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

[Lauront]

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 In Heavensward, our blessing was revoked by Middy, and in Stormblood, 3 separate characters, none of which have the blessing were able to resist it with their Echo.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 genuinely think they regret writing the tempering into Emet's dialogue. It was a bad idea given the plot they were going for with him, to have it all at the whim of a primal. They watered it down in many ways through the lore introduced in 5.4 and also in an interview Yoshi did on the topic, and by EW (which attributes the beast tribe summonings to flawed versions of ancient creation invocations) it amounts to little more than an aetheric alignment that affects those Ascians who didn't safeguard their identity or memories well to the point that they regard him as a god in his own right (which he is... but not without a driver inside), but otherwise, is of little consequence. I'm glad in a sense, but it also comes across as contrived IMO.

[Theodric]

I like him, but his overly timid anime style admiration is tired bordering on creepy. They get it right with Estinien, imo.

As I see it, there's a good reason why many RPG's make it 'opt in' to pursue a deep friendship or romance with specific characters.

Alisae's 'crush' comes across as creepy to me as well. Not only is she underage, neither my character or I are even into women so there's no reason not to give my character the option to not unintentionally lead her astray with false hope!

To say nothing of the dubious nature of characters opting to flirt or become overly clingy with someone who has undergone the Ceremony of Eternal Bonding...

On the other hand, most of the Scions do strike me as homewreckers given their habit of intervening even when a decision has been agreed upon that they disapprove of!

[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.

[ApolloGenX]

As I see it, there's a good reason why many RPG's make it 'opt in' to pursue a deep friendship or romance with specific characters.

Alisae's 'crush' comes across as creepy to me as well. Not only is she underage, neither my character or I are even into women so there's no reason not to give my character the option to not unintentionally lead her astray with false hope!

To say nothing of the dubious nature of characters opting to flirt or become overly clingy with someone who has undergone the Ceremony of Eternal Bonding...

On the other hand, most of the Scions do strike me as homewreckers given their habit of intervening even when a decision has been agreed upon that they disapprove of!

Yeah... I was ok with Ardbert though....and Emet. =-)

[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.

[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.

[Rulakir]

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.

Even this was retconned. It's said the Ascians introduced the element of tempering to primal summons and at most they would have felt a 'tug' with Zodiark. Add to this that there's a question as to whether or not Hydaelyn is sundered, the Watcher says she is but there's nothing else in game about it. The Azem crystal was either forgotten about or retconned. It was created by Emet post-sundering in secret in ShB, then in EW they act like the crystal has been passed down through Convocation successors.

I'm loathe to lay it all at the feet of Ishikawa. We know that Yoshi-P made the decision to push the end to 6.0 instead of 7.0 or even 8.0 like Ishikawa would've liked. I also suspect that the decision to make Hydaelyn 'ultimate good' was last minute and/or made by someone other than Ishikawa.

[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.

[Theodric]

Yeah... I was ok with Ardbert though....and Emet. =-)

Likewise! Hien, too.