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

[KizuyaKatogami]

Imo I just wish at least one of the Scions had died.
I think Zenos should've killed one of them when possessing your body, it'd be especially disturbing and escalate the tension a lot.
I think some of the characters are just finished too as far as their character arcs goes, the twins can probably have more potential with a time-skip I think killing Alphy at least could've worked tho but I think Thancred should've died there.
Maybe he could've leapt to intervene when Zenos attacked with your body but Zenos/ your body was just too strong and went straight through his Gunblade or something and killed him.
Imagine after Zenos leaves too and you get your body back and Thancred's last words is just confusion about why you'd kill him, I think it'd fit the overall theme of despair too and be very dramatic and memorable.

Sure it'd be extremely messed up but I think in a good way.
Especially when you go back to the First and see Ryne again, it sounds really depressing but I think that's fine especially in the last expansion of this story too having some really traumatic moments like this would make it better imo.
Even if some people would've gotten mad about it I don't think it matters, there will always be people getting mad when you do stuff like that.
I mean Game of Thrones had a lot of people who got mad when characters died too but I think we can all agree that if no one died in the show that mattered then it would've been boring and not as memorable.

agree with all of this. Its extremely boring when the traumatic and horrific stuff only happens to the antagonists or nameless npc's. Lets see some of it with the more prominent characters.

[Akiudo]

Especially when you go back to the First and see Ryne again, it sounds really depressing but I think that's fine especially in the last expansion of this story too having some really traumatic moments like this would make it better imo.
Even if some people would've gotten mad about it I don't think it matters, there will always be people getting mad when you do stuff like that.

"there will allways be people mad when you do x" is the very nature of this thread.

I mean Game of Thrones had a lot of people who got mad when characters died too but I think we can all agree that if no one died in the show that mattered then it would've been boring and not as memorable.

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.

[KizuyaKatogami]

"there will allways be people mad when you do x" is the very nature of this thread.



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.

i dont think anyone is asking for people to be killed left and right....but when we go through two major expansions where the stakes are the highest theyve ever been and everyone comes out completely unscathed...it takes away from the story. Especially when the theme of said story is about suffering and sacrifice. What sacrifice do the scions know these past 2 expansions? Theyve had everything handed to them.

[EgilTheStressedMage]

Imo I just wish at least one of the Scions had died.
I think Zenos should've killed one of them when possessing your body, it'd be especially disturbing and escalate the tension a lot.
I think some of the characters are just finished too as far as their character arcs goes, the twins can probably have more potential with a time-skip I think killing Alphy at least could've worked tho but I think Thancred should've died there.
Maybe he could've leapt to intervene when Zenos attacked with your body but Zenos/ your body was just too strong and went straight through his Gunblade or something and killed him.
Imagine after Zenos leaves too and you get your body back and Thancred's last words is just confusion about why you'd kill him, I think it'd fit the overall theme of despair too and be very dramatic and memorable.

Sure it'd be extremely messed up but I think in a good way.
Especially when you go back to the First and see Ryne again, it sounds really depressing but I think that's fine especially in the last expansion of this story too having some really traumatic moments like this would make it better imo.
Even if some people would've gotten mad about it I don't think it matters, there will always be people getting mad when you do stuff like that.
I mean Game of Thrones had a lot of people who got mad when characters died too but I think we can all agree that if no one died in the show that mattered then it would've been boring and not as memorable.

I would have preferred if Zenos dipped into the cloning methods Emet-Selch used then decided to kill the WoL for their DNA and make as many of them as he desired while Eorzea would burn. Also his artificial echo should have given him memories of the WoL which in turn would show people precious to them and he would just warp (or walk, I don't know) to those people and kill them too. I preferred the SB Zenos and was extremely bothered when they made him necessary for the final trial then slap a (admittedly well done) solo duty at the literal last second. I don't care if the entire story had to be rewritten, give me my Lord Arktivus Brevon type love to hate scumbag villain that you robbed from me. You don't do what he did in In From The Cold with zero deaths. I hate this trend of making every villain learn, especially when it was established that he only cared about his fight with the WoL and all else could die. At least with Emet we had direct interactions with him throughout ShB. We didn't get anything with Zenos but threats that went nowhere for forty hours.

Oh well, at least I can easily picture such events in my head with the appropriate music from both games fueling my still trash fanfiction that I'll never write.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[Lauront]

Yeah, the problem with reddit is a lot of people on it lack a cohesive understanding of the sources on the matter, so it's just spun into a variety of headcanons, the most popular being that Zodiark would just keep consuming souls and that the Convocation was unmoving because it was tempered (ironically I find a lot of posters there behave in a more consistent manner with that), plus that we definitely knew what it was they were going to sacrifice (neglecting on top of that that they were divided on this issue and Venat makes absolutely no real reference to it in her decision, which the Q&A affirms...) You do get pushback on there, but it amuses me whenever the "sundering isn't really killing people" line rears its malformed head.