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

[Lustre]

On the topic of "close in the distance", I think it's telling they chose to use the cheesy, corny vocal version over the actually appropriate ambient/atmospheric version for the zone music. After all, that's all most of EW was, shallow emotional manipulation sacrificing a (somewhat) coherent storyline in the process. I still keep thinking about just how different in tone SHB was from EW. SHB will tell you to your face that "something's wrong here" and "maybe there's more to the ancient/hydaelyn conflict than we realise" only for endwalker to go "haha not really, they bad, we good, updoot me when I return to sharlayan pls". It feels really really weird. Also, I only just saw this thread tags lmfao they're hilarious

[Rulakir]

I believe she's the last one of them. En masse they caused a lot of problems. But one by herself...won't cause as bad of an effect. A drop of water vs an ocean.

It only took a single Meteion to destroy several worlds.

Okto: Annihilated itself in a world war instigated by Meteion's arrival.
Deka-Hexi/Alphatron: The Omicron world believed to have fallen due to Meteion's influence.
Deka-hepta/The Plenty: Mass suicide triggered by Meteion.

It's not stated outright, but it wouldn't surprise me if she's responsible for Deka-pente as well. The world where the higher power obliterated everyone and then destroyed itself upon her asking why.

I understand wanting a 'feel good' ending with her, especially since Hermes is the one responsible for making her the way she is, but I still feel it was highly irresponsible for us to have let her go. She's simply too dangerous and we've ended other foes for less.

[YukikoKurosawa]

Well the problem IMO with letting Meteion live means she suffered absolutely zero consequences for her actions whatsoever. Having her die could've been a tragic irony, that she only finds meaning in existence right before she her own ends.

But I guess that would've been too depressing for our apocalyptic story so they (arguably) had her spontaneously live in the end. If only that question was answered in one of the live letters. Not that I'm a fan of external media sources giving out narrative/lore explanations that should either just be made clear in the game or left permanently ambiguous to allow some mystery. I'm not sure if the latter was their intention with Meteion's fate or not. But I'm sure they would give some convoluted explanation as to how she actually did in fact live in the end. Something something "the hope you imbued her with magically healed her and she was able to live on" something something.

But yeah I don't like her just getting off completely scott free after causing the most harm of any villain in the entire story, along with how arguably dangerous she still is.

[CrownySuccubus]

Again, I recall that the one singular Meteion was against what her sisters were up to, and was on your side during the final battle. The narrative gives the impression that she had no control over being absorbed into the hivemind during the scheduled report. I could be remembering wrong, but even if I'm not, I don't disagree about the threat she poses. On the other hand, though, I can also see the argument that one Meteion wasn't nearly as dangerous as the whole. In the case of the world war planet and The Plenty, that's not Meteion's "fault"; it's like the US and Russia deciding to nuke each other to stop the other from talking to Vulcans. I don't necessarily think the Plenty was her "fault", either.

IF nothing else, reinforces what I said about this deserving more attention than it was given in the story. Is the implication that this one Meteion was "fighting from the inside" for 12,000 years?

[RyuDragnier]

Well the problem IMO with letting Meteion live means she suffered absolutely zero consequences for her actions whatsoever. Having her die could've been a tragic irony, that she only finds meaning in existence right before she her own ends.

This specific one was the individual with Hermes when we met him, and was the one who bonded with us (as little a bond as it was). From the very beginning she ran when she realized what her sisters were saying, trying her hardest not to let Hermes hear the truth. If you recall at that very scene, the pure despair was trying to overtake her, and the pure emotion given off by it was overwhelming even us. I do not blame that girl for what her sisters did, she was an individual who was overwhelmed by the Hive Mind.

[Coombah]

Endwalker was a huge letdown...I agree with the original post.

[YukikoKurosawa]

I just realized Hydaelin's entire trial was ultimately pointless, as there was no great threat, no foe more powerful than her we needed to face and prove ourselves strong enough to do so by besting her first. The only thing that could be argued is The Endsinger. But the Scions don't even face her, they get yeeted and deleted by her easily. And the only reason the WOL manages to stand a chance is because Zenos, who had absolutely nothing to do with Hydaelin's plan and came entirely for his own personal reasons, showed up and helped.

The only thing the scions did was kill themselves to let us progress, than after being brought back get yeeted by Endsinger, than ultimately just resort to praying to empower us in the final battle, as it was clear even with Zenos' help the Endsinger would've beat us.

And this is not to mention I would think the amount of things the WOL has achieved thus far would be enough to prove they have the strength to overcome Meteion, from her POV, if her measure of our worth is by beating her, a severely weakened primal, when we've beaten far more powerful such entities in the past.

So basically Hydaelin died for nothing, she may as well have just given us the Mothercrystal and let us go to UT instead of having us do a pointless trial that ultimately proved nothing since we still failed without entirely unaccounted for third party aid even after "proving" ourselves by besting her. Her trial proved nothing and she died for nothing.

[Rulakir]

I thought her trial was ridiculous because it's supposed to test our ability to deal with dynamis, but both her soul and her primal form are aether based. So, how exactly did we prove ourselves capable of handling Meteion?

[MikkoAkure]

The only thing the scions did was kill themselves to let us progress, than after being brought back get yeeted by Endsinger, than ultimately just resort to praying to empower us in the final battle, as it was clear even with Zenos' help the Endsinger would've beat us.

And this is not to mention I would think the amount of things the WOL has achieved thus far would be enough to prove they have the strength to overcome Meteion, from her POV, if her measure of our worth is by beating her, a severely weakened primal, when we've beaten far more powerful such entities in the past.

So basically Hydaelin died for nothing, she may as well have just given us the Mothercrystal and let us go to UT instead of having us do a pointless trial that ultimately proved nothing since we still failed without entirely unaccounted for third party aid even after "proving" ourselves by besting her. Her trial proved nothing and she died for nothing.

I thought her trial was ridiculous because it's supposed to test our ability to deal with dynamis, but both her soul and her primal form are aether based. So, how exactly did we prove ourselves capable of handling Meteion?

We had to fight her to prove ourselves because this is a video game, there was no way we weren't going to fight her, and they had to come up with a reason that still keeps her as "the good guy". I think she just wanted to make sure we were strong enough to carry on without her. She didn't exactly have a Dynamis-based dummy to have us fight so I'm not sure what you're looking for.

I don't think the Scions had the gift of foresight and knew they were going to disappear before we fought Endsinger.

I don't think she died for nothing either. There would have been more complaining on these forums if she had lived through the expansion. There's not really a need for her to exist anymore now that Zodiark is gone forever and the Ascians are more or less wiped out and Rejoinings can't happen anymore.

[Theodric]

We 'had' to fight her for the same reason that WoW ended up deeply regretting the decision to randomly turn beloved Warcraft 3 characters into raid bosses 'just because'. Something they ended up reversing in the case of Illidan much later.

At the end of the day it's a story driven and the story, especially recently, as been rather all over the place.

It's also a fantasy setting so the constant ego stroking of 'mortals' wears thin - especially with Myths of the Realm revolving around yet more 'tests' of strength at the hands of alleged gods.

If only the game remembered that the player character isn't an actual representation of typical moral strength in the first place and has been granted considerable advantages unavailable to other characters...