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

[Nilroreo]

Well, they lost the best writer in XIV for XVI to let someone who is apparently obsessed with trying to make people cry and power of friendship speeches... Yeah the old writer is still around but his involvement in ShB and EW is very minimal.

I don't wanna be too hard on the current writers as I'm sure they're really passionate about the prospect of working on this franchise, but It's a bit hard to ignore that some of the more aggressive retcons and recontextualizations became more frequent starting with Shadowbringers, which I believe was around the time Ishikawa came on board full time.

Random example, when Emet confirms he was tempered in Shadowbringers, I decided to take him at his word, since I have no reason to assume he would lie about something like that. But when paired with the revelation a few patches later that the Echo isn't some phenomenon tied exclusively to Hydaelyn but instead to all Amaurotines in general, it brings to mind every single instance of immunity to tempering up until this point and how all have been attributed to the Echo. In ARR, I believe we didn't even have Hydaelyn's blessing for most of the story, so it would've been the Echo protecting us. In Heavensward, our blessing was revoked by Middy, and in Stormblood, 3 separate characters, none of which have the blessing were able to resist it with their Echo. But then Shadowbringers drops this revelation and Endwalker confirms it was actually the blessing of light protecting us this whole time!

So now, if we assume the Echo is what gives us immunity, then Emet couldn't have been tempered, but if we assume it was actually the blessing, then every single instance of the Echo being used to resist tempering between ARR and Stormblood is now called into question. the "light tug" comment in Endwalker doesn't really help much to clarify things either.

[ReynTime]

I don't wanna be too hard on the current writers as I'm sure they're really passionate about the prospect of working on this franchise, but It's a bit hard to ignore that some of the more aggressive retcons and recontextualizations became more frequent starting with Shadowbringers, which I believe was around the time Ishikawa came on board full time.

Random example, when Emet confirms he was tempered in Shadowbringers, I decided to take him at his word, since I have no reason to assume he would lie about something like that. But when paired with the revelation a few patches later that the Echo isn't some phenomenon tied exclusively to Hydaelyn but instead to all Amaurotines in general, it brings to mind every single instance of immunity to tempering up until this point and how all have been attributed to the Echo. In ARR, I believe we didn't even have Hydaelyn's blessing for most of the story, so it would've been the Echo protecting us. In Heavensward, our blessing was revoked by Middy, and in Stormblood, 3 separate characters, none of which have the blessing were able to resist it with their Echo. But then Shadowbringers drops this revelation and Endwalker confirms it was actually the blessing of light protecting us this whole time!

So now, if we assume the Echo is what gives us immunity, then Emet couldn't have been tempered, but if we assume it was actually the blessing, then every single instance of the Echo being used to resist tempering between ARR and Stormblood is now called into question. the "light tug" comment in Endwalker doesn't really help much to clarify things either.

I don't think Ishikawa is a bad writer, but the direction they went with starting with ShB is decidedly more "shounen" than any FF has been since VI. And credit where credit is due she IS good at making sympathetic antagonists... Meteion is just not one of them and I blame it on how rushed her development and exposition is.
I just think Maehiro is better at writing stories that don't underestimate an adult viewer's intelligence.

[Lauront]

I don't think Ishikawa is a bad writer, but the direction they went with starting with ShB is decidedly more "shounen" than any FF has been since VI. And credit where credit is due she IS good at making sympathetic antagonists... Meteion is just not one of them and I blame it on how rushed her development and exposition is.
I just think Maehiro is better at writing stories that don't underestimate an adult viewer's intelligence.

Has there been any word on whether she'll still be lead writer now that 6.0 is done with? I agree with your assessment of her writing style. She's not bad, but it is a particular style of writing better suited to certain stories and characters, and I've had my fill of it now.

[KizuyaKatogami]

I don't think Ishikawa is a bad writer, but the direction they went with starting with ShB is decidedly more "shounen" than any FF has been since VI. And credit where credit is due she IS good at making sympathetic antagonists... Meteion is just not one of them and I blame it on how rushed her development and exposition is.
I just think Maehiro is better at writing stories that don't underestimate an adult viewer's intelligence.

I don’t think Ishikawa is necessarily a bad writer either. I think a few things could be involved. One of them being i’ve felt like her writing is very same-y. A kind of, don’t fix it if it ain’t broke type of deal. For example, we have shb, where she made emet and the ascians/ancients as a whole sympathetic and understandable, and it worked! It fit for that sort of thing. But then we get to 5.3 where she decided to multiply that sympathy by 1000 and turned Elidibus from the manipulative cunning person he was in ARR to….dementia stricken npc. Not to mention the whole Amaurot instance with him just feeling like Drk questline 2.0,.

Then now we get to EW. Where she continues to do the same thing but this time strays away from the grey morality a bit and has Venat be considered benevolent and a hero. Then tries to make the ultimate big bad aka Meteion sympathetic as well. To me, Meteion is like they took Necron from ff9, a villain who can work just being clear cut bad, and tried to make him sympathetic, thus we got Meteion. Everything is just sympathy,sympathy,sympathy. And the one thing that she wrote that wasn’t sympathy….is one of the things many players hate(Zenos) and wasn’t even explored this expansion at all. Remember his whole visions of the end of days since early childhood? Yeah me neither apparently.

However, it’s hard to say whether all the blame is on her. How do we not know that maybe it was yoshi or some of the higher ups that influenced her writing? Considering that yoshi P made a comment on that podcast talking about how he cried so much at Venat’s scenes and, they spent a month or more on Hydaelyn’s model itself. It definitely seems like there’s some bias in that regards.

[TaleraRistain]

I don’t think Ishikawa is necessarily a bad writer either. I think a few things could be involved. One of them being i’ve felt like her writing is very same-y. A kind of, don’t fix it if it ain’t broke type of deal. For example, we have shb, where she made emet and the ascians/ancients as a whole sympathetic and understandable, and it worked! It fit for that sort of thing. But then we get to 5.3 where she decided to multiply that sympathy by 1000 and turned Elidibus from the manipulative cunning person he was in ARR to….dementia stricken npc. Not to mention the whole Amaurot instance with him just feeling like Drk questline 2.0,.

Then now we get to EW. Where she continues to do the same thing but this time strays away from the grey morality a bit and has Venat be considered benevolent and a hero. Then tries to make the ultimate big bad aka Meteion sympathetic as well. To me, Meteion is like they took Necron from ff9, a villain who can work just being clear cut bad, and tried to make him sympathetic, thus we got Meteion. Everything is just sympathy,sympathy,sympathy. And the one thing that she wrote that wasn’t sympathy….is one of the things many players hate(Zenos) and wasn’t even explored this expansion at all. Remember his whole visions of the end of days since early childhood? Yeah me neither apparently. However, it’s hard to say whether all the blame is on her. How do we not know that maybe it was yoshi or some of the higher ups that influenced her writing? Considering that yoshi P made a comment on that podcast talking about how he cried so much at Venat’s scenes and, they spent a month or more on Hydaelyn’s model itself. It definitely seems like there’s some bias in that regards.

Necron wasn't good or bad. Necron was neutral. He was the force of death and he was summoned because he thought mankind wanted to die. He considered it a benevolent action. Very much like Endsinger. She was the sum total of the despair and suffering she encountered in the civilizations the Meteia encountered. They faced their own mortality and couldn't find a reason to live on. So her ultimate solution was to prevent life to prevent pain and suffering. There was no good or evil in her actions, either.

[KizuyaKatogami]

Necron wasn't good or bad. Necron was neutral. He was the force of death and he was summoned because he thought mankind wanted to die. He considered it a benevolent action. Very much like Endsinger. She was the sum total of the despair and suffering she encountered in the civilizations the Meteia encountered. They faced their own mortality and couldn't find a reason to live on. So her ultimate solution was to prevent life to prevent pain and suffering. There was no good or evil in her actions, either.

I was mainly speaking in regards to how the main characters perceive him. You are correct in that for sure, i was trying to find a good way to phrase it without just saying turned an unsympathetic antagonist into a sympathetic one but i suppose that would’ve sufficed. Either way it just hammers home the constant sympathy aspect of a lot of the characters she writes barring one.

[TaleraRistain]

I was mainly speaking in regards to how the main characters perceive him. You are correct in that for sure, i was trying to find a good way to phrase it without just saying turned an unsympathetic antagonist into a sympathetic one but i suppose that would’ve sufficed. Either way it just hammers home the constant sympathy aspect of a lot of the characters she writes barring one.

It isn't just her, though. Gaius, Yotsuyu, Fordola, yes Emet, but even Thordan they've given us background to try to understand their point of view. Thordan is probably the closest to pure bad but especially doing the caster EW role quests, you can see where the root of some of his perspective came from as they grapple with how to get past the lies they were told about the church without just tossing off the mantle of the faith that's been so important to them.

[KizuyaKatogami]

It isn't just her, though. Gaius, Yotsuyu, Fordola, yes Emet, but even Thordan they've given us background to try to understand their point of view. Thordan is probably the closest to pure bad but especially doing the caster EW role quests, you can see where the root of some of his perspective came from as they grapple with how to get past the lies they were told about the church without just tossing off the mantle of the faith that's been so important to them.

For some of those i wouldn’t say it was as much sympathy as it was like you said, giving background. For Thordan i understood his motives, but i wasn’t sympathetic towards him at all. The same goes for Yotsuyu. I suppose i felt sympathy for what had happened to her, but i felt 0 sympathy for her overall because imo it wasn’t an excuse for her actions(although i do enjoy her as a character.) For Gaius and Fordola it’s the same thing. I suppose sympathy can be a bit of a perspective/subjective thing in the end. Personally i only really started noticing it with ShB because it was like one thing after another. Emet,Vauthry,Elidibus,beast tribes etc etc. Then this is just repeated again in EW. Probably doesn’t help Fandaniel a lot of the time just felt like them trying to make an Emet 2.0 with the over the top antics and theatrical performances.

[ReynTime]

(...)

While ShB isn't my favorite of XIV (I like it a lot more than EW though) I also wanna say despite the shounen tropes and over reliance in plot armor during it, it was a good, safe writing for what the expansion was, elevated by the long awaited exposition about the ascians as more than generic moustache twirling bads. I don't like Emet fans because of their hypocritical stance towards other antagonists, but Emet himself was also a good departure from past XIV expansion villains and even if I don't think the story was THAT good I understand why she was applauded in events.
That said I agree with what you said about sameyness. 5.3 was when I started feeling like my expectations were being betrayed. The disney ending in ShB made sense since we were clearly not going to dive too deep into the First again (except for the complete cheapening of the "sacrifice" at the end), but when things started getting really rushed into sunshines and rainbows in 5.4 and 5.5 regarding the internal disputes in Eorzea, I feel that was when the writing really jumped the shark.
Then you get Endwalker, which rehashes a lot of the foundations from ShB. "It worked well before, so let's use the same tricks again" pretty much. People thought Tesleen's death was super shocking so let's do that kind of scene a few more times at least. People thought having a sympathetic expansion villain was great and refreshing so let's do the same thing, only this time with a thick layer of pseudo philosophical pretentiousness so most people won't call it a rehash. People liked seeing the different people and races from the Crystarium and Eulmore working together and receiving us upon our return, so let's have every named character coincidentally wait for us back at a specific time that they had no way of knowing to make an emotional homecoming scene again...

I always disliked Zenos as a character and kept wishing he wasn't alive after 4.0. But if I had predicted Elpis and Meteion would be a thing... Honestly, I think I would have disliked it a lot less if his one-note self was the final antagonist instead.

Either way I think it's likely Ishikawa was going to write this with 2 expansions in mind, but her superiors had her change things ASAP to fit into 1 single expansion.

[Momo_Kozuki]

In ARR, I believe we didn't even have Hydaelyn's blessing for most of the story, so it would've been the Echo protecting us. In Heavensward, our blessing was revoked by Middy, and in Stormblood, 3 separate characters, none of which have the blessing were able to resist it with their Echo. But then Shadowbringers drops this revelation and Endwalker confirms it was actually the blessing of light protecting us this whole time!

Middy revoked your blessing in post-ARR, but you regained the blessing back (showing by earning elemental crystal one by one after you deal with dungeon/trial bosses in HW) by the end of HW. It was supposed Middy's test to see if you was worthy of her blessing, and you proved your worth. So your Blessing of Light is available since HW onward.