Endwalker Main Scenario Commentary & Feedback

[MikkoAkure]

I’ve read through the thread and wonder if some of us have been playing the same game this whole time.

There was no way after 11 years of the game that they were going to have a twist where Hydaelyn is malevolent. That would cheapen a lot of the game and a lot of what we’ve done for a weak payoff. It was apparent things were going to end this way when SE responded in an interview to say that we only had one side of the story.

The plot armor for the Scions is annoying but expected, since they’ve had plot armor since the beginning and Y’shtola herself has been in mortal peril at least 5 times off the top of my head (tsunami in 1.0, Flow in ARR, stabbed in SB, Flow 2 in ShB, and Meteion’d in EW). I didn’t expect any prior established characters to die who were in the Trust system or in existing branching quest lines.

The game has always been fairly saccharine with a message about love and friendship. Even the edgy DRK turns out to be a knight who uses the power of love. There are dark moments for sure, but none of expansions end on one, least of all the whole game’s storyline.

So overall I’m confused why the outcome comes to a surprise to some. Were people seriously expecting an end where the Ascians were right all along and half of the party is dead?

Most of my thoughts on the expansion have already been mentioned here by others. The writing seems to have been inconsistent compared to ShB, with wild changes to our understanding of existing lore with no explanation. Other times, it felt like the writers were casually going through a list of bullet points they have for unfinished plot threads and just throwing the solutions at us out of nowhere and then moving on quickly by the end.

Then specifically with the ending:

I felt like the Scions were in no danger at all because they beat us over the head with the foreshadowing for Azem’s Crystal and the teleporter as if to keep making triply sure we wouldn’t forget about those plot devices.

Overall I would rate it below ShB, which felt consistent and focused throughout and made me cry at the end. None of which EW did. I would rank it above or equal to HW, and definitely above ARR and SB, the saving grace being:

Impromptu “road trip” with my friends from 12,000 years ago being one of my highlights for the game as a whole, and the fact that I felt like while inconsistent and sometimes lost, the game at least didn’t bungle the end.

[Bhearil]

I’ve read through the thread and wonder if some of us have been playing the same game this whole time.

There was no way after 11 years of the game that they were going to have a twist where Hydaelyn is malevolent. That would cheapen a lot of the game and a lot of what we’ve done for a weak payoff. It was apparent things were going to end this way when SE responded in an interview to say that we only had one side of the story.

The plot armor for the Scions is annoying but expected, since they’ve had plot armor since the beginning and Y’shtola herself has been in mortal peril at least 5 times off the top of my head (tsunami in 1.0, Flow in ARR, stabbed in SB, Flow 2 in ShB, and Meteion’d in EW). I didn’t expect any prior established characters to die who were in the Trust system or in existing branching quest lines.

The game has always been fairly saccharine with a message about love and friendship. Even the edgy DRK turns out to be a knight who uses the power of love. There are dark moments for sure, but none of expansions end on one, least of all the whole game’s storyline.

So overall I’m confused why the outcome comes to a surprise to some. Were people seriously expecting an end where the Ascians were right all along and half of the party is dead?

Most of my thoughts on the expansion have already been mentioned here by others. The writing seems to have been inconsistent compared to ShB, with wild changes to our understanding of existing lore with no explanation. Other times, it felt like the writers were casually going through a list of bullet points they have for unfinished plot threads and just throwing the solutions at us out of nowhere and then moving on quickly by the end.

Then specifically with the ending:

I felt like the Scions were in no danger at all because they beat us over the head with the foreshadowing for Azem’s Crystal and the teleporter as if to keep making triply sure we wouldn’t forget about those plot devices.

Overall I would rate it below ShB, which felt consistent and focused throughout and made me cry at the end. None of which EW did. I would rank it above or equal to HW, and definitely above ARR and SB, the saving grace being:

Impromptu “road trip” with my friends from 12,000 years ago being one of my highlights for the game as a whole, and the fact that I felt like while inconsistent and sometimes lost, the game at least didn’t bungle the end.

I completely agree, the story even if still great feels at times disjointed and a step down from ShB. While ShB keep the quality high during the entire expansion here you see lows and ups making certain points awesome and others a real slog.

Its still a worthy finale but could be done better considering how good was ShB

[PangTong]

I’ve read through the thread and wonder if some of us have been playing the same game this whole time.

Regarding that

Not making Hydaelyn evil is one thing the writers completely deserve commendation for. Over the years I've had to deal with so many people who were so convinced that twist was coming that it seemed like they were actually hoping for that most shallow and meaningless of subversions. "The good guy was the bad guy all along". It would have undermined the story so badly if it truly ended up being that simple. Imagine how awful the story would have ended up being if it was really just, the Ascians were right all along, Zodiark is a good guy and Hydaelyn has been deceiving you the whole time. Imagine if that's what we got instead of Shadowbringers.

In the end Hydaelyn is neither good nor evil, which is perfect. How you see her ends up coming down to whether you agree with her reasoning. Endwalker is far from the perfect ending in many respects but on that point at least I'm glad it played out the way it did

[Loggos]

I’ve read through the thread and wonder if some of us have been playing the same game this whole time.

There was no way after 11 years of the game that they were going to have a twist where Hydaelyn is malevolent. That would cheapen a lot of the game and a lot of what we’ve done for a weak payoff. It was apparent things were going to end this way when SE responded in an interview to say that we only had one side of the story.

Regarding that

Not making Hydaelyn evil is one thing the writers completely deserve commendation for. Over the years I've had to deal with so many people who were so convinced that twist was coming that it seemed like they were actually hoping for that most shallow and meaningless of subversions. "The good guy was the bad guy all along". It would have undermined the story so badly if it truly ended up being that simple. Imagine how awful the story would have ended up being if it was really just, the Ascians were right all along, Zodiark is a good guy and Hydaelyn has been deceiving you the whole time. Imagine if that's what we got instead of Shadowbringers.

In the end Hydaelyn is neither good nor evil, which is perfect. How you see her ends up coming down to whether you agree with her reasoning. Endwalker is far from the perfect ending in many respects but on that point at least I'm glad it played out the way it did

I'm also very glad that

Hydaelin didn't turn out to be the evil manipulater after all.

But I think the reason why many players felt that the story could take that turn might have been because Shadowbringers did shift the tone quite a lot.
For the first time we had a story with "more shades of grey", if you will. It also felt a lot darker to me.
Whereas ARR and Stormblood felt kind of colourful, over-idealistic and ultimately more like "clichéed optimistic fantasy" (not saying this is a bad thing - just trying to put it into words) and Heavensward was sad, more serious but not, for the lack of a better word, "bizarre", Shadowbringers - in a good sense - felt a lot darker and gritter, with some storytelling elements almost borrowing from horror genres (e.g., when I saw Tesleen's tranformation I was positively shocked because that kind of depiction felt quite unprecedented in FF14).
In ARR, HW and SB an evil Hydaelin would not have made sense thematically. But within Shadowbringers it suddenly felt like it actually might. And because people assumed they would continue to tell the story as they did in ShB they probably expected the same kind of "shades of grey" and perhaps also the same kind of darkness/grittiness in EW. (I would even argue we did get the latter. The HR Giga inspired Telophoroi towers that made you think a xenomorph is waiting behind the next corner, some of Meteion's "creepy" scenes or people turning into monsters (and stomping their own children) really embodied that spirit.)

[vormela]

I’ve read through the thread and wonder if some of us have been playing the same game this whole time.

I started playing the game in around April or May and have felt this way about the entire lore forum. I thought it was just me not having the decade-long experience and familiarity. Or I am crazy, which is usually the correct answer.

In other places online, there are specific groups that tend to have more to talk about than "this zone was very slow, retcon, aether blade, etc." A lot of it is fanfic community and people who write.

Like, if you thought Labyrinthos was slow then maybe you weren't paying attention to the quests.

The quest where we have to find 8 distraught high-security-clearance scientists to comfort with loporrits, which are basically Venat's comfort toys for people in senior living facilities... I know the medium limits that quest a lot, but I felt like they were making a statement about what it means to live. People need companionship and someone to say, "Hey, are you okay?" And more often than in instances where they need CPR! Everyday anxieties and insecurities about whether we did everything we could. Existential dread that can come with being a scientist in a field faced with the end of civilization and asking you to fix an impossible problem (climate scientists, anyone who deals in environmental engineering, etc.... basically anyone in earth sciences, health, biology).

The things that give people the "boost" to make all this possible in FFXIV are magical in some kind of way -- whether it is moogles, flying pigs, dragons, loporrits and their technology...but in life we have to decide for ourselves what that magic spark is. The magic can even make a difference in these everyday situations that don't seem critical (the quest I mentioned was part of an instanced zone and the music that plays is like "I'm on a mission to save the world" music).

With Endwalker specifically, the story had to cover so much ground that they were stuck with uniting the bits thematically. And the themes of this game are very deep, personal, and meaningful themes.

What does it mean to live? What does it take to survive? Why do we need to fight? Is there a reason/answer? The collapse of civilizations. Despair.

I think geeking out about lore of stories naturally tries to avoid these ideas to get down to some kind of answer, and that Endwalker's STORY is saying, "You need to find your own answer within." This naturally feels at odds with the "facts" and how they change over the course of how the story is told (I admit, some of the facts still bother me--I am at the last trial).

However, I think there is a balance we can achieve here between this type of take and the lore details (which is just as, if not more important--don't get me wrong!!). There is no "story" forum. I have checked.