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

[EgilTheStressedMage]

Like I said, too much inconsistency. They Star Ocean’d the game and gave no damns about it to move on to something they want. Just gonna farm Savage gear and try out 5, 6, 7, and 8s when they drop. To me the arc ended with us piloting Hydaelyn and Zenos piloting Zodiark in a titanic brawl the likes of Sonic Unleashed Wii.

[Fiel_Tana]

The watcher telling us that she sundered herself was one of the many plot-holes introduced for apparently no reason. As was pointed out, that means with each rejoining she got stronger as well so the balance would remain. Unless they plan to address it, then why bother adding it otherwise? It makes no sense unless there was a rushed rewrite and it got left behind in a frantic cleanup, which is still my main theory as to how the story got so messed up.

That line from the Watcher and the scene with Venat showing the WoL how to use the echo to see the past by going where an event took place.. what is the point of that scene other than creating problematic loop-holes. If using the echo in that way was so simple to ancients there's no way Emet would just shrug off his lost memories. We saw in the story that even though he didn't believe us, he had to investigate our story as part of his duty. Also it makes the 'fan theory' that people wouldn't believe Venat completely irrelevant.

What is shown in EW and what is said are often at odds with each other which leaves it as an unsettling and confusing mess of a story in so many ways.

[Lauront]

Really? This makes the story even dumber. Because it means, every rejoining does not only strengthen Zodiark, it strengthens Hydaelyn too. So when all rejoinings would be complete, Hydaelyn would be propably be able to sunder Zodiark again. And the second thing is, we propably did not kill Hydaelyn completely. There are parts of her on other shards.


Cheers

For what little it's worth, Yoshi addressed this point at the Q&A:

Q: Were Zodiark and Hydaelyn completely destroyed? Or there are still Sundered parts of them on other Reflections?
A: To be really frank on this one and to give you a very straight answer here, Hydaelyn was completely destroyed. Similarly, Fandaniel crushed Zodiark’s heart which is his core and that completely destroys Zodiark. There were of course parts of Zodiark in the other Reflections when he was sealed and split across all of them but at the same time of his main body was destroyed, they all would have also faded into oblivion

He really seemed to want to be done with this arc, and some of the answers he gave at that Q&A just screamed it.

I wouldn't rule out her going and collecting her individual shards. The only reason for the writers to commit to her (very weirdly) sundering herself is that they may have wanted to maintain consistency with the dialogue in the Word of the Mother scene, where she gives this implication. It's never made a great deal of sense, and was vague enough for them to circumvent, so it just comes across as really stupid to me. She admits she "had" to sunder the entire star because Zodiark, even without his heart, was just so much more powerful than her, but there's no reason that should mean simultaneously shattering her own primal...

All the same, she should hopefully be gone for good:

Q: Venat said that not even her soul would remain but what does that mean? I’m very fond of her character and would like to see her again.
A: The answer is that souls are also made of Aether, and she gives up so much Aether that includes all of her soul as well. By contrast Zodiark was summoned using sacrifices of a lot of people, yes? But he was able to only use their Aether aside from their souls up because Zodiark was really strong and summoned by the Convocation of the Fourteen and so on. Hydaelyn had a much weaker summoning and because of that she didn’t have the option to leave the souls untouched, and that includes Venat she ended up using all of her Aether. In 5.2 there was some discussion of Venat’s group that assisted her in doing this and also how much of the Ancient people were sacrificed to create Zodiark so if you look back at that time it might be of your interest now. At the very end, Hydaelyn still had her own soul, which is Venat’s. That was the very power that she used to fight the Warrior of Light. When she tells you before the final bout she had saved enough Aether specifically to fight you, and that specifically points to Venat’s soul.

According to the Watchman, Hydaelyn also sundered herself too.

Yeah but even so it doesn't negate the point that poster is making, as the original summoning is what matters, and that was of the primal in its unsundered form. After ousting Zodiark, she is pretty much within the Aetherial Sea, with as much aether as she could ever ask for... she mentions storing up the aether accumulating in the mothercrystal for the final journey to Meteion (another disappointment when it comes to how these primals work), but honestly, there's so much aether around her I don't fully buy that she couldn't just tap into it if needed.

[Teraq]

Getting ready for 6.2, in this great story of "The ends don't justify the means (but in my case they do)" and "The meaning of life is the journey, not the destination (but not in your case, I'm going to have to kill you because of the destination I have imagined you will get to, in my mind, based on this very short report on a completely alien civilisation, and you got there because of my own inaction, which I intended in the first place because I 100% approve of Hermes's fair test)".



I have exactly one expectation I know for sure will come true tomorrow, and that is Themis Elidibus Finalfantasyxiv being a screenshotable babe.

Really? This makes the story even dumber.
[...]
Cheers

This is such a great summary of 672 pages to be totally honest.

I did the side quests. Most of them were nice or neutral with a few rude or mean people. Like humans are. They're scientists, they're not going to be all nice. One or two people would prefer you to die, and several went above and beyond for some random familiar that was not their responsibility.

Not to mention, it is regularly pointed out that you seem to be an exceptional familiar, particularly that you are capable of complex thought and this is why some researchers express the wish to watch you and study you. Hence we can infer that familiars are typically not like us, and more or less akin to AI (which is what Meteion absolutely is). So the one guy saying he'd rather have his observation subject survive than the familiar he doesn't know and assumes to be an AI? Yeah, makes perfect sense to me.
The fact remains that the zone's main side quest line ends with four employees asking a familiar its opinion on funeral rites.

The Ascians were never informed of the cause of the Final Days, so of course the Ardor never would have led them to Ultima Thule to confront Meteion.

Speaking of Emet-Selch's out of character clown takes in Ultima Thule, I would like to point out the following: how did we get to UT again? Oh... that's right... a whole bunch of Aether, with Ancient-made familiars that were capable of designing and piloting spaceships, and in Zenos's case, imitating an alien species (that the Ancients had not met – same goes for Omega and time/dimensional travel) with the power of the Echo, which is an Ancient thing. Now actually setting foot on UT would require Dynamis capabilities of the likes of Meteion, who... is a familiar created by an Ancient, whose concept could have been studied (no matter Hermes's own participation because another entelechy, the Elpis flower, was there to be observed by anyone), refined and iterated upon if someone had brought the significance of Dynamis to widespread attention. ummmmmmm endwalker sweaty it looks like u didnt pay attention to the cutscenes.......


---

By the way, anyone here reading current One Piece? Because there is this very amusing situation right now...

Long story short: a 9-year story arc just ended. The backstory of the setting involved a particular clan being hunted down because one of their ancestors attempted a coup. Two of the villains of the arc are survivors of that clan who watched their relatives get murdered because of something they didn't do. They grew resentful and one of them orchestrated a (successful) coup to torture the citizens of the country purely out of spite for 20 years. It was absolutely awful, and everyone hated it, except the guy living out his revenge fantasy.
Anyway, shonen manga stuff happens, there's a big battle and the good guys win. The bad guys from the historically persecuted clan were killed and as far as we know there are no other survivors from that family.
And so the now-reinstated legitimate princess of the country declares, in a snappy, take-that way built off a Japanese pun on the clan's name, that it's a good thing they were all exterminated. All the citizens – understandably – cheer and clap. End of the story arc. This stands, as of today, as the unambiguously good conclusion with no in-universe pushback.

The fanbase erupted, even on the main subreddit. People are calling out the author on the fact that this spiteful, pro-discrimination conclusion seems to be fully endorsed by the story, even though previous arcs have literally been about innocent children not being responsible for the sins of their fathers.

You've all guessed the point I am getting at here, and it is with a very heavy heart I must conclude that a shonen fanbase whose usual preoccupations and discussions revolve around my Zoro could beat up your Sanji in a fight is currently being a lot more sensible about pro-genocide hypocrisy than this Great Community By The Way.

Do better, Final Fantasy XIV white knights.

[Teraq]

the story was more enjoyable to me before i came on this thread months ago.

then everyone started nitpicking it

But is it nitpicking or just not turning our brain off? The Endwalker Knight dilemma: are dissenters not paying attention or paying too much attention its just a game omg?

Never forgetti when I brought up Pashtarot on the lore channel of The Balance a couple of weeks ago and was met with :thinking: emoji by the local Venatori and "when was he mentioned? was it in a voiced cutscene?" /forcedsmile

[Kazhar]

...

I did notice some similarities between the two fandoms. It's particularly hilarious since in both cases of genocide apologism, there were claims that it was only a tiny subset of the fandom who was angry about it and that japanese fans were totally ok with the implications. (Until the official release of the chapter where it was proven wrong by twitter meltdowns on the japanese side)
But I think the main difference between the two works is that we had signs that One Piece was past its prime for years. The growing dissatisfaction started with the timeskip and while the manga is still very popular, the story reached multiple low points since then (the slipping schedule, Fishman Island, Dressrosa being an absolute mess and now Wano managing to be even worse than that.) So while One Piece still has its fair share of White Knights, their voices do not have the same power when the complaints about the story starts to pile up.
Shadowbringers was not that long ago so there's still a lot of good will towards the story team. I don't think the reaction would have been this good if we had years of Endwalker-level expansions prior.

[Teraq]

yo i have no idea how you just said I'm a white knight. I'm not exactly a hydaelyn fan club either. particularly when she says she wanted to finish us in our spar. i took it as her not trusting a random from the future and wanting to get rid of us there and then.

I'm just saying it was more enjoyable with brain off. and maybe I'm a depressed shit but hermes speech about the creature dying actually made me sad.

The white knight poke wasn't really aimed at you but in a general way. Sorry it came off that way I worded it awkwardly.

I wish I could have turned my brain off personally. I enjoyed most of the sights and the music at least.

Ah... reminds me of the Mothercrystal trial that didn't really make sense because she wants to test us for our fight against Meteion but she is testing us neither with pure despair or Dynamis, because she herself is an Ancient Primal of pure dense aether who is, by her nature, off-topic when it comes to Dynamis. It's like LOOK MAN WE WANTED A HYDAELYN TRIAL OK??

[Larirawiel]

I'm just saying it was more enjoyable with brain off. and maybe I'm a depressed shit but hermes speech about the creature dying actually made me sad.

I cannot turn my brain off. I am programmed to find inconsistencies, story loop holes, time paradoxons etc. And if i find one, then my brain makes "brrrrzzzzt" ....


Cheers

[Vahlnir]

I cannot turn my brain off. I am programmed to find inconsistencies, story loop holes, time paradoxons etc. And if i find one, then my brain makes "brrrrzzzzt" ....


Cheers

Relatable.

[Teraq]

YoshiP's recent interview talking about how they're apparently still in the process of deciding what 7.0 will be about just... made me feel dejected about Endwalker even more. What, exactly, did you rush the finale of this 10-year story arc for, then? You don't even have a concrete idea of where you're going. Ishikawa is on record saying she could have written her story for 6.x and 7.x, maybe even 8.0, and it is very obvious the Endwalker we got was an awkward condensate of two storylines. What was this all for?

There is, however, one thing that gives me hope: they haven't finalised the writing of Pandaemonium yet. I am interpreting this as "might be open to feedback". I also happen to think the Omega side quest was, in part, intended as acknowledging backlash against Venat.

Therefore, look forward to me whining loudly about Pandaemonium if it treats Ancients with as much nuance as 6.0 did. I am not asking. You will look forward to it.

(At least they're finally giving us the minion we should have got in Shadowbringers to raucous applause. After all, why honor one genocidal maniac with an MSQ minion and not another? Hopefully Pandaemonium will give me the one genocidal maniac I actually want, though! I suffered through 6.0 and all I got was this lousy minion of a white robed Ancient who became the Heart of an elder primal and went on to commit genocide, AND IT WASN'T EVEN MY FAVE I S2G SQUARE ENIX)

but became enthralled by zodiark and just kept feeding themselves to zodiark because that was zodiarks will.

I hesitate to call you out on this because you might simply be talking about an hypothetical original timeline AU that might as well be completely ridiculous for all we care, as long as it results in the events we then go on to tell Venat broad strokes about... but that was never the case however, according to a shade of Hythlodaeus conjured by a literal world leader of the time who would very much know what the plan was, no matter how much Endwalker wants to make everyone believe Ancients were totally going to keep feeding their blood god. The plan was always to sacrifice a portion of the life that had grown back to exchange for the people still within Zodiark, and Zodiark was as much of a blood god than Hydaelyn was: his acting consciousness was Elidibus. The effects of Zodiark's tempering seem to be very weak at best, considering how much free will Emet himself demonstrates. Even the Sundered Ascians are stated to still be tempered through death, or at the very least "marked" by Zodiark (since Emet cites this as an argument for raising them in particular rather than any rando the Unsundered find), and that obviously isn't stopping Fandaniel either. The writing around tempering seems very flip-floppy.

Hydealyns purpose and the whole point of the sundering was to ensure life continued in the Final Days.

Which, again, relies on Dynamis, something she is quite ill-suited to judge because of her very nature. But I'm sure having Those Eight Guys prevail in a little fight against her will save the planet from the nightmarish scenes we saw in Vanaspati.