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

[Rulakir]

I, for one, as someone unable to live and do many activities without assistance, fully intend to keep living and, furthermore, posting, until all are converted to the following of appreciating Zenos. \o/

I was thinking more of a vegetative (or close enough to it) state. You're still not allowed to euthanize humans even if they'll never live any form of meaningful life, they must be kept alive as long as possible. I can't even say the end of their natural lifespan because nature would select them to die much sooner, but modern medicine can keep them alive to age 75+.

Since we're sharing :P, as someone who's dealt with major depression since childhood I have zero zest for life and absolutely would've "returned to the star" many years ago were that an option. The idea that maybe this dice roll of a reincarnation was a bust and I can just return to the aetherial sea and try again sounds fantastic.

[CrownySuccubus]

In case you've forgotten, here was my original point for the conversation.

And here's the part where you were flat out wrong.

IMO, I don't think the writers were anywhere near the level of elaboration as you make it out to be. We can speculate about whether the writers truly sought to address things like morality, paradise, despair, etc.

Because, as we've proven -- yes, they WERE at that level of elaboration. Or rather, they tried. By their own admission, in the aforementioned interview, in black-and-white print, they absolutely DID try to address the exact things I said they did. I was correct that the things they wrote to attempt to invoke a moral grey were, in fact, on purpose. END as a story is VERY unsubtle about its feelings toward morality, paradise, despair, etc.. Hell, the last area alone, the main characters flat out state what the thesis of the story is MULTIPLE times.

EDIT: Have to edit this post due to post limit.

This is the funny thing. The interview that you brought up yourself said that: "Most people came away with thinking they were just "good people" instead." How well explained was this story if the Famitsu interview even said that most players got the wrong impression? If the game devs have to resolve confusion in a post-release interview, that kind of reinforces my original point that the writers weren't elaborate enough, don't you think?

It literally says in my original post that they failed to properly convey their themes.

For you to argue against this point means one of two things:

1) You define "elaborate" as addressing complex themes, even if the story is bad at it.

2) You define "elaborate" as addressing complex themes successfully.


If your definition is #1, then we agree.

If your definition is #2, then we still agree, because I flat out said they didn't succeed.

So yet again, it seems you are finally agreeing with what I said from the beginning. Congratulations.

Really? Like in your original post where you emphasized the "grey morality" of the ancients using words like 'definite,' 'obvious,' 'clearly,' and even saying "that they turned around to actually making them morally dark?" Sounds like you were trying pretty hard to tell me that it was in fact properly conveyed.

No. That's you not reading properly. What I said was that the writers ATTEMPTED to create a grey morality and failed at it. I freaking LITERALLY SAID:

"But EW then not only gave the disaster a name and a face, it then upped the ante by attaching it to mankind's final boss: oblivion. And by doing that, they undid the attempt to create moral gray; because, by definition, anything that fights oblivion is objectively good."

"That story thread was the exact moment that any sense of moral gray or relativism was thrown out of the window. After Elpis, you either agree with Venat and the Scions and take the plot's lesson as it was intended...or you disagree with them and the plot starts to make little sense the more you scrutinize it."

What I said was these were the themes they put into the story, not that these stories were done correctly or well. Your entire problem here is that you seem to have the belief "if the themes are bad, then they weren't in the story". Which is not how themes work. A story can have badly-done themes.

Hell, i didn't even say "definite", "obviously" or "clearly" in that first post. What I said in my SECOND post was:

"There was a definite, deliberate effort to make the Ancients more morally-grey. That's obvious the instant you reach Elpis, and the Ancients start calling you "it" and telling you to kill butterflies to make new clothes."

I did NOT say they did it successfully or correctly. I said they made an "attempt" or "effort" to do so. The ATTEMPT to do so is what's obvious, because it's unsubtle as hell. Again, I never said they were successful. I never said it was done well. I never said that players agreed with it. All of that is simply you misunderstanding my point and repeatedly being argumentative about a point I never even made.

EDIT AGAIN:

Also, why would you say that my statement is "flat out wrong" only to immediately concede in your next sentence that they weren't at that level? Why contradict yourself like that?

You said in your response, "IMO, I don't think the writers were anywhere near the level of elaboration as you make it out to be. We can speculate about whether the writers truly sought to address things like morality, paradise, despair, etc., but to me, having all the events play out as they did despite the WoL traveling back in time and revealing the future to the ancients feels like the writers were just going through the motions and trying to complete the story without spending too much extra time on it."

You were wrong, because as I stated (and was later proven), the writers did indeed put the exact themes I said they did into the game. Again, just because they did the themes BADLY does not mean the themes were not there. There's nothing to speculate on. The attempt to make the story morally grey was made, as I said it was, and they failed to do it properly, just like I said they did.

I literally said ALL of these things in that first post you replied to. You are the one who is wrong here because you're arguing with me about things that I never said. I never said, not once, that the themes were done well, that the story was told well, or that the morality was conveyed well. This entire argument is simply because you were seemed to believe that just because themes are bad then that makes them not elaborate.

Lol, no you're misinterpreting what I'm saying. "IMO, I don't think the writers were anywhere near the level of elaboration as you make it out to be. We can speculate about whether the writers truly sought to address things like morality, paradise, despair, etc." Did you really interpret that as me saying that those themes were completely absent from the game?

So then we're right back to what I said earlier:


"2) You define "elaborate" as addressing complex themes successfully."

(snip)

"If your definition is #2, then we still agree, because I flat out said they didn't succeed.

So yet again, it seems you are finally agreeing with what I said from the beginning. Congratulations."

I'm just saying that they're not anywhere near the level of elaboration as you make it out to be. I even gave you some credit when I entertained your non-sequitur by saying: "Sure, it could've been an effort to paint the ancients as morally grey, and "I mean, sure, it's definitely a possibility."

And as I said, you were wrong about this. As I said, we've proven there's no "could have" or "possibility". There WAS an effort. We have proof that there was, now.

There are certain things that I don't agree are morally grey like the ancients choice of returning to the star and their experimentation on living creatures, but that's not me saying that moral greyness is completely absent from this game. Venat performing the sundering is a moral grey area for me.

As I have repeated multiple times now, and hopefully for the LAST time:

I am not saying that I personally found the points made about the Ascians to be morally grey. I am saying that the WRITERS and thus the STORY intended them to be morally grey (aka "scary"). I have repeatedly said, multiple times now, that I do not agree with them or think that their efforts were successful. ALL that have I said were that 1) there was an effort to be morally grey and 2) that the effort failed.

So I repeat: you are arguing about things I never said.

[Kaurhz]

Zenos arguably had the chance to redeem himself in the eyes of many during Endwalker but instead the story got derailed due to Hermes and Meteion. Aspects of his earlier life and relatives could have been explored and seen in-game as opposed to hidden away in side stories. I generally dislike Zenos but I would rather put up with him than despair incarnate, despite both being relatively weakly-written antagonists.

The only instances where I can remember Zenos doing something remotely interesting was when he grabs Yotusuyu by the hair in Stormblood, and the reclamation of his body during Shadowbringers. Hermes and Meteion didn't even have cool moments like that, just nonsensical ramblings about despair and his "test."

Zenos is nice if you like someone who is just doing something for its own sake, but personally, I felt that Zenos was so obscurely written for far too long, really. Unrivalled power? Check. Discovers bringing himself back to life by accident? Check. Seemingly carries on these absurd shenanigans even in the body of a random imperial? Check. Despite said body, still, manages to allegedly slam Elidibus and force him to tear a hole in the rift? Check. Has had several experiments done on him, yet having no expansion whatsoever on this, beyond missive comments regarding this from the equally poor Fandaniel? Where are the telophoroi? The supposed doomsayers? Or was this just a secret cult of Fandaniel and his best bud Zenos with the poor, helpless tempered imperials? The only explanation we essentially really got for him across 4-5 years was "So Emet found a way?". Both before and after that I felt naught but irredeemable disdain for Zenos. I liked the idea of Zenos acting as the antithesis of the Warrior of Light, but after his willing decapitation, he just felt so... Forced.

TL;DR I'd take more Meteion, and Hermes over Zenos any day. But then if I had the choice I'd have done so much differently, personally.

[kpxmanifesto]

And here's the part where you were flat out wrong.

Because, as we've proven -- yes, they WERE at that level of elaboration. Or rather, they tried. By their own admission, in the aforementioned interview, in black-and-white print, they absolutely DID try to address the exact things I said they did. I was correct that the things they wrote to attempt to invoke a moral grey were, in fact, on purpose. END as a story is VERY unsubtle about its feelings toward morality, paradise, despair, etc.. Hell, the last area alone, the main characters flat out state what the thesis of the story is MULTIPLE times.

So yet again, it seems you are finally agreeing with what I said from the beginning. Congratulations.

This is the funny thing. The interview that you brought up yourself said that: "Most people came away with thinking they were just "good people" instead." How well explained was this story if the Famitsu interview even said that most players got the wrong impression? If the game devs have to resolve confusion in a post-release interview, that kind of reinforces my original point that the writers weren't elaborate enough, don't you think?

[Brinne]

They weren't elaborate enough in execution, but they did clearly have an "elaborate" intent. They aren't the same thing, sadly, and thus we are where we are now.

[kpxmanifesto]

They weren't elaborate enough in execution, but they did clearly have an "elaborate" intent. They aren't the same thing, sadly, and thus we are where we are now.

Precisely. This is why players had to resort to asking Yoshi-p to clarify parts of the story during live interviews. SE had a grand design in mind, but the execution of it was poor.

[kpxmanifesto]

And here's the part where you were flat out wrong.

So yet again, it seems you are finally agreeing with what I said from the beginning. Congratulations.

Yeah... you sure have a funny definition of what it means to agree.

It literally says in my original post that they failed to properly convey their themes.

Really? Like in your original post where you emphasized the "grey morality" of the ancients using words like 'definite,' 'obvious,' 'clearly,' and even saying "that they turned around to actually making them morally dark?" Sounds like you were trying pretty hard to tell me that it was in fact properly conveyed.

There was a definite, deliberate effort to make the Ancients more morally-grey. That's obvious the instant you reach Elpis, and the Ancients start calling you "it" and telling you to kill butterflies to make new clothes....they just did it in such a heavy-handed way that they turned around to actually making them morally "dark". We are clearly meant to see them as flat out wrong

[Erendis]

I posted a personal headcanon on the lore forum that, without Hydaelyn, the sundering will eventually correct itself. Much to my surprise, there's evidence to support this?



This is potentially promising and probably the most hopeful I've been since the end of EW. Short of an AU, I love the idea that everything will 'right' itself eventually. I might even be able to find some forgiveness in my heart if this whole sundering mess turns out to be a blip in the history of Etheirys.

While hot tea eventually cools down, cut apple never fuses back. The same way I do not see shards rejoining naturally.

[KageTokage]

The shards were stated as being loosely connected to the Source with the rejoinings basically being meant strengthen that connection by weakening the boundary between the two. so I don't think it's off the table personally, especially if it was Hydaelyn who was responsible for those boundaries existing in the first place.

That said, the notion of the First being destroyed after all we did even in the distant future doesn't sound terribly appealing to me.

[Rulakir]

Well, like I said, it's not something I figured would happen within the game's lifetime. At best, I suspect the 13th will be joined either with the Source or the First somehow. I don't see the point in restoring it unless there's a way to reverse being a voidsent, otherwise Cylva and Unukalhai are the only survivors and both are conveniently on the First.

Supposedly, a partial rejoining of the First was on the table at one point. I doubt it'd happen now for gameplay reasons, but Norvrandt had such a dwindling population if there were a way to teleport them to the Source it could've worked except for the issue of Black Rose.

The shards definitely aren't a cut apple, were that true then rejoinings and soul mergers wouldn't be possible. I believe Lauront said that Oda has already referred to the situation as being unnatural and nature tends to correct itself when it can, it just couldn't due to Hydaelyn.

Regardless, it's my headcanon. :P I posted it not thinking there was any evidence to back it up only for someone to say it's supposedly possible due to dialog from the Studium quests (that I haven't done). I mean, if we're not going to get an AU then, for me, it's the next best thing. I understand why it'd sit ill with others though, which is probably why it'll end up in the "come up with your own theory" pile short of the MSQ doing something to make it impossible. They already ruined my headcanon that Azem was the one who saved Emet from being sundered (without knowing the future).