Quote Originally Posted by Iscah View Post
I don't see why "we know the world isn't really going to be destroyed" is something to treat as a specific failing of Endwalker or even FFXIV in general, because that's just the same suspension of disbelief called for in the vast majority of stories across any media.

You don't ever believe that the villain is truly going to win; the question is not whether but how the hero is going to overcome that threat.
I daresay it's a bit more complicated than that. For starters, tastes vary. Secondly, in a game where the 'mother goddess' figure is complicit in the horrifying genocide of many innocent men, women and children then I daresay it isn't clear cut as to who the 'heroes' and 'villains' actually are.

Yet even if we reduce things to a rather simple narrative of 'good guys' and 'bad guys' there are plenty of people - myself included - who would prefer that the hero have some meaningful stakes and genuine struggles.

It's a lot like how some people choose to completely ignore the presence of PvP in this game. They have every right to do as much, but there's plenty of people who enjoy it so it exists as something for players to indulge in if they so choose.

The same line of thinking can be applied to the story. In order to appeal to a broad range of tastes...then maybe, from time to time, a major protagonist could be killed off in a tasteful manner to show that a threat is an actual threat and that the 'good guys' don't always get to go home and emerge completely unscathed from a fierce battle.

It's not like the cast isn't a large one, either. There's plenty of new and existing characters that can step up and enter the spotlight. The game is set to have a good few more expansions and last at least another ten years.

Finally, if nothing else...the supposed 'theme' of Endwalker was the idea of overcoming despair. That'd be a lot easier to buy into if the bulk of the 'despair' didn't involve the Scions watching terrible things happen to throwaway NPC's and sympathetic antagonists rather than people they actually knew and cared about on an intimate level.