This story is really underwhelming - it's opened to mixed reviews.

[Hallarem]

Yeah this kinda annoys me too.
The entire spiritualism of the lore has become very mechanical in nature, there are no real gods or goddesses and even then the spirituality disappeared after Heavensward. I think I would of preferred if the gods and goddesses were never personified because all we got out of it was lore being made redundant and honestly a very boring ARaid series.

Yeah one thing that really annoys me with mainly japanese rpgs is that they kill the spiritualism, "kill the gods" "gods bad" not everything needs to be revealed, not everything needs an explanation, you can just have gods you pray to, you don't need to know whats beyond the veil, you don't need to explain every bit of magic in a Sharlayan classroom.

[GartredZW]

Yeah one thing that really annoys me with mainly japanese rpgs is that they kill the spiritualism, "kill the gods" "gods bad" not everything needs to be revealed, not everything needs an explanation, you can just have gods you pray to, you don't need to know whats beyond the veil, you don't need to explain every bit of magic in a Sharlayan classroom.

It's not a distaste for spiritualism, it's just a cultural and religious trope. A lot of folklore in various east asian religions revolves around spirits and gods being born from normal people. They sometimes go corrupt, and have to be killed by heroes who sometimes become gods themselves.
I can see the argument about demystifying the FFXIV pantheon, but I think that's kind of what the game is all about at it's core. The scions are made up of almost all uber-educated scholars above 99% of the world. The group started as the "circle of knowing" and most of what we do involves trying to turn magic into a science.

[Zaniel]

It's not a distaste for spiritualism, it's just a cultural and religious trope. A lot of folklore in various east asian religions revolves around spirits and gods being born from normal people. They sometimes go corrupt, and have to be killed by heroes who sometimes become gods themselves.
I can see the argument about demystifying the FFXIV pantheon, but I think that's kind of what the game is all about at it's core. The scions are made up of almost all uber-educated scholars above 99% of the world. The group started as the "circle of knowing" and most of what we do involves trying to turn magic into a science.

^ What this guy said. Gods in Eastern mythology are rarely Judeo-Christian omnipotent creators or even Zeus-like figures, they are often ascended mortals who reach a pinnacle point in their journey of cultivation, very Taoist based. Look at all the "sennin" type gods in Chinese lore, half of the Heavens used to be "great sages" who left their mortal coil.