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

[Striker44]

Considering they cut an entire expansion and still tried to tell both expansions worth of story in one, I wouldn't exactly call the writers smart lol

I wouldn't call them stupid, either, just practical and realistic. The complaints some people make on here are very naive/immature, as in expecting a video game series to progress for 5 expansions over 10 years without any continuity issues whatsoever. Having a retcon somewhere along the line is just called normal and human, but some people act as if it's the end of the world.

Frankly, just taking a quick spin through YT and seeing the hundreds of people posting about how much they've enjoyed the game and the story in EW - I'd say the writers must be rather smart indeed.

[AwesomeJr44]

I wouldn't call them stupid, either, just practical and realistic.

If the writers were practical or realistic, the story would have been drastically different and probably far better.

Frankly, just taking a quick spin through YT and seeing the hundreds of people posting about how much they've enjoyed the game and the story in EW - I'd say the writers must be rather smart indeed.

It's not a Striker post without a mention of his fake majoritah. The majoritah does seem to be getting smaller though. Apparently now it's only 'hundreds'.

[Kazhar]

Maybe one day Striker will learn about how the YouTube algorithm works.

[Graeham]

Maybe one day Striker will learn about how the YouTube algorithm works.

Guild it has master the vTuber algorithm with new critical miss series. Is the skill of being ratioed. By power of 2head take will guild take social media world by the storm of laughter. Is the force of the reckoning. They think it memeing but we still dreaming. By epic fail we achieve the greatness. In the name of the Princess Svelte Lana.

[BRVV]

Frankly, just taking a quick spin through YT and seeing the hundreds of people posting about how much they've enjoyed the game and the story in EW - I'd say the writers must be rather smart indeed.

If you take all the YT algorithm surfers as face value you would think EW was the most depressing story ever with all those (fake) tears

[ReynTime]

Can someone explain why G'raha needed to carry an aetheric analyzer? I thought that was what the goggles every scion carries were for.

[Vyrerus]

Can someone explain why G'raha needed to carry an aetheric analyzer? I thought that was what the goggles every scion carries were for.

Something something, the goggles let you observe it. Something something, the aetheric analyzer records it. Something something possible retcon. Something something, weren't you blown away by how cute it was that Catboi Sage Deluxe had to lug around something oh so heavy even though he knows incredibly powerful levitation magic?

[jameseoakes]

Can someone explain why G'raha needed to carry an aetheric analyzer? I thought that was what the goggles every scion carries were for.

To make a comic relief scene, as that seemed to be the only reason. The it made no sense for him not to be using a pack animal to help carry the equipment so the scene just seemed to be there to make him look goofy for comic relief

[Liam_Harper]

Can someone explain why G'raha needed to carry an aetheric analyzer? I thought that was what the goggles every scion carries were for.

[Teraq]

I am in the minority, but I hated Elpis. I'll use it to segue into your statement "Endwalker was popular and a success". I'm just going to be blunt, but I have been working in a specific environment that has brought my attention that people's comprehension levels are absolutely abysmal and it's embarrassing. People do not read. People do not have patience. People do not give an f-bomber plane about anything beyond surface level. People just want their hand held because it's easier. […]
I'm not going to say my comprehension levels are great. People liked endwalker because they saw a pretty game with great music and a neat story. They're not going to look into it much more than that. I don't need my hand held for the story, I don't need it held for the lore, and I don't want it held for the combat.

Absolutely this. I don't deny there are lore people who actually pay attention and still somehow love Endwalker, more power to them, but it honestly just seems the vast majority does not care this much and is just in it for a fairly enjoyable, "don't think too hard about this" romp, like most blockbuster movies are. Most people don't care to dissect a story and point out every little plot hole. It's the irony with FFXIV: it's touted as this amazing story, but at the same time, people will chide you for analyzing it too closely. "It's just a video game!". Yeah, it's just another media to tell a story. This does not mean it has to be subpar and not stand up to scrutiny.

That is when people are not giving you the ol' "Have we played the same game? / Pay attention to the cutscenes sweetie…" while in the same breath spouting headcanon like "Ancients were going to keep sacrificing lesser humans to their blood god" like it's the truth. Christ, dude. I've been obsessing over Ascians and Ancients for the past three years. I have this big folder of collected fan art right here. I can recite every Convocation seat and the color of their associated crystal in the order of the zodiac. I've done every side quest and spoken to every single NPC I could in Amaurot and Elpis, sometimes in multiple languages. If only I had never cared enough to pay this amount of attention. I truly, truly wish I hadn't.

This argument is especially bad when it's followed by the person regurgitating Endwalker's bad plot and aesop at me. Yeah. I got it the first time around when I suffered through it, because I happen to have a functioning brain. You repeating this stupid story but embellishing it with personal insults is not exactly making its case any better. People will just reply to criticism of Venat with a link to her martyr-o-vision cutscene, as if they think they are making a point that is completely new to me.



Here it is: Endwalker having all the subtlety of a brick the writer is throwing directly at your face, featuring everyone's favorite race. To be fair you must have a very high IQ to understand…

All in all, I cannot figure out what precise amount of attention I had to give Endwalker to enjoy it. I can only suppose that paying simultaneously too little and too much attention works exactly the same as the logic that the Ancients were both too perfect to live (the sheer gall of them to have been born with biological immortality and creation magics that instantly make their society post-scarcity!) and too flawed to be brought back: the answer is You Are Wrong.

Elpis was a frustrating mess for me for the bad dialogue and the pointlessness of conversations. To use an example, the scene where Hades is teaching the critter to fly and Hythlo would not shut up. Look, hes a great person. Look at him helping! I am not joking in that Elpis helped people realize that Hades wasn't always a big meanie pants. I mean, I thought that was obvious in Shadowbringers. That he was a normal person until 12k years of suffering.

You are entirely right, of course. However, I would posit that the subtle brick being thrown directly at the player's face is exactly what most of this player base needs. This reminds me of that post-5.3 interview where Yoshida says they made the incredibly unsubtle parallel between G'raha and Elidibus with that one line explicitly so players could better understand Elidibus through G'raha. I honestly found that insulting. Who even needed that to empathize with Elidibus??

YoshiP knows his audience, I suppose. Even as Pandaemonium bashes you over the head that the guy was nothing but the most precious of sweethearts (which was already made plainly obvious in 5.3 and its accompanying short story), you'll still find people wishing they could be hostile to Themis in dialogue options, because I guess they enjoy roleplaying their WoL as a moron with a grudge and no grasp of time and logic. Even though everyone and everything is telling them the Unsundered have been warped by trauma and 12k years of suffering and loneliness. Glad these people got the option to accuse Lahabrea of things he did literally twelve thousand years into the future, though. Gotta throw the Minority Report pre-crime people a bone, after all.

Yet, the worst part of Endwalker is Yoshida's attitude toward it. Him not knowing people cared about the lore so much. I'm sorry, but he doesn't have an excuse to not understand. Does he just forget about all the lore QandA? Is the game not marketed for its story? Do you not have lore books? A major complaint people had about WoW was the lore being retconned. This and Yoshida clearly wanting to be done with the story so he can "move on" to other stories.

Happy anniversary to this Q&A, by the way. The nail in the coffin of 6.0.

I particularly love that this was his immediate response to a question about Ascians in particular. It's like he's surprised people even care about them when they aren't named Emet-Selch.

It comes across as the polite way to say "wow, you guys care so much more about Ascians than I ever did!". I know, man. I know. I've played through Endwalker. I know you don't care about Ascians, you don't have to say it out loud.

And even Emet he expresses confusion about, sometimes bordering on resentment it seems, when he draws a false equivalence between him and Hermes and Venat in the very same Q&A, asking why people would resent Venat and Hermes but not Emet. This man truly, absolutely does not get it.

(And in case you were wondering, yes, of course I'm still mad about the obvious lion mask apparently not being Fandaniel's. I still refuse to accept YoshiP's answer. This is stupid. It's a lion, not a goat! At least PRETEND it was big brain foreshadowing for a main antagonist instead of "uhhhh random lol")