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

[Theodric]

The people who write the story by their own admission rushed to wrap things up earlier than planned, cut out an entire expansion and ignored the established narrative from one expansion to the next. Furthermore, just because the development team say something it doesn't mean everybody has to agree with their take.

Yoshi-P could write a story about how Y'shtola woke up one day and decided to become a serial killer that specialises in burning down orphanages but come up with a contrived excuse to say that she's actually a good person because those kids might have grown up to be a threat.

Which isn't much different from the laughable and pitiful excuses used to try and shield Venat from criticism. Genocide isn't suddenly acceptable or a necessity just because some pretty woman is the one partaking of it. Furthermore, video game developers are very far down the list of people who I'm interested in hearing lectures on morality from in the first place. Endwalker isn't exactly Matsuno tier in terms of quality and consistency. It has many holes - and much like with the holes in the Sage icon, there's now a panicked effort to try and cover those holes up.

[TaleraRistain]

The people who write the story by their own admission rushed to wrap things up earlier than planned, cut out an entire expansion and ignored the established narrative from one expansion to the next. Furthermore, just because the development team say something it doesn't mean everybody has to agree with their take.

They did not cut an entire expansion. They didn't have storyboards or a script or had hired voice actors. They said they considered a Garlemald expansion ending at Anima and then Endwalker would be the rest. They decided against that after the response to Shadowbringers.

They didn't explain the entire thought process. One thing I could posit is that it could be difficult to not have that fill like a filler expansion very much like Shadowbringers was feeling in the lead-up quests. I recall a lot of sentiment along the lines of "We have things going on in Eorzea. Why are we going to another world?" They don't say one way or the other but I could see that being a reasonable path for their considerations to go down.

And no, nobody has to agree with their take. But there's a lot of things being stated in this thread as fact that are just as much headcanon as things others try to write off as headcanon because what's been presented to us either in game or outside media doesn't prove the conclusion one way or another.