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

[Caurcas]

Emet worked for ShB, but he shouldn't have reappeared as a plot driving character past 5.0. It flanderized the character for fan service and pushed the plot into the direction that EW took. I enjoyed the world building and cultures of the First, and that was ShB's strongest aspect. Where as the Ancients reveal pushed them into a corner writing wise. Furthermore, the culture and visual flair of the Ancients is bland when put up against other cultures SE created within the world such as the Xaela, Garleans, Bojzans, Ala Mhigans, etc...

[Theodric]

Which is ultimately just your opinion at the end of the day. You may not like the Ancients and you may very well find them to be bland but others do not and like the aesthetics that they're associated with.

It's just personal tastes in play at the end of the day. I also really like the aesthetics and culture of Garlemald, Limsa Lominsa, Gridania, Doma, Hingashi and the Azim Steppe.

Ala Mhigo didn't do anything for me and I found it boring though I wouldn't go out of my way to say that those who enjoyed it should never be thrown a bone or bit of fanservice ever again.

[AziraSyuren]

Emet worked for ShB, but he shouldn't have reappeared as a plot driving character past 5.0. It flanderized the character for fan service and pushed the plot into the direction that EW took.

Hard disagree. Emet was pretty much the high point of the expansion... again. He hard carried Elpis and Ultima Thule (alongside Hythlodaeus) and I sincerely think that his characterization in EW was even better than in ShB. And I don't even get how anyone can think otherwise unless they're principally opposed to the fact that he appeared again.

[Tehmon]

Hard disagree. Emet was pretty much the high point of the expansion... again. He hard carried Elpis and Ultima Thule (alongside Hythlodaeus) and I sincerely think that his characterization in EW was even better than in ShB. And I don't even get how anyone can think otherwise unless they're principally opposed to the fact that he appeared again.

Honestly, it was Hythlodaeus who carried Emet, and therefore most of Elpis. Emet in Elpis only really works because Hythlodaeus is there to make him feel more '' human '' and approachable, whether it's by him jovially getting on Emet's nerves or telling us what kind of man he truly is.

[Brinne]

Hard disagree. Emet was pretty much the high point of the expansion... again. He hard carried Elpis and Ultima Thule (alongside Hythlodaeus) and I sincerely think that his characterization in EW was even better than in ShB. And I don't even get how anyone can think otherwise unless they're principally opposed to the fact that he appeared again.

Emet's individual characterization was basically perfect (asides from him jumping on board the Venat apologism train in his last scene, unfortunately), and perfectly consistent with what we got in Shadowbringers - especially with the Lodestone stories in consideration, just with some of his traits, that were always there, being emphasized somewhat more or somewhat less. I actually thought EW was really nice in very strongly clarifying the true nature of his character and personality where I thought a lot of players tended to misunderstand it, including both Emet fans and Emet dislikers.

In general, I've always had mixed feelings at the premise of the Ancients' world being fully realized as part of the game - to me, their presentation in Shadowbringers was so haunting and powerful because they in part felt 'out of reach' and things like the design in Amaurot encouraged us to associate them with "the real world" rather than "the fantasy world of the game," which informed how I read Emet's claims of us not really being people. But I said basically immediately while playing through that if it did have to be incorporated as a part of the fantasy world - and I understood that was basically inevitable - Elpis was more or less ideal in very clearly showing them as, overall, incredibly sweet, good people who nonetheless had room to express a variety of individual personalities and idiosyncrasies.

In a way, this caused the impression I got to be the opposite of what the devs intended - both Amaurot and Elpis, compared to Eorzea and in many ways the real world, actually made me feel uniquely comfortable and "safe." The Ancients' world was a peaceful, benevolent place, but it still had people who got annoyed, people who were annoying, people who disagreed with one another, people who expressed themselves poorly and stepped on one anothers' toes - which made it feel as "ah, there WOULD be room for someone like me in a place like this!" except without the danger of being meaningfully harmed by someone else, or secure in the knowledge that there wasn't genuinely malicious intent. Oh no, Ancient Bob thinks my ideas are stupid and dumb! What's he gonna do, challenge me in a week to the debate hall where at the end we'll thank each other and shake hands for the rigorous discussion and exchange of thoughts?

So, just like Venat, in a way, but opposite, soaking in that feeling so strongly, and being so happy with it, and then learning the intent in fact was for that environment and those lovely people to be "scary" enough that I was expected to be on board with Venat's very sad (for her) decision to wipe them all out was, uh, an absolute trip. Would be one way to put it.

[Lauront]

Neither party had anything to discuss in "earnest". This thread devolved into Venat hate by posters that have always had a chip on their shoulder about the character. I am just a neutral party pointing that out, but sure I am just a troll. You do you buddy.

If you engage in snarky fly by sniping whilst others are discussing the topic - hardly the first time you do this, either - then don't be surprised if some of us see you as little more than a troll. You seem to be deranged by the fact that some people like the ancients and dislike Venat, and come up with all sorts of snark about it. There's been plenty of discussions here that have been interesting, all based on the lore the game set out, as well as some interesting insights people have brought up, so no, I can't really agree that neither party has had anything to discuss in earnest. A lot of the criticism has come from people who were inclined to like her. If you simply intend to snipe at people here with attempts at bait, don't be surprised if you just end up being taken as a troll, because really there's not much functional difference. Certainly no different to the usual passive aggressive snark you get in this community for voicing criticism of the game, I guess. There's plenty of other discussion threads/sites gushing in effusive praise for the story and Venat...

Emet's individual characterization was basically perfect (asides from him jumping on board the Venat apologism train in his last scene, unfortunately), and perfectly consistent with what we got in Shadowbringers - especially with the Lodestone stories in consideration, just with some of his traits, that were always there, being emphasized somewhat more or somewhat less. I actually thought EW was really nice in very strongly clarifying the true nature of his character and personality where I thought a lot of players tended to misunderstand it, including both Emet fans and Emet dislikers.

He's a fairly complex character, though when you take it all together - particularly the characterisation Yoshi gave of him during the interview Rulakir mentioned, it all fits nicely together, and you can see how the Ascians' toil changed him over time, but left some core aspects of his personality untouched, like his devotion to his people and the star, and seldom showing his true feelings. Elidibus got a fairly complete characterisation in 5.3 (regardless of whether one likes it or not; I had my issues with it at the time), and the Themis stuff is filling in gaps, but with Emet we didn't get as much insight into his ancient self besides hints here and there, as he was mostly narrating in the short stories, so the Elpis stuff felt like it was completing that, and expanding on his dynamic with Hyth.

Regarding the ancients more generally, if they were to feature centrally in the (or a) game, rather than as part of the story/world to visit, I could sort of see them being the starting point of some kind of space opera, where they begin spacefaring to discover new challenges. Alas, EW wasn't too kind to all those alien civilisations... though who knows, perhaps there's others out there.

[CrownySuccubus]

Overall, I think the Endwalker plot issues can be summarized as three root causes: 1) Emet-Selch's breakout status, 2) the desire to "subvert expectations" and 3) pandering to the players' sense of Power Fantasy:

Point 1: The entire Elpis storyline felt sloppy, IMO, because the writers wanted to milk Emet for fanservice. They know that he was the most popular thing about ShB, and fans reacted positively to Emet showing up to save you from Elidibus. So, more Emet is no-brainer, right? Thus, an entire story thread where you get to interact with the real Emet-Selch, and constantly get pounded what a tragedy it is for such a good man to turn into a villain.

Point 2: The story could have made either Zodiark, Hydaelyn or both the villains. They've been hinting since ShB that there was no real "good" or "evil" between the two, so they really could have gone anywhere. But, they added a third element in ShB (a mysterious sound that caused the Final Days) and decided to make that the main villain. So we wind up with Zodiark, the big villain they've been hyping since ARR, dying first. Then Hydaelyn, the other side of the conflict, dying second. That means we now have to focus on the final "true" villain that only gets introduced in this expansion. This once again puts a lot of heavy lifting on Elpis.

Point 3: The main theme of EW is overcoming despair and always moving ahead to a brighter tomorrow. For this story to work, we must accept that the WOL (our character) is somehow doing things in the morally "correct" way. Otherwise, nothing in the story would make sense (the WOL never even hints that they might turn into a blasphemy, and they HAVE to be the last person standing when we get to Meteion). Further, this position also makes it necessary to paint the Ancients as "wrong" somehow. In order to prove that the new races (and, especially, our WOL) have somehow "overcome" the problem that killed the Ancients and that they have the power to create brighter tomorrow, we have to portray the Ancients as bad.

BUT, due to Point 1, we also don't want to tarnish our beloved cash cow Emet too badly, so we have to make the Ancients "bad, but not TOO bad". This creates silly scenes like being told our WOL is unhappy when Hyth creates butterflies out of robes and being offended when other Ancients kill a monster that can't fly, while I'm walking around in clothes I crafted from the skins of 100 jabberwocks, using a Relic Weapon I got from slaughtering everything on several maps. Combined with Point 2, this also means that Venat (aka Hydaelyn) has to be portrayed as correct, which is why we get that nonsensical post-Elpis scene where she argues with a bunch of cartoonishly strawmen Ancients, and when we then combine Point 3, we get some 10th-grade edgelord moral about suffering being good because it makes you strong.

[Nekokaori]

You know what really carried the story atleast for me,

First seeing daddy Emet-selch period no lines are anything that was it just seeing him..

and two: the final fight with zenos that was more fun than every bit of content in endwalker more fun than the trails or the dungeons.. just the two of you in the middle of no where beating the shit out of one another for no other reason than to beat the shit out of one another period. Many people give him shit but he is the most chilled character in the entire game he doesnt give a shit about conquest or bringing the end he just goes along with the ride to play with his playmate and that y i respect the guy more so than the trash fire that is vanat.. nothing about her is good other than she is a light holy entity but wait doesnt the snakes also have a "holy godddess"


plus why didnt the anicents just create another creation to go kill meta that also used the energy, they had no need to sunder the world to destory her with their creation magic ... it was just... ~_~

[Rulakir]

Well, this was a surprise. Quite a long comment thread on Reddit criticizing EW with awards and upvotes!

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...mment/i3gbmig/

[PawPaw]

plus why didnt the anicents just create another creation to go kill meta that also used the energy, they had no need to sunder the world to destory her with their creation magic ... it was just... ~_~

They didn't sunder the world, that was all Venat. And they didn't, or rather couldn't come up with a counter to Meteion because they had absolutely no idea that Meteion existed or what was causing the Final Days. Only Venat knew that and she wasn't sharing.