A game for 4 year olds

[MikkoAkure]

If they made even ONE of those cars unique and good-looking, people would be looking for it to be somehow relevant to the story, or at least start demanding it as a mount.

It’s too late for that. When I first saw them in Garlemald, besides thinking it was funny that the great, powerful, and evil empire putts around in tiny little city cars, I immediately wanted to see a Roegadyn or a Hrothgar in one and have it be a four-seater.

Plus my Hyur is too short for Noctis’ car and can barely see over the steering wheel despite everything else in the game being designed around my model so it would be nice to have a car that’s me-sized.

[dynus]

More and more, we see stuff that is pulled from either a very childish sort of writing style or something akin to fanfic-level fawning over the game's prescribed favourite characters.

This is the worst insult. I've read fanfics that are 100x better than some of the stuff that gets published.

[Alleo]

So the questline is finished

After we ask around if the customers like the cafe we get a report that Elysium has changed again. We go there and the first thing we see is a new baby dragon. I was like "awww" and then so happy. Finally the dragons have their children again.

Then we see the huge tree of the Nibirun, now part of the Omikron map. Its absolutely beautiful. The Nibirun are there too and are bascially wondering about the reason to life. At the end everyone of the new races come over and invite them to some nice discussions about the universe and the existance.

That finishes the story. I do say that the solution for the Nibirun was a bit fast. I guess the combined happyness of the other races got to them in the end.

I love that in their zone we have them talking with the Omicrons about trees while they just love discussions with the Ea.

And at the cafe you have one that is really fascinated with the joyfulness of the newborn dragon.

Also the Omicron gives new information about the Nibirun. They bascially managed to destroy any illness and violence and achieved eternal lifes. They reached harmony across the whole race which in turn meant that they never had any conflict anymore. But that was their end. Without pain and all the negative emotions, the positive ones also lost their meaning in time and thus they wanted it to end.

All in all a great storyline, with some emotional points and a very stunning Elysium.

[KageTokage]

I honestly wasn't expecting them to double down on the "joy is meaningless when not tempered by sorrow" angle for the Nibirun, because the vibe I was getting was more that they didn't have anything left to be joyful about because a complete removal of strife entailed throwing away virtually everything that gave their lives meaning.

That philosophy is one I just fundamentally cannot agree with.

[Wyssahtyn]

omicron beast tribe bloodsworn ending feels weak/rushed. seems like a running theme in this expac.

[Cleretic]

I think there's something interesting there if you walk around the Last Dregs afterward. Now all the NPCs are talking to each other, allowing for both different dialog when we talk to them, and different idle speech bubble chat. (Apparently that Grebuloff that kept chanting for soup has had a concerning amount of it at this point!)

One of the NPCs we can talk to is the Nihilistic Nibirun (he's talking to a Karellian), who seems to be reflecting on the recent events around them; that they wanted to be part of something larger than themselves, but pursued perfect understanding (and much the same doomsaying attitude that the Ea had when we met them) rather than realizing that, hey, maybe they could just sit down and talk to people. Which, yeah, they weren't doing before--they mostly just hung around the edges of the places we were going and saying to themselves 'hm, yes, we're right, everything should die'. The scene in Elysion is the first time they've bothered actually HAVING a conversation and listening to someone other than themselves.

There's also one hanging out with the Emotional Grebuloff with a speech bubble line that really helps explain that whole 'without negatives there are no positives': "We once had cuisine..." That's actually a pretty great, simple example of what they're trying to get across: if people didn't need to eat food, we wouldn't have needed to come up with good food. Like the Ea from a different direction, the Nibirun escaped the need to eat... so they eventually forgot the joy of a good meal.

The tribe's an extension of the story of Ultima Thule, it's basically an ending for that particular zone. Which is a good move, that zone's one of the worst in the game in terms of its story being more 'central plot progression' than 'actual place with its own things going on', the tribe quest did a lot to make its population actual characters rather than plot-progressing cardboard cutouts. If I had to ding it for anything, it'd be for something that's true of a lot of the game: it's not going to win you over if you've already decided you don't like the story it wants to tell. If you didn't like Ultima Thule, it's not going to make you like Ultima Thule, but if you do like Ultima Thule it's absolutely top-notch; I actually think it might well be unseating the qitari as my favorite tribe quest, although I might need some time to chew on it.

[Alleo]

That philosophy is one I just fundamentally cannot agree with.

Its something we as humans can never really get because we are not immortal and we have enough suffering in our lifes. But I can see that a world where there is only pure harmony, no conflict (not even a small one between individuals) can get stale with time. It seems that their lifes were just the same day in, day out. If you have everything you can get, what do you look forward to? Of course it still needed Meteion and her questions that drove them over the edge but I can see it.

That in my opinion does not mean that we cant work towards a brighter future or that everybody has to constantly suffer. No I think it just means that perfection is not something we should want. Because in the very end it could lead to a utter meaningless boring life.

A life where (as Cleretic pointed out) they did not even have to eat anymore. So what do you do the whole day? Sounds absolutely awesome for a small amount of time (like our own limited life on earth) but absolutely horrible if you have the infinity before you.

[KageTokage]

Even their dialogue in the aftermath of the quest gave me more of a vibe that they had cast off so much in the pursuit of what they considered perfection that it took very little to push them over the edge and realize how empty it was when confronted with Meteion's question.

There's no real conflict in Elysion either, but it seems to be growing on them simply because it's more lively and varied then what they were used to.

[Brinne]

Its something we as humans can never really get because we are not immortal and we have enough suffering in our lifes. But I can see that a world where there is only pure harmony, no conflict (not even a small one between individuals) can get stale with time.

This begs the question, though, of who and what this portrayal and this theme is for. If it's something that can never really apply to us as humans, what is the audience meant to extract meaningfully from "a theoretical (but admittedly impossible outside of constructed thought exercises) existence that is too good or is absent of the things that make you suffer is actually bad?" What utility or urgency is there in exploring, in the world we live in now, "if you think about it being hungry can lead to good things actually" in a world that continues to struggle with mass hunger and poverty? Does it have any actual utility apart from self-satisfied navel-gazing about how, really, our current existence is basically the best one possible, we're number one, etc, etc?

[Alleo]

I am not sure if every theme of the game has to be applied 100% to our world. People will interpret Endwalker and the theme of suffering and hope differently. There are many stories on reddit where people wrote that it had helped them work over their grief of losing someone important. For me its the message that no matter the suffering there will be better days ahead. To not give up even when everything is messed up right now. And that we should not take everything for granted.

Honestly I thinkt this is mostly just for those beings in Ultima Thule since a lot of them are immortal, while still holding a bit of a hint for the players to think about. But thats just how I see it (and have a hard time putting my thoughts into english words).

Even their dialogue in the aftermath of the quest gave me more of a vibe that they had cast off so much in the pursuit of what they considered perfection that it took very little to push them over the edge and realize how empty it was when confronted with Meteion's question.

There's no real conflict in Elysion either, but it seems to be growing on them simply because it's more lively and varied then what they were used to.

Yeah it seems that they were at a point where just the simple question about life gave them a huge crisis.

I think part of the change is that they now have other races with them. Races that have lived different lifes with different views and pasts. There will be conflict but not in a violent way but more in the "I have a very different view as you". Their ideas will be challenged and they will grow with this.

Its shows what they Ancients were also always afraid of. That different views, or even just wearing something else would build conflict. And it does. But it also gives new ideas, new ways of handling something. And its stops whole races being grapped by the same despair.

So I guess another theme here would be: Cultural diversity and individuality are good and necessary.