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

[Nilroreo]

Really atrocious story quality and Ishikawa and Oda are supposed to be good at this. I'm really disappointed if this is the quality of story we can expect from them going forward, where the threats are pointlessly neutered before they even begin and we're supposed to be focusing on sitting around in Sharlayan having a tea party while the apocalypse is supposedly happening.

This point is actually kinda interesting cuz it ties into one specific issue I have in regard to stakes in Endwalker. I've seen others defend the Ultima Thule segment claiming that death was never the point to begin with and that the scions have already reached their "final forms," having long conquered the source of their own despair. This same argument is also used to defend the deceptively tame nature of the Final days that we experienced. But this defense is precisely why I find the conflict this time around to be fairly weak. When working with a setting that has been long stripped of the root of its despair, why hand the main antagonist of your final arc a weapon specifically designed to target, and exploit said despair? If nearly everyone in your story is bulletproof, why give the bad guy a gun?

[KizuyaKatogami]

This point is actually kinda interesting cuz it ties into one specific issue I have in regard to stakes in Endwalker. I've seen others defend the Ultima Thule segment claiming that death was never the point to begin with and that the scions have already reached their "final forms," having long conquered the source of their own despair. This same argument is also used to defend the deceptively tame nature of the Final days that we experienced. But this defense is precisely why I find the conflict this time around to be fairly weak. When working with a setting that has been long stripped of the root of its despair, why hand the main antagonist of your final arc a weapon specifically designed to target, and exploit said despair? If nearly everyone in your story is bulletproof, why give the bad guy a gun?

The answer to this is pretty simple. They just don’t want to kill any of the main cast as we all know. Instead they kill off minor npcs so that people can defend it and say “see, it wasn’t without consequences! X character died!” We saw this in Shb with Tesleen who in reality we knew for 5-10 mins. It’s pseudo consequences basically. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that a lot of the stuff that might’ve actually threatened the scions has been completely dropped. Again, i bring up Yshtola’s supposedly draining life. What happened to that? Literally not mentioned after HW.

[Atelier-Bagur]

The answer to this is pretty simple. They just don’t want to kill any of the main cast as we all know. Instead they kill off minor npcs so that people can defend it and say “see, it wasn’t without consequences! X character died!” We saw this in Shb with Tesleen who in reality we knew for 5-10 mins. It’s pseudo consequences basically. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that a lot of the stuff that might’ve actually threatened the scions has been completely dropped. Again, i bring up Yshtola’s supposedly draining life. What happened to that? Literally not mentioned after HW.

Im gonna just clip that last sentence because I have a feeling somewhere in the future the writers have been thinking about this part about new Y'shtola for years.

[KizuyaKatogami]

Im gonna just clip that last sentence because I have a feeling somewhere in the future the writers have been thinking about this part about new Y'shtola for years.

More power to you. Personally i’ve been heading for the past two expansions, “Oh i’m sure it will be mentioned next expansion!” And it never has been. At this point it would feel pretty random for them to mention it, because in all honesty she should be dead from it by now. She got sliced in SB and then used flow again in ShB. That should’ve deteriorated her life even more. Instead the opposite has happened and she’s grown stronger. It seems like the rules and laws of the universe don’t apply to them.

[ReynTime]

The answer to this is pretty simple. They just don’t want to kill any of the main cast as we all know. Instead they kill off minor npcs so that people can defend it and say “see, it wasn’t without consequences! X character died!” We saw this in Shb with Tesleen who in reality we knew for 5-10 mins. It’s pseudo consequences basically. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that a lot of the stuff that might’ve actually threatened the scions has been completely dropped. Again, i bring up Yshtola’s supposedly draining life. What happened to that? Literally not mentioned after HW.

It's a cheap way to make things more dire than they are in the plot. Introducing a character exclusively to kill them off 10~20 mins later.