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

[Vyrerus]

Venat was totally justified. I like her a lot. I cried when she cried

It's ok. Simping is human nature.

[Oizen]

In terms of Endwalker's plot, the point to me where it went from alright to my least favorite story this game has ever told was the 2nd half. Specifically everything about the Final Days.
The big hyped up world ending event that absolutely destroyed Amarout and the rest of the ancients. I was looking forward to see how that would change the world, how each city would deal with it, theres a lot of potential for something like this.

What did we get? Red Sin Eaters that only attacked Elephants in India for like 2 days. Sure we had the role quests, but those were basically episodic mini-stories where we saw everyone we ever met was just fine actually, and only newly made npcs could be turned into Red Sin Eaters, everyone else was just fine. The only character across the entire journey we had across all expansions, the only one who struggles with potentially becoming a Red Sin Eater is Fordola, and its not like that even happens, and its not even part of the main story even, just some side quest for materia.

No one was affected by this in side stories in any lasting way, Only NEW characters were affected in the MSQ. It was insanely toothless and felt fake to me.

The Final Days really should have been called "The temporary inconvenience of elephant people"

[Vyrerus]

The Final Days

The reason for this is that we played a protagonist centered morality game where no adversity can ever actually overcome our designated protagonist's ability to deal with it. It wasn't an issue in the past, because they were willing to have the protagonists lose or have major setbacks, like the ransacking of The Waking Sands and the execution of almost all minor Scions. Or the blood banquet at the end of 2.55 followed by most of the side cast of Heavensward dying or being held in jeopardy at a minimum.

These were events contained to single cities, and as such, were easier to show in an accurate manner.

XIV got too ambitious though, come Stormblood, and that's the first time that a major event in the story needed to be large scale, and it was proof that they don't do large scale events well. Stormblood rarely felt like a war, more like some plucky rebels winning a few major, albeit small, skirmishes for most of its story. With its post story turning towards mostly random adventure set mostly in and near Yanxia.

Shadowbringers was basically the writers realizing that they could never show the scale they'd need to with a proper war with Garlemald, so they ran away from it. That's why Shadowbringers was full of Ascian backstory and big big reveals surrounding the mysteries left in the setting. It was do that, or try to show a war in a very poor way again.

This gambit was really, in my opinion, done to give them time to actually craft a war setting for the Garlean expansion that we were supposed to have, but the unexpected popularity surrounding Emet-selch and the Ascians' backstory and ancient civilization caused them to change course again. They instead turned towards expounding and centering the story on that, leaving the assets they'd worked on for the Garlean expansion in Bozja, Zadnor, and Delubnum Reginae in the post SHB content. This is why it was SHB post game content. It was leavings leftover from the cancelled Garlean war expansion.

I think this was all a turn taken prior to the pandemic happening, and when it happened it was probably seen as a boon in some small way for offloading the narrative they didn't wanna try and tell that they had originally planned to tell.

And since the story entered the realm of the nonsensical with regards to relying on time travel again (done mainly for fan service), they really hoped people wouldn't doff their horse blinders and just focus on what was shown over what was not.

Unfortunately the cracks do show up quite well to a lot of people, because gameplay design cracks are starting to rear their ugly head as well. I believe the hope now is that Dawntrail papers over those cracks with a lot of flash over substance, because the design team seems to have fallen into the trap that as long as things are showy and cool, they will be well received.

And I guess they're not entirely wrong.

[Xeronia]

I will agree for all the focus the concept of The Final Days had in marketing and EW lead up it pales in comparison to most threats that came before it. I always find it a bit sad The Calamity in the long term had way more effect on the world and story then something called The Final Days.

It also would have felt a bit more impactful if it had lasted longer and had effected more zones throughout the MSQ. I am amazed Sharlayan never had to deal with it for example. At the end of the day it added to EW feeling like a rushed job expansion because the writers wanted a new story and were sick of the old one.

[Dorito_Burrito]

A Garlemald expansion would've just been Stormblood 2.

[Vyrerus]

A Garlemald expansion would've just been Stormblood 2.

Probably someone's quip in the board room when they shelved the Garlean war expansion.

Stormblood really didn't give us a proper taste of a full on war with the Garleans until Ghimlyt Dark.

Paratroopers dropping down from the dreadnaught overhead. Magitek everywhere. Wrecked Magitek everywhere. Ceruleum oozing into the depleted soil that's been shelled to hell and back. Loads of side characters taking to the battlefield.

We basically got the 2.0 version of that in Bozja/Zadnor, and those had some of the finest content in the game. Castrum Lacus Litore and Dalriada. Particularly the Dalriada being lowkey a Final Fantasy II Dreadnaught mission reference.

[Supersnow845]

Garlemald didn’t get enough time but I don’t think outright war with them was ever on the table of a good idea, it is far more thematic to the story that they collapsed under their own weight when it was revealed they are being run by ascians in an attempt to facilitate a rejoining

SB wasn’t “big enough” on the conflict side but skirmishes over the territories (doma, gyr abania, Bozja) was all conflict with garlemald should have been, not open war

[Iscah]

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.

Actually I think the part with the baby makes perfect sense, because it is such an extreme circumstance and to me it just seemed like a natural conclusion that a baby doesn't have complex thinking yet and is just going to feel everything at its keenest. It doesn't comprehend "my parents have died" but it can comprehend "I want Mummy and this is not Mummy", "a strange person is holding me uncomfortably and shouting", "I am cold and wet", "I am being jolted around", probably there are all sorts of eerie noises and sensations going on around it, and it all becomes too much for a tiny mind that has no comprehension yet of staying calm or controlling emotions.

To be fair, yes, it seems that the transformation is more about reaching an immediate threshold of negative emotion that doesn't have to be long-term despair at all, but an underlying mood would perhaps bring people to that threshold sooner.

And yes, it is likely that some other children were thrown into a similar situation and had no last-minute reprieve, while others were kept safe and did not reach that threshold of utter misery.

[Vyrerus]

The most charitable I could be about the baby turning is that a baby's corporeal aether would naturally be thinner than an adults, so it could be turned without needing to give into despair at all.

Part of the Sundered's problem with The Final Days is that they are too thin aetherially and interact with Dynamis more readily, meaning they are at Dynamis's command if they slip into negative emotions too poignantly or for too long.

Remember, Alphinaud even counsels Jullus against getting too angry at Zenos.

I still don't think it delivers the baby scenes well, though, and they are definitely cheap, emotional manipulation, since I don't think we even learned the mom's name before her neck was broken. I would think given the trauma it experienced, even with Alphinaud wanding a healing hand over it, the baby would be unconscious after nearly drowning.

I still did really enjoy Matsya in that scene. All of Thavnair was one of the stronger points in Endwalker, even if it still has its issues.

[MikkoAkure]

This gambit was really, in my opinion, done to give them time to actually craft a war setting for the Garlean expansion that we were supposed to have, but the unexpected popularity surrounding Emet-selch and the Ascians' backstory and ancient civilization caused them to change course again.
[…]
[Bozja] was leavings leftover from the cancelled Garlean war expansion.

It feels like your point is based too heavily on a lot of wild personal speculation than anything substantial.

We already know that they didn’t begin to formally discuss the next expansion until after 5.0 had already released for players so it’s really doubtful to me that they already had plans for Shadowbringers as a buffer for 6.0 with a story and even assets made before 5.0 even came out and then abandoned or repurposed all that work just because players liked Emet-Selch. I don’t really think that we were “supposed to have” anything, it was never set in stone to begin with and they just write as they go.

A potential Garlemald expansion was never “cancelled”, that would mean that it would have actually had to have existed as something beyond just a vague idea. They said in an interview that they could have ended the story in one or two expansions, decided on one, and IF they had decided on two instead they just said that the first one would have been the Garlemald bits of what we already had in Endwalker without saying anything had actually been fully planned out more than that. I feel like a lot of people took that snippet from the interview and ran with it.

This narrative that they would have made assets for a potential future expansion in Garlemald way in advance that early and ended up having to reuse them in Bozja after that was scrapped doesn’t make much sense either. The first Bozja content came out in April of 2020 after the next expansion had already been decided in autumn/winter of 2019 so it’s likely would have needed to have been planned long before. You would think that the main content for Field Exploration/relics, hiring of a third party (Matsuno), and all the writing, gameplay, and assets would much more likely to have been planned well in advance of Shadowbringers’ release let alone just after “cancelling” Garlemald, and wouldn’t have anything to do with fan reactions to Emet-Selch.