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

[Rosenstrauch]

ME3 really isn't the best example for reasons that might become apparent to you when you finish the game. I'd also argue the gravity of Priority: Earth isn't too far off from the gravity of the 2nd Thavnair story section, with the big issue with the latter being that said gravity didn't extend far beyond that.

I don't want to spoil anything for you though so I can't really elaborate further.

Thank you for the consideration. I do appreciate it.

But it's Mass Effect 3. The ending controversy sort of overshadowed the rest of the game, to the point where despite loving ME1 and ME2, I never bothered picking up or even renting the third game. Apparently I've missed a genuinely fun and engaging multiplayer mode because of that. Shame. I've heard the Extended Cut makes the ending better, but in the same sort of terms that I've seen some folks describe Endwalker 6.1's Omega questline: "It gives me more info/a better perspective of events, and lets me flip the bird at the thing I hated, but that's not what I actually wanted".

Regardless, I do want to actually experience and form my own opinions on it, so again, thank you.

[Jagick]

*Snip* Consistently avoiding any meaningful change or lasting consequences.

We've gotten to the point where if certain characters show up or the story takes us back to an older location then it's obvious that even minor characters will be perfectly safe. All to maintain the status quo at any cost...but mysteriously never really throwing a bone to those of us who favour the antagonists and would enjoy seeing at least some of them stick around without being forced to lose everything, proclaim that their ideals were 'always misguided' or just generally end up going in an utterly bizarre direction far removed from what appealed to those who liked the character in the first place.

It's gotten to the point that every time Y'shtola (for example) has another potential (but obviously fake out) death scene, my immediate reaction is "THANK GOD, FINALLY!"

I felt more of an emotional impact and a deeper sorrow when Elidibus died at the end of Post-Shadowbringers than absolutely anything involving the Scions across every expansion.

[Lucida3b]

Going to swerve a bit

But is there any dumps or like compilations of the script anywhere, i find it difficult to talk with people about this when i cant find specific quotes

[Rosenstrauch]

Going to swerve a bit

But is there any dumps or like compilations of the script anywhere, i find it difficult to talk with people about this when i cant find specific quotes

Garland Tools and FFXIV Gamerescape are what I typically use to find relevant parts of the script, but you actually need to know where and when things were said (as in, which quest, if it was a cutscene or part of overworld chatting, etc.), because neither site has a perfect compilation of the script.

[SpitbreakFTW]

Eh. I can see the problem, sure. But I guess it didn't bother me any more than the 10,000 other missions we do where our mission is to spar with or weaken some type of target without killing them. If I can shoot somebody with a steampunk shotgun at short range and have them just down on their knees and panting in the next cutscene, I've already checked out of expecting realistic wounds regardless of the level of violence.

That's not a bad point. But still, how many conscripts and useful idiots did I butcher in Castrum Meridianum and the Praetorium and in Ala Mhigo and Doma and Giblet Dark and NOW I'm supposed to believe I can just non-fatally bonk everyone over the head. Now wonder Livia STILL hates me I kind of screwed her SPECIFICALLY. Really, Lucina should be at least a little annoyed that I slaughtered her sister when I, apparently, could have just bonked her on the head.

I guess ultimately the problem is the incredible laziness with which they tried to breeze through this casualty-minimizing invasion. It would not have been hard to include the Conquerer's Chain from the beginning (which would totally justify how the WoL didn't kill anyone), show or at least admit to SOME casualties amongst the actual military contingent we had to fight, highlight an explicit plan to tactically use magic to non-fatally engage the enemy instead of throwing Estinien at them.

He could have been given a linkshell and told to jump and report what he sees so proper less-than-lethal forces could be best deployed.

I like the point raised about the Ragnarok. It's such a large ship that it felt weird that so few people ended up boarding it.

It ties in to why I consider some elements of the storytelling in ESO and WoW to be superior. They leave room for the 'everyman' to get on board and go somewhere exotic and fanciful. Whether it be Draenor through the Dark Portal in WoW or Molag Bal's domain of Coldharbour. FFXIV spends far too much time building up the player character and the Scions as these uniquely special individuals who can go anywhere and accomplish anything but it quite simply doesn't feel earned to me at all.

The "Chosen One" garbage is a weird problem in a lot of MMOs, even ESO. Why do clods pick that kind of story for a game that, by necessity, has thousands of "protagonists" running around on a server?

FFXI did it a lot better. The player character was just a Level 1 guy that trundled into town and started doing stuff that needed doing. A lot of leveling up and Right Place Right Time later, they're widely known and trusted by rulers to handle some real live problems. Which is generally a more satisfying Hero Arc than "God chose me lolololol" and actually kind of fits into an MMO.

FFXIV, of course, is the worst case of "I AM THE COMPLETELY UNIQUE CHOSEN ONE JUST LIKE EVERYONE ELSE ON THE SERVER" ever.

.

Oh yeah I omitted a lot of that because exactly what was going on with time travel and what a ruinous idiot Venat seems to be (seriously sundering man was a pointlessly idiotic action that accomplished nothing positive and almost got everyone killed) would have been worth a whole different tl;dr post.

Though I would like ANY explanation for how, in that cutscene as we travel back to The Present, the sky is burning when the Unsundered have APPARENTLY already summoned Zodiark. And if they haven't summoned Zodiark (explaining why the sky is burning), and then VENAT sundered man, when did Zodiark EVER get summoned to be on the Moon forestalling the Final Days? And regardless, how did VENAT in VENAT form have the power to sunder man and CREATE THE MOON and imprison Zodiark just by waving her sword around? And how did she become Hydaelyn AFTER doing that? Why would she even need to become Hydaelyn after that?

Did literally ANYONE proofread the first draft of this clown plot before they just went ahead and produced it?

I feel like any time there's 5 or more characters on screen everyone, including the villains, and especially the WOL, collectively loses over 50 points of IQ.

Most of them, at this stage, were sitting at about 50 IQ to start with

Another Mass Effect post. I am almost finished with Mass Effect 3. Only have the Citadel DLC, Priority: Horizon, Priority: Citadel Headquarters, and Priority: Earth left.

I hate to rob your joy here, but that is the exact point at which I felt the quality of that story begins to plummet.

[Misplaced_Marbles]

FFXI did it a lot better. The player character was just a Level 1 guy that trundled into town and started doing stuff that needed doing. A lot of leveling up and Right Place Right Time later, they're widely known and trusted by rulers to handle some real live problems. Which is generally a more satisfying Hero Arc than "God chose me lolololol" and actually kind of fits into an MMO.

Except the WoL was preordained to be the chosen one the moment they divulged the future to Venat. "Right place at the right time" has a different ring to it when the master of puppets has been pulling the strings for 12000 (or however long it was) years in advance, so everything would be as it was. The WoL isn't just A chosen one like the rest of the warriors of light, they're THE chosen one.

[Moebious]

SplitbreakFTW's great long list of suspension of disbeliefs a player has to swallow, surmises pretty well why Endwalker is probably where many players felt great disconnect to the story.

I believe I could combine all the times I've rolled my eyes in all prior expansions together, from ARR to ShB, and it still wouldn't have come close to how much I rolled my eyes to the moments of Endwalkers' need for so extreme dose of suspension of disbelief. Or being so jarring I was completely disconnected from it.

Biggest moment of jolt, was probably in the Elpis scenario, realizing everything is predetermined, the literal, "Chosen One", not just some random person who fought against concepts of fate and destinies, but was all along predetermined on a path they had no real choice over. Complete and utter manipulation of entire of the person's fate. There never was any question of whom or what you were, you were always just some special 'Chosen X' from the past soul, your individuality hasn't changed or anything, no real character progression actually, you were the same then as you are now, somehow. All the deaths, calculated to the predestined need of the moment. Makes things rather cold, calculated, and very sinister.

Its probably also why I think Venat could have worked as an Antagonist/Villain, because the more you think of how predetermined and predestined all these horrible events for innocent civilians were, the more cold and calculated they seem, once you know they were all predestined to happen, for the course of nurture the 'Chosen One'. We fought against fate and destiny in all other expansions in some shape or form, just to be used by it, and it being planned out for eons, to arrive at a predetermined destination, to fulfill a predestined function. Literally a path built on the corpses of countless worlds and trillions of lives.

Sometimes, its simply better to leave some things up in the air, I guess Endwalker is a great showcase, once more, why prequels are often a terrible idea, if not fleshed out well enough, against possible plotholes or contrivances.

[Lauront]

It's gotten to the point that every time Y'shtola (for example) has another potential (but obviously fake out) death scene, my immediate reaction is "THANK GOD, FINALLY!"

I felt more of an emotional impact and a deeper sorrow when Elidibus died at the end of Post-Shadowbringers than absolutely anything involving the Scions across every expansion.

Totally agree. I consider him to be the game's most tragic character. None of the Scions even compare.

[Theodric]

Totally agree. I consider him to be the game's most tragic character. None of the Scions even compare.

Likewise. It was a real shame that the game decided to pull as Sylvanas and try to pretend as if Venat was the real victim all along. Yawn.

[Eisi]

I think it was lackluster too! I liked Endwalker overall, laughed a lot and cried a lot, but Elpis was hot garbo!

So was the end of Garlemald, which had been really cool up until the point when Ishikawa realized she had written herself into a situation where main characters were in actual danger and then assumed the form of Fandaniel to literally clap her hands and go: "That's it, nobody dies! It was just a prank!" and then that's it! Totally deflated the entire scenario, especially when she then had the gaul to have Zenos say "I want you to hate me!" motherfukker why didn't you kill Alisaie then? That would have been a nice sendoff, first some stupid girls die, then a character who's name you actually remember shoots himself, then at the end a main character dies. Alphinaud would have been even better. And btw I mean cold blooded murder, no heroic sacrifice at the end for a change. Just a cruel, indifferent takeout.

Also Zenos should have sliced and killed the WoL in the soldier's body before the bodies switched back.

The torture porn of Thavnair part 2 was ridiculous, it's amazing how much of a Shb Emet-Selch Ishikawa turned out to be: The main characters are the real people to her with real meaning, they have to be protected. The side characters? She will inflict as much torment and pain and suffering and excruciating agony on them as possible, children die in front of their parents and vice versa, who cares, she certainly doesn't, they are not even characters to her, just set-dressing. With the main cast, she's worse than Disney who at least had the balls to have Bambi's mom die! It's so bizarre, it's like two different tonal universes that clash extremely ungracefully. Of course Ishikawa is cool, she's not actually evil or anything, I just wanna make a point. I consider it a weakness in her writing.

Elpis was utter trash, they should have never have a quasi-timeloop bullshit narrative like that. It's too much contrivance, Kairos was an absolute joke (it doesn't even make sense, even the writers don't know why the timelines merged!) and to hinge the entire fate of the universe on one zone's worth of storytelling was doomed from the start. Meteion and Hermes fell totally flat for me, Venat worked as a character imo but her reasoning is more muddied than she was at the end of that one cutscene. Hythlodaeus was good.

They had it literally laid out for them, Zodiark was used to rewrite the law of the star, he was defeated by Hydaelyn because enough sacrifices, however with her final blow she tore the star apart, as Zodiark was so intertwined with it as to uphold its very laws, boom, easy! Why do you have to make it so it all was intentional and hey, the souls needed to be reduced in their aetherial density to be better able to interact with this other new fantasy dimension, gimme a break, this is way too far removed from anything sensible.

Ultima Thule was great, including the faux sacrifices (which would have been a great relief if someone had actually died before), I have no idea why people dislike it. It just couldn't salvage the shit that came before.