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

[MikkoAkure]

But hey, if you want to have a crack at it, I'm open and eager if you want to share your ideas on where they went wrong! The question of how exactly they ended up in such a messy place just from a writing process standpoint is also interesting to me. There's a lot of angles to take on "WTF happened to EW's writing," honestly.

Finally, some good food.


I think the first place they went wrong was in their original idea that seems to have existed before the writing actually started on EW that there should be a surprise boss at the end that isn't Zodiark or Hydaelyn. They could certainly have kept this in and have a good story, but I think a lot of the mess was when they introduced this and how they attempted to reconcile it with the story that was already given to us in Shadowbringers.

Problem number 2 is part of problem number 1 and it's that Oda apparently really likes space and that he and Ishikawa wanted a space zone, which required a reason to go to space, specifically led to Ultima Thule and not the moon according to interview, and made a further mess of things.

Problem number 3 is time. While the 6.0 MSQ is longer than the other x.0 MSQs, it has too much story to tell, not enough time to tell it, and doesn't make good use of the time and space it has to tell it. I feel like at least half of Labyrinthos and all of the Moon were wasted both in the narrative and in their use of the zones. Ultima Thule suffers from 6th zone syndrome where the last zone in an expansion ends up being mostly about the spectacle and a mad dash to the end. Needing to wrap up every last loose plot thread didn't help either.

Problem number 4 is Shadowbringers. Yoshi-P admitted that too much was revealed to keep milking the plot a few more years and that they had to end it in 1 expansion. The other problem from Shadowbringers is its success and the need to follow ShB. Emet-Selch ended up becoming a fan favorite due to reasons covered in another thread and I feel like the writers felt that since Venat had been here since ARR and was more important to the story, she also had to be a very complex character with moral dilemmas to copy his success.

And problem number 5 is the fact that this is an MMO and the narrative isn't organically grown. Summing up all of my points above, the story had to fit into a box where there is an established trial, dungeon, zone, or half of a zone at specific levels and they're set in their ways and won't budge the established outline to satisfy the narrative. So they have to build the story around the framework of the game instead of allowing it to tell its own story as a book would. The whole ending wasn't planned from the very beginning either and Ancients didn't even exist in their heads in ARR. Ascians were just "doing bad things" and praying to their one and only dark god to plunge the world into darkness until they could figure out what to do and build the story as it was live. Then they had to take everything random they're adding in as well as unnecessary flourishes to characters or backstory to make things more "interesting" and you get what we got.


This is why I am more forgiving of a story's intent and less interested in pulling the plot holes apart when it comes to this instead of a book or a movie. They're completely different mediums that should not be compared on equal grounds.


They could very well have kept the whole "keening from inside the planet" and have us chase down some "original blasphemy" inside the planet but they needed a reason to go to outer space. Which probably led to the final boss thing being a creation gone rogue that went to space, so they needed a reason why it would do that. But the reason is very complex so we needed a whole fanservice zone in the Ancient's time to show what happened. But because we do the whole thing with Emet, Hythlodeus, and Venat, we need a reason for Emet to not remember us. Then we get into the whole thing of memory wiping, but not Venat for some reason, and then the plot holes start forming. Her characterization then becomes more unbalanced against what we already know about, expect, and are supposed to sympathize with her.

Difficult to reconcile concepts like Dynamis and the wonky Elpis time travel story ended up getting made just to satisfy the unwieldy plot and don't feel like they're naturally introduced well enough to prepare us for them unless you count the color changing elpis flower.

I think the simplest change for the better would have everything remain the same up until the end of Elpis despite how much I feel let down by the moon. Even if Venat also lost her memory, enough had already been gained to continue the story without as many plot holes. We found the cause of the Final Days and it would've tied off any time travel paradoxes. Hydaelyn could very well have recovered her memories as Venat after taking up her role sitting in the Lifestream due to some magic yadda yadda and become a tragic figure that way. The whole Sundering thing could have remained a tragic accident due to strong wills and a side of tempering.

It also bothers me that the ancients are held to a different standard to the sundered, we see Y'sthola sending familiars into a hell dimension and the Sharlayans abandoning there familiars in Dravaina so it seems odd that one group got the killed for it while the other are treated so well

Some stale food.


This same discussion happened back in 6.1 and like I said back then, how is this any different than us generating a Carbuncle and sending it off into battle back when they could get targeted by enemies or tank for us? Carbuncle and the Nixie are both similar familiars that are nothing more than pure aether magicked from inanimate objects (a gem or water in each case) and given form to do a task. Poroggos are actual frogs who were uplifted and given intelligence and everything about their story is cruel and none of it is played as something sympathetic to their original masters.

Y'shtola then dismisses her Nixie as one would to a Carbuncle. Does that mean that every time I de-summon my Carbuncle I'm committing acts of cruel violence to a familiar? No.

[Heroman3003]

I think in my general view, the Ascians and Hydaelyn are roughly morally equivalent, YMMV with closer nuances between them. The Ancients pre-Final Days and pre-Sundering, though? Nah. The Ancients were victims, and Venat (with Hermes) was their killer. I don't really accept a "no clear right or wrong" in that context, at least as far as my own values go, especially with Endwalker's clarification that Venat's concern about the sacrifice idea was not on behalf of the actual sacrifices which, again, she was also perfectly willing to kill so long as she could also kill every Ancient besides the three she needed to manipulate for the timeline.

The ancients were 'victims' that were activelt making pto do exact thing Ascians ended up trying to do anyway - destroying countless 'lesser', 'meaningless' lives to serve their own selfish goals. Venat stepped in to stop that, but ultimately couldn't because some got away from sundering.

In fact, I'd dare say, post-Zodiark ancients were further away from original worldview and philosophy of ancient society than Venat and her followers were. For society for which betterment of the star is only goal worth pursuing, and where no individual suffering matters in scheme of grand design to perfection, choosing to start creating not to better the star as a whole, but to feed selfish desire to have good old times back, rather than accepting the sacrifices as lives that fulfilled their purpose and moving on with building the paradise, past the setback... Would be off to say the least. Probably consequence of going through a disaster of level of Final Days that caused the shift in mentality, which makes whole thing all the more ironic in the end.

[Brinne]

Finally, some good food.

Hilariously, I'm pretty sure I would agree with every single one of your points here and the general line throughout of the tendency to put the cart before the horse for several aspects of the writing.

Problem number 4 is Shadowbringers. Yoshi-P admitted that too much was revealed to keep milking the plot a few more years and that they had to end it in 1 expansion. The other problem from Shadowbringers is its success and the need to follow ShB. Emet-Selch ended up becoming a fan favorite due to reasons covered in another thread and I feel like the writers felt that since Venat had been here since ARR and was more important to the story, she also had to be a very complex character with moral dilemmas to copy his success.

Lunaxia has also raised the idea of "Shadowbringers sort of ruined FFXIV as a whole by being so brilliant", and I think it's a really interesting one - it's also been discussed here by a few people how the writing with Hermes ended up falling flat for many because of a sense they tried to copy Emet-Selch's success with him, too, with mixed results at best. I'm rapidly running out of brainpower to keep actively replying at the moment, but I kind of wanted to put a bookmark on this, as the ideas of "the devs weren't prepared to handle the acclaim of Shadowbringers and the elements that allowed Shadowbringers to be to successful got sort of corrupted going into Endwalker" is kind of a particularly interesting thought to me. The idea of the MMO format necessitating a structure, to the detriment of the story, to accommodate X number of zones, X number of dungeons at certain points, and the by-the-seat-of-our-pants plotting and writing is also interesting.

I think my feelings on being forgiving of the story's intent are obviously a bit less generous than yours to the team, though - I think the messaging that unintentionally came out of the Hydaelyn mess, obviously, was deeply uncomfortable and, yeah, pretty grossly unethical to a degree while so fundamental to the entire lore and worldbuilding that I can't really be at peace with it and just roll with the vibes of the intent. For all the limitations and presumed crunch, I still think the missteps there were incredibly avoidable. So as far as the writing process goes, I recognize the hurdles, but I think they made a fundamentally incorrect decision in trying to stick to their guns on the wrong point with what "original intent" was there (Hydaelyn=Good) instead of taking a more fully organic approach (recognizing Shadowbringers changed the landscape and accepting it and working with what it did, and how it affected prior scenes like HW's bit with Hydaelyn's retconned-via-ShB-to-be-a-lie account of her conflict of Zodiark. Even if you didn't mean for it to be a terrible lie at the time you wrote it, you gotta confront and work with that idea that it is now instead of trying to awkwardly brush it off, guys.)

Thanks for the post! If only the Sundering had remained a tragic accident, indeed--although I do remember Yoshida indicating early on in the post-5.0 landscape that even then "we hadn't heard Hydaelyn's side of the story," (in defense of her, and while expressing surprise people were so sympathetic to the Ancients) which... feels kinda weird given what "Hydaelyn's side of the story" wound up being...

[MikkoAkure]

If only the Sundering had remained a tragic accident, indeed--although I do remember Yoshida indicating early on in the post-5.0 landscape that even then "we hadn't heard Hydaelyn's side of the story," (in defense of her, and while expressing surprise people were so sympathetic to the Ancients) which... feels kinda weird given what "Hydaelyn's side of the story" wound up being...

I was remembering that when I was making my post but couldn't find the source for that quote.

But I would like to think that sometime between that interview and Endwalker that part of the story had changed because it didn't seem like we got exactly what he said we'd get.

[Brinne]

I was remembering that when I was making my post but couldn't find the source for that quote.

But I would like to think that sometime between that interview and Endwalker that part of the story had changed because it didn't seem like we got exactly what he said we'd get.

I sort of feel like Yoshida was taken off guard in general by the degree of sympathy people had for the Ancients after Shadowbringers, and had a hard time understanding it, which... basically continued by his repeated surprise about the same thing that he expressed in the interviews for Endwalker. That being said, Yoshida did also mentioned in that MogTalk radio bit (IIRC?) that they only even made the decision that Venat=Hydaelyn very late in the writing process, so one can only imagine the full scope of the Huge Mess and Last Minute Scrambling.

[Vyrerus]

Some Stale Food

Issue #5 The story actually is organic. Its real trouble is that it's that it's written by multiple people. Your points about having to adhere to content criteria and formula are spot on, but the story itself is definitely organic. It's just, how does anyone write a story over the course of a decade, when the writers themselves only got in charge of it in the middle?

You know, games tell stories wonderfully. Differently than books or movies. And their mode of telling the story differs. XIV's is expositional in nature. It is incredibly similar to a formula fiction book vis a vis Da Vinci Code or anything by Christopher Pike. It really isn't the game's framework that holds the story back. If anything it aids the disparate writers in forming something coherent.

Like, of course the Ascians weren't what they became. The writers changed. Those unnecessary flourishes you talk about had not only completely different ideas behind them, but different minds forming the ideas behind them.

You should pull apart yourself sometime as a thought experiment. Lord knows the different writers did just that when they changed the story to their liking as they advanced it.

I liked your #4 idea a lot.

------

As for Electric Familiar 2: Ethics Boogaloo - Carbuncle's kind of a funny choice, since its original conception was the Proto-Carbuncle deemed too dangerous for society at large in Ancient times. You might not think we were cruel to our Carbuncles as player mechanics, but the story itself shows that other folks Carbuncles have personalities and disobey their masters like real animals do( Tataru's and the one in Revenant's Toll). Basically the entirety of the, "Ancients were inhumane to their creations." schtick that the story went for to attempt to dehumanize them or portray them as god-like or however you slice it does fall flat because of stuff like that. James Oakes has a point, however stale it might be.

[Lunaxia]

Sorry to see you go, Lunaxia, but of course, I understand [...]

Thanks, Brinne. It's been a real pleasure chatting about the ins and outs of the problems plaguing EW with you, and though some fairly chaotic IRL shenanigans often cause me to lose track of the thread, I did catch your posts - but really there's only so many times one can express "100%!" or "well-put" before I feel it becomes redundant, haha, especially when the thread has moved on. I just wanted to say I thought you made some great points in the wake of our discussion, though.

Lunaxia has also raised the idea of...

Really, that was one of the things that struck me about the expansion more than anything else - how much everything felt twisted and contrived to try and hit the same notes that ShB did, without taking note of the build-up, nuance and plain old solid writing that made them land in the first place.

Garlemald came close, but it was a victim of time constraints and and had spent too long in one-dimensional Generic Bad Guy purgatory to generate the reaction I believe the devs were aiming for, and it was soon discarded and overshadowed by Deus Ex Machina: Bird Edition regardless. They tried and failed to set Hermes up as lost, isolated and worthy of pity when he really came off as deranged, they set up Venat as a hero against the odds and a parallel of sorts to ourselves and our journey whilst she demonstrated both the same behaviour that they highlighted made the game's previous antagonist a villain and a very tremulous line of thinking that we had been previously encouraged to question, tried to inspire the same sense of horror, danger and tragedy that the Light did in ShB but then had the supposed "apocalypse" hit like wet paper from which any and everyone we ever knew or cared for emerged entirely unscathed, and finally dragged us to the edge of nowhere with Ultima Thule to try and outdo the Amaurot reveal gut punch, which, while it was very pretty visually, just had none of the emotional weight the finale of its predecessor did - merely spectacle and fanfare, but like I said, no substance. I couldn't help but be amused by how they didn't even try to hide the Dead Ends being an almost identical rip of the Amaurot dungeon, down to the antagonist's foreboding narration (which only succeeding in making me want to go to these other stars and see their stories, because I found them far more enthralling than the one I was currently experiencing. The second star's expansion, when?!)

They were, and are, paranoid about losing that success, going so far as to utilise such nefarious tactics as using certain characters as their mouthpieces when convenient and bending entire plotlines and characterisations to make others more appealing by any means necessary. And this fear has led to an unprecedented amount of fandom pandering, where it feels they are now practically dictated by what they feel the fans will want.

It has caused the game to lose a deal of its identity, and to loop back around to my previous post and a more personal note, I struggle to recognise the game I once enjoyed. Between the casual-catered, watered-down gameplay and realising the story and its characters will only ever really continue to hit certain predictable tried-and-tested fan-pleasers with its writing formula, for the first time in nearly eight years I can't bring myself to play anymore even if I wanted to. And though I know there are many players who are satisfied with the current state of affairs and will remain avid subscribers with such compelling content as the promise of Nophica's bountiful cleavage, I am a little curious if this will last after Endwalker's glow has fully waned...

[MikkoAkure]

Issue #5 The story actually is organic. Its real trouble is that it's that it's written by multiple people. Your points about having to adhere to content criteria and formula are spot on, but the story itself is definitely organic.

The story isn’t organic because it needs to adhere to an artificial structure and can’t grow on its own accord. The story is made to fit a frame that fits 6 zones and to accommodate trials and dungeons at set intervals.

It's just, how does anyone write a story over the course of a decade, when the writers themselves only got in charge of it in the middle?

Like, of course the Ascians weren't what they became. The writers changed. Those unnecessary flourishes you talk about had not only completely different ideas behind them, but different minds forming the ideas behind them.

Banri Oda has been responsible for the lore ever since at least ARR, wrote for HW as well, has been on the team since 1.0, was main scenario writer in Stormblood and Shadowbringers, and lead story designer for Endwalker. He’s been there this whole time making the story for the game, but there’s been other faces on the writing team alongside him.

Yoshi-P has also had a hand in the story and has obviously been here this whole time. It was Oda and Yoshi-P who said that they didn’t know what to do with the Ascians from ARR through Stormblood and that the lore for their goals didn’t exist yet and they were just “doing bad stuff”.

Shadowbringers going where it went made them have to write the story for the Ascians. It had nothing to do with new writers or thought experiments.

[MoofiaBossVal]

It's the one year anniversary of the thread. 754 pages and over 7,500 posts! Hopefully the feedback here have been relayed to the devs, though with the people currently in charge of English community management, the lack of any interaction with SE employees on the English forums, and how "surprised" Yoshi-P was at certain questions that seems doubtful. Seeing people unsubbing from the game over the past couple dozen pages... no doubt this game will follow in the same footsteps as WoW and many other subscription MMOs where people become disinterested in the game and leave and their voices go unheard, with the devs only seeing the opinions of the diehard fanboys who stay. You have to be a subscriber to post on these forums after all. Not sure how long I'll stay. The state of the video game industry is abysmal (actually entertainment in general, be it comics or movies or anime). I can count the number of games that came out within the last five years that I was excited for on one hand. And I've just about played almost all of the old games that appealed to me. I own a few games I haven't gotten around to yet but I'm not feeling particularly motivated to play them. Moving closer and closer to the bottom of the barrel here. Only still subbed because FFXIV is one of the very few modern games that vaguely appeals to me. I might just quit gaming altogether and find another hobby.

I really hope things improve with the next expansion, but I'm not holding my breath. That my be my exit point. IDK.

[Necrotica]

It's the one year anniversary of the thread. 754 pages and over 7,500 posts! Hopefully the feedback here have been relayed to the devs, though with the people currently in charge of English community management, the lack of any interaction with SE employees on the English forums, and how "surprised" Yoshi-P was at certain questions that seems doubtful. Seeing people unsubbing from the game over the past couple dozen pages... no doubt this game will follow in the same footsteps as WoW and many other subscription MMOs where people become disinterested in the game and leave and their voices go unheard, with the devs only seeing the opinions of the diehard fanboys who stay. You have to be a subscriber to post on these forums after all. Not sure how long I'll stay. The state of the video game industry is abysmal (actually entertainment in general, be it comics or movies or anime). I can count the number of games that came out within the last five years that I was excited for on one hand. And I've just about played almost all of the old games that appealed to me. I own a few games I haven't gotten around to yet but I'm not feeling particularly motivated to play them. Moving closer and closer to the bottom of the barrel here. Only still subbed because FFXIV is one of the very few modern games that vaguely appeals to me. I might just quit gaming altogether and find another hobby.

I really hope things improve with the next expansion, but I'm not holding my breath. That my be my exit point. IDK.

Just because everyone says the story is the most important part of this game, doesn't mean you have to believe it. There are lots of other reasons to play it. And while flawed, I still believe this is the best mmo out for me.
ESO came close but good god the armor and character models are ugly over there.
Hope you can find something else about this game to keep you playing.