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

[Leptys]

I apologise in advance cuz i havent read through all of this thread and if those issues i mention were adressed before i apologise. I just made an account for the sole purpose of getting all of this stuff off of my chest...

Expansion has some pacing issues – the first half proceeded rly slowly, but I cannot undermine the importance of the events that happened – there was some exposition, introduction to new zones and characters, we had to craft talismans that offered protection against tempering, mount large scale assault on Garlemald, deal with Fandaniel/Zodiark and then proceed to uncover the truth about Final Days.. It is when we arrive in Elpis the story gains momentum and also introduces the main antagonist of this expansion along with explaining and establishing Dynamis as the source of cataclysmic events. The main issue I have is the Dynamis and Meteion themselves. Afaik there was no foreshadowing of the hidden source of energy akin to that of real life dark energy unless doing LBs count. (one of the Ancients mention that it's density is about 68,3% - same as hyphotetical dark energy). As of Meteion the entelechy girl was just naive, empathic, sensitive child granted with powers beyond her master's comprehension and later the same traits brought her downfall as she witnessed the fall of countless civilisations. As Hermes stated he did not learn her how to walk on earth, she was still a child, uneqipped with any psychological mechanisms that could help put up with everything she saw, the utter despair and nihillism she witnessed. Meteion served her purpose in the plot, but the late intoduction of an important character (introducing main antagonist after about 10 years...) sin feels rly meh to me and it also makes her shallow, simply because she doesnt have enough time for development. Also rouge AI is not a new concept...

Zenos pretty much did nothing much of importance to the expansion. Given how much development time he got i expected... something else? He still wants for more power, still is a bored psychopath wreaking havok around him. Getting stronger and a promise of another fight with us is what kept him going. He went all the way to the edge of the universe to just help us get rid of the nuissance that stopped us from fighting him."Never have I understood those around me. Understood their obsessions. Besieged by their banality, the world was a mire of tedium and trivialities". That's what he told us in his final moments indicating that in reality he saw no purpose in his life. He just succumbed to apathy and only when fighting with us he felt his blood boiling. Would i grant him this final fight? No fucking way, i would just yeet him in space and flew away. I think that Zenos is still NOT trully dead and SE might just make some sort of redemption arc for him cuz he helped us save the universe and is absolved of all wrongdoings right, right?...

[Leptys]

During the expansion i did not rly feel the sense of despair and hopelessness. In ShB we metaphorically speaking collapsed under the weight of responsibility of saving not only our world but The First as well. We tried our best, killed the Wardens but we failed, doomed to turn into a monster. But we didn't give up, fought back and won. We earned it. In EW there is nothing like that. NPCs talk about failing and getting stronger but in reality we do not fail. We just go through every encounter with a breeze. When we arrived at Ultima Thule and Thancred died I was hoping that finally we might face some long term repercussions, embrace dread of losing our dear comrades but nope, we still had Azem stone in our pocket and after each and one of them gave their speech we just magically brought them back to life...

Correct me if im wrong but I think the principle of causality got betrayed in the storyline. When we traveled to Elpis and do the thingies, only us and Venat remembered the events that occured in the end. Memory of those events we're also the reason why The Sundering happened in the first place. So she waited thousands of year for us to be born to go back in time and witness the events in Elpis. Effect cannot happen before the cause yo, bootstrap paradox right there... I know i know we already had something similar with Alexander and i didn't like it. Also why couldn't we change the past? Just because papa Elidibus told us so? By going to the First and doing all of the stuff there we averted the 8th Umbral calamity and proved that timelines not converge to the same outcome...

Also i was thinking about the Sundering and it's influence on aether. If Hydaelyn split the world into smaller pieces it's safe to assume that aether got divided and aetheric density of each planet's atmosphere got thinner. Why didn't Meteion invade then? After the Sundering Zodiark's power was just a fraction of what he wielded back then and all of it was necessary to make the stagnant aether flow again and create aether barrier around the planet strong enough to keep Meteion at bay.

I don't hate this expansion but i cannot say i liked it either. Whole EW is like a love letter to Scions and although themes on nihilism and importance of life are syplhlike, they could have handled them better.

[EaraGrace]

There’s multiple inferences that they were advancing, especially with the various breakthroughs we see, in pandemonium for example with Phoenix or even the Guardian Forces they were studying.They didn’t stop striving to do better i’m not sure where you’re getting that from.

But the question is what is better? When Hermes asks what’s the point, what answer do the Ancients have? If they say for the betterment of star, the question is why care? Why care when your mentor is dead, when you know the betterment of the star means nothing more than the constant creation and killing of creations with souls and feelings of their own?

You’re trying to apply our real world logic to this which just doesn’t work.

They’re human, they’re living beings with thoughts, feelings and desires. You certainly can.

Pandemonium also shows that there were some creations that weren’t just killed off for being dangerous. They sealed them in there and would study them instead of just getting rid of them. If something is useless…then there’s not really a reason for it to exist is there?

No life's existence should be based on arbitrary utility should it? And sealing them away is indeed more moral, but the fact was they sealed them for nothing more than study. Quality of life wasn’t exactly a concern.

They kind of did show they could think outside the box time and time again. especially when the final days hit. Also again. not getting this weird headcanon you have that they stopped progressing when we’re shown numerous examples of their progression and developments. It seems like some people just like to argue ancients bad and get headcanon twisted into the narrative.

Let’s see how great their progress was when we reach deeper into Pandaemonium. They left it’s teleporter overgrown and abandoned for a reason.

Because that's just the way the game presents these societies. A very basic caricaturization of different perceptions of "perfection" or "the peak" because they're not meant to be working societies, they're just hero fodder. It's "mustache-curling laughing villains" levels of caricaturization. They themselves believe their designs to be perfect but the 5 year old audience can easily point at the flaws in their plan and then cheer when the heroes do just that.

The game offers answers that the character fee gives their lives meaning. Their not meant to be answers in themselves, but examples of people establishing why they want to exist. The Ea are free to find their own path, as are the dragons and the Omicron. All the answers we see are just part of the larger answer.

Thy life is a riddle,
To bear rapture and sorrow.
To listen, to suffer,
To entrust unto Tomorrow.
In one fleeting moment,
From the land doth life flow.
Yet in one fleeting moment,
For anew it doth grow.
In the same fleeting moment,
Thou must live, die and know.

[Caurcas]

Technical issues aside. The Ancient demonstrate the fundamental issue with "perfect" collectivism. The crushing of the individual and "for the greater good!" being used as justification to sweep the moral issues it poses under the rug. Don't fall for magical communism.

[KizuyaKatogami]

But the question is what is better? When Hermes asks what’s the point, what answer do the Ancients have? If they say for the betterment of star, the question is why care? Why care when your mentor is dead, when you know the betterment of the star means nothing more than the constant creation and killing of creations with souls and feelings of their own?



They’re human, they’re living beings with thoughts, feelings and desires. You certainly can.



No life's existence should be based on arbitrary utility should it? And sealing them away is indeed more moral, but the fact was they sealed them for nothing more than study. Quality of life wasn’t exactly a concern.



Let’s see how great their progress was when we reach deeper into Pandaemonium. They left it’s teleporter overgrown and abandoned for a reason.



The game offers answers that the character fee gives their lives meaning. Their not meant to be answers in themselves, but examples of people establishing why they want to exist. The Ea are free to find their own path, as are the dragons and the Omicron. All the answers we see are just part of the larger answer.

Here we go again ignoring context to suit your narrative. Not all creations had souls, it was random whether they gained souls or not but also incredibly rare. Most of them were soulless constructs. However if we’re going to start arguing over them killing soulless constructs, then you had better be waving your no-no stick at the scions and wol. Summoning primals in Eden just to kill them without their consent, summoning numerous familiars and egi’s just to let them get battered in battle etc. Funny how i never saw any of you arguing against it until the Ancients came into the picture. Seems like a heavy dose of situation bias to me. The eden primals’ lives were based on arbitrary utility so try again unless you’re willing to shame the wol and scions for it, in which case they’re not better than the ancients.

[Skyborne]

I've been lurking for ages and I pretty much agree 99.9% with posters like Rulakir, Veloran, Lauront, Kizuya, etc. Just my own thoughts too...

I also 100% agree with the themes presented in the game: happiness is hollow without sadness, we must all find our own meaning in life, etc. However, even though FF14 and FF in general has never been subtle, it just felt like a gorilla beating me with a sledgehammer with these 'themes', at the expense of the plot itself. It was all basically a victory lap for the Scions/WoL, and it also felt very meta, like Yoshida himself was praising us for sitting through this all. The music did the heavy lifting and it's as if someone locked Ishikawa in a dark closet for weeks with nothing but a bottle of booze and a copy of Undertale. I would say the sensation I felt the most was 'nausea'.

It was to the point where it made me reconsidered my agreement with these themes, and to ponder the merits of the opposite. Big backfire. Or was that the intent? Anyway, that Bitter Amaurotine caricature strawman in Venat's Chuunibyou Manifesto scene is the true hero. Take me back to Amaurot, where I can hang out with people who actually feel like natural and organic old friends and not bland rich kid book club snobs who just butter me up so I'll be their muscle. And frig off, live-laugh-love mary sue sparkleprincess, you aren't my mom.

I could write way way more about my thoughts on the characters and story elements, but that would basically take up a small novel. And I've already ranted about it all at length to my friends. Unless they make any antag more compelling than the Ancients/Ascians/Garleans, I may just tune out from the story/lore I have grown so attached to...

EDIT: and for the record, I consider myself a sentimental person who feels strongly and isn't above getting choked up on books/movies/games. I also enjoy Kingdom Hearts and all of its funcringe and character moments. But this...

[KizuyaKatogami]

I've been lurking for ages and I pretty much agree 99.9% with posters like Rulakir, Veloran, Lauront, Kizuya, etc. Just my own thoughts too...

I also 100% agree with the themes presented in the game: happiness is hollow without sadness, we must all find our own meaning in life, etc. However, even though FF14 and FF in general has never been subtle, it just felt like a gorilla beating me with a sledgehammer with these 'themes', at the expense of the plot itself. It was all basically a victory lap for the Scions/WoL, and it also felt very meta, like Yoshida himself was praising us for sitting through this all. The music did the heavy lifting and it's as if someone locked Ishikawa in a dark closet for weeks with nothing but a bottle of booze and a copy of Undertale. I would say the sensation I felt the most was 'nausea'.

It was to the point where it made me reconsidered my agreement with these themes, and to ponder the merits of the opposite. Big backfire. Or was that the intent? Anyway, that Bitter Amaurotine caricature strawman in Venat's Chuunibyou Manifesto scene is the true hero. Take me back to Amaurot, where I can hang out with people who actually feel like natural and organic old friends and not bland rich kid book club snobs who just butter me up so I'll be their muscle. And frig off, live-laugh-love mary sue sparkleprincess, you aren't my mom.

I could write way way more about my thoughts on the characters and story elements, but that would basically take up a small novel. And I've already ranted about it all at length to my friends. Unless they make any antag more compelling than the Ancients/Ascians/Garleans, I may just tune out from the story/lore I have grown so attached to...

Agreed. Personally i find it so disappointing getting to spend time with characters like Hythlo and Emet and Elidibus who i find far more interesting, and then having to go back to what i find, bland cardboard scions. Pretty sad that the antagonists are just so much more interesting than the protags. Especially given how long we’ve had to deal with them. Especially when they never suffer near the amount as antagonists do, story feels very one sided in that retrospect. Especially in an expansion that beats you in the head with suffering, it’s incredibly confusing when i can’t even think of a time the scions have suffered for a few expansions.

[EaraGrace]

Here we go again ignoring context to suit your narrative.

That’s rich coming from you Kizuya.

Not all creations had souls, it was random whether they gained souls or not but also incredibly rare.

None of this is true. Souls are granted to beings the star deems as being capable of life in accordance with nature.

As Hades well knew, souls spontaneously manifested within creatures that were born in accordance with the laws of nature. It was a gift from the star itself, long held to be impossible to recreate. No artificial being, no matter how subtly sculpted in the image of nature, could come to possess a soul. Such creations occupied a separate classification known as arcane entities.

Hermes makes clear that many of the animals we see in Elpis are not arcane entities, in our conversations on the lightning elementals he makes clear the distinction using the Petalouda as an example.

Most of them were soulless constructs. However if we’re going to start arguing over them killing soulless constructs, then you had better be waving your no-no stick at the scions and wol. Summoning primals in Eden just to kill them without their consent, summoning numerous familiars and egi’s just to let them get battered in battle etc. Funny how i never saw any of you arguing against it until the Ancients came into the picture. Seems like a heavy dose of situation bias to me. The eden primals’ lives were based on arbitrary utility so try again unless you’re willing to shame the wol and scions for it, in which case they’re not better than the ancients.

You’re arguing against a strawman of your own creation again. I wish I could ask Hythlo if it also has a soul.

Remember I was the one who argued for that distinction so don’t pretend that I’ve contradicted that. Many creations were ensouled, this is a fact.

[Nabby]

Yeah, I think the fact that Venat just kicked the can down the road is conveniently ignored.

It's not ignored. Venat explains before we leave Elpis that she cannot go to the convocation for help because now Hermes is a member and she cannot let him find out the truth. If he does, he's likely to come to the exact same conclusions as before about how to handle Meteion. It's also very important to remember that the only reason the ancients survived the final days at all in the first place is because Hermes (as Fandaniel) engineered the plan to summon Zodiark and fight back against Meteion. Venat could not risk making an enemy of Hermes before Zodiark was summoned.

Before erasing his own memory, it's clear Hermes's goal was to test humanity fairly, and we have every reason to believe that Hermes would oppose Venat, because by escaping the memory wipe, she essentially "cheated." We also don't really know how long Venat had to act between the events of Elpis and the final days, so there's no reason to assume she had plenty of time to come up with a better strategy for opposing Meteion.

And finally, it's very much possible that Venat simply realised that Hermes actually has a damn point about the way the ancient society functions, and how even preventing the final days would not necessarily lead to a brighter future for a people that delude themselves into believing they live only "for the benefit of the star" even when they clearly all have their own selfish reasons to live. And the combination of being selfish (which is natural - one can only live for their own reasons) but also having god-like powers AND a a belief in the righteousness of using those powers to decide the fate of "lesser" creatures is not a good one. We see first hand how Emet-Selch views humanity as it is in its sundered form, despite us knowing as players that the people of the Source and shards are not without value.

1/

[Nabby]

It is clear that Venat does not agree with the convocation's point of view about it's importance over "lesser" beings. On the contrary, Venat does what she can to learn about us as a person, the world we live in and the people in it. She clearly empathises with us as explorers, sundered though we may be and does not automatically dismiss us as some lesser familiar but as a creature in our own right that actually isn't that dissimilar to the ancients themselves. In fact, she has the knowledge that the sundered WoL and friends are much more durable and capable than even an unsundered ancient in Lahabrea, Emet-Selch and Elidibus.

Despite that, Venat doesn't just give up on her own people and immediately sunder the world. She doesn't want to do that, and she pleads with the remaining ancients after Zodiark's summoning to change their ways because she knows if they continue down the path they're on they will fail. She doesn't WANT to believe that the ancients will continue to abuse their immense powers to alleviate their own suffering at the expense of others. She wants them to push through their despair and learn how to live with the inevitable suffering life will throw at them. But they don't.

And if you've ever dealt first hand with despair you'll know all too well that someone telling you "if you keep acting in despair, things will only get worse" doesn't help. Despair and suffering isn't something you can click your fingers and make vanish. But the ancients are powerful enough to cause irreparable damage to themselves and their world before they realise for themselves that they aren't making things better. So yeah, Venat does a terrible thing to them, and forces them to experience suffering without the physical power to fight back and destroy the star itself in the process. Because even though many will still suffer and ultimately fall to despair, it at least means those who do find something to live for and find happiness will not be destroyed.

Venat did tell the ancients of Meteion, which is why she had a small following the help her summon Hydaelyn, but they were vastly outnumbered and weaker in strength than those who did not heed her words and chose to follow Zodiark. Had she not sundered the world, the disciples of Zodiark would surely defeat them and proceed with their self-destruction.

2/2