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

[Theodric]

As an aside, the recent discussion reminded me of this thread:

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...ly-good-though

[Rulakir]

There's a dark joke in here somewhere about how Venat and Ilberd, with their ideologies and methods, secured victory and achieved everything they wanted, whereas Emet-Selch's point of failure and his downfall is stated to be his "kindness," but I probably don't have the heart or the brainpower to properly formulate it at this moment.

Nice guys finish last? :P

Emet was undone by the Azem soul. That was his Achilles' Heel and Venat knew it. I don't know how familiar you are with other language translations, but "matchmaker" is used in almost every (all?) other version except EN in his UT dialog. Purely speculation on my part, but I can't help but feel that Venat specifically used Emet's love for Azem against him. She'd thrown in her lot with the WoL and, aside from knowing the future, would've known that would be his weakness. I don't know if that was the intention, but if it was it makes her exponentially worse in my eyes because that's such a sadistic thing to do to someone. Every time I think Emet couldn't be any more tragic I learn that, yes, yes he can.

[Teraq]

If Hien had, as a diplomat, approached the Steppe leadership openly and proposed they join forces for mutual benefit against the Empire, that would be one thing. But instead he resorted to what amounts to a sneaky power play to force the issue, and no amount of hand-waving about "well actually the fantasy Mongols are conveniently totally cool with it because they love violence anyway and hey there's the Empire on their doorstep after us to piss them off" is going to mitigate that, for me.

Yeah, Hien found a great loophole in their cultural ritual and he exploited the hell out of it. Look, he's not participating in the Naadam as an agent of Doma, he's fighting on behalf of the Mol, who after their victory have agreed to let him call all the shots because of their superstitions and because Cirina has a crush on him! What Is The Point With That Quite Lackluster Story In Stormblood

So we told the other participants outside the Mol they would be expected to fight and die for another country if we won? I must have missed that scene.

I'll be honest with you: I wouldn't know. As I've said Stormblood is... reaaally far in my memory, and I've tried to look up dialogue in my screenshots folder only to remember how little I cared about the story prior to 5.0. Oops. So the other tribes didn't know about Hien's intentions? Well then, that's pretty bad.

I still think that Sadu and Magnai giving their full approval after the fact and being so ridiculously enthusiastic about random bloodshed and one upping each other mitigates how I feel about it a lot. But I see what you mean in a more meta way about the writing making it pretty convenient, especially the Garlean attack right after the fight felt random from an in-universe standpoint, and not-so-random from an out-of-universe one.

In the end I'll admit to being biased in that I didn't care about StB at the time and turned my brain off. I have an alt that is going through Othard soon, I'll rewatch it all with a fresh look. Likewise for the Confederacy plot, I remember nothing about it beside feeling it was a little contrived even at the time, like well that one dude is Doman and he is certainly feeling some kind of way about imperial occupation... so I guess they're all on our side now!


(Edit) This has made me reflect on how people who aren't lore nerds likely feel about Endwalker... Basically, the way I viewed Stormblood may be how a fair number of people think of Endwalker, with the added fact that Endwalker had a lot of spectacle and superficially enjoyable sequences, so it would logically get a higher base rating. My brain was off for all of it, and bringing weaknesses and inconsistencies of the plot to my attention now is mildly interesting, but it doesn't impact too much how I feel about Stormblood – which was largely "cool zones, I liked seeing those places we've mentioned for so long. the plot happened I guess". You could take the average player and point out to them every single way in which the plot of Endwalker blows and I feel like at most you'd get a reaction that amounts to "huh, yeah, I guess you're right. Hm". You would like more introspection to happen, but the brain power simply isn't going there for whatever reason.

Sorry for the stream of consciousness cringe, carry on

[Lauront]

Endwalker also smacks the player over the head with how much Venat loves you, throws in a time loop to make it seem like Venat's actions had to happen that way, has the fan faves all bend over backwards - sometimes in ways that don't fit them - to reinforce this, underplays the Sundering by not really showing it in game and uses the Plenty as a caricature to give the veneer of plausibility to Venat's fears (which would only potentially materialise if her people did not change, made worse by the fact that they did not get the information they needed or the chance to decide for themselves on this), and more besides. Because of the scale of the act EW was trying to justify, and all the foregoing narrative gaslighting, it's much harder to ignore or gloss over it, but yeah, if you don't look too hard at what's going on, you may think what Venat did was necessary and not that big a deal. Show that Nier crossover scene, maybe the debates that took place in Ere our curtain falls, and throw in some nuanced discussion over it as with the Omega quest line, and we might have seen a different impression being formed by those who pay less close attention to the lore. Either way, yes, the SB story on closer analysis does seem to have involved an awful lot of plot convenience for the protagonists.

[Brinne]

Well, like I said, even if I squinted hard at these elements at the time, and can talk about them if prompted, it's not like I felt the need to throw a fit or post on the official forums or anything because of them, either. I mostly rolled my eyes and moved on, besides some private discussions purely for fun (some of us are weirdoes who actively enjoy dissecting writing elements that do and don't work for us.) I can rail on Hien all day, but Hydaelyn is obviously on another level, and fundamentally, Hien amounts to an arc character that I can mostly ignore in the bigger picture - Hydaelyn's actions form the foundational lore for this entire story and world, and had a direct, devastating impact on the storylines and characters that truly resonated with me.

But I think it's true you can sort of identify a similar emotional thread in terms of someone who generally enjoys an expansion, but isn't that invested in the plot specifically - and for whom pointing out the issues doesn't change their overall feelings that much, even if they acknowledge what you're saying.

[Krokov]

Lackluster? It explained the story why the FD happened and the back story of Hydealyn along with other Ancients. It shows hope and light overcoming darkness and despair.

[CrownySuccubus]

Yeah, I personally have a bone to pick with any "never strive for perfection -- appreciate the status quo" and "suffering is a part of life, so embrace it and grow stronger" narratives.

I grew up in what I thought was a privileged environment (until I grew up and learned what real privilege looked like), and later got a job that put me in direct contact with people who grew up in, or are perhaps even still trapped in, scenarios which can only be described as living nightmares. I've had to talk to and interview someone one step away from suicide one time too many (and one time is LITERALLY too many), so yeah....I have a helluva beef with any game that comes around and tries to peddle "Actually, it's a good thing for people to know suffering -- that way, they can grow strong". Yes, no. Just....eat my whole butt.

I would rather remove my own eye with a cheese grater than tell the people I've met that their suffering was "good". Yes, sometimes you have to tell someone whatever they need to hear to not let despair overwhelm them and force them to do something rash, but if there's one thing I've learned on this job:

"Copium is NOT the same as Happiness."

[KizuyaKatogami]

Lackluster? It explained the story why the FD happened and the back story of Hydealyn along with other Ancients. It shows hope and light overcoming darkness and despair.

Darkness isn’t always supposed to be bad though per shb, and light isn’t supposed to always be good. So why are we now reversing that and going back to the stereotype of “dark=bad, light=good?”

[Teraq]

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Good point both; the sheer scale of Venat's actions and how central she is to the entire arc makes her play in a wholly different ball park.

I like that Hien is a very questionable "good guy" – probably the worst of the country leaders (and incidentally the one representing a fictional, ancient version of the writers' country). But he isn't questioned much by anyone that Matters™, is he?... Pft. His reaction to Yotsuyu's pimp is especially egregious... It's also interesting that of all the Scions, only Lyse (as far as I remember??) accompanies us in the Steppes. Of all Scions, I think she would be the one with the fewest qualms about Hien's actions, for a couple of reasons: she's the punch first ask questions later girl, likely not politically savvy, she is also in somewhat of a similar situation to Hien... By the time we meet back with other Scions, the deed has been done. Again, being able to express your own opinion via more critical dialogue choice would have made this more interesting.


(Edit)

Darkness isn’t always supposed to be bad though per shb, and light isn’t supposed to always be good. So why are we now reversing that and going back to the stereotype of “dark=bad, light=good?”

It... just occurred to me that darkness was supposed to be energy, chaos and entropy while light represented stillness, quiet and stagnation... Yet Endwalker very obviously portrayed the elder primal of light as driven by the ideal of evolving and moving forward, while the elder primal of darkness was painted with the "ill-fated wish for a stagnant society" brush...

[Brinne]

Yeah, I personally have a bone to pick with any "never strive for perfection -- appreciate the status quo" and "suffering is a part of life, so embrace it and grow stronger" narratives.

I grew up in what I thought was a privileged environment (until I grew up and learned what real privilege looked like), and later got a job that put me in direct contact with people who grew up in, or are perhaps even still trapped in, scenarios which can only be described as living nightmares. I've had to talk to and interview someone one step away from suicide one time too many (and one time is LITERALLY too many), so yeah....I have a helluva beef with any game that comes around and tries to peddle "Actually, it's a good thing for people to know suffering -- that way, they can grow strong". Yes, no. Just....eat my whole butt.

I would rather remove my own eye with a cheese grater than tell the people I've met that their suffering was "good". Yes, sometimes you have to tell someone whatever they need to hear to not let despair overwhelm them and force them to do something rash, but if there's one thing I've learned on this job:

"Copium is NOT the same as Happiness."

I also have a personal, seething hatred for these kinds of messages (along with "just world fallacy"-type threads and "protagonist-centric morality," which I consider to be my Ultimate Mortal Nemesis in storytelling), as to me, they usually amount to being transparently self-serving and trying to throw a coat of pretty, manipulative rhetoric over enforcing existing power structures or justifying why it's okay that people other than us suffer. Why it's okay to leave them in a state of suffering and not extend what power we can, while pretending "well, actually, doing nothing for anyone else or ever going out of my way for anyone else is the morally correct thing, and for their own good, if you really think about it, trust me bro." One question I usually ask when it comes to this kind of heavy-handed theming is - okay, who is this message for? Who does this narrative serve?

In Endwalker, the answers to those questions are, viewed generously, well-meaning but misguided, and viewed less generously, incredibly ugly, in the context of the Player In-Group versus People Not In The Player In-Group (the Other, Not Like Us, So It's Less Sad When Bad Things Happen To Them Versus Them Happening To Us.)

And it is really tragic to me on a writing level that Endwalker came so close to hitting on a theme incredibly near and dear to my heart - the value of living even if the shape of that living is permanently imperfect or less than ideal. The idea that even if the overall status quo of your life isn't what you may have wished for, you can still help other people, still enrich others' lives - and you can still have good moments, even if at times they seem fleeting. It is beautiful to me - and I say this with the disclaimer that lack of judgment also being very important to me when it comes to people dealing with their own pain - when someone is still able to find or construct a quiet, imperfect meaning in their imperfect lives. As I've mentioned once, I'm disabled, and one part of that is that I would indeed die horribly in a zombie apocalypse (or a post-Sundering world, lol) where I had no access to insulin - so when done well, this theme can drive me to tears like nothing else.

Hell, this is part of why Shadowbringers resonated with me so much, as much as I loved and sympathized with the Ancients. It was also very important to me that the Scions were able to look at this conflict, have no logical arguments against Emet-Selch, be forced to concede his points - and assert that they still wanted to live and believe they had the right to live, questions of inferiority or superiority be damned.

And then Endwalker took such a wild swing at this ball that the bat spun around and smacked it in the back of the head, leading to bleeding, concussions, and probable brain damage.

See, the notion that "it's beautiful when someone, despite everything, is able to find meaning in a life of hardship" immediately becomes unspeakably evil, actually, and almost weirdly fetishistic, when taken a step further into "therefore I will attempt to manufacture as much of that beauty as possible by inflicting hardship on people." That it can be inspiring and admirable when someone is able to grasp a desire to live in spite of everything does not change the fact that they should not have had to struggle to do so to begin with, and the error in mistaking those two things is enormous. Going back to the question of "who is this story for?" - it comes down to the feeling that this story is pushing hard to celebrate our specific moment, our specific way of life, our specific conditions in our specific time, injustices and atrocities and all, and therefore, whoever benefits from all those things - at the expense of any other possibilities or ways of existing, and to the point of suggesting if we ever reach a state where things could be considered better, then they should actually be beaten back down to the state we're at Right Now, So Stop Asking. There's a myriad of reasons why that leaves a horrible taste in my mouth, personally. I prefer my stories to encourage compassion and understanding, not weird self-glorification.