Endwalker Main Scenario Commentary & Feedback

[Alleo]

So now that I was able to sleep over it (and without the stress of the long queues and fear to be thrown out of the game) I will give my impressions about the expansion.

First I do think that it was a very good end for the first story arc. I had moments where I was in tears, where I laughed or felt sad. Still for me it never reached Shadowbringers. These escort and stealth missions got on my nerves the more we got. Some of them made sense but for others it felt like padding. The same with these quests where you have to go to specific points and wait and look around.

Well now into spoiler territory

I loved that till the very end Hydealyn was a goddess with faults but still good at heart. That SE did not turn around and made us fight her to destroy her but as a test.

I am also fine with what they have done to Zodiark. After all he had always just be a tool for the Ascians. As we learned he was controlled by all the sacrificed souls that saw themselves as the will of the star (which was probably an honor for them seeing how they lived to make the planet better) and I wonder if they could even be exchanged...what would have happened to Zodiark and his mission if suddenly the new souls might not want to be the will of the star and be full of anger and hatred for the Ancients? Still happy that these souls got released and will be able to be reborn.

I am not really sure if I like Endsinger. I enjoyed the Hydealyn dungeon and was looking forward to the last one, the one with all the creepy images in the trailer. But before that we had to go through a copy of different "worlds" and of course all had the same theme of despair and finding no sense in existence. Honestly by the end of that zone I was already over that...and I just cant believe that most if not all worlds ended in such a way. And even if they did (one day every star will die after all) it would not mean that every person on that planet yearned for oblivion.

With the amount of stars in this universe and the relative small amount of the birds (bad remembering names...) I just cant believe that they saw it all...and as we learned through the notes in the dungeon, the birds may have played a huge part in starting their ends and death wishes...which for me means that somehow these birds are able to be such a huge influence...

It was too much of the despair, too much of the talk about ending it all that instead of feeling bad, it made me feel a bit annoyed. Like "I get it SE" everything will end bad, our world too, even if you have a happy world where nobody dies, they yearn for death...I am not sure what was so bad about it? I mean they can live a long life that may at some point lose its meaning and then get the choice to die. Thats not that bad imo. Even the Ancients in a way lived like that. If they felt they have done enough for the planet they choose to die. Bascially they were "immortal" but still had their meanings in life. And some like Venat even continued to live even when their duty was done.

All of that has really tampered the finale for me quite a bit, especially when it was forced to end with fight with Zenos...I liked the part where we could not even stand anymore and how we seemingly got some grave wounds but I wished that was from fighting the Endsinger and not that spoiled prince...

Not that I of course disliked the whole end part. There were great moments in between that were awesome. All the speeches from the Scions but especially Grahas (with that fistpump) and the twins. The last two being much more concerned with leaving us behind. The slow walk afterwards with the prayers of people probably pushing us further, fearing again that we have lost another round of good friends.

The beautiful scenerey with the flowers and of course the last actions of Azems old friends.

Later then our character finally not accepting that their friends die and doing something! I grinned so widely when she got the teleport device out and saved them, knowing that she will have to stand alone but doing so with the knowledge that those she loved will be save. The last part of the fight against the Endsinger...where the scions prayer help us to defeat them.

Really there were many of such great scenes in this expansion (and I still cheered even when we had the "everyone comes together" in Shadowbringer already...but it was so nice to see how our actions really brought it all together) and if they only had that, it would have blown Shadowbringers away.

But sadly they also had way more low moments, even in the final act of the story, that it took me out too much. Especially since all of that hinged on Venat somehow being able to plan all of that. How it all ended that well even though we just changed our future in the expansion before that...was that too already one of her plans? Venat was a bright and awesome person (I liked her very much) and yes the Ancients were much more powerful than us. But it still felt that she was a bit too good in that part. That she somehow was able to put the plan in motion that for example the Space Ship was ready just in time for the Final days. And yet even with all her knowledge and seemingly power she did not try to changer her own future at all. I wonder if she might have explained it to our Azem who was not happy to just play it out and who tried to change it but failed...

So as a conclusion I am fine with the ending. Yet if I could have written it, I would not have put the stakes so high. I wished they kept it to just our planet, even if it would have truly just been an alien lifeform that sleeps deep in the planets core or something. I mean in the end the Final Days were a product of the Ancients themselves. Hermes did create the birds and sent them out to bring him an answer about life. And with that action he might have doomed who knows how many worlds because as far as I understood it was his creation that later turned into Endsinger because of all that despair. Having him create the "Final day boss" but keeping it soley on this planet would have felt better for me. His view on the way the Ancients threat other living lifeforms was compelling enough, it really did not need to be on such a wide scale.

[Rulakir]

Well now into spoiler territory

Especially since all of that hinged on Venat somehow being able to plan all of that. How it all ended that well even though we just changed our future in the expansion before that...was that too already one of her plans? Venat was a bright and awesome person (I liked her very much) and yes the Ancients were much more powerful than us. But it still felt that she was a bit too good in that part. That she somehow was able to put the plan in motion that for example the Space Ship was ready just in time for the Final days. And yet even with all her knowledge and seemingly power she did not try to changer her own future at all. I wonder if she might have explained it to our Azem who was not happy to just play it out and who tried to change it but failed...

So as a conclusion I am fine with the ending. Yet if I could have written it, I would not have put the stakes so high. I wished they kept it to just our planet, even if it would have truly just been an alien lifeform that sleeps deep in the planets core or something. I mean in the end the Final Days were a product of the Ancients themselves. Hermes did create the birds and sent them out to bring him an answer about life. And with that action he might have doomed who knows how many worlds because as far as I understood it was his creation that later turned into Endsinger because of all that despair. Having him create the "Final day boss" but keeping it soley on this planet would have felt better for me. His view on the way the Ancients threat other living lifeforms was compelling enough, it really did not need to be on such a wide scale.

Things & stuff. :P

This is why the closed time loop didn't work for me, there are so many faults with it. Elpis should've branched into an alternate timeline. Despite the WoL detailing the future to Venat, one in which we still had not been successful in stopping the Final Days, she still chose to not do anything differently. I know the theme is faith and hope, but when you are told your choices didn't save your civilization and have still failed to save civilization 12k years into the future, wouldn't you try something else? I also notice that Azem not joining her was never addressed, so I have to wonder if even her protege disagreed with her.

The Sound wasn't a product of the Ancients, it was specifically Hermes. It was evident early on that he was an anomaly (essentially the only depressed person in a society of happy people) and in the wrong line of work for his mental health. This inevitably tainted Meteion before they were ever sent out into space. I suspect they brought Hermes' negative energy to the worlds they visited and possibly caused a disruption in the dynamis of other stars that resulted in increased feelings of despair. Emet somewhat touches upon that by questioning Hermes' method being flawed to produce unfavorable results.

[Alleo]

Things & stuff. :P

This is why the closed time loop didn't work for me, there are so many faults with it. Elpis should've branched into an alternate timeline.

The Sound wasn't a product of the Ancients, it was specifically Hermes.

About the ancients

Yeah the closed time loop also did not work for me (but time travel is hardly something that I like). I really thought that maybe they would change their outcome and later would help our fight. Even if they are worse against Dynamis not every Ancient lost control of their magic. But it was not meant to be that way sadly.

Well not directly a product of all the Ancients but a product of one of their own. (So it was not a complete outside threat) And Hermes was suffering that way because seemingly a huge amount of the Ancients threated the new created life as something that can easily just be undone. Even Hythlo just casually makes a robe out of two butterflies. Even we are threated much different even though we have a soul and thus should not just be magical construct. At the same time if something is way too dangerous then even in our world we put it down, for the safety of other living beings. Hermes seemingly does not understand that too. Yet at the end he turns around and is ready to destroy the whole planet...including all those animals that he helped create. Really a messed up situation.

@Rosenstrauch

About Zodiark: Yes that is how I interpreted it too. When they called themselves the Will of the Star I started to wonder if Zodiark would still be the same and even listen to the Ancients word if the souls got swapped out with unwilling sacrifices.

About Venat: Yes at that time it was too late. What of course makes it harder is the timeline of it all. The Ancients think in whole different time periods. So who knows how long it still took for the final days to happen after our visit. Could have been hundreds of years or just a few months. But she had to have time to come up with the ship plan, to create the rabbits and more. I guess a lot of stuff could have been learned from us (since we have no idea how much we really told them) but she still needed to put everything in order. And seemingly she never thought about trying to at least tell Hades and Hythlo the truth. I just dont understand the reasoning for keeping it "fair" towards Hermes.

[yajnaji]

So as a conclusion I am fine with the ending. Yet if I could have written it, I would not have put the stakes so high. I wished they kept it to just our planet, even if it would have truly just been an alien lifeform that sleeps deep in the planets core or something. I mean in the end the Final Days were a product of the Ancients themselves. Hermes did create the birds and sent them out to bring him an answer about life. And with that action he might have doomed who knows how many worlds because as far as I understood it was his creation that later turned into Endsinger because of all that despair. Having him create the "Final day boss" but keeping it soley on this planet would have felt better for me. His view on the way the Ancients threat other living lifeforms was compelling enough, it really did not need to be on such a wide scale.

That paragraph!

It's my own fault because I created my own (high) expectations and fan-fiction, but I was really hoping that in the end, the source of it all was something Jenova-like (hell, I even thought it would be called Jenova!), dormant in the core of the world a la Lovecraft. Also the whole "every world we met died so we got no answer to Hermes' question" kinda banalised the whole deal... treating Etheirys (spelling?) like just another world to the slaughter.

[Loggos]

Like "I get it SE" everything will end bad, our world too, even if you have a happy world where nobody dies, they yearn for death...I am not sure what was so bad about it? I mean they can live a long life that may at some point lose its meaning and then get the choice to die. Thats not that bad imo. Even the Ancients in a way lived like that. If they felt they have done enough for the planet they choose to die. Bascially they were "immortal" but still had their meanings in life. And some like Venat even continued to live even when their duty was done.

I absolutely agree with this.

It's a bit strange that they tried to empahise the point that immortality is so bad (as we see with the Ea and the nameless golden dungeon people) that it leads to despair for all immortal civilisations when at the same time they had created a society that had a really good solution for a similar situation and they were all quite happy.
I'm not really sure whether the Ascians were a conscious contrast to all these negative examples (although I want to believe they were) but because they repeatedly said that our planet is pretty much the only one that hasn't fully despaired yet it makes it sound as if this immortality-->suffering pipeline occured relatively reliably. And that felt a bit too simple to me.

The Ascians did have one key factor that helped them which is that they as immortal beings watched over the planet. I mean, this is the narrative of most gods: They watch over mortal life (or sow chaos in it). I can imagine that if you are immortal but engage heavily with mortal life then you might find ever renewing "meanings of life" because the world you are watching over is always changing. Even if you are "static" the world around you is dynamic which should influence your own life, as well. So the immortal-mortal pairing might be one solution to combat immortality fatigue.
Surely our planet wouldn't be the only one where both mortals and immortals exists?

But I think even in a fully immortal society without any changes caused by mortals long-lasting happiness could be possible.
Maybe it's because we can't really fathom it as "short-lived mortals" but perhaps immortal beings would be able to find new sources of meaning that we are not even aware of or able to comprehend.

And exactly as you said: If you have lived a happy life as an immortal and want to "go" that is completely different from a mortal person aging and ceasing or somebody dying of other causes. Being immortal inherently reframes death. We are judging this as aging, dying humans so it's terrifying for us. For an immortal being it might even be a joyful affair, just like it was for the Ascians.

All of this is also why I disliked the idea that a planet ending in a catastrophy is somehow indicative of life not being worth it as a whole. As if all the life that led up to that point could not have been filled with happiness. Especially if people are mortal. If the Earth ended today this would be bad for everyone alive but the lives of the people who came before us would not be affected by this at all. They could have lived the happiest lives imaginable and this happiness would not suddenly cease to be relevant.

[Alleo]

[...]
They could have lived the happiest lives imaginable and this happiness would not suddenly cease to be relevant.

Exactly thats my view on this too.

About Fandaniel (late game spoilers!)

Honestly thats what annoyed me a bit about Hermes. Yes unlike the Ancients the life they create does not have the chance to die when they want to but that is something he should know by now. Yet he still helps creating that life anyways. On top of that he really is not that better than the rest...he creates a "race" who is bascially forced to take in the emotions of the people around him. We can see it with our poor girl how much she suffers as soon as he feels negative emotions. Once she even said that she cant breath. Yet he still sent her sisters out. Did it really never occurs to him that the negative emotions on other planets could be too much? That the unknown universe could be really dangerous? Yet he risks their lifes and wellbeing just like the other Ancients did.

And when he learns the truth from us, learns what will happen, sees how his creation suffers he still sents her out into the universe, he choose her over everything else including all the creation that he and the former Fandaniel created. All of that dies in the Final days too.

He probably has one of the highest body count in this story, simply because of his creation, including his own people that surely had more that felt similiar to him.