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

[Teraq]

So did this thread reach the conclusion of "How dare the WoL fight against the Unsundered you big meanie Big Papa Emet was justified" yet?
Or was that already a thing?
I really don't want to read over several hundred pages and who knows how many posts. I already feel like my emotional and time investment in the story was basically a gigantic waste.

Others have given very good replies, so I'll just take Skyborne's post, bold the parts that really rustled my jimmies personally and underline the worst offender:

'ate me time loops that have unfortunate implications for the WoL/Hydaelyn if you activate your brain.
'ate me memory wipe devices.
'ate me dynamis ex machina that is now being retroactively justified.
'ate me Garlemald just immediately being dumped offscreen, the towers just being resolved immediately, the body swap scene having no point other than a cool instance, and the whole first half feeling like it was stitched together from the remains of another expansion.
'ate me escort and stealth quests.
'ate me endless Scion speeches, filler that feels like it doesn't respect your time and is there so Yoshi can boast that it's the longest expansion by hours.
'ate me cheap emotional manipulation.
'ate me wet fart of a Final Days that only hits two regions in full and all the protags escape with nary a scratch.
'ate me fanservice that isn't really fanservice since we have to watch these people get screwed over and be told they were naughty and deserved it and mom knows best.
'ate me clumsy and forced themes.

(Everything stealth-related had me like, I knew all these years of being an MGS fangirl would pay off one day; you might say it had kept me waiting huh.)

I'll add that personally, as an unabashed Ascian enjoyer since before 5.0, I expected a lot more out of the closing chapter of Hydaelyn/Zodiark. I wanted this to be a high school reunion of Sundered Ascians with conflicting ideals and "what now?" questions, I wanted the Heart of Zodiark to have a lot more to do with the Hydaelyn/Zodiark expansion on equal footing with, you know, the Heart of Hydaelyn, I wanted Gaia to have any sort of significance at all, and you know what, I'll even take involving Unukalhai ever so slightly. I have my criticisms of 5.3, especially now in hindsight that it wasn't setting the scene for more involvement of my favorite character, but one of the things that really hyped me was seeing all the Convocation crystals embracing the Zodiac/FFXII reference and starting to flesh them all out for, presumably, relevance in the near-future. I mean, of course, I was a fool: this never was meant to be the Hydaelyn/Zodiark expansion in the first place, but the Hydaelyn/Sound expansion. I guess I should applaud SE for subverting my expectations. What a curveball! You little rascals.

Instead I got Damn Daniel, who never even bothers appearing in full Ascian regalia and showing us his absolutely-not-lion-shaped mask! I mean, I realise that's precisely his point because he gives zero shits, but I just want to be petty about it. Now that we've had confirmation that Gaius's obviously lion-shaped mask was not actually foreshadowing for an upcoming antagonist supposed to represent Leo (consider my expectations subverted again), we don't even know what Fandaniel's mask actually looked like and I am disproportionately irked by this, and I don't care if it's just me.
(And speaking of that particular Q&A regarding Gaius's masks, the fact that YoshiP opened with "Wow that’s really meticulous of you, you all are really paying close attention to this game." makes me feel a very particular way, like I can't help reading it as "wow, you guys care about this throwaway tidbit??? (proceeds to check notes)".)

^This. The sundered as a whole are even more susceptible to it, with their souls being consumed, and even the strongest amongst them (outside your posse) succumbing to despair in several instances - and this is without the incident spreading anywhere near as far as the original did, or devastating the star to the same degree. We have to remember, enough ancients survived the entire ordeal to summon Zodiark in the first place, so it's not as though they were wilting lilies. The problem is that their creation magicks were also being hijacked in the process (the unaddressed subterranean sound, which the Watcher mentions as well), leading to powerful, corrupted monstrosities roaming the star, while the star itself was dying off, leaving them as the only source of aether to fuel into Zodiark - a being which itself protected the sundered world for 12k years.

Sundered humans were actually lucky the Terminus beasts were actually them undergoing horrific transformation: this way there can only ever be an actually finite number of beasts instead of humans spawning several monstrosities like the Ancients presumably did. Truly, Venat was an unsung definitely sung enough genius.

(As for The Sound itself coming from the earth: I had just presumed it was Meteion's scream bouncing off the ground. I realise this is the most boring theory ever, but it's what we've got so far, and I doubt they're going to go back to that.)

[Rulakir]

Sundered humans were actually lucky the Terminus beasts were actually them undergoing horrific transformation: this way there can only ever be an actually finite number of beasts instead of humans spawning several monstrosities like the Ancients presumably did.

I don't know, that didn't really work out in the Walking Dead. :P As long as there are babies being born there can be new blasphemies. Ooh, how creepy would it be if they could become one in the womb? Now it's a horror story!

Anyway, if any of y'all do Reddit, there's an interesting thread at the moment. I'm surprised to see so much criticism in a space typically intolerant of it. You wouldn't have seen this a couple of months ago.

[PawPaw]

I don't know, that didn't really work out in the Walking Dead. :P As long as there are babies being born there can be new blasphemies. Ooh, how creepy would it be if they could become one in the womb? Now it's a horror story!

Anyway, if any of y'all do Reddit, there's an interesting thread at the moment. I'm surprised to see so much criticism in a space typically intolerant of it. You wouldn't have seen this a couple of months ago.

People are still trying to downvote opposing viewpoints to the nether but it is good to see how many more people are speaking up compared to the same type of thread maybe a month ago.

[Lauront]

People are still trying to downvote opposing viewpoints to the nether but it is good to see how many more people are speaking up compared to the same type of thread maybe a month ago.

There's this too.

[Teraq]

There's this too.

Meh. Just skimmed it and it feels like more of the same to me, mostly. Kudos to what looks like Kizuya Katogami trying, down there.

That just reminds me how much I dislike, now that all is said and done, the tempering of the Convocation. I mean in-game it's never really shown to us in any significant fashion, but the cat is out of the bag anyway so it's open season on the "The Convocation were totally brainwashed!" argument. Meanwhile, we now know Mommy would never do such a thing, and anyway, she always knew the entire truth all along. God, I miss Shadowbringers when I felt like the plot was going in a grey direction.

[Rulakir]

People are still trying to downvote opposing viewpoints to the nether but it is good to see how many more people are speaking up compared to the same type of thread maybe a month ago.

I couldn't see the vote tallies when I first read it. I don't know what length of delay they have for the numbers to show. I'm glad at least that more people are voicing criticisms because the first month or so was bad with many (including myself) not feeling comfortable expressing their true thoughts.

God, I miss Shadowbringers when I felt like the plot was going in a grey direction.

Same. I can only hope the "junior writers" that Ishikawa wants to hand off to will do something interesting. I wish we knew what other storylines they'd worked on in game so I could gauge if this is a good or bad thing. I'd be a lot more hyped if the writer for HW were taking the helm.

[Kolsykol]

People are still trying to downvote opposing viewpoints to the nether but it is good to see how many more people are speaking up compared to the same type of thread maybe a month ago.

The FFXIV Reddit has a problem with automatic downvotes.
People often say that it's bots but the mods say that it's that people on the page are just for some reason significantly less likely to upvote than usual.
I have no clue but it's a very common theme that people have noticed that topics often get downvoted no matter what it is automatically.
When you see positive ratings it's usually because it has just gotten more positive engagement than usual and kinda activated people into upvoting, but normally the usual average threads get mass downvoted into oblivion for no real reason.

There's probably other Reddit pages that are like this too but I've never seen it be as bad as on the FFXIV one it's a very widespread problem that even the mods have acknowledged.

i mean lord of the rings killed one "main character" and that one realistically was as much a main character as moenbryda was, i think we can all agree that if people died left and right than it would have been to grim for a lot of people and not as beloved as it is today.

LOTR didn't really go on for as long as FFXIV did I just think it feels a tad bit silly that basically no one died in the main cast minus Minfillia.
I just think it would've left a bigger mark and had more impact if someone had died.
I don't agree with the premise of the thread, the FFXIV story is probably my favorite story of all time as a whole.
But I think like with anything it could've been better and has some negatives.

I did expect someone at least to die and was very surprised when it didn't happen, not surprised in a good way tho but it did leave me a little disappointed.
Main characters dying has more long term consequences and matters more imo.
It also raises the stakes and makes it more exciting, I want to feel like the characters are in real danger when stuff happens.

[Lauront]

I'll add that personally, as an unabashed Ascian enjoyer since before 5.0, I expected a lot more out of the closing chapter of Hydaelyn/Zodiark. I wanted this to be a high school reunion of Sundered Ascians with conflicting ideals and "what now?" questions, I wanted the Heart of Zodiark to have a lot more to do with the Hydaelyn/Zodiark expansion on equal footing with, you know, the Heart of Hydaelyn, I wanted Gaia to have any sort of significance at all, and you know what, I'll even take involving Unukalhai ever so slightly. I have my criticisms of 5.3, especially now in hindsight that it wasn't setting the scene for more involvement of my favorite character, but one of the things that really hyped me was seeing all the Convocation crystals embracing the Zodiac/FFXII reference and starting to flesh them all out for, presumably, relevance in the near-future. I mean, of course, I was a fool: this never was meant to be the Hydaelyn/Zodiark expansion in the first place, but the Hydaelyn/Sound expansion. I guess I should applaud SE for subverting my expectations. What a curveball! You little rascals.

Agreed, I had a similar sense of disappointment, and I dread them even touching on them in the future, if it's just as villain props for more of the same moronic "move on, sweetie" type rhetorical nonsense I have no interest in.

Instead I got Damn Daniel, who never even bothers appearing in full Ascian regalia and showing us his absolutely-not-lion-shaped mask! I mean, I realise that's precisely his point because he gives zero shits, but I just want to be petty about it. Now that we've had confirmation that Gaius's obviously lion-shaped mask was not actually foreshadowing for an upcoming antagonist supposed to represent Leo (consider my expectations subverted again), we don't even know what Fandaniel's mask actually looked like and I am disproportionately irked by this, and I don't care if it's just me.
(And speaking of that particular Q&A regarding Gaius's masks, the fact that YoshiP opened with "Wow that’s really meticulous of you, you all are really paying close attention to this game." makes me feel a very particular way, like I can't help reading it as "wow, you guys care about this throwaway tidbit??? (proceeds to check notes)".)

Yep, pay no mind to us zooming into the masks.

Sundered humans were actually lucky the Terminus beasts were actually them undergoing horrific transformation: this way there can only ever be an actually finite number of beasts instead of humans spawning several monstrosities like the Ancients presumably did. Truly, Venat was an unsung definitely sung enough genius.

(As for The Sound itself coming from the earth: I had just presumed it was Meteion's scream bouncing off the ground. I realise this is the most boring theory ever, but it's what we've got so far, and I doubt they're going to go back to that.)

It's funny, because we know she induces despair, but the phenomenon is described as taking control of their creation magicks first, then siphoning every dread impulse. It may well be one and the same thing, but it never really was clarified - and I agree that it's possible it never will be and we're just meant to assume that.