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

[CrownySuccubus]

If you don't have an issue with the same story resolution being repeated 4 times in a row then it is extremely unlikely we will ever come to an agreement as to what or what doesn't constitute good storytelling. I don't have the patience for that sort of writing, I consider it quite lazy and I feel that it is cheapening the game's world each time it is used.

Repetitive storytelling is kind of par for the course in an MMO plot. There's always going to be yet more dark gods to slay. More evil overlords to depose. More oppressed people to save. Complaining about monarchies specifically is a hill I have no interest in dying on, and since half of your arguments amount to "I just don't like it", agreement was never really feasible. Understanding, at best.

Following on from this, Doma is no longer relevant to the plot, Fanow is never going to be revisited again anytime soon, and Radz-at-Han is not a setting that has done much to charm me besides having a dragon.

Doesn't change the fact that they're monarchies.

Not a monarchy, an immortal dragon.

He's a satrap, which is a monarchal position. Before him, a family of monarchs ruled as the puppet government. The fact that he doesn't age changes nothing about that, since he could always be killed or step down and personally name or father a successor.

It doesn’t compare with the likes of Ishgard or Garlemald’s plotlines, and absolutely doesn’t come close to scratching the itch that Bozja and Ivalice content does for me.

So we've moved from "the game is against monarchies" to "none of the ones that exist do it for me anymore".

Ishgard = Aymeric is chosen by the noble houses as the next king after proving his leadership. This falls in line with how Cecil Harvey, despite literally being half-alien and half-commoner ascended the throne of Baron. Or if they insist on having a UK style parliament then at least let the man go so he can join the party.

Ala Mhigo = With how poorly the WoL was treated there I wouldn’t care at all if Shinryu razed the place to the ground entirely. Otherwise let Raubhan take control as a competent military dictator and focus on establishing order and proper governance again.

Eulmore = This is the sole instance where having a mayor elected via democratic vote would have made sense, contingent on the story not having already exhausted my patience with using the yay democracy plot twice already by this point.

Bozja = A young female Hrothgar queen is chosen to lead her people into an era of peace and prosperity, guided by the stars as they were in days of yore. She is advised by a small council made up of resistance members. Long blond hair like Cersei Lannister and red priestess garments to contrast against the blue-white tones of the other queen.

Garlemald = A young princess survives the catastrophe that befell her nation and by sharing her peoples’ plight, grows closer to them and understands their troubles. As the sole heir and more benevolent option compared to the former members of the senate who enabled half a century of conquest and misrule in the provinces, she is crowned Empress. Long black dress with gold trimmings and snow-white hair, pure soviet princess vibes. The new community waifu. Thancred stays behind in Garlemald to act as her bodyguard and protector like Basch did for Larsa. No one goes to the moon.

Ala Mhigo doesn't want another dictator since the last one was literally called the Mad King. They literally held a conference to decide.

Eulmore is basically just "I don't like it".

No comment on Ishgard. It's not that different from what we have, except Aymeric just isn't wearing a crown. No comment on Bozja, either. That wasn't even written by the same writers as the rest of the game, and he had to rush the ending...so meh.

Garlemald? ...Yeah, I'll get to Queen Waifu in a second.

Solution = write heirs into the plot. Moving on.

That seems like it misses the point and/or goes against the entire characterization of said monarchs.

Thordan's goal was to become Emperor Palpatine and live forever as a god-king with no need for an heir.

Ala Mhigo's entire royal family died decades ago.

Eulmore was run by a manchild whose entire philosophy was that the future didn't matter, so party it up now.

Bozja did have an heir, and she turned out to be insane.

Most Garleans literally scoff at the idea of women rulers, and have no interest in anyone ruling who isn't a generalissimo. The idea of some Disney Princess showing up and melting the hearts of the Garleans sounds like an even more boring and unlikely outcome than any of the others.

See = Baron from FFIV, Alexandria from FFIX, Fynn from FFII, Dalmasca from FFXII, Archades from FFXII, and so on. Granted, Archades is not an absolute monarchy but it can be assumed that with Larsa and Basch in power that their senate who orchestrated disaster after disaster was finally reigned in at some point.

So in other words, you want the Scions to rule? That's what it sounds like you're saying. Because in each of the games you mentioned, the endgame is a player power fantasy that ends with various members of their party either as ruler or consort to a ruler. All hail Archbishop Thancred, Queen Lyse, Mayor Alphinaud, and Emperor G'raha!

Besides that, all of these "solutions" really say to me is that the problem isn't repetition. It's "do the repetition that I like". By your own admission here, you had no problem with the same conclusion in three different FF games (and twice in one of them).

I'd pick the side that led to me and supports me continuing to live since that's all I know.

This part I don't agree with. If I could go back in time and stop the genocide of the Indigenous Americans, the Crusades, the Transatlantic Slave Trade, the Holocaust, and many others, I'd do it even if I ceased to exist.

Most of these things are the reason the current world is so effed up.

[MikkoAkure]

This part I don't agree with. If I could go back in time and stop the genocide of the Indigenous Americans, the Crusades, the Transatlantic Slave Trade, the Holocaust, and many others, I'd do it even if I ceased to exist.

Most of these things are the reason the current world is so effed up.

Where I see the difference is the means and the result. You can go back in time and stop any one of those things and the world would be a better place but it would also still be our world. The Ascians want to delete 15,000 years of history and in order to do so, they need to cause untold death and destruction time and time again and each time, a whole world is destroyed and along with it all of that whole world's history and every life upon it.

I couldn't sacrifice billions of people over tens of thousands of years just for the sake of what once was.

[Thaciscokidd]

Where I see the difference is the means and the result. You can go back in time and stop any one of those things and the world would be a better place but it would also still be our world. The Ascians want to delete 15,000 years of history and in order to do so, they need to cause untold death and destruction time and time again and each time, a whole world is destroyed and along with it all of that whole world's history and every life upon it.

I couldn't sacrifice billions of people over tens of thousands of years just for the sake of what once was.

Super off topic but.

This is the danger of linear Closed Loop variety and the branching Open Loop time travel well time travel in general. You are right. For the story to go forward with the world as is the loop needed to be closed(strangely unlike the black rose death timeline that was averted in ShB).

But as cool as it would be to stop one of those real world events there is no telling the repercussions that would happen because that had changed. Heck if you changed the Transatlantic Slave Trade there's a good chance I wouldn't exist and more importantly what atrocities would(or wouldn't) occur because who exist or who doesn't exist. Fundamental butterfly effect theory.

If you want a good example in gaming Chrono Triggers 12 different endings depending on what you do or don't do.

[Brinne]

But as cool as it would be to stop one of those real world events there is no telling the repercussions that would happen because that had changed. Heck if you changed the Transatlantic Slave Trade there's a good chance I wouldn't exist and more importantly what atrocities would(or wouldn't) occur because who exist or who doesn't exist. Fundamental butterfly effect theory.

Oh, I'm absolutely certain that if not for a number of horrific atrocities I wouldn't exist.

I still believe it's the right thing to in no uncertain terms condemn those atrocities and the people who committed them. I don't think you give slavers in the past a pass, or qualify your condemnation of what they did, because "well without them our world wouldn't exist as it does today." Shadowbringers had a good line about this when Alphinaud was talking to Emet-Selch - "we define our worth, not the circumstances of our creation." Whether or not it would be "okay" or "better" to go back and unwrite history, potentially erase timelines full of people, is a more complex question - we should probably ask for G'raha's thoughts about this! But asserting our right to live, while also acknowledging the 'circumstances of our creation' sucked and was wrong, and that the people who were wronged deserve justice, are not mutually exclusive ideas.

I had hoped that the narrative word on the Sundering would be along the lines of: "an absolutely horrific thing that should never have happened, but now that it has, probably not worth the human cost to undo at this point." Instead, we got, um, something else?

[Thaciscokidd]

Snip

Yep, its the blessing of helping the protagonist. Just like it was ok for us to stop others for being oppressed but we've put down the Gigas race twice. I held out hope that it would get settled out when we were making peace with the other beast tribes but nope. No primal no dice.

[aveyond-dreams]

a post

I am too low on sleep to respond to the entirety of this post but I stopped reading after you attempted to compare the likes of the scions to party members who went on to become rulers in previous Final Fantasy games. The scions have the development of vanilla wafers compared to what characters like Garnet and Ashe endured, who opposed tyranny without being overly preachy in the way of the scions. It is concerning how several posters cannot seem to tell the difference between these two styles of expressing themes and messages. I feel like this post was written to just argue for the sake arguing and little to no evidence was provided as to how repeating the same resolution for political regime situations 4 times in a row was justified.

We are unlikely to ever agree on how the writers should handle these situations, all I know is that FFXIV's world lies in ruins with half its nations neutered and the most interesting plot elements straight up gone or wrapped up so hastily that I can scarcely believe some of this writing made it in game. Maybe the English localization team is partly responsible for this state of affairs, there was a thread that criticized their work on several pieces of dialogue regarding Venat and I can imagine their preoccupation with other factors may have had an impact on how badly they neglected everything else. I just don't know.

[CrownySuccubus]

I am too low on sleep to respond to the entirety of this post but I stopped reading after you attempted to compare the likes of the scions to party members who went on to become rulers in previous Final Fantasy games. The scions have the development of vanilla wafers compared to what characters like Garnet and Ashe endured, who opposed tyranny without being overly preachy in the way of the scions.

Again, if your argument here is just "I don't like them", then there's no point. I don't think anyone really cares if you, personally, like who gets put onto the fictional throne.

I mean, YOUR "better" solution was "put this OC blonde waifu on the throne". Pretty sure there's zero grounds to argue about character development.

but I stopped reading after you attempted to compare the likes of the scions to party members

Okay. So you read pretty much the entire post except a line or two, then.

It is concerning how several posters cannot seem to tell the difference between these two styles of expressing themes and messages. I feel like this post was written to just argue for the sake arguing

Dude, come on. Are we seriously preening about how superior our methods of storytelling appreciation are?

and little to no evidence was provided as to how repeating the same resolution for political regime situations 4 times in a row was justified.

As I said, FFXIV and MMOs in general repeat story beats all the time. It's nothing new, it's not "horribly bad writing", and it's not likely to end any time soon. Again, you have simply (for whatever reason) chosen "Oh no, democracy" as the specific hill YOU want to die on. If we're supposed to be complaining about repetition, then we could go all the way back to Shadowbringers revealing "Oh by the way, here's yet ANOTHER advanced ancient civilization, and it's even MORE Ancientier than the rest!".

Feel free to think whatever you like, but an objective measurement of story quality it ain't.

We are unlikely to ever agree on how the writers should handle these situations

Nor should we have to.

Forums are to discuss opinions. Even if those opinions differ. It's not for slowly developing a hivemind.

You can feel free to have whatever opinion you want, but I do appreciate that you went out of your way to provide us with your own proposed endings. I just don't think they're very good. And that's my opinion, just like you have yours.

I like how Aveyond's argument is "it's boring that all of these nations are written to go from monarchy to democracy every time," and the counterargument is "well everything in the writing perfectly justifies the writing's direction!" No shit, of course it does. They wrote it that way on purpose, of course it'll contains all sorts of justifications for its endings. It didn't have to be that way from conception, but they decided to make it so. That doesn't negate Aveyond's argument, it's just restating their issue from another angle but this time with your opinion applied to it.

I mean, I guess, excuse me for believing that the way a storyarc wraps up should follow the themes, character motivations and tone of the story. For example, if the entire point of Vauthry is that he's a hedonist who doesn't care about the future, is likely immortal, and believes that everyone should just party until the world ends....what part of this character indicates, "You know, the writers should have given him an heir"? Granted, I know he said he was mostly fine with Eulmore's finale...but my point is that changes have to make sense in context. Even if we change the context completely and go with, "Well, they shouldn't have written Eulmore to be about those themes at all", then we're basically talking about a story so different from the original that it's literally fan-fiction.

Same thing with Garlemald. We've been told since 1.0 that Garlemald's political situation is so unstable that Varis barely holds on to his power, and even a hint of a power vacuum will turn bloody. So, I don't particularly find it a "problem" when that's exactly what happens. Notice that we had to pretty much insert Princess Anastasia into the story to create the type of conclusion aveyond prefers.

[anhaato]

-

I like how Aveyond's argument is "it's boring that all of these nations are written to go from monarchy to democracy every time," and the counterargument is "well everything in the writing perfectly justifies the writing's direction!" No shit, of course it does. They wrote it that way on purpose, of course it'll contain all sorts of justifications for its endings. It didn't have to be that way from conception, but they decided to make it so. That doesn't negate Aveyond's argument, it's just restating their issue from another angle but this time with your opinion applied to it.