Endwalker Main Scenario Commentary & Feedback

[Fenral]

Plenty of lighter things to think about, but this one has been gnawing away at me since level 81, so I'm posting it now, and separately, just to get it out of my head.

Post-credits spoilers:

Corvos name dropped for the billionth time. Hoary Boulder and Coultenet are headed there to check things out in the wake of Garlemald's fall and the Final Days. It seems like tensions between the locals and the surviving Garlean expats is on the rise. Much like the sudden Mhach-dropping we got in Heavensward, it is likely that Corvos is about to play a very big role (my guess is either relic or trial series, if not the next expansion setting).

Some of those expats are House Darnus. Some of those locals are the Corvosi G. With Amon brought back as a primary antagonist, and the fall of Allag tying in thematically to the events of the final dungeon, I suspect the saga of the Allagan Royal Eye is far from over.

The additive retcons we've gotten on G'raha's backstory indicate the Allagan Eye was passed specifically to the firstborn son, and thus we can assume is the mark of a de facto nunh. This makes more sense than what we had to go on before, which was not only a vague "once in a generation" sort of thing, but G'raha's own casual admissions indicating it made him an outcast. We can now assume that part of his childhood happened in Sharlayan, and in his own birthplace he's essentially the chosen one.

Now where things get messy: Corvos was hit pretty badly by the Final Days, which likely means the Corovsi G were as well. G'raha has also expressed a desire to visit (just once, he says), which is already setting him up for an appearance when we go there. Given his unbearable sense of responsibility, it seems incredibly likely that G'raha will end up pressured into the role of nunh. That role is, at best, a form of voluntary sexual slavery, not something that should ever, under any circumstances, be forced on anyone. It would also be an incredibly tone-deaf development for a character who is (subtextually, anyway) a love interest but otherwise established as very asexual. ("Does G'raha Tia f*kupo*k?" is simply not a question that ever needed a canon answer. Same for pretty much everyone besides Thancred.)

Ishikawa knows better. Oda knows better. I would like to assume Yoshida knows better, since he's been signing off on all the subtext thus far even while he insists it's not romantic. And yet, seeing so many dominoes dropped in place all at once (and going as far back as the optional conversation in 5.3 about G'raha's "Tia" status), is just really quite odd, and I don't know what to make of it besides suddenly feeling really uncomfortable about his character trajectory. It's been a very, very long time since any of my darkest predictions have come true, and I really, really want to be wrong on this.

[GrizzlyTank]

Everything.

All i got to say is that i would have preferred if Meteion had ended up as something like Jenova where her pursuit of life forms ended up with her being possessed by "The Thing" and then proceed to feast upon the star and it denizens. Though nevertheless her motives are very final fantasy (as much as i dislike the frequent faulty/pessimistic portrayal of nihilism though at least our merry band touched upon that issue).

[Minato777]

I was all set to hate this expac after the first couple of hours of playing then at around 83 they start pick up then BOOM pure crap. then it gets really good again.... they really need to work on pacing cause the first 15 or so msq just drag on and honestly could of been part of the 5.0 patches. I don't know why but HW and SHB felt much better getting into the beginning....

[Soleras]

Zenos conclusion, what I want and why I liked it

I don't want Zenos to come back. Zenos is dead, raw and unsatisfying, and it was told this way on purpose. This expansion's theme is musings on the nature of life, death, and purpose. Zenos speaks on these things as he was dying, but never even got to finish his thoughts. Is there purpose in life? The answer is unknowable and unsatisfying. He *chose* his purpose, like we all do, and the end result was the glorious combat he desired and his thoroughly pointless death.

While I don't want it to be true, Asahi showed us a villain that retained some part of himself in the underworld. I wouldn't be that shocked if Zenos somehow crawled his way out, but I think how they handled Zenos was perfect. Let pointless death be. Let his story end unceremoniously.

[Bright-Flower]

Fandaniel

I ended up liking him more than expected, and was ultimately glad to see he was more of the main villain than Zenos. I liked the Amon reveal and the idea of him identifying more with that life than his Hermes life in the end.

Asahi showing up to drag him into oblivion at the end was a bit 'wat' moment for me though.

Zenos

Better utilized here than in SB but that's damning with faint praise. At least he wasn't the main antagonist again as I feared he'd be. He may have been the last fight but it was ultimately a pointless one story wise.

Spoiler Villain

I'm not generally into 'I'm doing the world a favor by ending it' villains but there was at least an attempt for an interesting angle with Meteion here. All of her different selves traveling the stars, finding dead or dying planets and filling her with despair. Though I feel like the game itself takes an overly pessimistic turn to get there. This idea that everything sucks so much everywhere else in the universe doesn't really sit right with me. It's like the FFXIV cosmos was populated by feeding a list of cautionary tales into an AI script.

[Soleras]

Spoiler Villain

I'm not generally into 'I'm doing the world a favor by ending it' villains but there was at least an attempt for an interesting angle with Meteion here. All of her different selves traveling the stars, finding dead or dying planets and filling her with despair. Though I feel like the game itself takes an overly pessimistic turn to get there. This idea that everything sucks so much everywhere else in the universe doesn't really sit right with me. It's like the FFXIV cosmos was populated by feeding a list of cautionary tales into an AI script.

There are some interesting, real-world references here (villain and final zone themes)

The fermi paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_...destroy_itself
The big freeze: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultima..._or_Heat_Death

[symbiote129]

Holy....lol Emet, What the heck?

Are you telling me all potential content in the future?

• Underwater Ruins of the Bounty (the Sea between Aldenard, Ilsabard & Othard)
• Blindfrost of North Othard
• Golden Cities of the New World (El Dorado?)
• Sacred Sites of the South Sea Isles
• Meracydia and its present state of affairs
• the Twelve's real identity (upcoming Alliance Raid)
• and then potential visit of other reflections like the First

[Loggos]

I have to say I really liked EW and it has mostly given me the finale that I had hoped for

(minus Zenos but I have said enough about that in another thread so I’ll leave it at that)

.

But the reason for that is that I have kind of given up on FF14 really making sense on a deeper level when it comes to world building. ^^;

I always felt that consistent lore was never really its strength and that it shines more in the emotional department.



What I liked:


My favourite characters (Urianger,

Vrtra and Venat

)

EW had some stellar emotional aspects, esp. regarding Urianger (forgive me the DOUBLE pun).
He was hands-down my favourite character, next to Vrtra and Venat. The way his personal moments were written (and voiced, at least in Japanese) felt so genuine and emotional. It was such a (tearful) treat. But other characters such as Vtra, Estinien, Alisaie, Venat, and Hermes really moved me, too. Emet-Selch and Hythlodaeus were very entertaining and I loved interacting with them. This was fanservice in the best possible way. (And of course, Krile, Y’shtola and Thancred were lovable as always.)

For Vrtra, I loved how they gave so much depth and so much tenderness to the scary-looking dragon. I felt so much sympathy for him. His relationship with Estinien was nice to see as well.

Places:

Radz-at-Han and Elpis were absolutely beautiful. Not to undercut everything the WoL is fighting for but I’d also rather live in a place like Elpis, minus the danger of being eaten by monsters.

The finale:

Even though the ending was very cheesy it was cheesy in a good way for me, haha. Yeah, it played veeeery heavily on this whole Hope and Friendship trope but I did like how they worked with darker themes, too. It really balanced the sappiness. I liked Venat’s speech in particular.
(And the creepiness of Meteion was a nice touch.)

I absolutely LOVED the design of the Endsinger. It was such a great fight, too. So that was a very rewarding experience. And the last zone felt very dreamy and surreal and basically exactly how I would have wanted it.

Some concerns regarding the Hydaelin/Zodiark arc:

I can totally understand why a lot of people are unhappy with the treatment of the Hydaelin/Zodiark arc. The reason why it didn’t put me off is that I thought the premise of Meteion and her source of Evil were really fascinating and “otherworldly”. It really felt grand and I personally liked this story even more than what Shadowbringers alluded to. But in terms of ShB/EW continuity it really wasn’t good and I agree that the whole Akasha/Dynamis/Meteion revelation happened very quickly.

Some thoughts on

Hermes

(potentially controversial I guess...):

I'm going to go a bit on a tangent on animal treatment here but for the sake of not going off-topic I'm not going to debate this further in any replies. If you disagree strongly bc you have a very different view on animals I would kindly ask you to ignore this bit.

Whereas I thought Hermes was really interesting I felt like his emotional motive regarding the destruction of species was a bit forced at times.

It made no sense to me that he says he wants to cherish life but then really wants to preserve the existence of evidently too destructive beings that might endanger the balance of an eco-system.

Nature is an eco-system and selection is cruel. It doesn’t become any “nicer” if it happens in the wild than if Ascians do it based on scientific observation. The other species that are negatively affected by say the fire lycaons/fire wolves also have a will to live, so to say that it’s wrong to remove the fire wolves even though they kill lots of other beings feels very short-sighted and not thought through.

Like, they already let a lot of dangerous species live so it's not like they don't respect the circle of life/food chains and so forth. So the fire wolves must have been Really bad and in my eyes the story made it clear that they seemed like an outlier even for animals of prey.

Also, they are based on creation magic so they shouldn’t even have a soul anyways? (Maybe I’m missing something here.)

And (and I say that as a vegetarian) to be brutally honest the Ascians in Elpis didn’t treat animals any differently conceptually than we treat them: as beings with objectively lower cognitive functions than humans (which is no reason to be cruel or to not cherish them) who we use for different purposes such as life stock, doing work, creating clothing, keeping as pets, breeding etc.

I’m not saying all of this is always good (neither is it always bad - context matters) but it’s definitely not as morally reprehensible as Hermes makes it seem. Otherwise, all of Eorzea should be doomed in his eyes for relying on animals (then again, I guess we are).

In itself I can even understand how the approach of the Ascians upsets him but they play so much on that idea in cutscenes to establish his motivations and to underscore his perception of the Ascians’ lacking respect for life itself and their arrogance that it feels a bit disproportionate. (Esp. on the wolves - it would have made much more sense if they continued to show the flying snakes bc they really did nothing dangerous and embodied the right of "non-performance-optimised" life to exist, too.)
We do know that the Ascians were prepared to sacrifice mortal life to bring the sacrificed Ascians back but up to that point they were actually very, very invested in serving the planet by creating a livable planet for said mortal life.

The Ascians kill their animals (but again - no soul?) for "good"/non-sadistic reasons. We generally kill them for similarly "well-intendtioned" (but not always intelligent) reasons. And whereas I can say with the utmost conviction that I hate animal cruelty it's simply not the same as killing humans, which is how Hermes sometimes made it low-key seem to me on an emotional level.

Venat vs. Hydaelin:

I really liked Venat and how she humanised Hydaelin. The latter never really spoke to me much (Hah) and felt really abstract but Venat’s personality just appealed so much to me (when she walks through the darkness, her face filled with fury while being covered in this tar-like substance was really impactful). I thought the dog was a little bit of an odd choice. He seemed a bit too funny/cute for the theme of her character but I can live with that.

What I didn’t like:

Zenos.

The philosophical tone part 1:

I agree with the people before me that I couldn’t really get on board with that super pessimistic EVERYTHING is bad narrative. One thing they always forgot is that while a planet or a civilization can come to an end, that doesn’t mean that there was no happiness until that point. A planet lives a long life. Mortals do not. Sure, Earth will also die at some point but until that happens many people will get to live and die. Some will be unfortunate to experience sadness and despair but some will also live a life of fulfillment. Some will experience both. It’s not all or nothing.

Only because the people during the Apocalypse suffered doesn’t mean that the lives of everyone before them was impacted by the Apocalypse. It was a very simplified understanding of life and happiness in the grand scheme of things.

The philosophical tone part 2:

I also don’t know if I agree with the idea that immortality and “perfection”/the absence of despair automatically leads to such a horrible state that losing all meaning of life and desire to live is inevitable. I know this view is not completely uncommon but I can also think of many hypothetical scenarios in which immortality and “a perfect world” could lead to the opposite. This is a purely speculative mental exercise of course but it was sad that it was presented so one-sided. It made it feel a bit cheap while trying hard to seem deep and philosophical in a very rushed manner.

The last dungeon:

That’s also why I didn’t enjoy the last dungeon. It actually didn’t feel FF14-esque at all to me. The second part looked like it’s from a completely different game but because it had no build-up it felt as if someone had just dropped a completely different genre into our story for the sake of it. The last part of the dungeon was absolutely beautiful and a delight to see but as I said before the point it tried to hammer home felt rather forced.

All in all, this dungeon felt like an attempt to get as much symbolism into one piece of content as possible to bring the point across while also having to create different worlds on the brink of collapse to make the universe seem big.

It would have made more sense to me if they used the three worlds they had already established in the zone as dungeon segments: The first part retells the dragon tragedy, the second part features the Ea and the last one deals with the Omicrons.

The Filler:

Also, the Labyrithos part after Elpis was such. A. Filler. It was really annoying tbh. xD

[GrizzlyTank]

Holy....lol Emet, What the heck?

Are you telling me all potential content in the future?

• Underwater Ruins of the Bounty (the Sea between Aldenard, Ilsabard & Othard)
• Blindfrost of North Othard
• Golden Cities of the New World (El Dorado?)
• Sacred Sites of the South Sea Isles
• Meracydia and its present state of affairs
• the Twelve's real identity (upcoming Alliance Raid)
• and then potential visit of other reflections like the First

Loved that nod to potential upcoming content.
End spoilers:

Let alone travelling to other stars (or invasion from), even though most of those in our vicinity is fubar

[TheRod]

It's curious to revisit the EW Announcement thread and reread our expectations back exactly in the day 6.0 was revealed, reflect what came true and what didn't.


Thread:
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...howcase/page14

It's noticeable just how openly honest Yoshida was from get go. I remember doing this analysis of the very first press interview he did after the event and much of everything was, basically, what we got.

Febuary 14:

Got to read the lastest Yoshida interview for Famitsu (just now translated by AkhMorning) and I immediatelly reminded of this passage in my previous post:

(...)

I expect even more on the typical idealism again. This imagery of the Paladin - bar all the Cecil parallels - displays exactly the imagery of the noble good knight clad in shiny armor to save the day - our typical heroic fairytale.

And Yoshi-P basically confirms that the main reason for the Paladin choice wasn't especifically meant as Cecil reference, but the typical imagery of the "heroic hopeful knight" the Paladin presents:

Famitsu: The main job for this expansion looks to be Paladin here, does this mean you’ve picked the job because of its connections to FFIV, or is there any other reason behind the job selection?

Naoki Yoshida: When I thought of how to illustrate what hope means to myself and other people in a straightforward manner, I thought Paladin would be the most suitable one to represent that theme among all the jobs in FFXIV. When I think about who would be the first one to move forward while carrying the burden of everything even when cornered, this job would be the best to represent that… so it was a straightforward reason and also the major one behind this decision.

And as essentially extracted from the PLD symbology/iconicism, story keeps en route with the idealistic stuff:

Naoki Yoshida: This applies to Final Fantasy XIV overall here but I think the story that is weaved throughout the Hydaelyn-Zodiark saga does have the aspect of “hope against despair” here. For example, the same is also true for the image of that slight despair that was felt when the legacy of FFXIV was running, and from there comes the release of “A Realm Reborn”.

How the players will manage to find hope within the “despair over the apocalypse” situation will also be included as the theme for this expansion. The heroes who will face the hardships with the despair looming around them… this will be the nuance I wish the players would understand here.

Overall, he said story will be very epic/much bigger, but not necessarily it'll be unexpected:

Naoki Yoshida: (..) To me, instead of portraying something that subverts everyone’s expectations, I’d say the desire to surpass the scope of imagination is actually much stronger here.