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

[Xeronia]

I think a lot of it hit me in 6.1 of the reasons I couldn't stand Endwalker that have been well cited here. I will add my biggest gripe with 6.1 was I have done several side stories that include the void and yet I wasn't allowed to really address any of that and feel due to the high requirements to unlock one of them it will never be addressed despite it really should be those characters storyline, not the Mi'qote Power Hour(with guest Estinien!) storyline. A friend of mine also has started to feel the same way as me noting "The only cat I want to see is Cait Sith next patch."

I have read through a lot of the thread and I can't really disagree with a lot of the dissatisfaction I see here and honestly I do agree with most of it. I also heavily agree with the over use of "slice of life" over actual plot. The slice of life scenes have their place but when they are used to make me forget issues with a story as they were so blatantly in EW I just have to roll my eyes and start skimming dialog alongside the friend I play every patch with.

[Kisshu]

Some of the problems I have with the story, is that it's all over the place with some parts getting way too much time and others over in an instance.

80-81: the set-up, visiting the new city and two half-zones. It's ok and sets up the path ahead.
80-83: Garlean time, deal with the towers, invade Garlean lands and "help" the people there. Follow with a dungeon and finally 30 minutes on the moon to deal with the Big Bad. You're now nearly 100% done with Garlean stuff.
84: That last part was dark, so how about several hours with comic relief moon bunnies.
85: Finally, the End of Days is here as seen so heavily in the trailer. For all of half a zone and a dungeon, and most of the time you're looking for a darn ciuple and their baby.
86-87: No more End of Days for you, it's a fieldtrip to the past to learn more about that Mcguffin voice we threw in after the Big Bad was defeated.
88-89: Did you like the part in SHB where everyone you met came together to build a giant Talos so you could reach the boss. Well, let's do it again and finish building a space ship. And you're stuck for half a zone doing errands for people.
89: Finally at the last zone, lets fake-out several deaths of the NPCs while we slowly learn about three races (two of whom you knew a decent amount before) and why they want to die.
90: Did you like the narrated final dungeon in SHB, lets do a near 1:1 of the for this dungeon (and a second optional lv90 dungeon), with a boss that feels like the giant Hades fight, complete with some similar attacks.

[Teraq]

Sorry for quoting you so heavily, but I really don't know how else to contextualize my thoughts. ShB had moments that I thought were unique and shocking, but even the grand finale that made ShB this wonderful.. shade of gray situation? Naw, EW is here to make sure you know you were 100% the good guy and everything you did was 100% correct

It's my number 1 complaint about Endwalker, to be honest. Shadowbringers brought some much needed nuance to the Hydaelyn/Zodiark conflict, with neither side truly right, each simply wanted to handle the post-Final Days situation differently and one side ultimately won, prompting the sole survivors to resort to desperate measures out of responsibility to their people. With the cause of the Final Days unknown, it made for a very compelling and human tragedy.

Endwalker took this and shat on it. The Ancients deserved it, you see, and were a dead end. Hermes was the only relatable and human Ancient with feelings, and he and Meteion were simply products of the society they lived in, bottom text, and their actions ultimately resulted in a net gain for mankind. Hydaelyn is indeed a primal, but this fun little tidbit does not matter in any way at all narratively: she did not temper anyone, did not suffer from Primal Brain Rot like Elidibus did, was not warped by slowly devolving ideals in 12,000 years, and seemingly did not drain the land of any aether – I guess Hydaelyn was just Venat but cooler. The only "greyness" left at all is Venat's self-flagellation, which is promptly dismissed by the Scions and the plot itself wildly gesturing and silently mouthing at you that SHE WAS 100% RIGHT SHE DID THE ONLY THING THAT COULD BE DONE AND SHE IS A HERO FOR IT. This isn't moral greyness, it's having your narrative cake and eating it too.

When you look at this image, it will finally dawn upon you the reason behind many of the writing decisions in Endwalker and who they were trying to appeal to, why things felt, as Anhaato put it, twitch streamer reaction baity. When Yoshi said they had been "watching streamers" since mid 2021, they meant it.

(snip)

Wow, this picture just revived my undying rage for FFXIV social media. Thanks I hate everything about it!

[AnaviAnael]

Two of the biggest problems I have with the story:

1. Dynamis. Introduced last minute as this big plot device and will probably never be mentioned again.
2. The Endsinger. Fighting her didn't feel like some epic conclusion, she wasn't even worthy of her own boss theme. Phase one was a remix of all the other final bosses and phase 2 was a remix of The Maker's Ruin. She didn't even have a second form. Defeating her didn't feel as heroic as saving Eorzea from Ultima Weapon, stopping Thordan, or saving the First from Emet-Selch.

[aveyond-dreams]

I can understand having an exaggerated reaction when you have a 10,000 person twitch chat spamming you nonstop...but that isn't the norm for most players, and the added hype effect surrounding launch was very real. If those streamers were to play the game on their own, several months after launch when they could think clearly and analyse what was going on I imagine they would have very different reactions to that scene.

To this day I cannot believe how Endwalker never showed us the Hydaelyn vs Zodiark fight, but spent all the time and money possible on the college dorm room scenes in Sharlayan. As others have mentioned before, some of these slice of life scenes are downright embarrassing given the context of FFXIV as a whole - a game that started off serious but then grates on your patience with some of the more recent writing trends.

I know to expect silly classroom scenes when I play a Persona game, but at least those games actually build your party members up in a believable way over time. Here we're just expected to like people by default and if we don't then they just shove them down our throats anyway. Or, in the case of specifically G'raha Tia, you take a character who had a genuinely good arc to him only to later ruin it by turning him into a joke.

With the direction I see things going in, if you gave me the choice between suffering through Heavensward era-gameplay and even sacrificing new Summoner for the sake of getting the story back on track I'd gladly do so without question. Those of us who played FFXIV during that time period got to enjoy a time when the story didn't grate as much on one's patience as it does nowadays, with logical and consistent motivations driving each character. Ysayle and Estinien had attitude, something the rest of the Scions lack completely these days. 5 months after EW I can barely remember any memorable moments the Scions may have had, aside from the ones that became memes or those that I found particularly atrocious. I can still however remember when Ysayle's faith was shattered before her eyes, and all of Estinien's bickering with her.

Ishgard was also a setting that did much to help us fall in love with it, similar to how many fell in love with the First as well, instead of the whirlwind-tour style of storytelling from Stormblood and Endwalker. Endwalker specifically went "this is X zone, enjoy!" where as Shadowbringers went "this is X zone, these are the problems they are facing and why you should care, let's stay here until the problem is done before moving on to the next area." Stormblood failed in this regard because it followed EW's style for the first set of Gyr Abania zones, but succeeded in the East because those zones were more like those of Shadowbringers.

[Xirean]

So if EW was lackluster does that mean the next expansion will be good? As is right now it's kinda the pattern of good to bad to good. At least imo.

[AnaviAnael]

Can't show Hydaelyn vs Zodiark, but gotta show the midnight Burger King run.

[KizuyaKatogami]

Can't show Hydaelyn vs Zodiark, but gotta show the midnight Burger King run.

I’ll just say when the confirmed most expensive animation this expansion was animating estinien’s foot….there’s something wrong. Couldn’t show the sundering. Couldn’t show the Hydaelyn vs Zodiark fight. My hateful bias towards this expansion aside, i just can’t fathom how you can have this big epic conclusion in the making and not have any cinematics whatsoever outside of trailers.

[Lucida3b]

Wait, wait. Estineins foot???

Why am i getting 1.0 flashbacks of misusing resources....

Yeah, I'm not sure who they're trying to appeal to these days. It certainly doesn't feel like Endwalker was actually a love letter to people who have been playing from 1.0 or 2.0. There's so many abandoned or leftover plot points that I would love to have seen addressed or at least given proper closure.

There's points where I've felt embarrassed to be playing this game. I never felt that way back in ARR, HW or SB. It was creeping in a bit at times in ShB but became much more common as of EW.

Maybe it's a good thing that they had such stiff cutscenes in earlier expansions because if it was full of so much ear wriggling, strange faces and slapstick comedy then I'd not have bothered investing in the game.

Instead I'd like balance - and more genuinely creepy moments like Garlemald and Edda's downfall.

Honestly Im not as averse to the anime comedy, but I do feel they need to tone down say the graha fanboy thing, let him be more casual with us as characters or use more of the crystal exarch personality.

On garlemald, I do think one of my favorite scenes is in fact the suicide of lord quintus, the repeating radio theme is just fantastic. I do feel like you can feel remnants of ideas of a separate expansion in the tonal shifts at times. Like I would argue the revisit to thavnir for example is dark, but it's a different dark from the bleakness of that scene in garlemald, or just the general VIBE of garlemald part.

[Xirean]

The sad thing is that I really liked that Estinein scene, but if I had to choose between that and the HvZ fight, I'd go for the fight hands down.