A game for 4 year olds

[Veloran]

Sorry, you quoted my post before I edited and expanded on it a bit.

I'm usually the first to criticize the execution of the FFXIV writers, but I don't think it's wrong for a story to have themes. FFXIV is fundamentally about the folly of refusing to let go of lost things, and the need to instead learn from what has been lost and grow. This concept is present in almost every story in the game. Whether or not that theme changes from 7.0 onward, I don't think it's exceptionally strange to continue it here.

It's one thing to have themes. It's another thing to repeat the same theme across many dozens of plots for nine years. We essentially had this exact same story with way more depth and nuance and moving parts seven years ago in Heavensward. And Endwalker was already laser-focused on this idea, so I can't see a good reason to reiterate it, again, after the big crescendo when we're supposed to be moving into new territory.

To be frank, it's just depressing me now. Every time we come back to this I'm just jolted back into remembering this is a predictable fantasy universe and not a breathing world. It sometimes makes me apathetic to the entire setting.

[Lurina]

It's one thing to have themes. It's another thing to repeat the same theme across many dozens of plots for nine years. We essentially had this exact same story with way more depth and nuance and moving parts seven years ago in Heavensward. And Endwalker was already laser-focused on this idea, so I can't see a good reason to reiterate it, again, after the big crescendo when we're supposed to be moving into new territory.

To be frank, it's just depressing me now. Every time we come back to this I'm just jolted back into remembering this is a predictable fantasy universe and not a breathing world. It sometimes makes me apathetic to the entire setting.

I don't broadly disagree that a lot of the writing has been repetitive, but I do think the Omicron quests have a somewhat different vibe insofar as it's about rebuilding a sense of meaning from literally nothing, and does a good job of conveying (unlike the EW MSQ, largely) that there's no definitive path to finding purpose and living, but that it's different for every being and situation. It also toys with some existential questions which the game hasn't touched before.

It's nothing revolutionary and is still a little preachy, but I think it's a little strange to be so hostile to it just because a handful of reconstructed survivors from civilizations millennia dead are not sufficiently holding on to their grudges. The premise is that the people in Ultima Thule have reached the end-stage of destructive nihilism, where they no longer hate specific things but reject life on a foundational level, and so obviously the quest is about mending their connection to it so they can begin feeling anything again. In that sense, you have to start from the ground up - finding joy in the fulfillment of basic needs, like eating.