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

[Teraq]

but part of Hermes’ strife is that becoming Fandaniel would mean not being at Elpis anymore.

Well, that comes with the territory of having a wholly different job, yes.

As for the rest of your post, I'm sorry but you are extrapolating on your (obviously negative) interpretation of Ancients. This is why I specifically said in my post that "comrades" could be interpreted in different ways, and that's okay, but you come in here and tell me I'm wrong while dismissing Lauront and his reasons for disliking EW. Do you realise how rude you come across as?

My personal interpretation stems from the fact that the FR line plainly refers to Azem summoning their comrades because it would have been bothersome for them to go back and forth to Amaurot to report to the Convocation. The English line never mentions Amaurot, only says Azem wouldn't refer to the Convocation. Of course, this isn't the first time we've pointed out localisation differences, and this is yet another example why it may subtly influence readings.

And ultimately they were kicked from the Convocation when it became Zodiark time.

The text very much suggested to me that Azem chose to walk out when it came to Zodiark. Whatever happened later happened later, i.e. the Unsundered choosing not to make their crystal. Just another example of you twisting phrasing to fit your negative view of the relationship between Azem and the Convocation. Therefore it would only be fair for me to do the opposite, right? Except I'll do the honest thing and say it's just how I read the text.

[aveyond-dreams]

Maybe there was a way to make Venat come across as a sympathetic heroine using sound logic but all that got thrown out the window the moment they introduced time travel and memory wipes stacked right on top of each other. This is what happens when you rely on "devices" rather than strong characterization.

[Teraq]

You all seem to have been "wronged" by the story because you invested yourselves into the plot of characters who were meant to end up losing in the end and any step the story makes that seems to suggest their wrongness ends up rubbing you the wrong way.

Cool armchair internet psychology but no. I've loved villains since I was old enough to make up stories in my head. Losing and dying is literally what my favorite characters end up doing 90% of the time.

What I care about is this objectively terrible plot retroactively making them pointless and ignorant while the emotional crux and gravity of Shadowbringers largely rested on them having a point, all the while giving Emet non-sensical lines where he is for whatever reason blaming himself for "having forgotten" and not having followed Venat's olympic level plot gymnastics that by a massive stroke of luck resulted in us saving the day.

And please, I won't hear any argument against "objectively terrible" – any story that involves a closed time loop that justifies a character's actions, a super handy magical memory wipe-unwipe, and circumstances that should be only possible if everyone in the world is an idiot (literally the Elpis plot) while shooting dead the nuance the previous season had is bad. It doesn't mean you shouldn't like it, god knows I love some terrible things. But I get the feeling that if this had been anything other than Beloved Final Fantasy XIV and its great community BTW, it would have got torn apart shot by shot like GoT season 8 was. But it's okay, because we can just turn our brain off. I mean, I have friends who watched S8 and didn't care this much – they never cared much in the first place anyway.

Creatively speaking, Venat's plan made sense to us because we wanted it to happen.

(amazing post absolutely 10/10 holy hell)

[...]
At that time we weren't presented with any of this existentialist inevitable doom for the Ancients, or of some hanging threat that they couldn't deal with, the conflict was simply their world versus the current world

RIP I miss Shadowbringers

And even though the MSQ didn't care to so much as question her (Perhaps in part because the conflict in this "conclusion to the Hydaelyn and Zodiark saga" was in fact only tangentially related to them)

This right here was one of the most egregious things to me.

I mean, okay, a lot of things in Endwalker make good candidates for "most egregious". But that in particular.

I wish they had been honest about the story so I wouldn't have been as disappointed.

[Rulakir]

I didn't want to edit an already long post for this, but as a new(er) player I can't help but wonder if because I completed the whole MSQ within 6 months as opposed to 10 years I didn't have as much time to develop headcanon over vague memories of past storylines. I'm also an altoholic and have been through the MSQ in its entirety more than once during the past year, so the inconsistencies, contradictions, and hypocrisy of EW are glaringly apparent when you go through HW and ShB in particular. (The latter is the most egregious since it's the previous expansion by the same MSQ writer. It's amazing to me that EW feels so disconnected from ShB.)

Just a couple of many such instances:



and



Like I said, Venat's behavior and actions have been condemned in the past. Not a single character calling her out is just so ridiculous to me.

I wish I'd saved where Thancred says in HW that the WoL has ever fought for friends, not nations. Next alt, I guess. :P

[DevonEllwood]

I've been meaning to post again for a while, but I've been distracted by other things. I was talking to a coworker about series continuity because he was reading a long series of books from when he was a kid. He was mentioning how plot holes develop after so long a series and I mentioned the same issue with FFXIV. He was already familiar with the game since I had told him about it before. I had to back things up a bit and explain Hydaelyn and then went on to explain Endwalker/Venat. I mentioned that genocide doesn't always entail purposeful killing. I then remembered the guy I was talking to was Jewish. I also remembered the convocation tittles, even though they're from FFXII, are in Hebrew. It just really doesn't look good.

After talking about it we both agreed that if you have to get to a point in your story writing where genocide is a positive outcome, then maybe you shouldn't be writing that story. He also mentioned on the sundered people not remembering that if he genocided a race, he also wouldn't want people remembering anything about it either. "Covering up the crime" is what he called it.

I missed the conversation about Meteion but I just wanted to mention breaking down Venat's decision and her alternate options and how it just matches up with Brinne's post about her. The other options people mention for Venat after telling her people what happened was: to either selectively sunder a portion of the population, or create beings that could deal with Meteion. Both options would go against her ideas wince both options wouldn't change her people in the way she wanted. This is the most logical path anyone would take, but Venat is still so stuck on her ideals that she refused both options. Venat's fear of the plenty and the inclusion of Dynamis means the sundering had to be purposeful. I guess one or the other wouldn't be enough to make genocide look remotely good for people so they used both. Dynamis only exists to give a reason for the sundering. They they went this way with the story, I have no idea. Let Venat get her mind wiped and you have to remove dynamis because it wouldn't make sense anymore. meaning you need a new end boss. Remove the fear of the plenty and there's no reason Venat wouldn't have taken the selective sunder/familiar creation path.

Yoshida stated that he didn't think people looked this far into the story. Well, apparently neither do the writers, because this story should have never happened. it comes off as gross just for the sake of pushing ideals.

If I had a choice, we would have never went into the past. No interaction with Venat, no memory loss because it's not needed anymore, little Elidibus doesn't need to die. The sundering was an accident because, the sound actually came from an extraterrestrial force living with the plant, no Meteion, no "suffering is inevitable, so get use to it, I'm 15 and this is deep, friendship is magic". Do something with Zodiark and reduce the time the rabbits sped in the game, and I would have actually liked Endwalker. Predictable, but I really don't care. I would rather have a predictable decent story than the horrible paced, tonal dissonant riddled mess for the sake of "subverting expectations".

[Lunaxia]

I "support" Venat/Hydaelyn because to me it's been obvious from the very beginning that it was the director/writer's intention and any other interpretation is an edgy headcanon. You all seem to have been "wronged" by the story because you invested yourselves into the plot of characters who were meant to end up losing in the end and any step the story makes that seems to suggest their wrongness ends up rubbing you the wrong way. I guess the writers get some credit for the fact that adding nuance to the Ascians got a lot of people to take their side, but I don't think that was ever the intention and that's my point.

I have to disagree on all accounts there. There was ample enough reason to suspect Hydaelyn wasn't as she seemed - and at times, such was actively invited, but I run the risk of repeating myself for the umpteenth time - and enough of other parts of the story were retconned to the degree it would hardly have been conspicuous. Speculation in itself is natural, and yes, in this instance, your personal interpretation turned out to be the one that panned out, but I don't see the need to degrade the perceptions other people might have had because of that. Each side had validity to it.

I'm too weary to address the implication yet again that any sourness directed towards how the story handled Venat is down to character preference, and not what has been emphasised for many pages now: double standards and haphazard writing. It's already being said by other posters anyway, so I won't labour the point any further.

On a general (but related) note, one thing that occurred to me was the cutscene where Venat herself states during one of the recordings from Anamnesis Anyder that their actions will earn them the "eternal condemnation" of their people. Considering this is explicitly stated in game, it would have been nice to see this followed through and expressed anywhere at all at any point, even if we as mortals managed to reconcile ourselves with what happened. Instead, we get one of its sole survivors lightly sniping at Venat as if she had cheated him during a chess match.

I suppose the fault lies with me and my "edgy" way of thinking, where expecting some acknowledgement for what was not only murder but cultural and historical obliteration is rather reasonable.

[Teraq]

(good post)

(...) He also mentioned on the sundered people not remembering that if he genocided a race, he also wouldn't want people remembering anything about it either. "Covering up the crime" is what he called it.

Between this, it being mentioned by Elidibus in the 5.0 stinger and her being revealed as a big damn primal...........

...but no! Obviously, thinking Hydaelyn might have turned out to be dodgy was just an edgy headcanon you guys. She was always a good egg and I'm not sure why you'd assume otherwise you edgelords!

Predictable, but I really don't care. I would rather have a predictable decent story than the horrible paced, tonal dissonant riddled mess for the sake of "subverting expectations".

Yup. Predictable doesn't mean bad. In fact, some degree of predictability is pretty good, especially for the conclusion to an arc: it means the internal logic was consistent and that the plot delivered on points that were set up.

I'm gonna say it again, but the game telling us the Big Antagonist Figure Zodiark was actually Background Long-Lasting Antagonist Elidibus, only to make nothing out of it but an excuse for a power-up that serves as an unrelated-to-Zodiark series reference, is Chekhov's Gun turning out to be a water gun. It's used... but... uh.

[AwesomeJr44]

Yup. Predictable doesn't mean bad. In fact, some degree of predictability is pretty good, especially for the conclusion to an arc: it means the internal logic was consistent and that the plot delivered on points that were set up.

Very true. Subverting expectations for the sake of it almost never ends up with a good story. This is the exact problem Star Wars had. The director for the 8th movie threw out the plotline that the previous movie put down and decided to subvert our expectations instead and it tore the franchise's story apart. It was so bad, that the next movie (RoS) had to resurrect the first six movie's main villain who was supposed to be dead, which ruined the first six movies.

This mindset of 'subvert expectations at all costs, even at the cost of the story's consistency' has been proven to fail time and time again. While it can be used well for plot twists, Endwalker reeks of subverting expectations for the sake of it. Why is there a twitter bird in space causing all of this stuff? Cause you didn't expect that! Why are Fandaniel and Zenos shoved to the side after the first trial? Cause you didn't expect that! I can only hope that this mindset was a one-time error from the writing crew, and not something they're going to be doing going into the patch quests and 7.0.

[Teraq]

Why is there a twitter bird in space causing all of this stuff? Cause you didn't expect that!

This was actually rather predictable, if you take the focus off Meteion herself and more onto "The Ancients created their own doom".

People were allllll over that in ShB, as far as I can remember.

I mean, I hate it, of course. I would much rather have had the Final Days be a tragedy that randomly befell a fundamentally good people, some kind of Eldritch being/phenomena the Ancients had nothing to do with and no control over. But they went with blaming the victims, of course. Muh (broken) aesop.

[ReynTime]

Yoshida's comment about people looking too deep into the story is so baffling. He saw people stand and applaud Ishikawa because of Shadowbringers' story... Did that not hint that people care more for the story than he thinks...?

Besides they're the ones who keep putting the MSQ front and center when marketing the game. Why is it surprising there are players who witness the plot in more detail than others in such a story driven game?