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

[SaitoHikari]

Two expansions after Shadowbringers would have let things sink in a little longer, but considering Oda said that the story would've been the same, the people in this thread would have had the exact same criticisms of Garlemald being destroyed off-screen and the issues with Venat.

The story being the same does not mean the presentation would have remained the same, which is what we're really arguing about. Garlemald would still be destroyed in the end, but it's likely that if the Garlemald arc wasn't basically condensed into a single zone, a lot of what happened wouldn't have been off-screened to make way for the Final Days arc. I personally find the Venat arguments a bit overdone too, when such arguments are most likely a consequence of her arc being just as condensed. Who knows how much cut context we're missing from both sides of the expansion as a result?

(Also, I sincerely hope that the devs never make another multi-expansion villain like Zenos ever again, or at least one we already fought coming back from the dead and undercutting other plot threads older than his introduction the way he did.)

[Graeham]

Endwalker was originally intended to be two expansions as per some past interviews, with Garlemald slated as being the endpoint for the first of them, meaning the tower business was supposed to be a much more lasting threat then it was.

That would've presumably left the Final Days with an expansion to itself and a lot more time for the subplots surrounding it to develop.

Yes. Garlemalding was entire expansion after Shadowbringing. It best idea. Chara have kill leader of No Shadow God in the isekai. Now come home and do the tower climb to fight the servant zombie king of God King Solus. Is entire expansion climbing tower. Patch 60 you go to first floor. Ohhhhh there is the many step. We are tire let us stop and eating the cheesieburger. Patch 61 you go to the second floor. Oh no more step. But at least is not cold and we have delicious lowpoly grape. Patch 62 you go to the third floor. The zombie it is after us now. Real reason is wanting to eat delicious buuz. But have not enough to be share. So eat the zombie instead. Patch 65 we fighting Zombie King Varis because even we are tire of climbing tower. Is the drama moment like the patch 53 fight with Elibuss. Zombie king he make the speech. Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. It like the Elibuss speech I do not remember why I fighting but I fighting. Is because of the brain not work. Then we kill Zombie King and shedding the tear. And next expansion is the Endwalking. It make huge difference to the story.

You are genius Cage to Cage. Is good guild has you on the side to uncover evil plot of writer. Only by read original german script can uncover truth of two expansion rush into the one. Otherwise the No Shadow God would win story.

[MikkoAkure]

The story being the same does not mean the presentation would have remained the same, which is what we're really arguing about. Garlemald would still be destroyed in the end, but it's likely that if the Garlemald arc wasn't basically condensed into a single zone, a lot of what happened wouldn't have been off-screened to make way for the Final Days arc.

Garlemald would still be a smoking ruin by the time we got to it since Anima would still have been a thing. Zenos would’ve been much more in focus than he was in EW if Garlemald had its own expansion and would’ve just been Stormblood all over again. Every second Zenos was on-screen in EW made me wish his death stuck in Stormblood and I could not have taken it again if he was the main feature of a whole other expansion.

There’s a lot of things they should and could have done, but a Zenos-lead Garlemald expansion is not one of those unless the Garlemald events of ShB didn’t happen and Zenos was somewhere else or just being a nuisance. That then would mean a Garlemald too strong for Eorzea to fight since the 1.0 writers made Garlemald too strong and they’d still need to self-destruct or get wrecked by deus ex machina to be defeated.

I personally find the Venat arguments a bit overdone too, when such arguments are most likely a consequence of her arc being just as condensed. Who knows how much cut context we're missing from both sides of the expansion as a result?

Venat’s arc was not condensed. Emet-Selch exposed the whole everything about the world PLUS his side of events in a post-dungeon cutscene midway through ShB and just half a zone at the very end. Venat’s side of events being what it was is just bad writing at worst and awkward storytelling at best and not anything to do with EW going zoom. In no way I can think of did it need to be longer to be better.

There was plenty of opportunity for her story to be explained better, but instead they decided to introduce brand new concepts and characters at the very end of everything that just muddled it all up culminating in a confusing Final Days cutscene that isn’t even canon to how Hydaelyn was summoned since that whole thing happened after the Final Days.

Her whole arc could’ve been salvaged with a change in the dialogue or cutscene after Kairos and/or when we meet her as Hydaelyn in the Lifestream. Instead we have the intention for how it was supposed to go, albeit with a lot of holes.

[Xirean]

Venat’s arc was not condensed. Emet-Selch exposed the whole everything about the world PLUS his side of events in a post-dungeon cutscene midway through ShB and just half a zone at the very end. Venat’s side of events being what it was is just bad writing at worst and awkward storytelling at best and not anything to do with EW going zoom. In no way I can think of did it need to be longer to be better.

There was plenty of opportunity for her story to be explained better, but instead they decided to introduce brand new concepts and characters at the very end of everything that just muddled it all up culminating in a confusing Final Days cutscene that isn’t even canon to how Hydaelyn was summoned since that whole thing happened after the Final Days.

Her whole arc could’ve been salvaged with a change in the dialogue or cutscene after Kairos and/or when we meet her as Hydaelyn in the Lifestream. Instead we have the intention for how it was supposed to go, albeit with a lot of holes.

This is probably the biggest contributing factor for the discussion imo. That single cutscene cannot be taken seriously because it is just a complete miss match of how we know the events played out. Show us the summoning of at least one of the 2. Show us Zodiark putting the aether shield over the planet and show us the fight. Showing us the fight is not only a big cool factor but also allows the writers to let the sundering be an accident. Something along the lines of her using the move mid fight but not realizing exactly how it works results in the sundering of the star. It's more expensive to make obviously, but it's the first and most ancient of primals; I'd need a better reason than budget to justify not seeing that fight.

[redheadturk]

Garlemald would still be a smoking ruin by the time we got to it since Anima would still have been a thing. Zenos would’ve been much more in focus than he was in EW if Garlemald had its own expansion and would’ve just been Stormblood all over again. Every second Zenos was on-screen in EW made me wish his death stuck in Stormblood and I could not have taken it again if he was the main feature of a whole other expansion.

There’s a lot of things they should and could have done, but a Zenos-lead Garlemald expansion is not one of those unless the Garlemald events of ShB didn’t happen and Zenos was somewhere else or just being a nuisance. That then would mean a Garlemald too strong for Eorzea to fight since the 1.0 writers made Garlemald too strong and they’d still need to self-destruct or get wrecked by deus ex machina to be defeated.




Venat’s arc was not condensed. Emet-Selch exposed the whole everything about the world PLUS his side of events in a post-dungeon cutscene midway through ShB and just half a zone at the very end. Venat’s side of events being what it was is just bad writing at worst and awkward storytelling at best and not anything to do with EW going zoom. In no way I can think of did it need to be longer to be better.

There was plenty of opportunity for her story to be explained better, but instead they decided to introduce brand new concepts and characters at the very end of everything that just muddled it all up culminating in a confusing Final Days cutscene that isn’t even canon to how Hydaelyn was summoned since that whole thing happened after the Final Days.

Her whole arc could’ve been salvaged with a change in the dialogue or cutscene after Kairos and/or when we meet her as Hydaelyn in the Lifestream. Instead we have the intention for how it was supposed to go, albeit with a lot of holes.

Her whole arc could have been salvaged if they had, I dunno, just made the Sundering an accident?

[Yeastyloins]

Yes. Garlemalding was entire expansion after Shadowbringing. It best idea. Chara have kill leader of No Shadow God in the isekai. Now come home and do the tower climb to fight the servant zombie king of God King Solus. Is entire expansion climbing tower. Patch 60 you go to first floor. Ohhhhh there is the many step. We are tire let us stop and eating the cheesieburger. Patch 61 you go to the second floor. Oh no more step. But at least is not cold and we have delicious lowpoly grape. Patch 62 you go to the third floor. The zombie it is after us now. Real reason is wanting to eat delicious buuz. But have not enough to be share. So eat the zombie instead. Patch 65 we fighting Zombie King Varis because even we are tire of climbing tower. Is the drama moment like the patch 53 fight with Elibuss. Zombie king he make the speech. Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. It like the Elibuss speech I do not remember why I fighting but I fighting. Is because of the brain not work. Then we kill Zombie King and shedding the tear. And next expansion is the Endwalking. It make huge difference to the story.

You are genius Cage to Cage. Is good guild has you on the side to uncover evil plot of writer. Only by read original german script can uncover truth of two expansion rush into the one. Otherwise the No Shadow God would win story.

This is such an underrated post, what an absolute legend.

[Lelila38]

Her whole arc could have been salvaged if they had, I dunno, just made the Sundering an accident?

The whole story woukd have been much more bearable to me if just one of 3 possibilities had happened.

1. The sundering was an accident. Hydaelyn fought Zodiark and through that powerful clash it happened.

2. Venat was memory wiped too. We went to Elpis, we tried our best to warn them and change the outcome, but ultimately the past cannot be changed and we failed.

3. Hydaelyn is called out on her crimes. Despite believing when she says she thinks it was the right thing to do it was objectively a terrible terrible act that destroyed a whole people and their civilization. If the scions would only call her out on it and treat her like the well-meaning antagonist that she was portrayed to be, my disconnect would not be as strong.

[Brinne]

The Ancients are allowed to hold a grievance against Venat. They are not allowed to wipe out all of creation because they are desperately grasping for a past that can never be reclaimed. Frankly, describing that as "seeking justice" makes your entire stance suspect.

The Ancients suffered an incredible injustice. They are acting in reaction to that injustice, which has never been redressed.

I may not have been clear, but when I qualified with "emotionally understandable," I did it with the intent of specifying that also implied "but not understandable in other ways." IE, you understand where they're coming from emotionally and they have a legitimate grievance, but this does not justify their actions or their violence. But like, if my clumsy wording makes it easier to dismiss everything I have to say, not much I can say about it besides well ok.

There are plenty of plausible reasons that Venat didn't explicitly lay out Zodiark, Meteion, and so forth. The most brute force is that she knew it wouldn't matter, we're in a closed time loop and a future that produces a WoL that will travel back to Elpis is going to happen. That is also not a terribly satisfying answer, but it's notable that if you go with it, Venat still tries to convince the Ancients to reject Zodiark. She knows it's hopeless, but she still tries because she loves her people and their world.

Prior discussion has gone over every one of Venat's weird, thin, unconvincing excuses ad nauseum (what is the Echo? We just don't know), but what it comes down to is: once again, Venat agrees with the premise of Hermes's test and wants to see it carried out. She fundamentally chose to say nothing because she wanted to see mankind take on Meteion's challenge and prove her wrong. Proving that Meteion was wrong about the worth of Life as a universal concept is, to Venat, worth burning up trillions of individual lives. The second she says "we must prove ourselves equal to Hermes's test and prove man is worthy to exist," everything else is just mealy-mouthed spice on top because somewhere, deep down, both she and the writers know that it sounds really bad to flat out say "I think the Ancients should be hit with the Final Days actually" and spread a layer of very thin plausible deniability (of course, a good person would prioritize saving lives, and we want you to see Venat as a good person so mumblemumble) around it.

It was absolutely a genocide of the Ancients and the writers assumed that people would realize, based on FF14's previous anti-genocide stance, that it was a horrible, monstrous choice. But that with the context of her beliefs and the events around her, there were no good choices.

With the context of Ilberd's beliefs and the events around him, there were no good choices.

With the context of Thordan's beliefs and the events around him, there were no good choices.

With the context of Emet's beliefs and the events around him, there were no good choices.

Is "genocide is always wrong + Venat committed genocide = Venat was wrong" really that difficult to square away with? (Well, yes, because in the case of Venat and only Venat the writing does as much as possible to kick up dust around nearly every aspect of it that they possibly could. Which, again, is the whole problem and what people object to.)

[Vyrerus]

They are not allowed to wipe out all of creation

Congratulations, that's not what they were trying to do. At all. They were trying to undo the Sundering, which was not an act of creation, but an act of malformation.

For any of Venat's reasons to be within an arm's breadth of plausibility, the writers would need to retcon The Echo, and also the fact that Ancients were capable of controlling it (literally demonstrated by Venat to the WoL in Elpis btw). Venat chose to withhold the unaltered memory of events that she held within her soul, that her kin were capable of perceiving if she would allow them too. You're essentially saying that Venat offering fortune cookie platitudes to a race of people that literally created God that solved the problem as far as they knew was her best effort.

Empty philosophy is no substitute for the truth. Especially in the face of a tangible, almighty savior.

[DevonEllwood]

stuff.

Is this really the hill you want to die on?

I picked up BLM after being away from the game for years. What BLM guides are people looking at these days? Is there anything for controller players or is that a no no?

This is good.

I am trying to collect the level 83 gear, but are there other good Garlemald glamours in game right now?

Are there artbooks out on Garlemald mech and airships? I want to know more about their tech (like schematics in sci fi series).

Your repeated attempts at pretending to not understand English is bordering on being offensive. If you are going to troll, stop hiding your disingenuous posts behind BS.