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

[Jagick]

I don't post to prove myself to be right. I post to put my opinions out there in the hope that I might encounter people who share similar concerns for the direction of the game's narrative as well as reinforcing the idea that they're not alone. I also hope that the thread is being read by someone employed by Square Enix who may very well pass feedback along to someone involved in the story.



I imagine many posters have all sorts of different takes on what would be 'valid' or 'reasonable' on any given subject. Ultimately we're dealing with a fictional setting which is primarily there to entertain. It can't please everybody but that's precisely why many favour more variety across the board in terms of how elements within the story play out.

Someone rooting for House Stark in Game of Thrones is going to have very different expectations than those who roots for House Tyrell or House Lannister and so on.



It's why I'm drifting back to single player games for my immersion needs. It never fails to impress me every time I enter Novigrad in The Witcher 3. It's one of the more immersive cities I've seen in an RPG to date. Equally, as far as MMO's go I'd say Divinity's Reach in Guild Wars 2 is a good example of what FFXIV could do if it really pushed itself to its limits.

Even if the city was devoid of life it would have been nice to see, even though I'd prefer to have witness the grandeur and technological powerhouse we've heard about. It kind of makes me laugh now thinking about it, but upon exploring the zone, I didn't feel like I was play FFXIV and exploring the capitol of Garlemald. I felt like I was playing an ancient free-to-play MMO, Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine. Tower looming? Check! Mostly empty wasteland? Check! An area with some building ruins but nothing much else to see? Check! A couple demon- I mean monsters roaming here and there to kill? Check! Pet summoned to help me fight? Check! Low graphical fidelity to compliment it all? CHECK!

It's not that shocking considering when there is a "crowd" in any cutscene. I guess more than 2 and less than 10 can be considered a crowd, lol.

It's even more baffling that they seem to have started just copy and pasting those NPCs in even those smaller crowds rather than making them unique. Same face, same clothes, same colors. Really ruins the immersion.

[Brinne]

It's useful to be able to distinguish - from both a writing and a reacting position - pointing out something Weird about what someone is writing/saying, versus applying that as a judgment to that person's personal character. I can point out that Endwalker's writing Did A Genocide Apologism, Using Classic Apologism Techniques, and that is Really Not Okay, without that meaning I actually think Yoshida and company are literally pro-genocide. There's no way to absolutely know that - but I don't have to know that to think the disingenuous way they went about communicating the story and uplifting a single character felt gross and harmful. Similarly, I think most of this thread can agree we can point out that a lot of the rhetoric used to defend Venat's actions align very closely with abuse apologism, but don't think that means we're specifically pointing the finger at anyone for Literally Being An Abuse Apologist. But using the rhetoric still sucks and is worth calling out.

Not everyone is educated or aware of the ins and outs of the dynamics and history of abuse apologism and such, so - like I hope/think Yoshida and Co. did with EW - don't necessarily realize what they're doing. But the hope is that pointing it out will get them to reconsider that rhetoric and realize what it actually is, like we're seeing at least start out in the Omega quests (and will very hopefully continue.) On the other hand, if there's a stubbornness about persisting with it and doubling down, I don't think anyone could be blamed for starting to raise eyebrows.

FFXIV tries to achieve a very delicate balance between being an escapist, personal power fantasy (both in literal power and in moral high ground power), while also obviously wanting its story to be relevant and thoughtful to complex real world topics, or Stormblood and the Garlemald zone wouldn't have been written the way they were. Because Stormblood obviously put forth an effort to be thoughtful about the Colonialisms, I feel more at liberty to say that it didn't do so well at it, and be able to explain that to someone who would hypothetically insist Stormblood's depiction was flawless actually. So the same should be applicable to discussions of Garlemald and imperialism, or Venat and the lol Social Darwinism nonsense.

Writing is hard, expressing thoughts is hard, interpreting both can be hard, but once again, different people are coming to this thread for different reasons. Some are here to vent and don't want to be challenged, no matter what they post. Some want to discuss and analyze, are here specifically to challenge (and there are a million different ways to go about doing so.) Some are looking for solidarity with other posters, and others are mainly hoping they can make their case to the actual writing team so the story doesn't continue down EW's path. When you have what a lot of people increasingly view as the Central Hub for MSQ criticism all gathering in one place, yeah, those views and approaches are going to clash because they're fundamentally at cross purposes.

I'm not sure how this can be addressed other than, like, clearly signposting for a vent post This Is A Vent Post, I Do Not Want To Be Challenged, or something, or simply splitting the thread - neither of which would probably sit well with a lot of people.

[anhaato]

Please stop talking about it for the love of god I’m begging here.

[aveyond-dreams]

Well that's the rewrite done, let no one say that I didn't at least try to not completely destroy the entirety of the source material I had to work with despite my strong urge to do so. I did what I could with characters that I otherwise despise, and hopefully I told a story that provides a bit more oomf than whatever the second half of Endwalker was supposed to be.

The most considerable challenge to this was definitely on how to handle Meteion - I tried to do for her what the writers thought they were doing for Venat, if that makes any sense. Whether or not I was able to accomplish this effectively is definitely up for debate. I basically said to myself, "What is a character that I can actually tolerate and whose behavior isn't nonsensical?" and I picked Rydia from FFIV and transposed her characteristics on top of whatever was salvageable from Meteion's original writing.

Naturally I make no excuses for Venat and try to stay true to what I expressed in an earlier post - a traitor who hides behind a beautiful illusion. I drastically changed the battle sequence against her to fit what would be the real final battle of the expansion, and thus various plot points are altered as a result of this. Again, I drew inspiration from the media I've already mentioned earlier in this thread for all that.

The most fun part was definitely getting to flesh out Garlemald with the addition of more Ivalice material and being able to provide some political aspects to the plot that I tried to handle a bit more carefully than how Garlemald's actual finale was handled this expansion. I openly challenge the whole "United States of Final Fantasy" that the scions and Sharlayan have going on through the characters who live in Ilsabard that reject this form of government. I would have liked to go into further depth but I made the decision to reign myself in to keep pushing the plot forward.

[Teraq]

Which is precisely why I am rather firmly opposed to subtle or not so subtle attempts to ridicule or portray posters as 'bad people' for liking or arguing in favour of the 'wrong' characters in a fictional setting. That some people are unable to separate fiction from reality is, quite frankly, not my concern. Someone immersing themselves in a fictional story and rooting for the 'bad guys' is not in any way a statement in support of such events happening in the real world.

It's perfectly possible to say 'I don't like this character or faction' without drawing bizarre conclusions about those who do. Which is precisely why I'm not petty enough to go around declaring that if someone likes Venat then that means that they support genocide in the real world.

I literally cannot believe we still have to say this again, again and again in the year of Our Lord Zodiark 2022.

The type of characters I enjoy in fiction does not align with who I am in real life. I have loved villains since I was a little girl. That's just how it is. I cannot stand conflict in real life. I have been removed from my job for being overwhelmed by my own empathy. (Funny that, by the way... there's this dude in Endwalker......)

Speaking of conflict!

I'm convinced at this point there's a vested interest in seeing this thread crash and burn, especially as efforts to derail it have increased in both intensity and frequency since the Zepla mention. I've had people message me to say they felt 'run off' so, you know, good job. This was supposed to be a bastion of catharsis for those who didn't enjoy the EW MSQ and instead it's turned into dozens of pages of pettiness that's not going to result in any meaningful change in story direction, which is at least what I wanted.

Not that I expect my speaking on it (again) will change anything since it didn't before but, yeah, it's very much not appreciated.

It’s almost like an insidious plot to fill as many pages as they can with trolling and infighting in order to make that the entire thread’s image when people read through the recent pages. I’m no conspiracy theorist so I’m mostly joking, but it’s certainly going to look that way upon first impression if things keep going the way they are.

The poster in question had a couple decent posts, then quickly descended into thread troll argue-for-arguing-sake mode while being a twitter first-reply-guy to certain posters she has a grudge against, use of the ignore list and not responding is recommended.

I also recommend the bolded part. Please. The derail efforts have very obviously been conducted by a single person, and nothing good has come out of it for the last sixty pages save for Theodric's post quoted above.

It's useful to be able to distinguish - from both a writing and a reacting position - pointing out something Weird about what someone is writing/saying, versus applying that as a judgment to that person's personal character. I can point out that Endwalker's writing Did A Genocide Apologism, Using Classic Apologism Techniques, and that is Really Not Okay, without that meaning I actually think Yoshida and company are literally pro-genocide. There's no way to absolutely know that - but I don't have to know that to think the disingenuous way they went about communicating the story and uplifting a single character felt gross and harmful. Similarly, I think most of this thread can agree we can point out that a lot of the rhetoric used to defend Venat's actions align very closely with abuse apologism, but don't think that means we're specifically pointing the finger at anyone for Literally Being An Abuse Apologist. But using the rhetoric still sucks and is worth calling out.

Fully agreed, but Ishikawa's "Was what Hermes did wrong, or was it the first step for humanity?" does not exactly fill me with confidence. I suppose you could say phrasing it as a question allows for the benefit of doubt... but I'm never getting over entertaining the thought of Was the Joker the first step for Gotham City? on a planetary scale.

The answer to that should plainly be No, but then it was pushed in-game by Omega outright (disregarding 6.0's not-too-subtle othering of the Ancients to make them suitably genocidable). I cope by telling myself it's Insane Troll Logic coming straight from the speakers of an extraterrestrial war machine whose society revolved around warfare and conquest.


Going off on a tangent here, I am still baffled, nearly 7 months after the fact, that people who loved Shadowbringers would love Endwalker even more. Particularly people who love Ancients and/or Ascians. I simply cannot compute this. I wish I could say Endwalker merely disappointed me in a way I could shrug off, but I viscerally hate the fact that it's actively made Shadowbringers worse with its inane plot, stupid reveals (lmao the unsundering), memory wipes-unwipes pulled straight out of a desperate writer's lower digestive tract, and presenting itself wrapped with a pretty little bow and the premise of "finale of the Hydaelyn and Zodiark arc!" only to come up short at literally everything involving the Zodiark side of things and either not answer questions or answer them in the dumbest way.

The more I look back on it, the more I believe Shadowbringers's nuance and morally grey conflict were simply a fluke. Perfectly unintended stroke of brilliance. They gave me a premise and an antagonist cast I loved by sheer accident.

Just thinking about how Endwalker tainted my favorite character moment in the entire game, the Seat of Sacrifice intermission, with its ridiculous retroactive plot almost makes me physically sick. I guess I have to applaud the feat.

[Rulakir]

Fun times when players are having to try to "fix" the MSQ through fan fiction. I've heard this has increasingly become a thing since EW. I have my own version as well I've been half-heartedly writing on the side, but EW crushed so much of my love and enthusiasm in the story it'll probably never be completed.

I've been going through ShB cutscenes in JP and revisiting it I can't help but wonder not only what went wrong, but if EW retroactively ruined ShB? The only benefit, from my perspective, was the added context of Emet and Hyth. Everything regarding the Final Days and the Sundering was made worse. I also noticed Emet in ShB consistently believes that Hydaelyn was created to keep Zodiark's immeasurable power in check, which makes me wonder what her followers were telling people and, likewise, what Venat was telling her followers. Then I despair :P because we'll probably never know. We can't have lore that makes Venat look bad and Yoshi-P wants to be done with the story, so suffer well, I guess. (Yes, I'm malding. :P)

I can point out that Endwalker's writing Did A Genocide Apologism, Using Classic Apologism Techniques, and that is Really Not Okay, without that meaning I actually think Yoshida and company are literally pro-genocide. There's no way to absolutely know that - but I don't have to know that to think the disingenuous way they went about communicating the story and uplifting a single character felt gross and harmful.

It is baffling to me that the man compares Venat to both Emet and Hermes, but doesn't seem to make the connection that makes Venat an antagonist. Having to say, "We want to communicate Hydaelyn's not a bad guy!" should be an indication. Plus, saying, "She really was an Ancient, huh?" is so lazy. I guess the Ascians weren't villains then. Just Ancients doing Ancient things. Oh wait, the narrative still very much presents them as villains and wholly in the wrong, it's just magically Venat who's exempt. Funny how that works.

Where's my codex entry for Elidibus who sacrificed himself to become the heart of a primal - the actual will of the star before it was usurped - that saved the world and ended up going out as time travel fuel never knowing the truth? Where's my codex entry for Emet who spent 12k years of "hatred and heartbreak" trying to put his broken people and world back together in complete ignorance while being manipulated the whole time by Hydaelyn? Instead, we get this ridiculousness of how much Hydaelyn loved mankind. Yes, so much that Miss "Nothing Is Impossible" gave up on them, wiped them out, and forced their broken remnants to restart from zero from literally not being able to speak. Indeed, so much love.

While I appreciate the Omega quests, I do find it laughably twisted that they further undermined the sundering. I'll just quote Veloran here:

The whole premise has been doing nothing but falling apart like a jenga tower with every new piece of information related to it released since 6.0. Since the Omega quests just come out and say that the resistance to the Dynamis transformation is almost totally random and not strongly correlated to one's life conditions or strength of character, the entire idea that the sundering was necessary to create a world of people that could withstand despair and existential oblivion through their inurement to suffering basically becomes moot.

Fantastic. Yet, we're still going to present Venat as a heroine.

[aveyond-dreams]

I did not bother trying to introduce or account for the element of Dynamis in my rewrite. It was simply too ridiculous of a device to use in any serious story. Think about the target audience - how in the world are you going to try and pass off the literal power of friendship onto a playerbase that is in their late teens/twenties? By that point that kind of nonsense just isn't palatable or believable.

I will however encourage you and other frequenters of this thread to finish and post all of your respective rewrites, can't wait for these streamers to open the first page of General Discussion and see it flooded with multiple works that are highly likely to outdo and course correct the direction that Endwalker went in. We may as well make this territory our own.

[Tama-Kanzashi]

"She really was an Ancient, huh?"

I found it was a very shallow reason too, on the surface level it may imply that Ancients just like making large-scale decisions, but thinking a bit further it would also imply that any other Ancient would have made that same decision if they were in her position - which is hard to believe. It's not just a decision for the people of the present, but also a decision for endless generations in the future, and I highly doubt any other Ancient would be arrogant enough to deem themselves fit to make a decision like that, especially since it would lead to endless suffering.

And since I know this will invite someone to say "But they decided that future life seeded by Zodiark would be sacrificed!" - the problem here is that from what we know, that would be a one off sacrifice. The Sundered are still happily blasting each other after countless generations with no end in sight.

And about the arrogant part - no, ShB Emet does not count as he had already been thrown into a woodchipper for 12k years. ShB Emet made decisions that were motivated by endless grief.

[Striker44]

Fun times when players are having to try to "fix" the MSQ through fan fiction. I've heard this has increasingly become a thing since EW. I have my own version as well I've been half-heartedly writing on the side, but EW crushed so much of my love and enthusiasm in the story it'll probably never be completed.

When you have a game as immensely popular as FFXIV, there will inevitably be some small minority disagreeing on anything you can think of. Go practically anywhere outside these forums (even Reddit, usually a cesspool of negativity), and you'll find that the overwhelming majority of the playerbase *loves* the MSQ. It's okay to not like it, but to act as if your opinion is somehow representative of everyone when it isn't even close is bad form.

[Rulakir]

I did not bother trying to introduce or account for the element of Dynamis in my rewrite. It was simply too ridiculous of a device to use in any serious story. Think about the target audience - how in the world are you going to try and pass off the literal power of friendship onto a playerbase that is in their late teens/twenties? By that point that kind of nonsense just isn't palatable or believable.

I can't find the link for it now, but I thought the average age of the JP FF14 player was between their 20s and 30s? (I believe it was a survey Famitsu did.) Even if it is in the teens (the game is rated Teen in the US), that's still too old an age demographic to keep doing this Saturday Morning Cartoon stuff. It's especially disheartening when I read that the writers like 'darker' stories because they're either not allowed to do them or their definition of 'dark' is much different than my own. Their single player titles are darker.

I've 'joked' numerous times that EW as an expansion reads like r/im14andthisisdeep.

I will however encourage you and other frequenters of this thread to finish and post all of your respective rewrites, can't wait for these streamers to open the first page of General Discussion and see it flooded with multiple works that are highly likely to outdo and course correct the direction that Endwalker went in. We may as well make this territory our own.

There are tiers to EW rewrites. The first one being minimal changes, everything stays the same but the gaslighting surrounding Venat is removed and the characters don't all act like they've been tempered by Hydaelyn. The last tier being we need to go back into ShB and do some things differently. I tend to be more in the latter camp. Even though I loved 5.3 at the time, in hindsight I think it was a mistake to kill off Elidibus who should've been saved for 6.0 and involved with Zodiark.

I found it was a very shallow reason too, on the surface level it may imply that Ancients just like making large-scale decisions, but thinking a bit further it would also imply that any other Ancient would have made that same decision if they were in her position - which is hard to believe. It's not just a decision for the people of the present, but also a decision for endless generations in the future, and I highly doubt any other Ancient would be arrogant enough to deem themselves fit to make a decision like that, especially since it would lead to endless suffering.

Even Hermes and Venat weren't on board with genociding their people until Meteion gave her report. I'd almost find this plausible if 'our' Meteion by connecting to the hivemind had inadvertently warped their brains with dynamis, though that wouldn't explain why Emet and Hyth didn't become genocidal (unless you want to blame Kairos :P).

(even Reddit, usually a cesspool of negativity)

Tell me you don't go to r/ffxiv without actually telling me. The place is toxic positivity at its finest. Try posting anything critical about EW and get back to me about how severely downvoted you are.