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

[Lauront]

The ancients' souls were not consumed by the Final Days because of how dense their aether was, hence they were available to use to summon Zodiark and create a buffer (albeit as a last resort because they didn't know what was causing the crisis or what led to it spreading so rapidly), adequate to last at least 12k years even in sundered form, and also to revitalise the star with some more sacrifice. In a situation where souls are consumed wholesale, that just wouldn't be possible.

As to methods hinted at? Ktisis Hyperboreia allows for aetheric suppression, for one; uses of this could potentially be adapted and extended to allow them to more readily hone the ability to interact with dynamis. For another, use of better constructed familiars than Meteion. For yet another, selective sundering of some ancients rather than sundering the entire planet, and preparation of them to face her. It only took a few sundered to hunt down Meteion after she'd guzzled several stars' worth of despair. In addition, Elidibus in SoS is able to manipulate the power provided to him through prayer from summoned WoL fragments to fuel his LBs and shield himself from them, and we know there is an association between prayer and dynamis; primals are constructs of both prayer (a lot of which went into Zodiark) and aether and it is possible to turn into them and adopt some of their traits. These and other things they could've come up with in the span of 12k years or less were all potential workarounds...

[Lieri]

Remember that the story in Endwalker isn't just about the emo bird and holy adventurer mommy. Do you forget about Thavnair and Garlemald?
After ShB what else do you need to know about Hydaelyn or Zodiark anyway? the stories from previous expansions (ARR to ShB) have pretty much explained what they did and what they are. So in order conclude the arc, which is what Endwalker supposed to be, they need to explain something beyond Hydaelyn and Zodiark (it's no longer who or what but why). They did that by adding a rather lengthy story in Elpis.

Also don't forget that WoL slapped Zodiark in it's imperfect form.

And to answer why is the story in Endwalker plays out this way, it's because a group of competent people whose job is to create stories in a video game decided it has to be like this. Maybe it's also related to their plans for the future. So questions like "why didn't character A do B?" is a little bit silly. It's like asking why is Naruto's name Naruto and why are his clothes orange when there are so many colors to choose from.

[MagiusNecros]

They used time travel poorly. SE should of revisited their masterpiece in Chrono Trigger for proper use of time travel. Or even Legacy of Kain. They've made quite a paradox and it's going to bite them in the ass at some point.

The world building was great but the pacing and story behind it was awful.

I expect heavy liberal use of "Azem is a queer, is weird and has crazy magic" to explain away things they can't explain at all like they have been doing since Shadowbringers.

[RoroCookies]

Manipulating dynamis was never the only reason, only a potential benefit. The Sundering is described as a “desperate act which allowed Her to imprison His shattered essence upon the moon.” It wasn’t the ideal.


Dynamis manipulation was not something she could have direct experience in. What she did know was either told to her by us in Elpis, or was represented by the Elpis flower.


Dynamis is governed by emotions, so prayer and love and hate and pain and feelings in general do command it. That’s why hope is so important, as it is both a shield and a sword.

I didn't expect Venat to teach us how to use Dynamis. More of a, "Hey there's a world ending foe that uses this power, maybe you guys should spend some time to hone your abilities first." You know, actually prepare for a world ending event that destroys everything instead of charging right into it. Meteion even mocks us for not knowing how to use dynamis. There was no need for convenient heroic sacrifices if the scions also spent the amount of time having tea into learning to manipulate dynamis and making the situation more into their favor. The fact that we hinge on our magical hope to win the day against a planet destroying despair bird whose been collecting souls for over 12k years is just... okay.

It may just be a me issue but just seeing how eager we were to throw ourselves into the enemy's nest with 0 actual planning annoyed me. Even more so when we waste our time doing fetch quests in between all this. Not even out back up plan was solid enough because that button could easily malfunction, get lost, or just break. Maybe my own expectations were to high.

[Ayuhra]

Really my main issue with Endwalker was Fandaniel. Not because I disliked him but...really the opposite. I liked him a lot, I wanted more time with him. The game says he is in despair but aside from subtle facial expressions and animations we don't see that much. We don't know which memories of Hermes he carries exactly other than dreams of the Elpis quest chain burned into him by Kairos.

Also the reveal that Fandaniel is Amon meant he needed a bit more time to shine, at least to me. Amon is a character that's been bouncing around the lore since ARR, he created most of the nonsense at the Aetherochemical Research Facility and Fractal Continuum, was the main designer (apparently) of the Binding Coils and the tech used to seal the Warring Triad, he very likely designed the Diablo Armament under commission from Xande as well. Like this one dude is responsible for a huge amount of past content.

I didn't need him to be around the whole expansion but one more zone would have been nice.

[Consurgens]

These are my personal grievances with the story. Emphasis on "personal" since I understand why some people would enjoy it and I recognize the appeal, but it just didn't resonate well with me:


Sudden plot elements: Hermes, Meteion and Dynamis were just too abruptly introduced in the story. Yes, we've heard of the seat of Fandaniel and we knew of "the sound" but the thread of correlation was too thin between what the player knew and what was introduced. I think it's important for stories to have a build-up and continuity of some degree, that makes you speculate about the elements and where they might go from there, but if you drop new, all-encompasing elements all of a sudden, it's hard to keep me invested because at any moment you could just drop another one and leave me in the dark again. I ended up caring very little about Hermes and Meteion which took away from the whole experience since they're central aspects of it.

No, I wasn't expecting Zodiark to be the "big bad", but I think there were other possible venues of storytelling they could've chosen using pre-existing elements instead of adding entirely new ones right at the relative end of the story, in true Final Fantasy fashion. I wouldn't have enjoyed FFVI as much as I did if Kefka was only introduced at the Floating Continent when he's about to tap into the Warring Triad's power. Even the infamous Yu Yevon from FFX had some modicum of foreshadow and previous exposition.

You could retroactively apply Dynamis to previously established lore (such as the Omega raid or Limit Break), since it's such an abstract and vague concept, but that's not good world building in my opinion. Who knows now what's Dynamis and what isn't? Will they even bother to articulate it with future stories and, if they do, will they at least give it a more concrete explanation and modus operandi, or will it be relegated to a very anime-esque plot device for when the WoL is in trouble?



Time travel: Time travel often does more harm than good in the story. I'm not saying you can't have an interesting story with time travel, but it does require a neatly packed frame since the chances of contradiction and plot holes are enormous.

EW not only did time travel, but they decided to do the closed loop variant which is, in my opinion, the most flawed one. The whole "who comes first..." scenario just feels like a cheap excuse to not give proper causality to the events presented: it expects you to just accept that it is what it is and to move on. No sense of wonder as you unfold the reasons, no theorizing about the contrivances involved, no speculating about its widespread unknown impacts and variables, nothing.



Theme: Nihilism is, quite frankly and very personally speaking, a very boring theme. For every german philosopher and indian monk claiming that there is no meaning to human existence, you have millions of people giving meaning to their own lives, be it through faith, love, ego, personal goals, legacy, values or even just hedonism.

I think it works well when it's tied to the development of a character with relatable traits, surrounded by goals, flaws and situations that make said character adopt a very personal, subjective type of nihilism, shaped by their own trials of life. Caius in FFXIII-2 comes to mind.

Suffice to say, Meteion is quite the opposite... although it makes sense considering what she is. Her take on nihilism was extremely shallow and juvenile and it kind of dragged the whole writing with it. At some point when it was just the WoL, the twins and Meteion in Ultima Thule, the dialogue was almost reduced to "My hope is stronger than your despair!" and "No! My despair is greater!". This is the type of writing I expect from something like Danganronpa - and I quite enjoy Danganronpa, but for the comedy, not because I take the writing seriously.

I never understood why some writers present hope and despair as if they were some kind of hidden yet concrete power that you declare to others. Emotions are more complex than that, specially when interacting with the emotions of other people. I think both themes are better presented when they're subtle and preferably not even mentioned: they're emotions and they work better setting an atmosphere. You could feel the despair and the misery of those garleans in the subway refuge, or in Quintius' melancholy: the story and its chracters don't need to spell it for me.



Fantasy vs Reality: Sometimes it feels like the writing is not sure if it's based on reality, based on fantasy or the latter constructed upon the former.

I think it was mentioned in this thread before, but the Ea is arguably the biggest example: in this universe where the equivalent of matter is well known and even interactable, where people have created underground suns, sent ships to the edge of the cosmos - which is 60% something made of "emotion power" - and all sorts of rules of physics are nonchalantly broken by fantasy elements, why is the game telling me that suddenly thermodynamics and the entropy of the universe is a big deal?

I could stretch the point to the Ancients. Of course they have a different view of death than I do: they're virtually immortal beings with demiurge-like powers, living in an enlightened society articulated by social dialectics and communitary values and - more importantly - with a clear understanding of the cycle of life and death. Me, the poster, have some decades of life ahead of me, have no idea what happens after I die and am surrounded by a world filled with animosity, strife etc. The game expecting me to so readily apply my own sense of life morality to a world so detached of my own feels forced. Perspective is everything.

In fact, some of the reasonings for the despair of certain worlds (like the Ra-La one) seemed to completely disregard how complex people tend to be, specially when on the verge of destruction and how we always aim to adapt and preserve life. But then again, those worlds may have been under the Endsinger's influence to begin with so no point in commenting further.



Ultima Thule: I loved the zone's atmosphere, specially the Ea part which really sold the eerie alien aspect. The music (the instrumental one) was also on point. Other than that, unfortunately, I feel it was one of the weakest parts of the expansion.

Admittedly, that's mostly because of the abovementioned points, but the zone just sank my expectations further. I can understand when people say the scions' "sacrifice" was just for the message, but that doesn't change my perception that the entire thing was a completely pointless, overly sappy waste of time.

The moment Thancred "died" and the characters were just "okay, moving on", that was already a sign. When Estinien was "dying", the first thing I thought was: "Oh, it's gonna be one of those moments" that have been done countless times in other japanese RPGs and animes. Just because something was done before, doesn't mean it's bad, but Ultima Thule did it in such a formulaic, non-impactful way that whatever immersion I had was just replaced by "Alright, here's zone 2, who's next to make the speech and disappear so we can move on?" When the writing becomes this predictable, it becomes hard to create immersion to begin with. I feel they could've just kept the scions there the whole time, interacting with the different alien races and it would've probably been better.

And before someone says it: I don't think killing characters for the sake of emotional impact is good either. That said, this expansion was advertised as an apocalyptic moment. There is a limit of how many random NPCs you can kill in the most tragic ways before it stops being impactful because the main cast just seems to be immune to it. You don't have to kill the scions, but surely you can leave scars - both literally and figuratively - on them: it's a sign of development and of the stakes the story is trying to present.

Why did a banquet in ARR leave a bigger impact on the scions than the actual end of the world? Also, notice how the WoL's dialogue became influenced by Haurchefant and even Emet-Selch: because those characters left a legacy after death that shaped the protagonist's view. Death doesn't need to happen everytime, but it can improve a narrative and I feel EW had some great opportunities to use it.

With that said, some people saw EW as more of a conclusion to those characters, since they were already completely developed by the end of SHB, and that's fair, but if that's the case, I feel it was a very boring conclusion.



Other points I could mention (plot conveniences, the whole Venat thing) have been said countless times, so I won't extend this wall of text. Apologizes if any of this sounds condescending or overly picky as it was not my intention: if anything, I'm criticizing EW the way I am because of how much I appreciate this game's story and lore.

[Vandelay]

My only real areas of disappointment were 1) that Zodiark kinda ended up being not much in the story (although I guess you could say we already sorta dealt with him via Elidibus in 5.1-5.3, the same way we did Hydaelyn via Venat), and 2) the continued failure to mold Zenos into something more profound than your "notice me senpai" groupie, despite keeping him in the story for three expansions. It seemed like they just never quite figured out what to do with him.

There are some other flabby bits of storytelling that maybe don't hold up to super-close canonical scrutiny, but honestly that's kinda par for the course at this point for all of the expansions.

Overall it's a terrific story, and an emotionally resonant ending for the arc involving the Ascians and mega-primals.

[EaraGrace]

Meanwhile as we know, the ancients were able to manipulate it to some extent, which just in the end makes her look even worse.

Mmmmm not really. The most Dynamis manipulation from an Ancient we see is Hermes, whose noted as being the only one to change the Elpis flowers colors. There’s also the inherent issue of if Dynamis could be manipulated by them why make Meteion, or he’ll why make her so aetherically weak. Neither of those choices would make sense if they could.

She didn’t learn to “walk” with her people. She gave them 0 chance and damned them without even telling them the truth. We’ve seen that its been hinted with both the ancients in the dungeon run and with Elidibus they could utilize dynamis.

Neither of these things are true. She did give them a chance, and they chose to return to the world they thought lacked fear or suffering, and we’re willing to sacrifice the living for that. And are we now arguing that the Limit Break is purely a Dynamis creation?

I mean, in fact it seems Elidibus is able to block dynamis with the way he blocks limit breaks in his trial.

He hallowed grounded, not exactly a “Dynamis block.”

It may not have turned into planetary annihilation had Venat told the ancients what was to come,since we know their souls werent consumed in the process, they were able to use that fuel for summoning Zodiark. Considering the sundered had to rely upon a loooot of things the unsundered left around, i think that says a lot.

A lot of maybes.

Ktisis Hyperboreia allows for aetheric suppression, for one; uses of this could potentially be adapted and extended to allow them to more readily hone the ability to interact with dynamis.

For that to work the suppression would have to suppress soul density as well, an effect we don’t have proof is possible.

For another, use of better constructed familiars than Meteion. For yet another, selective sundering of some ancients rather than sundering the entire planet, and preparation of them to face her.

So the Ancients would create a race of beings whose purpose is to suffer so they don’t have to, beings that had no choice in the matter and ultimately no reason to love the Ancients or their people. When faced with the graveyard of hope that is Ultima Thule, why wouldn’t they join with Meteion or give up entirely? What would they have to live for?

In addition, Elidibus in SoS is able to manipulate the power provided to him through prayer from summoned WoL fragments to fuel his LBs and shield himself from them, and we know there is an association between prayer and dynamis;

Prayer and aether are linked as well. On a planet like Etheirys even more so.

[KizuyaKatogami]

The moment Thancred "died" and the characters were just "okay, moving on", that was already a sign. When Estinien was "dying", the first thing I thought was: "Oh, it's gonna be one of those moments" that have been done countless times in other japanese RPGs and animes. Just because something was done before, doesn't mean it's bad, but Ultima Thule did it in such a formulaic, non-impactful way that whatever immersion I had was just replaced by "Alright, here's zone 2, who's next to make the speech and disappear so we can move on?" When the writing becomes this predictable, it becomes hard to create immersion to begin with. I feel they could've just kept the scions there the whole time, interacting with the different alien races and it would've probably been better.

And before someone says it: I don't think killing characters for the sake of emotional impact is good either. That said, this expansion was advertised as an apocalyptic moment. There is a limit of how many random NPCs you can kill in the most tragic ways before it stops being impactful because the main cast just seems to be immune to it. You don't have to kill the scions, but surely you can leave scars - both literally and figuratively - on them: it's a sign of development and of the stakes the story is trying to present.

Why did a banquet in ARR leave a bigger impact on the scions than the actual end of the world? Most of the WoL's dialogue became heavily influenced by Haurchefant and Emet-Selch, because those characters left a legacy after death that shaped the protagonist's view. Death doesn't need to happen everytime, but it can improve a narrative and I feel EW had some great opportunities to use it.

Agree with everything you said, but this especially i resonated with a lot. There really just wasn’t any time that i felt this expansion felt truly end of world-like. Thavnair was probably the closest but even then it was just random npcs introduced to be killed off for about 5 minutes. Your point about the banquet is a good one as well. Why is it that the banquet or the garleans were able to apply more consequences or scars than the literal end of the world event was? This can be applied to shadowbringers too tbh.

Mmmmm not really. The most Dynamis manipulation from an Ancient we see is Hermes, whose noted as being the only one to change the Elpis flowers colors. There’s also the inherent issue of if Dynamis could be manipulated by them why make Meteion, or he’ll why make her so aetherically weak. Neither of those choices would make sense if they could.



Neither of these things are true. She did give them a chance, and they chose to return to the world they thought lacked fear or suffering, and we’re willing to sacrifice the living for that. And are we now arguing that the Limit Break is purely a Dynamis creation?



He hallowed grounded, not exactly a “Dynamis block.”



A lot of maybes.



For that to work the suppression would have to suppress soul density as well, an effect we don’t have proof is possible.



So the Ancients would create a race of beings whose purpose is to suffer so they don’t have to, beings that had no choice in the matter and ultimately no reason to love the Ancients or their people. When faced with the graveyard of hope that is Ultima Thule, why wouldn’t they join with Meteion or give up entirely? What would they have to live for?



Prayer and aether are linked as well. On a planet like Etheirys even more so.

1.)Yes, theres good info to suggest limit breaks in some form are indeed a part of Dynamis control, which prayer is also a part of, hence we see this with Elidibus and in Ktisis.
2.)She approached them after the Final Days occurred, when in reality she could have approchaed them beforehand. I've reiterated this point numerous times now and you keep ignoring it or saying "but, well...there were problems with that." No there weren't. She chose to not even give them a chance then, she kept her secrets to herself and continued to keep them and lie in our own time as well. Shes a manipulator and deceitful person.
3.) He does it purely against limit breaks, if you want to amount it to something else thats on you.
4.) Thats about what 90% of the arguments advocating for Venat are based around.Dont see you equating it as such when it benefits your argument hm? Regardless i've given absolutes before and people simply dodge around them or avoid those points entirely.
5.) As for your point about the creating beings just to suffer, please, pray tell, explain to me how this is any different from us summoning primals in the Empty just to kill them without their consent.

[Lauront]

For that to work the suppression would have to suppress soul density as well, an effect we don’t have proof is possible.

Don't see 1) how we know that or 2) why it matters, since we don't know exactly which facet of the ancients makes it harder to manipulate dynamis, considering they had much aetherically denser bodies too.

All we know of Ktisis's field is this:

Hythlodaeus: And what does this “state of alert” entail exactly?
Ktisis Scholar: A field of dampening magick is draped over the entire facility, usually in response to escaped entities and the like.
Ktisis Scholar: Ktisis scholars and observers are unaffected, but everything─and everyone─else is weakened to a fraction of their usual capabilities.
Hythlodaeus: Then consider us forewarned. We do, however, have urgent business with Chief Hermes, and must enter the premises regardless.
Hythlodaeus: ...That said, if Hermes is willing to enact such measures, I wonder what other obstacles he has seen fit to drop in our path.
Hythlodaeus: With that enfeebling spell in place, we're not like to be at our fighting best.

Whether it can affect soul aether is unknown. Whether it needs to (the WoL themselves being 9/14ths dense at the soul level) is unknown. Whether it could be modified to if necessary is an open option, as is use of it as-is.

So the Ancients would create a race of beings whose purpose is to suffer so they don’t have to,

Bizarre framing. They're just arcane constructs at the end of the day, much like Primals or egis are. And that isn't why. The reason is to help them track and hunt down Meteion and stop her from hiding, to ultimately get to her and put her out of her misery. For that, ability to manipulate dynamis is required. If one had to, one could endow it with the purpose of protecting the universe itself - quite a noble purpose. If it did not work, there is the option of selective sundering of some of their own.

beings that had no choice in the matter

Beats sundering your entire race with no choice in the matter, along with the star and every other life on it, potentially weakening the very barrier shielding it by thinning out Zodiark's potency, when only a handful of sundered was what it took to bring down her and all her moping "despair", along with several stars' worth of it, after it was left rather late...

and ultimately no reason to love the Ancients or their people.

Then revise the concept to circumvent that little problem.

When faced with the graveyard of hope that is Ultima Thule, why wouldn’t they join with Meteion or give up entirely? What would they have to live for?

Because they're impervious due to how their concept was designed or for any other number of reasons. Having a world they can roam about, for example, as opposed to the supposed "heat death" of the universe. Being heralded as heroic amongst the ancients. etc

What was stopping a sundered being from doing the same, knowing of their broken existence, after they were made to suffer in this state thanks to a Supreme Deity? You could ask the same question here. Thus, test and prepare.

Prayer and aether are linked as well. On a planet like Etheirys even more so.

So what? It's linked to both. Primals happen to have an awful lot of it to tap into.

Anyway, I'm not really interested in endless back and forth over this. It is clear that there is enough room in the plot to allow for it.

These are my personal grievances with the story. Emphasis on "personal" since I understand why some people would enjoy it and I recognize the appeal, but it just didn't resonate well with me:


Sudden plot elements: Hermes, Meteion and Dynamis were just too abruptly introduced in the story. Yes, we've heard of the seat of Fandaniel and we knew of "the sound" but the thread of correlation was too thin between what the player knew and what was introduced. I think it's important for stories to have a build-up and continuity of some degree, that makes you speculate about the elements and where they might go from there, but if you drop new, all-encompasing elements all of a sudden, it's hard to keep me invested because at any moment you could just drop another one and leave me in the dark again. I ended up caring very little about Hermes and Meteion which took away from the whole experience since they're central aspects of it.

No, I wasn't expecting Zodiark to be the "big bad", but I think there were other possible venues of storytelling they could've chosen using pre-existing elements instead of adding entirely new ones right at the relative end of the story, in true Final Fantasy fashion. I wouldn't have enjoyed FFVI as much as I did if Kefka was only introduced at the Floating Continent when he's about to tap into the Warring Triad's power. Even the infamous Yu Yevon from FFX had some modicum of foreshadow and previous exposition.

You could retroactively apply Dynamis to previously established lore (such as the Omega raid or Limit Break), since it's such an abstract and vague concept, but that's not good world building in my opinion. Who knows now what's Dynamis and what isn't? Will they even bother to articulate it with future stories and, if they do, will they at least give it a more concrete explanation and modus operandi, or will it be relegated to a very anime-esque plot device for when the WoL is in trouble?



Time travel: Time travel often does more harm than good in the story. I'm not saying you can't have an interesting story with time travel, but it does require a neatly packed frame since the chances of contradiction and plot holes are enormous.

EW not only did time travel, but they decided to do the closed loop variant which is, in my opinion, the most flawed one. The whole "who comes first..." scenario just feels like a cheap excuse to not give proper causality to the events presented: it expects you to just accept that it is what it is and to move on. No sense of wonder as you unfold the reasons, no theorizing about the contrivances involved, no speculating about its widespread unknown impacts and variables, nothing.



Theme: Nihilism is, quite frankly and very personally speaking, a very boring theme. For every german philosopher and indian monk claiming that there is no meaning to human existence, you have millions of people giving meaning to their own lives, be it through faith, love, ego, personal goals, legacy, values or even just hedonism.

I think it works well when it's tied to the development of a character with relatable traits, surrounded by goals, flaws and situations that make said character adopt a very personal, subjective type of nihilism, shaped by their own trials of life. Caius in FFXIII-2 comes to mind.

Suffice to say, Meteion is quite the opposite... although it makes sense considering what she is. Her take on nihilism was extremely shallow and juvenile and it kind of dragged the whole writing with it. At some point when it was just the WoL, the twins and Meteion in Ultima Thule, the dialogue was almost reduced to "My hope is stronger than your despair!" and "No! My despair is greater!". This is the type of writing I expect from something like Danganronpa - and I quite enjoy Danganronpa, but for the comedy, not because I take the writing seriously.

I never understood why some writers present hope and despair as if they were some kind of hidden yet concrete power that you declare to others. Emotions are more complex than that, specially when interacting with the emotions of other people. I think both themes are better presented when they're subtle and preferably not even mentioned: they're emotions and they work better setting an atmosphere. You could feel the despair and the misery of those garleans in the subway refuge, or in Quintius' melancholy: the story and its chracters don't need to spell it for me.



Fantasy vs Reality: Sometimes it feels like the writing is not sure if it's based on reality, based on fantasy or the latter constructed upon the former.

I think it was mentioned in this thread before, but the Ea is arguably the biggest example: in this universe where the equivalent of matter is well known and even interactable, where people have created underground suns, sent ships to the edge of the cosmos - which is 60% something made of "emotion power" - and all sorts of rules of physics are nonchalantly broken by fantasy elements, why is the game telling me that suddenly thermodynamics and the entropy of the universe is a big deal?

I could stretch the point to the Ancients. Of course they have a different view of death than I do: they're virtually immortal beings with demiurge-like powers, living in an enlightened society articulated by social dialectics and communitary values and - more importantly - with a clear understanding of the cycle of life and death. Me, the poster, have some decades of life ahead of me, have no idea what happens after I die and am surrounded by a world filled with animosity, strife etc. The game expecting me to so readily apply my own sense of life morality to a world so detached of my own feels forced. Perspective is everything.

In fact, some of the reasonings for the despair of certain worlds (like the Ra-La one) seemed to completely disregard how complex people tend to be, specially when on the verge of destruction and how we always aim to adapt and preserve life. But then again, those worlds may have been under the Endsinger's influence to begin with so no point in commenting further.

Agree with every single point you're making and particularly about sudden plot elements, time travel and the point regarding the ancients' stance on death and strawman worlds like the Plenty. I genuinely don't see how this "move on from death" POV is even meant to segue with theirs when the world's metaphysics is so different and the ancients, unlike the sundered, experience death in such a different manner.