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

[Turtledeluxe]

WoL(Meteor) is just the Scions prize fighter. Only seen as a hero or weapon/tool they can use to solve all their problems. Only characters that saw WoL as a adventurer/person are either dead or presumed dead. Which were Haurchefant Greystone and Zenos Galvus. All other big names see the WoL as Hero First and Adventurer/Person second.

If they wanted to expand the WoL beyond the Scions they would have done so across multiple expansions where the WoL is there during these big events but the main character of the expansion is a new NPC.

WoL amounts to little more then the Scion's Enforcer. The Scions serve as the body while you serve as both their Sword and Shield.

You got side stories with little to no Scion involvement but even then the WoL is just taking orders from questgivers.

Wow aren't you so cool calling out the typical MMO format for MC interaction.

This thread continues to be a joke even when it has been derailed by random "um achktually the characters are just x when you really think about it" keyboard authors.

[EgilTheStressedMage]

That boot flavored ice cream is really popular I see.

[Theodric]

At any rate, I figure it's worth posting another invite to the Discord server that formed around this thread since it's a good way to keep in touch with those who invest in the game's story but who have since quit or are taking a break:

https://discord.gg/4Ea8Rd4X

[Raoabolic]

By the way I can't put any faith in the current English localization manager when she can't even pronounce Bozja right, even right after Yoshida himself said it a few seconds before her translation.

Eh, that's just localizers in general now a days. Personally, i'm still waiting for them to fix the lelumanati to blueblood like the JP script.

[Vyrerus]

For all its faults, I can't remember disliking any of the voice acting in Endwalker. Man, are they committed to sacrificing Dawntrail to make EW look better by comparison? :/ I need to go to bed. Giving this too much thought.

[MagiusNecros]

When they split the staff to make FF16 the scenario writing took a nosedive. Dunno what happened to the writing and pacing after the fantastic job they did in Shadowbringers but it's pretty mediocre in comparison. I quit playing for 5 or 6 months because post EW launch was so boring I just stopped caring. Only resubbed to accrue gear for Pictomancer in advance.

I don't think the Voice Acting in EW sucked at all. The writing and pacing was just not good.

[Theodric]

It's by design, I suspect. They now appear to be writing not for those who actually took the time to pay attention to every little bit of lore but the most basic, surface level takes that shy away from nuance and allow for the game to trend on social media.

If I wanted to get spicy I could also also point out how the consistency and tone of the writing took a nosedive right around the same time that the development team ceased pretending that they weren't just catering almost exclusively to the players who heavily alter the game files, proudly upload screenshots of doing as much and who basically treat it not as Final Fantasy XIV but some creepy Second Life sequel instead.

I do not think the game was ever the deepest story ever, mind you - though it gripped my attention the most in Shadowbringers due to how it chose to handle the Amaurot reveal. Endwalker then attempting to excuse genocide so long as the pretty mother goddess figure is the one conducting it simply made me roll my eyes as it retroactively lessened the previous expansion's highest moments.

[Supersnow845]

My problem with the writing these days is coming from the fact that square utterly refuses to write in side content lore into the MSQ because they are afraid that people won’t understand if they only do the MSQ

Big examples of this were Gaia in 5.5 and the entire void crew from the role quests in the void storyline

People are actively being punished for doing side quests with worse lore because the justifications for why they don’t include these characters and lore pieces is paper thin and doesn’t even make sense half the time

Start including side content as you would expect it to appear and if people don’t want to do it they should just look up who said character is, it shouldn’t be the other way around

[ReynTime]

They do alright with smaller self contained stories and sidequests. I just don't trust the current team with high stakes plots anymore. So the fact they no longer bother with adding proper job quest scripts is pretty disappointing to me.
Again the sooner they move on from Endwalker's threads, the better. They've done enough sloppy patchwork with all the lore that wasn't even theirs to begin with.

[Theodric]

It's one of the most frustrating elements of the game as a former lore enthusiast. When I was more deeply invested in the setting I would take the time to do every side quest and even pay attention to the little scraps of lore that you would see in FATE's and item descriptions. It was my belief that it would all ultimately tie together as something consistent.

I think a lot of the side content was actually pretty great and it's a shame so little of it ended up being acknowledged in the MSQ's even when and where it would make sense. One of the most jarring aspects to me was the fate that befell Regula van Hydrus. It's a pretty big deal for a high ranking soldier to put aside differences with the protagonists and sacrifice himself in order to protect one of them. Especially when his dying words directly referenced his best friend, the Emperor of Garlemald himself. Though by the time a confrontation with Varis zos Galvus came about there was no option to bring up Regula even in passing.

I never expected the story to be particularly deep, granted, though the only reason I bothered to invest in it in the first place was due to the high praise Yoshi-P was giving the Ivalice games. I assumed, then, that a similar level of maturity and tact was to be in store for us rather than just surface level references.

Perhaps it was originally the intention before the game was hijacked by the venue and modbeast crowd. The game is certainly catering to them more and more blatantly these days, both in terms of emotes, housing furniture and a lack of meaningful stakes for characters who seem to exist as little more than body pillows who gush over how amazing the player character supposedly is. Alongside the development team doing stuff like making sure that food is animated to look as realistic as possible and beats of sweat drip down Estinien's shirtless form even as it desperately tried to avoid showing the confrontation between Hydaelyn and Zodiark in its raw, unfiltered form.

It is what it is, I suppose. I don't expect much more from this game in the future other than increasingly tone deaf writing, overly preachy and hypocritical protagonists and bizarre Hildibrand style emotes. I get my fix from other games these days and intend to let my subscription lapse again very soon.

A lot of my disgust for the game in its current form stems from matters unrelated to the story, at any rate. The horrific treatment of Susan Calloway being a prime example. I predict that the community will continue to tear itself apart between now and Dawntrail since that's almost a year without any fresh content other than a minor crossover event scheduled for April.