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

[Starshower]

A garlemald expansion going trougn the ilsabardian regions with the final boss being anima would be really underwhelming... I could see people saying it's stormblood 2.0 let's march to the empire liberating the lands in the way, then when we defeat anima and win the day we liberate garlemald! Now all the world is united under the banner of the eorzean alliance. How original... and you guys trash endwalker. That one would be a predictable mess.


And I love how some of you, to add contents to this imaginary expansion, add endwalker story points like dynamis and such.. leaving endwalker (an actual real expansion that happened) with nothing identifiable to it, or some have super original non predictable ideas like zodiark as the final boss (ooo who could have guessed)...


The truth is some of y'all aren't as talented story writers as you think you are. Your expansion would have flopped :x (garlemald burnout is real at this point) almost all contents for the past 4 years had garlemald as the main enemies.

[aveyond-dreams]

A garlemald expansion going trougn the ilsabardian regions with the final boss being anima would be really underwhelming... I could see people saying it's stormblood 2.0 let's march to the empire liberating the lands in the way, then when we defeat anima and win the day we liberate garlemald! Now all the world is united under the banner of the eorzean alliance. How original... and you guys trash endwalker. That one would be a predictable mess.

That is hardly what those of us who like Garlemald want. At all. I would much rather see one of the more competent members of the royal family placed on the throne to guide Garlemald into an era of better rule. I would have liked to explore territories who are very much in favor of being in the empire, and seek to restore order rather than to break away into a series of small, likely to fail nation-states.

I feel like I need to be absolutely clear on this, but I do not want to see the Empire join the Eorzean Alliance. This isn't like the Alliance of Altana from FFXI-its comparatively far less appealing and less interesting and every nation who joins it becomes another "free" democracy!

Given what we know of Varis through other characters like Regula and the opportunity to expand on his character further, a final fight against him as Anima would have carried far more weight than the fight against Meteion. An idealized Garlemald in my view maintains its militaristic spirit and is still headed by its monarchy, with its armies focused on battling things like blasphemies.

Sadly, given the current writing direction of sapping all magic out of FFXIV's world bit by bit, I can definitely forsee a future where Alphinaud, or better yet, his father, pacify the state and set up a democratic provisional government, and then 7.0 will ship us off to who knows where with Garlemald being an afterthought.

[anhaato]

A garlemald expansion going trougn the ilsabardian regions with the final boss being anima would be really underwhelming... I could see people saying it's stormblood 2.0 let's march to the empire liberating the lands in the way, then when we defeat anima and win the day we liberate garlemald! Now all the world is united under the banner of the eorzean alliance. How original... and you guys trash endwalker. That one would be a predictable mess.

Just because you lack the imagination to make an interesting story out of Garlemald doesn't mean the writers would. Ishikawa comes up with great stories when given adequate room to do so, this time she wasn't so it was messy. And I'd take predictable and satisfying (Heavensward) over unpredictable and messy (EW) any day.

[Starshower]

a final fight against him as Anima would have carried far more weight than the fight against Meteion.

I don't know man, fighting a winged head as the embodiment of despair throwing planets at you while flying in the back of a dragon in the far edge of space is pretty metal. But cute bird girl bad

[aveyond-dreams]

I don't know man, fighting a winged head as the embodiment of despair throwing planets at you while flying in the back of a dragon in the far edge of space is pretty metal. But cute bird girl bad

This has nothing to do with Meteion's physical appearance and everything to do with how horribly her character and that of Hermes was handled. They were both thrown in last minute and it felt like I was fighting against someone I didn't care at all about and had very little relationship with.

Contrast this to antagonists like Ardyn, Emet-Selch, Jecht, Kefka - the fight against the Endsinger simply does not compare.

[Starshower]

This has nothing to do with Meteion's physical appearance and everything to do with how horribly her character and that of Hermes was handled. They were both thrown in last minute and it felt like I was fighting against someone I didn't care at all about and had very little relationship with.

Contrast this to antagonists like Ardyn, Emet-Selch, Jecht, Kefka - the fight against the Endsinger simply does not compare.

Hermes and Meteion obviously didn't resonate with everyone... but the 2 of them were my favorite new characters in endwalker... This is why I like this expansion so much, because of Elpis and the way it was presented, and specially those 2 characters. I got what they were going for, It really resonated with me. And I'm not alone, I know there are other people that understand Hermes as well. I cared about them and felt really close to them, more than many other characters from the other expansions (like say haurchefant, but I don't wanna be cancelled).

[KizuyaKatogami]

The truth is some of y'all aren't as talented story writers as you think you are. Your expansion would have flopped :x (garlemald burnout is real at this point) almost all contents for the past 4 years had garlemald as the main enemies.

I guarantee you half of the people in this thread could write a better story than what we got in EW. Not everyone is tired of Garlemald, in fact many have expressed sadness and anger at them completely writing off an entire country off screen. EW had the perfect template to be a fantastic expansion and they ruined it specifically because they focused on trying to subvert expectations and it backfired. They asspulled too many things, tried to rationalize genocide, and tried to preach about serious themes while making their main characters not have to adhere to them. Sorry but if they’re going to try and tell me genocide is okay as long as it’s a pretty woman doing it, i’m going to disregard everything else they try to throw at me and that just isn’t good writing for me.

Most people in this thread could spend 30 mins writing a story for EW and i guarantee it wouldn’t flop as bad as EW did.

[Skyborne]

I like how I brought up "Stormblood 2.0" and then this. Seconding aveyond... no more dull Alliance stuff where everyone are fluffy friends who all get along and agree 100%. Kind of why I don't like the scions very much either.

Parts of the story really did not resonate with people, or in the worst case, caused huge cognitive dissonance or even distress (and not the intended kind). It's great that you absolutely loved everything, but clearly, not everyone did, and many of the same general points of contention with the story have been brought up by dozens of people over the thread. It's too bad there's no highlight feature or any actual use of the updoots, expecting someone to read 350 pages is a lot. Plenty of really good analyses, particularly Lauront's and Brinne's. Then again, this just seems to be another outraged flyby poster so dunno if I should bother.

Also don't really think a poster deliberately asking people for their ideas and thoughts on how they'd handle elements of the story and people responding to it is somehow bad because it's... not what happened? Of course it's not real. That's not how criticism works... and I don't think anyone thinks they're better, aside from Kizuya being a chad up there.

Anyway, I'm pretty tired of having certain cliches be "subverted" while other cliches are played completely straight and rubbed in my face (the entirety of UT for one). It's telling that even reddit of all places is starting to criticize it more.

[Atelier-Bagur]

Has this thread fallen so far below that most of you are resorting to stroking egos with "I can totally write a better story than EW"?

[anhaato]

Has this thread fallen so far below that most of you are resorting to stroking egos with "I can totally write a better story than EW"?

Only one person is saying that