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

[BaconBits]

save this for later

[Silerion]

Here are my thoughts:

Loved Thavnair. I liked Nidhana and Vrtra. The lead up to Garlemald was fun. But there was something that felt disappointing at the end of it? It's like the conclusion was too easy.

Loved Zodiark's prison, Argos, Mare Lamentorum, the Watcher, Hythlodaeus and the shades of the Ancients was amazing. Although the entire thing about about Hydaelyn redirecting Zenos/Amon felt cheap since they just casually walked in and destroyed the final seal anyways.

I didn't like Bestway Burrows. Beautiful zone, but the questing was painful. I didn't like how Zodiark was defeated like a filler boss. I was hoping for something magnificent.

I did like how it lead to the Final Days, and Amon's double-crossing. The apocalypse in Thavnair was amazing. I really felt horrified and sad about what was happening. Especially the part where Matsya was running with the baby.

I liked going back to the First and talking to Elidibus. Stepping into Elpis took my breath away, and I enjoyed everything except for the side quests. I felt like those quests threw the entire pacing off since the WoL literally had a world to save. I had the same issue with Labyrinthos, and was kinda confused why no one contacted Cid earlier.

I think everything from this part is where a lot of controversy starts to happen, and rightfully so. Everyone is going to have their personal opinions about matters of a society's relationship to death, creation, rebirth, and such.

I found Hermes insufferable. He felt like a whiny kid that got put into a position of power that he wasn't mentally ready for. Throughout the entire questing experience, I was asking myself how anyone allowed him to create Meteion and go on a celestial exploration without anyone knowing about it? That was when I started to see that this was going to be less of a world-event, and more of an emotional/psychological one.

My hope was that there was some consequence to creation magic, and all the death caused by the Ancients on the projects that they determined to be flawed. Perhaps all these souls, in their pain and despair, started to influence dynamis in such a way that negative emotions would continue to be amplified until it creates some sort of void/demonic emotional entity that could give dynamis some interesting layers. Kinda like the Daedra in Elder Scrolls.

I felt like the writers still used elements of that thought process, but forced it all into Hermes and Meteion alone.

I did like going to Ultima Thule. I felt sad for Meteion, especially when you understand that she never really developed her own moral compass. She was a sponge that absorbed all the pain, trauma, and hopelessness from various civilizations over Hermes flawed question and experimental design. This is why making her out to the final boss bothered me.

Ultimately, the story is good. I think some parts could have been better to create new story threads. But it's not the end of the world. Pun intended.

[Teraq]

(And yes, when you just spent that much time trying to randomly pick apart every word someone said, most of it falling flat to boot, it might be time to step away for a bit. That's not meant as a "get lost" comment, but actual advice to make a healthy decision.)

I won't blame you for not noticing, or not following my every moves on the internet, but I have in fact been away for a bit. I haven't bothered to post anything since September's Hermes short story. I am still subbed to the game however, because as I have said before on here, I still do enjoy its gameplay and play with a friend, much like I have played WoW for years without caring for its subpar story. Although I have definitely not been playing as much lately with the holidays and new games.

I just decided to randomly come back on the new year to engage in a bit of pedantry. Wholesome!

As someone who has gotten frustrated with the direction of the thread before, and even thought "yeah, its time has probably passed", it's always a little funny to see it starting to slide away and then get inevitably bumped back up to the front page for days by people asking "wtf why is this still here" and subsequently trolling. I mean, okay. Sure.

I love it when it's bumped. In fact, some of the posters could simply just write "BUMP" like this is 2002 all over again and the net value of their prose would be unchanged.

This has always been a little "huh" for me, since - not that it matters much for the purposes of game discussion in most cases - I'm about as hard left as you can ask for, and so are most of my friends who play the game; if you asked me personally, I'd say a lot of my own qualms with where Endwalker's writing took things are intertwined deeply with my progressive standpoint? Not into the whole orientation of one's worth around "strength" to the point of condemning a post-scarcity society that has accomplished strong social support and networks for supposedly lacking it (y-yay primitivism?), very weird Social Darwinist overtures, accepting the premise that one should and must prove one's worthiness to exist, the uncritical self-celebratory cheerleading, and bizarre abstractions to justify mass violence against an Othered population complete with historical/cultural erasure. Not into it!

Not that others can't - and haven't - expressed different angles for disliking Endwalker (that I often disagree with, and may or may not have outright clashed with people about), but I guess it's not the first or last time I've seen political-ish (or identity-ish) inferences made about one's general response to the game or characters where I've just gone "Huh. Uh. Hm. Unsures at"

I completely agree – I was just riffing on the strawman I've seen touted around some of Twitter's darker (or perhaps Lighter with a capital L) corners, the sort of extremely basic GOTCHA arguments of portraying people who enjoy the antagonist faction(s) as fully, unironically adhering to that faction's ideology because… that's exactly how the interactions between reality and fiction work, I suppose! Emet-Selch literally invented fascism [citation needed], therefore anyone who has Emet-Selch as their favorite character must either be a fascist themselves or a braindead fujoshi who thinks he did nothing wrong because OMG he's so hot teehee.

And yes, there actually are people all over the political spectrum in the fandom anyway. I, for one, suspect my fascist and eugenicist overlords would be incredibly disappointed in my voting track record…


(edit)

was kinda confused why no one contacted Cid earlier.

I found this really, really egregious. You're really going to tell me … we went to the Moon… the far ass-end of deep space…and Garlemald… and Cid wasn't invited? And Nero didn't even have a single snarky line in 6.0 MSQ?? File this one under Endwalker's weird decisions along with the rest I suppose.

[Raoabolic]

*reads thread*
*looks at my sweet Crimson Standard Earrings*
Being a Lominsan is suffering. ;A;

[Reap00]

No. You're welcome.

I am so happy I was able to give you and your 7 forum cronies a meaning in life. You beat back that evil forum dweller! Good job kiddo!

[Aline_D]

[QUOTE=Millybonk;5802432]

• The mighty Zodiark, which has been build up as this mighty(evil) entity over several expansions, turns out to be nothing but filler trash for the first Endwalker trial
  
  
  The Zodiark we fight is less than half unsundered, and its core (Elidibus) has been destroyed. The new core, Fandaniel, doesn't care to fight that hard since even if he loses he wins.
  
  
• The true cause of the Final Days is a pet-project from an ancient which goes mad after observing countless dead world and possibly causing the death of several world by projecting negative emotions unto them, and is thus dead-set on bringing despair to every world, upon which said ancient goes mad and is now letting her run her course to test humanity if they can withstand/fight despair
  
  This makes perfect sense because the Ancients were absolutely insanely cavalier with creation magic, they were playing with fire, as we see with both the Elpis storyline with the wolf monsters getting out of control and with Ashodelos. It wasn't a question if something would go wrong with a project, but of how bad the catastrophe would be.
  
  
• Venat, who hasn't had her memory wiped + still remembers you from being in Elpis, quite apparently doesn't lift a finger to learn about Dynamis herself or to mobilize the other ancients to end Meteion then and there, and instead chooses to turn herself into Hydaelyn, sunder the world and the inhabitants, thereby forcing them to live with and face despair and gambling that their resilience against despair might be enough to face Meteion one day

The Ancients would never manage to fight Meteion because they were so powerful and full in Ether that they would not be able to manipulate (or be manipulated by) Dynamis.
It's why the Scions had the perfect balance to both manipulate Dynamis by using their ether to create the various places in Ultima Thule.
That inherent weakness was one of the reasons of why Venat chose to sunder everyone.
The second reason was also to make humanity weaker, so they would never be able to achieve perfection, which could also be destructive as we see from the Ea and other races that simply lost the will to live after reaching Utopia.

Her actions are not presented 100% in the right btw, and this is commented on both by the story and by her when she asks for forgiveness. But it was the best she could do, if the Ancients continued their ways they would simply all die either by Meteion or the other dangers I stated.

[BaconBits]

I am so happy I was able to give you and your 7 forum cronies a meaning in life. You beat back that evil forum dweller! Good job kiddo!

[KageTokage]

The Ancients would never manage to fight Meteion because they were so powerful and full in Ether that they would not be able to manipulate (or be manipulated by) Dynamis.
It's why the Scions had the perfect balance to both manipulate Dynamis by using their ether to create the various places in Ultima Thule.
That inherent weakness was one of the reasons of why Venat chose to sunder everyone.
The second reason was also to make humanity weaker, so they would never be able to achieve perfection, which could also be destructive as we see from the Ea and other races that simply lost the will to live after reaching Utopia.

Her actions are not presented 100% in the right btw, and this is commented on both by the story and by her when she asks for forgiveness. But it was the best she could do, if the Ancients continued their ways they would simply all die either by Meteion or the other dangers I stated.

People have already argued and debated at length about how flimsy Venat's stated reasons for carrying out the Sundering were to them (Hence why this topic has bloated to hundreds of pages among other causes) but...I'll bite.


Dynamis

She admits to having only a "basic" understanding of dynamis back in Elpis, and she tells literally nobody the whole truth of the Final Days, not even her own followers so unless she somehow determined for herself off-screen that there was absolutely no way the Ancients could've solved their whole dynamis debacle (Which was started by an Ancient's creation in the first place), it feels rather poorly reasoned to me, particularly when she's only educated about the negative effects it can have on people. Any positive uses for the stuff would've been strictly hypothetical.

Death by perfection

Seeking perfection in itself is not dangerous. It is the reckless pursuit of perfection that is cited as being problematic. The Nibirun sought perfection through elimination of strife and cast off so much in the process that by the time they reached that ideal, it was so hollow that Meteion's simple question was enough to convince them to give up on life. The Grebuloffs desired more and more and followed the path of conquest only to destroy their ecosystem in the process. The Karellians simply got into a prolonged war that kept escalating further and further until both sides ended up destroying one another with WMDs. The Ea...didn't really do anything wrong at all, they just couldn't handle the "ultimate truth" of existence; that all is seemingly destined to eventually end due to the heat death of universe.

The Ancients were not a reckless people. They spent an extremely lengthy period of time debating about the morality/necessity of the third sacrifice, and it got to the point where Elidibus had to force himself out of Zodiark to enact his role as a mediator just to help them to finalize that decision. The notion of them simply choosing to collectively off themselves if they ever somehow managed to truly achieve "perfection" feels a bit...preposterous with how meticulously they'd consider any decision that would affect their society on a larger scale, coupled with the fact that they sought perfection through addition, not elimination like the Nibirun did. While they did intend to sacrifice surplus life to free the souls within Zodiark, it was something that the Conovocation had deemed would be for the greater good, and rather logically so considering that 75% of what little population that had survived the Final Days was now trapped in purgatory.

Weakening humanity and inviting strife and conflict into the world has opened them up to far, far more "dead ends" then they were vulnerable to pre-Sundering, and Meteion was never going to be an issue as long as Zodiark was intact considering he was still doing his job for 12,000+ years after being sundered.


As far as her actions not being presented as entirely in the right goes...it's literally only called out by the Ascians and herself due to the admittance of there being "no justice or kindness" in it, and it's one of the chief things that bugged me about Endwalker. We're allowed to express doubt towards her when we meet her on the way to Old Sharlayan and question the morality of sealing Zodiark in Mare Lamentorum after seeing the Ancient souls mourning and suffering within him, yet when we finally meet her in person as Hydaelyn, there's nothing but unanimous positivity. It's only in the Omega quest post-MSQ that we're allowed to actually inject our own feelings on the matter, but it felt a bit...hollow versus telling it to her personally.

I can agree that her methods did work, but being able to at least question her about it truly being the only/best option available would've at least left me feeling less emotionally dissonant without having to drastically change the story.

I was really expecting the Sundering to be extremely well-reasoned, like as an act to prevent the immediate end of humanity, not to spare them from some hypothetical "death by perfection" some point in the very distant future.

[Droxybrobotnik]

Since this thread is still going....

- Awful villain with the motivation of a teenage emo child

- The end times didn't feel impactful at all

- False high stakes with a much too obvious happy ending

- Time travel? Seriously?

- Is even worse without knowing the ShB story

The villain is trash, nobody actually thought the world was going to die, or the scions, friendship is magic is a tired trope, time travel never works, and the introduction of dynamis is an enormous deux ex. And Zodiark deserved better, I'm so tired of brainlets going "but he wuz suppased to beh secand fiddle, it subv0rtz the expuctashions" - that does NOT mean they had to make him filler garbage for the first trial!

[Aline_D]

Since this thread is still going....

- Awful villain with the motivation of a teenage emo child

- The end times didn't feel impactful at all

- False high stakes with a much too obvious happy ending

- Time travel? Seriously?

- Is even worse without knowing the ShB story

The villain is trash, nobody actually thought the world was going to die, or the scions, friendship is magic is a tired trope, time travel never works, and the introduction of dynamis is an enormous deux ex. And Zodiark deserved better, I'm so tired of brainlets going "but he wuz suppased to beh secand fiddle, it subv0rtz the expuctashions" - that does NOT mean they had to make him filler garbage for the first trial!

Zodiark was just a name they drop once or twice, how did he "deserve better?"

>friendship is magic is a tired trope,

Ahh so this is a troll post. Else I have no idea why you are suffering to play a Final Fantasy game where friendship is pretty much *always* the magic. Maybe go play COD or GTA where everyone is an edgy as**le?