Endwalker Main Scenario Commentary & Feedback

[Rosenstrauch]

Well, I am at long last at the final trial.

Post-Zone Five spoilers:

Thancred hinting at even the possibility of bringing Minfilia back. Seeing her guide us past the halfway point. Wanting so much to just... grab her, and not let go. Please, devs. Bring her back, please. A fictional character shouldn't have this kind of impact on me.

Fandaniel continuing to be Fandaniel, even unto death. And then Asahi came in and spoiled the mood. Seriously, what was the bloody point in that? Amon was on the verge of letting go, so why did we just let this human cockroach waltz in and all but shoot another character to death?

But the Hydaelyn encounter was amazing, and I loved every moment of it. Went in with Trusts and basically watched her demolish half the Scions over and over with her more complicated attacks. Also I died twice, the second time intentionally by running away with the stack marker and trying to Living Dead through it. Turns out that Trusts can't heal through the Walking Dead debuff even with two dedicated healers and around four or so off-healers.

For two particular dialogue options, you're allowed to pick which name you refer to her by: Hydaelyn or Venat. I picked Venat both times, which I felt was in-character for my WoL. She would see Her as a goddess second and a friend first and foremost, and call her accordingly. I was a bit... happy... to see this provoked an emotional response in her. But before I get ahead of myself, I have to ask: Does she still cry if you call her Hydaelyn instead?

Anyways, I definitely need an MSQ moment in 6.1 wherein I grab one of G'raha's excessive soul vessels, dive back into this dungeon in a solo duty, and convince Minfilia that she should come back already. And work out the whole "she doesn't have a body" thing, too.

Final Zone spoilers:

I like this zone thematically. I like the lore bombs being dropped. I liked the return of the Elpis characters, especially Meteion.

I did not care at all for the fake out deaths. There comes a point when you foreshadow something too hard and end up spoiling the mood you're trying to set up. Bravo for Hydaelyn for having the forethought to actually enable this reversal of fortune, but the constant reminder that the Scions aren't gone and we can bring them back without issue once we don't need their sacrifices anymore just... gods, I hated it.

G'raha twisting our arm and demanding we dedicate another massive portion of our life to his wants probably appealed to a lot of fans. It did not appeal to me. Well, whatever.

Y'know, I was loving the final encounter with Meteion all the way up to Zenos butting in. He's every bit as obnoxious as G'raha, only the writers seem aware of this and his obnoxiousness is the point. Poor End Singer, not even getting to be the focus in the cutscene before her fight.

So... yeah, Final Trial is all I have left. I want to actually be awake for it, not half-asleep and running on fumes. Too many close shaves in the level 90 dungeon for my liking.

I am well aware of what Zenos does after. I plan on alt-tabbing out of the game if it's a cutscene. If it's not, well, I can't choose to not play through it...

EDIT: The Final Trial, the Professor and Mary Anne and the rest... spoilers

Endsinger was surprisingly harder than I expected, while also... not really? As the total doofus that I am, I ended up with six vuln stacks at one point and just sort of shrugged since I was learning the fight. The "everyone prays for you and then the fight is basically over" moment was neat.

Meteion giving us our way out was sweet of her, too. Pity about Zenos. If the entire story, going all the way back to the first appearance of Elezen Zenos back in Stormblood, were rewritten to exclude him, Endwalker would be better off for his absence. No, I don't care that everyone insists "he's your dark reflection"! I don't care that he had a bad childhood! I don't care that the only meaningful relationship he ever had was with a combat instructor who tried to assassinate him! I just. Do not. Care. About this man.

The fight itself was fun, at least. Cutscene Attacks where Zenos arbitrarily does 200% of your HP in damage to force you to use up an extra life aside. And iirc the final Ran'jit encounter was more mechanically intense than this one.

And then along came Zeus! Seriously, the teleporter dropping down to get us was Deus Ex Machina in its purest form. This wouldn't have been necessary if not for the Mandatory Zenos Encounter. So... eh. That whole part was pure crowd pleaser energy, and I'm not going to begrudge the developers for it when they provided me with a pretty great expansion story outside of that.

Credits rolled, the Scions are "disbanded". Post-credits scene, obviously Elidibus in obviously Elpis talks about obviously Azem bidding him wait for obviously us to go do 12 8-Man fights. How, exactly, does Lahabrea fit into this? They didn't do the thing where they used Lahabrea's likeness as a stand-in for everything Ascian-related again, did they?

Overall thoughts: 8/10 Too much Zenos, not enough Minfilia

And now I'm finished. Time to finish up my fic as well, and then find something else to do until raid day. Warframe is looking nice...

[KageTokage]

For two particular dialogue options, you're allowed to pick which name you refer to her by: Hydaelyn or Venat. I picked Venat both times, which I felt was in-character for my WoL. She would see Her as a goddess second and a friend first and foremost, and call her accordingly. I was a bit... happy... to see this provoked an emotional response in her. But before I get ahead of myself, I have to ask: Does she still cry if you call her Hydaelyn instead?

Yes, though the latter choice gets more of a reaction then the former.

[TheRod]

She only shows a sad face if we call her by primal entity name

If we call her by real name, then she visibly cries

[EdwinLi]

Introduction of Dynamis may bring for Season 2....

The concept of Dynamis being a very dangerous and positive effect on people along with potentially bring a threat to the world or saving it reminds me of Final Fantasy Mobius storyline about Hope and Despair.

Both Hope and Despair are good and bad based on how they are used by people.

Season 1 of FF Mobius was about Hope and how it can be used to manipulate people to do bad things but at the sametime can be used to save many lives.

Season 2 of FF Mobius focused on Despair with how in a world that lack a Hero, people became deprived of Hope. The Main Character even became known as the Warrior of Despair because he created this world by ending the source of despair in Palamecia being Chaos which lead to a world without Hope because there was nothing to give hope to the people now. However, it is from despair where people found the strongest light of hope to a point they became drunk with it. Yet at the sametime it is by defeating the despair that consumed themselves, the main characters manage to find their own hope and defeat Vox who manipulated the world through hope and despair.

These are not fully accurate accounts of every aspect of FF Mobius story but one that did leave a strong influence on me.

I mention this because with the introduction on how Despair can be a dangerous thing, I feel the Warrior of Despair may become a concept for Season 2 storyline in FF14. I am only guessing of course but what happened in Endwalker got me thinking a lot about the consequences of what happened in Endwalker.

[Cleretic]

Final Zone spoilers:

I did not care at all for the fake out deaths. There comes a point when you foreshadow something too hard and end up spoiling the mood you're trying to set up. Bravo for Hydaelyn for having the forethought to actually enable this reversal of fortune, but the constant reminder that the Scions aren't gone and we can bring them back without issue once we don't need their sacrifices anymore just... gods, I hated it.

It's worth pointing something out something you didn't mention on this one.

Remember that, while we have that Chekhov's Gun sitting in our back pocket, we also have that moment of Y'shtola telling us specifically not to use it. While the Scions being reduced to soul energy is treated as a solvable problem, it's not one with a known solution, since Y'shtola points out that using Azem's crystal for that would render the entire effort worthless (and probably kill them, since... you know, Thancred's sacrifice is the reason the air is even breathable there).

So it becomes a question of 'yes we know it will happen, but we don't know how'. And personally that works for me, I do love a good moment of the hero(es) having to get clever.

And on the main thing you don't like... personally it initially worked for me, but I can understand why it doesn't for you.

Again, it was sort of a question of 'I know this fight will happen, but I don't know how'. They'd kind of run out of prominent allies for us to call on at this point! But the sheer audacity of Zenos turning up, actually having had some form of character growth (albeit not much), and giving a moment of dumb fanservice for the villains? Yeah, that actually works (albeit in part because he's in Shinryu's form, and Shinryu is cooler than Zenos).

It actually holds up in the music, too. The first phase is the villains' time for a big fanfare, with The Worm's Tail, Ultima, Heroes, and Invincible. And in a weird way... yeah, they are all there! Thordan's influence is a little tangential, but either the boss themselves or an element from them are all involved.

I didn't like the final Zenos fight, and I wish I actually got the option to just leave like he said, but I'll give Zenos credit: there was exactly one scene in the game where I was happy he was there, and it's then.

[Theodric]

I think most of my concerns with the story can be summed up by branding it poorly paced, saccharine and needlessly convoluted. Endwalker really needed to be two expansions as originally planned so that every element could be properly expanded upon and given its fair share of time in the spotlight.

As it stands, there's periods in the story where things move at an agonisingly glacial pace with awkward busywork and senseless chatter...but then it is as if there is a pendulum forcing things to swing in the opposite direction which leads to things happening too quickly with little room to breathe or see the characters properly absorb or discuss what they just learned.

Each to their own, I guess, but as far as I'm concerned FFXIV jumped the shark in a similar manner as WoW did and I now find my interest in the PvE and PvP side of things far greater than my interest in the story. Perhaps that will change as of 6.1 and beyond or maybe it won't. I guess we'll see.

[Cleretic]

I think most of my concerns with the story can be summed up by branding it poorly paced, saccharine and needlessly convoluted. Endwalker really needed to be two expansions as originally planned so that every element could be properly expanded upon and given its fair share of time in the spotlight.

See, I've heard the 'it should've been two expansions' argument, and I don't disagree that it felt weirdly compressed at parts, but... where the hell do you split it in a way that doesn't feel terrible for the gap between 6.0 and 7.0? The rough midpoint in terms of story is Vanaspati; certainly bigging that up to a cliffhanger would have some value as a sequel hook for a more conventional series, but for a game that has to continue its storytelling in patches, you kinda rob the End of Days of all urgency as Thavnair 2 presumably transpires over patches, and then 7.0 launches with Elpis, which sounds terrible.

Could you instead expand the early part to the point where Zodiark is the ending of 6.0, with Thavnair, Garlemald and some of Sharlayan as 6.0 being 'vs. the Telophoroi'? Again, that sounds like a strong initial package, but you've got the patches to worry about; certainly the Loporrits are there to be the 6.x equivalent of 5.x's Amaurot, and then it sets up Vanaspati as the 7.0 opener, but do the Loporrits really sound like something that works to carry the years-long span of patch content before 7.0 kicks off the End of Days? (You also lose one of my favorite single moments of the expansion, that revelation of 'wait, how is Zodiark the FIRST trial')

Hell, even the conventional approach of 'the story REALLY ending somewhere in the patch content; presumably that would make the 6.0 finale the Aitiascope followed by Hydaelyn, with the trial 2 spot being filled up by a promoted dungeon boss (Magus Sisters, Anima, Svarbhanu, any could work no problem), and the Endsinger works as well as the Warrior of Light or Nidhogg does. But then... what happens to Ultima Thule? Are we okay with losing that as a setting and trying to spread out its plot points into the existing zones, as would have to happen for the patches? Personally, I'm probably not, I think Ultima Thule is one of the best zone stretches in the game.


I'm not picking on you or anything; again, I've heard this thought a few times before. I just really like interrogating a story and going 'how could you deliver this differently, and would it be better', and how you could make Endwalker longer is simultaneously a very interesting question for that and a really hard one. Because as much as it clearly struggles with fitting everything into its allotted time, it's also a story that makes the most of the fact it is unbroken, better than any part of FFXIV before it, there are no easy 'break points'.

[Fenral]

Honestly, this is the expansion that forced me to accept that my happiness comes at the expense of others, and embrace it. Zenos, G'raha, inappropriately-timed musical interludes with diminutive (oversized?) rabbits, I wouldn't change any of it. It's weird, meandering, and indulgent, but looking back on the really weird s*kupo*t the franchise usually does to fill downtime, I feel less like they forgot what it is to be Final Fantasy, and more like they finally remembered. "We only get one shot at this, guys, better go all out."

[EdwinLi]

Venat instance fight

This fight is rather interesting because it is literally a Noctis story instance boss fight but instead of Noctis it is against Venat.

Venat even has Noctis Limit Break being Legacy of the Lucii.

[Atlas-04]

Could someone explain what exactly the twins did this entire expansion? I must of missed it between them failing at everything again and giving long ideological speeches. Feels like them and the scions are given too much credit for the events this time. Technological advances were not theirs, hostility towards the forum was misplaced and I don't count fake sacrificial deaths as contributions.

The moments the WoL was away from them were the best parts. So you could be the hero you actually are.