Who knew the 6.15 Omega Quests… (Spoilers)

[EaraGrace]

It works for most folks, because most of XIV's playerbase weren't here for the nuance. They were here for the music, feels, pretty characters, colors, and WoW replacement. Endwalker does all of that gloriously, but it is also the first time that XIV's narrative has actually combatted its own logical progression. It suffers so much for that, but people do not care. They consume.

Here we go again. Just claim the people who like it have their brains turned off and that's that. And folks wonder why this discussion is a dumpster fire.

Between the attempts to portray those who defend Endwalker as low brow media consumers and the desperate attempts to paint over the Ancients flaws and portray the Sundering as wholly unjustified (as if that wouldn't make Hydaelyn a straight up villain ), its little wonder these discussions become so heated. Its clear folks have diametrically opposed viewpoints on the way the story should go.

I think a key thing here is the writer's outlook, because I'm not sure who it is originating from specifically, but the idea of a civilisation becoming too comfortable and grinding to a halt and decline comes up right back in the first lorebook describing the rise and decline of the Allagan empire.

So if this concept is something a core writer holds as a concept to be a natural course of civilisation, then they may not feel a need to foreshadow it heavily when they use it again.

Maybe it's Ishikawa, maybe it's someone else, maybe it's a pervasive idea among the dev/writing team. But the earlier mention of it makes me think it's something they saw as already inherently possible, not a scenario they invented for that one setting alone.

Ishikawa wrote the Crystal Tower raids as well so I agree.