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

[anhaato]

I muse on how I would've liked to see Endwalker story handled, or more like what I was expecting going into the expansion, and the avid EW defenders go incandescent with rage. Damn, some thinking out loud got you all that pressed? I didn't even pretend I was better than the writers, I know just how good they can be when given enough room to flesh out a storyline, and without interference from people like YoshiP who explicitly had his hand in the story. EW flopped for me, period. I know they can do better than this, because they have. If you thought my ideas were shit I really don't give a damn, I'm talking about what would've interested me and me alone. At the end of the day I don't pretend to be as good as the XIV writers because if I was then, hell, I'd probably be on the team by now. "That would've been boring and predictable!" well lucky for you I didn't write it. If you enjoy the story for how it is then feel free to not stick your head in a thread full of people criticizing it.

[Brinne]

Personally speaking, the idea of an entire expansion and over two years of content dedicated to Garlemald - especially as a follow-up to Shadowbringers and after so many Chronicles dedicated to them - mostly just makes me feel incredibly tired. I do think Yoshida made the right call under the circumstances, and think Garlemald's role in the story overall, including their downfall, was handled very well. But hey, their fans have a right to be their fans. If I went Full Self-Indulgence, Final Fantasy XIV basically would have turned into Ancient Fantasy XIV after 5.0, and my personal ideal dream version of 6.0 would probably also be deeply disliked by a lot of people, so.

In regards to "fixing" EW, the lowest effort, and probably most plausible version, is literally to just let go of the need to make us like Venat. Let us question her, cut or heavily alter the montage, allow those with the right to hate her and be angry with her to hate her and be angry with her, and call it a day. This would correlate with making some of the more questionable, broader themes go down easier, too. EW would still be messy, but not significantly moreso than any of the other expansions I've enjoyed.

There's more high-effort versions I've spitballed about with friends for fun (including the tinfoil-effort version of "what if Hermes and Hydaelyn WERE written as the same character?") but it mostly has to deal with individual characterizations and arcs for the Scions and such, and allowing the Ancients to have their AU if we're going to the past, moreso than a complete overhaul. Obviously, Zenos stays exactly the same! <_<

As I've said, I've loved this game for almost ten years, and I want to keep loving it. I'm looking for any reason to keep doing so without struggling with the weird dissonance. At this point, I might throw my hands up and actually take the joke option of "Venat is never spoken of again and the Ancients-are-saved AU is established in a Lodestone side story." There are multiple facets to my psychological downfall in regards to EW, I tell you.

[Nekokaori]

*cough* ppl mentioning stormblood but storm blood is far superior to endwalkers story. Stormblood felt like a war as it was meant to, endwalker feels nothing like the final days should we get 2 min of final days and thats it, garlimold was in ruins way before we got there, nothing was destoryed at all...

So honestly stormblood is better without patchs it Actrually delivered what it was to

[KageTokage]

I was honestly expecting both Mare Lamentorum and Elpis would be dedicated to sorting out the loose threads surrounding the Hydaelyn/Zodiark conflict and the Sundering...but that largely ended up being an afterthought in the end.

I'll stand by my single biggest disappointment being that we never actually got to see Hydaelyn and Zodiark fight it out, but I would've liked if they had at least made it so the former's actions felt more justified and concrete in the reasoning involved instead of revolving mostly around flimsy ideology that feels extremely unconvincing between evidence and lack of context.

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"?

You have a very narrow perspective if you think "most" people here are saying that...but then again, it's pretty obvious most of the naysayers haven't actually looked at more then a few of the pages of the thread and are likely fundamentally disinterested in engaging with the topic in any meaningful manner (As is evident from the tags people have been throwing on it...).

I'm also not sure what you mean by "fallen so far below" unless you're trying to insinuate that the people complaining are in fact, wrong, and EW is a spotless masterpiece undeserving of criticism.

People are complaining simply because it did not hold up under their scrutiny like the previous expansions did. I personally kept my expectations in check and didn't expect it to be better then ShB, but once the initial hype and emotions wore off, I was still left feeling sour about it in multiple ways when that wasn't the case for any of the prior expansions (Which I tended to actually appreciate more as time went on).

That is not to say I didn't still largely enjoy it, but I feel they mishandled key lore that has been central to the plot for years and the resolution was unsatisfying; especially when as has been stated ad infinitum, they doubled down on trying to push Venat/Hydaelyn as unquestionably good and the one with the moral high ground with little to actually support it after ShB had tried to add shades of gray to the conflict.

[Lauront]

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.

This. I would've liked to see it morph into something closer to Archades, while retaining some of its territorial holdings (maybe those which benefitted from its rule and are thus more loyal to it), to provide a counter-balance to the Eorzean Alliance, to some degree, and also have a different flavour to the latter.

Only one person is saying that

Well, the story falls so far below from what I've come to expect of the writers (the phrase "too many cooks..." comes to mind, and there are at the least indications of rewrites being involved), that I've little trouble believing that several people in this thread could in fact come up with better ideas for how to handle it, and some have presented some outlines of that. It's less to do with stroking egos but more expressing how it could have avoided the pitfalls that have been identified... especially since people were asked how they'd do that. Also I doubt anyone is claiming people in this thread would do a better job of all the characterisation and writing etc. that'd go into it, but a high level plot overview is a different story. The writing team is very talented but it doesn't mean they or the writing process itself is infallible. I suspect though that poster is just doing a routine check of the thread so they can contribute some flyby sniping.

cool ideas

At least speaking personally, I'd have vastly preferred this. It's close to some of my own thoughts on the topic.

[Starshower]

*cough* ppl mentioning stormblood but storm blood is far superior to endwalkers story. Stormblood felt like a war as it was meant to, endwalker feels nothing like the final days should we get 2 min of final days and thats it, garlimold was in ruins way before we got there, nothing was destoryed at all...

So honestly stormblood is better without patchs it Actrually delivered what it was to

Sweetie, endwalker was about the end of the story and tying loose ends first and foremost. Why did you get the impression that the story would be mainly about the final days? I'm glad that the story touched on more than just that! Remember, they said in the fanfest and marketing materials that shadowbringers was about finally bringing an end to the garlean empire!





Imagine being disappointed that shadowbringers wasn't about that at all, instead of what it actually was about! (that's you)


Stop limiting endwalker by what the final days could have been... that's all in your heads lol. You're basically mad it wasn't what was on the marketing material while shadowbringers had the same misleading over it. (and stormblood being advertised as the ala mhigo expansion, while omitting that the far east was even a thing until the last moment).


Edit: yeah, I know you garlemald lovers think a garlemald expansion would be all about keeping garlemald's honor... Look at that slide and let sink in what the devs intended since many years ago.

[Nekokaori]

Sweetie, endwalker was about the end of the story and tying loose ends first and foremost. Why did you get the impression that the story would be mainly about the final days? I'm glad that the story touched on more than just that! Remember, they said in the fanfest and marketing materials that shadowbringers was about finally bringing an end to the garlean empire!





Imagine being disappointed that shadowbringers wasn't about that at all, instead of what it actually was about! (that's you)


Stop limiting endwalker by what the final days could have been... that's all in your heads lol. You're basically mad it wasn't what was on the marketing material while shadowbringers had the same misleading over it. (and stormblood being advertised as the ala mhigo expansion, while omitting that the far east was even a thing until the last moment).


Edit: yeah, I know you garlemald lovers think a garlemald expansion would be all about keeping garlemald's honor... Look at that slide and let sink in what the devs intended since many years ago.

it has nothing to do with the name lol

fandial or hermes w/e u want to call him shows up on the final setting up that he is destorying the world (or attempting) it was set in motion from the very begin before the 1st msq of endwalker that this was going to be end of the world..

and if u want to talk about marketing they said there would be a price to pay, but there wasnt everyone was auto rezed noone that mattered worth a damn has died since our best friend lalafell at the end of heavensward ... and for an end of the world setting the entirity of expanson was no where deep enough or dark enough with as many stupid jokes as we got

[CrownySuccubus]

As I've mentioned, I think the Garlean portion of EW was probably the most realistically-handled of all of them.

In real life, most militaristic empires collapse from within, either through civil war and schisms or through slow socioeconomic decline. Since the latter can take anywhere between decades to centuries, and doesn't sound like much fun besides, Garlemald destroying itself is a pretty fitting outcome.

And again, I loved the fact that Garlemald, as a copy-paste of the Gestahl Empire, pretty much suffered the same fate: becoming irrelevant well before the game is even over.

[Starshower]

for an end of the world setting the entirity of expanson was no where deep enough or dark enough with as many stupid jokes as we got

Really? You don't think an expansion about encroaching despair and doom would also involve hope and finding happiness in the little moments? The 2 obviously go together very well. You can't have one without the other. I'm glad that for the end of the saga, it ended in a bright note where everyone came together and hope overcame despair. What an awful end it would be if everyone just died lol.

[Theodric]

What's meant to be wrong with liking Garlemald, exactly...? There were many ways in which it could have been handled without leading to its destruction, especially when it's people have long suffered as a consequence of the Sundering leaving them with the inability to manipulate aether in many cases as well as repeated attempts to subject them to genocide.

The development team outright admitted that Garlemald was set to have an expansion of its own, which suggests that the original plan wasn't to simply do away with the place entirely. Furthermore, it wasn't lacking for fans - even with a vocal subset of the community bizarrely and creepily attacking anyone who dared to mention it in a positive manner.