Can 7.0 focus on a storyline without the philosophizing

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

I swear, a ton of you people sound like you did not even pay attention to the EW story lol, these forums never disappoint with the hot takes.

I made a Hot Take?
Im confused lol

[kpxmanifesto]

The philosophy they tried to portray in 6.0 EW, for me personally, fell really flat. Especially since we saved universe without any sacrifice, and without any real stakes. It all felt staged

Oh yeah, all those fake death scenes on UT. What inspirational cutscenes I guess, lol.

I think the game would have been better served by consistency. For years it was extremely and obsessively preachy when it came to matters such as genocide, insisting that it was a line in the sand that could never be crossed even if the reasons for indulging such an act happened to be seen as an 'impossible choice' or 'deeply sympathetic'. Endwalker swings around and suddenly when the pretty mother goddess reveals that she deliberately inflicted genocide upon her own people for a situation she, herself, helped escalate through inaction and treachery and suddenly it's 'regrettable, but necessary'.

The consistency bit is what confused me the most. The story as a whole I would've found much better if they ditched Venat's philosophical reasons for sundering the ancients and just stuck with the original reason from ShB where a colossal battle between Zodiark and Hydaelyn sundered everyone.

To make that change so suddenly kind of threw me off. It's like the writer, instead of opting to write a story that was more consistent with the plot from ShB, decided they wanted to try to impress the audience by inserting some other preachy and sanctimonious philosophical reason into it (“No more shall man have wings to bear him to paradise,") but it just came off as ludicrous and unnecessary. It reminded me of this pseudo-intellectual kid at high school/college who would always try to impress people and appear sophisticated by sharing their philosophical takes and outlooks on life, but in reality they barely had a surface-level knowledge of the topics they tried to lecture people about. That's what EW MSQ's writing reminded me of.

You know, if you don't like someone, you can just block them and don't engage with them, it's that simple.

They'll never block Gaius. They need to leave him unblocked to either A: argue with him, or B: report his posts to the mods, and they can't do either of those without being able to read his posts.

[Eorzean_username]

Anyone can say that they embrace humanity's flaws and failures if people always get inspired by them and are nice to them - and if they do not, they almost always will after two quests of convincing with good deeds. Anyone can want to fight on if they never failed.

I was convinced that when the "grumpy Garlean" in 6.40 MSQ wandered off into the city, it was going to be some fake-out heroic moment, and we'd find him dead or something, and have to confront the consequences of infighting, etc. Because it couldn't possibly be going down as obvious and banal a path as it seemed, right?

Nope.

It really was just, "Oh I bumped into a robot, but you killed the robot, I'm sorry I was mean to you, I've changed my political views completely, let's stop obstructing your plot device".

Why did it even need to happen?

Why am I even here, at this point?

You could just summarise this in a pop-up text and I would feel like my time was better spent.

[DiaDeem]

From all your posts, it's becoming clear to me that you really haven't played much Final Fantasy at all.

From your strange fixation on a non existent rule of having every primal ever in every game, to you seemingly being surprised at the themes that actually have been in most FF games, I don't think you really know what you're talking about.

From the grim story the characters face in II and Cecil's conflicts in IV, to the bounce back from VI's heroes and the fact that VII was made as a way to deal with death and loss, and from X's quest leading to death and XIII's characters dealing with the concept of their mortality through a forced focus, and basically every other plot in the series I didn't just paraphrased, Final Fantasy has always been about comradery, overcoming impossible odds through it, the meaning of living and the conflicts that come with it.

These themes were just picked up by CBUIII, and regardless of how well they've been executed each time, they've been at the core of Final Fantasy story telling for over 35 years.
Ishikawa wrote Shadowbringers and Endwalker. FFXVI was written by Kazutoyo Maehiro. XIV was directed by Yoshida, but XVI was directed by Hiroshi Takai abd Maehiro himself. The creative heads are different for each game. The themes remain as they did in the times of Hironobu Sakaguchi, Yoshinori Kitase, Kazushige Nojima and Testsuya Nomura, just to name a few.

This means that only one of the following three options justifies this kind of a post:
1.- You haven't ever really played this series at all and are just realizing these are common themes in it.
2.- You did play a few games, but the core themes just flew over your head because of lack of attention or capacity to understand them.
3.- You have played FF and know these themes are in the series, and thus you're making this post conciously in bad faith to pick a bone with CBUIII for some reason.

I don't know which one of the three is worse, but none of the posts you've ever made has made much sense.

[TheDecay]

I was convinced that when the "grumpy Garlean" in 6.40 MSQ wandered off into the city, it was going to be some fake-out heroic moment, and we'd find him dead or something, and have to confront the consequences of infighting, etc. Because it couldn't possibly be going down as obvious and banal a path as it seemed, right?

Nope.

It really was just, "Oh I bumped into a robot, but you killed the robot, I'm sorry I was mean to you, I've changed my political views completely, let's stop obstructing your plot device".

Why did it even need to happen?

Why am I even here, at this point?

You could just summarise this in a pop-up text and I would feel like my time was better spent.

Exactly. This is another big issue. People just don't behave like that realistically. People are stubborn and it can take a long time to convince them of something. Sometimes, in trying to convince them of something they might even retaliate.

But this game almost never shows that these days. The dev team has shown flawed characters (Alphinaud) and what that flaw wrought (2.55), but I wonder why we never see it anymore.

[Lieri]

Pray return to world of warcraft. No lectures here just dwagons and titans.

[TheDecay]

From all your posts, it's becoming clear to me that you really haven't played much Final Fantasy at all.

From your strange fixation on a non existent rule of having every primal ever in every game, to you seemingly being surprised at the themes that actually have been in most FF games, I don't think you really know what you're talking about.

From the grim story the characters face in II and Cecil's conflicts in IV, to the bounce back from VI's heroes and the fact that VII was made as a way to deal with death and loss, and from X's quest leading to death and XIII's characters dealing with the concept of their mortality through a forced focus, and basically every other plot in the series I didn't just paraphrased, Final Fantasy has always been about comradery, overcoming impossible odds through it, the meaning of living and the conflicts that come with it.

These themes were just picked up by CBUIII, and regardless of how well they've been executed each time, they've been at the core of Final Fantasy story telling for over 35 years.
Ishikawa wrote Shadowbringers and Endwalker. FFXVI was written by Kazutoyo Maehiro. XIV was directed by Yoshida, but XVI was directed by Hiroshi Takai abd Maehiro himself. The creative heads are different for each game. The themes remain as they did in the times of Hironobu Sakaguchi, Yoshinori Kitase, Kazushige Nojima and Testsuya Nomura, just to name a few.

This means that only one of the following three options justifies this kind of a post:
1.- You haven't ever really played this series at all and are just realizing these are common themes in it.
2.- You did play a few games, but the core themes just flew over your head because of lack of attention or capacity to understand them.
3.- You have played FF and know these themes are in the series, and thus you're making this post conciously in bad faith to pick a bone with CBUIII for some reason.

I don't know which one of the three is worse, but none of the posts you've ever made has made much sense.

The themes in themselves are fine, but it is the constant repetition and unbelievable depiction of humans wrestling with that philosophy that is the problem. Again, doing it once or twice is fine, like in a single-player RPG. However, doing it again and again with no grace is the problem.

As with your snide remark on Leviathan, your dissent has already been addressed in that thread, before you even posted there. Leviathan is in the lore of FF16. The lack of appearance means that there is material for them to use for a DLC. Your dissent only makes sense if Leviathan is not in the lore at all in the first place.

[TheDecay]

I think the reason for it is because this is what Final Fantasy games often try to do. Through their adventure they enter doubts and depressions and question the meaning of life and what they are fighting for, and Yoshi-P wanted to take that from the Final Fantasy games and do it in all this game's expansions as well.

Apparently EW resonated a lot with people suffering from depression who had not benefitted from any other sort of therapies, so it was a good thing for that reason alone.

The expansions can do this sort of thing whilst still having proper character development because it happened in some of the old final fantasy games. If they tackle depression, they can just do it in a way where the depression affects a particular character such as Thancred and watching him go through this whole period of depression and then come out of it and overcome the last boss with you.

That is also a big problem. None of the main cast is suffering which makes the whole ordeal feel quite unrelated to us.

[Xeronia]

Pray return to world of warcraft. No lectures here just dwagons and titans.

So is this the "go play other games" I keep hearing? I mean don't get me wrong I did pick up WoW on sale an re-subbed to it but you can still want better from a product especially one prided on the story as highly as 14 is and it seems clear to me that Endwalker does have a ton of faults on the rather shallow or incorrectly shown messaging as evidenced by the several times this comes up on the forums. Again I can see why people liked Endwalker's story but I also can look and see the arguments of "You know when you think of it this is kinda messed up ain't it?".

Funny enough one thing without spoilers I liked about 16 was the ending section and Clive embodying a lot of what I felt Endwalker needed for me to care.

[Jojoya]

It's hard to write an interesting story that's not going to have some philosophical point involved, and there will always be those who go searching for it then pointing it out to everyone around them.

I can agree it would be nice if they would at least vary up the theme a bit more. The "oh you were right, I was bad, I will be better from now on" does get a bit tedious with repetition though it doesn't bother me that much as long as I'm enjoying the story overall.

Is this ragebait? LOL
That's not a valid feedback. You can't just demand a game developer what they should and should not go creative-wise. It's their story to tell.

That kind of storytelling you are describing has always been a signature of the Final Fantasy main titles. Character development doesn't always have to be drastic to be interesting or nuanced. But yea, you are entitled to your wrong opinion.

If you want other styles or stories, there are plenty of other options outside of XIV.

It is valid feedback.

I don't see any demand language being used by the OP. I do see request language being used.

No need to get on the OP's case over this.

I swear, a ton of you people sound like you did not even pay attention to the EW story lol, these forums never disappoint with the hot takes.

Or people did pay attention to the story and got something different out of it because their life experience is different from yours.

One thing I've always hated about literature discussion is the "experts" insist there is only one correct interpretation for a piece of work even when the author states things are left open for the reader to interpret as they wish.