Thule and all the "sacrifices" accompanied with emotional speeches from the Scions only to return 30 minutes later. What kind of sacrifice is that?
Emet's look when Hythlodaeus left to be sacrificed to Zodiark has a way bigger emotional impact on me then all the fake sacrifices of the scions during the Ultima Thule arc. Because the former had consequences even 5000 years later while the latter was forgotten after 30min , as if nothing happened.

Yeah, as if Endwalker didn't have enough unnecessary cutscenes adding absolutely nothing but padding, all the time wasted with the "emotional" speeches during UT were super grating because anyone who knew anything about Ishikawa's writing should know no one was going to really be gone for long during that arc. I'm so glad this saga is over because I was getting tired of them overselling the tension in the story since Shadowbringers.