Quote Originally Posted by Theodric View Post
At this point, 'subverting expectations' would be actually having the stones to kill off a prominent Scion or one of the City State leaders. Ever since Heavensward the established trend has been to only kill off characters who are either outright villains, sympathetic antagonists or throwaway characters temporarily promoted into the spotlight. I guess you can count characters who were already written off as 'dead' only to be brought back to be killed for a second time. Such as Minfilia, Ardbert and Emet-Selch.

It's a predictable model and arguably insults the intelligence of those of us who don't buy into attempts at emotional manipulation. The story plays out very differently for those of us who know full well that the likes of Aymeric are never going to have any lasting consequences.
As bad as FFXV was, there were at least key moments whose consequences weren't undone and had a lasting impact in the rest of the game. I'm using it as an example specifically because it is considered one of the weaker plots in the series, though it didn't contort itself in the strange way that Endwalker did.

The beginning saw King Regis die and then Ardyn straight up murdered the game's waifu right in front of our eyes. This shook up the cast to their core and they proceeded to behave differently as they experienced these defining events. The darker the story got, the more we saw the cast grow more mature. In stark contrast to most games, there was no "final boss transformation," instead it ended with Noctis and Ardyn duelling each other as human beings. However, in order to fulfil his destiny, Noctis had to sacrifice his life and only received his happy ending in death.

The pain that all these characters had gone through was real and grounded, and I remember how strongly it all gripped the fandom during the time the game released. In Endwalker, almost no one talks about how impactful the Scions' sacrifices in Ultima Thule were. People don't care. You could see them coming back from a mile away, and it cheapened the ending more than if they had simply remained alive. While I was playing through that part of Endwalker, all I could think to myself was "Really? Are we seriously doing this again?" because it was just too direct.

They need to realize I think that a good chunk of the playerbase isn't...actually no even if I was still a teenager I would've been largely unamused by how Endwalker played out. This was a story that looked great in their heads, but whatever was in their heads didn't make it into the game we played, and the result was something that was too hastily put together.