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

[aveyond-dreams]

As far as main protagonists in the mainline series though, as simple as he was I still would say Cecil is mine. His journey from Dark Knight to Paladin is one I’ll always treasure, along with FFIV in general. Unlike Endwalker, it didn’t feel the need to purposefully throw everything into a “grey area” and was able to tell a pretty decent story of dark vs. light with lovable characters on both sides. Cecil himself also hit all the right notes in terms of fantasy in his Dark Knight gear and his more heroic look once he changed jobs. Unlike G’raha Tia, who is as close to a Paladin as we had in our party during Endwalker, his behavior was not offputting and I never found myself wishing that him or any of the rest of the cast would get off my screen.



However, if I had to pick my favorite protagonist across the entire franchise it is without question Jack Garland. No nonsense, to the point, and behaves like a realistic human being. I can feel for him because, unlike the scions, he actually suffered some losses along the way and it impacted his state of mind towards the end. His journey was as strange as it was entertaining. It even did time travel in such a way as to not invalidate everyone’s sacrifices for the sake of feels like Endwalker did in Ultima Thule, which must be highlighted as one of the critical failures in this expansion’s storytelling.



Which of the two scenarios makes for a more compelling story:

Your allies, in order to overcome the nebulous power of “despair” sacrifice themselves (while telling you not to bring them back, foreshadowing that they will be brought back) to create pathways through a zone where various aliens are experiencing different states of sad and one that for some reason was written to talk about the heat death of the universe. You then have a magical moment where another of your friends appears, scoffs at the supposed benevolent goddess figure of the game for playing a practical joke on him, and brings everyone back in a field of magical flowers. This all happens within the span of an hour.

Or,

Your allies, in order to quicken the power of Chaos in the main protagonist, throw themselves at you in a battle against your will. Fully understanding that their sacrifice is a necessary one in order to wrest control of the world back from the malevolent forces that would trap it in a perpetual time loop, you are forced to cut down each one by one. Memories of your journey together flash back as you land each final blow. In the aftermath of the battle, now truly alone and overwhelmed with emotion you proceed alone to the final dungeon and confrontation, where you rebel against the enemy and shatter their grip on the world. This takes place over several hours, but in the aftermath of the final battle your friends do re-appear now transformed into fiendish states with their human appearances only visible to yourself. Their sacrifice is partially undone, though it does have some permanent consequences.

One of these is a story that is more targeted at adults than the other. It isn’t unreasonable to expect the series to be in-line with the growth of the playerbase. Those of us who were teenagers in ARR are in our 20s now and would like to be respected more when it comes to the story. We can handle “tales of loss, fire, and faith” that include the deaths of our allies, or, their revival coupled with some permanent consequences for both themselves and the overall state of the world.

Thankfully FFXVI seems to acknowledge this factor and is poised to deliver a protagonist who is fuelled by a vendetta like Estinien was, and is set to be no stranger to loss on his journey. Individuals like Clive or Heavensward-era Estinien are much better messengers for Endwalker’s ill-chosen theme of “forging ahead” no matter what. I can accept when a hardened warrior who has lost so much adopts this mentality of stifling their own grief in order to continue fighting, or to draw power from those they have lost in order to forcefully push forward and see their journey to its end.



I cannot take this message seriously however when it is delivered by mouthpieces such as Y’shtola (and her infinite fakeouts), the twins (who are unironically setting the Source on a path to another Dead Ends with how they’ve conquered most of the known world), G’raha Tia (whose inappropriate behavior has washed out his previous character development), and Urianger (who should’ve gotten himself a new girlfriend by now). Thancred, if only he had acted more realistically like a father and not an unemotional side character perhaps could have believably delivered this message as well, but both he and Estinien were severely underused in Endwalker so it again wouldn’t have worked out.

To this day I struggle to comprehend why, if the Final Fantasy series as a whole is set to be at risk of fading away from being a household staple, the decision was made to release Endwalker’s story the way it played out while FFXVI is set to be vastly different. A mature, high tension story compared to...the numerous things that Endwalker has been compared to without the need for me to repeat it all here. Combine this with that recent beginner's video series and I have to wonder why there are so many clearly conflicting visions as to what this game is supposed to be and who it's supposed to target.

Which game would you rather play? The one marketed by the picture of Clive above, or this one?

[Raoabolic]

To this day I struggle to comprehend why, if the Final Fantasy series as a whole is set to be at risk of fading away from being a household staple

I would make the argument that the FF name is pretty obscure to most people outside of Japan and even the ones in Japan more or less think of it as "that old person game series" lol
FF is in the middle of an identity crisis and the direction XIV is going, Strangers of Paradise/XVI, FF phone games, ect. seems like their CEOs are just throwing everything at the wall and is seeing what sticks. Perhaps FF should leave the room for new IPs to shine. God knows I can stomach remasters/re-releases for only so long, doubly so when modern SE's ethics department rewrites and changes models from older games so they can rehash it. :/

[Teraq]

6.2 has been out for over 10 days and I still haven't managed to find the motivation to do MSQ. I haven't unlocked the new trial yet. But at least I've made the effort of not skipping any cutscene so far.

You would have never seen me say this during Shadowbringers. If I recall correctly, 5.1 was the only 5.x MSQ I didn't devour on release day. But here we are.

Of course, what I did devour on release day was the only story worth caring about, Pandaemonium, and as evidenced by the thread I've made, I have zero regrets about that. Whoever wrote Pandaemonium actually respects the Ancients, and damn it feels good. Inject more Unsundered respect straight into my veins, and Athena, too, of course, because in this house we stan a QUEEN.

I would make the argument that the FF name is pretty obscure to most people outside of Japan and even the ones in Japan more or less think of it as "that old person game series" lol
FF is in the middle of an identity crisis and the direction XIV is going, Strangers of Paradise/XVI, FF phone games, ect. seems like their CEOs are just throwing everything at the wall and is seeing what sticks. Perhaps FF should leave the room for new IPs to shine. God knows I can stomach remasters/re-releases for only so long, doubly so when modern SE's ethics department rewrites and changes models from older games so they can rehash it. :/

This made me realize how much of a millenial thing FF really is… as we post on a BBcode message board. Those new fangled social media with their newsfeed algorithm… the only algorithm I need is a good old "BUMP" post. (shakes cane at clouds)

[jameseoakes]

6.2 has been out for over 10 days and I still haven't managed to find the motivation to do MSQ. I haven't unlocked the new trial yet. But at least I've made the effort of not skipping any cutscene so far.

You would have never seen me say this during Shadowbringers. If I recall correctly, 5.1 was the only 5.x MSQ I didn't devour on release day. But here we are.

Your not missing much to be honest, I think 6.2 might be the most unengaged I have ever been with a 14 story part

[dapperfaffer]

Your not missing much to be honest, I think 6.2 might be the most unengaged I have ever been with a 14 story part

I mean ....

outside of potential hydealyn shenanigans from her crystal with Zero

I don't think theres a whole lot that was particularily underwhelming. at least in so far as the starting point for what we do in the 13th and its story being largely brought in 6.X patches.

[Fiel_Tana]

outside of potential hydealyn shenanigans from her crystal with Zero

The first time I've ever skipped a cutscene on purpose was the second I saw that crystal. Canonically my WoL never accepted it and my headcannon is that that Y'Shtola stuffed it in my bag when I wasn't looking so I put it to the only decent use I saw to (hopefully) be rid of it. Regaining that little bit of control over my character felt great tbh.

[underl0gic]

6.2 has been out for over 10 days and I still haven't managed to find the motivation to do MSQ

I haven't even finished the 6.1 MSQ let alone the new released stuff. For everyone building up Natsuko Ishikawa like she was the second coming of a story telling god she sure came up with a whole lot of cliche "friendship triumphs over all" and indestructible plot armor. Don't get me wrong there were some really good moments but they're immediately erased by:

-Zodiark, the supposed yin to Hydaelyn's yang gets nuked in literally the first trial of the expansion and Zenos is just like "haha whatever later nerds"
-How about the laughably bad cutscene in RAH when the final days begin and the WoL just stands there and watches that guy getting eaten like they couldn't have closed the gap in a split second and eradicated that thing with a flick of their wrist.
-Y'shtola being 90000 times more insufferable than she already had been
-Everyone sacrifices themselves on Ultima Thule and you think to yourself "FINALLY they're raising the stakes" haha nope just kidding nobody dies because POWER OF FRIENDSHIP CONQUERS ALL AM I RIGHT GUYS? It's the finale of a story where you're stopping the end of the god damn world and every single one of them has L9999 plot armor. It's like none of it mattered in the end because it's just another cliche happily ever after story so why should I care about what happens next? Where do you go when you've stopped the end of existence?

It's such amateur Disney level storytelling from the same person responsible for Shadowbringers and I found myself immediately going into the 6.1 MSQ saying "I don't care about any of this". It almost feels like to me 6.0 was FF14 running off a cliff in regards to lots of aspects of the game not just in the story but look at the housing fiasco and the balance issues and everything else. Island Sancts are a joke, they spent 5 months on a housing lottery no one bothered to internally test for 5 minutes to make sure the tickets drew correctly and then it took another 3 months on top of it to be fixed.

What happened?

[jameseoakes]

I haven't even finished the 6.1 MSQ let alone the new released stuff. For everyone building up Natsuko Ishikawa like she was the second coming of a story telling god she sure came up with a whole lot of cliche "friendship triumphs over all" and indestructible plot armor. Don't get me wrong there were some really good moments but they're immediately erased by:


It's such amateur Disney level storytelling from the same person responsible for Shadowbringers and I found myself immediately going into the 6.1 MSQ saying "I don't care about any of this". It almost feels like to me 6.0 was FF14 running off a cliff in regards to lots of aspects of the game not just in the story but look at the housing fiasco and the balance issues and everything else. Island Sancts are a joke, they spent 5 months on a housing lottery no one bothered to internally test for 5 minutes to make sure the tickets drew correctly and then it took another 3 months on top of it to be fixed.

What happened?

It's been really odd, Endwalker copies so much from what worked well when they did it in Shadowbringers and then seem to show they had no idea what made it work. My feeling has been that with Endwalker they tried to pick themes and concepts they had seen work elsewhere (like the despair and nihilism) and copy them but with out them having a firm understanding of how they work

[Kazhar]

It's been really odd, Endwalker copies so much from what worked well when they did it in Shadowbringers and then seem to show they had no idea what made it work. My feeling has been that with Endwalker they tried to pick themes and concepts they had seen work elsewhere (like the despair and nihilism) and copy them but with out them having a firm understanding of how they work

The Dead Ends dungeon is a perfect representation of this IMO. In surface, it has a lot of the same qualities as Amaurot. Cool music and visuals, an impressive walk through the death of a civilization narrated by the main villain.
Except in Amaurot, everything made sense. It was the culmination of years of storytelling and showed us a crucial event which kickstarted the entire plot of the game.
Dead Ends feels a bit random in comparison. I'm still not sure why Meteion decided to narrate this to us (we had a special connection with Emet-Selch and he wanted us to know where he came from. Meteion's reasoning is much weaker here.), and most of the things we saw here are completely inconsequential to the overall narrative. The event which gave birth to Hydaelyn and Zodiark + The Sundering vs ... some random civilizations Meteion hinted at once in a scene but have barely anything to do with the plot beyond ham-fisted symbolism. It's like Shadowbringers but without the substance.
It just feels like they just copied Amaurot because it was a well-received dungeon instead of trying to make something more fitting.

[jameseoakes]

The Dead Ends dungeon is a perfect representation of this IMO. In surface, it has a lot of the same qualities as Amaurot. Cool music and visuals, an impressive walk through the death of a civilization narrated by the main villain.
Except in Amaurot, everything made sense. It was the culmination of years of storytelling and showed us a crucial event which kickstarted the entire plot of the game.
Dead Ends feels a bit random in comparison. I'm still not sure why Meteion decided to narrate this to us (we had a special connection with Emet-Selch and he wanted us to know where he came from. Meteion's reasoning is much weaker here.), and most of the things we saw here are completely inconsequential to the overall narrative. The event which gave birth to Hydaelyn and Zodiark + The Sundering vs ... some random civilizations Meteion hinted at once in a scene but have barely anything to do with the plot beyond ham-fisted symbolism. It's like Shadowbringers but without the substance.
It just feels like they just copied Amaurot because it was a well-received dungeon instead of trying to make something more fitting.

Yeah that was the main one in my head when I said that, Amaurot was an amazing dungeon seeing the place we had just been walking round go through that was moving and Emets narration was really strong. The Dead Ends just repeated Thule and the narration didn't really add much and the places we see don't have much impact as they are so throw away and honestly they're not as grim as Amarout felt as they were just not well delivered.