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

[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.