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

[SeverianLyonesse]

She wrote Ysayle? Never knew that. I liked her since she was flawed and more gritty and had an actual spine. Her "delusion" of being Shiva reborn was shattered, but her sincerity and conviction wound up winning over Hraesvelgr. The game also never gave me the impression of forcing me to love her. Horsefarts seemed to get most of the acclaim, though.

And she did also write Ardbert. So it's not like she hasn't written good characters in the past.

I just wonder what the hell went wrong with Hermes/Fandaniel. Hermes starts out okay and then takes several hard left turns into nonsense territory.

[Ixon]

As much as I like a realistic story, I also don't need it to be real, after all, a lot of people play games to escape reality. I don't need it all to make sense in the end, I just need it to be fun. A sad scientist making a robot that decides the best thing for humanity is for all of use to die isn't that far fetched, and honestly a very common trope. As flawed as Venat was at times, at least it did breath more life into Hydaelyn, a character that I gave no care to at all till EW if I am completely honest. The Venat to Hydaelyn arc was at least more interesting than some benevolent all good light god that whispered at us now and then, though of course it could have been fleshed out a bit better. The only thing that I felt was SUPER forced was Fandaniel also being Amon. I feel ShB made you side with Emet TOO much as it caused many to forget he was a mass murdering psychopath, self included. And I would not have been surprised if there was a push for "hope in times of despair" more so in this expansion due to them working on this mid-pandemic, which I can't blame them for.

For me, regardless of it's plot holes I still had fun, and I enjoyed the surprises without them feeling forced. Zodiark as the lvl 83 trial, traveling back in time to Elps, seeing the faces and talking to people we really only knew as shades or hooded figures for a long time, discovering the reasoning for the final days, the self sacrifice of yourself to teleport your friends away only to have Zenos crash through the cieling(which to this day I still love), followed by an epic anime style Metion fight, ending with fisticuffs with Zenos. I enjoyed it all. Sure I could feel the pacing being a bit off here and there, and I wished this was two expansions instead of one, but I am not too worried about future expansions cause I had more fun and memorable moments in EW than I had in any previous expansion. I could be huffing the copium, and we will have to wait and see, but I am excited for a clean slate and a new story.

[Skyborne]

And she did also write Ardbert. So it's not like she hasn't written good characters in the past.

I just wonder what the hell went wrong with Hermes/Fandaniel. Hermes starts out okay and then takes several hard left turns into nonsense territory.

No way I could forget him either... the Sad Ardbert sessions were one of my favorite parts. He should really knock on the door before showing up, though. Rip WoL's privacy. Hermes made sense to me but I'm just not that big of a fan of the archetype or motivation, Yoshida claiming it was impartial even though Hermes was clearly having an emotional crisis before and during was odd, though.

only to have Zenos crash through the cieling(which to this day I still love).

If only he had showed up sooner and interrupted the endless Alphirants/Scion speeches, Jack Garland style. Also, IIRC, I can't find the source but I'm sure Lauront could, but they did originally plan it to be more dismal but irl events influenced them to make it 'brighter'. And honestly, Amaurot/Elpis was the best "escapism" and a nice slice of paradise away from the increasing gloom of irl for me (and from characters I largely did not care for), until crystal mom told me that escapism was bad and dragged me out Marche-style. Thanks...

[kpxmanifesto]

I think people got too enamoured by the edgy, emotional stories such as DK questline and Shadowbringers that honestly dampens too much the mood with the story sometimes. Im happy we got our lighter moments in EW and in general still enjoyed the expansion experience but yeah I miss the tone style of ARR and I hope 7.0 leans into it with more emphasis on adventure and less melodrama

I honestly thought EW tried to be the most melodramatic of all the xpacs to the point that it became overdone and stale. Every time an "emotional" scene came around I was like: "Ok, here we go again." I'd also much prefer if it went back to a light-hearted setting in 7.0.

[MoofiaBossVal]

Leaning negative on Ishikawa, or at least the direction of the story as of late, seems hard to tell who is exactly is responsible for what right now. I'll check out the next patch and if it interests me then maybe I'll stick.

[Fiel_Tana]

Personally, I'd rather not judge my confidence in the writer since, afaik, it's an entire team working on it and I'm sure covid and perhaps other factors may have led to unusual stresses and difficulties of a technical and / or emotional natures.

My confidence however has been rattled in the story delivery, particularly with how Venat/Hydaelyn has been portrayed.

TMI perhaps, but I had an abusive mother who was adored by outsiders, she used that to gaslight me into believing I deserved it and that I was in the wrong for making her do it and therefore causing her distress. (As Emet says though, 'spare me your pity, I have no use for it'. I only mention it because it is relevant to this discussion.) So I am more sensitive when I see similar things and certainly don't want that in a game I love.

That said, from a coldly analytical view of a story that ends the Hydaelyn / Zodiark arc it had very little of either of them in it.

We get to know Venat and some lead up to those events (Metion & Hermes) but not the main question of why, what exactly led up to the moment of sundering. Shouldn't why Venat didn't seem to try to stop the end days, and why she chose to become a primal to sunder 'her children' and the entire world be extremely relevant in this story? It's not exactly a minor plot point.

Yet we are to just accept this was a good thing since not one of the scions or other characters question it and continue to adore her. We're given a "Herois" minion of her. Our own WoL is given no other options but to show love, respect and be thankful to her for it all. (From a personal emotional perspective, it honestly made me feel more than a bit sick. Perhaps that's why I spent so long pouring over screenshots and reading the theories of why and what happened, to make it make sense... yet it never does.)

From a purely analytical look at the writing, there were a lot of things I loved about Endwalker, them dropping the ball on such a major plot point and not thinking that perhaps not all players will approve of her actions, lacking even dialogue options for the WoL to show opinion... that does not inspire the least bit of confidence in me.

They did so well with grey morality in Emet, how did the ball get dropped so badly with Venat?

[Ixon]

I honestly thought EW tried to be the most melodramatic of all the xpacs to the point that it became overdone and stale. Every time an "emotional" scene came around I was like: "Ok, here we go again." I'd also much prefer if it went back to a light-hearted setting in 7.0.

I see no reason for this to happen(hopefully), due to the fact that we have zero pressing matters at hand other than trying to make Garlemald an ally of the world and doing a Fordola and Giaus style arc of "be nice to the previous enemy that killed your loved ones". I feel the patches leading up to next expansion are to cover that, with something happening near the end that will have us plan to go to either the New World or most likely Mericydia and deal with some sort of conlfict on a much smaller scale over there.

[tokinokanatae]

I would be concerned over hearing "ten years of outlines from Ishikawa", but for a slightly different reason than most are giving.

Ishikawa's writing strength comes from character details; the actual structures of her plots are pretty typical and not terribly exciting on paper--there are things I like about the "plot" of EW, but it's also a fairly standard, "go here and do X, learn about Y, go here to find out more about Y" etc. She excels at things like blocking out individual scenes and working with Soken to make sure the music gets the proper emotion across.

Saying that we have ten years worth of outlines sort of implies that Ishikawa won't be the one writing those stories directly, which does worry me. I'd rather hear we have ten years worth of outlines from someone like Maehiro and Ishikawa will be the one writing.

[KageTokage]

After going over a bunch of interviews both old and new, it's kind of hard to tell whether or not the weird story decisions were on Yoshi or Ishikawa, particularly with the former initially not understanding why Emet-Selch was so popular, then being similarly confused when people had a less then shining opinion of Venat. He's ultimately the one who chooses whether or not to approve the story drafts he's given.

Overall, I'd consider my dislikes with Endwalker minor in compared to what I liked so I'm still optimistic about things going forward, I just feel like they could've tied up the plot threads surrounding Hydaelyn, Zodiark, and the Sundering in a much more satisfying way that didn't leave me feeling like the story is pushing some kind of moral double standard.

[aveyond-dreams]

Ishikawa is capable of producing high quality stories with fleshed-out characters, such as Emet-Selch and the original demeanour of G’raha Tia as the Crystal Exarch back in Shadowbringers. I want to see her do more of *that* and less slice-of-life sequences and less nebulous “meaning of life” nonsense. When given freedom, she knows exactly what she’s doing, and I imagine what she had in mind originally for Endwalker was better than what actually occurred in-game.

I believe, that to begin with, she can probably write an excellent 7.0 “Heavensward” style expansion now that we are no longer dealing with cosmic-level plots. I imagine that she could have written an excellent expanded Varis in a Garlemald expansion and made us feel for him the same way we did for Emet-Selch, and I hope to see more “human” antagonists moving forward as opposed to ones like Hermes, or goodness forbid Zenos. The Scions were significantly more tolerable during Shadowbringers where from what I gather she was less restricted compared to Endwalker.

On another note, I managed to beat Stranger of Paradise recently (it was a lot shorter than I expected) and seeing as how it is the single most *unusual* Final Fantasy game out there, I am going to compare it certain parts of Endwalker. Full spoilers for the story through the ending below:

The character interactions in that game somehow managed to make me feel something for the most bizarre cast of heroes in the entire franchise. Their sacrifice in the end felt meaningful in a way that the Scions’ just didn’t. I knew the Scions were coming back without question because the sequences were just too predictable. However, when Jack’s allies attacked him and thrust me into the fight against them, I was taken by surprise and couldn’t automatically predict what would happen next. The dialogue they gave during that fight was also an excellent send-off for each of them, and was more impactful than the Scions going on about “despair” in Ultima Thule. A detail I noticed in the final battle was that Chaos actually had the faces of the party grafted around his collar, and when they appeared before Jack as the four fiends in the ending, I appreciated all they did over the course of the game despite it being regrettably short.

Keep in mind this was accomplished largely without the use of long drawn-out monologues and speeches about ideals or morals. Jack cutting people off whenever they start talking like that was such a refreshing breath of fresh air.

I was surprised to like Astos as much as I did, especially when the full truth of his story was revealed towards the finale of the game. I didn’t know what to expect from this character, but less than 2 hours of Astos screentime was more entertaining than however long *Hermes* was on my screen. Whatever it was, it was too much. Do you see my current avatar?? Perhaps if things had not turned out the way they did, I would have Hermes as my pic instead.

Another thing I wanted to point out was that Princess Sarah’s form of hero worship was far less jarring than G’raha Tia’s ridiculous scene where he met Estinien for the first time and his subsequent ramblings about how much he cares about us. I also say this knowing that Sarah was clearly written as a satirical character that makes fun of the “princess” trope. Interactions with her are more endearing because I know that I’m speaking to someone...who is not on the same wavelength as me and isn’t pretending to be some wise sage half the other time when they aren’t eating hamburgers.

Lastly, there’s the sequence just prior to the final battle. Jack had a very interesting choice of words for when he addressed the Lufenians. There should have been an option to tell off Hydaelyn, perhaps in a less vulgar way than how Jack went off prior to the final battle in Stranger of Paradise, though ultimately a means to express disagreement with her actions would have been nice. As much as I enjoyed interacting with her in Elpis, I felt betrayed by what she did later on. I was hoping for a story of how potentially she was left with no other recourse but to become a goddess as an absolute last resort, or a fallen-angel type story. Either way would have made for a character that was a lot easier to feel sympathetic for in the end. Instead we ended up with neither, and the only way I can make sense of Venat’s later decisions is through my own personal headcanons that I’m not going to go into here. The dialogue in the scene prior to our fight with Hydaelyn felt somewhat rushed and forced. In any case I was cheering and rooting for Jack in that critical moment before his final battle, and I was rolling my eyes whenever Y’shtola said her quip about “fighting a supreme deity everyday.”

In the end I just find myself surprised at how an objectively weaker story that was thrown around quite hastily made for more believable and emotionally involved moments than my experience with what should have been the highlights of Endwalker. A lot of Endwalker is still great-especially our time in Elpis with the trio, the events in Garlemald, and our second visit to Thavnair after the moon. But looking back, Hydaelyn and Zodiark were completely mishandled and Ultima Thule was a joke of a zone that I saw straight through the moment we arrived there. For all the efforts to “subvert expectations” it was easier to predict and call what would happen in Endwalker accurately than it was in the moments leading up to the ending of Stranger of Paradise or FFXV. Characters with too much plot armor, sacrifices that meant ultimately meant nothing, the stakes couldn’t have been lower.

I only hope FFXVI does not suffer from this style of storytelling-at least the Heavensward writing team didn’t shy away from consequences. I’m hoping for that game to be more like Dragon Age Origins than...whatever soap opera the later half of Endwalker felt like.