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

[ZephyrMenodora]

Just chiming in to say I adored Endwalker's story. So many emotional moments! I guess it's not for everyone but I know a lot of people appreciated it.

[Rulakir]

You are right to say it is a condemnation - but that's because the means to pass the test was beyond the Ancients due to being too stubborn to change their ways and accept that their world wasn't perfect, which was why they failed.

Sicno already covered the rest of it, but what we see of the Ancients outside of the Zodiark Cultist Strawmen group in the post-Elpis cutscene doesn't support this. The unsundered, in particular, changed a lot in the aftermath of the sundering. Bearing in mind that the Ancients didn't know what caused the Final Days and thought that they were safe after Zodiark stopped them. What reason were they given that they needed to change?

And in the end, Meteion did get swayed by the people of Etheriys changing. It was pretty much the plot point of the Endwalkers cutscene when the WoL shares their experience to her.. she learned death and suffering will come to everyone and no one can live a life free from sorrow, but it's how we make the most of our lives during our time, which is what gives the meaning to life.

This was post defeat and Meteion was seemingly dying at that point (since she says we're her final encounter). It was more of a, "Now that I've kicked your ass so you're forced to listen to me, here's why you were wrong all this time." :P It's not like she was monitoring Etheirys, she'd already made her decision and was following through on it. I also hated that scene because if we'd just held hands with her in Elpis the whole thing could've been avoided. >_> (Don't get me started on the time loop, another thing I absolutely hated about EW. Should've done an alternate timeline like ShB.)

[KageTokage]

I can't help but wonder what Yoshi meant by the 6.1 MSQ being "confusing" as per a recent post-LL interview.

Hopefully it's either in a vein similar to ShB where there's something ominous happening that gradually gets fleshed out as the story progresses, or rather that there are so many plot threads dangling that it won't be immediately obvious which one they decide to latch onto for 7.0.

I'm just praying that Endwalker is the last time they try to incorporate shenanigans like time travel and causal loops into the MSQ because I feel like the bulk of the complaints about its story stem from that and it's honestly the only major beef I have with 6.0 as well.

[aveyond-dreams]

It almost certainly means that Thancred will go off to "investigate" something, we get another mission where we play as him (for the 3rd time), Corvos will once again be namedropped and we will have a dungeon thrown somewhere in the mix, whose relevance and appeal will vary between people.

The .1 patches are usually quite weak in terms of story, if memory serves correctly. That might change assuming they actually send us over to resolve things in Garlemald instead of...random quests in Thavnair or something, though Thavnair could link to a shift in the story towards Corvos. The moon and Labyrinthos are almost certain to be retired as relevant locations and we'll visit them about as often as we visited the Peaks after the SB MSQ finished. Ultima Thule is out of the question-that's future Crafter/Gatherer beast tribe territory, and Elpis is for 8-man raids.

If they want to build up Meracydia I suppose that could also tie into Thavnair or one of the more eastern locations since its too far removed from Sharlayan/Eorzea. Overall my expectations for this first patch's story are quite low, and I'm not expecting anything truly amazing until 6.3 or beyond. We're still at a point where we're too tied down to Season 1's story and its cast, with the only interesting thing going on being the continued state of disarray in Garlemald, and how they handle that remains to be seen.

Also agreed on that last point, this game has already used and abused its fill of time travel and other nonsensical plot devices. We could seriously use a more grounded story moving forward that relies less on these things, even if Elpis was one of the highlights of the MSQ for many because of the interactions we had there. And please for goodness sake invest money into more combat scenes instead of slice of life scenes. Let the RPers and twitter fanartists take care of that front, those quests had no business being so prominent in a story about the literal end of the world.

[FrightfulNight]

It's not just this arc. Prior to ShB some of the most interesting characters and arcs were around Garlemald. Gaius, Regula, Noah, even Varis are/were interesting, especially as we got closer to going to Garlemald proper. Instead all those years of development and waiting, and we got a single zone (cool and atmospheric mind you) whose story is just a footnote in the plot. Same for conflicts setup in Doma and Ala Mhigo. MSQ tier setups relegated to barely there side stories.

This. Garlemald was one of the plot points I was most interested in. It has played a major role in the story from the beginning and It especially seemed to be building up to it throughout all of SB and most of ShB. However come EW it is just one small zone that just feels like a side destination in the plot. What is more the zone is destroyed before we get there so because zones never change that means it will remain that way for the games life cycle. Most of it is also a frozen waste, i felt it should have at the very least mostly been urban, maybe have some inspiration from bombed out cities in WW 1 and WW 2. We already have coerthas for a frozen tundra. Or again we could have 2 zones with one being a frozen Siberia area, kind of a cross between where the Cereluem platform is and the frozen forests we passed through on the road to Garlemald, then we could have an entirely urban zone for the Capitol that makes us feel like going through a war torn city. The stories was at least good but I felt it should have had one more zone tied to it. Heck you could argue Garlemald should have had its own expansion. I do hope it at least gets the Lions share of the Patch stories with maybe a restoration after feeling like mostly an afterthought in the 6.0 scenario.

What is worse after getting this unsatisfying and conclusion to the Garlean arc there is a chance to rectify it by having an Ilsabard Expansion, but most people are crying out for a Meracydia or New World expansion when the world map of the three continents is still uncomplete, and there is evidence to support Ilsabard is in the Direst situation after EW with both the Civil War and the Final days reportedly wreaking the the most havoc in Ilsabard. It just feels irresponsible and selfish to go off to a new continent because adventure when Ilasbard is in need.

[KageTokage]

The situation with the remaining Garlean legions does seem very muddled considering that the bulk of them seemed to have given up on trying to reclaim the capital to pursue their own agendas, with only the Xth actually responding to the 1st's call for assistance.

They still have enough military power between them to pose a threat to the rest of the world, so I could just as easily see us having to deal with some kind of united "New Garlemald" faction in Ilsabard as an expansion's focus over visiting one of the more distant continents.

[aveyond-dreams]

Given the community's rigid perception of Meracydia being a wasteland or an amalgamation of Africa/Australia and the New World already having been described as basically the Americas, I would strongly prefer an Ilsabard expansion over veering off into the middle of nowhere.

Ilsabard represents the opportunity to give us kingdoms and high fantasy locations contrasting against the backdrop of the Empire's previous presence in the region, almost like an FFVI vibe. We don't need to be there to enact regime change or anything, we could just as easily go adventure there for any number of reasons.

The power vacuum left by the empire's fall could easily see the rise of new antagonists with their own distinct personalities and clearer agendas besides being so depressed that they decide to condemn all mankind on a whim.

[Theodric]

I'd be very surprised if the story went right back to making antagonists out of Garleans again. Uniting the survivors and crowning a new Emperor would be a pretty cool direction for Garlemald to go in. I'd rather not see it lose its claws and fangs altogether, though there's plenty of room for the Garleans to invest in magitek as a means of securing trade deals to justify further interaction between the various different nations. Thavnair and Hingashi are neutral towards Garlemald already and it'd make sense for the provinces that prospered and improved under Garlean rule to not necessarily desire breaking away.

[KizuyaKatogami]

I'd be very surprised if the story went right back to making antagonists out of Garleans again. Uniting the survivors and crowning a new Emperor would be a pretty cool direction for Garlemald to go in. I'd rather not see it lose its claws and fangs altogether, though there's plenty of room for the Garleans to invest in magitek as a means of securing trade deals to justify further interaction between the various different nations. Thavnair and Hingashi are neutral towards Garlemald already and it'd make sense for the provinces that prospered and improved under Garlean rule to not necessarily desire breaking away.

What’s sad is i could see them totally building up the long awaited Nerva as the antagonist for it…Since for some reason the antagonists always need to be ascians or garleans. I hope i’m wrong though and Nerva proves to be more of a Larsa-like figure from ff12 and helps unite the people.

[KageTokage]

Since for some reason the antagonists always need to be ascians or garleans.

The Garleans have long been the only significant source of strife on the Three Great Continents outside of civil wars like those in pre-occupation Ala Mhigo, so unless there's some closet military power hiding in Ilsabard and waiting to make their presence known, I have trouble thinking of who/what else could realistically serve as the antagonist for an Ilsbard expansion barring the introduction of some new supernatural threat as a consequence of Endwalker's events changing the natural order.