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

[SolemnDream]

Part 1:

925 pages, and this thing is still open. And I am here for it. I read the first 150 pages before responding.

I am a person who is pretty forgiving about a lot of plot elements. Time travel. Dropped Ascians and Ascian plans. Some inconsistency. People came in here and taught me how much of a mess those things were, and how much of a mess Hydaelyn was. I appreciate that. I want to give my own perspective though.

I finished Endwalker story only a month ago and I'm going to be very negative today.

After loving Shadowbringers and only really having a problem with the final cutscenes and Ran'jit, Endwalker is an icon for a lot of what I hate about most Japanese pop/anime writing. It's nonsensical, it's style-over-substance, it's got bad morals, and it sticks to the same weird, nonsensical tropes that I am honestly super tired of.

When I started Endwalker, I thought the only problem I was having was how poorly-paced, empty, and at the time seemingly devoid of purpose both Sharlayan and Thavnair were. Then the glurge cutscenes started to become a pattern. You know, the ones where they talk non-stop about love and hope and friendship, sometimes at completely inappropriate times. In Thavnair, Vrtra literally stops you after everyone else left the palace to talk about how "you need to look out for your friends because they're going to suffer because of you", and it was so poorly-written in the moment and the glurge patterns were already so established, that I *already* knew it would have nothing to do with anything— and I was right. That stupid speech had nothing to do with what would happen in the future, nor would Vrtra even have any way of knowing what would happen in the future anyway. It was forced and senseless and it took me out of the moment, like most of Endwalker.

Garlemald felt super great, until 1.) the Zenos body-switch interrupted a time when the game SUCCEEDED at helping me believe in the power of hope, with Jullus. Then 2.) the body-switch ended up affecting nothing and was never talked about again (WTF). Then 3.) in retrospect, Garlemald is just a bunch of boring ruins and we didn't spend a lot of time there, no matter how good that time was.

Fandaniel was obnoxious and so is every character who acts like him. I can't stand to look at them. Emet-Selch had charm, so learn from him.

Loporrits were an insufferable, unfunny waste of time, both on their own and plot-wise. I really sometimes want to ask Japanese people if they actually find their "comedy" tropes funny, or if they're just writing characters that way because "that's just how we do all our comedy, please play along".

The Final Days section with Thavnair was so infuriating I was screaming. The newborn section was just emotional manipulation with no sense, like a lot of EW. Why would a newborn "succumb to despair"? They're a newborn. All they know is "this is a stranger running with me", not "my parents just died". They aren't "in despair", they are crying because they're a newborn. Are you going to tell me that every child who cries in Thavnair is going to turn into a monster? That brings up such an important point, too: this story doesn't even seem to know what despair actually is. Most of the time the transformations are due to *fear*, not despair. It's just plot convenience, like the whole expac.

Part 2: