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

[Kolsykol]

I kinda do wish Nidhana didn't tell us about Dynamis tbh.
I would rather just have had that reveal be in Elpis.

[Reap00]

91 pages? Bravo. I didn't think people could drag something out this long but leave it to public forums to manage it. FFXIV Endwalker story was amazing. It brought this man to tears more than once. I look forward to the 10 years in front of us. Thank you Yoshi and team!

[BaconBits]

91 pages? Bravo. I didn't think people could drag something out this long but leave it to public forums to manage it. FFXIV Endwalker story was amazing. It brought this man to tears more than once. I look forward to the 10 years in front of us. Thank you Yoshi and team!

It's a forum. As long as interest in a topic remains people are going to discuss it, no matter how asinine you may think it is.

[DBriggs304]

91 pages? Bravo. I didn't think people could drag something out this long but leave it to public forums to manage it. FFXIV Endwalker story was amazing. It brought this man to tears more than once. I look forward to the 10 years in front of us. Thank you Yoshi and team!

It's a good discussion at least. It's not as many people sour at the story as folks think there is but to each thier own.

I am looking forward to what comes next for the WoL without our usual teammates with us and how they will navigate that.

[KizuyaKatogami]

It's a good discussion at least. It's not as many people sour at the story as folks think there is but to each thier own.

I am looking forward to what comes next for the WoL without our usual teammates with us and how they will navigate that.

Bit unrelated to the overall thread but im curious why people think we wont be traveling with the scions anymore? Since theyve been hinting so much at corvos i would imagine we'd be taking Graha(ugh) with us, but i believe yshtola also says she wants to explore or something like that.

[Sicno]

The issue is that we’re given examples of the Elpis flowers reaction to emotions which show it changing colors dramatically and in a very visible way. And given the fact that the flower existed in Elpis for at least several centuries by that point, based on the convo with Timaios, the fact that none have observed a shift leads me to believe that there’s either two options. Either the Ancients just don’t have emotional moods, which would be ridiculous I agree, or those shifts are being prevented from affecting change in the flower. The latter seems like a better fit, though exactly why Hermes gets through that remains unknown to me. Maybe the depth of emotion? Grief is a powerful one, and the Ancients didn’t exactly seem well versed on how it felt.

The flower may not change all the time and only be affected by strong enough emotions. But what I'm saying is: the ancients are aware that the flower reacts to emotionS. Plural. In order to observe such a behavior it must have reacted to something else. Not just "default white - black when Hermes is brooding." They speak about changes in hue and vibrancy. They're describing a spectrum. How can they claim that if they only ever saw it change for 1 person and 1 emotional state?

Problem is dynamis is partly defined by the difficulty you have in interacting with it. As stated before, while we don’t have objective statements on the matter, dynamis has shown to be manipulated only by those with the will and emotions to do so while also being aetherically weak enough to not crowd it out. While I’m sure an experienced group could make entelechies not as susceptible to environmental emotions as Meteion, they’d still need free will and to have a reason to overcome Meteions song. The Scions fought for the those back home and for their friends, would a creation not given a choice in the matter do so?

I’m not gonna say it’s impossible but I just think unlikely given what we’ve been told.

And that's why I told you about "creative solutions". They didn't need to go and fight Meteion as we did. Dynamis is an energy. They could have chugged on that same dynamis and make her dry on it so she's less powerful (think of Eureka, for example, and how the original plan was to reverse the flow of aether so the primal was cut short of it until it was completely dry). They could use that energy to create something or power up something.

Or another idea: how about instead of making a shield around the planet they just went and make an aether prison encasing Meteion? Remember, dynamis gets drowned by aether because it's far weaker (Hermes says so himself). Sure, Meteion had a head start towards the end of the universe, but like I said, she's a mere pet project, made by Hermes alone in his spare time. A whole team seriously devoted to the study of dynamis could have come up with more efficient ways to use it and create better, more efficient entities and devices to catch up with her before she became too powerful or have exploited the fact that aether > dynamis anyway.

[Sicno]

I would think anger would make more sense, which the WoL has in spades. It's not a particularly prevalent emotion from what I saw of the Ancients, unlike sadness, and Hermes' dissatisfaction was directed outwards rather than inwards. He may have wondered if he was the oddity, but he was upset at everyone else rather than himself about it. I often think the Meteia were less about finding what gave others purpose than his seeking to affirm his own feelings.

We tell Meteion that we've seen flowers go dark in our home, and she asks us if we have dark emotions. There are multiple options to reply:

-The pain and sorrow of loss.
-Great fury and frustration.
-Doubt and anxiety.
-I have a few.

With such an array of possibilities it's more evident than the particular emotion isn't important for that part, but just that we have negative emotions too just like him, unlike the other ancients living in their paradise. So even more reason to not take the "they only reacted for Hermes" too literally.

[DevonEllwood]

I read the forums at work and post when I get home, so I'm not going to look for things to quote or respond to, just a stream of thoughts.

I appreciate the interview links that were provided of the interviews. I was looking for one that specifically mentioned re-writing parts of Endwalker, but it could be I got second hand information that suffered from interpretation issues. A few things stuck out to me though. I believe the developers take care of the story. I have to separate what I feel are continuity errors and poor writing from a writing style I just don't like. Yoshi P mentioned "Subverting expectations" and keeping everything fresh so no one gets bored. I feel there's subverting expectations and then there's jumping the shark which I feel Endwalker was.

So I'm going to break things down and try to look at the bigger problems I had with endwalker.

The entire last zone with the scions ignored the expansion themes for the sake of the protagonists ans well as "playing it safe". these are writing styles I don't like at all, but the same was seen in Shadowbringers with the same writer. The early death of zodiark would fall under "subverting expectations". I don't have any opinion on it, but a lot of people didn't like it. The final days being isolated is probably a product of a lack of time and mashing two expansions into one. Kind of lame, but it's whatever.

Now the boring stuff out of the way, I want to mention three things I had issues with that I have no answers to. A continuity error with the rabbits saying Zodiark couldn't temper anyone, and the what I felt was bad writing: Hermes's actions versus attitude and Hydaelyn and her entire plan.

I'm going to take as much as possible at face value and that no characters are lying. This is just going to be a bunch of hypothetical nonsense based on that I feel the developers couldn't made such massive mistakes. I'm trying to fill the gaps in with something.

The rabbits stating that Zodiark would only make a small "tug" and he couldn't temper anyone and tempering is an added effect. Hades said he was tempered. These two don't contradict each other, both can easily be true. Lahabrea was the designer of Zodiark and if both statements are true, then it's likely he introduced tempering to Zodiark. Why he would do it and how he got the idea I don't know, but maybe he was just a control freak. From the raids it's apparently he wore a metaphorical mask when dealing with people not his son. I don't believe Erich is "our" Lahabrea at all as people are suspecting, based on their capabilities alone.

Hermes has been argued to death that his actions don't match his words. The way he treated Metion does not match to what he preaches. It almost seems that Hermes himself doesn't even know what he's talking about. He's upset that his mentor would chose to retire, then changes his tune a bit saying "death is only beautiful for man". Metion can't eat, which shows he didn't intend for her to live her only life, only live for her purpose. His ending statement about how man judges all life, so he as the chief of Elpis, will judge man. Not all life was judged though, since it's presumed there was non created life that existed. Man can't be judged as a creation because they aren't a creation...or are they? I haven't done the side quests, but if the ancients could transform then they could easily alter anything they don't like about themselves. Could they have potentially over time, altered themselves and passed that on through generations? I'm wanting to sit down and do all the sidequests, so maybe this is already answered, but I find it strange be are presented more background information about the 5th zones races then we have with the ancients.

The one thing I really wanted to focus on was Hydaelyn's decision to sunder the world. I really payed attention to what she said this time around. Azem traveled the world to gain a better understanding of it and the people. She considered each person to be a miracle, said that anything is possible and there's always hope. I can't believe that this Venat and the person who gave up hope and sundered the world are the same person. It makes no sense and this glaring contradiction could not possibly be overlooked by the writers. My only answer is that there's missing information. There's a lot surrounding the sundering that doesn't make sense because of lack of information. Where did this spell come from initially? It took the entire convocation to put Zodiark to work with half of their people as sacrifice. Hydaelyn not only defeated Zodiark but completely sundered the world. What was sacrificed? Just the 12 people who were with her? Zodiark blanketed the world and Hydaelyn defeated him and made 13 copies of the world while doing it. One of these is a much bigger action than the other so how did she come to the conclusion that his is the only way and how was it possible? How did Lahabrea introduce tempering and where did this information come from? How did Hermes know enough about such an unknown energy source to make not just one being but a ton of them able to manipulate said energy source? Why was he so conflicted on his feelings and not even seems to agree with himself?

People mentioned there being a "third party" at the end of shadowbringers but this was in response to Fandaniel's actions. Another party being involved make a lot of sense for Venat's case, and kind of plays into the other two things I mentioned as well. We still don't know what Azem was doing at the time and he didn't want to have anything to do with the plans for Hydaelyn. There were multiple mentions of other people on the planet and we don't know if they're the same race or not. If they have have the same capabilities as the ancients we know, then it wouldn't be hard to just sneak in and be disguised ans something, like a fellow researcher, a shoebill, anything. A group of people who may have wanted to see them fail and set things up to get rid of them could happen. Yoshi P repeated that Endwalker will be the end of the Hydaelyn and Zodiark story, he said nothing about the ancients or the other people who lived at that time.

This was just a bunch of rambling to make sense of the story. Most of it can be explained as just writing I don't like, but the 180 that Venat did makes no sense at all. There's missing information and I hope we get to see what caused it.

[seraf]

Their society looks overly formal/strict. They wear masks, identical robes and rarely use personal identity. They know emotions really well but IMHO to break their way of strict life it has to be really strong (Emet recreation, the whole existence of Ascians, praying to Lord Zodiark).

They didn’t have emotions beyond super basic interests. They were more focused on creations magicks. You’re also talking about a race that would just go and die once they contributed something useful to society. This is where Hermes whole story comes into play because he felt like existence should have more meaning.

[Rokke]

The rabbits stating that Zodiark would only make a small "tug" and he couldn't temper anyone and tempering is an added effect...

The loporrits saying Zodiark doesn't tempter is an English translation choice. In english the loporrits like to downplay things and then usually quickly follow with an explanation or a witty comment because they're predominantly our comic relief. In literally every other language (esp in JP) it is made clear that anything Zodiark tier will inherently drag people under because that powerlevel is incomprehensibly strong.