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

[Theodric]

So, with the first story arc concluding with shaming those who decide to not just roll over and die in response to the attempted genocide of their people what are your bets for the next story?

My prediction is that, under Alphinaud's leadership, each nation will be pressured into joining a new organisation known as the Etheirys Economic Forum. Despite widely considered out of touch by the very people that the organisation claims to represent criticism of any of Alphinaud's policies is branded 'misinformation' and the player character is sent to threaten or quietly eliminate anyone who poses a threat to Alphinaud's ultimate goal.

Naturally, due to the sheer scale of the efforts to unite the world under one banner resources are strained but never fear, for even as G'raha sits around eating burgers and Y'shtola indulges in fine wine...the average citizen is stripped of any and all assets that they own, locked up in a small box-like home and force fed insects as they clap and cheer on command to re-runs of the latest speech regarding a 'better tomorrow'.

At some point an antagonist who values freedom is introduced to the story. Seeking to restore society to a point where regular people were allowed to own belongings and consume something other than insects as part of their daily diet, the character succeeds at liberating a handful of nations before ultimately being confronted and put down at Alphinaud's command.

In an interview released shortly after the patch in question, Yoshi-P laments the fact that players sympathise with the character who values freedom over the character seeking to enforce his vision for a 'better tomorrow'.

[Rokke]

The comment on Garlemald originally having a bigger focus reminds me of the NA fanfest I attended back when SHB was annoucned. There was a slide shown to us that said we would "take the fight to Garlemald!" and then nothing really came of it lol

[Lauront]

Well, that's disappointing. So as expected we did miss out on a Garlemald focused expansion. The way in which Hermes is described is utterly bizarre as well. I also note that they're being entirely non-committal to the idea of the Ancients being fated to follow the path shown within the Dead Ends. They keep using the term 'might have' instead of 'would have' which, of course, means it would not be a certainty.

Ishikawa, at least, seems to 'get it'. I can't say I'm fond of Yoshi-P's takes on many fronts in that interview. No, Hermes and Venat seeking to inflict genocide upon their own race isn't the same as Emet-Selch seeking to reverse that genocide when it was inflicted upon his people with no forewarning. Nor is it a fair 'test' in any rational, logical capacity. Especially when we know that the Ancients and beings forged through Creation magic are most certainly not the same.

I'm losing count of how many times Yoshi-P confessed to 'crying' over something in the game. Moenbryda had closure back in ARR and not everybody even liked her, so pushing her to the forefront yet again felt strange to me. I like Jullus, though I'm tired of this 'everybody's crying and screaming over every little thing' approach to the game's story.

I'm still not seeing why we missed out on a Garlemald focused expansion. We could have then gotten proper closure for that aspect of the story and then had the Hydaelyn and Zodiark/Ancients arcs conclude in the following expansion.

Meh.

Indeed. To say I was unimpressed is an understatement. Ishikawa at least articulates the reasons as to why it shouldn't really be "surprising" to Yoshi-P that people don't resonate with Hermes in the way they do with Emet-Selch. He introduces some strawman reason for forgiving Emet-Selch, that I have seen very few people invoke. No, the reason people find him sympathetic is his people survived the Final Days, only to see their world and existences torn apart and with him and two others with absolutely no understanding of why this was done, left to clean up this mess through gruelling methods. Moreover, they credit Hermes with providing knowledge of the Plenty - great, now how about the part where, through his spite-driven test, he tries to obscure all knowledge of this knowing what Meteion would proceed to do? The fact that this could've been spun out into two separate expansions is very much evident. By the sounds of it a lot of re-writes were involved.

This doesn't exactly instil much confidence in FF16 or the story going forward, since the problem appears to be less so Ishikawa, more so Yoshi.

[Fiel_Tana]

No matter how I try to understand at her motives I can't come up with any logical reason for why she did what she did. The story sure doesn't show us her thoughts during it at all so we have people saying everything from "ancients can't interact with dynamis" (which is shown in the story multiple times to be untrue), "people need to grow strong through suffering" (universally, causing suffering is NOT seen as heroic), "eventually they would have become like the plenty so it had to be done"(?), "people needed to learn to not live in the past" (??!?), "Ancients are just like that!"(??!??) to "well our world wouldn't exist had she not done that so she made the right choice" (bad, bad take imo).

None of those truly make sense within the story. It feels like major questions of the arc were entirely ignored.

Pardon my self quote.

Now that I've read that Famitsu interview it seems to make more sense why these questions weren't answered. For a Hydaelyn / Zodiark arc finale, the team don't mention them much at all other than the fights. Hydaelyn & Zodiark don't seem to have been the focus of the team at all. Playing through that was clear with Zodiark's part but I had really hoped Hydaelyn's story would be more fleshed out but I guess that's not what they had in mind?

I feel duped tbh. One of the things I loved about this game was the attention to detail and how the stories wove through each other. It seems the reason Yoshi was so surprised in the Live Letter that players paid attention to details like the Ascian masks Gaius had... was simply that the creators didn't think in that depth of detail? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I thought it odd and a bit upsetting at the time, but huffed so much copium I'd almost convinced myself he just couldn't give us more details because *spoilers*.

They seem more interested in Hermes and whether he was a good or bad guy... what? Am I the only one that really didn't connect to that character either way? And how is what he did good?! I understand his depression, I understand feeling different than everyone else, I understand his moral dilemma about the creations, I understand wanting an answer about the meaning of life. I don't understand how he went from point A (killing creations is wrong) to point B (destroy all life in the universe) nor how that could be considered "the first step for humanity".

[PawPaw]

The comment on Garlemald originally having a bigger focus reminds me of the NA fanfest I attended back when SHB was annoucned. There was a slide shown to us that said we would "take the fight to Garlemald!" and then nothing really came of it lol

When I got to Garlemald and saw the ruins of the city with its highways and cars and train stations and architecture, I was devastated that I'd never gotten to see this country when it was whole. I would have loved to have actually spent some meaningful time there before it all went to shit.

[Lauront]

She really wants me to believe that it's the latter but I'm sorry, I clearly have a vastly different set of morals than this team does. At no point would my brain ever stop to ponder on the rights and wrongs of destroying a world and its people. Emet did it and it was wrong then also. I completely understand why he did it and feel terrible about what he's had to suffer through, and the fact that he was set up to become a murderer; but that doesn't make it not wrong. No, what Hermes did is not up for f*%!ing debate, it's wrong. And trying to pass it off as questionably correct because he's your FaVoRiTe is disingenuous.

At least Ishikawa seems aware from the outset that Hermes would be hated by most of the audience and understands why that is. It's Yoshi's commentary I find perplexing, and it's like he either doesn't grasp why the two characters are disanalogous and it isn't all about some "test", or he's trying to influence people to take a more favourable interpretation of Hermes for whatever reason.

[Theodric]

At this point it just seems like anyone who enjoyed the story elements of ARR and HW is being thrown under the bus. The finale didn't feel like a proper ending on many fronts and where the game seemed to reward attention to detail it now seems to neglect players who bother to dig beneath the surface and pay attention to the subtle elements.

I'm not sure where they're getting their feedback from, either. People have been doing deep dives into the game's lore for quite some time yet now it seems like any feedback they do get is heavily filtered and entirely limited to what people are posting on Twitter and Reddit. Most of the 'fanservice' certainly reflects that sort of style, too.

Honestly, it was the Garleans and Ascians who hooked me the most back in the days of ARR and HW. I wanted to see where their respective stories would go and the game opted to handle both in a very strange manner.

[Ixon]

When I got to Garlemald and saw the ruins of the city with its highways and cars and train stations and architecture, I was devastated that I'd never gotten to see this country when it was whole. I would have loved to have actually spent some meaningful time there before it all went to shit.

Easy fix. We go to the Crystal Tower Tower of Zot and talk to the soul of Elidibus Varis who uses their Ancient Anima power to hurl us back in time so we can see what pre-sundered destroyed Elpis Garlemald looked like. There we could talk to Venat Zenos and convince them that sundering Etheirys helping destroy Garlemald was the best Answer way to be friends with the WoL.

[PawPaw]

Easy fix. We go to the Crystal Tower Tower of Zot and talk to the soul of Elidibus Varis who uses their Ancient Anima power to hurl us back in time so we can see what pre-sundered destroyed Elpis Garlemald looked like. There we could talk to Venat Zenos and convince them that sundering Etheirys helping destroy Garlemald was the best Answer way to be friends with the WoL.

Hey, they got people to believe that it worked once flawlessly! What could possibly go wrong?!

[Rulakir]

Most of Ishikawa's responses seem based, she even says she wrote Hermes figuring 80% of people would hate him. It also confirmed whatever she wrote originally wasn't accepted by the others and she had to rewrite it barely making it under the deadline. Granted, no details were given, but I had a feeling that was the case all throughout EW.

The main thing that bothers me is acting like Hermes (and I assume Venat by extension) ended up being a boon to humanity. There just isn't any evidence of this at all. The sundered still couldn't handle the Final Days and we went from the Ancient society to one in which wars are frequent, there's sex trafficking, and a myriad of other ills that didn't exist before because the Ancients might have gone the way of The Plenty? This was an absolute regression by every metric possible.

I'm disappointed by Yoshi-P's responses and it's making me think he's the reason for some of the Saturday Morning Cartoon feeling of the story. It seems like both Ishikawa and Oda would go darker if they could. That's just my impression though, I could be wrong.