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

[KizuyaKatogami]

I sincerely doubt that a thread on an MMO forum can be representative of the quality of anything.

If the forums have taught me one thing - one thing only: complain about everything, all the time, whether it is justified or not.

And please, enough with the "we pay" point. We already had too many of these during the difficult launch. Childish attitude.

You're free to have an opinion, and free to state your own points, but i would really rather you not denote people's opinions in here simply because they are posted in a forum thread, if you want an example of childish attitude, its that. It seems your gripe with this is the fact people are actually critiquing a story and you disagree with all of it so youre trying to write off peoples opinions and statements. Thats the opposite of a debate and plain and simply a hindrance. It's especially interesting to me because where else then would critique be valid for you? The toxic cesspool that is reddit or twitter? Where a majority of people hate and send death threats to anyone who critiques the story?

Im genuinely tired of seeing people coming in here and downplaying peoples opinions in here, no matter if they agree with me or not, its childish and outright rude to downplay posts. As ive stated previously, yes, you are going to see more complaints on the forums. Why? Few reasons. Main one being they are the official forums for the game, people critique so that hopefully the devs see it and will take the feedback and do something with it. Secondly, as ive stated the other two places that are typically used for social interactions, they are extremely toxic, especially to anyone offering criticism for the game. This is a much better safe space to hold conversations and debates than either of those.

As for the "we pay" comment....its the truth. We're paying for a game and a service, we are allowed to have our opinions and express our concerns with the game. Yes you heard it during the launch, because people took off time from an already delayed expansion to play and couldnt even log on. If this happened to any other gaming company like blizzard, people would be raging all over and preaching for a cancellation.

If you're referring to Azem's Crystal and the moment in the encounter then I'm pretty sure that could be free of his burden and his 'responsibility'. In this circumstance there is freedom in death. There's a lot of questions remaining here, but it's perfectly plausible that in the end Emet-Selch simply wanted to relieve him of this burden, or at least attempt to help us in our endeavour of doing so. Without the other unsundered to aid in that goal he's effectively completely and utterly alone. With our escapades of preventing the calamity which would have brought about our deaths that's potentially many millennia of planning to bring about his ultimate goal - Alone

To be fair, kwwp in mind this is before we learned of Meteion, he would have killed us there and would have succeeded in the rest of the rejoinings. The thing is too, at that point was Emet really dead? The short story seems to confirm he was as close to alive as could be in the lifestream. Why didnt he just... talk to Elidibus. The thing is how would Emet know Elidibus would be killed? That didnt happen until this expansion. Before his death again, he was trapped inside of a tower with the memories of his people and his failure to bring them back. All he did was make his burden worse until he sacrificed himself.Elidibus was working alone for most of it anyways after Lahabrea died so im not sure that holds much merit.Emet didnt seem to care back then because he was quite literally sleeping during the events of arr,hw,and most of sb. And even before then.

[Kaurhz]

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Our deaths wouldn't result in the immediate succession of his rejoinings. Our own death is just the removal of a fairly obstinate obstacle. Our deaths could result in our next incarnation being more powerful, and seemingly how the rejoinings work his goal would only become more and more difficult. Still, many millennia of planning. Our death isn't just an immediate rejoining. The whole purpose of our trip to the first was to prevent the flood of light in combination with black rose. We effectively took that flood on ourselves and used it against Emet-Selch. All of that abundance of aether. Have fun recreating that calamity. - Otherwise by your self-same argument we could just hypothesize that the best course of action for Elidibus to take would to simply sit on the sidelines and wait for our inevitable death in a hundred years.

The whole point is he didn't know Elidibibus would be killed, nor would he know that we would defeat him, or stop his calamity entirely. That's just creating contingencies. If the events of everything leading up to his entrapment in the tower, Elidibus himself was borderline crumbling. Up to the events leading, all he knew was his obligation. Emet-Selch saw his obligations of rejoining the first to the source as complete; and the only natural course of events would be to simply play spectator sport. him being asleep and letting what should have been the natural course of events playing out is entirely different from him actually being dead or borderline dead, and given he could no longer sense Emet-Selch it'd stand to argue that he'd be pretty hopeless in conversing with Emet-Selch. Elidibus didn't really (to our knowledge) have an real affinity or capacity with the lifestream, or the ability to 'see ones soul', comparative to say, Emet-Selch, and equally to the best of our knowledge, our unsundered self is one of few ancients that could 'summon the stars to their side'.

So yes, all things considered the "He probably wanted to relieve Elidibus of his burden through death" is still perfectly reasonable, especially if Emet-Selch was coming to realise that we were worthy of carrying their legacy. In this regard, many of the gripes would actually be more related to Shadowbringers than with Endwalker itself. The pacing of Shadowbringers completely and utterly dropped after the base expansion itself.

[KizuyaKatogami]

The pacing of Shadowbringers completely and utterly dropped after the base expansion itself.

I can strongly agree with you on that lol. Part of me wonders if it was that way due to the expansion change thing although, it just seems like they had so many revisions done to the story. We know that Eden was originally supposed to be the final boss of ShB…so how would that have affected 5.3+? Would emet have been the 5.3 boss and Elidibus the main focus of 6.0? Is that why he feels so shafted. And if so i wonder how all of that would’ve affected what is now Endwalker. We also know they had thought about doing a partial rejoining on the first…So many revisions and changes.

[Kaurhz]

I can strongly agree with you on that lol. Part of me wonders if it was that way due to the expansion change thing although, it just seems like they had so many revisions done to the story. We know that Eden was originally supposed to be the final boss of ShB…so how would that have affected 5.3+? Would emet have been the 5.3 boss and Elidibus the main focus of 6.0? Is that why he feels so shafted. And if so i wonder how all of that would’ve affected what is now Endwalker. We also know they had thought about doing a partial rejoining on the first…So many revisions and changes.

The problem is from the initial inception of the game right up until now they're still bound by many of those narrations set earlier in the game. That includes the whole light vs dark, or Hydaelyn good Zodiark bad nonsense. It's difficult to get around stuff like that. Personally, I'd have been happy with us not facing Emet-Selch whatsoever but instead having him as the guide or sorts on our journey and acting as a true sacrificial lamb towards the end. Continually deciding our worth. To be frank I think he thought we were 'worthy' pretty early on, with the missive comment he made of our soul and all. But just carrying on his condescending attitude. Equally I've said many times that I personally think Endwalker needed to be longer (I like the world building and I don't want that sacrificed), at least given how post-shadowbringers was handled. To be frank I think Post-Shadowbringers had a lot of consequences on how Endwalker was told. It left a few questions which ultimately should not have been left unanswered.

I'd have been happy if our budget Emet-Selch (Fandaniel) never existed to begin with. Or at least have him introduced in Endwalker and then left post-Shadowbringers dedicated almost entirely to flushing out Elidibus. Speaking of Fandaniel; I don't think we ever found out more about the telophoroi.

[KizuyaKatogami]

The problem is from the initial inception of the game right up until now they're still bound by many of those narrations set earlier in the game. That includes the whole light vs dark, or Hydaelyn good Zodiark bad nonsense. It's difficult to get around stuff like that. Personally, I'd have been happy with us not facing Emet-Selch whatsoever but instead having him as the guide or sorts on our journey and acting as a true sacrificial lamb towards the end. Continually deciding our worth. To be frank I think he thought we were 'worthy' pretty early on, with the missive comment he made of our soul and all. But just carrying on his condescending attitude. Equally I've said many times that I personally think Endwalker needed to be longer (I like the world building and I don't want that sacrificed), at least given how post-shadowbringers was handled. To be frank I think Post-Shadowbringers had a lot of consequences on how Endwalker was told. It left a few questions which ultimately should not have been left unanswered.

I'd have been happy if our budget Emet-Selch (Fandaniel) never existed to begin with. Or at least have him introduced in Endwalker and then left post-Shadowbringers dedicated almost entirely to flushing out Elidibus. Speaking of Fandaniel; I don't think we ever found out more about the telophoroi.

Yep i agree with all of these points. As much as i love Shadowbringers, just like other people have stated they really wrote themselves into a corner. I think a lot of it has to do with a trend i’ve pointed out with Ishikawa in making everyone and everything sympathetic. It leaves very little room for just plain and simple evil. It also leaves very little room to explore nuance and all that. Fandaniel was a wasted opportunity imo. I get the whole subverting expectations with having him die off early but…i hardly felt anything for it because we didn’t know much about him to begin with until later. We didn’t learn more about the teliphoroi, we didn’t learn more about zenos’ memories of the final days nor did fandaniel even elaborate on the whole “did emet selch find a way?”

This may be my bias showing(totally is), but i think it would’ve been extremely more interesting if say, like you said Emet had been our guide on our journey to dictate our worth, and they went back to Elidibus’ whole shtick on balance, him keeping the peace on both sides and them eventually both hydaelyn and zodiark having to work together to combat some immensely greater threat. I think it at the very least would’ve worked better than the convoluted time mess we got and the unanswered questions, and at least would’ve done a better job keeping everything neutral.

[OhNooo]

This may be my bias showing(totally is), but i think it would’ve been extremely more interesting if say, like you said Emet had been our guide on our journey to dictate our worth, and they went back to Elidibus’ whole shtick on balance, him keeping the peace on both sides and them eventually both hydaelyn and zodiark having to work together to combat some immensely greater threat. I think it at the very least would’ve worked better than the convoluted time mess we got and the unanswered questions, and at least would’ve done a better job keeping everything neutral.

Yes I would've loved something like this. At this point I'm tired of just killing everything instead of trying to form mutually beneficial alliances. One of the things I loved about HW was teaming up with Hraesvelgr and Ysale and lately it just seems like we've killed everything until nothing's left to form any opposition. If we could've somehow formed an alliance with at least one of the unsundered, I think that would've taken the story in a very interesting direction.

[Theodric]

Yes I would've loved something like this. At this point I'm tired of just killing everything instead of trying to form mutually beneficial alliances. One of the things I loved about HW was teaming up with Hraesvelgr and Ysale and lately it just seems like we've killed everything until nothing's left to form any opposition. If we could've somehow formed an alliance with at least one of the unsundered, I think that would've taken the story in a very interesting direction.

Yeah, it's odd. JRPG's have never shied away from having sympathetic antagonists team up with the protagonists in order to combat a greater threat. Many Final Fantasy games have themselves done as much.

Incidentally, it's also why FFVIIR and FFIX stand higher in my list of favourite FF games than FFXIV. The Scions are very dry and inoffensive in my view, with few or no meaningful quirks. They never really disagree with each other in any meaningful capacity and I can practically see the drool leaking out of the corners of their mouths each time they decide that, once again, they're going to start working towards a 'better tomorrow'!

[Kaurhz]

Yep i agree with all of these points. As much as i love Shadowbringers, just like other people have stated they really wrote themselves into a corner. I think a lot of it has to do with a trend i’ve pointed out with Ishikawa in making everyone and everything sympathetic. It leaves very little room for just plain and simple evil. It also leaves very little room to explore nuance and all that. Fandaniel was a wasted opportunity imo. I get the whole subverting expectations with having him die off early but…i hardly felt anything for it because we didn’t know much about him to begin with until later. We didn’t learn more about the teliphoroi, we didn’t learn more about zenos’ memories of the final days nor did fandaniel even elaborate on the whole “did emet selch find a way?”

This may be my bias showing(totally is), but i think it would’ve been extremely more interesting if say, like you said Emet had been our guide on our journey to dictate our worth, and they went back to Elidibus’ whole shtick on balance, him keeping the peace on both sides and them eventually both hydaelyn and zodiark having to work together to combat some immensely greater threat. I think it at the very least would’ve worked better than the convoluted time mess we got and the unanswered questions, and at least would’ve done a better job keeping everything neutral.

You see the irony is in the fact that many of these questions should have reasonably been answered in Shadowbringers, and arguably in the case of Zenos; he should have been addressed in Stormblood. Ultimately some of their rushed areas in previous expansions just left slim chances of everything actually being addressed promptly. In fact, arguably Meteion as a character should really have been teased in Shadowbringers too. It'd actually elude more to what the issues were, seeing as the 'sound' was introduced in the base MSQ of ShB.

I would say that'd have been a better approach since it keeps to the confines of maintaining the balance with Elidibus and then whole Emet-Selch judging our worth. But not only that it'd have been a real nice send-off to the ancients themselves if they could actually see what was causing their downfall. I don't think the primals themselves should have been the ones to work together, but rather us with the unsundered. Back to the previous paragraph really, many of the questions that were left unanswered should have been addressed in previous expansions.