A certain someone isn't coming back [Spoilers]

[Cleretic]

Generally is an understatement. The fact is we don’t entirely know, especially with all of the delays that EW brought. I never said they’re the fault of everything people don’t like or understand, but there’s very obvious signs of it like empty plot threads that lead to nothing or dropped plot threads entirely that make it incredibly obvious. Writers aren’t perfect, it’s time to start understanding that instead of worshipping everything.

Exactly, and I never thought they were. But similarly, you can't just say 'this must have happened because rewrites', because we know when expansions start firming up, and the line that you've decided must've been a dropped plot thread was well after that. This is akin to declaring Nanamo's death fakeout to be the result of rewrites; that just can't actually be true, because the content where it was seeded and the content where it was 'undone' were being written simultaneously (or possibly even in the reverse order to how we got it). You can hate how it is, but that doesn't mean that some mythical different version was ever planned.

We know that plot is being finalized, voiced and all that by around the .4 patches, partly because of the voice acting changeover between ARR and Heavensward starting then (Aymeric and Estinien turned up with their new VAs, thereby confirming voiceover was being recorded at that time), and hilariously, because of the cultural references in the English script; we can literally sync Stormblood's writing, HW's patch production and real-world events by when exactly Hamilton references started turning up. And, yeah, it's at about 3.4 there, too.

You can go ahead and not like this beat and Endwalker all you want, and I'm happy to see it; god knows I've made my dislike of certain parts of Shadowbringers known, and I think people talking about what they don't like is just as important as talking about what they do. But don't get caught up in declaring that the things you don't like must be the fault of something specific when you don't actually have proof, lest you prove yourself a fool and lead yourself down a wrong path.

The timing confirms that this part you're complaining about can't be a change in rewrites; the way it came out was intended from the moment it was recorded. Hate it for what it is, don't try to pin blame on something just because it's a convenient scapegoat. The writers made a decision you hate, and they made it in full confidence and knowledge; accept it.