My biggest issue of Endwalker it failed to deliver on the backstory of the Ancients during the Final Days. We got to see none of the politics, infighting, and emotions of those in the convocation, which Shadowbringers teased at had me anticipating. It felt like that itself should've been a hefty topic of an entire expansion. Emet himself said that Hydaelyn and Zodiark "fought and fought and fought" but we got to see none of that. At the end of the Elpis questline, we just got a recycled Amaurot cutscene and sure, Venat said some cool things that might've distracted everyone from the fact that they abridged the events so hard it didn't even make sense compared to what Shadowbringers set up. It's like they had no time and did the bare minimum to wrap it up and they're going to suppliment the lore with the Tales from the Dawn. The ancients and their society are the most interesting part of FFXIV lore but they're going to spend it on text like it's WoW or something. If I were to get what I'd wanted, we would've seen Venat struggle and play politics during the Final Days instead of the compressed cutscene we got at the end of Elpis.



Elpis, I enjoyed it, but it also wasn't what I was hoping for. Memory alteration, what a cheap plot device. What a retcon, Hydaelyn seems so inconsistent from Venat from what we've seen in previous expansions now in the context that she knew the events of Elpis. Something just feels unnatural.


Also, the fact that the Final Days wasn't some actual cosmic threat but some bird a depressed dude made which somehow was able to destroy civilizations. I mean, they did a great job, but I didn't think it was the best direction to take with that at all. I just would've preferred if Metieon was simply a medium for the despair of failed civilizations, not Metieon herself perpetrating all of it.

I don't believe it, I don't believe they had everything planned from the start. I wish they did things differently, though I'm fine with how they did it in EW, but my expectations after the Amaurot dungeon were not met.