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

[Carin-Eri]

I have a weird question for you guys.

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

The interactions with Jullus at Camp Brokenglass - a truly touching moment
The The Font of Maya - Matsya and the baby; I was SO on edge throughout that sequence.
The Moon - the awe of being there, and it started off really nicely (though I'd have to concede that I didn't enjoy Bestway Burrows much and could barely believe Zodiark ended up being a midgame boss)
Despite feeling indifferent about Meition I did enjoy the whole 'Endsinger' thing, and I'll admit I grinned like an idiot when Zenos appeared
The fight against Zenos, as well as our final interactions with him either side of the fight. I know this one polarises opinion, but I loved every minute of it!
The closing sequence. Not going to lie - I had tears in my eyes during the scene with our character walking with the Scions, toward the Ascians, and then seeing my character acknowledged as "The Warrior of Light" (love that touch, acknowledging every players part in the overall success of the game as a whole).

And the music - have to give that an honorable mention. 'Close in the Distance' is a masterpiece in my view, and 'Footfalls' has been livign rent-free in my head since the first time I heard it!

[Rolder50]

I have a weird question for you guys.

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

Hmm...
The story was pretty good up until the time travel stuff, in my opinion. Time travel in stories like this always end up being full of plot holes and contrivances and the same proved true here. I especially disliked that the big bad was suddenly introduced half way and then defeated at the end. Felt very anti-climatic for the supposed end of the Ascian arc or whatever.

Though the end fight with Zenos was pretty rad.

At this point I'm really only subscribed to use the game as a chatroom. Heck I didn't even do the 6.3 story until a couple of weeks after because it just didn't seem like it would amount to much (and it didn't)

[Teraq]

The story was pretty good up until the time travel stuff, in my opinion. Time travel in stories like this always end up being full of plot holes and contrivances and the same proved true here.

Doesn't help that they did the time travel like… well… like this. But they did it like that the last time. Even though the very first time it was brought up in a raid storyline it was done like this – and at the time I thought Who cares? it was just a raid storyline on the side, fated to be irrelevant. Neat that he was the cat I guess huh.

But you know, yeah. I seriously, 100% thought we were done with time travel in Shadowbringers, because… I thought that was the whole point of the Twinning. …wasn't it?? I haven't read the lore on it in a lonnnnnng while, but it was my impression that future Ironworks planned for it to happen and for us to go destroy the Tycoon, and I had assumed that the Tycoon was what gave the Tower its time travel functionality in the first place.

I also feel like split-timeline time travel has less overbearing impact on a story. It happened like that in our timeline, but we know the original timeline still exists somewhere, and it's unlikely it will affect the story going forward. Intrinsically, this sort of AU story is about defying Fate™… unlike the time loop type of time travel, which is depressingly fatalistic when you happen to be the guys destined to be snuffed out. And the fact that the ShB time travel very much seemed to be a one-off thing that couldn't be feasibly replicated saved it from being an opened can of worms.

And then… yeah.

Baffling, honestly.

[redheadturk]

Hmm...
The story was pretty good up until the time travel stuff, in my opinion. Time travel in stories like this always end up being full of plot holes and contrivances and the same proved true here. I especially disliked that the big bad was suddenly introduced half way and then defeated at the end. Felt very anti-climatic for the supposed end of the Ascian arc or whatever.

Though the end fight with Zenos was pretty rad.

At this point I'm really only subscribed to use the game as a chatroom. Heck I didn't even do the 6.3 story until a couple of weeks after because it just didn't seem like it would amount to much (and it didn't)

This. Time loops suck balls. It only worked in the Alexander raids because it was self contained. To intentionally merc your own people to preserve a time loop? Pretty frickin' stupid.

[Striker44]

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 quests in the relic storylines themselves have usually been of a serious nature, but all of the conversations surrounding them have been straight-up humor. The HW ones, for example, almost every quest end/beginning was some kind of Gerolt and that other lad we worked with getting frustrated with each other in a way that we as the observer were intended to find amusing. We haven't really seen much at all of the actual quests in the new EW storyline yet.

[AwesomeJr44]

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!

Careful, if you point out how Aveyond is held to a different standard than everyone else, you'll be called a simp for it.

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.

I still maintain that the optimal way to order the expansions would have been: ARR -> HW -> SB -> Cancelled Garlemald Expansion -> SHB -> EW, and I think if they started Bozja in said Garlemald expansion, they could have continued it in SHB and it would have had the time to be properly wrapped up instead of having to be 'finished' through exposition in the field notes.

This. Time loops suck balls. It only worked in the Alexander raids because it was self contained. To intentionally merc your own people to preserve a time loop? Pretty frickin' stupid.

Time travel in stories is nearly always bad, regardless of what type of time travel it is. It's just too hard of a topic to write well, and most people who attempt it fail. Time loops still are one of the worst forms of it though.

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.

You're ignoring literally everyone else who does this. If one person's opinion is worthless, then why is everyone else's opinions worth hearing?

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

And it wasn't a good way of telling the ending.

It does kind of bug me a little that we're essentially being denied both a trial storyline and a relic storyline due to them now being baked into the MSQ and Hildibrand respectively.

I think that having trials in the MSQ patch quests is a good idea... if we're getting something worthwhile in exchange for the missing trial storyline. Tataru's Grand Waste of Time isn't cutting it. As for Hildibrand, it should never have been tied to the relics.

[MikkoAkure]

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.

Bozja ended in patch 5.55. Were they supposed to keep going and invent x.6 patch just to satisfy you?

Bozja ends with Bozja being liberated. There's literally nothing more to do in Bozja with it being in the last patch of ShB and there wasn't any room to add more if there was any. Matsuno even said the Bozja part is finished.

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.

We already know some of the behind the scenes.

Yoshi-P and Matsuno said in an interview that the field notes weren't written in a panic and that was the intention. What probably wasn't the intention was not continuing the story. But from what Matsuno has said on twitter and in the interview, it seems that a combination of factors from the storyline not being well liked in Japan (the vague part we don't know), covid, and the idea that players are exhausted of war stories led to the story being left on "to be continued". Matsuno doesn't want a war of liberation arc for Dalmasca so we're not going to get it.

They've already said what the story would be like if they come back to it, and it would be similar to the first part of Bozja with a solo-playthrough and a trial.

[Midareyukki]

Bozja ended in patch 5.55. Were they supposed to keep going and invent x.6 patch just to satisfy you?

Bozja ends with Bozja being liberated. There's literally nothing more to do in Bozja with it being in the last patch of ShB and there wasn't any room to add more if there was any. Matsuno even said the Bozja part is finished.

In fairness, the plotline of Bozja continues in the Field Notes. It does not end in the cutscenes. The arc does, but the story doesn't.

Pagaga and Lyon walk around.
No word on Clarricie afaik.
Sicinius is scott free after Lyon broke him out of Dalmasca.
Gabranth "dies" but gets transplanted onto a clone. To the public, the death is staged as Lyon having murdered him.
Zero consequences for pretty much everyone that wasn't Menenius.

All of those characters save for Gabranth got introduced in Bozja proper and had a major role there. Gabranth was introduced in the preceeding arc, the Ivalice Raids, but has more development in Bozja than he ever does in Ivalice.

And right now it's left open-ended, with Gabranth musing on how he expected Bajsaljen to make the Bozjan constitution in the same vein as the Garlean rule and his own ideals (with maybe a lot less murder), and being seen walking around in Dalmasca despite being considered dead.

There's no closure due to that. They did say that if they ever came back to this story, it'd feature Dalmasca, however.

[Atelier-Bagur]

In fairness, the plotline of Bozja continues in the Field Notes. It does not end in the cutscenes. The arc does, but the story doesn't.

Pagaga and Lyon walk around.
No word on Clarricie afaik.
Sicinius is scott free after Lyon broke him out of Dalmasca.
Gabranth "dies" but gets transplanted onto a clone. To the public, the death is staged as Lyon having murdered him.
Zero consequences for pretty much everyone that wasn't Menenius.

All of those characters save for Gabranth got introduced in Bozja proper and had a major role there. Gabranth was introduced in the preceeding arc, the Ivalice Raids, but has more development in Bozja than he ever does in Ivalice.

And right now it's left open-ended, with Gabranth musing on how he expected Bajsaljen to make the Bozjan constitution in the same vein as the Garlean rule and his own ideals (with maybe a lot less murder), and being seen walking around in Dalmasca despite being considered dead.

There's no closure due to that. They did say that if they ever came back to this story, it'd feature Dalmasca, however.

and honestly they should hold on to that sorta not sorta promise. It really sucks how Bozja ended prematurely

[Midareyukki]

and honestly they should hold on to that sorta not sorta promise. It really sucks how Bozja ended prematurely

Likely happened due to the Pandemic :T We know they intended for at least one more instance, so some stuff had to be cut back. How much of it actually was and how much of it got relegated to the Field Notes we don't know, of course.

I just wonder about that weird hole left with Gabranth's future. Because it's okay if they leave it at that imo... but they do point out that Gabranth is being spotted around in Dalmasca. Is he a free man? Is he plotting something?

That and my only personal wish is bringing justice against Sicinius, but that in itself really would require a fair bit "more" out of them.

Regardless o: Whether they will or won't come back to this story and set it in Dalmasca, they did say it wouldn't be anywhere during 6.0. So we shouldn't be expecting anything further in this cycle.