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

[Midareyukki]

But when you turn the relic into a joke after chasing out the fleshed out plotline we had going for it in Bozja that we didn't even get to finish

We did technically finish Bozja's story... in post-it notes.

Bozja being free was something Gabranth expected bc he wanted someone who liked the Garlean rule to make a constitution.
Sicinius gets arrested in Dalmasca, blabs about what he did to Dabog Invisch and several other Hrothgar, then he's busted out by Pagaga and Lyon.
Gabranth dies and Lyon is blamed for it (at least publicly).
Thanks to Sicinius realizing he can transfer memories to another Hyur's body and disfigure it to look like him, Gabranth is being spotted all across Dalmasca despite being "dead".

The next thing we need to know is what Gabranth wants to do after. Which ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ is up in the air. Yasumi Matsuno's gone, so we don't really know if they will or won't do the next chapter in Dalmasca.

I for one would certainly prefer the game take on a more serious tone. I would like to see lasting consequences, tangible losses, and removal of the plot armor protecting the primary cast. I'm not saying I believe they should start killing characters just to kill them, but I do find the knowledge none of main cast are ever in any real danger detracts from my ability to enjoy the story. Throwing Hildebrand in on top of this was not something I particularly enjoyed. Perhaps the humor would've been more welcome had there been a darker overall tone for it to contrast.

That they chose to forgo the usual means of acquiring relic weapons in favor of something so asinine was just the icing on the cake, I suppose. Not to mention the relics being virtually worthless.

Last time we had a thread asking for that, people started complaining that the story being edgy, angsty or too serious made it boring and they couldn't focus :s

[ReynTime]

Yeah, with how little we're getting these days, it is pretty hard to stay excited and speculative. Even speculation on the events we did get were chewed into cud by a week or two after 6.3 landed. I hope the next forms of the Manderville relic look really cool. I'm all in on Manderville comedy, as it's some of the most over the top best stuff the game offers, because it knows exactly what its wheelhouse is, and I have no expectations of those characters other than they remain silly as all get out.

It's kind of hilarious to me though. Whether people enjoy EW or hate it, it seems like folks on both sides of that lane either entirely love or entirely hate Hildibrand related stuff. It's like the one thing people who otherwise don't see eye to eye can agree on.

(Psst, c'mon, let's stretch it to 800.)

I vividly remember (anyone can google this, in fact) people who didn't like Hildibrand back before Endwalker describing the comedy as cringe and/or "too anime". I like Hildibrand but I'm not as interested as I used to be because the type of humor and anime comedy shenanigans that used to make it stand out from the rest of the game is now present in the comedic scenes of the MSQ.

[jameseoakes]

I vividly remember (anyone can google this, in fact) people who didn't like Hildibrand back before Endwalker describing the comedy as cringe and/or "too anime". I like Hildibrand but I'm not as interested as I used to be because the type of humor and anime comedy shenanigans that used to make it stand out from the rest of the game is now present in the comedic scenes of the MSQ.

Yeah I'd been thinking that as well, with it now feeling closer to the comic relief in the main story than something distinct. For me I just haven't been finding the humour funny this time round as well

[redheadturk]

Not sure if we are allowed to link other sites here, but. . .https://www.reddit.com/r/FFXIVAncientfans. Just wanted to drop an alternative to the big reddits here for the Ancident fans who may be on this thread.

[Saraide]

When was the relic questline not a joke? As far as I'm aware drunk smithy the kettlemancer has been in all of them. Did he skip eureka relics?

[Vyrerus]

When was the relic questline not a joke? As far as I'm aware drunk smithy the kettlemancer has been in all of them. Did he skip eureka relics?

The first relic questline in 2.0 was meet Gerolt, who happens to be an extreme alcoholic, but he's the best smith in the land. You go through a serious process of killing a Chimera, Hydra, and the three primals at the time as well as crafting a base weapon yourself in addition to raiding a select beastmen stronghold for the old relic. There's lore about prior relic users, where the relics come from, and it has a serious tone all over, with Gerolt being a smidgeon of comic relief. As it continues, his assistant Drake and the Thavnairian Alchemist Jalzahn are introduced. The process then becomes collecting crystallized souls to feed to your weapon resulting in hundreds of battles killing things with it. There is an optional joke questline afterwards where you can do the same for a kettle, and the complete comedy of it is that Drake makes a better kettle with little effort.


The second relic questline for an Anima weapon involves Gerolt again, because as established by the first questline, he is the BEST smith in the land. That noble kid who I can't remember if he's Hannish or Sharlayan, has you go through a laborious process that is mostly 100% serious that involves all sorts of crystals, soul energy, battles, and eventually imparts a soul into your weapon itself making it a living weapon. Comedy is again kept minor, and mostly relegated to Gerolt wanting for booze or going into debt by getting an extreme amount of booze.

The third relic questline involves the Eureka weapons. Gerolt's back at it again, and Drake's along for the ride again, but now they also have understudies who make the Eureka armor for you. He's working off his debt to Rowena, and there really isn't a lot of comedy in it(more drinky drinky more he ordered a whole crate and didn't account for shipping costs). You have to collect hundreds of elemental crystals and then pieces of the strongest monsters from each Eureka zone for each stage. There's very little story around it, and also very little humor. It's almost solely just the process itself.


The fourth relic questline is for the resistance relics. The Queensguard weapons or whatever from Bozja. Gerolt's back on scene. There's more comedy, but again it's all about booze and his relationship to Rowena. The process for relic creation is gathering memory crystals, soul crystals, and battling a lot of stuff. There's some more comedy interplay with Gerolt interacting with the resistance smith(adorable Hrothgar with glasses), and a little bit of comedy around the people trying to make deals with Rowena's but it's funny due to being about a vicious business tycoon.

Here we are at fifth relic. Same old Gerolt. But now Manderville hijinks are added to the mix. We find a rare meteoric ore. Ok that's pretty serious. Oh but to make its properties come out we need... Mandervilleman Sweat. Oh by the way, here's some naked Highlander man servants to help you with extra makes. It begs the question, what will the next step be? Manderville Spit?
This is much more overt, and while it is mildly interesting if you're interested in perhaps finding out why the Mandervilles are so powerful, it's smacking of possibly discounting every possible serious portion it may have.

We'll have to wait and see, though.

[aveyond-dreams]

All I know is I'd rather be living the alternate timeline where Bozja wasn't ended prematurely and we received its Dalmasca arc complete with more FFXII and Ivalice themed outfits. Far as I'm concerned this expansion has permanently soured me on anything Hildibrand-related. If I had to choose between having a joke of a game and a one that takes itself seriously then the choice is obvious.

[NelaryNeaky]

It's funny how time after time aveyond leaves a message where he has his opinion on something and has nothing to do with the current discussion. Okay if just once, but every new post is about the same thing. Dude, we see your posts, you don't have to give us a reminder about you every time, you're already a legend on this forum

[Teraq]

Have you heard the good word? Zodiark Trance is officially over! Some people are truly bent out of shape by the fact that some people dislike a piece of fiction, and their special waifu Veness in particular. All the more proof that we are doing something right if we can get the terminally online so mad because (checks notes) a story didn't live up to some people's expectations…?

Oh no. Anyway. Back to the usual schedule of taking Endwalker apart.

But I don't understand why you guys want to remain in the game, knowing it won't change

Personally, I've managed to play WoW for years without really caring about its story, just liking the game and doing stuff like achievements and rep grinds. This is pretty much how I treat FFXIV now. Ultimately, FFXIV's gearing system caters to my play style far better than WoW's, and I appreciate that.

Before ShB, I mildly liked the story, as in it made use of some tropes I usually enjoy, coming from ASOIAF and all that, and I was curious to see where it was going to go. During ShB, I loved it so much I was actively looking forward to any new bit of information they would give us. Jumped on live letters and trailers (which was what first made me realize some localization choices were interesting…), actually got the brain rot regarding certain characters, etc. 6.0 put an abrupt end to all that (well, to the "loving it" and the "looking forward" bits, not so much the brain rot yet, alas). The story arc I was always curious about ended in the most middling of ways, and the new story we've been getting so far isn't really gripping, which is why most people here most heavily rant about 6.0 rather than 6.x. There just… isn't much to talk about in 6.x.

The comparison has been made before, but to me it is very much an equivalent to GoT S8.

So story has basically become this background thing I am apathetic towards. And unfortunately, Endwalker has been making it harder and harder still to stay subbed for the gameplay, because of the patch delays, lack of battle content such as Eureka/Bozja… they've even taken to delaying some day 1 patch content like daily tribal quests to the .5 patches. None of this is helping. I've cancelled my subscription for now, but definitely not as a definitive thing. I'll see if I'm addicted enough to renew it instantly when it drops. (btw Blizzard please give back the buyable 30 days without a sub option)

knowing Square hasn't heard anyone's voice thus far...

Especially not when so many people have praised the expansion, both within and outside the forums.

I can speak only for myself here, but to me the point of this thread and discussion isn't so much getting SE to acknowledge us, because that ship feels like it has sailed some time ago (why can't you be happy with the bone we threw you in the Omega sidequest!), but moreso being visible for the sake of other players who might feel similarly. It feels like the criticism isn't just drowned out by the overwhelming positivity, but actively being pushed out of fandom spaces. It all feels very toxic, and I want to continue speaking up against it for as long as I still unfortunately care in spite of myself. This fandom isn't a monolith, we all like different things about the story and its characters and how we interpret them, and I find rather disturbing the narrative that you need to like X characters and Y story arc or else you simply aren't welcome.

Simply put, I used to love being in the fandom with everyone else during ShB. Now I've become one of those bad Ancient fans who were let down by Endwalker and didn't just swallow the characters of Hermes and Venat and the narrative of 6.0 like the rest of the Twitter Ancient stans – and it's come across rather clearly that people don't want people like me around anymore. Which is exactly why, personally, I stick around.

But uhhhhhh onto your actual question!

I have a weird question for you guys.

...is there anything you guys liked about Endwalker?

If we're talking strictly 6.0 MSQ, Garlemald is IMO the best part once the dust has settled. There are two other parts I was excited about playing through the story: Thavnair 2.0 and Elpis. I thought things were finally ramping up good in Thavnair 2.0: much like how I mourned StB's Garlemald patch storyline but still thought ShB was an acceptable alternative that definitely made up for it, Thavnair 2.0 had me thinking "I guess I could be okay with them unceremoniously tossing out the Ascian and Zodiark storyline if the Final Days are this hype with high stakes for everyone". Spoiler alert: it kind of was just Thavnair being hype. I would have loved this to have deaths, be an actual honest to god near-extinction event for humanity like it was for the Ancients back then, have the cities we know and love hit with the full brunt of despair. Screams and skies turning red in Sharlayan. But it just ended up being a fairly underwhelming "apocalypse". Thavnair 2.0 is this tribute to how I could have liked Endwalker had it gone into that direction. Great idea and introduction, and then "that's it?".
As for Elpis, boy. I loved all the world building and being actually able to talk to Ancients. It's gorgeous. I love the BGM too. It's just a bit of a shame it happened to come with a story attached, you know? And what a story! What a story…

No, after all is said and done, I think Garlemald holds up the best still. It felt incredibly human, seeing all those exhausted survivors of horror, and to get the POV of Garlean civilians hating you or being terrified, because they grew up in a particular culture and war is ugly, but at the end of the day they're all people. It's properly depressing, and I mean this in a good way. It feels like a teaser of what I wish would have been explored more with the rest of Ilsabard and the Ancients/Ascians. The soup scene made me break down, and then came the mass tempering, and that dinner scene (though as pointed out by Rosen, Fandaniel kidnapping us made absolutely zero sense, a particularly egregious instance of "why did nobody do this any sooner?"), followed by the quest… that was so good, but then it… fizzled out… rather pointlessly? Man, I think that if I were to pinpoint the exact moment where Endwalker jumped the shark boldly enough to make Mitron blush, it would be the tail end of Garlemald culminating in us just casually teleporting to the moon like that. I thought the plot might get back up on its feet then, but it was actually all downhill from there.
But even its anticlimactic ending can't manage to ruin how I feel about 90% of the level 83 Garlemald MSQ. It was a poignant setting.

Beyond 6.0 MSQ, of course, I have Pandaemonium. I was so expecting more Ancient bashing I was actually very surprised to find out Tier 2 wasn't. I mean, of course, some people will still take away "See? I told you these people were irredeemable and deserved to die!!" from it, but they would whatever the circumstances anyway. I loved getting more insight in their society, I loved seeing Convocation members at work (wow, who could have thought they would be able to handle sensitive affairs, even stepping out of their lofty amaurotian offices to do so?), I loved Athena as soon as she opened her mouth to snark and be a psychopath, I loved Lahabrea being cold but ultimately good… basically, so far, Pandaemonium has been proving a lot of my head canons on Ancients right; it is feeding me and I am loving it.
Which is why I entirely expect it to go off the rails in Tier 3 into full Venat-riding mode, because Endwalker has taught me not to get my hopes up. Hope, after all, is only for certain people. So, so much would go wrong in Tier 3, and undo all the good will the first two tiers have garnered so far.
Also, as a shameless unabashed Elidibus simp, I am still literally unable to get over the sentiment of we could have had so much more of this in the MSQ had they bothered to care.

Yyyup. One patch was all it took to ruin the Eden story for me because I was genuinely interested in learning about Eden itself and it all went out the window as soon as Mitron appeared. Felt so lazy, "sike! it was ascians all along". Praying the last tier of Pandaemonium won't take a nosedive with its story too.

I felt the exact opposite; I couldn't be bothered with Eden until they dangled Ascians in front of me and my addled brains instantly turned on and my eyes lit up, because I am a completely honest caricature of myself.

In any case, I think both of us should probably be bracing ourselves for 6.4.

Not like "most" players liking it is especially hard to achieve. Most players in this game do not look at a story with any kind of critical eye, they do exactly what the company wants from them, buy product, consume product, get excited for next product.

All Endwalker really needed to do for a 9/10 after the ShB hype machine was give them their favourite characters from previous expansions to fangirl/fanboy over, some pretty visuals to look at, grand speeches about saving the world and some kind of feel good "message" that ties everything together neatly while actually ending the Hydaelyn/Zodiark story.

At least Game of Thrones fans weren't as hostile to the idea that yeah, they dropped the ball in a pretty major way when it came to the finale. Here we get told we skipped cutscenes or goodness knows whatever else a certain crowd often resorts to.

The same crowd who, despite their protesting, would have loved any other alternate ending to Endwalker so long as it had official sanction by Yoshi. The inverse of the logic they are increasingly desperate to use in order to silence those of us who think for ourselves. They already proved as much is the case time and time again when the groupthink "corrected" for stuff like people calling out Menphina's design, only for the story then to switch to everyone somehow loving it?

Basically both of these. I'd love to see an alternate timeline in which Endwalker went a very different way. I am fairly sure most people would praise its story, writing and characters regardless. I am willing to bet money that the people going "Hydaelyn not being 100% good would have been cliché and predictable!!!!" would have reacted with "I love that they subverted expectations of the pure goddess of light and good being 100% good because that would have been so cliché and predictable!!!". Cash money.

Yes they do because not ever sentence begins with "in my opinion". Isn't that the rules some have on posts in this thread? Oh it's just if you DIDN'T like EW.
Secondly i don't know what it is with you claiming that we think we are in the majority. From my perspective we are all fully aware that we are the minority.

No, posts only come under scrutiny when they come from a bad poster with bad opinions of Final Fantasy Fourteen: Endwalker.

Such as aveyond-dreams. aveyond-dreams is a very bad poster with certifiably bad opinions, and you need to be reminded he is bad once every few pages. Quick, aveyond-dreams posted something that is perfectly on topic as it is a direct continuation of the discussion on the previous page! He urgently needs to be mocked!

All I know is I'd rather be living the alternate timeline where Bozja wasn't ended prematurely and we received its Dalmasca arc complete with more FFXII and Ivalice themed outfits.

The treatment of Ivalice is another instance where I wish we could know everything about what went on behind the scenes. While I personally have never been in love with Ivalice and its storylines in FFXIV, ShB ending its whole story unceremoniously in field notes was… certainly… something. Just another questionable story-telling decision in ShB patches that foretold the mess that was coming.

As for Hildibrand… I enjoyed the ARR quests, the first time around. HW and StB were a bit of a blur. EW, so far, feels like XD RANDOM stuff happening rather than an actual storyline like the ARR quests.
Gating the relic weapons behind Hildibrand is entirely unnecessary. Literally the only "story hook" there is that you stumble upon Godbert on the moon. His motivation for making the weapons is completely unrelated to the Hildibrand quest storyline, as it is in reaction to the Final Days. I struggle to think of a good reason why this should be gated behind everything Hildibrand, other than a cynical "please do this content you haven't done and stay subbed!" decision.

[Rilifane]

I have a weird question for you guys.

...is there anything you guys liked about Endwalker?

Like, sure, okay, it was a "major let down, end of" and all that jazz. But you guys are still here o: After 3 patches, and I assume it'll continue, yeah? Why? :| Do y'all think a miracle will happen and Square will change the course of their writing which they clearly haven't shown any indication of doing?

Honestly?
No, not much. Bits and pieces but overall Endwalker was a fairly disappointing expansion for me and the only thing that kept me subbed after trying the content they released, being disappointed and not doing it on my 2nd char again was raiding with my static.
I'm currently just using the remaining time of my sub to get the last few p8s reclears for my static but it's already running out and once we have them, I'm gone. I've explored alternatives and I'm happy with them, whatever flaws they have don't bother me but I have plenty of things that are a lot of fun there.
The story wasn't the deal-breaker for me, it was Endwalker as a whole, but the "defining feature", the "selling point", the "reason to play FFXIV" being so disappointing for me sure helped in making this decision. It just reminds me of a Mary Sue self-insert fanfiction by now with an extra serving of friendship and comfort characters. But I have plenty of other reasons on top of that to stop caring about the game.

I've given it plenty of fair chances, tried the content they released, tried to give changes that didn't sound good the benefit of the doubt.
But the game is no longer for me, I've accepted it and moved on.
There will be no miracle, it's fine, I'll spend my money elsewhere.