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

[BRVV]

Sadly this is how the community treats the expansion where we aren't a glorified all good "hero" like in a show for toddlers:



This destroys almost all my hope i will enjoy any little bit of the 7.0 story

[Vyrerus]

LOL. You didn't get April fooled, promised! And I also didn't exactly forget this thread! But real life happened and then I didn't manage to read much of the thread beyond what I did previously. And then I got into Eureka *ahem*. I will see if I can get back to reading the thread lol.



Yeah! It was actually pretty nice to not be a cosmic savior or whatever.

*cracks whip*

Read faster, mald with us!

[Thenightvortex]

Phttps://youtu.be/VhJ3dSU6gXU

Found a pretty good video on Venat in the wild. While it’s only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to problems with her writing, I think it’s a nice summary which also touches on points that are often ignored, like her being the one behind the ascians.

[DevonEllwood]

This write up is now old. But because of the situation with AT&T and I can't play without constant rubberbanding, I don't care anymore. Posting it anyway. I read at work, and just write stuff up in another document and post it when I feel like when I get home. I feel like posting it now because I've been pretty irritated at the situation, more so that there has only been a response on twitter.

This will just be a stream of though regarding the new additions
Relic:
I like the Hildibrand stuff, so I have no complaints about the story itself. My complaint is that...I'm not sure why people are surprised they doubled down on using the tomestones. They have already been cutting corners. They combined the relic story into the Hildibrand stuff and also combined the trial quests we would have gotten into the MSQ. Another reason I don't think Zero will last is because I feel this story was originally meant to be separate. Yes, it might be "fine" now, but I'm really hoping this is not going to be the norm. Just more cutting corners.

beast tribe:
I was going to give the new beast tribe an honest chance. I was two days behind because of my 12 hour days so I didn't have time to start it after reset.When I did start it I was mentally exhausted from work and I just wanted to get it done. I tried to just skim dialogue and follow along and I guess it's about the loporrits being bored and them finding other things to do. I usually give the beast tribes a lot of attention and even read quest dialogue, but I just decided to skip the first two (three?) quest scenes. I watched the last two or three and it turned out to be okay I guess? The main problem I have with this one is that these quests are really regional quests. They involve other groups and not just the tribe themselves. It just seemed really dull to just have the loporrits and no one else. I would have really liked them interacting with the Sharlyans to set some things up, or something. I really would have much preferred the trolls over the loporits to have tribe quests.

I did want to go over the story itself and its message. It was already done in endwalker msq and I don't think it needed to be done again to this extent. The loporrits being bored and trying to find a purpose and becoming stagnant is just the same people claimed the ancients were. The loporits have creation magic, they live on the moon away from dangers, they don't have to do anything for food or survival, yet for some reason it's okay here? I'm reminded of the dialogue by cookingway being that we shouldn't advance because we would always want more, just be happy with what you have. I don't know if this was something lost in localization but I thought endwalker was stating stagnation is bad. Or is that just what people are saying? I don't know anymore. Endwalker wants to preach these things and half of them contradict each other. The whole idea of "finding a purpose to keep living" is weirdly dehumanizing to me. Isn't just wanting to live enough? Is this some societal niche for the individual I'm too dumb to understand? Some of the loporrits were resulting to harming themselves. With endwalkers context and the context of the loporrits no longer having a purpose, it's kind of disturbing.

People compare the lopporits to the moogles and say they're no different, we still get just as much time with them. The difference with the moogles it is implied in game that they're annoying! The approach to them is that characters do express irritation toward them. With the lopporits, everyone is extremely gentle with them. No one gets mad at them. I think only the player character has the opportunity to express irritation and it's not as extreme as with the moogles.

Omega quest?:
It's been a bit since I've done this one, but I did it a week or two ago. I guess I didn't like it as much as everyone else. The only standout moment I can think of is Omega's question to the player and the description of each character he asks about. I don't agree with how they're presented. Again, it's been a while since I've done this quest so please correct me if I'm wrong. Omega states that Hermes put mankind in a position to force to better themselves. That is very debatable. This comes to "this version of humanity is better than this one" and I really do not want to get into that because I feel that entire thinking is just bad. Hermes's intention was out of spite. He introduced the danger not for humanity to better itself but to end them. Whether the result is "a better humanity" or not is not one I want to think about. On Venat giving mankind a way to survive I guess refers to the moon being a spaceship? It completely glosses over the fact that the sundering was completely unnecessary. Hades would not have existed as an ascian if it were not for either of them. I really wish this dialogue was devoid of the player character apparently "speaking fondly" of any of them. I really wish it was just straight facts about what the robot thought.

I guess they tried.

role quests I never did:
Still haven't done them. I watched a general summary on them and the ones I would have done first, tank and healer (because these are the classes I play most), would have irritated me into not doing the rest.
Tank, we are still going to let innocent people die because elementals lol. Healer, hey maybe Fordola can now be free? How about no? I love Fordola as a character but I praise stormblood for how they dealt with a still living enemy. Jail, and kept alive because she's useful. Apparently with the final role quest she gets to walk around without a restraining device. I am getting really tired of Endwalker messing up anything good that the other expansions created. How about we let Yuyuhase and that Laurentis guy walk free too if they haven't been executed? Any "children of Alamigo" we have, like murderers, do they get to go free too? Just because they had a tortured childhood? It's the same with Gaius. I like him as a character but put him in jail, he's a war criminal. Fordola killed people right in front of the player character.

I'm not asking for the writing to be perfect. I asking for it to not be hypocritical at every turn. The Gridanias still bending to the will of the elementals despite them having no power over the populace anymore is stupid.

I want to do the role quests to get more context, but I really don't want to get any more irritated at the writing than I already am. I don't know who directed or supervised 5.0 onward but they're making me not want to even continue with the story anymore. I know that enemies become friends thing is a trope, I get that. But when the previous expansions had never previously leaned that far into this.

There's a certain FFXIV podcast I listen to while doing other things and I've been catching up on episodes. I knew of Ishikawa stepping down from lead writer but also apparently Oda did too? I am not willing to cry conspiracy theory, but from all I've heard it sounds like someone was interfering with the writing process. The new guy taking over the next expansion has me potentially hopefully since he'd doing Pandemonium, but it all depends on how it ends.

[Reap00]

818 pages on the topic. Good to see people are so passionate about the phenomenal XIV story. Keep at it folks!

[VelKallor]

A pity that as of late every opportunity to depower and reset the WoL's power level has been squandered, not to mention we still carry around the accursed Azem stone whose all but lost its wow factor due to how repeatedly overused its been.

Why would we do that? What possible reason would we have to do that? Who wants a weaker hero?

You make no sense.

[Renalt]

Sadly this is how the community treats the expansion where we aren't a glorified all good "hero" like in a show for toddlers:



This destroys almost all my hope i will enjoy any little bit of the 7.0 story

I knew there was a reason Stormblood was my favorite.

[Arkdra]

Why would we do that? What possible reason would we have to do that? Who wants a weaker hero?

You make no sense.

The stakes of cosmic power level shit is just different and some people don't like that kind of stuff. There's a big difference in expectations once you start dealing with god level powers and saving the universe vs. fighting some dudes and saving a village. For my money, I definitely prefer more generally grounded stories, they feel more personal. But I don't mind the high power stuff, just not my preference.

[Absurdity]

Why would we do that? What possible reason would we have to do that? Who wants a weaker hero?

You make no sense.

Not really that complicated, because it destroys all stakes that the story could have.

In Endwalker we defeated what was basically the devil, then defeated god and went on to use the power of friendship to defeat entropy.

What could they even throw at us with our current power level that could be remotely threatening?

[RyuDragnier]

Not really that complicated, because it destroys all stakes that the story could have.

In Endwalker we defeated what was basically the devil, then defeated god and went on to use the power of friendship to defeat entropy.

What could they even throw at us with our current power level that could be remotely threatening?

A person who can body swap. Seriously, imagine an expansion for 8.0 starting with a guy STEALING our body (like In From the Cold), forcing us to basically have to pull an Ascian and take control of a dead person's body for an entire zone. By the end, we've essentially warped the corpse into being similar to our body, but the guy running around in our original body has insane power due to our many adventures. So we're forced to fight the most dangerous force on Etheirys for a few expansions...ourself.