Would Endwalker have been better if we never visited Elpis at all?

[OhNooo]

[Kaurhz]

Nope.

I will fight this tooth and nail that Shadowbringers post-story handling was the biggest issue and factor in many of the problems present in Endwalker. I would actually go a step further and say even the base story of Shadowbringers exhibited issues that later plagued Endwalker. They focused far too much on rushing through Elidibus to conclude the Ascians. His sudden personality change was depressing to watch.

I think Elpis was perfectly fine. The issues were with how padded out the Radz-at-Han story and the lack of focus or substance in the Garlean section of the story.

[Larirawiel]

I love Elpis as a zone.

But the story got so many errors because of Elpis, that it destroys literary everything from Shadowbringers. The story writers should never ever allow us to do more than to observe in Elpis. But they decided, that we can alter the past. It it leads to many many causal loops, retcons and inconsistencies. Time traveling is a real mindf*ck. If the story writers have no clue how to do it right then they should never try it. But they did it and the damage is done.


Cheers

[Jeeqbit]

Elpis is what made the expansion great for a lot of people, so it would probably have been worse without it. The alternative would be visiting some ancient ruins to find things out and I'm tired of looking through empty, ancient ruins like Azys Lla. In fact, Azys Lla would be have been a lot cooler if we had gone back to allagan times and interacted with the allagans.

[NekoMataMata]

Probably. Despite how much I enjoyed it, time travel always creates plot issues. It's a shame there wasn't another way to experience Elpis without creating those issues.

[Absimiliard]

All they had to do was hold the course already navigated by Shadowbringers. ShB managed to handle time travel and grey morality very well. EW dropped the ball on both; the stable time-loop is dumb at the very least, and the reversion to black and white morality was plain boring. While I did enjoy Elpis as a zone, I feel it would've been better if we only gathered information instead of being the one to plant all these ideas in Venat's head.

[Elizabetha]

The only thing that bothered me about EW's story was trying to keep straight which ancient became which other character I already fought or met.

I felt like some old lady asking, "Who's this now? He looks familiar."

Oh and I thought Meteion's legs were actually killer boots and I couldn't WAIT to get that glamour. /sulk

[Ashpd]

Yes. Why not more Garlemald ?

[Carin-Eri]

Personally, would've preferred less Elpis and more Moon.

I've said this before, in another thread, but it does feel as if they intended for more to happen there. The pre-launch trailer and cinematic placed quite some emphasis on it and it feels as if more was supposed to happen there.

Though I guess it's possible that we'll have to go back there at some point, particularly since that fountain of dark Aether that Zodiark left behind may end up being significant to our upcoming jaunt to the 13th.

[Midareyukki]

No. Elpis isn't the inherent problem with Endwalker.